[6.2] Demonology Warlock Guide

[Arothorn]

Has anyone else felt really weak during our opener without being fury capped? If I don't cast 4 demon bolts, my opener is never over 22k. This is strange to me because the sims I have been running say I should get an almost 40k opener starting from 200 fury. Do you guys think I'm doing something wrong? Perhaps I'm just interpreting the sim wrong.

[Woz]

I thought the nerf a couple weeks ago was related to the passive crit being reduced and nothing more?

I'm pretty certain it was nerfed across the board at the same time. Same with the Lucky Double Sided Coin.

[Deleted]

The opener should be HoG -> Corru -> Shadowbolt -> HoG -> DS -> Meta -> Doom -> Bolt x2 -> Build/dump cycle begins. Shadowflame is a big deal, are you sure you're maxing the uptime?

[Arothorn]

Yeah I'm definitely sure to get the 2 stack of Shadowflame rolling. Can someone who feels sure they're doing it right give me a reference point? I'm currently ~640, if that helps perspective.

Edit: After a little more thought, I realized that the number I provided before (22k I think) was without using my Doomgaurd, with it I can touch 30k, but that is still not the 39K the sims indicate I should be reaching. Perhaps it's semantics at this point.

[Smuts]

How do you open without glyph of imp swarm?

[Tyrean]

So I have been playing around with stuff and I actually am finding that the best DPS for me personally is going with supremacy and servitude. So I have been running the old school demo "rotation" but I am trying to squeak just a little more DPS out of it and I need some advice.

Currently I am basically just running normal rotation and trying to save as much soul fire for demon form, but while I am building fury I am switching into demon form to apply two stacks of chaos wave. I am waiting until I get a few seconds till double stack, switching to demon form and waving once, casting a soul fire and then waving again and then back to caster form. When I get a good amount of fury built up I will demon soul and dump it all.

I am curious about a couple of things... Am I doing that correctly? I am also thinking that it would be better to run with archimonde's and DS glyph and everytime I have a double stack of chaos wave popping DS and switching to form and dumping fury. I am not sure how that will play out though.

Also, I am curious on imp swarm glyph. I know that it is less imps over time, but would it benefit me more to run imp swarm and pop that after I have built up my first batch of fury? Will I end up wasting too much soul fire casts in caster form?

Also, why the hell don't we get to start a fight of with more fury? I hate how basically everyone else gets to pop CDS and go balls deep on the pull and it takes like a minute to get going for me.

Moved this post to the Demo sticky.

[Deleted]

Uhm I might be wrong here but I don't think you should be using Chaos Wave and you should rather use Hand of Gul'dan. Chaos Wave was only broken at lvl 90 because of the scaling but now it's fairly mediocre and you are better of using HoG by applying 1 HoG and then clipping the DoT before the first stack expires, giving you ~4 secs of 1 stack of HoG and then 7-8 secs of 2 stacks of HoG. Imp Swarm is worth using especially if you can stack it with DS, however Glyph of Dark Soul is only worth using if you have Cataclysm or Demonbolt, otherwise Glyph of Dark Soul is hurting your DPS more than it helps you. If you don't run with Demonbolt, you can't squeeze enough Soul Fires into 10 seconds of Dark Soul making the glyph worthwhile. Since you also regenerate Demonic Fury a lot slower than you would if you ran with Demonbolt, you wont have enough Fury to really make a 1 min CD on Dark Soul worthwhile either. Hope that helps and if anyone else has a better idea, please let us know as I'm dreading playing as Destro in Highmaul on wednesday.

[FurtyIRL]

How do you open without glyph of imp swarm?

The same way, you just cut out the Imp Swarm.

[Tyrean]

Okay, I see that HoG is better now, thank you for that. I also got the clipping the dot part, just sometimes I see a dot with chaos wave and othertimes I don't I did not read the tooltip well enough to see that chaos wave does not have a dot component.

The reason I ask about the glyph of DS is because I find when I dump all my fury I have 8 or so seconds left on DS. I think that is probably because I am using chaos wave.

So the way it should go should be that I start the fight with corruption, then switch to demon form and put up doom. Then back to caster and HoG and clip with second, and then build fury and save my soul fire procs. Then when I get full fury DS and dump soul fire and then repeat?

Going to go dummy test that now. Thanks.

[Deleted]

No Chaos Wave only applies a snare, why it stacks twice is anyone's guess I suppose as the snare doesn't get effectively doubled with 2 stacks.

Yeah using Chaos Wave twice will deplete your Fury quite fast. However, Chaos Wave is perfect on a bunch of small adds that are just about to die (think the second to last boss in UBRS for example, the proto drake). Using Chaos Wave there and getting the killing blow on all the small adds will cap your Fury.

You can always try reading either the guide here on MMO-champion or check out the one on Icy-veins if you prefer that.

[Tyrean]

Soo I been messing round with this a lot tonight and I have to say that I think the only thing making demonbolt stronger than serv is the fact that you can get a real doomguard out as an extra. I messed around with not summoning a doomguard and the DPS is almost identical to taking serv and doing normal rotation as dumping with demonbolt.

Just make me sad that I think we are built around a 10 minute CD. I know it does not reset in dungeons, but does it still reset in raids when you down a boss or is it just when you wipe to a boss?

[Alarinth]

I know it does not reset in dungeons, but does it still reset in raids when you down a boss or is it just when you wipe to a boss?

Should be whenever the encounter resets, either via a wipe, a kill or an actual reset where the boss despawns; I think all cooldowns longer than 5 minutes are reset, like bloodlust, doomguard etc.

[Scarykid]

Sorry if this was already covered but I was curious if anyone knew what the 2set for demo actually does this tier ?
Item - Warlock T17 Demonology 2P Bonus - Hand of Gul'dan has a 50% chance empower your inner demon, temporarily bringing your Metamorphosis form out even while you are not transformed.
Seems worded very poorly to me. Doesn't explain if you are just being granted your demon form damage bonus temporarily or if you are actually being transformed into a demon.

[bio347]

It summons a guardian that throws some soulfires at your target.

[Santoisms]

How is encountering there Demonbolt cycles? Are you all waiting for the 800 Fury? Or just casting how many ever you can AFTER the debuff on Demonbolt resets?

[Tradu]

How is encountering there Demonbolt cycles? Are you all waiting for the 800 Fury? Or just casting how many ever you can AFTER the debuff on Demonbolt resets?

I've just been doing it once every minute(+/- a bit), because that's generally how long it takes me to get just over 800 Fury. On top of that it lines up with glyphed Dark Soul and my PvP trinket, so that's nice. That said, I only recently started playing my warlock, so I'm probably doing everything wrong. I'd love to know if there's a better way to do it, though.

[Santoisms]

I've just been doing it once every minute(+/- a bit), because that's generally how long it takes me to get just over 800 Fury. On top of that it lines up with glyphed Dark Soul and my PvP trinket, so that's nice. That said, I only recently started playing my warlock, so I'm probably doing everything wrong. I'd love to know if there's a better way to do it, though.

Yeah I've been doing it both ways and haven't gotten any solid math or tests to see which is better.

[Deleted]

Yeah I've been doing it both ways and haven't gotten any solid math or tests to see which is better.

So pretty much like anything you say then?

Anyone else noticed a bug that happens with the Glyph of Darksoul and the use of AD. Sometimes I can use the 2nd charge but 90% of the time I am unable to.

Yup - I've had this happen several times (a lot less than 90% though...) but cannot work out any trigger causing it. Mostly running without it at the moment, focusing on larger 2 min bursts with service.

[Zevoa]

Yup - I've had this happen several times (a lot less than 90% though...) but cannot work out any trigger causing it. Mostly running without it at the moment, focusing on larger 2 min bursts with service.

Reported this a while ago, hopefully they address the issue soon.

Yeah I've been doing it both ways and haven't gotten any solid math or tests to see which is better.

The answer should be glaringly obvious.

[Verothous]

Yeah I've been doing it both ways and haven't gotten any solid math or tests to see which is better.

The fourth cast is barely worth the fury spent as it is. holding for the 800 fury is only going to be worth it if you are about to need burst damage for a mechanic or if the fight is almost over and you know you won't get another demonbolt cycle in before the boss dies.

For the most part though just start your DB cycle as soon as the buff drops. If you have the fury to cast 4 great, if not you probably will next cycle go ahead and cast it.