[6.2] Demonology Warlock Guide

[Deleted]

I get what you're getting at, but looking through some logs I'm not really seeing any differences between performance on stuff that matters. I'm not looking very hard though but it isn't apparent at first glance at the very least.

Nobody is saying that Destruction is better; simply that it is still extremely effective on this fight. A lot of people still regard Destruction as a trash tier spec on everything but Kromog.

I think it's also important to point out the number of Destruction parses in relation to Demonology. You'll notice the difference in the number of recorded parses for each fight is quite large, resulting in more Demonology logs recorded with favourable RNG.

With that said, I compared my 61k Destro log (private) with that of Lyrpen's 76k Demo log (public rank 1). RNG can vary, but overall I'd like to highlight a few things.

Damage to priority targets is very close. I played Demo for half our pulls and both specs could consistently deal upwards of 5M to the Primal Elementalists (I think both managed over 6M a couple of times). As we got quicker Destro started to pull ahead as the shorter the gap between shields down the harder it is for Demo to burst. CR Destro can consistently unload every time. Overall the specs seem neck and neck on stuff like Primals / Engineers / Bellows. I'd have to look deeper into which spec bursts Bellows down to 50%, but they're close enough that I don't think it matters.

Where the specs differ is in how much padding they do. Overall damage on Security Guards is even, however when we look at Slag Elemental damage it's a very different story. Lyrpen did 12.19M to them over the whole fight as Demo, whereas I did 1.93M damage as Destro.

If we look at just p3 damage, Lyrpen did 13M to my 8.5M, however I beat him on boss damage by 2.5M.

Looking through further logs, Demo locks do a ton of damage to slag elementals throughout p2 and p3 from Corruption / Doom and HoG / CW splash, regardless of whether or not they are actively AoEing for ranks. I did less than 400k to slags in p3 and kept up FnB Immolate on them as much as possible.

Disclaimer: Before anyone calls me out on this, I'm not saying Demo is bad or that Destro is better. Simply stating my reasons for why Destro is 100% viable as a progression spec on this encounter.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think Octa is saying that it's outright better, just that it's one example of a fight where Destruction is an extremely viable alternative should that be your preference.

Eh took me so long to type out you beat me to it.

[Deleted]

With Iron Maidens though I have to disagree that Demonic Servitude is inadequate. The only important part of the fight is the last 20% zerg during which you'll be best served with high single target DPS. Demonic Servitude is of course our best option currently for single target dps. In addition, the bosses will be below 20% health meaning both Doomguards are hitting for 20% more.

On a fight or a segment of fight which lasts less than 1 minute, Demonic Servitude is a DPS loss over no talent at all. Because of the 1 minute Doomguard of the 10 minutes cooldown. With Demonic Servitude, you are playing with one pet where you could have two with no talents.

Finally, you won't want to have the DS glyph in order to maximize your DPS in the sub 20% phase, and its a requirement for Demonbolt.

Assuming a 1min10-2min duration for the sub 20% phase, DS glyph will allow for 3 focus dump with DB, while no glyph will allow for only 2 but will give you more DS uptime outside meta, and more uptime of DS during your Grimoire of Servitude. As DPS on the rest of the encounter is irrelevant, why is the Glyph of DS necessary ? Both options seem viable. Cataclysm is also a valid choice.

[Octa]

I don't think Octa is saying that it's outright better, just that it's one example of a fight where Destruction is an extremely viable alternative should that be your preference.

Yeah, exactly this. CR just happens to be fun on this fight while not really being detrimental to your overall damage since it does well on basically everything. I am by no means saying "Destruction is THE BEST spec for this fight", just outlining likely reasons you're seeing parses opting for Destruction.

[MycantrumX]

On a fight or a segment of fight which lasts less than 1 minute, Demonic Servitude is a DPS loss over no talent at all. Because of the 1 minute Doomguard of the 10 minutes cooldown. With Demonic Servitude, you are playing with one pet where you could have two with no talents.

This is a good point about the 10min Doomguard, but the fastest kills on WCL have the final phase lasting about 1:20 so its only going to get longer than that usually as you get slower kills. However this is a good argument for both DB and Cata as you'll have a very high uptime of DG during the sub 20 phase.

Assuming a 1min10-2min duration for the sub 20% phase, DS glyph will allow for 3 focus dump with DB, while no glyph will allow for only 2 but will give you more DS uptime outside meta, and more uptime of DS during your Grimoire of Servitude. As DPS on the rest of the encounter is irrelevant, why is the Glyph of DS necessary ? Both options seem viable. Cataclysm is also a valid choice.

I believe you misunderstood me here. I meant that the Glyph of DS is required for Demonbolt as thats how the talent works, which would give you a lower uptime of DS during that phase, as you have shown with your own math. Also given the ability to SF spam sub 25%, its not unreasonable to have 2 full DS dumps within the last phase. They won't both necessarily be on Marak as she is the first to die, but certainly you could have it for the 2nd, if not, 3rd boss.
I would go Cataclysm if your guild doesn't have an issue getting Marak down in a reasonable amount of time, which normally is the case for a guild that is progressing on this boss at this point.

[Deleted]

Yeah, exactly this. CR just happens to be fun on this fight while not really being detrimental to your overall damage since it does well on basically everything. I am by no means saying "Destruction is THE BEST spec for this fight", just outlining likely reasons you're seeing parses opting for Destruction.

That's good to hear because I prefer to play Destruction wherever I can ^^

Just wanted to see if there was some secret mechanic that I was overlooking, always nice to have what you suspect be confirmed by people who've actually done the fight. I don't know why everyone else in my guild dreads Furnace progression though, from the few pulls we had it seemed like a fun fight!

[Deleted]

This is a good point about the 10min Doomguard, but the fastest kills on WCL have the final phase lasting about 1:20 so its only going to get longer than that usually as you get slower kills. However this is a good argument for both DB and Cata as you'll have a very high uptime of DG during the sub 20 phase.

Even for a 2 minutes fight, 1 minute of DG and 2 minutes of FG would be better than 2 minutes of DG. The argument still holds.

I believe you misunderstood me here. I meant that the Glyph of DS is required for Demonbolt as thats how the talent works, which would give you a lower uptime of DS during that phase, as you have shown with your own math.

Glyph of DS is not required. It gives a better overall DPS, but overall DPS is not what matters on this fight.

I would go Cataclysm if your guild doesn't have an issue getting Marak down in a reasonable amount of time, which normally is the case for a guild that is progressing on this boss at this point.

We just killed Iron Maiden tonight. I played DB / GoServ, no glyph of DS. I still don't know if Cataclysm would have performed better.

[MycantrumX]

Even for a 2 minutes fight, 1 minute of DG and 2 minutes of FG would be better than 2 minutes of DG. The argument still holds.

I don't know if you're forgetting to include the service DG here, but I don't want it to go unmentioned in the case that you are. It's going to give a substantial amount of damage here.

Glyph of DS is not required. It gives a better overall DPS, but overall DPS is not what matters on this fight.

Not using Glyph of DS is fairly wasteful though. With a 4x DB dump, you're wasting at least half of a DS using caster form Soul Fires to rebuild fury for the next dump. Not to mention you'll have 2 buffed dumps with 1 non-buffed DB dump.

We just killed Iron Maiden tonight. I played DB / GoServ, no glyph of DS. I still don't know if Cataclysm would have performed better.

Grats on your kill ^.^

[Mazda]

Love reading all the fighti-*cough* discussions, here.

Anyway, to bump a question: I haven't been able to find 4pc events in my logs yet, but I saw someone post a log with 4pc events. Anyone?

[FurtyIRL]

Yeah, exactly this. CR just happens to be fun on this fight while not really being detrimental to your overall damage since it does well on basically everything. I am by no means saying "Destruction is THE BEST spec for this fight", just outlining likely reasons you're seeing parses opting for Destruction.

Yeah, for real. I agree with a lot of what Shizwix said — spec is actually a lot stronger than people give it credit it for, just really heavily underrepresented right now because Demonology is so overwhelmingly dominant even at an overall class/spec level. That coupled with Destructions severe gear dependency relative to Demo sort of push it waaay out of the limelight.

[Woz]

Love reading all the fighti-*cough* discussions, here.

Anyway, to bump a question: I haven't been able to find 4pc events in my logs yet, but I saw someone post a log with 4pc events. Anyone?

Look for spellID: 182087
or SpellName: Hand of Gul'dan Ready!

[JV Chequer]

Killed Furnace few moments ago.

I feel Destro it's OK in that fight, mainly with shadowburn cleave on P1, but Demo it's pretty smoother on P2 and P3 so I go for it.

[ziir]

Furty, I watched your video and saw how you kept manually setting up the filters over and over again. Is there a way to save the pins so that I don't have to do it for every fight?

[FurtyIRL]

Furty, I watched your video and saw how you kept manually setting up the filters over and over again. Is there a way to save the pins so that I don't have to do it for every fight?

If they're from the same log pins should carry over if you switch the fights around. If they're in separate logs I'm pretty sure you're SoL.

[Deleted]

I don't know if you're forgetting to include the service DG here, but I don't want it to go unmentioned in the case that you are. It's going to give a substantial amount of damage here.

You are right, a Service Doomguard is probably a little better than a Service Felguard, though with the whirlwind, on 2 targets the difference should not be very high.

Not using Glyph of DS is fairly wasteful though. With a 4x DB dump, you're wasting at least half of a DS using caster form Soul Fires to rebuild fury for the next dump. Not to mention you'll have 2 buffed dumps with 1 non-buffed DB dump.

What you are wasting on the > 20% phase is irrelevant. With or without Glyph of DS, you will only have time for 2 x 4 DB dump during the key phase of the encounter (< 20 % and when there are at least 2 boss alive). Playing without Glyph gives you 20 additional damage of Dark Soul while you are spamming caster former Soulfire. Not much but always better than nothing.

[Woz]

If they're from the same log pins should carry over if you switch the fights around. If they're in separate logs I'm pretty sure you're SoL.

There is sort of a way to do it with pins but it's really not the greatest way and still requires some work on your part.

&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Warlock%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24104027%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Warlock%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24103964%5E0%24Separate%24%23a04D8A%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Warlock%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24124916%5E0%24Separate%24%23DF5353%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Warlock%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24113861%5E0%24Separate%24rgb(78%25,+61%25,+43%25)%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%240.0.0.Warlock%24false%24177046%5E0%24Separate%24%23a0a0a0%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%240.0.0.Warlock%24false%24177081%5E0%24Separate%24%23F43F5B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%240.0.0.Warlock%24false%24177176%5E0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%240.0.0.Warlock%24false%24177051

_{You just have to add this pin code to the end of the WCL URL and hit Enter.}

Is a pin code for everything you'd analyze in a Demo Locks logs but it will show them for ALL Warlock so you'd still have to do some work regardless.
Firstly it doesn't show what the actual ability is but it shows you the spellID, for example in this pin it goes (top to bottom):

1. Soul Fire (Meta)
2. Touch of Chaos
3. Chaos Wave
4. Dark Soul: Instability
5. Howling Soul (GSR proc)
6. Molten Metal (BMC proc)
7. Archmage's Greater Incandescence (Ring proc)
8. Instability (DUT proc)

Now in a log where you have multiple Warlock sources it will show you them all in the pins, which can be helpful but it can also suck if you want to analyze one persons log and not all the Warlocks.

What you have to do is select the Warlock you want to analyze in each of the abilities pin so it filters out the other Warlock(s) and what you'll be left with is one Warlock that you want to analyze. To see the Fury usage during these spells I would highly recommend going to the Resources tab and selecting Demonic Fury as well since you will see the ebb and flow of Fury during these procs/spell usage.

[pvw1075]

I feel like I've asked this before for Service are we using Felguard or Doomguard.

Thanks!

[zvvl]

I feel like I've asked this before for Service are we using Felguard or Doomguard.

Thanks!

Doomguard, assuming you also have Servitude. Which you should if you are using Service.

[MycantrumX]

I feel like I've asked this before for Service are we using Felguard or Doomguard.

Thanks!

Doomguard, and this is for ST. Really any time you have multiple targets (and you aren't running Demonic Servitude for priority target damage) you should be taking GoSyn as it outstrips the other two talents with each additional target.

[Deleted]

Saw some neat macros in the OP, so I tought I'll share level 100 talent macro I've been using for a few weeks. Might be useful for someone who switches talents frequently.

#showtooltip [talent:7/1]Demonbolt; [talent:7/2]Cataclysm; [talent 7/3]Grimoire: Doomguard
/use [talent:7/1]Demonbolt;[talent:7/2]Cataclysm;[talent:7/3]Grimoire: Doomguard

[Geminine]

What is a good add-on to use to keep track of my HoG's for keeping 2 stacks up? I use tellmewhen but I can't seem to set it up to countdown the stack on the mob and I seem to only be able to keep 2 stacks for 2 rotations ever. Frustrating the hell out of me.