3.3.3 Demo changes

[aguladx]

What I think will happen if one swaps out Glyph of Lifetap for Glyph of Immolate or Meta Glyph is once Blizzard makes Glyph of Lifetap scale with Intellect, then people will switch back.

Probably best to stay status quo and just enjoy the Immo buff.

[Kvn]

What I think will happen if one swaps out Glyph of Lifetap for Glyph of Immolate or Meta Glyph is once Blizzard makes Glyph of Lifetap scale with Intellect, then people will switch back.

Probably best to stay status quo and just enjoy the Immo buff.

The DPS you gain by swapping to the Immolate glyph, even at the low numbers of spirit on gear in ICC, is smaller than the amount of dps gained by your raid. So, it's definitely worth swapping it out for destro but not demo

[Demonologist]

It is simply impossible for a Demo to draw aggro. If you do, get rid of your tank.

I agree with most of your post, but I have to take issue with this particular bit. Demo locks have some of the highest single target threat out there, with the potential for insane spikes that even excellent tanks can have trouble with. As the dedicated rDPS Demo lock, I am generally in the low/midrange of our raid dps on an average single target fight, but I am often riding the tanks on threat. During Meta/Soulfire I've seen my tps sitting at 15k solid.

Its nothing shatter/salv or a Vigilance can't solve, but I'm just saying if you DO have bad tanks the threat reduction option is not a horrible idea. Personally I'm sticking with 2/3 Imp. DT since it seems to be the best overall dps option given ideal circumstances.

[Kvn]

I agree with most of your post, but I have to take issue with this particular bit. Demo locks have some of the highest single target threat out there, with the potential for insane spikes that even excellent tanks can have trouble with. As the dedicated rDPS Demo lock, I am generally in the low/midrange of our raid dps on an average single target fight, but I am often riding the tanks on threat. During Meta/Soulfire I've seen my tps sitting at 15k solid.

Its nothing shatter/salv or a Vigilance can't solve, but I'm just saying if you DO have bad tanks the threat reduction option is not a horrible idea. Personally I'm sticking with 2/3 Imp. DT since it seems to be the best overall dps option given ideal circumstances.

In lower levels of gear (BiS ToC level I think) 2/2 suppression is better than 2/2 improved demonic tactics, but then at BiS ICC, 2/2 improved demonic tactics is better. So basically, choose whichever one your gear supports. In terms of threat, 2/2 demonic tactics would technically be lower but it really doesn't matter.

[~Thalia~]

In lower levels of gear (BiS ToC level I think) 2/2 suppression is better than 2/2 improved demonic tactics, but then at BiS ICC, 2/2 improved demonic tactics is better. So basically, choose whichever one your gear supports. In terms of threat, 2/2 demonic tactics would technically be lower but it really doesn't matter.

This is not entirely accurate. The lower gear levels you're referring to is the BiS list I compiled using only normal ICC loot (10 or 25 man).
If Suppression is ahead of IDT in the chart posted on EJ, it is because the 11% hit profile uses Arthas' weapon instead of Rigormortis (which the 13% hit profile is using).

Technically it means taking Suppression is better on very specific cases (like when replacing Rigormortis by Arthas' weapon if you can't make up for the loss of hit), but it doesn't mean it is always true. The results may have been different if both profiles used Arthas' sword but only swapped hit gems for SP gems.

The only answer would be to sim your own character with two gear options. But so far IDT still seems to be better in terms of personal dps.

I agree with most of your post, but I have to take issue with this particular bit. Demo locks have some of the highest single target threat out there, with the potential for insane spikes that even excellent tanks can have trouble with. As the dedicated rDPS Demo lock, I am generally in the low/midrange of our raid dps on an average single target fight, but I am often riding the tanks on threat. During Meta/Soulfire I've seen my tps sitting at 15k solid.

Its nothing shatter/salv or a Vigilance can't solve, but I'm just saying if you DO have bad tanks the threat reduction option is not a horrible idea. Personally I'm sticking with 2/3 Imp. DT since it seems to be the best overall dps option given ideal circumstances.

I also have to agree on that. It is not uncommon to have threat problems as Demo if you do decent dps. I'd stick with IDT though.

[Bloodymist]

Dont mean to bust anyone's bubble, cause I would LOVE to see this for demo....but doesnt it say its a destro change, and NOT demo?

Warlock (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Affliction

* Life Tap: This spell no longer scales with spirit, and instead scales with spell power.
* Dark Pact: This ability no longer requires line-of-sight with the summoned demon, and the range has been increased from 30 yards to 100 yards.

Demonology

* Demonic Pact: This effect now has a 45-second duration, up from 12 seconds, and a 20-second internal cooldown.

Destruction

* Immolate: The damage-over-time component of this spell can now produce critical strikes.

EDIT:

Nevermind….I took a look at my parse from last nights raid, and saw my immolates critting for 4k. Don’t have scrolling combate text anymore, so I didn’t immediately notice it last night.

[moode]

I know I have seen this somewhere but can someone point me in the direction of how to gem/spec/glyph for pDPS as Demo? I may be switching over and we already have our normal demo for raid buffs. I'd like to see what the difference would be between pDPS and rDPS.

sorry for asking this, I am on here every day and I know I have seen this comparison before but cannot find it now.

[harky]

Don't run pDPS if you already have an rDPS Lock. DP will sometimes overwrite another DP with more SP making pDPS a potential DPS loss to a raid with an existing rDPS Warlock.

As far as talent switching? I don't see any reason after doing my a bunch of work in ICC last night as Demo. Hit is a non-issue. Hit talents are under-budget and it's actually somewhat difficult not to go over hit cap depending on the gear you get your hands on. With Immolate critting the DoT is making up 9% of my damage even with 96.5% uptime. That means Aftermath would be an extra 10,480 damage, or an extra 51.12 DPS, or .89% more DPS. On the other hand my Felguard is about 22.8% of my DPS, so Imp DT only needs to be a ~1% increase to his DPS to break even. It's more like 4%. So... cookie cutter is unchanged.

Felguards just do too much damage with proper buffs for reducing their crit to be worthwhile. I suppose if people are not using cooldowns properly and not using petfood this could be different, but you're talking about a pet that puts out ~2400 DPS by itself. A 6% gain to ~850-1k DPs is not going to win against a 4-5% increase to 2-2.4k DPS.

So far 3.3.3 is nice though, in 3.3 it was a struggle to break 11k DPS, now as long as you keep Corruption/Immolate up-time as high as you can it's not too bad at all.

[Kvn]

Don't run pDPS if you already have an rDPS Lock. DP will sometimes overwrite another DP with more SP making pDPS a potential DPS loss to a raid with an existing rDPS Warlock.

As far as talent switching? I don't see any reason after doing my a bunch of work in ICC last night as Demo. Hit is a non-issue. Hit talents are under-budget and it's actually somewhat difficult not to go over hit cap depending on the gear you get your hands on. With Immolate critting the DoT is making up 9% of my damage even with 96.5% uptime. That means Aftermath would be an extra 10,480 damage, or an extra 51.12 DPS, or .89% more DPS. On the other hand my Felguard is about 22.8% of my DPS, so Imp DT only needs to be a ~1% increase to his DPS to break even. It's more like 4%. So... cookie cutter is unchanged.

Felguards just do too much damage with proper buffs for reducing their crit to be worthwhile. I suppose if people are not using cooldowns properly and not using petfood this could be different, but you're talking about a pet that puts out ~2400 DPS by itself. A 6% gain to ~850-1k DPs is not going to win against a 4-5% increase to 2-2.4k DPS.

So far 3.3.3 is nice though, in 3.3 it was a struggle to break 11k DPS, now as long as you keep Corruption/Immolate up-time as high as you can it's not too bad at all.

Funnily enough, for some reason recount showed me as doing only ~4k dps on deathwhisper single target last night. I was above people who were doing single target on deathwhisper as well, except their DPS was calculated to be over 9k. Someone said that it was because I was rank 1 hellfiring beforehand (for trinket) but I don't buy it because I've always done that.

[harky]

Recount bugs out sometimes. Check a good parsing site, or a parsing executable and they'll typically avoid that problem. Another good way is to take DBM's kill-time and divide your damage done by the time to get a rough idea of your real DPS. I also pre-Hellfire to stack Muradin's (because +200 SP is yummy) and I've had recount report low DPS occasionally. Sometimes it says you're 1-2k lower, sometimes more. Not sure at all what causes it, but it does happen. Damage done is far more important though.

[Kvn]

We do WoL, but I'm too lazy to check them later after the raid.

[Vachus]

I've added the following to the Demonology FAQ.

What changes with 3.3.3?

Immolate:

More DPS for us, and there is now absolutely no question as to whether Immolate should be maintained during the execute phase, since at all levels of crit it will have a higher DPCT than Soul Fire. Do not Glyph for this, our glyph choices remain the same.

Life Tap:

Whether or not this is a buff or a nerf will depend on your current gear. rDPS geared 'locks with very high levels of spirit may find that they are getting less mana returns than prior to the patch.

Demonic Pact:

This is the interesting one. The increased uptime minus the cooldown means that there is now a 25 second window in which our pet can refresh the buff, rather than 12. In theory this means that our pet only needs half as much crit to maintain the same uptime as prior to the patch.

This means that Demo locks can now afford to consider dropping the 2/3 Improved Demonic Tactics which has, until now, been considered more or less mandatory.

The possibilities for alternatives are:

Suppression - 2% hit. Very useful if your raid comp or gear mean that reaching the hit cap is a struggle.

Improved Corruption - +4% damage on corruption. Corruption is about 7% of our damage, so this is a DPS increase of ~0.3%.

Aftermath - +6% periodic damage on Immolate. The periodic component of Immolate is again around 7% of our damage, so we're looking at ~0.4% dps increase.

Cataclysm - 4% reduction in mana cost for destruction spells.

Destructive Reach - 20% threat reduction and 20% range increase for detruction spells. The threat reduction may be very useful, dependent on the tanks you tend to run with. The need to keep corruption up (especially if you are running with substantial haste and GoQD) reduces the value of the range boost, especially as all our destruction spells have cast times. However, that's not to say you'll never enjoy any benefit from it, but don't let it be your motivation for taking this talent.

Improved Demonic Tactics - ignoring the benefits to Demonic Pact uptime. It's difficult to give a figure for this, but assuming you have about 50% crit raid buffed, and your felguard does around 14% of your damage, this is a dps gain of around 1.2%.

Intensity - 70% pushback reduction for destruction spells. This is situationally dependent, but potentially very useful. On fights where there is frequent pushback Demo obviously suffers a lot, due to long casttimes and lack of instants.


The numbers quoted above are very rough values, but it should be clear that if you are not having issues with hit rating, mana consumption or threat management, then you should stick with Improved Demonic Tactics as it provides a more substantial DPS boost than any of the alternative dps enhancing talents.

The cookie cutter 00/56/15 will, therefore, still be the standard spec, it maximises dps and DP uptime (if only slightly). Variance from this is only justifiable in terms of adjusting to raid comp - reaching hit cap, reducing threat or mitigating mana consumption issues (e.g. if your healers are struggling).

TY ^

[Bakis]

If ppl have as two specs, Demo/Affe go for supression, cant see any reason to not go supression regardless of combo. Since affe without supression is a dpsloss cos it free up itemstats to haste intstead of hit you might want to consider the less gearswapping needed if Demo get supression as well. Rest of the options are pretty crappy since all that possible haste will kick the dpsincrease of the other choices by a mile and more <3
(threat reduction or pushback isnt even an option unless someone is braindead).

[Kvn]

If ppl have as two specs, Demo/Affe go for supression, cant see any reason to not go supression regardless of combo. Since affe without supression is a dpsloss cos it free up itemstats to haste intstead of hit you might want to consider the less gearswapping needed if Demo get supression as well. Rest of the options are pretty crappy since all that possible haste will kick the dpsincrease of the other choices by a mile and more <3
(threat reduction or pushback isnt even an option unless someone is braindead).

Because putting points in suppression and imp dt yield very similar dps numbers, the choice is pretty much personal preference. But, you probably are underestimating the strength of pushback - think of it as situational haste. Yes, it's a 0 dps gain on some fights but then a huge dps gain on others (but to be fair, it's still probably less than imp DT on average, I only get it because I hate pushback not because I think it's optimal dps)