Demonology warlocks.

[Deleted]

Hello everyone,

I noticed something weird. I know according to simcraft, EJ, etcetera Destruction is THE spec to get high DPS. Affliction (first SB then Drain spec) gets the second place and Demonology gets the last place.
Well, I just saw the pic of Adept getting that boss worldfirst on HC and I saw something huge purplish thing, indeed a metamorphis warlock!
Last week I noticed the same when a guild killed Nefarian on 25 normal. But then I thought that the warlocks in that guild loved to play Demon. But now I am thinking, why do they pick the worse spec for warlocks? I know the difference is small, but still.

So why do warlocks, who want to get world first kills, use the demonology spec over destruction?

I am quite sure there is someone else providing the SP buff, and mastery is not that really good for demon warlocks (the gear is filled with it!)

[Fizzlebeard]

Many guilds still prefer a Demo Warlock of an Elemental Shaman for the 10% SP buff. Also, they proved the 5% spellcrit so your mages don't have (and can go Arcane or Frost if thats better DPS, I wouldn't know) to and your Warlocks can spec Destro.

[Deleted]

5% spell crit is brought with affliction warlocks aswell (better movement and better DPS).
The totems an elemental can bring is more than a demon warlock (Idk bout their DPS tho).

[Jenerena]

I was wondering this as well. It made me feel quite happy to be honest, but I still expect them to pick a better spec. I'm guessing that a lot of the boss fights are kind to demo - perhaps some aoe, etc. But I wouldn't know as I haven't started raiding yet.

[Deleted]

I agree that demon has a pretty wild AOE. But if your pet aggros and dies (happened to me in RS 25 HC a lot of times and it is annoying) your DPS will drop with huge numbers. Also if your pet dies, you can't use Demon Soul and makes Mastery pretty useless (unless in Metamorph).

[Deleted]

Only reason for speccing demo is aoe fights. You can basically get everyone off the charts with that. Well...except unholy dks.

Anyway, affli and destro for single target fights, demo for aoe.

LE: if your pet dies, you have the instant summon 4 free talent in demo tree, otherwise just blow a soulburn for instant resummon. Don't see the problem.

[Deleted]

What's theoretically optimal, and what's optimal (and fun, though it stands for optimal on it's own too) when played by a real person, do differ...

[Elvy]

Demo buffs the raid, has sickest aoe of the game and competitive single target dps. Hard to play, but very fun.

[Deleted]

i play a demo warlock.
according to me they are just fine. when im in a random i do about 11-12k dps (330 ilvl) and sometimes i even do 50% of the total dmg done.
but it is hard to keep track of every dot (4), cds (6) and debuffs. and ontop of that u have to move out of the fire.
i also belive they have the best aoe in the game. they can have 6ish aoe at the same time (while moving!).

[Gahouf!]

Ever figured they might be bringing the player, not the spec?

Yeah.

Not everyone's an elitist *****, you know.

[Veyne]

Here's the thing with Warlocks. All three specs (4 if you count Drain Life Affliction and Shadow Bolt Affliction as separate specs) are very close in DPS, so we're at a prime time to play whichever specs we prefer to play.

As for progression guilds bringing Demonology Warlocks, it's probably a simple matter of Demonic Pact and not necessarily having an Elemental Shaman available.f

[Leadros]

Here's the thing with Warlocks. All three specs (4 if you count Drain Life Affliction and Shadow Bolt Affliction as separate specs) are very close in DPS, so we're at a prime time to play whichever specs we prefer to play.

As for progression guilds bringing Demonology Warlocks, it's probably a simple matter of Demonic Pact and not necessarily having an Elemental Shaman available.f

Not only that, but most people forget, that Demo has a great survivability with its soullink wich you can glyph. And damage reduction is a huge plus right now because of the healing intensiv fights and mostly low mana pool of healers.

as for the AoE Argument. i am a demo warlock myself, and in the raids right now, i dont see any part wich requieres that much of AoE power. Maybe magmaw, but we did fine with kiting instead of Bombing the target.

as for the Damage itself i was able to surpass our Destro Warlock on council of the winds and had about the same damage output than our mage ( it was about 14-15k).

And i think Demo will be better than destro anyways, since demo just scales that much better with haste than destro ever will.

[Jessicka]

Soul Link is baseline, every spec gets it. However, the extra Stamina is nice.

The thing with Demonology is that it has a good few cooldowns. EJ base their numbers on Patchwerk fights, but given he died 2 years ago now, those figures aren't realistic for todays content. You can use those cooldowns to work your DPS around the fight itself, ie, time your Meta, Demon Soul, Felstorm, Guardian etc to points in the fights you will be best able to use them. Destruction and Affliction don't have such high 'peaks' to exploit. Remember, the same was true of the three specs according to EJ during Wrath, but Demonology, depite it's low PW style fight potential numbers, could on any fight compete very well with most classes in game because of the cooldown mechanics, Decimation rolling and so on.

A lot of people say it's hard, too much in it etc, but because there's a lot in it, it means you have more flexibility in working it around the fight than you do with the much flatter specs. It's that flexibility that enables it to make up that gap, which really isn't very substantial in the first place.

[notbob]

My guild tried raiding a bit ago and we fought Magmaw in blackwing descent. We had a demo lock (damned if he isn't the best demo lock i know, got 2200 in 2s last year with an affliction lock partner but thats another story) he pulled 18k on the fight, way ahead of everyone else, because of his massive aoe with hellfire, felstorm, immolate aura etc etc that other locks don't have or don't use. I coould see potential as demo locks being the single best aoe class really.

[Runc]

While there's a ton of other assumptions being made by those simulationcraft numbers, here's the two BIG ones.

1. The fight is 100% uninterrupted nuking with no adds, no movement, no place for utility, no concern for incoming damage.

2. The casting order is solely driven by a priority list. What gets cast is just the highest available thing in the list, with no other concerns than that.

Those two conditions favour destro bigtime. If you we're looking at the top guilds managing to overcome a fight like that (lol) they would probably spec destro, as straight-up nuking according to a priority list is what that spec brings to the table in spades.

On the other hand a significant part of playing demo is lining up your cooldowns to maximise their effects (some folks will have heard to stack cooldowns/buffs for best dps, and all demo locks should have). This utterly central aspect of playing demo isn't modelled at all by simulationcraft. Neither is demo's fantastic utility, surivability and mobility options. Nor is splash damage (an important part of dps for many fights) - not 'pure' AoE, but just the natural splash from the pet, immo aura, shadowflame, etc.

So what you're doing is comparing one thing (the straight-nuke priority list fight) which favours destro, to another (an actual fight with suvivability, utility, strategic timing of stacked cooldowns, and splash damage) where a lot of demo's strengths come into play. Apples and oranges. Oh, and demo has cool buffs too.