Why do people say demo single target dps is pathetic?

[Jessicka]

Who specs into aura of foreboding?

No one. That's the problem. It has potential to be a great piece of CC akin to Shadowfury, but it's tie in with HoG makes it utterly impractical either because it 'wastes' a HoG refresh on Immolate on your main target, or because you end up CCing stuff you'd rather not.

[BillyMole]

Demonology does not have quite as high a potential on single target as Destro or Affliction, it's true. The difference in potential, however, is minor. Where it falls short in personal dps is that it's extremely difficult to maximize your dps, even harder (in my opinion) than affliction. Destruction is, by far, the easiest warlock spec to maximize (though I will note that easier is relative, it's still harder than many other dps classes). Because of this, Destruction has a larger following, and it's reflection on places like stateofdps benefits from that. At this point, Demonology is almost in the same place as Arcane mages. Many warlocks believe, quite wrongly, that the spec is only good at heavy aoe situations, and the spec has thus been abandoned by most warlocks as not viable for single target. Those of us that stick to the spec are in the minority, and while many of us know how to play, it makes us look bad on the overall rankings, mostly because those with a lot of gear (and thus higher dps) moved to Destruction long ago in an attempt to maximize themselves.

An illustration of this principle is that, when I had Ilevel 351 two weeks ago, I placed in the top 75 on Halfus normal for Demonology warlocks, and top 200 on a couple other fights. This would not have been possible for me to do as either Affliction or Destruction, simply because of the much greater amounts of players playing them who have far better gear than me.

An extreme example of this is Arcane mages. There's nothing wrong with the spec, particularly after they radically reduced the AB manacost. However, the spec was long ago abandoned by almost everyone, so it's a vicious cycle at this point. I did Argaloth on tuesday with my pathetic Ilevel 344 with PVP pants, and still fell a mere 400 dps short of the top 200 for Argaloth.

All that said, if your raid does not have any source of the 10% spellpower buff, which can very easily be true for 10 man, you should be Demonology, end of story. 4% spellpower will add more to your raid than you will lose personally, unless you have no clue at all how to play the spec.

[Nicola]

No one. That's the problem. It has potential to be a great piece of CC akin to Shadowfury, but it's tie in with HoG makes it utterly impractical either because it 'wastes' a HoG refresh on Immolate on your main target, or because you end up CCing stuff you'd rather not.

It is worth to spend 1 point in aura of foreboding simply because of the root. While a 2sec root is pretty short and useless on bosses. It can be used on adds to keep em in place long enough to a tank can pick them up or someone else can trow in some cc.
Just take a look at deathbringer fight ( stupid example but still), the 2sec root on adds can mean the difference between a wipe and nice loot.
A welltimed HoG on deathbringer himself and all adds r rooted so the rest of the group has enough time to apply their own snares and stuns.

Aura of Foreboding isn't the best talent but imo, its one of the best fillertalents u can choose from.

[gherkin]

I killed several dozen of my guildies on Maloriak with the root.

Also, Whiplash knocks back Arcanotron for some reason and completely pisses off your interrupters.

Hilarious to think about, depressing to be responsible for.

[Krunklock]

Won't it also cause parasites during Magmaw to jump to the nearest player if they're rooted?

[gherkin]

Wouldn't know, Hand of Guldan on parasites isn't something I would recommend to anyone.

[Jenerena]

Many warlocks believe, quite wrongly, that the spec is only good at heavy aoe situations, and the spec has thus been abandoned by most warlocks as not viable for single target. Those of us that stick to the spec are in the minority, and while many of us know how to play, it makes us look bad on the overall rankings, mostly because those with a lot of gear (and thus higher dps) moved to Destruction long ago in an attempt to maximize themselves.

An illustration of this principle is that, when I had Ilevel 351 two weeks ago, I placed in the top 75 on Halfus normal for Demonology warlocks, and top 200 on a couple other fights. This would not have been possible for me to do as either Affliction or Destruction, simply because of the much greater amounts of players playing them who have far better gear than me.

I agree with this strongly. On a fight where destro is clearly the best, the majority of serious raiders will spec it (and the majority will have SP buff already). Therefore there is a very small amount of players that will spec demo for a fight like this. With such a small pool of players, it's very easy to get ranked as demo, and you'll find the differences between parses are quite big. You look at the destro players, since most play destro because of its superiority on that fight, it's hard to get ranked because there are so many, and thus the differences between the top dps and 50 places down is minimal. Therefore, the overall average dps for demo will be lower. There just aren't enough people getting the most out of demo (because they have destro and buff) to bring it up to what it is actually capable of. I'm one of those that can get a lot out of demo but I'm not enough to push that average up.

[Hellfury]

I know most of raiding warlocks on my server, and those that really play Demo its because either they like the play stile(extremely rare) or are forced buff bots for they raids. Myself I was buff bot for half of later ICC25hc and while I hated to play Demo I knew I had to help. Luckily we got a very active elemental shaman now.

If you dont have a Elemental shaman or other demo in the raid the extra 4% spell power in half 372/359 gear its 300ish SP wich is almost a flask, and competitive guilds working on HC mods really need that extra 4% sp.

Copy pasta of my answer from EU forum...

Because of sites like stateofdps.com that compare the top 200 of a couple of thousand Destruction players with the top 200 of a much smaller number of Demo players and make it look bad.

The reality is that single target, there isn't much between the three specs at all, but what does seperate the specs is the ability to multi-dot, Affliction has Soul Swap and Destruction has Bane of Havoc where Demo has to manually use weaker DoTs which is much harder for a lesser effect.

People also tend to think Demo is easy and/or boring, but just don't get it and consequently do it badly.

This is not true, there are loads of Demo warlocks on HC guilds that don't have elemental shamans, infact I believe those stateofdps.com demo logs are probably of awesome players that have to play demo either cause they guild don't have elemental shaman or they elemental(s) shaman(s) didn't shown. When iam bored I toy with other specs and in comparison with 4.06 destro single target, demo its noticeably behind

[Migage]

I agree with Gherkin and BillyMole here. I don't find anything "broken" with demo at all. It's complicated and a little bit clunky and certainly not a spec to be learnt overnight. I've be playing Demo since early wotlk so I've had plenty of time to "work it out". I enjoy it, love it actually. I was actually disappointed that they moved Imp. Soul Fire, as I enjoyed that added level of complexity and had just started getting used to it when they moved it. Destro bores me now and I've never enjoyed the Affli playstyle. Demo I find challenging, damn challenging, but it's risk/reward. I'm in a small casual guild, only 7/12 with a few 1% wipes on artra and council and a struggle with people's work/lifestyles to raid as regularly as we'd like. I still sit comfortably as highest dps in guild, by quite a bit. Hit 20k on argaloth last week with no bloodlust in 354ilvl gear.

I see destro locks everywhere in server, much like in wotlk, cos of the simplicity and ease of high constant numbers (even for a time when destro was the "weakest" of the three in wotlk). Which is why when I out-dps them on Bh/Tot4w pugs I'm asked how I do it, whats the rotation, etc. Sure, it takes 15mins to the try and break down the spec and even then, usually, they're left scratching their heads. No doubt, they'll change specs, try it out on a dummy, not "get it" and change back to destro. It's frustrating how little is actually done and worked out for demo; on EJ especially so much continued discussion about affli and destro and not much followed up for demo. And as others have said, the 4% extra spellpower you bring (10% in our 10 mans since I'm the only one with an sp buff) will more than make up for the 500dps you (may) do less if you went destro or affli.

As an aside, I'm hoping that something is being done about our signature pet not being the pet we use all the time. A buff to FG's white attacks or legion strike, just something to make it viable single-target again.

[kneeo]

Personally, I mostly hate that in order to get the absolute most out of the spec you HAVE to stand in melee range, very often. It irks the hell out of me, which in turn gimped my dps as demo because I never like standing in melee range unless I have to. Due to that I, personally, do a lot better with destro.

[drinoff]

Well Demo is not bad , playing it recently cuz the guild needs me to be.. so , i did 21k on Argloth , which i dont think is bad.
Omnitron 19k , no multidoting and not using Doom at all , just to be carefull , magmaw 24k , Chimaeron HC 22k , Halfus HC 46k(mith almost no AoE) Maloriak hc.. we trying it and i do around 30-32k dps . Didnt tryed it out for other bosses cuz we pushing Maloriak right now.. But Demo is al right.. i think it just need some speed that is it.Personaly i wish Shadow Bolt to go under 1.8 s cast , an i think Demo gonna destroy Destro.. but that are thoughts...

GL

[Dreadnor]

this might be very intuitive and common sense, but i believe any spec played the right way can be good. there will be situations where one spec wont be able to beat another spec on a fight, but if you think you play demonology better than destro or affliction, and you arent wiping your raid, its your choice if you wanna stay demonology.

now if youre in a very top end guild, this might not be your decision. youll probably be expected to learn each spec, and be able to play the hell out of each one, just so that heroic encounter with XXXXXXXXXX becomes that much shorter, that much easier.

[Jessicka]

This is not true, there are loads of Demo warlocks on HC guilds that don't have elemental shamans, infact I believe those stateofdps.com demo logs are probably of awesome players that have to play demo either cause they guild don't have elemental shaman or they elemental(s) shaman(s) didn't shown. When iam bored I toy with other specs and in comparison with 4.06 destro single target, demo its noticeably behind

This is not true. It took a couple of months before there were even 200 parses for each fight with Demonology on WoL, whereas Affliction and Destruction were 'ready' straight away. You're massively overestimating how many parses are actually posted to WoL and shared publicly for stateofdps to work with; even now take a look at heroics: 1500 Destruction, 1000 Affliction, and 950 Demonology. It's also pretty clear that with 300 more Elemental profiles, that those 'top heroic guilds' are taking them in favour of Demonology Warlocks - they're simply not going to have difficulty fiinding someone to play a spec they need if they're so far progressed, especially when an Elemental Shaman brings so much more than just the Spellpower buff.

[Xeones]

Demo is my favorite spec and I was playing every fight as it, but there are simply too many fights where I outperform demo as destruction (soon to be affliction) by thousands of dps due to bane of havoc or simple higher single target dps. I'm demo on magmaw, maloriak, and whelps halfus and thats about it now.

[Deleted]

16-17k dps is actualy not too high dps, on omnotron 20k+ is the very minimum warlock should do, due to possibility to multi dot, and due to energy pools that buff you dps.

Sure, energy pools. But multi-dotting? Isn't damaging a shielded (<50 energy) tron triggering its "shield ability"?

[Lillah]

No one has mentioned movement? Demo is pretty crippled by movement, and most of the current fights require heavy movement of movement.
Its just a harder spec to play well with in general, but it is viable.

[Jessicka]

Sure, energy pools. But multi-dotting? Isn't damaging a shielded (<50 energy) tron triggering its "shield ability"?

Depends on the tron. Magmatron is the one to be careful of.

[Hellfury]

This is not true. It took a couple of months before there were even 200 parses for each fight with Demonology on WoL, whereas Affliction and Destruction were 'ready' straight away. You're massively overestimating how many parses are actually posted to WoL and shared publicly for stateofdps to work with; even now take a look at heroics: 1500 Destruction, 1000 Affliction, and 950 Demonology. It's also pretty clear that with 300 more Elemental profiles, that those 'top heroic guilds' are taking them in favour of Demonology Warlocks - they're simply not going to have difficulty fiinding someone to play a spec they need if they're so far progressed, especially when an Elemental Shaman brings so much more than just the Spellpower buff.

You missing the point low quantity doesn't equal low quality.

There are so few Demo parses cause when there is 3 warlocks one is demo and the other locks are either destro or aff, there isnt more than 1 demo per raid for sure and when there is a elemental shaman 95% of the warlocks that play demo rather play the other spec. But lets not exagerate and say that those WoL parses are of mediocre players they are few but they are prob of good players for sure.

Lets face it Demo isnt liked by most warlocks, the cooldown dependency, the melee range reliance, the slow casting speed makes the spec abit unappealing for most warlocks.

[Jessicka]

Take a look at the standard deviations for Demonology against Destruction, it is invariably higher by 200-500 across the fights. It's clearly showing a wider skill delta in the sample set.

Furthermore, the melee reliance is a function of all Warlocks as Shadowflame is such a high DPET spell. Immolation is only a minor DPS increase in comparison. I agree though, it isn't well liked for a number of reasons but that just expands upon why it's seen as being bad, and probably has a lot to do with the misguided perception that it underperforms.

[roahn the warlock]

If you want the best destro, demo is pathetic if its a heavy moving fight, downright horrid, if your in a patchwerk, fine its amazing, but in any situation useless. its best spots? heroic Halfus ummm......