Demonology: FAQ and Answers

[Brauhm]

Demonology:FAQ and Answers

This is an FAQ about Warlocks that fight in the spec of Demonology for patch 4.2.2 of WoW. It is expected you use this build:00/31/10 . My character is Brauhm.

Changes from 4.1:
Moonwell Chalice

This trinket is by far the best trinket for Demonology Warlocks to date. When timed correctly this trinket provides a phenomenal DPS increase. Teamed with the high mastery we now can get from Firelands, we're the top single target patchwork style DPS, and that's not likely to change.

Why is Demo so good?
Simple. We have Doomguard. Our mastery has a very nice mechanic that allows us to triple dip into it for our Doomguard. That means that while its only a 2% increase for our felpup and our metamorph, its a 6% increase for our Doomguard. When times with Moonwell Chalice we get a HUGE boost in damage, without this trinket we fall below affliction. In addition, Metamorph and Doomguard takes a snapshot of your Mastery, thus an on use trinket with Mastery is the best choice so you can time your Meta and Doomguard with it.

How should I play Demo? I've heard both haste and mastery are good!
This is a common misconception that both haste and mastery are good, as in you can balance them. This is untrue. To maximize dps you must choose one or the other, but even in the end Simcraft shows that mastery is better through and through. Why? Simple. Impending doom. That talent made haste beautiful in 4.1. More haste meant more shadow bolts which meant more procs which meant a shorter cooldown and then we could HOPE we could time the metamorph with Theralions Mirror(don't try it, it'll happen like once every millionth attempt and its only good on paper, seriously, you'll never get it to work). But now with Moonwell Chalice, we never want more than 4 procs. Any more and the proc is wasted, this degrades the innate value of haste from our talents. In addition, plateaus for Corruption can increase our DPS slightly, if you find yourself 50-70 haste off of one. Go for it.

I heard that the Immolate plateau is worthless because it gets refreshed, is that true?
For a single target, yes, its almost worthless. You could argue that you'd notice the extra tick every 21 seconds but since its constantly refreshed you could say that the dot is never ending, meaning that you'll notice the tick instead at 25 seconds, this is the same with corruption as affliction being refreshed with Haunt. However, for multitarget fights where the tick will be noticed by its duration being extinguished it is a nice thing to have. You could argue either way, however, I wouldn't go out of your way to do it.

Can I use Heroic Necromantic Focus over Darkmoon card: Volcano?
Yes but I do NOT recommend it. Why? Because we use Doomguard at the beginning of fights when all of our cds are lined up. With a low haste spec sometimes its required to spam drain life (a significant dps loss) to stack the trinket before power torrent or volcano expires, so we have the additional mastery to pop doomguard with full stats. In addition the trinket barely catches up to it. So basically, you're swapping in a harder to use trinket for slightly less dps. Doesn't make sense does it?

Someone told me Doomguard isn't effected by haste effects, is this true?
This is true... kinda. It is not effected by haste effects that use percentages (bloodlust, beserking, felguard demon soul) but it IS effected by the static haste on your gear. Also, there are haste thresholds for the doomguard (as in how much haste is needed for an extra doombolt during his 1.08m duration) but they aren't that important.

Is there a minimum haste threshold that I should shoot for?
I, personally, hover at 8-10% haste, but that's because I can't reforge out of anymore of it. :P If in doubt, always use Simcraft.

Can you post a BiS list for Demo?
There already is one. I don't completely agree with it but its great to start out with. Personally I would use the chest from Beth and keep the tier gloves just for the additional mastery. I don't think its worth swapping to Rag gloves just for the extra 30 intellect and a few more haste and crit.

How should I start off battles?
Good question! |Prepot > Shadowbolt > Demonsoul: Felguard > Soulburn: Felhunter > Moonwell&Metamorph > Immoalte > Corruption > Bane of Doom > Hand of Gul'dan| This usually allows me to get one last Hand off and refresh corruption right before Meta falls off. This is my personal opener. The technical opener can be found in Simcraft.

What about doomguard?
Doomguard. This is our strongest cooldown, and probably the strongest cooldown that exists in the game. (well, until Shamans got that amazing two piece bonus). It can easily deal 1 million damage or more and it needs to be used optimally. You ONLY use doomguard with Chalice, Volcano, Power Torrent, Prepot, Lightweave (if a tailor), etc. You need all your buffs to super power him because he takes snapshots of our stats. If for some reason he's not up off cooldown before the next fight, try to time him with the chalice at least.

What glyphs do we use in our third slot?
I've seen a lot of debate over this. I would use Glyph of Corruption over Glyph of Incinerate. For flying fights I would use the Succubus as a pet and use Glyph of Lash of Pain. For AoE fights, some say use Glyph of Felguard, I personally don't swap because its not that big of an upgrade out of Glyph of Corruption (since you should be multidoting corruption and immolate anyway)

What do I do with Soulburn? Do I use it on Soulfire?
NO! Never ever waste it! You want to time your metamorph with your chalice and demon soul, then when demon soul is 5 seconds from coming off cooldown you want to HARD cast your felguard summon and pop your demon soul, then soulburn your felpup back out and engage in Metamorph with chalice. This is a HUGE dps increase.

So wait, does that mean I only use Meta with Chalice?
Exactly. Sim'ed even with meta coming off CD 1 minute before chalice, its STILL a dps increase to wait. This trinket is powerful, the on use alone is worth almost twice that of DMC:V.

Ask Mr. Robot says "this", what you said disagrees?
Ask Mr. Robot is no where near perfect. The best way to find out of its right is to Sim against it.

Are you a pro-warlock?
Not at all. This IS my main, but basically this is a bunch of questions that I see on the forums all the time that I wanted to answer clearly and officially, so no one else gets confused. However, I don't know anything, if there's anything anyone wants to add/correct to this FAQ then please, post a comment below.

Credits:
This FAQ was written by me with information collected and verified from multiple posts in the MMO Warlock thread as well as the EJ Warlock Threat. I take no credit for a lot of the information in this guide. If I've made any mistakes, please correct me (with proof) and I'll make the changes accordingly and credit you for the change. Thank you for reading! In additon, if you have any questions please fell free to ask and I'll add them, especially if they're good ones. xD

[kefkf]

if you are going to suggest hardcasting fg during the fight you might as well take master summoner instead of demonic aegis in the suggested spec

[Brauhm]

if you are going to suggest hardcasting fg during the fight you might as well take master summoner instead of demonic aegis in the suggested spec

Yeah sorry, I posted the wrong talent tree. Fixed! Thank you!

[Penguin FTW]

How should I start off battles?
Good question! |Prepot > Shadowbolt > Demonsoul: Felguard > Soulburn: Felhunter > Moonwell&Metamorph > Immoalte > Corruption > Bane of Doom > Hand of Gul'dan| This usually allows me to get one last Hand off and refresh corruption right before Meta falls off.

actions+=/demon_soul,if=buff.metamorphosis.up&pet.felguard.active
actions+=/summon_doomguard,if=time>10
actions+=/felguard:felstorm
actions+=/soulburn,if=pet.felguard.active&!pet.felguard.dot.felstorm.ticking
actions+=/summon_felhunter,if=!pet.felguard.dot.felstorm.ticking&pet.felguard.active

Your opener disagrees with simcraft

[Jessicka]

I heard that the Immolate plateau is worthless because it gets refreshed, is that true?
Not at all! When we reach a new dot tick, the length between our dots shorten. When Hand of Guldan refreshes it, it shortens the length before the first dot of the refreshed Immolate ticks. Basically its like a never-ending dot. Getting another tick per Immolate duration is a LOT more immolate ticks per battle which leads to more Molten Core procs.

The duration between ticks shortens regardless of whether you reach a plateau or not. One of the major benefits of the extra tick is the reduced number of hard casts; we still hard cast HoG regardless so we don't gain any benefit from that; nor do we use Conflagrate and so receive no benefit from increasing Immolate's damage that way. There is very little, if any benefit from additional ticks on Immolate as Demo.

[Brauhm]

actions+=/demon_soul,if=buff.metamorphosis.up&pet.felguard.active
actions+=/summon_doomguard,if=time>10
actions+=/felguard:felstorm
actions+=/soulburn,if=pet.felguard.active&!pet.felguard.dot.felstorm.ticking
actions+=/summon_felhunter,if=!pet.felguard.dot.felstorm.ticking&pet.felguard.active

Your opener disagrees with simcraft

Yes it does. Simcraft is an amazing tool but I find that personal use of your own character (its own haste its own mastery your own reactions to procs and mechanics) is best when dealing with things that only have a slight dps increase but require perfect execution and latency, also, half the time I soulburn the felpup out before the felguard can get in range and start felwhirl., I'll add that I used my personal opener versus the technical opener. Thanks!

---------- Post added 2011-08-31 at 03:53 PM ----------

The duration between ticks shortens regardless of whether you reach a plateau or not. One of the major benefits of the extra tick is the reduced number of hard casts; we still hard cast HoG regardless so we don't gain any benefit from that; nor do we use Conflagrate and so receive no benefit from increasing Immolate's damage that way. There is very little, if any benefit from additional ticks on Immolate as Demo.

That's not entirely true. Especially with multitarget fights where Immolate can't always be refreshed its nice to have that extra tick and since almost every fight does have adds its not bad to push for it, however, single target wise you are correct and this post will be edited for accuracy. Thank you!

[Jahrastafari]

Yes it does. Simcraft is an amazing tool but I find that personal use of your own character (its own haste its own mastery your own reactions to procs and mechanics) is best when dealing with things that only have a slight dps increase but require perfect execution and latency, also, half the time I soulburn the felpup out before the felguard can get in range and start felwhirl., I'll add that I used my personal opener versus the technical opener. Thanks!

A brostorming felguard will crank out damage in-line with the felhunter that is biting on a fully-DoT'd target. The plus of waiting to burn the felhunter in until the felstorm is over is two-fold. First, you'll start off with near-maximum pet DPS and second, when you burn the hunter in, you'll be looking at a full suite of shadow DoTs on the target for that first Shadow Bite. Burning the hunter in before you have the requesite DoTs up leads to a pretty piss-poor initial bite.

[kneeo]

Are you a pro-warlock?
Not at all. I'm actually a wrath baby.

Good thinking putting that at the end.

[Penguin FTW]

Yes it does. Simcraft is an amazing tool but I find that personal use of your own character (its own haste its own mastery your own reactions to procs and mechanics) is best when dealing with things that only have a slight dps increase but require perfect execution and latency, also, half the time I soulburn the felpup out before the felguard can get in range and start felwhirl., I'll add that I used my personal opener versus the technical opener. Thanks!

I simmed your character:
Standard Demo sim - 29404
Standard Demo sim minus felstorm - 29142
Demo sim with felhunter up the entire fight - 29225

And I couldn't even completely turn off his felstorm, it still hit for a few ticks - I just interrupted it.

(50k iterations, patchwerk, max length)

[Hammahtime]

Weird....askmrrobot puts Moonwell Chalice behind Stump of Time and others including DMC:V.

From what I can tell why, is due to the MC's Use effect of a lower add'l spell power vs Stump's Equip spell power at a higher #.

So how is an on-use lower spell power trink better than an on equip higher spell power?

[kneeo]

Weird....askmrrobot puts Moonwell Chalice behind Stump of Time and others including DMC:V.

From what I can tell why, is due to the MC's Use effect of a lower add'l spell power vs Stump's Equip spell power at a higher #.

So how is an on-use lower spell power trink better than an on equip higher spell power?

For one, askmrrobot is off on a lot of shit. And two, because MWC is on-use Mastery so you can super beef up your meta'd/doomguard/pet's damage.

[Mcshiz]

Weird....askmrrobot puts Moonwell Chalice behind Stump of Time and others including DMC:V.

From what I can tell why, is due to the MC's Use effect of a lower add'l spell power vs Stump's Equip spell power at a higher #.

So how is an on-use lower spell power trink better than an on equip higher spell power?

Make sure your stats are weighed correctly, and askmrrobot is nice but def not a perfect tool.

[Nicola]

Weird....askmrrobot puts Moonwell Chalice behind Stump of Time and others including DMC:V.

From what I can tell why, is due to the MC's Use effect of a lower add'l spell power vs Stump's Equip spell power at a higher #.

So how is an on-use lower spell power trink better than an on equip higher spell power?

mr robot should only be used for reforging and gemming, only if you have your own simmed statweights.
for gearchoices, especially for trinkets, it is garbage and should not be used.

[Hammahtime]

Make sure your stats are weighed correctly, and askmrrobot is nice but def not a perfect tool.

Actually every single reforge I've made from that, and even some gear choices, have helped out a lot dps wise. After seeing the MWC in the BiS list under Stump of Time and Therilon's Mirror (reg) made me wonder why it was below those 2.

[Mooji]

"NO! Never ever waste it! You want to time your metamorph with your chalice and demon soul, then when demon soul is 5 seconds from coming off cooldown you want to HARD cast your felguard summon and pop your demon soul, then soulburn your felpup back out and engage in Metamorph with chalice. This is a HUGE dps increase."

What's the point of casting a felpup during demon soul? I take it the felpup keeps that damage and haste increase? Thanks! Great post btw.

[OOMM]

You should let the Felguard Felstorm if you can. Also holding Immolation Aura until full procs (doable at least on the first one) is a dps increase.

[Perath]

"NO! Never ever waste it! You want to time your metamorph with your chalice and demon soul, then when demon soul is 5 seconds from coming off cooldown you want to HARD cast your felguard summon and pop your demon soul, then soulburn your felpup back out and engage in Metamorph with chalice. This is a HUGE dps increase."

What's the point of casting a felpup during demon soul? I take it the felpup keeps that damage and haste increase? Thanks! Great post btw.

Demon soul doesn't buff your pet, just you. Swapping to felpup after felstorm is done, lets you use the highest dps pet while still getting the best demon soul.

[Stridulent]

[SIZE=5]
How should I start off battles?
Good question! |Prepot > Shadowbolt > Demonsoul: Felguard > Soulburn: Felhunter > Moonwell&Metamorph > Immoalte > Corruption > Bane of Doom > Hand of Gul'dan| This usually allows me to get one last Hand off and refresh corruption right before Meta falls off.

I would highly suggest changing this to Prepot > Shadowbolt > Immolate (mostly for procs) > Moonwell+Meta+Demonsoul:Felguard > Felstorm > Corruption > BoD > Soulburn:Felhunter > Hand of Gul'dan. Doomguard somewhere in between all of this when the majority of your procs/spellpower buffs are up. Do not ever use Doomguard if Chalice is not active.

[Sockmaster]

Someone told me Doomguard isn't effected by haste effects, is this true?
This is true... kinda. It is not effected by haste effects that use percentages (bloodlust, beserking, felguard demon soul) but it IS effected by the static haste on your gear. Also, there are haste thresholds for the doomguard (as in how much haste is needed for an extra doombolt during his 1.08m duration) but they aren't that important.

Actually, Doomguards don't get in more than 20 doombolts during their duration regardless of haste.

[Sockmaster]

It's probably in the same situation as Bane of Doom: you need so much haste to make a difference it's not worth thinking about.

No, the haste needed for an extra doombolt isn't that high, they just don't get more than one cast off every three seconds.