[5.4] Demonology Warlock Guide

[Hatelocker]

Hey I just dinged my alt lock to 90 was having a blast leveling as demo and now Ive started heroics in my rubbish green gear but my damage is so bad my casts take ages so it take time to build fury does gear have an affect on this spec or am I totally noobing it up would be greatfull for some basic advise

Gear has a lot to do with both affliction and demo. All 3 specs are pretty even in heroic SoO gear but both affliction and demo scale quite a bit better than destro. So, at lower gear lvls the general advice is typically to go destro.

[Hugginz]

Depending on how you open boxes, I'd say for Demo with AD or MF would be OK...

We focus big adds and pull very few other boxes when the big assholes are up, so there isn't really a huge amount of time for pure AOE. That said, on the Mogu side, there will be statues up and if the big mob is in the middle of the room, MF will let you hit alot with Imm aura.

Sniping statues with shadowburn with havoc on the Big add is probably better, but Demo can work, though you're going to do less dmg to sparks...

DPS on this boss will be 100% dependent on how quickly you open boxes.

[rijn dael]

I wanted to ask you something are you maining demo for progression ?

Um, I swap to whatever helps us most - for paragons, I am.
For siegecrafter I was, but once we had all 18 engineers in our raid take EMP belt, destro ended up more use to us.

[evertonbelmontt]

Before I go to sleep, I'm gonna throw my thoughts here.

Today I tried demon, not thinking about results, but gameplay. I was getting boring of destro/aff, so I thought maybe demon should be fun, and more active.

IMO, demon is totally clumsy right now. You can't maintain good uptime with 4p set bonus and even with godlike gear I believe you will feel fury starved a LOT if you're playing 10man like I am.
Coming back to set bonuses, WTF is that? When you go on to meta with procs/buffs on, you should be spending SF to at least get a proc, but then you FEEL like you're doing something wrong because SF can't proc Chaos Wave, unlike ToC. This was the worst part for me, it's waaaaay much RNG involved.

See, afflic has a very good uptime on 2piece even with single target, and you don't even need to do something special. 4p is "meh", but do not require any special attention.
Destro... it just fits. You can time chaos bolts/procs/conflags with 4p and 2p is the way to go for AoE.

This is how set bonuses were suposed to be, right? A complement, not an obligation. But with demon, I bet a lot of guys feels like doing something wrong to proc/take advantage of set bonuses. I don't know, either I got too used to destro/afflic or demon is really messed up this tier.

And just for the records, I'm one of the (few) guys that supported demon even without UVLS on 5.2. Back then I was fury starved sometimes, but now, it's worse than ever. I really miss that 30% demonic fury from t15.

[Jessicka]

Before I go to sleep, I'm gonna throw my thoughts here.

Today I tried demon, not thinking about results, but gameplay. I was getting boring of destro/aff, so I thought maybe demon should be fun, and more active.

IMO, demon is totally clumsy right now. You can't maintain good uptime with 4p set bonus and even with godlike gear I believe you will feel fury starved a LOT if you're playing 10man like I am.
Coming back to set bonuses, WTF is that? When you go on to meta with procs/buffs on, you should be spending SF to at least get a proc, but then you FEEL like you're doing something wrong because SF can't proc Chaos Wave, unlike ToC. This was the worst part for me, it's waaaaay much RNG involved.

The only RNG that bothers me is that the spec is massively dependent on making best use of trinket procs for Fury spend. Trinket pops at the wrong moment; lasers on Juggernaut or Seigecrafter, and you really will feel it. This has made me not like ICD trinkets, at least with RPPM there's hope of a new proc some time soon.

See, afflic has a very good uptime on 2piece even with single target, and you don't even need to do something special. 4p is "meh", but do not require any special attention.
Destro... it just fits. You can time chaos bolts/procs/conflags with 4p and 2p is the way to go for AoE.

This is how set bonuses were suposed to be, right? A complement, not an obligation. But with demon, I bet a lot of guys feels like doing something wrong to proc/take advantage of set bonuses. I don't know, either I got too used to destro/afflic or demon is really messed up this tier.

I honestly don't, except maybe for Chaos Wave procs on our Spoils attempts. I don't think I've seen a single Shadow Bolt proc a HoG, may be something with my UI not picking up the new Shadowflame, but I'm not really casting that many Shadow Bolts anyway.

And just for the records, I'm one of the (few) guys that supported demon even without UVLS on 5.2. Back then I was fury starved sometimes, but now, it's worse than ever. I really miss that 30% demonic fury from t15.

If you're suffering Fury starvation, I strongly suggest taking the Imp Swarm glyph as it is a massive quality of life improvement in terms of offering up Fury and Molten Core procs right when you need them. It might not be considered optimal, but I've found it really does work for me.

[a C e]

I feel the 4set bonus is really RNG, it procced only 4 times on thok this week, i had alot of TOC casts.

[Deleted]

Yeah I don't really think it's anything worth putting too much thought into.

Only time I pay attention is when I'm doing a HoG, 2x SB, HoG into Meta. If the 4 set procs then I'll weave another 2 shadowbolts before casting my second HoG.

[Tietoso]

hey guys, i wanna try demo in combination with destro? my stats are put everything to mastery reforge all crit to haste.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Tietoso/simple

also, is it mandatory to do shadow weaving or whatever? thats one of the main reason i didnt want to play demo.

[Hatelocker]

hey guys, i wanna try demo in combination with destro? my stats are put everything to mastery reforge all crit to haste.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Tietoso/simple

also, is it mandatory to do shadow weaving or whatever? thats one of the main reason i didnt want to play demo.

Haste is basically even with crit for destro so for a demo OS the easiest thing to do is just go Mastery>Haste to 8097 > Crit > Haste.

As for meta weaving it is not mandatory. However, it is a pretty decent dps and in all honesty if meta weaving feel overwhelming to you then demo is probably not the spec to be if you want to do the best you can. Demo is on par/maybe even ahead at 570+ ilvl but has a very high skill cap and meta weaving is only a very small portion of what makes demo difficult. I am not saying don't have fun with demo but if you are looking to do the best YOU can do, given your gear, I would suggest just stick to destro.

[Mazda]

IMO, demon is totally clumsy right now. You can't maintain good uptime with 4p set bonus and even with godlike gear I believe you will feel fury starved a LOT if you're playing 10man like I am.

I do agree that Demonic Fury scales much better in a 25. Still playable, but there is a noticeable difference.

[Werst]

I'm still on the fence with going to 14873 haste for shadowflame or 8097 haste. I can hit either with pretty much maxed mastery...would just be changing crit for haste. I know the higher haste feels stronger and less DF starved. Destro doesn't seem to care as long as mastery is maxed though I personally don't like hitting the GCD so much. Lower ilvls I'd definitely go 8097 though. Sims say the 14873 BP is significantly better but I don't fully trust them for demo (541-1v)

[rijn dael]

I feel the 4set bonus is really RNG, it procced only 4 times on thok this week, i had alot of TOC casts.

I made a weakaura that plays a sound every time SPELL_CAST_SUCCESS is fired for guldan (basically, if I didn't hit guldan, I am aware instantly of the proc - otherwise I found I missed them when other things are happening). Jump on that with a second guldan as appropriate, and be happy.

Also, I don't know how you are proc tracking guldan, but my last malkorok as demo I did 51 toc + 29 sbolts, so rng would expect about 6.5 'procs' in that time frame - assuming your profile is somewhat similar it isn't as if you had terrible rng if you had 4 CW, and an few guldans that aren't really identifiable?

Mmm. tl;dr, I should cast more soulfires while in meta

[a C e]

I made a weakaura that plays a sound every time SPELL_CAST_SUCCESS is fired for guldan (basically, if I didn't hit guldan, I am aware instantly of the proc - otherwise I found I missed them when other things are happening). Jump on that with a second guldan as appropriate, and be happy.

Also, I don't know how you are proc tracking guldan, but my last malkorok as demo I did 51 toc + 29 sbolts, so rng would expect about 6.5 'procs' in that time frame - assuming your profile is somewhat similar it isn't as if you had terrible rng if you had 4 CW, and an few guldans that aren't really identifiable?

Mmm. tl;dr, I should cast more soulfires while in meta

Well I use tidy plates and I always notice the shadowflame dot and I always use the Hog cd in pairs and that fight it never even procced once, and for monitoring Choas waves I used skada to look at how many choas waves that were triggred and it was 4, but I think it is too early for me to go demo since I am 564 but I just got BBOY normal maybe that will make a difference. Also, I have the same problems I tend to use more soulfires out of meta and into meta I am forced to use more TOCs.
thanks for the Idea of spell alerter but that addon makes me paranoid.

[Mazda]

I made a weakaura that plays a sound every time SPELL_CAST_SUCCESS is fired for guldan (basically, if I didn't hit guldan, I am aware instantly of the proc - otherwise I found I missed them when other things are happening). Jump on that with a second guldan as appropriate, and be happy.

Depends on your style, but I just track shadowflame itself. Much easier for me.

[rijn dael]

Depends on your style, but I just track shadowflame itself. Much easier for me.

Both will work, and it isn't a big deal either way.
The benefit of tracking guldan instead of shadowflame for me is that by the time shadowflame is applied, I may have already have made a mutually exclusive decision like going into meta, or started my own guldan double-cast cycle (clipping the dot earlier than I would otherwise would prefer), etc.

[Mazda]

Did tonight's clear up to 10/14H as Demo for the first time. (10man btw)

Some fights were rough, some were awesome. Probably the worst was Spoils without 5% raid haste. It was absolutely miserable.

Otherwise, the spec felt strong and enjoyable for farm content.

[Werst]

I did most of the early bosses as demo last night just for S&G (25H). Went dest on gala, thok (dispels), and spoils but otherwise cleared through siegecrafter as demo. We had a ton of scumbagging parse chasers on nazgrim so despite being able to kill h.garrosh we had to wipe on him a couple times lol. Felt really solid and was a welcome challenge for the farm stuff. Actually liked it better than destro for siegecrafter as hog weaving on mines + a felstorm did better than even F&B conflag (glyphd). Could have probably used it on thok just fine but our disc was sitting so we were tight on dispels. Parse chasers made nourshen harder than it had to be as well but found ToC/soulfire spam to really be nice vs those adds as CB is a bit long in the cast time and often things die sub 20% before the server realizes you can shadowburn. I was a bit rusty (been aff/dest through progression) so clearly room for improvement but was a lot more "fun" in terms of farm night being engaging. Probably do demo on h.paragons tonight though I'll be dest for h.garrosh as he's still tough for us. I was running max mastery w' 15K haste BB/PBoI though I got a hwf KTT from a coin so probably go down to 8097 haste > M > C > H since it just crushes my norm BB by sheer force of ilvl per simC 541-1. Used AD/svc for every fight but sha since we were going DK'less (thus no aoe grip) where I MF'd instead.

Some things I'm not sure the default APL gets or I'd like input from other demo locks.....I was waiting to hit troll racial/darksoul/eng till I had my PBoI proc OR my BB hit 10x for a doom. Seems those few casts you get off before going meta or before the proc let you get enough DF to do more damage on the opener. Otherwise opener felt softer than aff/dest or at the very least less consistent. Did not use the imp swarm glyph as I dropped herbalism for tailoring when I was playing dest so much...sims say its a loss but not sure if that reflects smart play or not. Thoughts?

[Mazda]

Some things I'm not sure the default APL gets or I'd like input from other demo locks.....I was waiting to hit troll racial/darksoul/eng till I had my PBoI proc OR my BB hit 10x for a doom. Seems those few casts you get off before going meta or before the proc let you get enough DF to do more damage on the opener. Otherwise opener felt softer than aff/dest or at the very least less consistent. Did not use the imp swarm glyph as I dropped herbalism for tailoring when I was playing dest so much...sims say its a loss but not sure if that reflects smart play or not. Thoughts?

I was actually thinking about something along those lines last night. I'm going to do some math tonight and see if there is any concrete way to max out.

[rijn dael]

Some things I'm not sure the default APL gets or I'd like input from other demo locks.....I was waiting to hit troll racial/darksoul/eng till I had my PBoI proc OR my BB hit 10x for a doom. Seems those few casts you get off before going meta or before the proc let you get enough DF to do more damage on the opener. Otherwise opener felt softer than aff/dest or at the very least less consistent. Did not use the imp swarm glyph as I dropped herbalism for tailoring when I was playing dest so much...sims say its a loss but not sure if that reflects smart play or not. Thoughts?

I have a custom profile tweaking different things that gets ~5% gain for my gear.

The biggest upgrades I found was moving your second darksoul/pot onto double trinket procs in the sim. The opener didn't change a heap either way - but I haven't tested since I picked up bindings - since it procs later, it might pay off rather than losing trinket procs just in time for that bit more fury / slow procs.

One thing I do in game, that I can't get a sim to replicate as a dps increase, is to not soulfire without buffs in meta. The sim casts soulfire if in meta with an exception for 0.1-2sec remaining on darksoul, where toc will benefit, and soulfire won't. In game, I can't seem to get a higher parse by soulfiring without buffs, even on a fight where I refuse to move.

One of the problems you will have is simcraft doesn't have a "time in combat" variable, so you can't make explicit logic for say "time_in_combat<15" - which makes it hard to define logic for the pull precisely, without negatively impacting the rest of the encounter.

[Werst]

I'm kinda bad at APL mods at least in terms of logic. What I was messing with was spending excess DF with ToC unless I was above 8x MC charges if I didn't have a trinket proc or other CD but burning soulfires asap once I had a trinket/darksoul going. I ran AD and always had a darksoul for bindings proc...I also track the ICD of bindings so I have DF pooled. Basically sit on 7-8 charges of MC, spend DF via ToC if no haste buff or trinket procs, then dump big when the procs happen. That is what I have no idea how to code into an APL but seems the correct way to execute demo in a post UVLS world.