You know what I miss?

[Deleted]

Being able to play Demonology in a competetive environment. Yes, demonology was very strong during 5.2 and 5.3 and felt kind of gimmicky with Unerring Vision of Lei Shen. But boy did I have a lot of fun playing Demonology regardless. I think Blizzard nailed Demonology with MoP, but unfortunately it's only been viable for less than half of the expansion. Right now it's among 1 of the least played specs in hc SoO and for good reason.

Affliction and Destruction are just way ahead in terms of damage compared to Demo now. Affliction is as good as it has ever been and Destruction was severely buffed with 5.4. Affliction to me, is just outright boring. It certainly is a good spec, and has been for as long as I remember, but I feel that Affliction is nothing but looking at the timer of your DoTs and refresh them based on remaining time and procs.
Destruction to me has always been the easy spec. It was in a fairly good spot back in 5.2. It was the "newbie" friendly spec which dealt decent amount of damage for little effort. But now, it deals insane amounts of damage for little effort. It is pretty much your go to spec for warlocks right now, and the lack of any form of complexity in the spec just kills it for me.

Since we're not going to see Demo viable in 5.4, I hope they bring back Demonology in competetive play for WoD. It's so sad to see such a fun spec go to waste imo.

[Jessicka]

It is absolutely competitive with every spec in the game... with the exception of Destruction and Affliction on all but a couple of encounters, just like every other spec in the game.

The problem is that we have 2 overpowered specs, not that we have 1 underpowered one.

[a C e]

As Jessicka said, Demo is competitive with almost every spec in the game. Try Demo on Malkrok and Iron Jugg, I am sure you can compete with all your guildies in dps.

[Alarinth]

As Jessicka said, Demo is competitive with almost every spec in the game. Try Demo on Malkrok and Iron Jugg, I am sure you can compete with all your guildies in dps.

And Sha of Pride, Siegecrafter, Shamans... Demo really isn't bad.

[Tehterokkar]

Destro is the worst scaling spec of Warlocks atm, but it has a ridiculously high base damage that makes it the best(along with the mechanics it has). Affli has highest scaling followed very closely by Demo. Affli and Demo would catch up to Destro and beat it eventually, but we can't acquire that gear in this expansion.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post27053431
Simcraft chart with how much 8 iLvls change the DPS:

Destro: +60942 / +13.8%
Demo: +64319 / +15.0%
Affli: +63556 / 15.9%

Demo is competitive, but it has a ridiculous skill cap that you must reach before it can output good numbers. Also the spec mechanics(AoE/Multi-dot/burst) are vastly different than Destro or Affli.

[land]

I know a guy that was playing demo even on heroic garrosh progression pulls, still doing more damage than most of others. That guy indeed was pretty at it and the loss from playing destro wasn't really that big for them, I guess considering how must more burst (vs destro) he was able to pull on a specific phase was actually helping them... He is still playing demo in a lot of heroic farm content and doing insane damage, ranking a lot. Yeah, i agree that theres a big skill cap to it. But show showed me that if u play it well u can yes be very competitive.

[Lanorala]

I miss people not giving me shit for playing demo. I hate when people joke/poke fun and say things like "OMG PEOPLE STILL PLAY DEMO?!?!" or "You know thats a shit spec right?" its so frustrating especially when it's a fellow lock. I've gone as far as respecced to afflic for a PVP spec so people can't try and tell me to go destro in pugs and what not.

UGH.

[mitbrandir]

I also actually liked the gameplay demo had in cata. But I also found an awfull lot of fun with the UVLS trinket ( even though i only had the lfr version ), but it sucks that it's not on par with affi and destro for most people, since it's so much more fun to play. I hope they will keep the fun aspect in WOD that it has had this expansion, but will make it more along the lines of what destro and affi are doing.

[Deleted]

Can't say I really feel blizzard nailed demo in MOP, I've never been that big a far of metamorphosis and the focus has been shifted even more onto that than ever, everything being based around spending more time and putting more damage into it, which I always found pretty boring and detrimental to the pets that I used to think of as demos trademark.

I do wish it wasn't lagging behind though, affliction is a shadow of it's former self to me and just downright upsetting to play, while destruction I wish had a little more to it - one more button or mechanic going on to keep you engaged.

Hoping WOD shifts things up a bit, but at the same time - it seems pretty optimistic to expect all three specs to be balanced, they were pretty close in TOT but something seems to keep breaking them, UVLS or other broken trinkets being the prime problems. Having two strong specs and one decent one seems relatively lucky.

[Soulzar]

Can't say I really feel blizzard nailed demo in MOP, I've never been that big a far of metamorphosis and the focus has been shifted even more onto that than ever, everything being based around spending more time and putting more damage into it, which I always found pretty boring and detrimental to the pets that I used to think of as demos trademark.

I do wish it wasn't lagging behind though, affliction is a shadow of it's former self to me and just downright upsetting to play, while destruction I wish had a little more to it - one more button or mechanic going on to keep you engaged.

The Meta stance dance and being able to control your burst is an aspect I love so much about Demo. I really like Demonic Fury as a resource, however it is much less forgiving than Embers as it takes longer to build and expend, requiring more planning and thought. This is both good and bad.

Above said, I understand what you mean about too much being tied to Demon form. Doom does a TON of dmg, compared to corruption tickling the boss to death. Corruption just doesn't even feel important... Doom feels too important. I would really like to see Demos dmg spread out more.

The fury generation difference between a doom snapshot with multiple int procs and one without is too big. Late PBoI or meta proc and not only is your most important spell cast of the fight significantly weaker, the the fury it generates is going to effect your output for the next minute and a half. A lot of that is part of the skill cap of playing demo well, but I think there is a big hit to be taken with Demo when RNG gods decide to kick you in the ass.

For Destro, I actually really like it the way it is in regards to play style and how resource management flows however I agree it could use something else in the rotation since the removal of RoF single target. Having played my Boomkin and to a larger degree my Ele sham lately, it is making me really miss Improved Soul Fire. I really enjoy the instant procs to break up the standard rotation.

[Zevoa]

Since we're not going to see Demo viable in 5.4, I hope they bring back Demonology in competetive play for WoD. It's so sad to see such a fun spec go to waste imo.

No. Demonology is competitive with many other class/specs this tier; it is in a very good place on fights like Iron Jugg, Fallen Protectors (in terms of all non-affliction dps), Malkorok, Nazgrim (if you're boss damage whoreing), Siegecrafter and even on Garrosh it is comparable to other class/spec that don't include Warriors/Destro Warlock/the tank on boss dps.

You need to take into account the nature of encounter design and how they tend to favour either of Destruction or Affliction so favourably.

[Deleted]

The Meta stance dance and being able to control your burst is an aspect I love so much about Demo.

Yeah, demonology is a spec that I can't help but feel has advanced for the better, even if I'm not sure I like where it's gone - I'm not blind enough to not appreciate it being snazzy and appealing to a lot of people, just not me - illidan mode just doesn't push the right buttons for me, even if I can appreciate it mechanically compared to the old systems.

[Harsesis]

The only thing I think demo suffered from was it's opener when it didn't have the T15 2pc. Without it you don't start with enough fury to do much of anything on the opener. Simply increasing the base fury at the start of a pull would fix this. Overall though demo has been my favorite spec this expac.