Challenge mode advice

[Sickjen]

Hi all:

So i just dinged 100 on my warlock and i have a few questions before i enter challenge modes on my lock. My friend has been telling me demonology is the way to go for CMS is that the truth? Are there any tips you can give me? I've gotten 8/8 on a brewmaster but i'm fairly new to the warlock class.


Thank you in advance :^)

[Octa]

Any spec in the game can complete 8/8 gold CM so if you love Demo and want to do it as Demo, feel free but Destruction is significantly easier to get good results out of in CMs. After the "balancing" Demo got, which made them even more reliant on mastery scaling, it's now even weaker in CM's even if is capable of putting out some decent burst AoE. I would say that Destruction is by far the best spec for lock CMs.

Talents
Tier 15: Soul leech sheilds actually build up pretty quickly and is pretty nice on the first tier (some people are more comfortable with a controlled CD here).
Tier 30: Shadowfury is insanely good in CMs and is the default choice of this tier 99.9% of the time.
Tier 45: All three talents in this row have uses though I would argue Sac Pact is the weakest since it requires more planning on useage and if you're late using it the cooldown just becomes weaker and weaker the more HP you lose. Dark Bargain is a nice "shit hit the fan button" and CAN allow you to do some weird things with mechanics. Soul Link is what most people choose here since it's just a free 20% HP with GrimSac and allows Soul Leech to become a little more effective. It's also just a passive thing that lets you make more mistakes since you're probably not going to get 1 shot through 400k HP.
Tier 60: Burning Rush and Unbound Will are the ones here with uses. Burning Rush is always a nice speed boost to have (don't turn it on before invising!!! haha) and is always a pretty good option to take. Unbound Will will let you dispel yourself from certain mechanics and possibly leaves your healer with their dispel available for another player. While this can be nice to have in certain situations I used Burning Rush for all of mine because I hate feeling slow, it's the better choice for me haha.
Tier 75: Take Grimoire of Sacrifice here. You'll be using a ton of Chaos Bolts and shadowburns inside CMs since you can do so much Shadowburn Sniping constantly. You're swimming in embers if you play properly and Sac is a big damage boost to those ember users. On top of it being the best damage talent pets are just fucking dumb and annoying.
Tier 90: Archimonde's Darkness. Having two charges of Dark Soul allows you to be very flexible where you use it and gives you much more freedom to have a CD for bosses still if your group decided they needed to CD a trash pack just before a boss. Mannorth's Fury is useless and almost all the movement you do in CMs you can fill with a havoc or a conflag and even if you can't the movement isn't ever enough to consider taking KJC over AD.
Tier 100: Cataclysm. Cata gives HUGE burst potential every minute and really cuts away at the HP of trash packs. Charred Remains CAN be good in certain instances like Iron Docks but your group has to be doing massive pulls (to the point where if you're doing those pulls you're not just going for gold, you're pushing times) and is generally not a talent people take. Cata is by far the best choice for someone just looking to do some gold CMs.

Gear:
You want to make sure you get as much mastery and crit as possible, use pieces that are Mastery>Crit wherever you possibly can (which is every single slot except trinkets) and use Mastery enchants. I honestly have not messed around with trinkets very much since the start of the expac (so have not fully tested BRF and HFC trinkets) so I'm not sure how accurate this is BUT Copeland's Clarity and Stone of Fire are very strong for Destruction. Copeland's is a spellpower on use and adds quite a bit of extra damage under your control. Stone of Fire has Versatility passive but it's got a pretty large intellect proc on a very short ICD which makes it pretty strong. You can even use a macro to swap the slots your trinkets are in which puts Stone to it's full ICD so if you're having particular trouble with a certain part of the instance you can swap the trinket 1 minute before you get there and force the proc there.


So now that I've gone over talents and gear let's get into the actual gameplay.
Make use of Havoc, ALL the time. Havoc is an insanely powerful spell that allows you to do some serious cleave damage. You generally do not have enough mobs to realistically sustain any sort of AoE with FnB so you're going to rely a lot on Cata and Havoc. Making smart use of havoc will have a drastic impact on your DPS. Making sure you can havoc off your Shadowburns or cleave your Chaos Bolts is a huge deal and you shouldn't be sitting around with Havoc on CD very often. Even on bosses there are many places where you can get effective havocs off on targets that need to die or you can Havoc Shadowburns into the boss.
While you're not going to be able to sustain FnB very often, don't be afraid to use it to apply immolate to a bunch of adds while you burn down priority targets or to AoE slow a group with Conflag.
Sacrifice the Fel Hunter give you a spell lock, use it. If you really want to be super useful you can actually interrupt two targets at once through using Havoc and then your spell lock.
Go into bosses with DS available and full embers. While the majority of your time in CMs will be spent on trash packs and they're the more dangers parts of the instance, bosses still matter. Plan ahead an make sure you leave the trash pack before a boss with full embers. Destro can do some really good single target damage on bosses if you plan ahead and make sure you go into them with DS and embers available.
Shadowburn EVERYTHING. Always be looking to generate embers through Shadowburn wherever possible.
Pre pot wherever you can. Pot is 1 minute CD and so is cata, having an extra 1k intellect on every cata is pretty massive.

These are just some general things and if you've got any specific questions I can try to help you out with them. Good luck and enjoy the polearm for your Fel Guard

[Esmi]

thank you very much for your Guide

so for gear it is: mastery and crit?

any glyph advise ? like taking DS glyphe or not?