How is Demo PVP in 5.4

[Deleted]

Hello, everybody

I almost don't see any demo locks any more and I can't assess their strengths and weaknesses. Demo seems fun and tanky with dark apotheosis, can you answer some questions so that I know what to expect when i hit 90:

1) Are there any classes that can beat a demo lock in duels (if both play at skill cap). How do you fare against warrs/rogues/monks?
2) Are demo locks still best with frost mages for 2s?
3) Is the drain life spec viable (with glyph + soul harvest)? F.e. can you get a full drain on a feared target and heal for ... well, a lot?

Thanks in advance for your answers

Have fun!

[Tya]

Inferior to aff and destro by a significant margin.

1) Not sure why this is important, but demo is good in 1v1 duels. You should beat most melee, and tend to lose to classes that can outlast your burst (other warlocks, moonkin etc).
2) Moonkin work best with demo in 2v2, and indeed moonkin/demo is one of the few viable comps for demo. The reasons for this are mostly because both classes have strong, similar-duration burst abilities with mostly unavoidable/uninterruptable damage while bursting.
3) No. Dark Regen is basically required for PvP. Drain Life and Harvest Life also expose your shadow school, which generally leads to lockdown.

Wasn't a question, but still. You'd only use dark apotheosis when forced to tank a large melee cooldown, like a warrior's avatar. You'd never just sit in it.

[Deleted]

Hey, thank you for the swift reply

1) It is important to me because duels and world pvp is something i really enjoy and do a lot, so I tend to mostly play classes that don't have many hard counters. So I thought I'd play demo and give it a try

May I ask another question? Can I silence, fear and then sleep (from dark apotheosis) somebody for a 20 second CC chain as demo?

[Deleted]

Fear and sleep are on the same DR

[Tya]

Hey, thank you for the swift reply

1) It is important to me because duels and world pvp is something i really enjoy and do a lot, so I tend to mostly play classes that don't have many hard counters. So I thought I'd play demo and give it a try

May I ask another question? Can I silence, fear and then sleep (from dark apotheosis) somebody for a 20 second CC chain as demo?

Fear (8 sec) -> Shadowfury (3 sec) -> Fear (4 sec) -> Spell Lock (3 sec) -> Fear (2 sec)

20 sec total.

This is the standard, optimal, no-outside-interference CC rotation for any warlock spec.

Demo generally uses felguard stun and death coil instead of shadowfury and spell lock, so replace those.

As stated above, sleep and fear share DR, so no.

If you want a dueling spec, I'd lean towards Destruction with a voidwalker sac'd+soul link. The shear volume of hit points makes it a joy to play, and will prove to be far tankier than a dark apo-based spec.

[Werst]

The reason harvest life (or anything casted really) will never work is basically just a single melee and their near 100% uptime vs locks...especially warriors. 12 sec charge stun, pummel, disrupting shout (aoe interrupt), heroic throw, shockwave/stormbolt, spell reflect, and mass spell reflect....meanwhile they are running a pve damage rotation on you. Oh and they are immune to your main CC 33% of the time and can "trinket" it on a 30 sec cd. Between heroic leap, charge, and intervene/charge they can out mobility anything we can do now that maps all have easy melee access. That is just one melee....now add a rogue or someone else doing kicks, garrote/cheap shot, kidney shot, gouge, etc all with mind numbing. You can literally get run through stun DR, silence DR, and interrupts seem to never DR. Its an arms race between slippery uber bursty casters like frost mages and locks pretty much are collateral damage.

Now understand demo still runs off converting mana from HP and since damage is reduced about 75% in pvp that means you end up doing more damage to yourself via lifetap than you do to your target via fel flame (which is your only reliable DF builder). Corruption ticks for damage that would have sucked one if not two expansions ago. Doom can be dispelled nearly twice before it even ticks once (not that you'd really use it). All the pve tweaks around UVLS/etc (ex imp glyph) also took a nerf further impair things. Chaoswave is reliable but at a ~15%'ish crit chance with a mast > crit > haste build you are looking at a sub 2% chance to land a double crit and even that doesn't really hurt. Think the highest I've seen was 50-70K'ish crit with double dps trinkets. Your pet really isn't ever going to kill anyone or do much damage the way a BM hunter pet will but its mortal strike, a stun, and a DF builder.

The good news is that all your damage is instant. You have good mobility with demo leap. Your FG/WG's axe toss is wonderful for melee's magic/fear immunes for emergency peels. You can try a mannoroth build to mass aoe and hope to aoe pressure a team basically "dot-less" but its not going to be a burst thing so much anymore. It will take some time to build that DF so its not the kind of spec that just drops someone in a CC. The CC chain listed above any lock can do and both aff/dest have better toolkits on the macro level. Its really a shame...demo has so many great ingredients for a pvp spec and could be easily fixed to do so but its not on the dev radar.

[Constraint]

Fear (8 sec) -> Shadowfury (3 sec) -> Fear (4 sec) -> Spell Lock (3 sec) -> Fear (2 sec)

20 sec total.

This is the standard, optimal, no-outside-interference CC rotation for any warlock spec.

Demo generally uses felguard stun and death coil instead of shadowfury and spell lock, so replace those.

As stated above, sleep and fear share DR, so no.

If you want a dueling spec, I'd lean towards Destruction with a voidwalker sac'd+soul link. The shear volume of hit points makes it a joy to play, and will prove to be far tankier than a dark apo-based spec.

Out of abject curiosity (don't play a warlock particularly often) why is that an "optimal cc rotation"? Aren't you just delaying the resetting of your fear DRs by staggering your fears? Wouldn't Fear-Fear-Fear-SF-SL be superior, since your fear will come off DR ~6 seconds earlier?

[TiagoRamos]

I also play a Demo lock (maybe unfortunatly), always loved the concept.
But the true is that demo lock was nerfed due to a lot of issues. specially the uvls trinket. Imps were nerfed a lot.

- doom sucks in pvp, takes 15sec to tick and can be dispelled without penalties
- low pet health, low pet damage, every pet damage is bad atm
- corruption ticks for 2.5k lol
- drain life is good glyphed and talented but you wont be able to do it much and u will lose other glyph and talents that might be better lol
- demons cast time is ridiculous compared to hunters
- really bad mana managment was demo because all skills required alot of mana
- casting shadow bolt? sure...we cant. same happens to soul fire with molten core procs. even if u cast, gratz dealing around 20-25k crit DAMAGE LOL
- you will be rushed and ganked when they see you cause we cant do shit about it.
- low NUMBER and damage of our attack skills.
- our offensive skills are Touch of chaos , corruption. basicly... chaos wave was 30% dmg nerfed and spends a lot of fury, so ToC is better. void ray? lol ... drain life? carrion swarm?
- retarded caster damage and lack of offensive skills, and number of skills. u cant cast SB or even soul fire (u have other priorities like defensive cds, portal, corruption, or even guldan)
- I could be here all day.

[Tya]

Out of abject curiosity (don't play a warlock particularly often) why is that an "optimal cc rotation"? Aren't you just delaying the resetting of your fear DRs by staggering your fears? Wouldn't Fear-Fear-Fear-SF-SL be superior, since your fear will come off DR ~6 seconds earlier?

While it's true that it does stagger your fears, it's generally optimal because it accounts for trinket usage. If your desired CC target breaks one of the fears, then you can immediately shadowfury/spell lock, both of which occur instantly, and continue the chain.

It's also more lenient with regards to timing. Instead of lining up your next fear with the end of the prior, you just drop some instant CC and continue your chain.

Lastly, using a stun to chain fears ensures that your target doesn't fear-path outside your fear range. Not as big a deal as it was in previous expansions, but it still occurs from time to time.

[sugarfree]

It has been hit by more unnecessary nerfs when 5.4 hit. It was already struggling around 5.2-5.3-ish because Destruction scaled better and better while Affliction got huge buffs.

It's horrible now, its burst potential got nerfed hard and now, if you are casting Shadow Bolt in pvp, that's just pitiful because Incinerate, Lightning Bolt, Frost Bolt all hit for more. Basically, the whole spec is just trashed until further notice.

And for a spec that relies on pets, it's not a good idea to spec for now because pets are being outscaled by everyone. Damage is gone up yet their HP staggered. Damage increased significantly in between pvp gear, while their scaling benefit from them are way too inadequate.

This was presented in the PTR, which of course, got conveniently ignored.

[Brakos]

I find it boring and underwhelming. With Demo the primary interest I've always had was the depth, there's a lot to manage. You have pets to manage, two forms to manage, and that's on top of standard Warlock CCs.

But if you stack the three specs up I see Demo right now to be the weakest in most situations. Dark Apoth gives you more burst survival, but your already low damage output gets ganked when you do that.

Affliction is good in BGs and 3s or 5s Arena, but only when they're in a DoT based composition that their UA protects.

My favorite still is Destruction. It got nerfed a bit in 5.4 but it still has high output and good survival. And it's mobile and I personally like the fact that if I get locked out of fire I can still put down damage or likewise with shadow.

Drain Life isn't viable in PvP. If you try to use it you'll throw a flag on yourself because of the big neon line and they will hit you with a silence or interrupt. There's no way that any respectable PvPer is going to let you channel. And if you're Demo or Aff and you try to Drain life and get locked out of shadow you're toast.

Now if we're looking at the specs standing up against one another I don't ever lose a 1v1 against a Demo or an Aff. Destruction just overpowers them. There's too much fast burst coming their way for the DoTs to drop you or the Demo's Fury gain to ramp up their Burst to be high enough.

2 Pence and I'm out!

[TiagoRamos]

Yet, no one wants to fix Demo and talks about it?
unbeleivable

[Tya]

Yet, no one wants to fix Demo and talks about it?
unbeleivable

It's not a very fun spec to PvP with, so I doubt many care.

[Werst]

Demo was a TON of fun to pvp with when you could kill someone with it. Hell even when you could just annoy people to death with DA + 2x felguards + 5x imps with the original blood fear....you weren't killing them but damn if you were hard to shut down. The chaoswave aoe burst thing was too much but that is due to the delta between a double crit chaos wave and double non crit...and the gosac. Since you can no longer increase the radius of chaoswave via mannoroth they really need to buff it back to where it was damage wise. Especially when you look at what any other ranged can toss. My crappy mage tosses 50K to 70K (in pvp vs pvp gear) instants all day long. My MM hunter drops chimera shots that hit harder than darksoul chaosbolts...and he just got buffed 10% lol. Same with ele who also just got buffed. Point being that there is a huge margin for increase for demo in pvp. Especially with a new season coming this is worth bringing up to the powers that be. I get they don't want to divert too much from WoD but when its clearly so far off the devs need to turn out a better product in the meantime.

What would it take to get demo fixed with minimum effort and NOT bugger up pve balance?
*Imp glyph reverted to 5x imps, no longer has its CD reduced by snapshotted haste.
*Fel flame refunds 80% of its mana cost when striking player targets
*Chaoswave always crits, damage scales with crit (chaosbolt/soulfire treatment) with gosac having the same dot treatment as chaosbolt
*Pets take 50% less damage from players
*PVP power massively increases warlock self heals/absorbs such that fully geared you have near pve/regular values (as a tuning goal)
*Doom dispels refund the DF cost and spawn 2x imps
*ToC/shadowbolt imp spawn rate doubled when striking player targets (more passive imps)
*When stunned, silenced, or your shadow school is interrupted you gain 200 DF

My vision for demo is a more anti melee build whose pressure comes from imps and who lands kills with CD's once its built pressure and has a swap/kill chance. Not a swiftymacro mongo nor a complete dot based pressure only spec like aff. None of those should have any real pve impact. They just call for coding some things differently when facing players. Blizz says they don't like it but they have no problem doing it negatively to chaosbolt. When you look at the toolkit other classes bring I would love to hear the logic how any of that would be out of line or even hard to do.

[sugarfree]

Oh Demo used to be fun. Believe it or not, I only PvP with it from 5.0 up to around 5.2 (early 5.3-ish). It was hella fun back when it was a solid anti-melee spec. It became amazing when KJC got buffed in 5.2 or 5.3 I think when you can just cast while moving. It had great burst potential on CD but not overpowered.

Then KJC got nerfed and that was the end of it. No one seriously casts Shadow Bolt in pvp unless you are safe from being locked out, which is what the mobility protected you from.

Affliction and Destruction were not that good back then (arguably on Destruction). Affliction was just really meh and Destruction was just too squishy. Destruction became good in 5.3 because of scaling and how it's the only spec that survived the KJC nerf. The fact alone that you can pick up Demo over Destruction in older patches says a lot about how the spec just got utterly destroyed.

The performance spikes and discrepancies of each specs and classes from patch to patch have always been Blizzard's worst talents. It is almost a decade and they still can't get things right because of stubbornness. The solution is just right in front of their faces, they just refuse to budge.

[Crovyn]

Morpheus has a lot of fun with demo lock. If it's duels wpvp and BGs you like you CAN enjoy it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj2ZOLIy6kY

[Werst]

The video is fun but non rated bg's aren't 2's or 3's or rbg's. Not to say he didn't play well but you can do just about anything with the right non rated bg clip. You also notice he is seldom the kill target, has symbiosis, and many of those kills are assists from other classes. He gets to cast full shadowbolts and fears with nobody trying to stop him which isn't exactly your average 3's match where its mongo tunnel the lock while tossing instant cc at the healer and the first one that sticks the lock dies on.

Still the video gives me hope.... However you watch him vs cobrak (ie demo vs destro) and its not such a favorable matchup for demo. Again not due to any fault of the player just how the spec has been impacted by the macro game changes (75% dmg redux + needing to lifetap, imp nerfs, etc). Think back to where demo was at 522 ilvl compared to destro (when adjusting for all the respective buffs/nerfs since 522 was "content") and its clear why destro holds the lead at that ilvl.

[Nighthaven-]

I made some entries about in "Thread: [5.4] Demonology Warlock Guide" at page 136, bottom.

Here's a video of it in execution (youtube):
/watch?v=8Rg5uDusB_Q

Note this was 5.2
You cannot effectively cleave multiple targets with HoG anymore (but single target is just as good even better in 5.4), yet MF boosted immolation almost makes up for it. In mentality consider pet(s), imps and most importantly IA as DoTs and use them as DoTs.

[TiagoRamos]

There are so many wrong things about Demo...and sometimes its really frustrating to play with this...

[Pockitt]

Yeah it's really a shame at how bad demo got gutted... I've always loved the fact that you're managing two different forms with all of your core abilities changing into more powerful versions once you've entered the demon form.. To me, Demonology always felt like the embodiment of a true lock.. Destruction just feels like a glorified arcane Mage with all of your damage being direct and affliction is just another DoT spec. This is just my opinion though.. Blizard REALLY needs to do something about Demonology.. Not just in PVP but in both PVP and PVE it could use a really big buff..