Demonology Opener PSA

[gahhda 95]

It's come to my attention that the opener that I've had in place for the past few months hasn't really been posted anywhere. I tried every combination of ability orders in the first 20 seconds of combat you could think of, and this one is solidly (~1.2%) better than the standard openers people use. If anyone can come up with a better opener in simc, I'll gladly commit it. I've tried every single possible way I could to make chaos wave in the opener good, it just never works.

Since they upped the duration of service to 25 in the last patch, you don't need to pop DS immediately on pull, so long as you use it in the first 5 seconds of after using service doomguard. It pops service after the first HoG so the doomguard benefits from pre-pull trinket buffs.

Visual representation: https://gyazo.com/2884495ea9773830be8e1e5571e37528
Log courtesy of exon from halycon: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...73&view=events

The only difference in the log is that he uses HoG after GoServ, shouldn't make a huge difference.
 

1. Pre-potion
2. Pre-cast Soul Fire OR Shadow Bolt (see below)
3. Racials
4. Hand of Gul’dan
5. Service Doomguard
6. Corruption
7. Imp Swarm OR Shadow Bolt (requires temporary haste buff)
8. Hand of Gul’dan
9. Metamorphosis
10. Dark Soul
11. Doom

After this point, prioritize:
 

1. Refreshing Hand of Gul’dan
2. Metamorphosis Soul Fire
3. Touch of Chaos
4. Caster Soul Fire with crit trinket up
5. Shadow Bolt

With the 4pc for demonology, you have the ability to refresh hand of gul’dan 3 times in your opener, instead of the normal 1 time. If you have a hand of gul’dan charge, and you can refresh your initial 2x stacked hand of gul’dan DoT, you should cancel metamorphosis and do so. Yes. CANCEL METAMORPHOSIS. Your brain will tell you it's a bad idea, but when you see your HoG damage shoot up to #1 and your dps spike straight up, it's hard to argue.

A typical example of how you should use the 4pc:

Around 10-11 seconds in the to fight, you have 1 hand of gul’dan charge, a 2 stack hand of gul’dan DoT on the target that’s about to expire, and another hand of gul’dan charge coming off cd in 3-5 seconds.
 

1. Cancel metamorphosis
2. Refresh your 2 stack Hand of Gul’dan DoT
3. Shadow Bolt 2-3 times, buying time for your next Hand of Gul’dan to come off CD.
4. Hand of Gul’dan again
5. Metamorphosis, continue dumping DF via SF/ToC until DS ends

______________________________________________________________________________

You can currently bait your trinkets to proc twice on pull almost 100%. The BRF trinkets proc on combat/cast rather than on impact. This means that if you pre-cast your soul fire or shadow bolt and the cast ends before the boss is pulled, you can proc your trinkets before combat starts, and then the RPPM resets when the boss is pulled. Because the rppm resets, you have a VERY high change to get back to back trinket procs on pull.

Furty explains the pre-pull trinket shenanigans pretty well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGaQFlH13dE

Shadow Bolt vs Soul Fire in the precast makes very little difference, I prefer using Shadow Bolt to more safely proc my trinkets before combat starts.

Edited June 7, 2015 by gahhda

[Zilthy 36]

Well, I am just getting back in to it after taking a hiatus from raiding (lots of real life stuff going on, so I have been very casual, and playing on some different toons).

 

That opener is almost exactly what I have been finding out works best, the only difference is I swap order of corruption/service doomguard, just to make sure that service demon is around for the whole Dark Soul, but that's only 1 GCD difference there. *shrug*

 

I will experiment with what you put for post opener, although I do not have the 2pc or 4pc yet, due to beforementioned hiatus.

 

At any rate, it feels good to be back. :D

[spikeysquad 50]

Thanks for sharing Gahhda. I don't really have any Simulationcraft writing skills but really unsyncing your racials from DS and even DS so late in the fight wins out? I guess 1% is actually talking like 1.2-1.5k?  

 

As someone who cannot get regular double procs then I've already lost a lot by using that opener and personally I do find a CW>HoG at that point in time assuming that I am not getting a second lot of procs. Personally I am not a fan of 3 abilities either between HoG (even with bloodlust) but that's a personal thing and perhaps many players can do it sucessfully . Of course I appreciate that your aims are much different to mine and a Simulation does not have tanks who pull at random times.  

Edited June 7, 2015 by spikeysquad