6.1 Demonology Guide

[Liquidsteel 279]

With Cata you just play like pre-DB Demonology.

 

I played Cata for Hanzgar and Franzok and Flamebender Kagraz progress yesterday, and ran with Synergy / AD / Cata and Unglyphed Dark Soul.

 

The opener is the same, but instead of casting Demonbolt you cast Cataclysm, and there is no need to manually apply Doom. Spam Soulfire / ToC, but with 2+ targets I also add in Chaos Wave.

 

Build as normal but try to save Molten Core procs if you can*, and make sure that you have a close to full Fury bar and 8+ MC procs when you have your 2 minute cooldowns up again.

 

In between burn cycles I use Synergy procs as my bleed windows. Spend 15s spamming ToC / get a 2 stack HoG up and you're golden.

 

*On high movement encounters such as Hanz and Franz, it is ok to use Soul Fire in caster and more ToC in Meta to deal with mechanics. Use this as a personal judgement; you will have to think for yourself and evaluate your Fury / Cooldowns / Boss timers to make a decision.

[Nytemare 2]

I never played Demo before Demon Bolt, always just destro as I never had Demo down good I felt to play it during raid. So cata when taken is used to put doom up got it, In between DS we try and stay at a sweet spot of 8 say MC and almost full fury/full. I never thought about jumping into meta for a little bit with Syn proc and using ToC. I do make sure to get a double HoG off during the proc window to do most damage.

 

You said to use Cata in place of Demon Bolt ok that helps, but after I cast Cata and use any MC SF do I just spam ToC until I pop out? or manually pop out and go into the build?

 

2+ target you do CW? what you mean like you use Chaos wave over HoG even on fights like Hanz and Franz? I thought CW only won out if there were ton of mobs like Beastlord. / Tectus (all the motes) etc..

[Gruxa 1]

The legs logical one, since the legs off iron madiens(non tier) have haste/mastery

 

But iirc my sims said gloves. 

 

But sims are weird. 

 

I'd say legs from maidens as off piece.

 

legs have crit/mastery mate :P gloves have haste /mastery , (i'm picking gloves as off piece)

[KoragonArt 0]

I need some clarification on just how much we want to throw around dots.  How many mobs do there need to be before it becomes a waste of time to try to dot all of them up, outside of applying it on everything at once with cata?  Trying to eek out some more numbers by playing better while still not trying to just needlessly pad (like with cata on beastmaster or blast furnace).

 

edit: another question.  Just learned that the new alchemy trinkets which at first seemed quite sexy, have now been changed to have passive mastery to having passive versatility.  Still a big int proc but...the passive is now kind of shit.  Disappointed because i've been saving bloods for it.

 

http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=181650/stone-of-fire

 

Still worth it?

Edited February 18, 2015 by KoragonArt

[iriecolorado 3]

 

Still worth it?

 

 

Nooooooppppppeeeee.  In all fairness, they nerfed the shit out of it about 4 weeks ago on the PTR.  Plenty of warning on that one.

Edited February 19, 2015 by iriecolorado

[KoragonArt 0]

I'll get a heroic brf trink eventually anyway. Guess I'll go sell the bloods for mad money instead.

Edited February 19, 2015 by KoragonArt

[Roblinz 0]

Any advice on how to use the 4 pc properly?

[Zinthar 2]

With Cata you just play like pre-DB Demonology.

 

I played Cata for Hanzgar and Franzok and Flamebender Kagraz progress yesterday, and ran with Synergy / AD / Cata and Unglyphed Dark Soul.

 

The opener is the same, but instead of casting Demonbolt you cast Cataclysm, and there is no need to manually apply Doom. Spam Soulfire / ToC, but with 2+ targets I also add in Chaos Wave.

 

Build as normal but try to save Molten Core procs if you can*, and make sure that you have a close to full Fury bar and 8+ MC procs when you have your 2 minute cooldowns up again.

 

In between burn cycles I use Synergy procs as my bleed windows. Spend 15s spamming ToC / get a 2 stack HoG up and you're golden.

 

*On high movement encounters such as Hanz and Franz, it is ok to use Soul Fire in caster and more ToC in Meta to deal with mechanics. Use this as a personal judgement; you will have to think for yourself and evaluate your Fury / Cooldowns / Boss timers to make a decision.

 

That's generally how I've been playing Cata as well, but I'm considering an alternative approach for Iron Maidens (when not going on the boat); and it may be applicable to similar fights.  What do you think of:

 

Talent GoSup rather than GoSyn, MF rather than AD, and glyph DS.

 

Every 1 min, use meta, then Immo Auro, then DS + Cata + Felstorm simultaneously (you could macro all of this, probably), followed by 2x CW and soul fire or ToC to finish off the final seconds of DS. 

 

In the intervening 50 seconds between each phase, build fury by burning most MC procs in caster form; switching to demon form occasionally to use CW & ToC while moving. 

 

As the fight approaches the final phase, bank 900+ fury and try to make sure Cata & DS will be off cooldown for at least a 10 second window during heroism. 

 

Depending on how much trouble the group is having burning down each boss in the final phase, it may make more sense to take AD, avoid Immo Aura & the DS glyph altogether, and have two charges of DS banked for that final phase so that you can use one with three consecutive Cata's and proceed to burn the infinite MC procs you'll have for longer at the end.  I made a spreadsheet to play with the numbers and I think MF/Immo Aura + DS glyph is a DPS gain over the whole fight, but AD + no glyph may be the better option to actually defeat the bosses in the final phase.

Edited February 20, 2015 by Zinthar

[Liquidsteel 279]

MF isn't worth it because IA isn't worth it to be honest. Most of the fight is two targets, and AFAIK you don't really want to use IA on less than 4 targets anyway.

 

The flexibility that AD offers is just plain better, I believe.

[Gruxa 1]

Have you guys decided on your off spec (read: when u're not cata-demo) ? :) think i'll pick Sac-CR destro

[Soulzar 42]

I'm sticking with Service/Servitude for pure ST fights unless the Destro lock in our raid starts running away with things as Destro.  

I do have Destro as an offspec, and would run the GoSac/CR

[Liquidsteel 279]

Affliction with SB: Haunt.

[Sabertorous 0]

So been reading through a ton of forums on demo changes, I get where we are now, but considering we basically lost use of a major talent, ie DB, I would to know what the warlock community would like to see happen. This is assuming Blizz will change something to make DB viable again at some point.

I would like to see it balanced around a 3 DB rotation, with less fury cost so that we can use other options during burst phase. Like use the 20 sec window on a combination of 3 x DB, with ToC, SF, CW, and doom. Make the cost scale so that the fourth DB takes to much fury to be worth it, but 3 would be viable ST and priority add burn. That way cata can remain aoe and DS could be viable for ST as well as cleave.

My thoughts, I am willing to suffer for awhile so Blizz can find a way to make this work, very interested in what other locks would do if they could choose.

[Paracel 165]

So been reading through a ton of forums on demo changes, I get where we are now, but considering we basically lost use of a major talent, ie DB, I would to know what the warlock community would like to see happen. This is assuming Blizz will change something to make DB viable again at some point.

I would like to see it balanced around a 3 DB rotation, with less fury cost so that we can use other options during burst phase. Like use the 20 sec window on a combination of 3 x DB, with ToC, SF, CW, and doom. Make the cost scale so that the fourth DB takes to much fury to be worth it, but 3 would be viable ST and priority add burn. That way cata can remain aoe and DS could be viable for ST as well as cleave.

My thoughts, I am willing to suffer for awhile so Blizz can find a way to make this work, very interested in what other locks would do if they could choose.

DB nerf was excessive but needed.

Huge amount of spell power multiplier plus BRF gear increase plus raw mastery on the DS have made Demo a pretty monstrous spec - featuring all the kinds of damages for all the cases in current raid, topped with some mobility and a good damage resilence.

All those things packed together in one spec choosing one talent essentially made us a bit OP. I'm still feeling kinda awkward about myself throwing 300k damage punches left and right.

DB is still viable as a source of flexibile single-target burst damage. Conceptually, it has some place for Demo even though it was nerfed. I wouldn't touch it, at least for now.

However, I'd like to find out the point where new CR Destro outscales DB Demo in given terms of ST burst. (It's more sustain-focused AoE instead of burst AoE, though.)

Maybe, just maybe, 25% nerf is an overkill. 10-15% is somewhat a deserved amount IMO.

I mean, Cata is still out there and it's godly. Right?

P.S. I'm just expressing my opinion on our matter with almost stupid honesty.

I feel like I shouldn't be protecting The Nerf Bat.

Druids, Mages, and Hunters are being buffed/untouched and thus remaning top specs, while we are going down for the mid-pack. That's nothing I would like to see.

 

[Alkeir 1]

Hey guys, I had a few assorted questions about some of the intricacies of things I haven't myself decided to experiment with yet. The first one is a question about the new single target play style of GoServ/DemServ. Do we pretty much drop the Glyph of Dark Soul (GoDS) and play like it's MoP? I would assume so, but I just wanted to check if there were any reasons not to.

 

My second question has to do with the GoDS-less Cataclysm playstyle. I haven't tried it out yet myself, but what do you do after the first 3 Cataclyms? Do you just cast Cataclysm without DS up? I just feel like it would be better to always have DS for Cata, so I'm confused as to why the GoDS-less playstyle is viable. Final part of this question, what fights would you play GoDS-less?

 

My third question has to do with the viability of my playstyle on certain AoE fights. I adopted this playstyle since our mastery got buffed a while ago now, meaning Chaos Wave in metamorphosis packs a pretty good punch now, and is more viable to use sparingly now than HoG in 2+ target situaions, at least to my knowledge. Keep in mind I don't have a 4 set, or even a 2 set for that matter. For fights like Operator Thogar and Beastlord Darmac I bank my HoG charges for Chaos Waves in metamorphosis when I have either Demonic Synergy procs, Dark Soul or weapon/ring/trinket procs up, or I'm about to cap at 2 charges and have more than one target up. Otherwise, I only ever cast HoG in the opener on Operator Thogar, Once in the opener of Beastlord Darmac (to allow another charge to come back for the first beast pack for CWs), or if I have only 1 target at the time and need to prevent myself from capping at 2 charges and there will not be several more targets within the next 5-10 seconds. I feel that this is probably what most people do for these two fights, however; I have also adapted this style into Iron Maidens. After the opening 2 HoGs, I TRY not to cast another HoG for the rest of the fight (until there is 1 target left, of course), instead saving HoG/CW charges for CW when Synergy or good amount of procs are up or when I am about to cap at 2 charges. Now, finally to my question. Is this viable for Iron Maidens, or is HoG going to do more damage over the course of the fight? My playstyle seems to be doing well; it had a lot higher of a ranking last week than it is this week, however. Second, is this the right playstyle for Operator Thogar and Beastlord Darmac, or are there situations where I should try to maintain HoG-woven shadowflame debuffs on all the adds? Will that do more damage? Finally, if this playstyle is viable for some or all of the fights I have listed, how do you think the 4 set will change this playstyle? What will I have to do to adapt to having an extra charge of HoG?

 

If you read this far, I thank you for your patience and look forward to your responses.

 

Also, I know I should stop using the Infernal

Edited February 24, 2015 by Alkeir

[Magyar 0]

 Couple quick questions about Demonbolt-less playstyle. Currently running Synergy/AD/DServ for purely single target fights and I'm struggling a little bit with fury expenditure in between Dark Soul CD. When I get a Synergy/ring/trinket proc is it of utmost importance to jump into Meta and spend what fury I have while procs are up or is it better to make sure that I can build enough fury for next DS? Sometimes I get a string of procs and if I used ToC for all of them I'd be starved for when DS comes off cd. It bothers me to see procs and do nothing to utilize it. I feel like I'll get a better feel for how much fury I can spend in between DS and still have plenty for when DS comes off cd as I play more, but I was wondering if anybody had any tips.

 

My second question concerns your second charge of DS. Do you usually find yourself using this during bloodlust? I feel as though this is one of the only times I'll have enough fury gen to be able to use DS that close together.

[Paracel 165]

@Magyar

1.
Just relax. Those procs are pretty much incontrolable, so I wouldn't really touch them.
Stick to something that you are really in charge with - Dark Soul.

2.

I often find myself having a little of space for AD'ed DS, in some cases - not enough fury/embers/shards to spend.
IMO it serves best as the Big Red Emergency Burst Button, for the obvious cases of nuclear attack increased damage windows/unexpected Bloodlusts/priority adds popping.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Cataclysm DOES benefit from Mastery. It is increased by caster form. So Dark Soul does increase the damage. Getting 250k crits is pretty sweet.

[Soulzar 42]

Cataclysm DOES benefit from Mastery. It is increased by caster form. So Dark Soul does increase the damage. Getting 250k crits is pretty sweet.

 

I second this. It does.  What Parcel was likely thinking of is that Meta Mastery bonus does not effect Cataclysm, but Darksoul sure does.

 

Additionally to the questions regarding the playstyle of GoServ/Servitude.  You want to use the 2min Darksoul, there is no 1min burn cycle when using GoService as you want a full 20s duration darksoul for your Service Demon summon.  You main fury dumps will be every 2 minutes aligned with Darksoul/GoService.  You will Bleed off excess fury between those 2 minutes on trinket/weapon procs.  My MC procs seem to be limited (no 4p yet) so I personally am currently Pooling all MC procs for the 2min burn, and using ToC to bleed during procs.  Ideally you would want to use SF over ToC, but Soulfire during Darksoul is more important so pool them to use there unless you are capping.

 

When using Cataclysm, you will want to use the Darksoul glyph and each minute burn you Cataclysm, Soulfires, and CW's.  Caveat to this is, depending on the fight duration, 2m DS can still be best,.. since your first 3 cataclysms would have DS when using AD and you can do more effective fury dumps with the extra 10s of DS per cycle.

Edited February 25, 2015 by Soulzar

[Alkeir 1]

When using Cataclysm, you will want to use the Darksoul glyph and each minute burn you Cataclysm, Soulfires, and CW's.  Caveat to this is, depending on the fight duration, 2m DS can still be best,.. since your first 3 cataclysms would have DS when using AD and you can do more effective fury dumps with the extra 10s of DS per cycle.

I don't think my raid's overall dps is good enough to shorten heroic fights to less than 4 or 5 minutes, so I guess I'll stick with the glyph for now.

[Paracel 165]

Didn't really know this fact about Cata. Sorry for misleading advices.

Russian client tooltips have a long story of being broken/mistranslated.

 

[Zinthar 2]

I second this. It does.  What Parcel was likely thinking of is that Meta Mastery bonus does not effect Cataclysm, but Darksoul sure does.

 

Additionally to the questions regarding the playstyle of GoServ/Servitude.  You want to use the 2min Darksoul, there is no 1min burn cycle when using GoService as you want a full 20s duration darksoul for your Service Demon summon.  You main fury dumps will be every 2 minutes aligned with Darksoul/GoService.  You will Bleed off excess fury between those 2 minutes on trinket/weapon procs.  My MC procs seem to be limited (no 4p yet) so I personally am currently Pooling all MC procs for the 2min burn, and using ToC to bleed during procs.  Ideally you would want to use SF over ToC, but Soulfire during Darksoul is more important so pool them to use there unless you are capping.

 

When using Cataclysm, you will want to use the Darksoul glyph and each minute burn you Cataclysm, Soulfires, and CW's.  Caveat to this is, depending on the fight duration, 2m DS can still be best,.. since your first 3 cataclysms would have DS when using AD and you can do more effective fury dumps with the extra 10s of DS per cycle.

 

I was leaning towards using Glyph of Dark Soul as well, and using it each minute with Cata, then 7 secs of burning CW's and 1-2 soulfires.  Then I ran it through simcraft (500 sec duration, 20% vary length, expert skill level) and found that I couldn't come up with a scenario where Glyph of DS lead to a DPS increase (I tested light & heavy movement, and between 1-3 enemies) when taking either Cata or Demonic Servitude as my tier 7 talent.  The difference was usually in the 4-5% range, too. 

 

The difference is even larger when you take GoServ in tier 5 rather than GoSup. 

 

A few caveats: These sims were with my character's gear, which is ilvl 676 and just the 2 piece bonus.  Also, my second trinket is Copeland's Clarity, so stacking 20 second DS phases with it is probably part of it. 

 

That said, unless there's a fight-specific need for glyph of DS that makes it the clearly superior option, I can't imagine why I would want to replace the many Demo glyps that have some nice survival utility (Healthstone, Eternal Resolve, & Demon Training when combined with SacPact).

 

Also, I simmed my old ST DB build vs. GoSup/DS with my gear on a light-movement fight with one enemy (450 seconds, 20% vary) and the latter came out ahead by 2.2k DPS.  I thought it would come out ahead, but not by a 6-7% margin.  Is the new SimCraft simming DB bursts properly post-nerf? 

 

I'm going to test more later, but I'm betting that the nerf is so strong that glyph of DS is no longer a DPS gain for a DB build, and so we're stuck firing off 2 DB's per cycle without DS, while making sure we're pooling MC procs for a 20 second burn and dramatically cutting our fury generation as a result.  6.0.3 DB was so strong because we could quickly dump all of our fury in 10 seconds and had a means to rapidly regenerate it over the next 40-50 seconds with loads of MC procs. 

 

In short, no one is going to use DB and Blizz will probably find that they need to give it a ~10% buff at some point. 

Edited February 25, 2015 by Zinthar

[Alkeir 1]

I was leaning towards using Glyph of Dark Soul as well, and using it each minute with Cata, then 7 secs of burning CW's and 1-2 soulfires.  Then I ran it through simcraft (500 sec duration, 20% vary length, expert skill level) and found that I couldn't come up with a scenario where Glyph of DS lead to a DPS increase (I tested light & heavy movement, and between 1-3 enemies) when taking either Cata or Demonic Servitude as my tier 7 talent.  The difference was usually in the 4-5% range, too. 

 

The difference is even larger when you take GoServ in tier 5 rather than GoSup. 

 

A few caveats: These sims were with my character's gear, which is ilvl 676 and just the 2 piece bonus.  Also, my second trinket is Copeland's Clarity, so stacking 20 second DS phases with it is probably part of it. 

 

That said, unless there's a fight-specific need for glyph of DS that makes it the clearly superior option, I can't imagine why I would want to replace the many Demo glyps that have some nice survival utility (Healthstone, Eternal Resolve, & Demon Training when combined with SacPact).

 

Also, I simmed my old ST DB build vs. GoSup/DS with my gear on a light-movement fight with one enemy (450 seconds, 20% vary) and the latter came out ahead by 2.2k DPS.  I thought it would come out ahead, but not by a 6-7% margin.  Is the new SimCraft simming DB bursts properly post-nerf? 

 

I'm going to test more later, but I'm betting that the nerf is so strong that glyph of DS is no longer a DPS gain for a DB build, and so we're stuck firing off 2 DB's per cycle without DS, while making sure we're pooling MC procs for a 20 second burn and dramatically cutting our fury generation as a result.  6.0.3 DB was so strong because we could quickly dump all of our fury in 10 seconds and had a means to rapidly regenerate it over the next 40-50 seconds with loads of MC procs. 

 

In short, no one is going to use DB and Blizz will probably find that they need to give it a ~10% buff at some point. 

Try a sim using Cataclysm and GoSyn. Syn proc + Cataclysm + Dark Soul = monster big dick damage, and I think most sims put GoSyn>GoSup as is, don't they?

Edited February 26, 2015 by Alkeir

[Furyio 3]

Damn, I was useless in my raid last night. Was struggling to keep in the top 5 and on Grull and Oregorger I was barely scrapping top 5-7. 

 

Concerned Warlock is concerned....

[Paracel 165]

Damn, I was useless in my raid last night. Was struggling to keep in the top 5 and on Grull and Oregorger I was barely scrapping top 5-7. 

 

Concerned Warlock is concerned....

Wouldn't you mind fetching logs?

I've been totally fine yesterday at our Normal 9/10 clear.

Even nerfed DB still got me and my guild wlock 2 spots in a top 3 on Gruul, losing ~100dps to WW monk.

85-95% percentile Aff play on pretty much all the rest of the fights been OK, too.

I guess it's still "beat the Balance Druid - beat them all" kind of game for me

DB parses will be ranging from fight to fight still, depending on your personal skill progression / RNG procs / Good crits or multistrikes.

It does not seem like that much of a DPS loss, compared to what I've expected.