Season of Discovery Demonology Warlock DPS Leveling

Demonology Warlocks are known as the tankiest casters in the game. You have multiple talents to make yourself and your pet harder to kill, while having a large Sacrifice shield from your Voidwalker when in danger. Demonology has access to the powerful Felguard to cleave through your enemies, with talents to make him hit even harder. You will also have Fel Domination for those emergency situations when you need to pull another demon out. Most importantly, if you want to, you can turn into a Demon yourself with the infamous Metamorphosis Rune, making you extremely hard to kill.

Demonology is all about survivabilty, with you and your demons being the tankiest that they could possibly be. To enable this, start by putting five points into Demonic Embrace for the 15% Stamina. This will help give you a ton of extra health. After that put two points into Improved Healthstone to make your Healthstones give you more health when you use them. Drop down and put three points into Improved Sayaad. After that put one point into Improved Health Funnel.

From here, put one point into Fel Domination to reduce the casting time the next time you summon your demon. This is helpful for whenever your demon dies or if you need to pull out an emergency Voidwalker for the sacrifice. This talent also synergizes extrememely well with another talent called Master Summoner that you will end up taking. After that put five points into Fel Stamina to give your demon 15% more Stamina, making them tankier and making Soul Link last longer. Place two points into Master Summoner to get that quick summon back whenever your demon dies, like we mentioned earlier.

Next you'll want to put five points into Unholy Power to make your demon do 20% more damage. Next up put one point into Demonic Sacrifice, which won't be used, but you need in order to later unlock Soul Link. Then put five points into Master Demonologist, which will reduce all physical damage done to you and your demon by 10% for some magnifiscent damage reductions. Lastly put your final point into the infamous Soul Link. This makes it so 30% of all damage you take will be taken by your demon instead. This talents provides insane mitigation and will help you survive. This will also buff both you and your Felguard to 3% more damage. Side note, you can no longer use Soul Link while in Metamorphosis, so you can choose to not take Soul Link and put the point elsewhere if you plan to use Meta. Otherwise if you want to use Soul Link, then just use a different rune.

• Head — Pandemic
• Bracers — Summon Felguard
• Gloves — Metamorphosis
• Pants — Demonic Pact
• Chest — Master Channeler
• Belt — Shadow and Flame
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge

Metamorphosis is great if you want to level as Demonology. This transforms you into a Demon and significantly boosts several aspects of your character.

• Increasing Armor by 500%.
• Reducing the chance you will be critically hit by 6%.
• Increasing your threat by 100%.
• Increasing Mana gained from Life Tap by 100%.
• Alters the functionality of some of your abilities and granting some new abilities:
  • Searing Pain is now instant.
  • Shadow Bolt becomes Shadow Cleave, a Shadow melee attack that hits up to three nearby enemies, but has a 6 second cooldown.
  • Fear turns into a spell called Menace and will taunt the target to attack you for 3 seconds. Has a 10 second cooldown.

You'll be in the form forever while leveling, with the added bonus of being hard to kill if you're leveling on a PvP server. Once again, you can no longer use Soul Link while in Metamorphosis, so you can choose to not take Soul Link and put the point elsewhere if you plan to use this. Otherwise if you want to use Soul Link, then you can just use Haunt.

Master Channeler is amazing for leveling as Demonology. This Rune will make your Drain Life a DoT, rather than a channel. This is nice because you can put this up with your other DoT's and be able to wand, Shadow Bolt, spam your instant cast Searing Pain thanks to Metamorphosis or do whatever else you want to.

Shadow and Flame is the belt Rune of choice. After you put your DoTs up you will find yourself using the instant-cast Searing Pain. This results in a proc every time the spell crits.

Demonic Knowledge is great Rune as this simply increases your spell damage by 10% of your current demons total Stamina and Intellect. For example, if your pet has 50 Stamina and 50 Intellect, that equates to a total of 100, therefore you would gain 10 spell damage. This is also buffed by Blessing of Kings. The other options in this Rune slot are really weak and won't really ever be used. Shadow Flame is an AoE ability and Dance of the Wicked is a tanking Rune.

You've got a few options for leg Runes and to be honest none of them are great. Demonic Pact is preferred, since whenever your pet crits, it will buff you for 10% of whatever your spell damage is. This is a nice passive buff that you'll get and make you do more damage. The other Runes on this slot are far less impactful.

Pandemic is a perfect fit for you helm Rune as this will make your DoT's crit. Vengeance is for Warlock Tanks and Backdraft is for Destruction Warlocks.

More Engravings are likely to come out as we reach higher level caps, so make sure to checkout our general Rune guide to get a better understanding of what all tools you have available to your Warlock.

Leveling as an Demonology Warlock is rather straight-forward. Make sure you're in your demon form from Metamorphosis and send your demon in, put up a Corruption, Immolate and Drain Life, which is now a DoT thanks to the Master Channeler Rune, then wand or spam Searing Pain until the enemy dies. Use your Voidwalkers Sacrifice when in danger.