Season of Discovery Demonology Warlock Tank Leveling

This page will be about tanking as a Warlock strictly for dungeon cleaving or anyone who plans to level with dungeons. If you're looking for the page about leveling as Demonology in the open world, we have a page devoted that that under Demonology Warlock leveling.

Leveling as a Warlock tank is some of the most fun you can have in the game, in a constant state of demon form thanks to your Metamorphosis Rune. You have great single target and AoE threat thanks to all the talents you get from the Destruction tree that cause you to do a insane amounts of damage. You can use Searing Pain and one Incinerate to gather the mobs up, then use Immolation Aura and spam Hellfire to AoE the mobs down.

On single target you Incinerate, put your DoT's up, and spam Searing Pain to gain as much threat as you can. You also insane self healing thanks to the Rune Master Channeler making your Drain Life turn into a DoT so you always have heals, and you also have great defensive cooldown with Vengeance for those emergency situations.

While there are some flex points, this will be the general build to deal as much damage and threat as you can.

Start by putting five points into Improved Shadow Bolt. While you won't be casting Shadow Bolt since it turns into Shadow Cleave, you will end up using Shadow Cleave on the trash packs and this is affected by your Improved Shadow Bolt, meaning whenever your Shadow Cleave crits, you'll buff the rest of your Shadow DoTs, as well as anyone in the party who is using Shadow Spells.

Your next five points will go into Bane as this will reduce the cast time of your main DoT Immolate. Aftermath is only a chance at dazing and not worth it. You're next five points go into Devastation to give you 5% more crit. After that pick up Shadowburn. This point is one of the flex points I mentioned earlier. Feel free to put this into Improved Immolate if you prefer.

The next five points go into Improved Searing Pain. This increases your chance to crit with Searing Pain, which is perfect as this will be your main threat generator. More damage means more threat. After that put two points into both Destructive Reach and Intensity to give you further range on all of your Destruction spells and also provide you with a 70% chance to resist the knockback of your Hellfire, which you will be using constantly in the raid as your AoE damage/threat ability. Place one point into Ruin to increase the damage of your critical strikes by 100%.Your last five points in this tree go into Emberstorm to make you deal 10% more Fire damage.

Your remaining points go into the Affliction tree to pick up Improved Corruption to make your Corruption instant cast and then your last five points into Improved Drain Life to make your Drain Life heal you for more.

Both the DPS/threat build and the survivability build use different Runes. Both will be covered below.

• Head — Vengeance
• Bracers — Immolation Aura
• Gloves — Metamorphosis
• Pants — Incinerate
• Chest — Master Channeler
• Belt — Grimoire of Synergy
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge

While there are many options of Runes this phase, the ones above do the most damage, thus causing the most threat. Incinerate is your leg Rune and buffs your fire damage by 25%. You will use this simply to keep that Fire buff up as much as you can. You opener on fights will typically start with this and you want to look for times to cast this to keep the buff up.

For your chest rune Master Channeler is the default pick. This will give you a big chunk of damage, but also a ton of extra healing.

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Metamorphosis is the only option for Rune choice here. You can't tank unless in your Demon Form.

You have two solid options for boot Runes. Demonic Knowledge is your pick for damage and threat, 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 option Dance of the Wicked, which gives both you and your demon dodge chance equal to however much critical strike chance you have and also gives you both 2% mana back, leading to less Life Taps. Which one you choose is up to you. If you feel tanky enough, then go for Demonic Knowledge.

All of the belt Runes are good options to use, but Grimoire of Synergy comes out ahead. This gives both you and your demon a 5% chance to buff the other by 25% whenever they deal damage. Another option is if you prefer is Shadow and Flame, which makes it so whenever you crit with your Fire spells, you will get a 10% buff to your Fire damage for 10 seconds. It also can buff your Shadow if you crit with Shadow, but you won't be using too many Shadow spells.

Immolation Aura is a new Rune introduced in Phase 3 and is great for AoE. This is an aura that lasts until cancelled. This also reduces all magical damage you take by 10%.

Vengeance is another Rune introduced in Phase 3. This acts as a defensive cooldown that will increase your maximum HP by 30% for 20 seconds. Use this whenever you need some help surviving.

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