Season of Discovery Demonology Warlock Tank Talents and Runes

While you can tank as a Warlock as any of the three specs, tanking with a majority of your points into Destruction is the best for damage and threat, since your threat is based upon how much damage you deal. Simply put the more damage you deal, the more threat you will have. This build will go largely down the Destruction tree to pickup all the Fire Damage from Emberstorm and some help on your main threat generator Searing Pain with Improved Searing Pain. The remaining points will be put into the both Affliction for Improved Corruption and then Demonology for Demonic Embrace for Stamina and Improved Imp to make your Imp hit harder.

If you're having a ton of troubles surviving in your raid for whatever reason, you have an option to be on the safe side of things and spec into the Demonology tree. With the recent nerf to Soul Link, you can no longer use it while in Metamorphosis. That being said, you still get very good value out of Demonic Embrace for Stamina and your new Felguard will benefit from ALL FOUR of the effects from Demonic Sacrifice, meaning you will recieve 15% Fire and Shadow damage, regenerate 3% health every 4 seconds and restore 2% mana every 4 seconds. You can also flex your gear to be more tanky as well, rather than DPS if you're looking to survive more. Which you choose it solely up to you and what your raid needs. Both builds will be linked below.

For the damage/threat build you will have most of your points in the Destruction tree. While there are some flex points, this will be the general build to deal as much threat as you can. Start by putting five points into either Improved Shadow Bolt or Cataclysm. Both of these talents aren't amazing. Cataclysm will give you a little bit of mana back, while Improved Shadow Bolt will allow your Shadow Cleave crits to apply the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff, buffing yours and your raids Shadow Damage to the target. This is nice since you do cast a couple Shadow spells with Corruption and Drain Life. 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 put two points into Improved Firebolt to make your Imp cast faster. The next five points go into Improved Searing Pain. This increases your chance to crit with Searing Pain and that's really nice since you will be using this spell more than all of your other ones since this is your main threat generator. If it crits, it deals more damage, thus causing more threat.

The next two points have some options for where you place them. Destructive Reach gives you more range on your spells. Intensity gives you a 70% chance to resist the knockback of your Hellfire. Which you choose is up to you and what your raid needs. A lot of people prefer Intensity for the help on pushback with Hellfire, while some prefer the range from Destructive Reach. Next put five points into Improved Immolate to increase the initial damage of your Immolate

After that put one point into Ruin to increase the damage of your critical strikes by 100%. Five points go into Emberstorm to make you deal more Fire damage. After that go into the Demonology tree and place your last three points into Improved Imp. Imp does a ton of damage and is your main demon. This makes him deal 30% more damage, while also buffing his Fire shield and Blood Pact. Put 3 points into Demonic Embrace for some extra Stamina, then put your remaining five points into Improved Corruption for your instant cast Corruption, which will supply you with some great damage and threat.

For the pure survivability build, you'll be going down the Demonology tree and putting your leftover points into Affliction. Start with putting five points into Demonic Embrace for your Stamina, then two points into Improved Healthstone for more healing from your Healthstones. After that put three points into Fel Intellect simply to be able to open up the next tier of talents. Next put one point into Fel Domination, which pairs extraordinarily well with Master Summoner, which you'll put two points into. With these two talents you'll be able to very quickly summon a demon when you need to. Put five points into Unholy Power, which will make your demons do 20% melee damage. One point into Demonic Sacrifice, which as mentioned above will make it so when you sacrifice your Felguard, you'll benefit from ALL FOUR of the effects from Demonic Sacrifice, meaning you will recieve 15% Fire and Shadow damage, regenerate 3% health every 4 seconds and restore 2% mana every 4 seconds. Lasly put 5 points into Master Demonologist for the same reason as Demonic Sacrifice, meaning you'll receive all four of the buffs from this talent as well. Note that one of them is a benefit of the Imp, which will reduce your threat by 20%. It's yet to be seen if that's worth it, and if it's not, then you can put these five points into anywhere you want. After that go into the Affliction tree and put five points into Improved Corruption for instant cast Corruption, five points into Improved Drain Life to get more healing when you Drain Life and the last point into Suppression.

Both the DPS/threat build and the survivability build use different Runes; both are covered below.

• Head — Pandemic or Vengeance
• Bracers — Immolation Aura or Felguard
• Gloves — Metamorphosis
• Pants — Demonic Pact or Demonic Grace
• Chest — Master Channeler
• Belt — Grimoire of Synergy
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge or Dance of the Wicked

While there are many options of Runes this phase, the ones above do the most damage, thus causing the most threat. Demonic Pact is the best option for for DPS/threat for your leg slot, as this buffs not only you, but your entire party by 10% of your Spell Damage. Demonic Grace is the pick for pure survivability.

With the recent nerf to Lake of Fire, you won't be seeing much play with this like you did in Phase 2. Instead the best pick is Master Channeler. This will give you not only great damage, but also strong self healing.

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, however know that Demonic Knowledge is a ton of Spell damage and highly suggested.

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. This was recently buffed and is now the best option. Shadow and Flame is a solid option that falls shortly behind Grimoire of Synergy and makes it so whenever you crit with your Shadow spells, you will get a 10% buff to your Shadow damage for 10 seconds. It also can buff your Fire if you crit with Fire, but you won't be using too many Fire spells.

Both Immolation Aura and Felguard are new Runes introduced in Phase 3. Immolation Aura is an aura that lasts until cancelled. This also reduces all magical damage you take by 10%, which is obviously really nice as a tank. Felguard is only used as the tanky Demonology build in order to take advantage of the Demonic Sacrifice buffs.

Your option between head Runes is up to you. Pandemic and Vengeance were both introduced in Phase 3. Vengeance acts as a defensive cooldown that will increase your maximum HP by 30% for 20 seconds, giving you a powerful defensive cooldown, while Pandemic will allow your DoT's to crit. Vengeance is simply chosen if you feel like you need more safety, while Pandemic will be the default choice for more damage, which will always result in more threat.

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.