Demonology Warlock Battleground Blitz Guide — Midnight Season 1

Demonology deals the least damage out of all PvP Warlock specs, but Demonology can still find a niche in Battleground Blitz due to its crowd control and survivability.

You can choose three of the following PvP talents. Demonology does not have any mandatory PvP talents, so select from the following according to the matchup being played.

Impish Instincts is a crucial talent if you are playing against one or more melee DPS. This talent reduces the cooldown of Demonic Circle: Teleport by 3 seconds when you take direct physical damage. This will make it much easier to kite away from incoming damage when you are the primary target for the enemy team.

Soul Rip reduces damage dealt and healing received by players within 20yards of you when used for 8 seconds. This talent is great for increasing your survivability or used offensively to apply a Healing Reduction effect to multiple players.

Call Fel Lord summons a Fel Lord at a location that will stun anyone that enters its ring. This ability is crucial against melees who try to ignore it. This also increases your survivability if you stand by your Fel Lord. If you pick this up, replace Nether Ward for this PvP talent.

Nether Ward surrounds the caster with a shield that lasts 3 sec, reflecting all harmful spells cast on you. This is a crucial talent to take against all casters. You also want to use this talent versus teams with a Shaman, Death Knight, or Demon Hunter. This is because their kicks are magical and will prevent you from being interrupted while it is active.

In Battleground Blitz, Demonology Warlocks primarily focuses on controlling enemy players while contributing with damage when your cooldowns line up. Demonology Warlocks do not deal a lot of damage, but when Summon Demonic Tyrant and Call Dreadstalkers are up, the burst damage is decent. Thus, focusing on control is more important.

Demonology Warlocks can defend a base as they are quite sturdy with a lot of crowd control and are able to delay the enemy from capturing until reinforcements arrive. Avoiding big team fights and opting for smaller-scale skirmishes are preferred for a Demonology Warlock.

Demonology Warlocks should avoid team fights entirely and can play offensively with your team's flag carrier or try to steal enemy bases. Demonology is good at controlling and, therefore, assisting your flag carrier to get away or setting up an Axe Toss into Fear combo in order to capture a base.

In Battleground Blitz, there is no dampening effect. As such, burst damage and crowd control or running healers out of mana through damage are the ways to score kills and pull ahead. Demonology mainly focuses on CC, but can still contribute with Summon Demonic Tyrant and Call Dreadstalkers when they are off cooldown. Shadowfury and Howl of Terror are good to use on cooldown, and Fear should be used often, especially on enemy healers.

When playing a defensive role such as on Temple of Kotmogu, applying Curse of Exhaustion to players to slow them is recommended, or Fear to assist your orb carrier in kiting.

Demonology mainly offers utility in the form of Demonic Gateway and Healthstone. Casting a Create Soulwell often is a good idea, as well as positioning your Demonic Gateway preferably between Z-axises to give your team a positional advantage. For example, between the river in Twin Peaks or from the lower to upper level in the flag room.

Demonology Warlock is the strongest Warlock spec defensively and can survive better. Still, it is important to position at range in order to avoid being swapped to as easily. Remeber to place a Demonic Circle in the far back as well as insurance to drag enemy melee deeper if you are chased. Additionally, Warlocks can now use 3 charges of Healthstone in combat, and this should be empowered by Soulburn.

Demonology Warlocks have some of the worst mobility in the game and, therefore, should avoid being a flag carrier. Instead, protecting the flag carrier or participating in team fights is a much better alternative. While protecting your team's flag carrier, spamming Curse of Exhaustion on every enemy helps to peel them and allows you to stay ahead as you will likely not be targeted. However, if your flag carrier is too far, Demonology Warlocks are not a bad choice to pick up the flag until it can be passed off.

At the start of a Capture the Flag map, you should avoid following your team into the fight; instead, either protecting the flag in your own base or following your flag carrier towards the enemy base. When your flag carrier brings the flag through mid, protect them by peeling with Fear and slowing enemies with Curse of Exhaustion.

Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your team which base you should focus on first.

As a Demonology Warlock, you can defend a base if your team does not, but this is better suited to a Hunter or Rogue, for example. If you already have a defender, you can go by yourself or with another teammate to try and steal a base by setting up a CC chain with Axe Toss into Fear. CCing the enemy in order to capture a base will take much less time than killing them usually, so there are fewer chances for reinforcements to arrive.

As with resource maps, avoid playing the team fight and instead either defend a base or push with a teammate to steal a base. Remember that CCing the enemy in order to capture the base is much faster than killing them, and therefore, reinforcements often will not be able to make it in time.

Ranged DPS specializations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu. This is thanks to their ability to set up port upstairs and jump into the centre to gain more points.

Along with using Demonic Circle to get out of danger, Demonology is a good choice as a naturally tanky orb carrier. This ensures your team can capture a lot of points. Additionally, Demonology can cast their pets, then hide and let their pets and teammates kill enemies chasing them, rather than exposing themselves to danger.

If your team does not wish you to pick up an orb, treat this as any other battleground and protect your orb carriers with CC such as Axe Tossand Fear, or go after the enemy orb carriers and control their healers.

The stat priority for Demonology Warlock in PvP is as follows:

1. Intellect
2. Versatility
3. Haste
4. Mastery
5. Critical Strike