5.4 Demonology Tips and Quirks

[Eljin 0]

Hello fellow Warlocks, after months of Destruction i'm heading towards Demonology for our farm raids. As destro i've managed to get a rank 8 on Malkorok, 22 on IJ and a few other 30+ish ranks so i feels it's time to have fun with Demonology as i feel i play Destruction quite well. (I don't care about the AoE cheese fights).

 

I coined a heroic BBoY last week so i thought why not, as i feel quite confident as a Warlock, but again there is no limits in this class wich is another reason i love Warlocks, you can't simply get good enough and it's quite metal. It's basicly the only class i've played for the last 8,5 years. Although since i arrived quite late in MoP i'm not completly satisified with my knowledge of Demonology, thinking more of the 2/4 piece. Although i'm reading a lot these days as i don't wanna enter a raid and messing stuff up, i'll get RNG do that for me.

Anyways, for the set bonuses. Am i right if i should try to use a few SF's before HoG weaving (Depends on MF stacks, fury, if DS is to be ready soon) just so i can try to force the proc? And then ToC in Meta? (If no big haste procs, trinket procs etc is up of course). Is that worth it singletarget? ToC spam in Meta during heavy AoE is obviously worth it afaik, as free Chaos Weave with the use of cheap ToC is gold.

 

I basicly know what to do when things actually proc, i'm just curious to how i can optimise DPS when building fury, forcing procs to proc, etc.

Here's my armory and the build i'm going, feel free to give any heads up and correct me if i'm mistaken on the above things.

 

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/ragnaros/Eljin/advanced

 

Edit; Sorry if i've messed up the writing abit, i'm Norwegian and i have slept 3 hours a day for 4 days now due insane amounts of work, so don't go mad on me. Thanks in advance.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Eljin

[Zagam 1,982]

Rather than repeat all the other info on Demo we've given, the basics are up in the guide as well as in the thread itself in regards to the fine tuning of min/maxing the spec.

 

You can't try to force the 2pc proc or you'll find yourself in one of two situations - you'll be capped in HoG charges or you'll run out of MC charges - and you do NOT want to hard cast Soul Fire other than your opening one.  "Forcing" procs to proc isn't really a thing.  You can provide RNG with more opportunities for procs, but with Demo, you're working with 20% on Soul Fire for 2pc and 8% on Shadowbolt/Touch of Chaos for 4pc - you couldn't force these if you tried.

 

Demo is a lot like Affliction - you're going to run into RNG.  If your precast Soul Fire pops 2pc, your entire opener is buffed by 20%.  If it doesn't, you won't rank high.  If you don't get a good streak of BBoY procs to keep Doom ticking above 800k, you're not going to rank.  It's VERY similar to Affliction where if you get good RNG, you'll be a god.  If you don't, you fall behind Destruction's smooth, consistent DPS. 

 

The reason Destruction is so easy to play well is you only have a couple of things to manage with procs - Chaos Bolt and Immolate.  Whether it's BBoY, KTT, PBI, Dark Soul, whatever - Destruction has two things to focus on.  Demo has a lot more, same with Affliction.  Demonology's 4pc has a somewhat low uptime - same as Affliction's.  Destruction's is up 33% of the time and is a significant gain to Chaos Bolt when properly utilized.  Because of all this RNG, Demo will either do exceptionally well when played perfectly or it'll suffer RNG pitfalls.  On back to back weeks on 10 man Heroic Malkorok, I've put up 433k and then 525k playing exactly the same with the same gear - the ONLY difference is procs. 

 

There will be a lot of times your DPS will be lower as Demonology which is what creates the stigma of Demo being "bad."  The problem is it's not "bad" - it's just more loose, similar to Affliction, in the RNG department while Destruction is always consistent. 

[Liquidsteel 279]

Your armoury is fine.

 

To underline what Zagam wrote, just remember with Soul Fire that it's always better to use Soul Fire in Meta than in caster. The exception is AoE/Cleave fights where you want to Soul Fire in caster as ToC in Meta to try and proc the free cleave, and in cases where you're capping MC stacks.

 

I like to hover around 7-8 stacks of Molten Core. If I'm over or around that, I'll drop one in between HoG charges, and ofc before hitting 25% you want to dump any remaining charges to avoid wastage. 

 

Add my Btag as we're both on EU if you have any simple questions that come up.

[Eljin 0]

Yeah, there is no need to repeat stuff that is already out here, since i've basicly put of 4 days to go full "nerdmode" with reading logs, forums, testing stuff and enjoying cold beers with some good music. I don't mind RNG at all really although it's quite annoying when it's bad, but when it's good or even decent i find it overweight the bad parts. Hard casting Soul Fire, capping HoG and stuff like that is no problem for me, although it's a good thing to point out. I really put effort in what i do, so we'll see if RNGesus rewards me in the following farm raid.

 

I've gotten tons of whispers while helping some friends in Flex and sheet with people saying "Why are you playing demo, it's so bad" and things in that direction. Wich really makes me sad, it's not that Demonology is bad, it's just that Destruction and good RNG Affliction is "OP". As you said, Zagam - "Demo will either do exceptionally well when played perfectly or it'll suffer RNG pitfalls" wich i am OK with, as the spec is so much more enjoyable for me.

 

I think i've found back to the smooth style of Demonology now, i really do like the high haste build. I also do what Liquidsteel said, hover around 7-8 MF stacks, then cast one SF in between the weaving (Just to stare RNG in the eye). Thank you Liquidsteel for confirming that.

 

So yeah, i got the basics now i just need to polish my playstyle like a pro. Thank you both for confirming my thoughts, i really do appriciate it. And i'll add your Btag Liquidsteel, i do enjoy talking about Warlocks so!

 

/salute

Edited July 22, 2014 by Eljin

[Zagam 1,982]

people saying "Why are you playing demo, it's so bad" and things in that direction.

These people say that because they can't play it; therefore, it must be bad.  It's a deflection of abilities.  If you hear anyone say Demo is bad, just put them in the 'crappy Warlock' subcategory. 

[Kazistrasz 216]

The last bunch of warlocks tried to tell me it was bad... I laughed at them, and looked up their parses and laughed even harder, because their 25m destro parses are lower than my 10m demo parses.

[Elro 47]

I've been relatively lucky in that department, I've had locks whisper me and ask if Demo is good, and I just tell them "Sure, it's great if you learn to play it well." Then they usually get excited and decide to go brush off the cobwebs and run around as demons again, just because they saw a warlock with some heroic raid gear running around with a felguard following him. And of course, I always direct them here when they have questions, because where else could possibly serve them better? :P

[Cardio33 3]

Playing well is one thing but how much is honestly gear?  Do you guys feel that all 3 specs scale evenly?  I'm not trying to hate on players with top parses but if I have my flex PBI + jade spirit + BBOY lined up I might hit 2.5 mil chaos bolts if lucky.  

 

What % of raiders have greater than 582 ilevel?  My feeling is that the majority of raiders are working in the 560-580 range missing a key piece of gear (trinket or weapon)

[Elro 47]

Well, gear certainly impacts your dps, but someone in BiS gear could still do less dps than someone 10 ilvls lower if they can't play as well. I have a 576 ilvl, and the other lock in my 10man is sitting at 577. Her BBoY is a 4/4 upgraded normal version, putting it at 569. I'm still using a Flex BBoY, with 4/4 upgrades getting it to 556. I won't claim to know the exact difference that ilvl gap makes, but I imagine it's enough to make a difference if both are utilized properly. I can still outperform my fellow lock on every fight, in any spec, while she plays Destro full time. Our gear is clearly comparable, but the difference in playstyle gives us a dps gap of 30-100k dps, depending on the pull. 

[Desos 18]

Tried Demo@18,2k haste and 580 ilvl, was fun and rankings are really low hanging fruits, managed to get one on nazgrim and shamans even with KTT and no really priority for soulfire/toc

[Kazistrasz 216]

Playing well is one thing but how much is honestly gear?  Do you guys feel that all 3 specs scale evenly?  I'm not trying to hate on players with top parses but if I have my flex PBI + jade spirit + BBOY lined up I might hit 2.5 mil chaos bolts if lucky.  

 

What % of raiders have greater than 582 ilevel?  My feeling is that the majority of raiders are working in the 560-580 range missing a key piece of gear (trinket or weapon)

 

Look up any number of threads from the many, MANY warlocks we've helped here. They'll all tell you the massive swings in their DPS aren't because they got a few upgrades or one key piece - it's because they started playing the class correctly. They started lining up procs, snapshotting DoTs, maximizing Chaos Bolts, and just playing better in general.

 

As someone who did demo for a while with a flex BBoY before I got my heroic one, there is definitely a difference, but it's not near as big of a difference as you'd think. There's a lot of RNG to it as well, but also just how well you play it. The last week of my flex BBoY, I played really well on Shamans and did more DPS than I do even on a good week as Destro. The next week with my heroic BboY, I didn't do anywhere near as well. I goofed a lot.

 

Someone who really knows how to play the class can really out-DPS people that don't know what they're doing very much and have a solid 10-15 item levels or more. Gear only gets you so much.

 

Also, 582 at this point isn't that much to ask for - if you have one heroic warforged piece, you can have three non-warforged normal pieces and be 582 right now. Also, 582 would have been 574 before 4/4 upgrading was introduced. I was playing in relatively scrubby guilds when I first transferred to Mal'Ganis that all had people in December in the 572-576 range. We're now in the 10th week of 4/4 upgrading, meaning there's been enough time for someone to take all 16 possible slots from 2/4 to 4/4, get five brand new pieces of loot, and also upgrade those to 4/4. Sure, the majority of raiders aren't top-end heroic raiders, but at this point almost of actual raiders at least have Heroic Immerseus down by WoW Progress's front page statistics. More than a quarter are at least 8/14H. For most classes, you can hit 582 with only being 8/14 by how the gear is spread out.

[Cardio33 3]

Look up any number of threads from the many, MANY warlocks we've helped here. They'll all tell you the massive swings in their DPS aren't because they got a few upgrades or one key piece - it's because they started playing the class correctly. They started lining up procs, snapshotting DoTs, maximizing Chaos Bolts, and just playing better in general.

 

As someone who did demo for a while with a flex BBoY before I got my heroic one, there is definitely a difference, but it's not near as big of a difference as you'd think. There's a lot of RNG to it as well, but also just how well you play it. The last week of my flex BBoY, I played really well on Shamans and did more DPS than I do even on a good week as Destro. The next week with my heroic BboY, I didn't do anywhere near as well. I goofed a lot.

 

Someone who really knows how to play the class can really out-DPS people that don't know what they're doing very much and have a solid 10-15 item levels or more. Gear only gets you so much.

 

Also, 582 at this point isn't that much to ask for - if you have one heroic warforged piece, you can have three non-warforged normal pieces and be 582 right now. Also, 582 would have been 574 before 4/4 upgrading was introduced. I was playing in relatively scrubby guilds when I first transferred to Mal'Ganis that all had people in December in the 572-576 range. We're now in the 10th week of 4/4 upgrading, meaning there's been enough time for someone to take all 16 possible slots from 2/4 to 4/4, get five brand new pieces of loot, and also upgrade those to 4/4. Sure, the majority of raiders aren't top-end heroic raiders, but at this point almost of actual raiders at least have Heroic Immerseus down by WoW Progress's front page statistics. More than a quarter are at least 8/14H. For most classes, you can hit 582 with only being 8/14 by how the gear is spread out.

I want to be clear, I'm not using gear as an excuse for poor play.  I know I'm playing poorly lol, I'm trying to improve but I'm also trying to keep an eye on what are realistic goals for my gear set.  There is no question that 95% of people posting in this forum are playing much better than me.

 

With that said, for fun I put in your profile into simcraft (585 ilevel) and my own (571 ilevel).  You come out 90-100k dps ahead of me (350k to 450k) for destro spec.  30% difference for 14 ilevels feels pretty significant.  Not to mention if you had any warforged trinkets.

 

 

 

I believe gearing up and reaching +580 ilevels is much tougher and more RNG that you mentioned.  I started raiding a month ago at 565 ilevel and we've cleared 10/14 heroic 4 times.  I've just recently reached 571 ilevel and I used bonus rolls on Immersus, Dark Shaman, IJ, and others every week.  We also had a balance druid that started raiding at 550 ilevel and he's already mid 570s.  The point is there is a ton of RNG with loot.

[Drafty53 17]

Obviously gear matters Cardio.  Everyone who has raided this expansion has seen first hand of how comical the scaling of gear has been and I don't think anyone would discount how crazy it has been this expac...I mean it seems like every tier this expansion has made it so that doubling (Or even more) the dps of the previous tier is the norm.  So yes, you are right that in some form, gear matters.  What I do have to say is that 571 for someone who has cleared 10/14 heroic 4 times is really really bad rng....or, you are not upgrading your items 4/4...I'm pretty sure that in full normal 4/4 pieces (No WF even) + the legendary cloak, you would be 571...So either you have had no heroic drops or you are neglecting to fully upgrade normal pieces.  I know some people who think the upgrades, especially for pieces they envision replacing soon is worthless, but with the previous mentioned scaling this tier, the uptick from a full gear set 2/4 to 4/4 was easily noticeable in terms of damage output.

 

In the end though, as all of the regulars will report.  Focusing on rotation's, snapshotting properly, and boss mechanics for pre planned movement's, CD useage, etc. will win out the day ten fold to a couple more ilvls of gear.  I wouldn't worry about some "cap" to what your damage could be at certain ilvl's.  Some weeks, procs happen at opportune times and your damage "cap" will seem huge and other weeks, due to poor rng procs, your damage "cap" will seem significantly lower, all while maintaining similar rotations/priorities.  Playing properly and at a high lvl will shrink those two numbers closer together and you should become comfortable knowing you played well during a fight and got the kill because your actual damage #s will vary every pull due to how strong certain procs at certain times can affect overall damage.

Edited July 25, 2014 by Drafty53

[Kazistrasz 216]

Sim craft isn't a fair or accurate comparison. I wouldn't expect someone in 571 to beat me on the meters, but I've seen and raided with warlocks that wouldn't surprise me to see them lose to a 571 with 585 gear.

A lot of peoplexperience that whisper me in game, especially the boomkins I've helped, ask me a similar question. How much should I be doing with my gear? I tell them all the same thing: look at your logs and focus on your play. The numbers will come. If you worry about the gear, you discount the work you put in and end up noticing new gear less when your numbers don't go up.

[Cardio33 3]

Thanks for all of the advice and encouragement fellas.  I didn't mean to derail this thread from Demonology focus.

 

 

Good news is I improved my play by about 50k dps (250k-300k) on heroic Thok last night.  Biggest changes I made in my play was via Zagam's advice on bat aoe rotation and focusing on soul fires when in meta form.

 

I'll keep you guys posted on my progress and will hopefully contribute some ideas in the future for new content.

[Deamux 4]

Many many big and nice posts recently. So much truth in here :O

 

To get back to gear a bit; On farm fights i've been going demo for a few weeks now, and I play pretty poorly still.

But that isn't the issue right now. There is still so much i need to do better, and I can learn it myself. But I had a question about trinkets. I have a heroic KTT, and no BBOY. Do I want to get a flex one over that or?

[Zagam 1,982]

KTT doesn't proc off of pet attacks, so no Multistrike on pet's melee (about 8% of dmg), Wild Imps (another 10-12% of dmg), or Felstorm/Service Felguard.  So you're looking at missing out on 25% of your damage being able to proc Multistrike.  With Multistrike already being RNG reliant to get the full expected percentage, you'd be getting 3/4 of that, max.

 

BBoY is huge, at any item level, for Demo.  However, if you have nothing, KTT should hold until then.

[Kazistrasz 216]

I honestly would (and did for a while) use a flex BBoY over a heroic KTT. As said, pets are about 25-30% of your DPS that can't multistrike, and IIRC the flex BBoY proc is about 7k int stronger at 10 stacks.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I didn't really find much DPS difference between HC KTT and normal BBoY, but I was only around 565 ilvl at the time.

I opted for BBoY because it allowed me to reach 14880 haste, but I wouldn't have used a flex version. KTT isn't THAT bad.

[Nalar 0]

Hi guys,

Just wondering what's better GoSup or GoServ, trying a whole lot of new stuff as demo but this has most probably crept up somewhere b4.

[Desos 18]

@Nalar

 

I would assume that GoServ is better on fights with multiple targets like shamans and protectors and GoSup to be better on single target fights, but the difference should be not that big.

 

Personally, I dislike GoServ a little bit because you got 2 felguards, which are not really clever pets and because Felstorm bugs around if I use it while the second felguard is around. Sometimes I have to cast it 4 times to be on cooldown.

But it´s off the gcd, so GoServ got that goin for it, which is nice.

 

A little bit OT, but there is a beautiful poem on wowhead regarding the cleverness of the felguard.

[Zagam 1,982]

DPS difference between Service and Supremacy is relatively minor.  A factor often forgotten about is if you have a fight that lasts multiples of 2 minutes with 20 hangover seconds such as 2:20, 4:20, 6:20, etc - you will see higher DPS with Service because you'll have a higher uptime with Service.  If you get into the 3:00-4:00, 5:00-6:00, or 7:00-8:00 minute ranges, you'll see Supremacy come out ahead because of a higher uptime with a 20% buffed pet.  Since you have little control over when fights end, there is no "right" answer.  This, of course, is for mostly single target.  For fights with periodic AoE or multiple targets throughout the fight, lining up Dark Soul and Service will come ahead every time.

 

Service's Demonic Fury generation is also relatively minor - it gives 3 Demonic Fury per second which really doesn't amount to much.  You can't stay in Metamorphosis for the entire duration if utilizing Soul Fire properly, so the DF gain is relatively artificial. 

 

Felguards are also programmed to spend their Fel Energy ASAP - meaning they never have enough banked for Felstorm.  Upon telling your Felguard to use Felstorm, he may just...not do it.  You may have to spam it as well because he doesn't listen to the command, save up Fel Energy, then use Felstorm.  With the Wrathguard, you never have that problem as his AI is built to never go below the Fel Energy required for Wrathstorm.  This brings to question why the programming for these two pets is different - perhaps the Felguard is SUPPOSED to be dumber.  I doubt that and attribute it to an oversight.  With this blunder, Supremacy also offers a buff known as quality-of-life which is just easier to handle.

[Deamux 4]

I didn't really find much DPS difference between HC KTT and normal BBoY, but I was only around 565 ilvl at the time.

I opted for BBoY because it allowed me to reach 14880 haste, but I wouldn't have used a flex version. KTT isn't THAT bad.

 

The DPS difference is one, and the haste is two for me. I still play destruction as main spec, but i'd prefer not to regem to get a high haste build for demo. So the haste that BBoY provides is pretty sweet :D

 

Anyway I was just curious and my question was answered. Thank you for that! :D All I want right now is to be able to play demo at the same level as destruction. And Nalar, I dont know about you but I prefer grim of sup because:

 

1. I like the pet better

2. It's a bit easier to use if you aren't too familiar with demo like me. It removes the focus of pressing that button on cooldown. Enabels me to focus on all the other decisions :-)

[Nalar 0]

Thanks for the feedback on GoSup vs GoServ, I have always ran GoServ, likes the 2nd felguard, but yesterday ran 18k haste where I have always ran 14880, it's a lot faster so was wondering which one was better in the end.

Cheers tho.

[Yarv 2]

DPS difference between Service and Supremacy is relatively minor. A factor often forgotten about is if you have a fight that lasts multiples of 2 minutes with 20 hangover seconds such as 2:20, 4:20, 6:20, etc - you will see higher DPS with Service because you'll have a higher uptime with Service. If you get into the 3:00-4:00, 5:00-6:00, or 7:00-8:00 minute ranges, you'll see Supremacy come out ahead because of a higher uptime with a 20% buffed pet. Since you have little control over when fights end, there is no "right" answer. This, of course, is for mostly single target. For fights with periodic AoE or multiple targets throughout the fight, lining up Dark Soul and Service will come ahead every time.

Service's Demonic Fury generation is also relatively minor - it gives 3 Demonic Fury per second which really doesn't amount to much. You can't stay in Metamorphosis for the entire duration if utilizing Soul Fire properly, so the DF gain is relatively artificial.

Felguards are also programmed to spend their Fel Energy ASAP - meaning they never have enough banked for Felstorm. Upon telling your Felguard to use Felstorm, he may just...not do it. You may have to spam it as well because he doesn't listen to the command, save up Fel Energy, then use Felstorm. With the Wrathguard, you never have that problem as his AI is built to never go below the Fel Energy required for Wrathstorm. This brings to question why the programming for these two pets is different - perhaps the Felguard is SUPPOSED to be dumber. I doubt that and attribute it to an oversight. With this blunder, Supremacy also offers a buff known as quality-of-life which is just easier to handle.

I like the idea that the felguard is supposed to be dumber. But he's trying his absolute best :( Edited July 29, 2014 by Yarv