WotLK Classic Demonology Warlock Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

Demonology Warlock's rotation is one of the most fun and engaging rotations in the game. It is easy to play, but also has enough nuances in it to keep you engaged the entire time largely thanks to Decimation, which allow Demonology Warlocks to have an execute ability once the target gets to 35% health. This page will go over the single-target rotation, as well as the AoE and execute rotation.

Your opener as Demonology matters a lot in terms of both damage and supporting with your the opening Demonic Pact. That first Demonic Pact is important because this is typically when the raid uses their big damage abilities and cooldowns. This is also when most guilds Bloodlust, so it is nice to have a big Demonic Pact on the raid during this time.

1. Do not start at max range. You want to be closer, so you have less time running in to Meta.
2. Life Tap for your Glyph — This needs to be up the entire fight. Remember, if you have 4 piece Tier 7 set bonus, do not worry about life tapping to keep that 4pc buff. Just Life Tap throughout the fight as you normally would.
3. Pre-Pot a potion — Potion of Wild Magic if you supply the Demonic Pact buff. You can use a Potion of Speed if you’re personal DPS.

After your opener, your rotation/priority is listed below.

4. Pop Metamorphosis
5. Cast Immolate and keep this on the target at all times.
6. While running into the boss, put up Corruption and Curse of Doom. You always want to Curse of Doom, unless the boss will not last long enough for the Doom to go off. If the boss will not last long enough to Curse of Doom, then use Curse of Agony.
7. Once in range and you see that your trinket has procced, blow all your cooldowns, your Hyperspeed Accelerators if you are Engineering, then Immolation Aura and Shadow Cleave all at once.
8. Spam Shadow Bolt as a filler
9. Use Incinerate on any Molten Core procs you get.
10. Keep up Immolate, Corruption, and Curse of Doom up as much as you can, while not clipping Immolate and Corruption. Clipping means to reapply a DoT before the duration runs out of the first one.

For AoE, if Metamorphosis is off cooldown, I like to cast Demonic Circle: Summon before going in. This just ensures that you can get out once Immolation Aura is done or if you pull threat. Next you will run in with the tank, while putting some Corruption up as you are running into range for a little bit of extra damage. Once in range, pop Metamorphosis, all your cooldowns, your Immolation Aura & Shadow Cleave, then Shadowflame, and start spamming Seed of Corruption. After a couple seeds it is wise to Soulshatter to be safe with your threat, and if you are still having threat issues you can just port back out to get some room and keep spamming seeds.

Make sure to use Shadowflame on cooldown and if you have Engineering, make sure to utilize your Global Thermal Sapper Charge and Saronite Bombs as much as you possibly can. It is very helpful to have a Paladin bubble you whenever you Metamorphosis. There are typically enough Paladins in a raid to afford a Hand of Protection

If you do not have meta up for AoE, then just spam seeds while watching your threat.

Once the target hits 35%, you have entered execute range, which means you cast Soul Fire as your filler. Hopefully you have saved your second Metamorphosis (if the boss was long enough to get a second one).

Before hitting 35%, you should make sure you have the Mana to spam Soul Fire, so you should Life Tap a time or two to ensure you have Mana. This is also to make certain that you do not have to Life Tap during your Metamorphosis, so you do not waste the 20% damage buff from it.

1. Keep Immolate and Corruption on the boss if they will last. They both do good damage and Corruption gives you Molten Core procs which is what you are hoping for during your execute. As for cursing, whenever the Curse of Doom will not make it, then you can Curse of Agony. However, hold off on putting any DoTs up if you notice that you have got a trinket proc. It is better to use those huge procs on Soul Fire. Then after the proc wears off, put the DoTs back up if there is enough time for them to last.
2. Pop all your cooldowns, your second potion and start spamming Soul Fire.
3. A very important thing to keep in mind while in execute is to make sure that you are still keeping up the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff for the 5% crit. During the fight this is not an issue since Demonology and Affliction both cast Shadow Bolt frequently enough to never worry about it. But during execute, Affliction is also in their execute phase and they are Drain Souling for much more execute damage than your Soul Fire. So it is your job to keep track of Improved Shadow Bolt and keep it up amongst spamming Soul Fire.

Warlock do not have many cooldowns outside of trinkets, potions, and of course Metamorphosis. That being said, Metamorphosis is one of the biggest cooldowns in the game and it is important to not waste your Metamorphosis. It is such a big cooldown and it is not wise to use it on a pack of 3 or 4 when you could hold it for an upcoming larger pack. At the same time, make sure you have your meta for the bosses, so make sure that when you do use it, you will not be starting the next boss within the next two minutes.