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 can really choose between any of the three specs and be fine, however it's speculated that Affliction will do the most dmg thanks to the buff to Shadowflame and Shadow Cleave. 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, Rain of Fire with the new Lake of Fire changes and then spam Hellfire and Shadow Cleave (which now hits up to ten targets) to AoE the mobs down.

On single target you simply 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.

Your first five points go into Improved Corruption to make your Corruption instant cast instead of having to deal with the long cast time.

Your next points can go into Suppression to help get some Hit on your Affliction spells. This isn't as important as it is in raid, since you don't need as much hit, but it's still worth putting a few points into this in order to progress further down the Affliction tree. This is not super important as we have runes we can put in our rings that give us hit with Shadow Specialization and Fire Specialization, so you can put some points into Improved Drain Soul if you'd like.

Your next five points go into Improved Drain Life to help you get more healing from your Drain Life. This talent synergizes well with one of your runes that you can choose to take called Master Channeler, which makes your Drain Life a DoT, rather than you having to channel it.

Your next few points go into Improved Curse of Agony, which buffs your main Curse, while Amplify Curse makes then next Curse of Agony you do deal 50% more damage. After that you can pickup Grim Reach for some extra range on your Affliction spells and then two into Nightfall to make it so all casts of Corruption and Drain Life have a chance to proc and give you an instant cast Shadow Bolt. This talent is nice because you will almost always have Corruption and Drain Life up due to Master Channeler.

After that, get Siphon Life, which is a DoT that heals you for the damage done. The point in Curse of Exhaustion is a filler talent, but can be helpful when trying to kite or escape mobs and helpful if you're leveling in the open world on a PvP server.

After that, put five points into Shadow Mastery as this will buff all your Shadow damage by 10%. Then your remaining points will go into the Demonology and Destruction tree. Demonic Embrace gives you more Stamina, then down the Destruction tree for Improved Shadow Bolt to give you 20% more shadow damage if your Shadow Flame crits upon applying it. Bane will reduce the cast time of your Shadow Bolt and more importantly your Shadow Flame, which was reworked and is now a powerful DoT that is effected by any talent that buffs Immolate.

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

• Head — Pandemic
• Bracers — Immolation Aura
• Gloves — Metamorphosis
• Pants — Demonic Pact
• Chest — Lake of Fire or Master Channeler
• Belt — Shadow and Flame
• Boot — Demonic Knowledge or Dance of the Wicked
• Cloak — Infernal Armor or Soul Siphon
• Ring 1 — Shadow Specialization
• Ring 2 — Fire Specialization

While there are many options of Runes this phase, the ones above do the most damage, thus causing the most threat. Demonic Pact is nice because it gives you and your party 10% spell power.

For your chest rune you can choose between Lake of Fire or Master Channeler. Lake of Fire is an insane amount of AoE damage after its new rework. Now Rain of Fire is no longer channeled and just placed on the ground, allowing you to Rain of Fire and Hellfire at the same time. Master Channeler is nice if you don't feel safe enough with your health as this will give you a big chunk of damage, but also a ton of extra healing.

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

You've got a few options for boot runes in Phase 4, which all of them being pretty good to use. Shadowflame is an amazing rune, however it now it's a cast time and casting while tanking feels bad as you can't dodge or anything when you're casting. Demonic Knowledge was recently nerfed from 10% damage to 3% damage, making it not as strong. Mark of Chaos is another new rune added in Phase 4 that puts up all of your utility curses whenever you Curse of Agony or Curse of Doom, which is nicer in a raid setting, but in a dungeon might not be too helpul since it's all about mass pulling and AoE down the mobs. Dance of the Wicked is the prefered rune if you don't want to take the extra damage from Demonic Knowledge. This will simply give you and your demon dodge equal to your spell crit chance each time you crit, as well as gives you 2% mana back.

Shadow and Flame is great Rune for Affliction as this buffs your damage by 10% whenever you crit, which thanks to the Pandemic rune, your DoT's can crit, making you have high uptime on this buff. Invocation is a great rune for leveling as well, since this allows you to refresh your DoT to do instant damage.

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%. The other two rune options in this slot, Incinerate and Summon Felguard aren't worth it nearly as much, as Incinerate is a cast time and we use Summon Imp.

Pandemic is a phenomenal Rune that allows all of your DoT's to crit.

The cloak rune is very lackluster when it comes to tanking. Decimation is a really good execute spell, but it must be casted. Soul Siphon is another brand new rune that is very strong as well and should 100% be used if you choose to use the Master Channeler rune, which makes Drain Life rune a DoT, rather than a channel, so you get to keep it up full time. When paired with Soul Siphon, your Drain Life does even more dmg and ticks faster. Infernal Armor is the third new rune and can be really helpful if you're fighting against enemies that use magic, since this reduces all magic damage by a percentatge equal to your physical damage reduction from armor. This lasts 10 seconds and is on a one minute cooldown.

Ring runes were added in Phase 4 and the only two you need to worry about once you find them are Shadow Specialization and Fire Specialization. These ring runes give you 6% Hit to each school of magic.

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.