Demonology Warlock DPS Mythic+ Tips — 12.0.5

Mythic+ has become a large part of the World of Warcraft endgame, but the sheer amount of different variables has left many players feeling overwhelmed. The group composition, weekly affixes, the item level of the group, the keystone level and the experience and comfort level of the group are just several of the factors that will influence how you approach each dungeon. The purpose of this page is to prepare you for the key differences that set Mythic+ apart from the typical World of Warcraft endgame experience, including talents and rotational anomalies that may not be obvious at first glance.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Midnight Mythic+ page below, or check out our Mythic+ Tier List if you're curious about the current Mythic+ Meta!

Demonology Warlocks have the potential to deal extremely high burst AoE damage after a proper setup while also offering multiple short cooldowns that suit well the average dungeon pull cadence. With multiple abilities having some form of cleave effect, Demonology's damage profile is well-suited for dungeons, with the only negative of being limited by specific setup periods, and a slightly longer interrupt that shares a stun. The spec still retains all the class baseline toolkit comprised of Healthstones, Soulstones, Curses, skip-enabling Demonic Gateway, AoE crowd control abilities such as Shadowfury and Howl of Terror.

While both single and multi-target rotations do not differ substantially from the standard priority outlined in Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page there are few points worth noting:

• Starting a new pull without resources means a relatively long period of a time when the damage will be low, due to Shadow Bolt being the only resource generator outside of procs. This makes transitioning between pulls with Soul Shards/Demonic Cores/Wild Imps extremely important to maintaining a higher DPS profile across the dungeon.
• While it may look tempting, it is generally better not to implode at the end of a dungeon pack, trying to spend all the Shards on additional Wild Imps, in order to regenerate 3 shards out of combat and being able to cast a massive Implosion or Tyrant at the next pack.

While damage is the bigger reason to bring a Demonology Warlock, the class itself offers a noticeable amount of crowd control and various supporting abilities:

• Recently reintroduced, the Curses can offer some advantages against specific dangerous enemies: Curse of Tongues can reduce the group's interrupt requirements. At the same time, Curse of Weakness alleviates the incoming damage on the tank from auto attacks. Last but not least, Curse of Exhaustion can slow targets when kiting is required.
• Healthstones have a 1-minute cooldown and heal for 25% of max health, allowing for an emergency heal for each player.
• Soulstones offer a combat resurrection that you can use reactively and preemptively in the case of a death run.
• Demonic Gateway offers the unique ability to skip certain parts of the map, depending on the dungeon in question, avoiding specific pulls.
• Shadowfury helps alleviate pressure on the tank during big pulls as it is a 3-second AoE stun.
• Howl of Terror in its current iteration is especially strong as a short cooldown aoe interrupt when talenting into Oppressive Darkness.
• Fear and Banish are both spammable crowd control abilities that can interrupt a cast in a pinch or temporarily remove a target from combat.

TipsDo Not Underestimate Curses!

With the introduction of Foul Mouth Curses are now easier than ever to utilise in most pulls and situations, and knowing which one to use in what scenario can alleviate pressure on the group.

• Curse of Tongues reduces cast speed and work on any ability that can be interrupted
• Curse of Weakness delays the time between melee attacks and should be used when pulls are mostly comprised of melee mobs
• Curse of Exhaustion is a movement speed slow, helpful for kiting but otherwise more situational

FAQHow To Best Use Blights?

Blights are much stronger version of Curses, at the expense of being tied to a 2 minutes cooldown and lasting only 12 seconds. As such they should be treated as a defensive cooldown for the party, in order to alleviate any incoming damage, if applicable. Each Blight follows the same rules as their correspective Curse:

• Blight of Weakness works on any attacks, reducing the frequency and critical strike chance
• Blight of Tongues works on any cast that can be interrupted

4.

Mythic+ Flexible Talents for Demonology Warlock

Utility / Defensive Talent Swaps Damage Talents Swaps

4.1.

Utility / Defensive Flexible Talents

In regards to AoE stops Shadowfury and Howl of Terror are often interchangeable, and should be evaluated in situations where stun or fear immunity targets are present and if faster cooldowns are more important.

Banish is a much more niche tool to take out an Aberration, Demon or Elemental target from the fight for up to 30 seconds. It does not work on bosses and in boss encounter most of the time major mechanics often present targets immune to the spell.

Demonic Circle and Demonic Gateway can be considered repositioning tools, with the latter generally allowing specific route skips and the former used personally to handle mechanics that would force otherwise prolonged movements.

For Dark Pact supporting talents, Ichor of Devils reduces the Health Loss and is mostly used in situation where staying above a certain Health threshold is preferable, but in general is less applicable than its alternative Frequent Donor which offers a faster cooldown and thus more opportunities to mitigate damage.

Inversely, for Unending Resolve opting for Strength of Will makes the damage mitigation more substantial and is generally preferred as the base cooldown is long enough that a reduction with Dark Accord should be only considered if a specific fight requires double mitigation in less than 3 minutes.

TipsGrimoire Choice

Whilst Grimoire: Imp Lord is the baseline recommendation, it should be noted that it is in fact a flexible choice. Both Grimoires do comparable damage as cooldown so the main distinction is instead which utility spell between Devour Magic or Singe Magic is better suited in a specific dungeon or group composition. If there is need for offensive purge it is worth considering Grimoire: Fel Ravager.

4.2.

DPS Flexible Talents

For Diabolist, Fel Armaments and Empowered Felstorm offer more AoE, and can be swapped for Infernal Rapidity and Imp Gang Boss for better single target instead.

Practiced Rituals should be considered a last flex point, and can be reallocated on alternatives such as Inner Demons for more sustained output (with the potential risk of Wild Imps disrupting skips) or Infernal Rapidity for better 2 targets cleave.

You should be using your Felguard at all times as a Demonology Warlock.

When choosing your trinkets, we recommend simulating yourself on Raidbots using the Patchwerk option for raids and single-target, and Patchwerk with 4-5 targets or Hectic Add Cleave for an educated guess on multi-target performance in Dungeons. Usually, trinkets that proc stats are more versatile and better performers than single-target spell damage procs unless they are overtuned.

You can also get a quick overview of good Mythic+ Trinkets on our Gearing page, specifically the Simulation chart for multi-target scenarios.