Demonology
This is the spec i choose, currently it is the worst warlock spec but that being said that does not mean you cant be successful with it.
Stat priority
Hit 15% > Haste cap (varies) > Crit > Mastery = Haste
425 Haste = 1%
600 Crit = 1%
600 Mastery = 1%
Haste
Their are tons of haste caps to choose from, i recommend choosing one of the following
| With 5% haste buff | Ticks Corruption |
Ticks Doom |
Ticks Shadowflame |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4,717 (16.65%) | +2 | +1 | +1 |
| 9,211 (27.76%) | +3 | +1 | +2 |
| 13,153 (37.50%) | +3 | +2 | +2 |
| 13,737 (38.94%) | +4 | +2 | +2 |
| 14,873 (41.75%) | +4 | +2 | +3 |
| With 5% haste buff & Hero or Legendary Meta |
Ticks Corruption |
Ticks Doom |
Ticks Shadowflame |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8,097 (62.51%) | +6 | +3 | +4 |
| With 5% haste buff & Hero & Legendary Meta |
Ticks Corruption |
Ticks Doom |
Ticks Shadowflame |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9,369 (116.57%) | +11 | +5 | +7 |
View full list of haste caps here
Crit
As everyone knows a crit is double damage. If your spell hit for 100,000 an your crit it hits for 200,000 simple as that, however for a warlock it has added bonuses. First you want as much crit as you can while keeping your haste cap, try your best not to drop below 30% crit once your are able to achieve that, if you have to lose 1-2% to get haste cap its ok don't panic, crit is not a cap, just load as much stats as you can to crit (Recommended by Theclaycomb). The added crit bonus for a demonology warlock is that crit increases the damage done by soulfire which is a 100% crit chance as is, and the best bonus of all are the extra wild imps from doom crits. That's right if your doom crits it will summon an imp to cast 10 firebolts which may not seem like much but it does add up, this is one of the biggest reasons you need lots of crit, as well as a balance of haste to go with it.
Mastery
This use to be an amazing stat for a demonology warlock however with the wild imp procs it has become one of the worst unfortunately, especially since the mastery bonus is straight forward. The more mastery the higher dps you do, mastery increases damage by % while in normal form and a higher % while in metamorphosis, its as simple as that.
Talents
15 - Soul Leeh (Recommended)
30 - Shadowfury (Optional)
45 - Dark Bargain (Recommended)
60 - Burning rush (Optional)
75 - Grimoire of Servace (Required)
90 - Archimonde's Darkness (Required)
Glyphs
Major
Life Tap (Recomended)
Healthstone (Recomended)
Imp Swarm (Required)
Life Tap (Recomended)
Healthstone (Recomended)
Imp Swarm (Required)
Minor
All Optional
All Optional
Professions
Recommended (MUST USE)
Tailoring (Lose constant intellect but gain a huge intellect proc ability, use wisely)
Optional (Good bonuses)
Blacksmithing (2 gems of your choice, consider crit gems)
Engineering (Procs intellect, averages to other professions but is useful for warlock dots)
Average (Its ok if you pick one of these but don't expect them to be amazing)
Jewelcrafting (Intellect gems only)
Enchanting (Bonus intellect to rings)
Alchemy (Bonus intellect with flasks)
Leatherworking (Bonus intellect to bracers)
Not Recommended (Not for raider warlocks)
Skinning (Bonus crit, not enough to make it useful when raiding)
Herbalism (Bonus haste, not enough to make useful and may stress haste caps)
Mining (Bonus stamina, yeah.... your not a deathknight tank don't touch this)
Race
Alliance
Worgen (for the 1% crit bonus)
Horde
Troll (For the Berserking ability procs 20% haste for 10 seconds, 2 min cooldown which averages 1.67% haste but works well for burn phases or getting extra dot ticks, overall currently best warlock race)
Gems & Reforging
Red Socket
Lower Gear
Red Gem - Precise Primordial Ruby (+320 expertise)
Purple Gem - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (+160 expertise +160 hit)
Mid Gear
Orange Gem - Crafty Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 crit)
Orange Gem - Wicked Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 haste, only to hit haste breakpoints)
High Gear
Orange Gem - Potent Vermilion Onyx (+80 int +160 crit)
Orange Gem - Reckless Vermilion Onyx (+80 int +160 haste, only to hit haste caps)
Yellow Socket
Lower Gear
Red Gem - Precise Primordial Ruby (+320 expertise)
Purple Gem - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (+160 expertise +160 hit)
Mid Gear
Orange Gem - Crafty Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 crit)
Orange Gem - Wicked Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 haste, only to hit haste breakpoints)
High Gear
Orange Gem - Potent Vermilion Onyx (+80 int +160 crit)
Orange Gem - Reckless Vermilion Onyx (+80 int +160 haste, only to hit haste caps)
Yellow Socket
Lower Gear & Mid Gear
Orange Gem - Crafty Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 crit)
Orange Gem - Wicked Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 haste, only to hit haste breakpoints)
Green Gem - Lightning Wild Jade (+160 haste +160 hit, only to reach haste breakpoints)
Green Gem - Piercing Wild Jade (+160 crit +160 hit)
High Gear
Yellow Gem - Smooth Sun's Radiance (+320 crit)
Yellow Gem - Quick Sun's Radiance (+320 haste)
Blue Socket
Low Gear
Blue Gem - Rigid River's Heart (+320 hit)
Purple Gem - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (+160 expertise +160 hit)
Mid Gear & High Gear
Green Gem - Piercing Wild Jade (+160 crit +160 hit)
Green Gem - Lightning Wild Jade (+160 haste +160 hit, only to reach haste caps)
Their are some exceptions to these gems that don't happen often but can occur, remember to get your socket bonus regardless the stat its bonus points and you will benefit more from it. Use the Lower Gear recommendations if your hit cap is very hard to reach and remember hit = expertise so when debating between the two stats, get which ever gem is easier or cheaper for you to obtain. Use the Mid Gear recommendations if you can reach your hit cap but can reforge out of hit still, remember 160 points in haste or crit is more beneficial then 80 points in intellect so get the hit or expertise now and keep your set bonus and reforge later. If your hit cap is easy to reach and your having trouble losing hit, try to avoid hit, just go intellect at that point because for every point over 15% hit is wasted, theirs no use for it. In some rare cases including some that i personally have encountered you may find your hit is so high that you cant drop below 15%, or even 16% and all those points are wasted, in these cases you have 2 choices, first do you keep hit on your blue gems for socket bonuses, remember a 60 int bonus vs 160 hit wasted your better off using a straight crit gem and losing the socket bonus unfortunately. Second if it is worth it and you have something like a helmet with a blue socket where the set bonus is 180 intellect but you'll waste 160 hit to get it, well the hit is useless past 15% so if you lost the 160 hit and your still over 15% use a Jagged Wild Jade (+160 crit +120 stamina). Now remember you do not get any damage increase from stamina and their is little to no benefit for a dps to ever put stamina in a gem socket, but in a rare case where every piece of gear has hit on it and most of your gems are blue and you just cant drop below 15% hit no matter what you do, you will have to just suck it up until you get gear that does not have hit on it. This can occur but is rare.
As for Reforging.
Lower Gear
Anything -> Hit
Anything -> Expertise
Mid Gear
Mastery -> Hit
Mastery -> Expertise
Mastery -> Haste (only for caps)
Mastery -> Crit (only if hit cap is reached)
High Gear
Hit -> Crit
Hit -> Haste (only for caps)
Mastery -> Crit
Mastery -> Haste (only for caps)
Crit -> Haste (only for cap IF theirs no mastery or hit to sacrifice instead)
Haste -> Crit (only if your over a haste cap)
For Lower Gear its all about hitting your hit cap, you need hit cap to do good dps, don't worry to much about your crit or haste at this stage. Mid Gear level you should be able to reach hit cap but you may also find that you need a haste cap, in these situations aim for your hit cap first. Now for High Gear i know that it looks a bit sketchy reforging from Crit -> Haste and Haste -> Crit however keep in mind although at higher gear you want crit the most you NEED to hit your haste caps, at this point you should be able to look at your hit cap and have plenty to spare.
If you need help with this or notice your over cap and think you can drop it or you just cant reach your cap but you don't know how i recommend ask mr robot. From here you can put the name and server of your player and let the website do the rest. It will gem, enchant, and reforge for you in 1 click. Remember this is a very useful tool but do not use it 100% of the time because it does ignore the fact that stamina does increase health, although not useful for dps if your far over hit cap it will place hit past 15% at 0 value but it doesn't know that health is better then nothing, it will also priorities movement speed increases to 140 mastery + movement speed increase it sees as more valuable then +175 haste, but this is only true if you require the speed increase (recommended burning rush talent in the talent and glyph section instead), luckily you can lock gems, enchant and reforges and tell ask mr robot that i will be using this weather you like it or not and it will compensate for that.
Orange Gem - Crafty Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 crit)
Orange Gem - Wicked Vermilion Onyx (+160 expertise +160 haste, only to hit haste breakpoints)
Green Gem - Lightning Wild Jade (+160 haste +160 hit, only to reach haste breakpoints)
Green Gem - Piercing Wild Jade (+160 crit +160 hit)
High Gear
Yellow Gem - Smooth Sun's Radiance (+320 crit)
Yellow Gem - Quick Sun's Radiance (+320 haste)
Blue Socket
Low Gear
Blue Gem - Rigid River's Heart (+320 hit)
Purple Gem - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (+160 expertise +160 hit)
Mid Gear & High Gear
Green Gem - Piercing Wild Jade (+160 crit +160 hit)
Green Gem - Lightning Wild Jade (+160 haste +160 hit, only to reach haste caps)
Their are some exceptions to these gems that don't happen often but can occur, remember to get your socket bonus regardless the stat its bonus points and you will benefit more from it. Use the Lower Gear recommendations if your hit cap is very hard to reach and remember hit = expertise so when debating between the two stats, get which ever gem is easier or cheaper for you to obtain. Use the Mid Gear recommendations if you can reach your hit cap but can reforge out of hit still, remember 160 points in haste or crit is more beneficial then 80 points in intellect so get the hit or expertise now and keep your set bonus and reforge later. If your hit cap is easy to reach and your having trouble losing hit, try to avoid hit, just go intellect at that point because for every point over 15% hit is wasted, theirs no use for it. In some rare cases including some that i personally have encountered you may find your hit is so high that you cant drop below 15%, or even 16% and all those points are wasted, in these cases you have 2 choices, first do you keep hit on your blue gems for socket bonuses, remember a 60 int bonus vs 160 hit wasted your better off using a straight crit gem and losing the socket bonus unfortunately. Second if it is worth it and you have something like a helmet with a blue socket where the set bonus is 180 intellect but you'll waste 160 hit to get it, well the hit is useless past 15% so if you lost the 160 hit and your still over 15% use a Jagged Wild Jade (+160 crit +120 stamina). Now remember you do not get any damage increase from stamina and their is little to no benefit for a dps to ever put stamina in a gem socket, but in a rare case where every piece of gear has hit on it and most of your gems are blue and you just cant drop below 15% hit no matter what you do, you will have to just suck it up until you get gear that does not have hit on it. This can occur but is rare.
As for Reforging.
Lower Gear
Anything -> Hit
Anything -> Expertise
Mid Gear
Mastery -> Hit
Mastery -> Expertise
Mastery -> Haste (only for caps)
Mastery -> Crit (only if hit cap is reached)
High Gear
Hit -> Crit
Hit -> Haste (only for caps)
Mastery -> Crit
Mastery -> Haste (only for caps)
Crit -> Haste (only for cap IF theirs no mastery or hit to sacrifice instead)
Haste -> Crit (only if your over a haste cap)
For Lower Gear its all about hitting your hit cap, you need hit cap to do good dps, don't worry to much about your crit or haste at this stage. Mid Gear level you should be able to reach hit cap but you may also find that you need a haste cap, in these situations aim for your hit cap first. Now for High Gear i know that it looks a bit sketchy reforging from Crit -> Haste and Haste -> Crit however keep in mind although at higher gear you want crit the most you NEED to hit your haste caps, at this point you should be able to look at your hit cap and have plenty to spare.
If you need help with this or notice your over cap and think you can drop it or you just cant reach your cap but you don't know how i recommend ask mr robot. From here you can put the name and server of your player and let the website do the rest. It will gem, enchant, and reforge for you in 1 click. Remember this is a very useful tool but do not use it 100% of the time because it does ignore the fact that stamina does increase health, although not useful for dps if your far over hit cap it will place hit past 15% at 0 value but it doesn't know that health is better then nothing, it will also priorities movement speed increases to 140 mastery + movement speed increase it sees as more valuable then +175 haste, but this is only true if you require the speed increase (recommended burning rush talent in the talent and glyph section instead), luckily you can lock gems, enchant and reforges and tell ask mr robot that i will be using this weather you like it or not and it will compensate for that.
Enchanting
This is pretty straight forward, int > crit > haste > mastery unless you need a hit cap, in which you will use int > hit > crit > haste > mastery. Weapon enchant is Jade Spirit and priorities your profession enchants such as tailoring's lightweave enchant over the standard intellect one. If you find you need the movement speed increase on boots then priorities that, if not ignore it.
Rotation
Felguard, and use his felstorm with adds, or if theirs no adds then every 30 seconds or during buffs if you can control them or know they are coming
Doomguard, use him at the end of the fight always, he gains a 20% damage increase at the last 20% health of a boss and will last for 1 min. Do not use him at the start of the fight, yes he will gain 10-15 seconds of awesome buffs from you at the start but he will get those same ones at the last 20% on top of 20% bonus damage, maybe not all at the same time but the 20% damage will make up for them not being stacked and if they are stacked all the better, it will also finish off the boss at the end faster and most bosses get harder near the end. The only exception to this is if hero will be used at the start, use doomguard as an opener before any other spells.
Armor
Your T16 set bonus is very important and it is worth dropping normal warforged gear for a raid finder piece to gain a set bonus. Excluding the set bonus though if you want to get an idea of what armor is better then others you can check out ask mr robot, put your character in and click a piece of armor it will display upgrades and downgrades for you on an easy to understand chart for every armor.
Summary
- Curse of the Elements
- Corruption
- Hand of Gul'dan (2 charges)
- Metamorphsis
- Doom
- Touch of Chaos (one time)
- Deactivate Metamorphsis
- Wild Imps (prefered during haste proc to decrease the cooldown if possible)
- Grimoire: Felguard
- Dark Soul: Knowledge (has no global CD and can be used in a macro with Grimoire: Felguard or Wild Imps
- Hand of Gul'dan (1 charge)
- Soulfire (if Molten Core is up)
- Shadowbolt (Filler)
Now that is the standard rotation and their is a few things to note when doing this rotation
- If a spell haste proc is up including but not limited to meta gem proc, hero, or trinket then refresh doom unless
- The already applied Doom has a larger haste buff or the same haste buff with damage procs
- If you are using Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen Then always refresh Doom during the crit proc
- Refresh corruption using Touch of Cahos, you should only need to cast it directly once per fight unless something prevents you from doing so such as on Garrosh their is a time frame where you cant attack him and your corruption will fall off. Also if corruption is 1 tick from falling off refresh it regardless the buffs, its not worth the global cooldown to reapply if you can avoid it.
- Priorities your dots appropriately, don't waste time, refresh when needed, however if your doom is super buffed with amazing procs don't overwrite it, let it fall off the re apply it unless a similar amount of buffs proc during the final tick
- Don't drain demonic fury just because you have it, you will find yourself using metamorphosis for maybe 3-5 seconds on multiple occasions, use it to refresh dots you don't want to be caught without demonic fury.
- If your demonic fury is full and you have to use it then do so, try not to let it get full and try to make sure your using touch of chaos to refresh corruption and if your corruption is buffed up and your buffs fall off don't refresh it until later, don't be scared to use soulfire in metamorphosis to waste demonic fury, do however try to avoid using soulfire in metamorphosis because it massively drains fury unless you have to.
- Use metamorphosis during buff procs
- Molten core buff will last a long time, some fights you may want to save it, for example, On fights with adds utilize their health pools, enemy's that have low health take increased damage and infinitely proc soulfire, use it there, it is also a good way to burn down adds being as it is stronger then shadowbolt.
- Refresh hand of Gul'dan with about 4 seconds left on the buff, it will take around 3 seconds to make contact and give you 2 stacks of shadowflame dealing increased damage.
- Note that Pandemic allows you to refresh dots with 50% duration remaining. so your doom can last 90 seconds instead of 60, use this wisely to gain more ticks of a stronger dot
- When you have massive buffs/procs (say at the start of the fight with hero up) you may have 14,000 int from 1 trinket, 13,000 from another, 30% haste from hero, 30% haste from meta gem, 30% damage increase from dark soul, etc and they are procced at the same time, do a doom double cast, and just cast it 2 times to get the 90 second durration, its better to use 2 global cooldowns on a doom that will be 3x stronger then normal and tick 2-3 time more then 1 now and 1 later.
- Save the Grimoire: Felguard for adds and aoe phases
- Always use wild imps with buffs, procs, and dark soul knowledge otherwise it will decrease your dps
Demons
Felguard, and use his felstorm with adds, or if theirs no adds then every 30 seconds or during buffs if you can control them or know they are coming
Doomguard, use him at the end of the fight always, he gains a 20% damage increase at the last 20% health of a boss and will last for 1 min. Do not use him at the start of the fight, yes he will gain 10-15 seconds of awesome buffs from you at the start but he will get those same ones at the last 20% on top of 20% bonus damage, maybe not all at the same time but the 20% damage will make up for them not being stacked and if they are stacked all the better, it will also finish off the boss at the end faster and most bosses get harder near the end. The only exception to this is if hero will be used at the start, use doomguard as an opener before any other spells.
Armor
Your T16 set bonus is very important and it is worth dropping normal warforged gear for a raid finder piece to gain a set bonus. Excluding the set bonus though if you want to get an idea of what armor is better then others you can check out ask mr robot, put your character in and click a piece of armor it will display upgrades and downgrades for you on an easy to understand chart for every armor.
Summary
That should sum up demonology warlocks in a nutshell, it is a lot to remember they are one of the most complex classes and spec for any character. Unfortunately if all of the conditions are not met then you can improve however some things can be overlooked such as race and professions only because this stuff changes every expansion and no one wants to relevel a profession from scratch or pay to get a race change because Blizzard decides to change stat priorities. If your dps is still low after reading this then either your gear is low or improper, or your rotation is off, double check both.
Here are a few other helpful links
Here are a few other helpful links
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