The Pros and Cons to Demonology (7.3)

[@Lucron]

I do almost no PvE whatsoever, but I'm also proud to say that I main a demo lock, so I find it really neat to see how they fare in the PvE field. As for the gear, I definitely feel the struggle for optimization (though the pvp-only aspect has something to do with it, my other classes are just fine in pve with the pvp gear they get thrown at them). Haste is so imperative to have since it lets you summon more pets at a time, which directly leads to an increase of damage sources >and< a bigger Thal'kiel's Consumption. But since you said you might start doing some pvp soon in a reply, a quick pro and con that I've experienced for demo in pvp is: Pros: -You're not totally shut-down when cc'd. You have your pet stun and all of your pets' dps to help you out. -You actually have a LOT of cc you can use. -Your burst is usually heavily underestimated, so when you line up a 2.1M Thal'kiel's with Curse of Fragility on them, it's fun to watch them sit in their corpse and stare for a bit. Con: -Lots of cast-times. I know that mages have lots of cast-times too, but there's a difference in how much it affects them because they can literally blink twice away from their attacker and slow/root them instantly. As a warlock, you have to be premeditative with your fights. If you're not, well, you just gotta tank it. -Slow. This is more of a class-based con and not necessarily a spec-based con, but it's super noticeable when literally >everyone else< has a way to speed themselves up when you're stuck at base speed. -Pet control. If your pet is on assist and you spread your focus a lot, your pet could literally be roughly 60yd away from your target when you *really need* him to stun him right now. I know, I do lengthy comments a lot and I'm sorry, but I just felt like sharing knowledge from another demo lock experience to hopefully help prep yourself up for the pvp experience. Nice video! Keep up the good work!

[@PriestonART]

glad you liked the video, and I agree with these pros/cons for pvp and have experienced them myself.

[@BaronVonPwn]

Lucron you the man . Love your vids.

[@jackmcken]

Your sheer love for this class is making me want to pick it up :)

[@robheller9139]

I recently returned to wow. I am playing my beastmaster till I have void elves unlocked then making a demonolgy lock. Mobility and pets plus soloing content other classes can't handle is what I like.

[@vdogaymer]

I like your guides man, keep it up. They are good for someone who doesn't know anything about the spec as well as any veterans.

[@PriestonART]

thanks :)

[@Naaniisme]

Try the Implosion spec for 3's. You can potentially one shot a healer. The plan is to set up on a dps. So you Doom 3 targets. Cast Shadowbolt to 5 Shards. Hand of Gul'dan, Shadowbolt, Shadowflame, Hand of Gul'dan, (Seduce Healer now) Focus DPS Shadowbolt, Shadowflame, Hand of Gul'dan, (Hard Switch Healer) Curse of Fragility, into a TKC then implosion when annimation for TKC hits. With 12 imps + [Succubus + Fel Lord/Infernal (If your able to get them out)] out TKC should hit for 2-3M and Implosion follows with a 1.5-3M crit. In most cases you will 1 spoke da fuu out of the healer forcing them to blow cd's or hide, or just straight up one shot em. A good guide for this build is on twitch made by a player named Nazumar he mains a Demo lock in the 2200-2400 bracket

[@PriestonART]

sounds fun. i mainly raid and do m+ but i'll try it sometime.

[@johnragain7755]

Love the video's and info, keep up the great work!!!

[@kendro1200]

Your demo videos made me able to actually enjoy playing demo. When Legion started I wanted to like demo so badly, but the more mainstream guides just resulted with such poor dps that it made playing the spec so painful. After listening to your vids and changing my gameplay out I can easily say I love the imp spam playstyle, I love being able to actually put out dps, and I'm having fun with the spec I've wanted to like so badly since Legion launched. Thank you for the videos and trying to spread the word out on how to properly play demo, it is greatly appreciated.

[@PriestonART]

that's pretty much the reason I made them :) glad they helped out :)

[@Alex21JMU]

For the record, I'm subscribing cause Demo guides. Soooo goooood!

[@PriestonART]

awesome! more videos to come soon!

[@semi6544]

This is totally off topic but I wanted to hear opinions. Demonology is described as a pet class. Beastmaster hunter is the only class that is really treated like a pet class though. In a game which is giving more attention to appearance and collections, wouldn't it be awesome if Demonology Warlocks could get demon pens which act like hunter pet stables. We could enslave demons with different appearances and abilities around Azeroth for our collections. It would be cool to have an imp mother in your demon pen. Maybe special demons could give you convenience abilities like float or water walking. I just feel like it is another fun thing to do. Beastmaster hunters get to search for unique pets and even have to collect special items to gain access to some pets. Warlocks could benefit from some additional things to do for fun.

[@PriestonART]

of course, that would be great, though I think it should be handled a bit differently than hunter pets. I would like to see a call back to the original warlock quests for obtaining each pet. for example, a small questline to bind new types / appearances for each demon. (also lets get our old-school Metamorphosis model as an alternate appearance for doomgaurd :P )

[@semi6544]

That sounds good also. I would hope if they have a low number of demon appearances that the enslave demon quests have some difficulty to them, but if we can enslave any number of demons that they are as simple as the hunter pets are to tame. Blizz gave our metamorphosis play style away to the demon hunters and shadow priests. I don't think they will give us that appearance because it would just open wounds that haven't healed yet.

[@rhodey4759]

My biggest regret in legion is not maining my Warlock. I chose warrior and this isn't a slate on them as warriors are a great class too but I've been playing my Warlock in demo spec for about 2 weeks now and it's so much fun but it's just all the catch up with the legionfall and order hall campaign i can't be arsed with. Anyway great video man really enjoyed it 👍

[@denizerel3918]

You r doing well m8, keep going!! ;)

[@TyQueezy]

I love Demo lock, have been playing it since Burning Crusade (since vanilla really). I do a mixture of PvE and PvP, and I'm still learning how to balance the best talents and rotations. It's rather challenging, which is one of the main things I like about it.

[@PriestonART]

indeed, to play the spec correctly requires an understanding and planning on whats ahead, whether or not you will need to move soon, how long the thing you are attacking is going to live, and an intense management of your cooldowns. pulling these things off correctly is really satisfying, but also punishing.

[@PriestonART]

@Elric Melniboné just made a discord server anyone can join if anyone has any questions about demonology or anything Warlock related. Link: discord.gg/Fjh95Nu

[@Madelion]

Interesting video! You have got some good ideas in for sure. But would disagree on one thing. We're really not reliant on Legendarys, the difference between up to around 6 of our Legendaries is so small that you can more or less play with whatever your Tier/Offset pieces allows you to do. As an example I have Recurrent Ritual, Wakener and Harvester right now, and cant use any of them over Prydaz due to the power of tier slots. I agree on your issues with the spec for the most part, and having recently rerolled to Demonology from Holy Priest, i'm having a blast with it! The damage is competitive and reasonably flexible and punishing in the right way where you really feel the heat if you make a mistake. A video I would love to see you make is something adressing the Wow analyzer tool. The demonology algorithm of wow analyzer is actually very good, and helped me personally a lot with improving my performance, going from blue logs to purple, and now almost consistent orange logs by addressing the issues it lists. Also, an idea I had for making Demonology a little more competitive on split fights would be to have Dreadbite (which already buffs Imp damage by 30%) work as a Havoc effect for our imps. This would not have a dramatic effect on regular stacked AoE as we will generally ditch Dreadstalkers altogether over a target threshold, and below that would only serve as a small improvement. Yet on two targets such as Felhounds/Coven it would add an element of micromanagement to essentially double our imp damage and allow us to compete with the other specs/multidotters. What are your thoughts? :)

[@PriestonART]

this video is somewhat out of date as it was released before antoris had opened up. currently on most fights due to the 2 set combined with the new 4 set being so strong most of the time I run with Wilfred's sigil and the doom belt, as it allows me to run all slots with teir.

[@PriestonART]

i do like the idea for dreadbite, however, i would prefer to see it as a replacement for the current "improved dreadstalkers" talent, as the current form could be baseline. also having command over our minions would be ideal

[@kamikuru5398]

Lol they had their 10 seconds of fun you sir have earned a subscriber also I could use some helps for tips and tricks when it comes to macros for demonology :-) I haven't played it since they stripped us of metamorphosis and I've just been playing it for the past month casually

[@bundy1538]

what addon do you use for the little circles above you petbar which displays the duration of summable minions?

[@PriestonART]

that is actually baked into the default ui but is displayed under your player frame, I am using an addon called "Move anything" in order to put it above my action bar. if you use Elvui or other similar ui replacements this ui element is called the "Class totem frame"

[@rowdyrager-9403]

Where can I get a weakaura or addon that ONLY tracks number of demons up?

[@facebreakr]

i thought snapshotting was removed? could be wrong. great vid.

[@PriestonART]

so its not the exact same sort of snapshot that we had in the past. as in it will only take your current Hase value. The reason for this is because of the way the spell is coded, as the time to its 1 tick of dmg is = to its duration. the "duration" is reduced by haste when cast, so with a haste buff you can snapshot this.

[@zorwi9471]

Well nice guide , but I can't handle it with doom , how much damage I would lose if I use Hand of doom ?

[@PriestonART]

for single target, you will lose about 20% of your soul shard generation and because of that a decent chunk of your dmg, however, hand of doom is extremely powerful on fights where mobs are stacked and can last for at least one tick of doom. if you are still learning doom, just keep in mind that in essence it works just like any other DoT in the game,

[@ricardomolina905]

SUBBED. thanks for the help man!

[@draekxis9055]

What is your helm ? i see the "visage of the black harvest" but it's purple and yours is green

[@PriestonART]

its from the mists of pandaria challenge mode dungeons, which is no longer obtainable

[@Gonicksomestuff]

Hey preston i'm 910 ilevel but i'm only doing about 600k dps on the 112 felguard in the order hall. Is this normal? P.S I'm a destro main but want to learn to play demo to make it my new main.

[@PriestonART]

you should be pulling a bit more than that at 910, however, your stats are extremely important to demonology your haste may be really low. you need to have at least 30% haste (no soft cap btw ) for demonology, or it may fall on its face. if you haven't yet you can check out my single target guide to demo.

[@Gonicksomestuff]

I've watched about 11 of your videos at this point because they are very good quality, and ofc subbed after like 2 of them, this channel is going places. Could I have your Bnet so I could add you and may be we could diagnose my sitatuation? :)

[@Gonicksomestuff]

I got 27% haste and now at 929 I can pull like 1.2M at start of fight but after like 5 mins im sitting at 850k.

[@semi6544]

When I initially capped my dps on target dummies, I realized that I was hitting demonic empowerment too much. Sometimes you can get a dreadstalker and imp and use one demonic empowerment. My issue was I was using demonic empowerment every time I summoned minions. I learned to use it more efficiently and improved my dps. The second thing that improved my dps was that I thought 10-11 demons was an awesome consumption but after testing and using demonic empowerment more efficiently, I realized i could get consumptions around 14 demons. I am just a casual player; so I imagine better players can get even better consumptions also my haste is around 41%

[@PriestonART]

41% haste is really good, and yeah using consumption at 10+ demons is good, but more is always great, in the current single target build you shouldn't have to worry too much about your empowerment, as you will be using it as your filler / shard gen. it should always go Demonic empowerment -> instant cast shadowbolt. doing this as your rotational filler will naturally keep your minions buffed and you can focus on summoning more.

[@alejandrocantu7512]

whats the name of your transmog

[@PriestonART]

its a mix of different sets

[@chii2924]

How did you get those swords for your Wrathguard?

[@PriestonART]

they are from mythic HFC

[@chii2924]

No I meant how do you get him to have the non default weapons? Mine just has the ugly axes he came with.

[@PriestonART]

glyph of wrathgaurd allows you to change the appearance of your pet's wep based on whats in your "backpack"

[@PriestonART]

sorry, its glyph of "felgaurd" and glyph of wrathgaurd

[@chii2924]

So both the glyphs at the same time?

[@polskaelite7]

Any pvp videos?

[@PriestonART]

not yet i mostly do pve, raids and mythic +. but i might start doing some pvp soon.

[@polskaelite7]

awesome! keep up the great work 👍

[@leobreitholtz5789]

Gj mate :)