I’ve played for a long time but never really participated much in later game PvE. Now, I’m trying to get my feet under me playing my warlock, but I don’t seem able to replicate the results websites are guiding me towards.
ILVL is 354, so obviously I’m not going to be setting any records, but after whaling on a target dummy for twenty minutes practicing hitting the cooldowns on Demo, I wrestled it up from 11K to 13.5K dps (assuming I’m reading the damage meter correctly)
I switched by to my usual Affliction, and with my normal PvE rotation was within a few seconds at 17-18k.
Obviously that’s single target, but I’m trying and failing to imagine how to match Seed of Corruption spam and the occasional free Malefic Rapture. IS that just a failure of imagination, or am I missing something basic? All the guides are telling me that Demo is the way to go and Affliction struggles.
Demo: Talent trees seem okay. I am assuming you are using the Guilotine build for Fortified weeks and Nether Portal for Tyranical weeks.
Which means that the issue is the rotation/execution.
Despite that; I would say, for now, dont get upset with your DPS as your ilvl is very low. Hit around 380-5~ and start doing some decent keys (8-12) and then there can be a better discussion on it.
As it is, maybe you are running a low key like +3-5 and since its not Fortified, pack might be getting killed way too fast by some 390+ ilvl fella. Its a bad idea to take such runs as a comprison with the “benchmark” to decide if you are doing a good DPS or not.
It wasn’t the actual numbers, it was my inability to achieve with Demo anything close to my everyday Affliction output.
My Affliction rotation is:
Single target: Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Haunt, Vile Taint, Soulkeeper (if stationary), Darkglare, Drain Soul, Malefic Rapture when free. I know Vile Taint applies a stack of Agony anyway, but if I start with that and end up having to run around before dropping UI and Haunt, I could miss out on Darkglaring it.
Multi-target: Vile Taint, Seed of Corruption, UA on rando, Haunt on biggest target, SoC, Soulkeeper if stationary, spam SoC until empty, reapply UA as needed.
Demonology - I would really just appreciate advice on what to do. I loved Demo in… was it MoP? Building up energy to turn into a demon? Then they took it all off us, gave it to Demon Hunters, and replaced it with something clunky and weird.
Demo seems terrible as it has a steep learning curve but is honestly not that hard to play.
The general ideea is to use tyrant to extend duration of as many demons as possible, use dogs on cd and implode on 6+ imps if you have at least 2 targets.
Here is a rundown of main abilities usage:
Trash packs:
Dogs on cd except if pack is almost dead.
Implosion on 6+ imps if there are at least 2 targets. Try to cast dogs BEFORE implosion to make sure shadowflame dmg debuff from dogs is active when you implode.
Tyrant on cd except if last pack before boss. Play the talent that reduces its cd. Try to have as many demons out as you can but dont hold it more than 5 sec. At the very least, make sure you have dogs out and 6+ imps when you cast it. Any other demon extended by tyrant is a win.
Bosses: easy concept, save all demons except dogs for tyrant extension.
Other notes: get 20 21% haste asap or spec is almost unplayable. You want haste mastery whenever possible at start.
When learning, cast your cds even if you re not sure you ll have everything on boss. The biggest demo dmg loss is not using your cds. Especially important for tyrant. Dont hold it. Hold other demons for it. Dont hold dogs for anything unless pack is almost dead.
Spam 3shard hand of guldan whenever you can. More hands= tyrant cd up faster= more dmg. Also more imps= more implosions = more damage.
Felstorm, fel explosion and other cds as they become available.
Guillotine’s not very good, the only good part about that route through the tree is Infernal Command IMO, it’s an easy build to learn the basics with though and you should be practising on AOE dummies if you’re using it, the single target with that build is not amazing. If you want to practice single target, you need to learn how to play with Nether Portal, you’ll be using that in raids and dungeons with slightly varying builds depending on tyr/fort etc
Im using the netherportal build in aoe I can amass 50k+ dps and in st im doing roughly 30k dps, just keep spamming those little imps out as fast as possible.
Huge thanks to everyone for their input and suggestions. I’ve tweaked the build to include Nether Portal, stacked Haste, and I’m pretty sure now all the problems are this side of the keyboard.
Demo is definitely a lot more demanding in terms of realising potential damage output, especially when the floor is lava. There’s an entire little arhythmic dance to generate and consume shards effectively while keeping track of other cooldowns. Depending on how that went, I was either doing the least damage or three times as much as anyone else in an encounter.
What I want for (next) Christmas is for there to be a visual indication of shards due to be consumed by the cast in progress. I’m forever miscounting how many shards I have to play with and ending up unable to refresh the dogs on time.
If you don’t mind using addons, there are plenty of weakauras that will do that for you. There is a warlock content creator by the name of Kalamazi who has shared his entire UI for free. The weakaura(s) he uses for his UI have a very clear indicator of how many shards you’ll have left when you start casting spenders.
Visit Kalamazi’s website. There is a link to it in his video. There you will find all the information you require, including talent builds for different scenarios, consumables, enchants, rotations. etc etc