Just a little coment: We are only learning Vashij now, so this may change in the future, but in Phase 2 our Demonology warlocks (yes, we had 2 last attempt) summon the imp, which allows them to go full dps on the striders.

Of course this depends, but

What I did was felguard on nagas and dpssed the striders down myself, I get 5% more damage from felguard compared to having imp.

Imp will have 0 buffs where felguard would have full buffs. I really think keeping felguard on nagas and just dpssing the striders (like you would with imp) is the best way to go.

Also you can always keep everyone dpssing nagas for some time, like our guild does, when warlock tanking strider has some threat, then just go fullout on strider.

-threat is nice, but still we didn't have problems taking down striders, perhaps if you have dps problems and agro problems with striders, imps would be a good idea. However with our group/raid setup felguard seemed to work great.

As I said, we are just learning the fight, and currently Striders are THE problem we are facing. Maybe once our Strider kiter gets more comfortable and is able to build more threat...
You can summon the imp, have it buffed, dismiss it, and summon the felguard before the fight starts, can't you?

Haven't tried actually, I was assuming that you can't so have to try that.

If striders is your problem:

1) dps them from behind/front so you avoid pulling them to tanks (in the middle I assume).
2) dps something all the time, in practice = dps nagas when strider spawns and after stable agro on kiter = burn strider down fast
3) make sure warlock will remove BoS when tanking, I tanked once or twice with BoS on and was wondering why threat is so low (on leotheras though).

I hope some of these help you.

I always get the imp out of phase shift when it's buff time. Dismissing him, or dying removes all buffs from him though. The only way to keep buffs on him while not having him out is to make him despawn by running out of range.

I was under the impression if "you" die then the imp will retain its buffs when re summoned. Of course if the imp dies then it will lose its buffs the same way you do.

Thank you Nyarlathotep for yet another great post. Since I always had a love for Demonlogy myself I am really happy to see you test it so firmly so I know it's possible for me to play with such a build in future content.

I do have one question though. Why do you pick 5 points in Improved Corruption and 1 in Life Tap instead of putting points in Devastation to get more crit? Is it just preference or do you acutally gain DPS on it?

Well many fights need moving around and I use that moving time very frequently to renew dots. I haven't tested out devastation. It might be higher dps on tank and spank, but then again with very high damage instant corruption is lovely to have as well when fights involve moving.

Those mods are SM, CoS, Imp CoA, Misery, Contagion, Shadowweaving, and Resist. So if all is multiplicative CoA should have an extra 10%, 10% and 5% multiplier. I assumed doom benefited from Shadow Mastery but apparently it doesn't even though it benefits from succubus sac.. Ya I screwed up and put +20% for imp CoA. But since I gave doom an extra 10% as well it shouldn't greatly alter the stats. New calculations.

The numbers turn into

CoA
2.5*(1356+1200)*1.1*1.13*1.1*1.05*1.05*1.1*0.99=10490 dmg

CoD
4200+2000*1.13*1.1*1.05*0.99=8011dmg
SB*0.9
(572+857)*1.1*1.13*1.1*1.05*1.1*0.9*0.95= 1929.5 dmg
Total = 9765

10490 vs 9940.5
5.5% more damage 9.16 more dps... The spreadsheet has CoA 10.53 ahead.

The spreadsheets confirmed my suspicion that decreasing dot downtime and lag greatly helps CoA. Also turning off the amp curse option gave CoD a hit of over 15 dps more than CoA. So doing a raw calc ignoring lag, dottime, amp curse and imp sb should show CoA better at 1000dmg. However all 4 of those factors benefit doom more than CoA. Oh, also amp curse only affects base so basically everytime you use it on doom you get +2100dmg and +678 on an agony. There is two external factors that benefit agony. Agony can be cast on the run, and coa is weaved easier into a rotation than the shadowbolt you are casting instead, and CoD being pushed off due to the debuff cap is pretty disastrous.


Amp doom + 5 agonys + 0.9sb vs Amp agony + 6.5 agony

(4200+2000*1.13*1.1*1.05*0.99)+2100=10111dmg
5 agony = 20980dmg
SB*0.9 = 1929.5 dmg

total 30320.5

4874
6.5 agony 27274

total 32148
favoring amping the doom by 4.85dps.

So at an average gear level(1150dmg ish) the best option considering all factors is probably amp doom, followed by CoAs until the next amp application. Low lag, good dot timing certainly helps CoA take over at a lower number, but you need ALOT of +dmg for it to be not worth using your amp for doom..

CoD's true damage remains a mystery to me. One would think because it's listed at 4200 damage that it will always hit for the same amount. As 0/21/40 I've had Dooms upwards of 13000 damage, whereas when I was 41/0/20 they would vary from 8000-10000 damage.

Ya I have had over 13000 dooms in 0/21/40

Simple Calc shows to get 13000 you would need...
(13000/1.15/1.2/1.13/1.1/1.05-4200)/2 = +1508 shadow.. shouldn't be too hard to get with trinkets/shaman totem and full buffs (somewhere around +966 from gear plus imp fel armor, flask, oil, food, imp spirit, shaman, and trinket looking at your armory your 89 over this so you should be able to CoD for 13317)

The discrepancy you are seeing is probably due to succubus sac affecting doom and shadow mastery not (and amp curse only affecting base, and a high imp sb uptime as destro)

Oh, shadow mastery doesn't affect doom? Wtf? (Is that a bug?) I didn't know that, but I guess it makes sense looking back at the numbers.

A bit off topic, but still warlock and raid related (dont think this deserves a thread of its own just yet).... But does anyone else feel there is a serious lack of warlocks for end game guilds (guilds at Illidan). Seems its the one class that just mostly blows at the game. I don't think we've been able to get a lock to join us since TBC started (we've invited some to guild, they quickly burned out).

Warlocks are definately one of the least played classes right now. Which is ironic considering they are probably one of the "most stackable" classes for raids. Our guild has three warlocks who've rerolled since the TBC release incl. rogue (me), pally and druid, since none of our pre-TBC warlocks still play.

While it's just anectodal, I seem to have the same results regarding Immolate when I'm Affliction (42/0/19). I'm not sure if it's because I have more GCDs to manage on average, but even with /stopcasting I have not seen a DPS increase from Immolate in single-target sustained DPS. It should be, but it never seems to pan out that way.

From 0/21/40 build perspective what is an ideal gear combo to get? x damage, y% crit and 16% hit.

Yeah, I'm aware of what Immolate's DPCT is even as Affliction. I guess that's why I'm confused. Obviously for my case, since I only run about 14-14.5% hit on bosses due to gear Immolate is going to lose a bit there. It still doesn't account for the DPS difference in stand-and-fire situations that I see.

I'll get a couple WWS parses tonight if possible and see if there's something I'm missing, but generally I seem to do about 4% more damage without including Immolate in my rotation.

How pet buffs work is when you die, the pet "dies" as well. Luckily, there are ways around that, you can use /script PetDismiss and the pet will despawn and will keep its buffs.


So to the Demo Locks that feel they need their imp, you can first get the Felguard buffed then PetDismiss, then get the imp buffed and PetDismiss. When either pet is resummoned, it will retain its their buffs (also the buff duration is paused while the pet is in PetDismiss land).



To the people that think CoA > Doom with Affliction, just like for Shadow Destro, less things to worry about means more dps, since it is easier to focus on one task instead of more (which is also why multi-tasking fails for most people), but no spreadsheet can easily model that.

[Warlock] Destro raiding and minimum stats

Or do you mean the best theoretical gear you could have that currently exists in game?

Of course there is a shortage of warlocks. When the expansion came out the only class that wasn't affected by the shift from 40-man raids to 25-man raids were warlocks. You could even argue that we gained raid slots with the expansion.

I just think it's a bit excessive that we haven't been able to find a "average" raiding warlock that actually wants to raid 4-5days/week (3 now that we have BT/Hyjal on farm) since the start of TBC. I myself rerolled from DPS warrior to warlock.

With the Change to T5, i've been looking at changing my DoT Rotation to allow Maximum Shadow Bolt time while corruption is up. Currently i use:

UA -> Corruption -> Immolate -> Siphon Life -> Shadow Bolts

I've been thinking about going:

UA -> Siphon Life -> Immolate -> Corruption -> Shadow Bolts

Has anyone used the bottom rotation? i find that the top one has dots falling off in a nice manner and there arent many situations where you find yourself with a dot having 2 seconds to go and nothing to do as such, so you cast another shadow bolt.

I'm not sure if the bottom Rotation will work as well, anyone have any input/suggest rotations?

(cant really test, as i don't have any t5 atm)