Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
The general rotation of demonology revolves around resource management and building/spending shards properly. Summon Demonic Tyrant is a talent that is pretty much always taken, and a large portion of your damage will come from properly using this cooldown. The goal of tyrant setups is to extend all your "big" demons (Dreadstalkers and Vilefiend).
General priority can be summarized as this:
- Don't overcap soul shards
- Don't overcap Demonic Core procs
- Cast Call Dreadstalkers on cooldown
- Implode with 6+ Imps if talented
- Clean Tyrant windows
Opener
Precast Power Siphon (if talented into Inner Demons) around 10-5 seconds before combat.
- 2x Shadowbolt (if less than 30 yards away, only cast 1)
- Call Dreadstalkers
- Hand of Gul’dan,if playing Soul Harvester Hero Talent, ,
- Summon Demonic Tyrant
- Hand of Gul’dan if 3+ shards
- Demonbolt /w demonic core procs with <3 shards
- Shadow bolt with <3 shards
When Tyrant has less than 13 seconds left, try to make sure to have 2+ core procs saved and full shards. Then, repeat the opener from step 2.
General Priority Outside of Tyrant Setups
- Call Dreadstalkers unless you decide to hold a few seconds for a Tyrant setup. Generally, you don't want to hold Call Dreadstalkers for more than 5-10 seconds. The number of seconds it is acceptable to hold depends on fight timings, mechanics, and when you need your next Tyrant to be.
- Power Siphon (if talented), unless you have 3+ core procs.
- Implosion /w 6+ Imps if talented
- Instant Demonbolt if close to Demonic Core cap (4) unless it will shard cap
- Hand of Gul’dan on 3+ Shards
- Instant Demonbolt if 2+ demonic cores available.
- Shadow Bolt
Try to hold on to 1 core proc for movement or refreshing Doom if talented.
Multi Target
The Multi target rotation revolves around Implosion Cycles and spreading Doom with instant Demonbolts if talented. With the change to implosion capping the amount of imps consumed to 6, it simplifies the gameplay and the only goal is to have 6+ imps on every implosion.
Doom Gameplay: With the rework of doom in The War Within (and now in midnight) you want to spread as many doom debuffs as possible. You do this by targeting mobs with your instant demon bolts that do not already have doom active. I highly recommend using a mouseover exists macro for this as it's easier to get back to your “main target” while spreading brands around.
Cooldowns
In most raid encounters and mythic+, you want to use your cooldowns as soon as they are available to not lose out on possible uses.
This is also true for Demonology, but there are cases where you will need to hold cooldowns or sometimes even rush cooldowns to have better cooldown alignment throughout the rest of the fight.
When reaching more advanced levels of demonology gameplay, your thoughts should not be on the current Tyrant setup. Focus should instead be on where the NEXT Tyrant will be. If you get used to the "think of the next cooldown" mentality, your damage will go up on average.
Movement
Demonology has been known for having poor mobility, but that isn't necessarily the case anymore.
We have enough Demonic Core procs if used wisely, and Burning Rush + Demonic Circle being pretty much mandatory class tree talents, we can move around freely outside of cooldowns.
For most cases, as long as you know the fight and can find a 10-15 second window to stand mostly still and set up your cooldowns, no amount of movement should feel awful.
Defensives
Defensive usage as a warlock comes down to pressing Dark Pact BEFORE you take incoming damage. With the cooldown reduction from Frequent Donor or the increased power Ichor of Devils, it is one of the strongest short cooldown defensives in the game.
If that wasn't good enough, you have Fel Armor giving 3% flat damage reduction +10% stagger and Demonic Skin recharging your soul leech at a constant rate. You also have a 3-minute cooldown 40% damage reduction, or 2-minute 15 seconds cooldown 25% damage reduction in Unending Resolve to fall back on.
Soul Harvester Hero talents bring benefits to Dark Pact via Friends in Dark Places, and Diabolist brings benefits to Unending Resolve via Infernal Vitality.
The War Within brought with it the Pact of Gluttony talent, which might be the most powerful defensive tool of them all. It gives you the ability to use multiple healthstones per fight on a 1 minute cooldown.
Pair that with Soulburn and you have 1 minute defensive cooldown that heals you for 65% of max health and increases your max hp by 20% for 12 seconds. This can also be paired with Dark Pact (scales with max and current health) for one of, if not the most powerful 1 minute defensive combos in the game.
Other Notable Mentions:
- 15% flat stamina from Demonic Embrace and Demonic Fortitude
- Soul link for another 10% flat damage reduction
- Lifeblood
- 4% damage reduction for 10 seconds after using Demonic Circle or Gateway via Abyss Walker talent
- Mortal Coil /w the talent Improved Mortal Coil 25% max hp heal on a 45 sec cooldown
- Drain life /w talents heal and soulburn heals for approximately 20-25% of your max hp in approximately 2 seconds.