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Demonology Warlock in Shadowlands - DPS Strengths, Best Covenants, Soulbinds and Legendaries
Shadowlands
Publié
22/11/2020 à 00:33
par
Squishei
Shadowlands launches on November 23rd / 24th and all classes will be getting new toys to play with -- from Covenant abilities, to Conduits and returning Legendary effects! This article, written by Not, will provide details on the current state of Demonology Warlock in Shadowlands, to help you to prepare for the upcoming expansion!
Introduction
There has been a handful of changes done to Demonology since the first
State of Demonology
article. With Beta coming to a close sooner than later here is where things have started to shake out.
About the Author
I am known around these parts of the internet by my in-game name of
Not
. I have been playing a Warlock since the start of Cataclysm and have not really deviated from it since. I was the founder/creator of
Lock One Stop Shop
, a website that was made for Warlocks, by Warlocks.
You can catch me online on
Twitter
,
Twitch
, and
Youtube
.
Check out all our Shadowlands Launch Opinion articles by our Class Writers and members of the community! Click on any of the colored specs below to see what articles we've released so far.
These guides were meant to give you a preview of what's to come in the expansion, but don't worry -- our full Shadowlands Class Guides will be updated soon!
Blood Death Knight
Arcane Mage
Assassination Rogue
Frost Death Knight
Fire Mage
Outlaw Rogue
Unholy Death Knight
Frost Mage
Subtlety Rogue
Havoc Demon Hunter
Brewmaster Monk
Elemental Shaman
Vengeance Demon Hunter
Mistweaver Monk
Enhancement Shaman
Balance Druid
Windwalker Monk
Restoration Shaman
Feral Druid
Holy Paladin
Affliction Warlock
Guardian Druid
Protection Paladin
Demonology Warlock
Restoration Druid
Retribution Paladin
Destruction Warlock
Beast Mastery Hunter
Discipline Priest
Arms Warrior
Marksmanship Hunter
Holy Priest
Fury Warrior
Survival Hunter
Shadow Priest
Protection Warrior
What has Changed for Demonology Warlock?
I'm only going to touch base on Demonology specific changes and not general Warlock changes (except for pet summoning) since the previous State of article.
Lancer de hache
now interrupts and stuns all targets, if possible. Increased travel time.
Portail de Néant
demons buffed further by 15% attack power and any melee based demons now charge to the enemy.
Trait de l'ombre
damage increased by 13%.
Appel des traqueffrois
attack power has been increased by 20%. Dreadstalker’s Dreadbite and Dreadlash damage has been reduced by 10%.
Trait de décimation
bonus damage for
Trait démoniaque
reduced to 100-160%, down from 200-400%.
Pourriture d’âme
had its health cost removed.
Dîme spoliatrice
damage reduced by 20%.
Catastrophe imminente
damage reduced by 20%.
Wild Imps duration
out of combat
increased to 40s.
Noyau ardent de l’araignée torve
changed to stack 4 times and have a 15s duration.
There was not too much additional balancing done for Demonology, which is nice on one hand, but also shows that there is
likely
(not guaranteed) going to be a buff to our 'hidden' damage aura for all spells. Demonology is definitely the weakest overall spec of the three but is not unplayable, much like most of BfA.
Talent builds for for Demonology Warlock
There are actually a multitude of specs you can play for Demonology based on what legendary and/or conduits you are using, which is nice to have the variety.
There is no particular conduit or legendary you
have
to play, but
Noyau ardent de l’araignée torve
is recommended. If you are playing as a Necrolord you would take
Siphon de puissance
in the level 25 row.
No particular legendary/conduit is required for this build, you can play any option and do fine.
Playing this build requires you to use
Traqueurs carnivores
for maximum value of
Stratagème du dresseur de molosses
.
There are a number of legendaries you can use in this build including;
Sceau d’invocation supérieure de Wilfred
,
Relique de synergie démoniaque
,
Forces du cauchemar cornu
and
Potentiel implosif
.
No particular legendary/conduit is required for this build, you can play any option and do fine.
Leveling perks
Level 52:
Peur
- reduces spell pushback, mostly only useful in PvP.
Level 54:
Appel des traqueffrois
- gives your Dreadstalkers a secondary 'charge' effect when swapping targets.
Level 56:
Éclair de feu gangrené
- increases the number of casts from 5 to 6.
Level 58:
Tyran lié
- generates 5 soul shards when Demonic Tyrant is cast.
Covenant abilities for Demonology Warlock
Kyrian
Dîme spoliatrice
: A consistent source of damage with an interesting secondary effect that either refreshes its cooldown (if expired when mob is still alive) or gives you 5 shards (on mob death). Generally speaking, this is just a maintenance DoT with a little bit of implication for AoE since you fully refresh your shard pool.
Invocation de régisseur
: Fairly underwhelming given you already have a Healthstone all the time but you do gain another health potion, which situationally, can be OK.
Dîme d’âme
: Increases the damage of your demons by 10% for 10s if the target dies with Scouring Tithe still on it. Our demons are still a fairly significant source of damage overall but compared to other conduits, this is not a very appealing option.
Necrolord
Trait de décimation
: An execute type ability that will likely be the go-to for raiding given the power of execute in general. The change to amplifying Demonbolt enables you to stack multiple sources of damage amplification for your Demonbolt, which is quite strong single target.
Chair recomposée
: While not all too exciting to have yet another absorb (on a 4s channel) when you're already basking in damage reduction and shields is mostly underwhelming but could prove useful if you're able to get the extra absorb from channeling near a corpse. There are various Soulbind traits that modify this ability as well:
Solvant volatil
(Marileth) gives you various buffs based on type of monster you channel Fleshcraft next to.
Forme ultime
(Marileth) provides crowd control immunity while you're channeling Fleshcraft.
Montrer l’exemple
(Emeni) increases your main stat whenever you channel Fleshcraft.
Chair ambulante d’Éméni
(Emeni) allows you to move while channeling Fleshcraft, probably the most powerful of any of these buffs.
Peau sublime d’Éméni
(Emeni) increases your max health by 5% for 30s after Fleshcraft is used.
Recomposition des chairs ingénieuse
(Heirmir) reduces Fleshcraft cooldown after defeating an enemy.
Décimation fatale
: The overall damage of Decimating Bolt is not too significant, this conduit is not overly useful.
Night Fae
Pourriture d’âme
: Could be interesting to give yourself a different form of AoE outside of Implosion, however you likely will not ever have a use for the secondary ability with Drain Life outside of questing.
Forme d’âme
: Not too useful given will almost always have Burning Rush,
Porte des démons
and Demonic Circle available to you. Having a pseudo blink could be nice however.
Mangeur d’âmes
: While an OK buff to Soul Rot, it's very unlikely you would ever use this conduit as its overall power is quite low compared to others.
Venthyr
Catastrophe imminente
: This ability is interesting because of it providing you with a (smart casted; Tongues for casters, Weakness for melee) curse between Weakness or Tongues while doing decent damage in both travel and explosion.
Porte des ombres
: Another teleport with a short cast time could prove very useful in M+ to enable skips or to be used to avoid raid mechanics however suffers from the same thing as
Forme d’âme
where it shares with a lot the Warlock mobility toolkit.
Origine catastrophique
: Buffing the weakest Covenant ability by 50% is unfortunately not enough for this conduit to matter.
Picking a Covenant
Overall I think all the covenant abilities have their place for Demonology outside of possibly Venthyr. The best
overall
covenant for Warlock in general is Night Fae
only
primarily due to the fact that you will get 2 early potency conduits and a very strong final trait with Dreamweaver. However, the damage amplification to Demonbolt from Necrolord is not insignificant, especially for raiding however the Soulbinds available to you are not nearly as strong as Night Fae.
Best Soulbinds for Demonology Warlock
Kyrian
The best soulbind for Kyrian Warlocks will be Pelagos. The best trait route to follow is as below:
The strength of Pelagos is unfortunately something you cannot ignore. With
Méditation de combat
and
Renoncement au passé
giving strong bonuses to secondary stats.
Méditation de combat
provides an easyily maintained flat mastery buff by picking up the spawned orbs while
Renoncement au passé
gives you 3% versatility that is fairly easy to maintain given the variety of spells Demonology casts.
The other two Soulbind options for Kyrian are simply not as strong due to the tradeoff of a second powerful trait for your second potency conduit. Kleia offers you
Frappes vaillantes
and
Courage exemplaire
(but you lose a potency conduit) and Mikanikos offers you
Appel à l’action de Bron
and
Marteau de la genèse
(again losing a potency conduit). The secondary damage traits would be quite good options if you didn't have to give up your second potency conduit for it.
Necrolord
There are two options for you to go with if you choose Necrolord, both however will not unlock the second potency conduit until after Mythic Castle Nathria is open. Enemi will become very strong later into gearing when you have more stats to scale. Heirmir will offer you a similar route to your second potency conduit and a solid passive stat bonus.
Night Fae
If you choose to go Night Fae there is only one tree in particular that stands out, predominantly due to the final trait available in the tree along with early (actually the earliest) access to two potency conduits.
The final trait for Dreamweaver,
Champ de fleurs
has the best synergy for Demonology's toolkit giving you 12% haste every minute and has the potential to outscale everything else given how strong haste is for us. You also do get access to a cheap death in the way of
Cocon curatif
.
Niya and Korayn also have some interesting traits but shouldn't overpower Dreamweaver long term.
Demonology Warlock Conduits
Potency Conduits
Conduit
Description
Raid verdict
Mythic+ Verdict
Fruit du sang
While there are some talent builds that revolve around
Trait démoniaque
and gaining access to more
Cœur démoniaque
is nice this conduit is simply low on the totem pole of power compared to others available to us.
Decent DPS gain
Decent DPS gain
Traqueurs carnivores
Pairs very nicely with
Entaille effroyable
and
Stratagème du dresseur de molosses
in AoE situations and is actually a build enabler for Mythic+.
Minor DPS gain
Major DPS gain
Commando gangrené
A strong conduit overall since Felguard tends to be a solid source of our damage output. Should be considered the most well rounded option.
Major DPS gain
Major DPS gain
Âme du tyran
Having further access to increased demon damage even after your
Invocation : tyran démoniaque
expires is strong overall and also provides us with a predictable source of another stack of
Cœur démoniaque
Decent DPS gain
Decent DPS gain
Dîme d’âme
Having the option/ability to further stack damage onto your demons is a very appealing trait, especially if you ensuring you can line
Dîme spoliatrice
alongside with
Invocation : tyran démoniaque
.
Major DPS gain
Moderate DPS gain
Origine catastrophique
Making your curses last longer is not too impactful.
No DPS gain
Décimation fatale
A simple damage amplifier to
Trait de décimation
, could enable the ability to be a reliable source of target swapping at later ranks.
Moderate DPS gain
Moderate DPS gain
Mangeur d’âmes
Increasing the radius of this
Pourriture d’âme
is not great and the damage increase is fairly small compared to other conduits.
Moderate DPS gain
Moderate DPS gain
Finesse Conduits
Conduit
Description
Raid verdict
Mythic+ Verdict
Élan démoniaque
Is not too strong since in most cases using
Cercle démoniaque - Téléportation
will be enough movement.
Mediocre at best
Célérité corrompue
Easily the most useful Finesse conduit available to us since summoning your pet after a wipe/death while
Domination gangrenée
is painful.
Very Useful
Ombre de terreur
Mostly useless for all content outside of soloing.
Not useful
Ruse de Kilrogg
Extremely situational and in most cases will be useless outside of flavour. You aren't going to cast this in combat and out of combat you can simply go to where you want your
Cercle démoniaque
placed.
Not useful
Endurance Conduits
Conduit
Description
Raid verdict
Mythic+ Verdict
Vitalité accrue
Largely only useful for solo content.
Awful
Mildly OK
Pierre de sang diabolique
Largely the most useful Endurance conduit due to healthstones being used often in both situations and having additional healing available to you through Leech is never bad.
Good all rounder
Barrière résolue
Reducing our major source of damage reduction is good but it being locked behind a 30 second cooldown makes it lose some appeal.
Situational
Picking Conduits
With sims not fully completed for Warlock this is more of a determination on how these play moreso than what is definitively best based on the numbers.
For single target you should be aiming to take:
Commando gangrené
is the best overall conduit available for single target.
Fruit du sang
smoothens out the flow of
Cœur démoniaque
generation and gives you more overall charges for movement, when needed.
Âme du tyran
should be interchanged with Borne of Blood for longer burst windows as most times after your Demonic Tyrant has expired you'll be looking at a significant additional uptime of the already extended demons extending your damage window further.
For multi target you should be aiming to take:
Commando gangrené
is still the best overall conduit available for single target.
Fruit du sang
smoothens out the flow of
Cœur démoniaque
generation and gives you more overall charges for movement, when needed, the additional Soul Shard generation it provides is a big boon to your overal Wild Imp count throughout an AoE scenario, leading to more Implosions.
Traqueurs carnivores
should be interchanged with Borne of Blood when playing the Dog build, since additional
Morsure de l’effroi
will provide higher uptime of
Stratagème du dresseur de molosses
.
Demonology Warlock Legendaries
General Warlock Legendary Powers
Legendary
Description
Raid verdict
Mythic+ verdict
Griffe d’Endereth
Provides faster and more healing when using
Drain de vie
.
Never used
Piliers de la Porte des ténèbres
Instant cast
Porte des démons
and allows you two uses before triggering the cooldown, does damage to any enemy you pass through and knocks them away.
Never used
Relique de synergie démoniaque
Damage done by you or by your Felguard has a chance to increase the damage of the other one by 15% for 15 seconds.
Good
Very Good
Sceau d’invocation supérieure de Wilfred
Reduces cooldown of your
Tyran lié
for every soul shard spent.
Good
Very Good
Demonology Warlock Legendary Powers
Legendary
Description
Raid verdict
Mythic+ verdict
Potentiel implosif
Increases haste by 1% per Wild Imp imploded (single target) or by 5% per Wild Imp (3+ targets). There is no cap to how much bonus haste this can provide but does overwrite the buff if a lesser bonus would be applied; ie if you have a 30% haste increase then implode a set of 3 Wild Imps for 15% bonus, the longer duration buff takes over (15% in this example).
Not so great
Very Good
Appel effroyable de l’inquisiteur sinistre
Increases the damage of your next
Appel des traqueffrois
for each Soul Shard spent. A decent legendary as it especially gives you a second mini cooldown after your Demonic Tyrant is over (simply due to the extra shards spent during Tyrant).
Good
Mediocre
Forces du cauchemar cornu
A 15% chance to recast
Main de Gul’dan
. It mirrors the copied spell exactly and even at the 15% chance to proc makes for a good set and forget option.
Good
Very Good
Noyau ardent de l’araignée torve
Increases the damge of your
Trait démoniaque
by up to 32% for 15s.
Excellent
Good
Picking a Legendary
For raiding you are going to be focused on
Noyau ardent de l’araignée torve
or
Relique de synergie démoniaque
.
Noyau ardent de l’araignée torve
gives you a consistent buff to your
Trait démoniaque
and your primary spec for raiding will be mostly revolved around its damage.
Relique de synergie démoniaque
is simply a strong overall legendary that covers your bases for single target and for cleave fights in a balanced fashion.
In Mythic+ however you have a lot of options to choose from that all offer different things to your toolkit.
Forces du cauchemar cornu
offers a no fuss source of damage that retains its power in both single target and AoE,
Potentiel implosif
offers significant bonuses for AoE due to the haste bonus giving you a lot of additional soul shard generation,
Sceau d’invocation supérieure de Wilfred
offers you a near 60s cooldown which pairs nicely with the pace of most dungeons and pulls within the and
Relique de synergie démoniaque
being once again a strong overall option for single target and cleave.
Conclusion
While we may not have seen a lot of major changes to the spec between Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands the changes we did see were impactful and, at least in the case of the interrupt, something we have been begging for since forever. Our toolkit as a Warlock hasn't changed and for the most part neither has our damage profile. We aren't particularly strong in either single target or AoE but provide a consistent source of both, which in the world of RNG is a good thing.
The caveat of playing Demonology for raiding and Mythic+ is that, while you do have a mix of niches, you don't excel at any one in particular. In raids there are very few pure single target, lower movement fights that you can excel in as most encounters have adds split off from the main boss or adds that need to be snap AoE'd. In Mythic+ we fall into the same category in most cases; for lower keys our damage is too rampy and everything dies to the classes that have burst AoE. In higher keys we have the sustain but lack major utility that you would simply rather bring another class to fulfill.
There is a lot to look forward to for Demonology going into Shadowlands especially since it offers Warlocks as a whole some of the more interesting talent and covenant choices.
We do however have to ask the question; is it better to be a jack of all trades or a master of one?
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