I been playing demo for many years and this just feels like the worst time to play demo in PvP low damage high ramp up time no burst compared to other classes and specs people just rush demo in area with 0 fear because Demo warlock brings nothing to the table but CC while other classes have more cc more damage more everything warlock is a JOKE!
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It’s really really bad. It can live a while with the right comps, but the damage is god awful. And if you play with people who do laps around the arena rather than playing around LoS and your gate, your pets will never connect. It’s just god awful this season, anyone saying otherwise is lying to you and cherry picking good clips. Against melee/ranged/X it’s garbage and I think you’re pretty much better off playing Destruction or Affliction in any other scenario. Good players just LoS Tyrant and GG. Howl of Terror spec is interesting but you’re too squishy as Diabolist.
Demo is actually good with the right team and the right mindset, and both sticking on kill target, but this doesnt happen in Shuffles a lot of the time. That’s not blaming my team, I could always play better OFC, but Demo Lock especially requires a team that plays around you unfortunately. Felt good last season IMO but this season the damage isn’t there and even when it is, it’s not any more than other specs. Priests can run in and fear your entire army for example and there are so many stops/easy ways to line Demo burst and its damage between CDs is absolutely pitiful.
I’m not sure if they had it out for us this patch, but all the PvP content creators will tell you Demo is so unstoppable lol. Supatease seems to be the only one who kept it real and put us on B tier which is where it belongs. Not awful, just not good really. It has its moments.
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man i hate being a contrarian but my damage is better than my aff or destro, granted aff has a better burst and same as destro, my ramp isnt too bad, i also have better consistent dmg during fights because my summons stay up and i rely on FG for most my dmg instead of other things, ik everyone builds diff but ive relied more on my felguard this season and its feelin pretty good, my singletarget last season was around 1.8-2mil and this season its about 2.3-2.4mil and goes lil higher during rng burst(still havent got 2set yet) at times but stable at 2.4, in the arenas (granted im not high rated) the ones i have played i can maintain 1st or 2nd in dmg pretty well, id love a dps boost tho for sure but i dont feel too awful or anything, i can still give most specs a run for their money in wpvp and duels
Same.
I’ve been having a better experience with Demo than Affliction. Maybe the damage is a little weaker in team fights but 1v1 or smaller fights it feels so much more impactful and you feel way tougher.
There’s also sooo many dispels in the game right now it makes it frustrating in BG Blitz. And you can’t even apply your DoTs sometimes, like DK AMS.
I went from being top damage pretty much every BG last patch to struggling to be in top 5 on Affliction.
Although I did mess up by buying mastery gear for some reason instead of Haste. Surely it isn’t screwing me to that level though.
Demo is in its strongest iteration in months and shreds.
There’s just a skill-cap issue that lock and shadow priest players have to deal with - staying calm and pumping damage under heavy melee pressure. Locks are not mongo DPS classes like 80% of the others. You need to time your cooldowns, watch positioning and track kicks and CDs.
Positioning is half the fight. Remember where your port is and always reposition it. Always be in the mindset that your healer won’t have your port position in mind, it’ll go well in the long run.
Also not getting frustrated and trying to go in for offensive ccs. I’ve made some bad calls by trying to go for offensive ccs very risky. Playing defensively is the better battle…
Especially pulling melee away from their healers if they are not very exp.
Grats btw on rating, you been like top demo since beginning i noticed
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Urik is right
A lot of dps and healers learn to play better with a lock as rating increases. My W/L seems to increase after 2k mmr in solo modes simply due to this. Demo historically has been underrepresented in lower brackets (since the class can be clunky to play poor dps/healer support) and actually OVER represented in higher brackets. The reason they’re always up high on the tier lists of good players is that good demo locks are incredibly oppressive and cascading to go up against. I can’t tell that much difference from a 1900 vs 2400 warrior but you will see a noticeable difference with most wizard classes. It’s night and day and I encourage everyone to keep at it.
Our dps is generally the same as season 2, except our spammable shadow bolts are 1.2-1.4 million non-crit and infernal bolts can be 4-5 million when it procs. I hit harder with shadow bolts than my shadow priests void blasts. I disagree about it being easily choreographed since it’s a random proc with shivarra pet. It’s also fire school and the proc lasts 20 seconds - if they kick it you’re free to cast other spells and if they don’t they need to eat a 5 million damage bolt.
All I know is in pvp games every runs right past everybody else to attack me. Idk if they think it’s cause warlocks are weak or strong. Or maybe they just hate warlocks?? hahaha
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They avoid me like the plague on demo lol, idk why but i love it
I don’t think you’re going to see any Demo Locks in the tournament, or even any Warlocks. It’s pretty easy to shut down and if you trade CDs with the Lock, very squishy due to the lack of mobility. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but as soon as you go against players who know what they’re doing, it takes double the amount of effort to achieve a lesser result or the same. At the top levels of play, or even past 2K right now, you just get hard focused and completely nullified. You have to be a master at fake casting. DKs are absolutely a hard counter. We are at least decent against Ret though. It’s not all doom and gloom and like I said, I agree with some of your takes. I think it’s a better spec outside Shuffles than it is in Shuffles for sure, but overall. I’d put it on B tier… like mid to low B. I can land kills much easier with Destro or Aff, albeit a bit less tanky, but the trade off is worth it. And I am a Demo main through and through almost every patch. I barely play Destruction or Affliction and I do much more damage without the effort, because the damage profile is much more conducive to landing kills in Arena. You can’t CC double Chaos Bolt + Shadowburn. People also respect your damage more and it has a mental effect for sure. Knowing a Destro Lock can global you in three seconds, while Demo needs to align every single CD for maximum damage (and even then, you can just Fear/root/etc. the pets). You also have a much more reliable interrupt as Destro or Aff, opting to use the pet for cheeky kicks or going Grim. so you basically have a Counterspell. As opposed to the Felguard stun, which to me is very buggy, isn’t instant a lot of the time and can’t even use it on your kill target with your BEST partner, which is a Rogue IMO.
Open to your thoughts, I respect anyone who can play Demonology right now and I’m open to being wrong. I’ve always been a champion of the spec, in the sense that I’ll argue its viability in even its worst seasons. But to say it’s in its best iteration to me doesn’t make any sense and is lacking a lot of context, in comparison to other seasons where it was objectively easier to play with better results.
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In the higher rated lobbies (not coming at you for rating, I play this game for fun) they start double focusing you with all damage and micro CC’s. If they’re smart, and they know your timers, they line of sight all your burst. If they see dogs+vilefiend+Tyrant, or Grim Felguard. You need a partner that can help peel for you and lock down kill targets. That’s when Demo does become pretty fun IMO. By far the spec is at the behest of its partners, whereas IMO Destro and Affliction can land kills on their own. You can snipe kills as Demo, but only against below average teams/players. A lot of the time you need to sit on your CDs until the perfect moment, whereas with Destro and Affliction you can basically use them off CD and get max value, without having to land massive CC chains.
That’s why Soul Harvester is usually better, because your burst is more from Demonbolts. The Diabolist spec can be fun and has its moments, but a lot squishier and easier to nullify the burst. Infernal Bolt can be interesting though if paired with a burst class that can carry damage and play around your Infernal Bolt window.
Just my thoughts, wish you guys luck (better than myself) it just gets tiring having to put in double the effort of other specs without any more of a reward. Usually less.
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I gotta admit I was sorta excited seeing some of our hits, like the infernal fire bolt cast, but now teams have adjusted to it and have it on their add-ons looks out for it.
Additionally it was cool seeing us get an actual hard cast hitting spell every 30 secs or so, but then I saw all the other specs seeingarcane,boomy,rets,DH,DK hitting higher numbers with almost half the effort of standing there casing to get our damage out. Hell Rets are not doing much better burst/dots damage than Affliction not to mention their dots are applied automatically 
on using rotation abilities, and much more tankier at that.
It also feels like shadow bolts needs to have a faster casting on it. Not sure why immutable hatred needed a nerf in pvp as well since the other specs are doing some insane damage.
What’s worst is what’s going on with the demo tier set for pvp this things is hitting like 200k to 400k damage on me having to cast hand of guldan 3 shards 3 times??? I mean in pve the tier set gets up to hitting 3 mil on its own. In pvp it doesn’t matter what you do it only goes to like 300k per the ninth cast of hog…that’s a bit of terrible. I gets the nerfs on all tier set by 66% but it doesn’t seem like the power of the tier set is the same across the specs.
In mythic + I can get that 2 piece tier set hitting much higher 4 to maybe 5 mil hit but in pvp is like there some wall parameter set on it where it doesn’t matter what you do you can get it’s damage higher which with the 66% nerf on that damage it still should be hitting a lot higher than 300k damage…
The other issue is our pvp talents still haven’t been updated to how fast the games has gotten. Shadow Rift has its uses on the unaware but once your used to it with how much movement increase is available currently is pretty much useless people see it and move an inch out of the way almost instantly. it feels like that ability needs a faster activation time, can’t imagine if the frost wall for mages instead of instant needed 2 secs to activate than having an instant cc.
The ring of fire still does 1 mil of damage and then gets split 
when there more than 1 in it 1 mil in the 3rd season of TWW this is damn terrible., and that’s it it’s suppose use fatal damage to force people to not move out of it but it’s doing a 1 cast filler spell damage .
Fellord a 2 min CD still has a 8 yard radius even though the game updated most specs especially melee to not be melee anymore. And it does like 300k per swing the thing is not even immune to cc.
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imagine a world where shadowbolt casts while moving and maybe Hand of Guldan, prob would just feel like a mage but man thatd be kinda cool and ya our ccs being like all casted except MC and HT but every other range has bunch of instant cc, better mobility and etc, like ya im tanky but im tanky because i absolutely have to be with how little i have to defend myself, after using ur cc and mobility on cd, ur just a punching bag until you find a window to outplay someone when things come back off cooldown
Demo is strong but only shines with the right comps. Ive done 2 maybe 3 rounds of ss this season as demo and didnt die once but only won 2 games each round. Even free casting and getting cc chains on the enemy healer its dmg is just dog. But it has great utility.
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Exactly… paired with a good melee that can peel while you’re on the defensive and lock down kill targets/off targets while you’re on the offensive is ideal. Rogue for easy kills and Ret Paladin because it’s broken, are two good choices IMO. Demo used to pair better with Wizard comps but since Frost Mage isn’t played much now, I’d say this isn’t the case anymore. A lot of the time in full ranged lobbies you’re the weakest because it’s even easier to LOS your burst, without a melee to lock down kills.
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Yeah after seeing what others are doing for damage with their instant abilities/tier sets the 4.5 to 5 mil occasional infernal bolt doesn’t seem so cool anymore.
Also they def. baked alot of our damage into casting shadow bolt into shadow bolt.
Regardless still feels like they need to make tyrant instant, either that or remove umbral braze and replace it with the tier set that made Hand of Guldan instant every now and then.
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Demo is great. Might be a l2p issue. Most of the hard part is finding a good position to turret damage.
What I recommend doing is:
- Against caster/melee cleaves, you max range your port and slowly bully the caster back into a corner.
- Against melee cleaves, you max range your port and position the melee 30 yards away from their healer, so you can set up a 10-second CC chain off DR.
- Against double caster cleaves, you position yourself at max range from your port in mid and zone enemy casters away from your healer’s position with raw damage and CC.
It’s a mindset shift, but if you can find spots to stand still and CC the enemy healer at the same time, you’ll win more games.
Unless the other casters are stupid enough to not abuse los against you and are pretty below avg. sure any of the caster that has to cast, namely other locks/sps yeah you’ll get away with this strat. If there’s a competent boomy good luck, this one will kill through defensives.
The melee one sure that’s a good strat to start with. Once you start going higher is highly dependent on your teammates cc’ing the enemy healer if not, then good luck. It was good for a time and it works for half braindead melees.