I know it’s never been good, but it’s the only spec I enjoy. I leveled in bfa and quit lock, haven’t played it seriously since legion with the demo rework. I love the design and aesthetics of it, but it never seems to perform well. I hear people say that it is one of the worst specs in the game and nobody wants one for a group. Is this true?
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I have to have at least 10 Ilvl higher gear than anyone else to be competitive. It’s very weak. But I’m still playing it.
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My main for the xpac was a Sub Rouge. I rolled mage and pally alts after, but then rolled my demo lock. Out of all those toons, and most being op, I enjoy my demo the most.
Yes, it is middle of the pack B tier, but at least I feel like I’m playing the game and earning my damage instead of face rolling the keyboard.
It’s burst windows are awesome and satisfying. I agree with Littlegolden about the ilvl. It’s because locks have a bad rep so no one picks them. At the same time, why pick a lock when you can get any other class that will have more consistent, sustained damage instead of burst windows every 1.5 minutes.
Long story short, if you enjoy it, play it.
Edit: reposted with my lock and note to self, don’t post on a smartphone XD
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This sums it up really, theirs a reason why you don’t see many Demo Locks, I’m a Demo main ilvl 194, Afflic will beat me 10 ilvls lower, Destro will be on par or a little higher.
Our problem is they fixed Afflictions ramp time, but ours is just bad, theirs a reason why mythic race to first is mostly Afflic and I’ve seen just a few Destro…
I hope we get tuned soon, we definitely need buffs and honestly some decent changes.
But I refuse to play Affliction, Destruction I only touch in PvP… Demo I love just hard to see it underperforming. Ramp is our problem and our biggest barrier to performance especially in this new direction WoW is headed… it’s fast paced, it’s timed, it’s about doing as much as you can as quick as you can!.
It all falls too, why bring Demonology when other specs and classes do what we do but better…
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The only time I wasn’t demonology was to get green fire in Pandaria. The ramp up time sucks and it’s really not mobile, but me an Jhuthuun have been through a lot. Soloing my guild leader with just my Felguard back in the day before The Black Book got nerfed during the TBC pre-release patch was a lot of fun.
I love getting the Torghast power that uses health instead of shards for gattling imps. Get a bunch out, summon tyrant, summon MORE, pop implosion when there are 40+ of them. Then do it again 
There’s a reason they used to refer to us a raid bosses.
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i love Demo started this character back in wrath as demo and really havent changed her, even when demo wasnt good i would stay demo, but this xpac if you want to raid and want to stay in those raids you need to either be afflic or desto, its sad Demo can bring so much to the tables if bliz would just give us what we need to be on top like the other two specs, in my opinion at aoe demo should be up there with afflic not below desto, our imps, our dreadstalkers, our hand of guldan, our implosion, we should at least be good at something, but sadly ive had to change out of demo to desto for raiding 
I’ve been pulling respectable damage in m+ and when I’m allowed to cast in PvP and I get out a tyrant demo puts out some terrifying damage.
For raiding unfortunately I haven’t done normal yet, though I imagine I’d be able to keep up since I’ve been keeping up on tyrannical
Don’t work in pvp, mythic+ or raids (except normal mode).
For the casual content can be fun. If you need any performace at all, don’t go demo or destro.
With all due respect, most of the complaints and limitations of demo being listed are well above most of the posters.
Castle Nathria mythic progression is going to be stacked specific ways because it is a world first race. Many have yet to do even normal Castle where spec damage pales in comparison to mechanics.
Mythic+ at the high end is the same story. People are posting that Demo doesn’t work in M+, but have a season high of +2. Demo and destro are far more powerful for AOE and that is the name of the game in M+. If Aff can do it, so can the other two.
PvP is a weak point. Demo requires a lot of casting and everything feels like it is balanced around instant casts. Historically high rated demo locks are rare and it is fair to attribute that to spec design.
Play what is fun and the rest falls in line. No one in this thread is playing at a level where the demo spec is the true limitation. You cannot control what your raid leader thinks and chooses to bring if they are min/maxing for mid level content. You’ll never get a spot unless you are FotM with those people.
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Stop this nonsense. Stop this “the specs are fine”. THEY ARE NOT FINE, THEY DOESN’T DO DAMAGE. D P S = DAMAGE PER SECCOND. They can be beautiful, feels good to play whit but DAMAGE, they don’t do damage.
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Demo is definitely middle of the pack, which is fine. It could be much worse. We could be frost mages.
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If you’re playing to quest or do dungeon finder they are fun to play. Any serious content and you can feel everyone else getting ahead of you on performance even if you’re doing everything correctly. For the amount of ramp up time Demo had to do any reasonable amount of damage the pay off is lackluster.
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It might be middle of the pack, but if it’s something that you play well and enjoy then you’re going to do better playing it over the “top spec”.
I started playing aff when pre-patch hit and held to it until the raid opened up. Turns out that I just don’t like playing aff and just simply wasn’t any good at it anymore. My damage in raids was pretty sub-par to be honest.
So I switched back to demo and within two raids I was performing way better than I was as affliction, and it’s just getting better as I get better reacquainted and of course, get better gear. I’m not topping the damage meters but my contribution is way better than when I was playing affliction.
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Flat damage boost on Demonbolt.
DoT back on Hand of Gul’dan.
Instant cast Tyrant.
Nether portal baseline.
Felguard a lot more tanky.
Then we good.
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Slow down and reread what I wrote. I didn’t say specs are fine, I said for the majority the spec works. If you’re an outlier on the upper end, spec dancing should not come as a surprise.
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Seriously this all needs to happen!.
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But will it? I remember starting out legion as demo and ending it as demo. The whole time it was a subpar spec. They never fixed it the entire expac. BFA demo wasn’t good either. Just seems like they don’t know how to balance it. We are dreaming for something that will likely never come true until an entire rework like they did with legion.
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The community perception of demo is worse than it actually is. Anyone can tell you if you know what you’re doing you will do perfectly fine in your lower m+ or higher with friends, the issue is anything it does affliction does better in terms of damage profile, save for maybe dungeon trash in say low m+ that dies quickly (but if it does, it didn’t really matter anyways). With coordination you could still play it in a weekly for your vault or progression raiding, but if you’re pugging, people take information in the most simple form which is: he could be playing affliction so he doesn’t care about his performance as much. I’m not saying that’s the case, but when you host a m+ group you’re choosing between two dozen sign ups, some outrageously overgeared, and it’s easier to make that judgment.
If you’re playing with friends of course you’ll be fine. The problem is there’s such a rush of people doing content right now that overlooking someone who plays demo lock is a reasonable judgment, but that’s entirely a player mindset issue in the pug world. Just go out there and prove people wrong, demo is a good spec it’s just outshined right now. It might take an extra sign up or two but don’t let that get to your head.
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This is horrible outlook on a spec, I could be one armed, one eyed and can barely click a mouse and keyboard but if with friends ofcourse they’ll put up with it, most likely carry and won’t say one thing negative but re assure you, you are doing great…
Demo currently is in a bad spot, outside of pull opening were we excel at because no movement, just set up and go, our dps falls flat during the raid and M+ outside of playing with friends in low content as you suggest, especially when adds spawn we don’t provide the quick switch and burst, Affliction and Destruction provide…
also our current kit hinders us, you begin to ramp, finally doing decent damage, need to AoE, demonic strength, felstorm as usual, and the most annoying you implosion, so all that ramp to get going start back at square one… their goes your 12+ Imps. Let alone we have to deal with horrible pet AI.
I don’t think any other class have this ant-synergistic game play. It’s hard enough to ramp and get going, but our skills make us restart ramp all through out the fight. Affliction our other so called ramp spec, no problem starts of slow like us but then just maintains DoTs and they keep going… I bet they’d be up in arms if Malefic Rapture consumed their DoTs and they have to re ramp multiple times in all content.
As quoted this be a great, atleast while we re ramp, HoG applies a DoT evening our flow in dps, if Nether Portal becomes baseline, add a passive talent to have 2 Felguards pets, would definitely be great this way our talents are all different play styles, Theirs a reason why Demonic Consumption is best pick in every situation and content… Sacrificed Souls works on gathering Imps to increase damage, the second you implode their goes your final talent pick down the drain… Nether Portal if it stays the way it is needs a huge buff to atleast warrant its 3 min cooldown. And not to forget Grimoire: Felguard to be 1.5min to actually flow with our tyrant.
Demonology tool kit is its strongest draw back, while yes people love throwing Imps at enemies, it just really works against us.
It’s bad enough now they’ve made it more difficult then ever to tune a class, buff one certain aspect, Covenant and skills that work with covenants, Legendaries that benefit talents and skills that work with particular legendaries, the community will be in a uproar… I can hear it now, “was Night Fae now have to switch to xxxx”, “spent months crafting xxxxx legendary now it’s useless as xxxxx is better”, “all my progress in xxxxx covenant down the drain cause I have to switch”.
Even in PvP we are trash, BFA we had 2 demonology players break 2400 rating, and one of them switched to Destruction this expansion as Demonology was absolutely rubbish. Not sure if the other player has made the switch aswell.
Theirs a reason why, if you check raider IO and warcraft logs Demonology is as scarce as the loot drops in this expansion, I think it was a few days ago, one…one Demonology lock downed Mythic Shriekwing, arguably the easiest boss in the raid…
I can go on forever with the flaws and problems, I been a Warlock player since 2004, Demo mained through every expansion, currently ilvl 194, people as yourself defending this spec is the problem…
Sorry for the rant just passionate about a class I’ve been playing for 16 years. Either tuning needs to happen or a rework, and I doubt a rework will come anytime soon as everything is set in stone with legendaries…
So our best bet is the pray for tuning to negate our ramp.
I quote Not, Warlock Guru, “ Even though Demonology is supposed to be the single target spec there is more ramp time and planting of your feet to be able to reliably execute on this damage profile. Compared to Affliction where you have 2-3 DoTs you can cast while moving and another DoT that is a fairly quick cast while you generate Soul Shards, basically everything Demonology can do to both generate and spend Soul Shards requires you to stand still which simply does not translate well on a lot of the encounters in Castle Nathria. Given the higher difficulty of Heroic/Mythic you are punished a lot more for standing still and soaking mechanics using your higher passive damage reduction that you can otherwise soak in Normal where the damage is significantly less.”
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If you like it, play it. Then just do your research and practice. I’ve played warlock since vanilla, and they are almost always “garbage” and yet I’ve never had that issue. Warlock comes with a ton of utility, and it’s that utility that you have to keep in mind. Bad warlocks complain, good ones use the tools to overcome.
Demo has the best survivability and most CC. That’s why I play it. If you’re looking to play world of simcraft, just pick mage. But keep in mind that it’s very common for people to overlook the value of our utility as it doesnt show up in sims or bleeding edge raiders.
7 Likes