I’m about to complete my shadow mastery but I have no idea should I go Demo or Destruction next.
Which is the better spec for both pve and pvp content? Seems like demo tree gives you more survivability while destruction gives you more burst damage. Would like to hear some feedback!
Destruction offers you more damage, but Demonology offers more utility. Up to you - I personally would lean towards Demonology. You will want to respec by the time you hit 60 anyway, as the soloing spec isn’t the same as SM/Ruin, which is arguably the best spec to raid with.
DS/Ruin (9/21/21) is the highest single target DPS as it foregoes everything in favour of strong Shadow Bolts, but SM/Ruin (30/0/21) is close enough and is far, far better to solo with.
Neither. You will not pick up DS or Ruin until 60. It’s silly not to spend that single point on Dark Pact which will help your levelling efficiency by a tremendous margin, more than any other talent in the game. Just respec at 60.
As for where to go after that? Doesn’t really matter much, to be honest. I went down demo. The instant summon voidwalker is great for pvp but it’s a 15m cooldown. 15% more stam is alright. Destro is fine too. The shadowbolt talents are useful in situations where you have a healer that will let you tap and shadowburn is a good pvp finisher. If I did it again I’d probably go destruction.
Is Dark Pact really that good? It doesn’t seem to actually give that much mana, and you spam GCDs just to get that little bit of mana. A few Life Taps seem way faster, especially to let you regen mana (and you can just bandage if need be). The same with using Drain Life/Soul or wanding to death.
Yea I don’t think Dark Pact is that good as a Former User of it in Vanilla. I don’t believe it benefits from your +Dmg like your Imp. Lifetap does. It also requires the same instacast CD as lifetap so efficiency wise Lifetap should be better. If you are worried about your HP being low without a heal from a healer, you can use Lifedrain to replenish that HP loss, which does benefit from your +dmg for even more gain. More so if you puts some pts into Imp. Life drain, which Shadow Mastery also buffs. Another benefit of that is the increased chance proc of nightfall when using Lifedrain to replenish that lost hp from Imp. Lifetap.
Pretty much. Plus, using it more hurts potential mana regen even further. You can spend a few GCDs for Life Tap and that’s it.
I’m going off of what I’ve seen (Warlocks absolutely spamming Pact) and my 60 Warlock friend.
Dark Pact was amazing for leveling, absolutely 100% the best leveling talent. You literally never have to stop and rest, plus you get imp life drain and shadow mastery so your drains are extra effective.
I mean… why Dark Pact when you can Life Tap? Pact is 150 per GCD, Life Tap (at rank 4 which you’ll have at 40) is 220 mana for 220 health, but scales with +spell damage and also Imp. Life Tap. It’s fewer GCDs. You can also wand things to death instead of draining to let your mana start ticking right away.
It just seems inefficient for time.
Dark Pact is that good. Life tap will help you regain mana much more quickly, but having to heal that up will put a serious drain on your efficiency. Bandaging every single minute is costly on cloth and requires a whole lot of inventory space. Life drain will not outpace the damage that you are dealing to yourself + the damage mobs are dealing to you unless you are extremely careful and fight mobs one at a time fairly slowly. Tapping yourself low also puts you in an incredibly vulnerable position on a pvp server on a constant basis.
Since hitting 60 and speccing SM/Ruin, I find soloing mobs to be much more tedious. I have to play much more conservatively with my hp/mana. I generally need to stick to my more efficient spells and cannot justify recasting dots if they run out when a mob is at 30% hp, which means slower kills. With Dark Pact you don’t really have a care in the world. Take damage, blow your mana, fight multiple mobs, whatever. DP can pick up the slack, and it can do it for free.
I guess, I’ll try it out when my Warlock gets there but LT just seems better to me. I’m also going off the words of a friend of mine who’s a pretty good Warlock.
I’m DS/Ruin and killing mobs is so much more annoying without the talent to reduce push back.
Its funny cuz it was easier to farm at lvl 52 with a dark pact build then it is at 60 as SM/Ruin. I supposed when I can get more spell damage it should help a lot.
DS/Ruin is the best raid DPS, but it doesn’t really matter right now and I’d strongly lean towards SM/Ruin. Way better at everything that isn’t MC/Ony, and that’s like… a 5% DPS increase as DS/Ruin?
It’s what guild requested and respeccing will be super expensive because I had to do it twice for messing up a talent point distribution.
I think it’s a little too early to be min/maxing. MC and Ony are clearable without optimization or even a full raid.
I’ll discuss with the guild, but if it’s what they want, it’s what they want. We do our first raid run starting tomorrow.
Definitely a strange request as the dps difference is very marginal. For a different class I understand requesting maybe enhance to go heals because you are short on healers but to ask a dps to go a specific dps spec is odd at this stage.
It’s kind of weird given it’s a really small DPS increase. If Warlocks have a sim tool, do some tests and you’ll see. SM/Ruin is a massive QoL increase in literally every other way (and is much better for 5 mans too), whereas DS/Ruin really only has a 5% DPS max increase. It’s negligible.
I’ll throw my 2c in and agree that Dark Pact is indeed a must pick. Yes it’s tedious to use every gcd on pact on your way from mob to mob, but trade off is that you’re always at full health/mana on every pull. Yes life tap is more efficient, yes you can drainlife…but when mobs are hitting you for ~100 per attack and your draining at ~100 per tick, you’re really only maintaining your health and not actually getting much back to support further tapping. With dark pact I can pull 3-4 mobs dot them all up drain tank til they’re dead, and pact my way to the next group with zero downtime.
The problem with demo sac (IMO) is that you have to dump all those points into demonology only to kill your pet anyways.