Today I woke up thinking “hey I might try demonology on my warlock”. I logged in, switched specs, went to Orgrimmar to buy the glyphs I like using, and spent a little time reading the talents. Then I picked a set of them, fought a bit at the dummies, and logged out to check Icy Veins to try and read into them with more depth to try and pick out a more accurate build. Upon loading Icy Veins I’m presented with long chains of rotations, various builds for the spec, and now my mind is kind of spinning trying to decide what to pick.
And that’s just one tab on that page. That’s ignoring all the other things like stat priority, conduits, gearing, legendaries, enchants, and many others. Any class/spec guide on that site is going to have like close to 20 tabs of things to read. So now instead of going back onto the game to try the spec, I’m kind of clutching my head trying to prevent my brains from leaking out.
How does one handle all of this overwhelming information?
i suggest taking it one step at a time. Try out the rotation, and from there work on what talents you’d like to use. As far as stat priority goes, use it more as a guideline and not a hard fact. Biggest thing is to play the game and get a feel for what you need, and then work from there.
Was trying to find out if there was a playstyle close to what I liked about Affliction. In that I can run into the middle of an area, DoT everything in sight, let my voidwalker handle things, and leave the area a literal barren wasteland. I really liked that about the spec, it was great for finishing quests quickly and I liked how easily I could handle elite mobs by myself.
I more or less wanted to see if Demonology could do the same thing, so I wanted to pick a set of talents that meshed well with that playstyle. Part of that too is that I want to be a Necrolord and heard Demo was better with that covenant than Affliction was.
I’m just after effectiveness for the most part. I was open to Demo because I wasn’t sure if it was actually better than Affliction. The fact that Demo synergizes better with the covenant I want to be is more icing on the cake.
Leveling as the spec is really a handy experience in getting familiar.
Personally I can find specs complicated too if I rarely try them and just switch over into the deep end. Guides just give a list of things and it’s a little much. But if I start an alt and just level as the spec for awhile it makes so much more sense. You can pick up on the flow of how it works.
But if you don’t want to do that then practice makes decent! Forget covenant stuff and legendaries and all that for now. It does not matter at the moment. Just focus on the class and spend time with training dummies or running heroic dungeons, something easy.
That’s what I did with Affliction. Was nothing but that for pretty much the month or so since I started my warlock. Probably why this feels like a huge leap.
For the most part I just want to know which spec is actually more survivable and better at taking out fields of mobs + the toughest elites by itself. I was worried that I had spent so much time invested in Affliction only to find out that Demo would have been better.
add ons like Hekili can make a new spec a little easier - they arnt fool proof but they can give you a great basic visual cast rotation while your working out what everything does and how it interacts.
But just start with those guides by looking at the leveling or basic rotation. Get your ‘bread and butter’ casts worked out then you can look at things like weaving in your big dps cooldowns etc.
Stat prior etc will change for everything and most of it scales in importance with gear, just look at what your main stat is, likely haste or intellect and focus on upgrades that give you most of what your looking for, the rest can be worked out over time.
I’m not judging Demo by any means. I know it’s a popular spec and I wanted to see what all the craze was. I’m just trying to find out if it’s better for my purposes.
If you’re talking effectiveness for the raid than it depends a bit on which specific fight but demo is good single target in general.
The spec is actually pretty straightforward, you have shadowbolt and demonbolt for shards, you spend shards on dogs, hand of gul’dan, or a few different talented demons. The strat is to get as many demons summoned as you can before using your demonic tyrant. It’s helpful to have a weak aura for time remaining on demons.
Don’t do this for Demonology. Pick the talents that you enjoy the most. I was having so much fun with Demo until I took Icy Veins’ advice. They put all your focus on your stupid Dreadstalkers and the spec starts to feel hollow and boring and your AoE ends up being awful. I hated it so much, I Just went Destro.
Typically they’re spot on with talent builds, but I’d say make up your mind for that one.
Unless you’re doing high keys or Mythic raiding, stop trying to take everything in and min maxing. Just read the basics and go from there. Then go back later and tweak some more.
Majority of your time spent playing demo would be spamming these 4 buttons, Shadow Bolt, Hand of Guldan, Call Dreadstalker, and Implosion. That’s 4 buttons.
The rest you can just press on CD, you’d get blue and low purple parse just with this knowledge, Icy veins one looks complicated because it also gave you explanation over every possible talent picks.
Most classes in WOW only have 4-5 button rotation, it’s not rocket science.
So it is not the game, it is Icy Veins that is overwhelming.
One stays away from Icy Veins.
Okay, now that I am done being smart aleck…
If it makes you feel any better, I tried Icy Vein for this character last year and had the same reaction. Thankfully someone on this forum had the info I needed to make her playable otherwise she would have been left on the shelf.