DEMO WARLOCK ADVANCED TIPS

DEMONIC TYRANT

Alright, in this video we're going to be covering our biggest burst ability of Demonic Tyrant. Coming in with a 1 minute cooldown, Summon Tyrant buffs all our major pets and up to 10 of our imps by 25% while also extending their duration by 15 seconds.

And while it doesn't deal too much damage on its own anymore since the removal of Reign of Tyranny, it can still be amplified by the Diabolus talent of Abyssal Dominion. Now, as for the rotation for Demonic Tyrant to get the best pets possible, we've already given you this in the burst rotation segment of the course.

However, life isn't always perfect as we all know, as when we go to Summon Tyrant there is a massive target on our back, which makes us have to change up the way we cast it. The long and short of it is that it doesn't really matter how many imps we're empowering if we're under pressure.

We simply just want to make sure that we're snapshotting our Charhound, Dreadstalkers, and Grimoire when it's available.

This is so important in fact that when you're up against melee cleaves, it's actually a pretty good idea to use your wall early to get Tyrant out to extend all these pets as you're going to be able to reverse pressure with that.

However, if you miss this window because of kicks and micro CCs, you're actually better off waiting for your next set of high value pets to come up to empower them as it just increases our damage so much so compared to extending a handful of imps and Dreadstalkers on the other side.

Now, lastly, while we're on the topic of summoning the Tyrant, it's important to know that you're going to need to have Line of Sight to a targeted enemy when casting, otherwise it may bug out and fail to attack until it reaches melee range.

We can actually game this just a little bit though, as the Tyrant will always summon to our left, so we can still stand out of Line of Sight and cast it, just as long as the Tyrant will spawn an LOS of the enemy pet or totem that we have targeted.

Now, once our Tyrant is up, our job isn't done though, as we'll then have two choices, either going for more damage or going for crowd control.

Now, as a general rule of thumb here, if Dampening isn't particularly high, we can go for Fears on the healer to assist our partner in killing the DPS, as their damage along with our Tyrant and a few Shadow Bolts is going to be enough to force cooldowns in a CC chain.

However, if Dampening is really high, we can actually brute force through healing even if we have no diminishing returns. As our Sacrificed Souls is giving us so much increased damage on our Bolts.

This can also be effective pre-Dampening depending on where the enemy healer is, like in this clip here, when we're able to win by stacking Sacrificed Souls and executing with massive Demon Bolts. So, in our next video we're going to be going over when to play Howl versus when to play Mortal Coil.

We'll see you there.

COIL VS HOWL

Are you struggling to choose between Mortal Coil and Howl of Terror throughout your games? Then watch on, as we're going to tell you exactly how you can use both of these talents.

So as a default, you're probably running with Mortal Coil, which for the past few expansions has definitely been the way to go.

And in The War Within, it's still serving the same purpose, which allows us to extend our CC chain on the kill target by an additional 3 seconds, which, with how bursty the game is currently, is all you really need. Mortal Coil is excellent in a bunch of situations, actually.

Like, if you play with a Druid, then you don't really want to be using fear anyway, as Cyclone is just so much stronger due to it being unbreakable, so you might as well take Coil for extra kill potential.

Or, if you're in a matchup where you need to be able to carry with CC, you can use Coil on the healer as an initiation crowd control to prevent them from avoiding your follow-up fear while extending the chain at the same time.

And then there's the times where you can use Coil for... to stop the enemy on their cooldowns, or, in this case here in this VOD, preventing the Hunter from landing Trap. And finally, you can use it as a sort of pseudo-kick into classes that are trying to get their Hail Mary out.

Think Arcane Surge or maybe Ultimate Penitence. Coil can really help us prevent them from getting any value from these massive cooldowns.

So, if Coil is so powerful, talking through all this stuff, then when do we play Howl of Terror, you might ask? Well, since...

Cobblest got buffed to not be complete dead weight damage-wise, we can actually spec into it for that 25-second cooldown Howl, which is incredibly strong.

We can then set up with our teammates every 25 seconds by getting guaranteed fears on the healer, which will very often catch another DPS in it too, since Annihilations Below gives Howl an extra 5 yards.

Howl is particularly strong when facing evoker melee cleaves, as you're gonna consistently get triple fears on their entire team, as you're gonna consistently get triple fears on their entire team, as you're gonna consistently get triple fears on their entire team, which means you get a very strong offensive and defensive tool on a very short cooldown.

Now, what this means is that Howl is actually an incredibly strong tool if we're playing with a partner who needs crowd control to enable them to win the game, like an Elemental Shaman or a Melee, and by speccing into Diabolist and Howl, we can shift our focus away from our own damage and more into enabling our partner's damage.

Okay, so on to other things here. As for playing with Soul Harvester with Howl, it's really not worth it.

As the cooldown is so much longer that you may as well just play Coil for that lethality with your Demon Bolts. Alright, in our next video, we're gonna be covering how to use mobility for offense.

So don't go anywhere.

AXE TOSS TIPS

As Demonology, we have a unique kick with our axe toss that both serves as a stun and an interrupt, so let's take a look at how the pros get the most use out of it. First, as just mentioned, the axe toss can be used as a kick.

Now, we recognize that this may seem obvious, but it's crucial to remember that it will consistently interrupt the enemy, even if they're fully diminished on stuns.

So this can be great at stopping high-value cast, and since it has a long 30-yard range from our pet, it's also excellent at shutting down players going for crowd control, even if we're stuck in CC ourselves.

So, however, as Gelu does here, you may need to move your pet preemptively to get these kicks in time, as otherwise your pet may not be in range before the cast finishes.

Other than using it as a kick, though, we can and should be using it as a stun in the majority of our games, both as a means to kill targets while we crowd control the healer, and as a way to kill the enemy. So, let's take a look at how it works.

We can use it as a healer with a fear or how to lock our enemy in place, or as an initiation crowd control on healers to guarantee they can't escape our follow-up fear, or as seen here to just cover our partner's crowd control on the kill target.

We can also use it to enable us to cast Tyrant or Fear in clutch moments by covering targets that have kicks or micro-CCs available. And finally, it's, of course, a fantastic peel, although do watch out for evasion and die by the next toss to miss.

USING MOBILITY FOR OFFENSE

Are you strictly using your mobility for defense? Then you may just be making the game a lot harder for yourself.

Here we're going to be showcasing how you should be using your teleport and gateway to squeeze out more damage and more wins.

Now although most of the time we're going to be using these tools defensively to escape incoming damage, we can also use them to increase our own damage by avoiding interrupts, allowing us to get off our high value pets like Charhound and Dreadstalkers.

We can even combine this with our gateway for additional time to cast like Gelu does here, which enables him to get his full Tyrant window out in the opener without having to fake any kicks at all.

Casting damage isn't the only thing we can use our mobility for though, as we can and should also be using it to enable our crowd controls.

Gelu does this constantly by combining the talents of Howl of Terror and the PvP talent Gateway Mastery to allow himself to land frequent fears on enemy healers while he's in the middle of a fight.

And you don't even need to travel that far too for this to be effective as most healers won't be able to react… and here Gelu gateways just a short distance to get the set up as otherwise he would be too snared by the Frostmage to get to the priest.

This tactic is still effective even if you don't have howl available though, as just by getting close to that healer you can allow yourself to fear them off your part partner's crowd control. Moving on, for our final offensive mobility trick, we have one that is a little bit niche with Soul Burn Teleport.

Now this is because by pressing Soul Burn and then pressing Teleport, we can give ourselves a sprint effect, which allows us to hunt down targets with our Howl, which is great when it works, but honestly, not always the best use of mobility unless we're not the kill target as it's very risky burning our defensives like this.

SURVIVING MELEE

Surviving melees is probably the hardest part of playing Demonology, so let's go through how we can live longer together. Some players always complain that Warlocks are really squishy, dying instantly as soon as the gates open.

Whereas other players really consider Warlocks as complete tanks that take a very long time to take down. So who's in the right here?

With good decision making, Warlock actually can be excellent at surviving, as every 30 seconds you can trade a cooldown, which means that you can basically use something to avoid damage when the enemy is bursting. So to begin with, our first line of defense in a game should be our Dark Pact.

This is because it's going to absorb far more damage when used at high health as opposed to low health. Thus, it's naturally going to be bigger at the start of a game.

Now although this will often not be enough to survive enemy's melee cooldowns, which is where our second line of defense really comes in with Demonic Gateway.

Combining these two together in the opener is actually fine as you want to be able to hold out while still being offensive, and if you don't overlap you're still going to end up taking far too much pressure and often die.

Following this, if we're still taking too much damage, we can then use our teleport to get back to safety, which is going to allow us to cast on our target as they're going to need to use movement abilities to catch up to us first.

In this VOD here, Gelu even ends up using his Unending Resolve as his Monk really doesn't want to trade his Cocoon because of fear of dying.

And while all this does look like they have used a ton of cooldowns, considering Gelu still has Health Stone, Portal, and his Pact coming up soon since he used them so early, nothing was really wasted.

Now from here is where things get a little bit tricky, as you need to be very aware of how much damage you're going to take. The general rule of thumb is that you do not want to overlap Dark Pact and teleport on the same go.

As otherwise you're going to end up dying. So, here's a quick example of how you can use your Unending Resolve to get back to safety.

We can avoid doing these overlaps by incorporating our Soulburn Gateway to escape, and then potentially replace our Portal afterwards if we get too far. As well as also using Soulburn Health Stone before using Pact, which will make our Dark Pact far more effective since we have both more stamina and more health.

Not overlapping these cooldowns also allows us to use our Dark Pact to enable us to cast more as Gelu does here. As he can simply trade out Pact and continue doing DPS.

Finally, other than budgeting our cooldowns and trading accordingly when facing Melees, there is one more thing that you're going to need to survive as a Demonology Warlock. And simply put, it's just running in circles.

You see, the best Demonology Warlocks are constantly just applying Curse of Exhaustion to targets and then walking away, as even though they aren't getting offensive Globals out, the enemy Melee isn't either, although they don't have the benefit of pets to deal damage for.

So, if you're going to be a bit more aggressive, you might want to be careful with your Melee as you can get a bit more of a chance to get a bit more of a chance to get a bit more of a chance to get a bit more of a chance to get a little bit more of a chance to get a little bit of a chance to get a little bit more of a chance.

This is particularly effective though after using Teleport, as with the Sprint and Freedom, you can line aside enemy Gap Closers for a ridiculously long time, which turns every Melee into Joe Fernandez.