DEMO WARLOCK FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

DEMO WARLOCK PLAYSTYLE

Hello everyone and welcome to our Demonology Warlock Fundamentals course, which is packed full with all the knowledge that you need to dominate on the ladder.

So, in this first video we're going to be going over the general playstyle of Demonology, seeking to fuel for the class, allowing you to understand your role on the spec.

So, to start things off, Demonology is at its core a pet class, summoning legions of demons to not only deal the majority of your damage, but also buff your other abilities through the Sacrificed Souls talent. Now, sadly for Demonology, this does mean that you're going to be casting a lot more than other ranged classes.

However, the damage payoff is more than worth it. However, standing still and just spamming out damage really isn't going to be winning you games anytime soon.

As this isn't really the main playstyle of the class, that's more kind of an afflictions flavor.

As Demonology, our main job is to be as disruptive as possible while bringing a mortal strike effect with us, allowing us to slow down the game and bring it to an eventual close with CC or by dragging the game into dampening.

So, to assist us in being disruptive, we have a handful of tools at our disposal, such as our Spammable Fear, 2 Axe Tosses, Mortal Coil, and Shadow Fury.

Often throughout games, you're going to be looking to harass the enemy team as much as possible to prevent them from playing the game all the while your pets deal your damage for you.

This not only means that you end up doing more damage than the other team as they simply can't press any of their buttons, but also means that the ball is often in your court as you can control the pace of the match rather than simply being a passenger waiting for your team to take control.

And speaking of which, Demonology can also create its own kill windows. Very frequently, with its Summon Tyrant ability, every one minute with crowd control on the healer, giving it amazing carry potential in the right hands.

Just be sure to watch our burst rotation later in the course to figure out how to set this up properly. Finally, Demonology, although fairly tanky into casters due to its Dark Pact and Soul Link, does take a crazy amount of damage from melees if they have uptime.

Therefore, we're going to have to be using our Gateway and Teleport to the best of our abilities. This is a good way to get the best of our ability to not die.

Kiting as Demonology really isn't easy as we need to deal with casting while on the move and most melee can catch up to us. But through good positioning and timing, we can force melees off us and even reverse pressure on them.

Just check out some of our commentaries to see what we mean here. So, if Demonology sounds appetizing to you, then head on over to our next video where we're going to be covering the goals of the class, allowing you to have a solid game plan for each class.

We'll see you then.

DEMO WARLOCK GOALS

Welcome back! In this video, we're going to be outlining the goals of Demonology that the pros look to follow in each and every game to be as effective as possible.

So, right at the top, we have to not overcap on Soul Shards. Now, as Demonology, our main resource is, of course, Soul Shards, which we're going to be looking to spend on several pet casts to deal sustain and burst damage throughout the game.

Through casting Hand of Gul'dan, Dreadstalkers, and our Charhound abilities, we won't just be increasing our output through these pets alone, however, but also increasing our own personal damage through the Sacrificed Souls talent, allowing us to get massive Demon Bolts and Shadow Bolts off if we're able to free cast.

If we are to forego these pet casts and overcap on Shards, this means that we're going to have less resources to cast Hand of Gul'dan later down the line, and we may not be able to do that. We may not be able to cast our Dreadstalkers on cooldown, which reduces our overall pressure.

Which rings true, especially because Shards are a bit harder to come by as Demonology than our other two brethren specs, as we can only gain them from Demon Bolts, Shadow Bolts, or Soul Strike, rather than Passive Generation.

And since we are often the ones that are going to be tunneled throughout matches, overcapping on Shards can absolutely be devastating, as you will run out without Hardcastling.

Now, this isn't to say that you should always spend your Shards as soon as you get them, though, as Demonology Warlock also requires you to pool your Shards when your Tyrant window is coming up.

Now, what we mean by this is that when your Tyrant is coming off cooldown in about 10 seconds, you should be looking to cap out your Shards to full to allow you to cast multiple pets in a row without having to stop midway to regenerate Shards.

The best Demonology Warlocks look to do this constantly, as otherwise you're going to end up delaying your Tyrant by 10-20 seconds at a time, which can absolutely be a massive loss in damage.

So, to further help with this, we can and should look to Power Siphon before these windows, allowing us to instantly regenerate our Shards and go into more cast, allowing us to buff even more pets.

And while we're on the subject of pets here, for our third goal, although obvious to some, is that we should be using all of them literally. On cooldown.

Now, unlike some other classes where you may want to hold your cooldown for certain windows, as Demonology, if you choose to hold your big pets, you're going to be at a massive disadvantage.

This is because of the Wicked Maw talent, which makes our Charhound and Dreadstalkers apply a debuff to our targets that increases all damage they take from us and our pets.

If we summon Charhound and Dreadstalkers on cooldown, we can have close to 100% uptime on this debuff, making our sustained, and even more so, our Dreadstalkers, a lot more effective. And we can also have a lot of damage from our Dreadstalkers, which is a lot more important.

Now, other than this, Charhound also increases our Dreadstalkers damage by 50% when it's out. So having these two pets rolling at the same time is an absolute must.

And by summoning Dreadstalkers on cooldown, we can ensure that we're always getting a steady flow of Demonic Cores, allowing us to have enough Shards to play the game without having to desperately hardcast Shadow Bolts.

So, moving on to the fourth goal here, when using these Demonic Cores, it's imperative that we use them on as many targets as possible. This is because of the Pact of the Arid Ruin talent, which has a chance to summon a hard-hitting Doomguard when our Doom expires.

By spreading our Doom around on multiple targets, we can ensure that we have a higher chance at summoning the Doomguard, and, with proper management and a bit of luck, this talent can easily make up a huge portion of our overall damage.

However, if you are in your burst window, you can also summon a Dreadstalker on cooldown, which is a lot more effective. And by doing this, we can also increase our Dreadstalkers' damage by 50%.

So, if we're using these two, we can also increase our Dreadstalkers' damage by 50%. And by doing this, we can also increase our Dreadstalkers' damage by 50%.

So, if we're using these two, we can also increase our Dreadstalkers' damage by 50%. Do be aware that foregoing this rule and just single-targeting Demon Bolts will often be the better choice to try and kill your target.

Lastly, for our final goal, we have Crowd Control. As much to the anger of our opponents, Demonology is packing a bunch of CC and is often going to be winning in CC chains rather than with raw damage alone.

Because of the Demonology damage profile being really bursty every one minute, we can easily play around this with our own Crowd Control. Bu using Crowd Controls, summoning a ton of demons to do our damage for us, and then heading over to the healer to prevent them from assisting their team.

We can and should do this whenever we have Tyrant by using our Axe Toss, or Coil on our healer and then following up with Fear, preventing them from avoiding our CC chain with Line of Sight or other means.

Now as for defensive CC, we also have a ton of that too, and should be looking to spam Fear off targets when our Dreadstalkers and Charhound are on cooldown.

And another reason why we might be using Tyrant as our有點 is this is genius. if your founders bold up and guys were like, down to prevent the enemy from being able to play the game.

However, do be aware that unlike other Warlock specs, fearing the kill target isn't as good as Demonology, as it's going to call all our pets back to us, making them waste a bunch of time reconnecting again.

DEMO WARLOCK DAMAGE PRIORITY

So in this video we're going to be covering your sustain damage profile and this isn't really a set rotation though, kind of more so the power scaling of each of your abilities which is going to allow you to make informed decisions when it comes to what buttons you should be pressing and when you should be pressing them.

So let's get into it. Right at the top we're going to be placing our char hound and gloom hound depending on what you spec into.

This is going to make up a huge portion of our damage and it's also going to buff all our individual and pet damage through the wicked maw talent as well as buffing our dreadstalkers by 50% while it's active.

Char hound doesn't require line of sight to be casted so we want to cast this very early on in the game to prevent it from being kicked. Don't worry about being far from your target when doing so as it's going to leap into the fight once the target is acquired.

Since char hound makes up such a huge percentage of our overall breakdown we're going to want to cast this on cooldown as this is going to allow us to have one for every tyrant and one in between.

Moving on we then have call dreadstalkers which is going to be up there with char hound for one of your top damaging abilities.

Dreadstalkers cost two shards and it should be cast as soon as possible to also apply the wicked maw debuff although they can be instant and free if we're in luck with our demonic calling procs. Dreadstalkers will also give us a 100% chance of gaining two demonic cores when they fade away allowing us to get free damage.

So if you're going to cast a target you can cast them on a nearby totem or a pet to get them out regardless for the shard regeneration and damage that they're going to provide us once they reach their destination. Next up we then have demon bolt.

Which we should only be casting with demonic cores as this makes it instant down from a ridiculously long cast. Demon bolt should be used when we have three or less shards as it's going to give us two shards and it's going to allow us to summon more pets.

When using demon bolt make sure to spread doom on as many targets as possible with it to increase our chances of summoning doom guards. Following this we then have our shard dump of hand of Gul'dan which we should be casting three shards.

Hand of Gul'dan while not doing the most damage on its own is going to spawn one imp per shard use. These imps are going to do additional damage after the hand of Gul'dan cast.

They're going to give us extra damage from sacrifice souls and allow us to generate more demonic core procs when they fade away or are imploded. If you're going to over cap on shards and don't have higher value pets to cast make sure to use hand of Gul'dan to fill the gaps.

Lastly we then have shadow bolt.

It's going to give us one shard when used which on paper it really doesn't sound too incredible but with all the modifiers and all the buffs we have on this spell like sacrifice souls and rune of shadows if we have a lot of pets out we can hit pretty damn hard with this ability when given the chance.

Next up we're going to be covering our hero talent trees. We'll see you there.

DEMO HERO TALENTS: SOUL HARVESTER

Now we're going to be covering our hero talents, starting with Soul Harvester, which, although pretty boring, is incredibly powerful. First off, let's cover the keystone talent to Soul Harvester, which is Demonic Soul.

Which, although is covered in a bunch of fancy words when you read it, it basically just means that you have an RNG chance at making your Hand of Gul'dan a little bit stronger, as you can get a buff called Succulent Soul.

As well as making the Succulent Soul Hand of Gul'dan also hit the target with another ability called Demonic Soul. Now, while this doesn't seem too exciting, extra damage on a passive rotational ability is definitely always welcome.

So as we move down the tree, though, we instantly come to one of the strongest passives that we can get with Necrolite Teachings. As this is going to increase our burst damage by buffing our Demon Bolt and Shadow Bolt's damage.

Which, with modifiers like Power. Syphon and Sacrifice Souls already being in our kit, it can make our Demon Bolts and Shadow Bolts very, very powerful.

Next to this talent, we then have another incredibly strong passive with Soul Anathema, which can end up being one of your highest overall DPS abilities each game, which applies a dot every time Demonic Soul hits our target. So that's yet again, even more passive damage on our Hand of Gul'dan.

Going down the tree, we do have some. Other passives that we really don't care about, like Demonic's Fervor and Satyl's Volition.

However, once we reach the middle of the tree, we can pick up some great defensives with Friends in Dark Places, which increases our Dark Pact's Absorb, as well as Eternal Servitude, allowing us to reduce the cooldown on Fel Domination. If you've ever had your pet tunneled, you know how strong this really can be.

The real kicker in the middle of this tree, though, is Shared Fate. Which at first glance, it may seem like a very strong skill, but it's not.

The real kicker in the middle of this tree, though, is Shared Fate. Which at first glance, it may seem like a very strong skill, but it's not.

The real kicker in the middle of this tree, though, is Shared Fate. Which at first glance, it may seem like this is only going to proc in PvE, as it revolves around kills.

When combined with the Quietest talent on the next row, we're going to see it dealing damage when we consume our Demonic Core. Which pairs really well with yet another talent on this row, namely Wicked Reaping, which once again, makes our Demon Bolt's proc even more damage from an additional source.

As we said earlier, this tree has some very strong passives for our burst. So finally, with our Capstone, we have a lot of damage.

So finally, with our Capstone, we have a lot of damage. We have one that's a little bit lackluster, but it does have some nice quality of life, as it's going to allow us to gain three shards when summoning our Tyrant.

So just make sure to spend your shards before using it as a Soul Harvester. All in all, Soul Harvester is an excellent tree for when you're able to free cast Hand of Gul'dans, and it definitely can benefit from Sacrifice Souls to get big Shadow Bolts and Demon Bolts.

However, if you're looking for a more pet-oriented tree, watch our DIYs. Obelisk video coming right up.

DEMO HERO TALENTS: DIABOLIST

Next up, let's take a look at Diabolist, which revolves far more around pet damage than Soul Harvester does. Starting off once again with the Keystone talent, Diabolist gives us Diabolic Ritual, a 20-second buff that ticks downwards, getting increasingly shorter each time we spend a shard on offensive abilities.

Once this buff ticks down to zero, we're then going to automatically summon one of three demons when casting our next Hand of Gul'dan to pop out and hit our target for one hit.

The demons cycle between three different ones, which you can see on your buffs, and through the tree, each has its own benefits along with its damage. The first talent on the tree revolves around the Overlord pet with Cloven Souls.

This makes our Overlord increase our target's damage taken by 5% from us and our pets, and it isn't really too impressive, but it's really not entirely useless either. We then have Touch of Rancora, which is, sadly, really nerdy, and it's not really nerfed in PvP, therefore you really hardly even ever notice it.

And then the Secrets of the Coven talent, which makes our Mother of Chaos empower our Shadowbolt, allowing it to generate three shards and actually hit pretty dang hard for a demonology spell.

You never want to waste these procs, so much so that it's worth farming a ton of pets before you send out this Infernal Bolt to benefit from Sacrifice Souls, while also making sure the target has Wicked Maw on them to further amplify its damage.

Now this is pretty unusual for demonology, as we often play with Mortal Coil to set up kills.

However, with the reduced cooldown and increased range, Howl becomes a pretty attractive pick when playing Diabolist, especially if you're facing Melees, as you can peel yourself or even get offensive crowd control without having to cast.

However, if you forgo this talent, you can just as easily still play Coil and pick up Soul-Etched Circles, which has some nice quality of life elements, and you can also use it to get a little bit of a boost on your damage. So, that's pretty much it for the Infernal Bolt, and I hope you enjoyed this video.

If you did, make sure to hit that like button, and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching!

I'll see you in the next one! Bye!

Thanks for watching!

GRIMOIRE OPENER BURST

In this section we are going to be covering our burst window as Demonology which revolves around our Demonic Tyrant buffing as many pets as possible. This particular burst is what we're going to be looking to do at the start of every game when all our cooldowns are ready.

To begin the setup we'll first wait till we have two imps spawn from our Inner Demon's talent. Once this happens we'll then use our power siphon to sacrifice these imps and allow us to gain two Demonic cores in the process.

Following this we'll then look to cast our Charhound or Gloomhound depending on our talent choice and then chain that with our Dreadstalkers putting us on zero soul shards.

Next up we'll send out one Demon Bolt on our kill target to build shards and apply Doom and then another Demon Bolt on a secondary target to apply Doom to them as well while also building our shards.

Following this we'll then cast Hand of Gul'dan which will spawn three imps and then summon our last Demon of Grimoire Felguard to stun the target and send out a heavy Felstorm.

Now that all our pets are out we'll finish our burst rotation by using Summon Demonic Tyrant to buff all the pets, pop our Demonic Strength for that strong Felstorm from our main target and then summon our last Demon of Grimoire Felguard to send out a heavy Felstorm.

Now that all our pets are out we'll finish our burst rotation by using Summon Demonic Tyrant to spawn our last Demon of Grimoire Felguard to stun the target and send out a heavy Felstorm.

One final Hand of Gul'dan if we are Soul Harvester as we've gained three shards from our Tyrant and then send out as many Shadow Bolts as we can as they will all be buffed by Sacrifice Souls and therefore deal a ton of damage.

Now while there is some variation to this burst depending on when you want to use your Grimoire however we suggest using it as the last pet to allow you to cast Tyrant without getting kicked.

GRIMOIRE MIDGAME BURST

Welcome back! In this video, we're going to be covering your burst rotation for your second Tyrant of the game when you don't have Grimoire Felguard off cooldown.

To begin this burst phase, we're going to make sure we're at 5 shards. We can do this through Demonic Core Procs or Shadow Bolts.

Once we've met this requirement, we can then begin by using Power Siphon to sacrifice 2 Imps or gain 2 Demonic Cores, and then summon our Charhound or Gloomhound. Once our Charhound is active, we'll then summon our Dreadstalkers, and then spend 1 of our Demonic Cores on Demon Bolt, putting us back to 4 shards.

Following this, we'll then look to cast Hand of Gul'dan to spawn 3 Imps, and then cast our second Demon Bolt on a secondary target to apply Doom. Next up, we'll then cast Hand of Gul'dan another time for another 3 Imps, and then summon our Demonic Tyrant to Bulk.

Lastly, we'll then use Demonic Strength for the strong Bladestorm damage from our main Felguard, 1 final Hand of Gul'dan if we're Soul Harvester as we've gained 3 shards from our Tyrant, and finish with Shadow Bolts as they'll hit very hard due to this Sacrificed Souls modifier.

DEMO WARLOCK OPENER

In this video, we're going to be covering the opener for Demonology Warlocks, and it's going to give you a solid foundation for the rest of the match, so stay tuned. To do this, we're going to go over two different games, as the playstyle is going to vary greatly between them.

These are when playing against at least one melee, or when playing against double caster. So let's get into the melee game first.

So, as with all openers, we first must begin by beelining to the closest pillar and placing our teleport. When doing this, make sure it's out of line of sight to deny enemies reconnecting with their gap closers when we port to safety.

We must also then create our gateway close to our teleport, providing us a swift getaway from when the enemy melee plows right through our teleport.

Once this is achieved, our next step is to get distance from our teleport as soon as possible, as this is going to make our defensive port just that much stronger as the melee has to walk further. This will also increase our damage in the long run, as we'll have more time.

While moving away from your portal, it's also important to apply quiet movement by using your instant globals at the same time. Here, Gelu uses power siphon and his grimoire while he's moving, which allows him to be able to hard cast when he gets enough range from his port.

After this, you'll want to fully ramp your tyrant as soon as possible, so continue summoning your high priority pets like Charhound and Dreadstalkers and even a Hand of Gul'dan if you have time for it. In this clip, the warrior leaps on Gelu as he's about to attack.

Gelu is now in the middle of the fight. He's about to cast his hand, so he instantly pacts and uses his teleport to finish summoning his tyrant instead, buffing all his powerful pets.

This is going to give him guaranteed damage as he continues to kite throughout the match, as well as a good source of demonic cores. After the tyrant has been summoned, the warrior reconnects, so he must kite once again.

In this instance, he uses his void elf racial, but you can easily substitute this with your soul burn gateway as well. The most important thing is to minimize damage while your teleport and pacts are in place.

The most important thing is to minimize damage while your teleport and pacts are in place. There's no need to use ça around cool down.

Just let your pets and instant demon bolts do the work for you. After kiting the warrior for a few seconds at this point, Gelu then takes his gateway back to safety.

Gelu refresher squeezes in his Dreadstalkers to continue his passive damage, but then once again moves away from his teleport ready to start the cycle of kiting the melee once again.

In this opener, you can see that although Gelu was kite'd, In this opener, you can see that although Gelu was kite'd, kiting all game, he was still top damage as he was able to get his pets out while also making the warrior completely useless.

Now in games like these, running in circles over and over will eventually lead you to a victory in dampening. So now, moving on to the opener we use when facing casters.

We're going to forego kiting to just flat out deal more damage. To set this up, start by placing your portal and gateway just like the melee opener.

Then immediately cash Charhound to get its cooldown roll. This step is going to be crucial since you don't need to be in range or line of sight of your target, so casting it first helps you avoid getting kicked.

Following this, we'll then want to continue building our Tyrant's strength, so we'll use Power Siphon for more shards, spin the Demon Bolts, and cast our Dreadstalkers. If you get two cores, it can be a great idea to Demon Bolt two targets to spread Doom for more chances at summoning a Doom Guard.

After this, to prevent being kicked on Tyrant, you should look to Grimoire one target and cover the other with your Coil or Axe Toss, allowing you to free cast or force trinkets if they wish to stop you.

Once all of our pets are out, it's time to alternate between Hand of Gul'dan's and Shadow Bolts to maximize Sacrificed Souls damage, all while pushing towards the healer for CC.

Then, as soon as Dogs is off cooldown, make sure you summon your Dreadstalkers to keep up your consistent damage and core generation while you go for crowd control. At this point, you should be able to land a CC on the healer with one of your initiation spells, and then follow up with a fear.

By focusing on dealing damage first and then going for CC once everything is rolling, it's very easy to snowball pressure in this way, rather than only focusing on one single aspect.

DEMO WARLOCK WIN CONDITION

In this final fundamentals video, we're going to be covering the win condition of Demonology Warlocks, which, much like the opener, revolves around our Demonic Tyrant. For our first win condition, we're going to be starting a few minutes into the match.

At this point, Gelu has his big Grimoire Felguard Tyrant set up in 27 seconds. Knowing how powerful this is, Gelu wants to finish the game with it in the next CC chain, so he tries to force as many cooldowns as he can before it comes up.

To do this, he starts with a Fear on the Holy Paladin and two Hand of Gul'dans on the Death Knight, which do deal some decent damage due to the Succulent Shards buff. He then summons his Instant Dreadstalkers and coils the Death Knight, as they're popping their cooldowns and he needs to live to his next setup.

In the same line of thinking here, Gelu then fears the Shadow Priest, forcing their Trinket, and then casts another Hand of Gul'dan before fearing the Priest again. This is all to buy time here.

After this, Gelu is then hit with some crowd control, but most importantly, his Tyrant is coming off cooldown soon, so he begins his win condition by casting his Charhound immediately after, which he then follows up with an Axe Toss on the Shadow Priest to reduce pressure and a Grimoire Felguard.

This is all to buy time for Gelu, because Gelu is now able to use his Succulent Shards on the Death Knight for damage and CC. Next up, he casts his Dreadstalkers and then summons his Demonic Tyrant, buffing all of his major pets.

Now, because the enemy Paladin has Sacrifice up, Gelu opts to cast Hand of Gul'dan to get even more pets and sends out a Shadow Bolt for the damage as the sac ticks down, and then fears the Paladin on the very end of it, so it's less likely to break.

From here, Gelu then casts another Hand of Gul'dan, for 3 more imps, and presses his Demonic Strength for burst.

Following this, he looks to close out the game with massive Demon Bolts, so he Power Siphons, sends out 2 HUGE Demon Bolts, and then with no more instant damage available, re-fears the Healer, which lets his partner finish off the job on the Death Knight with a slight assistance from Shadow Bolt.

As you see in this one, in this win condition.

Gelu played around his diminishing returns on everyone on the enemy team to reduce their pressure so he could get to his tyrant window, and then when he had all his pets out, he abused Sacrificed Souls to allow him to burst as hard as possible with Shadow Bolts and Demon Bolts with CC on the healer.

You don't always need to kill the DPS as Demonology though, as with Axe Toss and Coil, you can create very potent healer swaps too like Gelu does here. So to begin with in this clip, Gelu's team has managed to force both Emerald Communion and Trinket from the enemy preservation, leaving them very vulnerable to a swap.

Knowing this, Gelu starts to prep his next tyrant by summoning as many imps as possible with his Hand of Gul'dans. He then swaps all his pets to the Evoker and presses Power Siphon, giving him two huge instant Demon Bolts.

At this point however, the enemy Evoker uses their wall, so instead of bursting into it, Gelu waits with his setup, choosing to cast Hand of Gul'dan, and then using his E-Bow to deal massive damage.

He then casts Hand of Gul'dan instead, and then teleporting to safety while dropping the Evoker with his Bolts so they aren't topped before the go. Following this, the melees reconnect to him and the enemy Evoker's wall falls.

At which point, Gelu then Axe Tosses the preservation, casting his Dreadstalkers and chaining it with a Shadow Fury and Mortal Coil, which seals the deal with some assistance from his partner. So, in conclusion, Demonology's win condition is very tied to Tyrant.

However, don't feel like you always need to kill the DPS, as with Mortal Coil and plenty of stuns comes plenty of swap opportunities.