Demonology Warlock Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

General Rotation

The general rotation of demonology revolves around resource management and building/spending shards properly. Summon Demonic Tyrant is a talent that is pretty much always taken, and a large portion of your damage will come from properly using this cooldown. The goal of tyrant setups is to extend all your "big" demons (Dreadstalkers and Vilefiend).

General priority can be summarized as this:

• Don't overcap soul shards
• Don't overcap Demonic Core procs
• Cast Call Dreadstalkers on cooldown
• Implode with 6+ Imps if talented
• Clean Tyrant and Dominion Of Argus windows

Opener

Precast Power Siphon (if talented into Inner Demons) around 5 seconds before combat.

1. Pre cast 2x Shadow Bolt / 1x Demonbolt (if no Power Siphon)
2. Call Dreadstalkers
3. Build to 5 shards with Shadow Bolt (4 if Soul Harvester)
4. Summon Doomguard (if talented)
5. Grimoire: Imp Lord / Grimoire: Fel Ravager (if talented)
6. Build to 5 shards with Shadow Bolt IF DIABOLIST,
7. Summon Demonic Tyrant
8. Hand of Gul’dan if 3+ shards
9. Demonbolt /w Demonic Core procs with < 3 shards
10. Shadow Bolt with < 3 shards

When Tyrant has less than 13 seconds left, try to make sure to have 2+ core procs saved and full shards. Then, repeat the opener from step 2.

General Priority Outside of Tyrant Setups

1. Call Dreadstalkers unless you decide to hold a few seconds for a Tyrant setup. Never hold Dreadstalkers if not talented into Reign Of Tyranny. The number of seconds it is acceptable to hold depends on fight timings, mechanics, and when you need your next Tyrant to be.
2. Power Siphon (if talented), unless you have 3+ core procs or 2+ core procs and dreadstalkers are about to expire.
3. Implosion /w 6+ Imps (if talented)
4. Instant Demonbolt if close to Demonic Core cap (4) unless it will overcap shards.
5. Hand of Gul’dan on 3+ Shards
6. Instant Demonbolt if 2+ Demonic Core available.
7. Shadow Bolt

Try to hold on to 1 core proc for movement or refreshing Doom if talented.

Multi Target

The Multi target rotation revolves around Implosion Cycles and spreading Doom with instant Demonbolts if talented. With the change to Implosion capping the amount of imps consumed to 6, it simplifies the gameplay and the only goal is to have 6+ imps on every Implosion.

Doom Gameplay: With the rework of Doom in The War Within (and now in Midnight) you want to spread as many Doom debuffs as possible. You do this by targeting mobs with your instant demon bolts that do not already have Doom active. I highly recommend using a mouseover exists macro for this as it's easier to get back to your “main target” while spreading brands around.

Cooldowns

In most raid encounters and mythic+, you want to use your cooldowns as soon as they are available to not lose out on possible uses.

This is also true for Demonology, but there are cases where you will need to hold cooldowns or sometimes even rush cooldowns to have better cooldown alignment throughout the rest of the fight.

As it stands right now the most impactful decision you have to make is when it is good to hold cooldowns for the next pack. This doesn't have only 1 correct answer, but a general rule is that if a pack will live for less than 20 seconds, pressing cooldowns is generally not a good idea because the damage window after you press Tyrant is upwards of 40 seconds.

This does NOT apply when doing lower level content where everything dies in 20 seconds regardless of what you do.

When reaching more advanced levels of demonology gameplay, your thoughts should not be on the current Tyrant setup. Focus should instead be on where the NEXT Tyrant will be. If you get used to the "think of the next cooldown" mentality, your damage will go up on average.

Movement

Demonology has been known for having poor mobility, but that isn't necessarily the case anymore.

We have enough Demonic Core procs if used wisely, and Burning Rush + Demonic Circle being pretty much mandatory class tree talents, we can move around freely outside of cooldowns.

For most cases, as long as you know the fight and can find a 10-15 second window to stand mostly still and cast during your Dominion Of Argust window, no amount of movement should feel awful.

Defensives

Defensive usage as a warlock comes down to pressing Dark Pact BEFORE you take incoming damage. With the cooldown reduction from Frequent Donor or the increased power Ichor Of Devils, it is one of the strongest short cooldown defensives in the game. This is especially true for Soul Harvester with Friends In Dark Places which increases the shield amount by an additional 50%.

If that wasn't good enough, you have Fel Armor giving 3% flat damage reduction +10% stagger and Demonic Skin recharging your Soul Leech at a constant rate. You also have a 3-minute cooldown 40% damage reduction, or 2-minute 15 seconds cooldown 25% damage reduction in Unending Resolve to fall back on.

The War Within brought with it the Pact of Gluttony talent, which might be the most powerful defensive tool of them all. It gives you the ability to use multiple Healthstones per fight on a 1 minute cooldown.

Pair that with Soulburn and you have 1 minute defensive cooldown that heals you for 65% of max health and increases your max hp by 20% for 12 seconds. This can also be paired with Dark Pact (scales with max and current health) for one of, if not the most powerful 1 minute defensive combos in the game.

Other Notable Mentions:

• 15% flat stamina from Demonic Embrace and Demonic Fortitude
• Soul link for another 10% flat damage reduction
• Lifeblood
• 4% damage reduction for 10 seconds after using Demonic Circle or Gateway via Abyss Walker talent
• Mortal Coil /w the talent Improved Mortal Coil 25% max hp heal on a 45 sec cooldown
• Drain Life /w talents heal and Soulburn heals for approximately 20-25% of your max hp in approximately 2 seconds.