Recently Tap Tap Pew Pew posted a two part interview about Demonology Warlocks. After reading it I decided that I’d try it out with Soulglowe. I found a common raiding spec on WoWWiki and opted to not take Shadowburn since it’s one of those abilities I always forget to use. Then it was off to test things out and farm some primals. Things went really smoothly. I was able to farm a total of about 10 primals of different types in about 2 hours or so. During this time I was able keep farming without having to eat or drink very often.

For a spell rotation I would cast Corruption and then Shadow Bolt until dead. Periodically I would use Drain Soul (Rank 1) to get a shard. When I ran low on mana I would Life Tap until full and the cast Corruption and Drain Life until full health again. I died once due to drowning when I failed to notice my Unending Breath had dropped. But who cares about farming primals? My usefulness in dungeons and raids is the true test of my satisfaction.

Last night I ran a Heroic Underbog (probably one of my favorite dungeons in TBC) with some guildies for badges and to see just how much I liked Demonology. My concerns were how I would do with micromanaging DoTs, a pet and my aggro. As for the pet I wasn’t sure how much he would interfere with the tank, how squishy he would be and what the effects of his cleave would be. I’ve never played a pet class in a group situation before beyond my imp bounding behind me out of phase.

One of the places I deviate from what Bristinie says in the interview is that Soulglowe has 2/3 Frozen Shadoweave as opposed to the recommended unspecific damage gear. For a rotation I decided to cast Corruption, Curse of Agony and then Shadow Bolt until dead while refreshing DoTs where appropriate. On trash with higher HP and Bosses I added Immolate which I didn’t refresh. I also remember to turn off Intercept and Torment on the pet.

The results were pretty much immediately satisfying. The pet didn’t seem problematic at all and didn’t really need to be micromanaged beyond sending him on the next kill target. I did turn off cleave on some pulls to ensure that he wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. Through the whole run he died twice. Once to Hungerfen which I expected and once to trash he was off-tanking.

Since our group lacked meaningful CC I used the pet to off-tank the squishy Broken in the water tank section leading to second boss. It seemed to work out really well. The mobs were generally half dead by the time Intercept stun wore off. I also made sure to disable Torment and Intercept before sending him back on the regular kill targets.

All in all it was a great run. I got 4 badges, Revered with the Cenarion Expedition and found I really enjoyed the Demonology spec. At the end of the run Recount showed that I had done about 700 dps which was up from the 600 dps I was doing with the Shadow Mage spec I had had previously. My next step is to finish off the Frozen Shadoweave set, get the Spellstrike set crafted and upgrade my trinkets.