How to best demonology warlock talent spec: world of warcraft

The Demonology tree involves bonuses involving your pet, your stats, and your conjured stones. Demonology trades the damage options of Affliction and Destruction for enhanced survivability and a stronger pet.

Improved Healthstone rank 2/2
Increases the amount of Health restored by your Healthstone by 20%.

Comment: Your final rank healthstone will go from 2100 to 2500, a 400 health increase. Not bad, but not great.

Solo: ** - I remember sometimes where 400 health saved or would have saved my life. I would not count on it though.
Raid: **1/2 - See note. This talent is more useful in raids since the bonus carries to everyone and not just you. Still not that big of a deal though.
PvP: *** - A pretty good help in the arena. Not as useful in BG's though.

Notes: People can carry multiple max rank healthstones if the Warlocks in the raid have a different numbers of points in this talent. Cooldown still applies though.

Improved Imp rank 3/3
Increases the effect of your Imp's Firebolt, Fire Shield, and Blood Pact spells by 30%.

Comment: Greatly increases your Imp's DPS and makes Blood Pact a little better. For the final rank of Blood Pact, it increases the bonus from 66 sta to about 85, an increase of about 200 health - not that big of a deal.

Solo: **? (Varies) - Depends completely on your play style. If you do not grind with Imp, this talent is worthless. If you use him for Blood Pact, you are spending many talent points for only a minor increase of health. If you use him for DPS, this talent is a must-have.
Raid: **1/2? (Varies) - Good to increase the party's health, but not crucial.
PvP: * - Imp is not the best pet for PvP, but some people like him for his DPS.

Notes: Imp's DPS got severely nerfed in a recent patch. In the interest of DPS, this talent is not that great without Improved Fire Bolt.

Demonic Embrace rank 5/5
Increases your total Stamina by 15% but reduces your total Spirit by 5%.

Comment: A very significant increase to your health. With the higher stamina values in BC, this talent is very important for PvP.

Solo: ** - The most efficient "stat" in solo is killing efficiency. This does not make you kill any faster, but since it helps prevent you from dying, it is not bad.
Raid: ** - Ideally, you should not be taking damage. In reality, you will be taking damage. This will help you take those hits and give you a wider "Life Tap" range for health, but it is not crucial.
PvP: ***** - Health is more important than ever in PvP, especially for Warlocks. Many classes would kill for this talent.

Notes: Note that an increase to your stamina also results in an increase to your pet's stamina. For builds with Demonic Knowledge, add an extra 1/2 star to the talent rating.

Improved Health Funnel 2/2
Increases the amount of Health transferred by your Health Funnel spell by 20% and reduces the health cost by 20%.

Comment: A decent talent for improving the efficiency of Health Funnel, mainly for use with a Voidwalker or Felguard.

Solo: **** (1/2 for Affliction) - Good for Felguard specs. Faster healing that requires less of your own health makes things a little more smoothly. Near worthless for builds that do not use Felguard or VW.
Raid: 1/2 - Every second spent using Health Funnel is a serious loss in DPS.
PvP: * - Sucks because Health Funnel sucks.

Notes: Note that +healing (and therefore +dmg) affects Health Funnel now.

Improved Voidwalker rank 3/3
Increases the effectiveness of your Voidwalker's Torment, Consume Shadows, Sacrifice and Suffering spells by 30%.

Comment: Improves your VW's threat-holding ability and Sacrifice. Worthless for FG and drain tanking builds.

Solo: * (*** if you grind with VW) - The most effective ways to grind are either by drain tanking or by grinding with a Felguard (post 60). However, if you insist on using Voidwalker to level, this is a pretty good talent to invest in.
Raid: 1/2 - Voidwalker is not a viable off tank in later instances.
PvP: * - VW is worthless in PvP except for using Sacrifice, which is dispellable. However, this talent has value if you are one of those Warlocks in arena who likes to use dual/tri Sacrifice with Fel Dom builds.

Master Conjurer rank 2/2
Increases the bonus Fire damage from Firestones and the Firestone effect by 30% and increases the spell critical rating bonus of your Spell stone by 30%.

Comment: Slightly improves the stats of Firestones and Spell stones. In the case of the Spell stone, I mean slight. Like two talent points for a small percent of a crit only if you have a Spell stone equipped somewhat slight. Yeah, this talent sucks.

Solo: 1/2 - No thanks. Wands and Life Tap -> Drain Life are usually more effective than melee + Firestone, and the benefits in fire damage and crit are too small to be worth any points.
Raid: 1/2 - See above.
PvP: 1/2 - See above.

Notes: One of the worst talents in the game. If this and Improved Enslave Demon were combined at tier 1 for a single talent point, I still would not get them.

Mana Feed 3/3
when you gain mana from Drain Mana or Life Tap spells, you pet gains 100% of the mana you gain.

Comment: Life Tap makes your mana pool last longer. With this talent, it makes your pet's mana pool last longer too! This is great as it reduces pet downtime with the FG/VW, improves the long term DPS of the Imp, and helps the Succubus CC for longer periods.

Solo: **** - Without this talent, your Felguard would have downtime related to his mana. Putting 2 or 3 points into this talent will allow him to spam all of his abilities without downtime. Helps Imp a lot too.
Raid: **** - See above. Mana Feed makes Succubus a lot better for CCing.
PvP: **** - If you are this far into Demo, you are spec'd for longer lasting fights where your Felhunter or Felguard can run out of mana. This is the single most important talent for keeping your pet's mana up.

Notes: It is not necessary to max out this talent. You only need one or 2 points for PvP, two or three (maxed) for PvE.

Master Demonologist rank 5/5
Grants both the Warlock and the summoned demon an effect as long as that demon is active. Imp - Reduces threat caused by 20%. Voidwalker - Reduces physical damage taken by 10%. Succubus - Increases all damage caused by 10%. Felhunter - Increases all resistances by one per level. Felguard - Increases all damage caused by 5% and increases all resistances by 0.5 per level.

Comment: An incredible talent that makes Demonology builds very versatile. Unfortunately, this versatility is somewhat limited by the fact that raids and party groups always want you to have a certain pet out. If your pet dies, you lose MD - be careful.

Solo: ***** - There is no reason to skip this talent if you are going deep into Demonology.
Raid: ***** - Very nice, as you get to choose between a pure damage increase (Suc), significant threat reduction (Imp), and for certain battles, resistance (Felhunter), but it won't fit into most raid builds.
PvP: ***** - Vulnerable to banish, but still a solid talent. See note.

Notes: Some have argued only placing 4 points into this talent, because most casters will have well over the amount penetration than the resistance it provides.

Demonic Resilience rank 3/3
reduces the chance you will be crit by melee and spells by 3% and reduces all damage done to your demon by 15%.

Comment: Significantly decreases the damage your pet takes. Essential for Felguard grinding. The crit protection is helpful, but it is too early to see whether it is significant when stacked with resilience or not.

Solo: **** - Essential for Felguard grinding as it reduces the damage he takes, thus reducing the amount of healing he needs.
Raid: *** (* for builds that do not use Felguard) - Felguard needs the AoE damage mitigation.
PvP: **** - Pets are commonly the first target nowadays, and this will greatly improve their mitigation. 120 resilience worth of anti-crit is not too shabby, either.

Notes: This talent WILL stack on top of the resilience "soft cap" at 492.

Soul Link rank 1/1
270 Mana 100 yd range Instant cast: When active, 20% of all damage taken by the caster is taken by your demon instead. In addition, both the demon and the master will inflict 5% more damage. Lasts as long as the demon is active.

Comment: Not quite the monster that it used to be, but considering you only have to put one point into it, it is still a pretty good talent. Not truly an increase to mitigation (as the same total damage has been done), but helps deal with burst well.

Solo: **** - More useful for the damage increase.
Raid: **** - One point for 5% extra damage is incredible. Losing this point (and your 3 from DK/5 from MD) due to AoE damage is much worse, though.
PvP: ***** - Considered by many to be a requirement for PvP.

Notes: It is still an incredible talent, as shown by the proportion of high arena ranked Warlocks who spec Demonology for it.

Demonic Knowledge rank 5/5[/b]
Increases your spell damage by an amount equal to 12% of your pet's stamina plus intellect.

Comment: For most Warlocks, this is about a +100 bonus to spell damage. It scales, but not very well (a small percent of a small percent). An incredible talent nonetheless.

Solo: ***** - Greatly increases spell damage, and doesn't require good gear to see the effects!
Raid: ***** - See above.
PvP: ***** - See above.

Notes: The best pet for receiving damage from DK is the Imp, but his MD bonus does not affect damage (just threat).

Demonic Tactics rank 5/5
Increases crit chance of you and your summoned demon by 5%

Comment: More crits. The usefulness of this talent depends on how often you nuke as a Demonology build. Yeah, I think the change was dumb too.

Solo: *** - Higher DPS is good, even if it only affects your nukes.
Raid: **** - Crit helps Improved Shadow Bolt procs, which is great. Loses a point compared to Devastation due to tree placement.
PvP: ** - Felguard will rarely crit against a geared opponent, because his crit with this talent will still only be ~10%. A decent boost to the Warlock in 5v5, where you might have time to spam Shadow Bolts.

Notes: This talent is weak because it suffers greatly from placement.

Summon Felguard rank 1/1
Summons a Felguard under the command of the Warlock.

Comment: A high DPS melee pet with decent health/armor. Comes with his own set of abilities, the most notable of which is Intercept - a 3-second stun that puts the Felguard near the target, but with an 8-25 yard range and a 30-second cooldown.

Solo: ***** - Felguard is pretty good for leveling after 56.
Raid: (depends) - Felguard does extremely well against certain bosses and has been found to beat out Affliction at lower levels of gear. Against other bosses, Felguard is worthless.
PvP: **** - Spec-defining talent. Felguard's Intercept is very useful as it is not magical and does not count against your Fear diminishing returns. He pressures cloth well with his appearance and damage and difficulty to Psy Scream/Frost Nova. However, he is extremely vulnerable to banish.

Notes: Ignore the Warlocks who say that Felguard is for "noobs." They think having to push three buttons instead of four makes you very easy mode. They do not realize that fewer buttons = fewer options to work with.

-Brandon C. ; aka. Darksun22