The Raid Demo

[-Shink-]

Tribrid-Good for fights where mobs/bosses have low protection or take double magic damage.You can show off with more -hate and more magic dmg on arbanus,gyas ,bone golems thoth adds,basilisk etc,other than that though is same or less dps with less team and self utility so personally i don't like it.

Perks-I either run cacodemon+bindings or cacodemon+wof and i use different speccs for each of them.Entity is not a subjective parse encounter.I ve been anywhere between 900 and 1700 dps depending on how much i have to run and/or tactic(killing projections or not).

Personally i ll take cacodemon any fight i can unless i have another demo in group running it and i ll run renegotiation+ring of fire or bindings +ring of fire only for fun.this though is down to personal preference and does not impact personal dps enough to argue about it.Adapting each time is fine.

[Khaletohep]

Did some more testing. Draw some conclucsions that I'd like some feedback on.

Fires of Gehenna vs. Shockstrike
Trying to find out which spell is "better", or under which circumstances which one gets better results.

Primary damage: This appears to be pretty much the same, as tested on firing continous nukes on a straw man (641.6 DPS with FoG, 647.8 DPS with Shockstrike, both with average crit rates, measured with guild stats, using BB equipment).

Secondary damage: FoG ruled hard, though, by the Incinerate DoT (99.7 DPS with 5/5 Lingering Flames).

This DoT is, however, also applied by Hellfire Stream and Waves of Flame (if feated). If your spell rotation includes these, using FoG would stack the DoT to x5 a bit sooner, but not enough to make a difference in most cases.

Buffs: FoG gives a buff to fire damage if Amassed Flames is feated, which would raise its primary damage slightly above that of Shockstrike. However, the buff only lasts for 6 seconds and needs to be stacked to x5 for maximum effect. This cannot practically be achieved with a spell rotation including Waves of Flames (4 seconds for WoF, then 2 seconds for FoG -> only possibe with zero lag and leaving out Shock and Hellfire Stream).

Splash damage: Shockstrike does much better if Chained Shockstrike is feated.

Mana use: FoG has a higher mana use than Shockstrike. Both cost the same amount of mana, but FoG has a shorter cast time. Its mana use is therefore in effect about 25% higher. After my 3 minute tests, I usually had about half my mana bar using Shockstrike and just about zero mana using FoG.

Spell rotation: The different cast times also make a difference for the cast rotation if you use Waves of Flames. Both these are possible:
- Waves of Flame, Hellfire Stream, Shock, Shockstrike, Waves of Flame
- Waves of Flame, Hellfire Stream, Shock, Fire of Gehenna, Waves of Flame

The second rotation, however, wastes .5 seconds in between the WoF spells.

In conclusion:

FoG is better
- against single targets (e. g. T3 except adds in the Toth Amon encounter, Imp, Zodiac, Entity),
- if you can not / do not use Waves of Flame (e. g. Entity),
- if you have little mana problems.

Shockstrike is better
- against multiple targets (e. g. T1, T2, adds in the Toth Amon encounter, General Sheng)
- if you can and will use Waves of Flame,
- if you have mana problems.

In my opinion, this makes Shockstrike the better overall spell. For special encounters (esp. Entity) which often require special feat setups anyhow, FoG can the better alternative.

Living Firestorm
Does 700ish damage for a 1.5 second cast with 75 seconds CD. Damage is kind of mediocre.
It pulses several times, but appears to only hit every target once, i. e. doesn't pulse on one target several times. This would make it useful only for encounters where lots of targets run into a specific spot (e. g. Sabazious), but even in those encounters, the Demo already has an awesome selection of AoE spells.

Conclusion: No. Just no.

Lingering Flames and Field of Fire
Lingering Flames is not good enough to be considered a "must have" feat, but is worth the points in my opinion. In the aforementioned example, the Incinerate DoT did just short of 100 DPS. That means that about 60 DPS resulted form those 5 feat points. Not

Consume Flames
This is actually quite decent if you have mana problems. Gives 12% of your total mana up to every 20 seconds, i. e. gives you back about a third of your mana every minute. As it uses up .5 seconds of cast time and removes the Incinerate DoT, this will lower your DPS, but having mana problemes lowers it even more.

What are your opinions / experiences with these spells / feats?

[Suctum]

On bosses that take increased magical damage (most of t3), you'll find incinerate does a lot more damage than your tests. You can upgrade it with a single point in intense heat and squeeze a few more points out of the dot, and even feat devouring flames and get some extra damage for nothing when fighting multiple trash mobs if they are well placed.

In regular encounters though, incinerate is pretty much meh and just there for either detonate or consume flames.

Amassed Flames, again pretty much meh as well, if you cast anything more than fog and instants, you'll lose the buff.

[Khaletohep]

Forgot one:

Demonic War
1/2 feat points give
- +1% Base Spell Damage for the whole group,
- a procc effect for the group, procced by physical attacks, giving +6.5% weapon damage for 10 seconds.

The procc rate is not documented. The buff was active for about 25% to 50% of the time on a highly unscientific strawman test.

2/2 feat points give
- +1% Base Spell Damage for the whole group,
- a procc effect for the group, procced by physical attacks, giving +13.0% weapon damage for 10 seconds.

The procc rate appeared to be higher, but that's hard to measure.

I have not observed the magic damage buff indicated by the tooltip:

"Each member affected [by the weapon damage buff] also increases the demonologist's magic damage."

Anybody have an idea about that?

[-Shink-]

Bugged since forever or false tooltip.Meelles and rangers in your group(or anyone that does a physical hit )get the damage buff but you don't get the magic dmg buff for each one affected in return.

[Shax84]

The only reason to take Demonic War is to get Unholy Hate.

If you want to compare damage of FoG and Shockstrike you have to include Shock Lance as well in my opinion. Every 5 casts you'll get the Shock Lance at 90% reduced cast time and with 25% extra critical chance and not having that on a FoG build is a dealbreaker for me. I'll have just the same amount of Incinerate procs anyway due to Hellfire Stream doing 1 stack, and the hits off Waves of Flame stacks it to 5. If Amassed Flames would have timer on 10 seconds rather than 6, it would be more tempting to use FoG since you could sustain it through a WoF channeling but you can't now so...

[Suctum]

Bugged since forever or false tooltip.Meelles and rangers in your group(or anyone that does a physical hit )get the damage buff but you don't get the magic dmg buff for each one affected in return.

That's probably for the best, demo's already have insanely high dps, increasing it with further with only a 2 point feat would be somewhat unbalanced if it worked as it said.

Unless I am going for unholy hate, I never put more than one point in demonic war, and that's only to move down the feat tree, not for demonic war itself.

[-Shink-]

That's probably for the best, demo's already have insanely high dps, increasing it with further with only a 2 point feat would be somewhat unbalanced if it worked as it said.

Unless I am going for unholy hate, I never put more than one point in demonic war, and that's only to move down the feat tree, not for demonic war itself.

Because if you got like 30-50 magic damage of it and had 1530-1550 instead of 1500 in t4 stuff it would be insane dps increase? .And not in t4 gear it would be something significant so a good feat instead of "get it only if you want unholy hate".

Plus you are dropping something else to get it,its not exactly free "oh lets put 2-3 pts here".

Also the debate around fog vs shockstrike is null.There are speccs and times that it's better to use fog or better to use shockstrike or both.

[Suctum]

Because if you got like 30-50 magic damage of it and had 1530-1550 instead of 1500 in t4 stuff it would be insane dps increase? .

Plus you are dropping something else to get it,its not exactly free "oh lets put 2-3 pts here".

There's really nothing your dropping to get Demonic War, your just leaving out amassed flames which is a preference.

And not everyone has full sets of t4 armor, you should not base class abilities by judging how it affects someone with the best items because that's not representative of the class norm.

Demo's do not need any dps increase on top of what they already have, and increasing magic damage could also mean magic damager multiplier, in that case if it went from 1% to 6% that would be signifigant and very powerful for a 2 point feat.

[-Shink-]

You replied before i edited.I am not basing that on t4 gear.For less geared players it would be a good feat.And if you don't drop anything then obviously we have different opinions about various feats in both trees.