Demonic Circle: not just for PvP

Once upon a (short, distant) time, Demonic Circle was thought to be a useless frill to appease PvP warlocks, but instead, it has turned out to be an excellent PvE raiding utility spell, particularly since a disproportionate part of raiding these days is "GTFO <shit>" where shit can be fire, ooze, defilement, frost patches, slime or whatever. To use DC to its maximum advantage you need to consider its three boons:

1. Mobility — it's a fucking teleport.


2. Facing — on arrival you always face in the direction you were standing when you cast the spell.


3. Graphic — it lasts for 6 minutes, giving your raid a durable, refreshable and consistent point of reference.

How you use it in a boss fight will depend on your raid's strategy, whether you need to run away fast, or get into position fast, and how much mobility the fight requires. To examine most of these aspects, I'll run through the Icecrown Citadel bosses in order, but first a recap of the spells involved:

Demonic Circle: Summon (DC) — summons the demonic circle at your feet, which lasts for six minutes. The DC effect is a bright green rune on the ground with a sparkly green shower-head above it. Cast this spell facing the direction you want to be when you arrive.

Demonic Circle: Teleport (DT) — teleports you to your demonic circle. DT has a 40-yard range and a 30s cooldown. This is plenty for most significant boss abilities that you're avoiding, but beware: some boss abilities will put you out of range - have a visual indicator in your UI for when it's castable. Note that DT is on the GCD.

Trash

This is more useful for Demonology, which is ridiculously fun for trash. First, set your demonic circle outside of melee range of the huge clusterfuck of The Damned that your tanks will surely pull. Second, put on your purple Lollidan suit, light yourself on fire, charge, and cast rain of fire. When you stop being purple (and stop being on fire) use Demonic Teleport to GTFO of melee range and spam Seed. Finally, rejoice in how uber-1337 your AoE DPS is every 2.1 minutes.

P.S. Nobody cares.

Lord Marrowgar

Meh. Not much use here. Just cross your fingers for the Frozen Bonespike and Crushing Coldwraith Belt.

Lady Deathwhisper

Drop a circle in the middle (within range of the crazy lady) before the pull, and then move away from it. If you get hit by Death and Decay, teleport out of it, and move to the other side when you're refreshing CoA or LT or casting a Nightfall Shadow Bolt.

This isn't the most exciting of uses for DC/DT, but it illustrates a theme: When there's going to be bad shit on the floor, drop a circle and move away from it. When you're in the bad shit, teleport. Use instant casts to move away from the circle again. Rinse, repeat.

Gunship Battle

WTF, Blizzard? Seriously? You've nerfed this trivial fight so it's impossible to die by missing the fucking boat with a rocket pack — a pointless fucking nerf if ever there was one — but we can't teleport back to the gunship? Wankers.

Deathbringer Saurfang

If your raid's burst DPS is low enough that you have to DPS the blood beasts, and you're terribad at assisting someone who should have more threat than you, then use this to get further away from a beast that you've aggroed. Otherwise, useless. Possibly useful for Demo charge/self-immolation/rotation and reset... but this fight is better as affliction, so bitch and moan until your raid leader lets you go affliction.

(In a later post, I'll write about macros and strategies that can help nuke the beasts while sustaining your DPS on Saurfang himself.)

Festergut

You should be at range for Festergut so you don't get Vile Gas in the melée (or on the tank; if you do that, please stop raiding). We have one spore stack on the tank, two spores stay away, and everyone else piles on the tank spore to pick up their stack of Inoculated. So you're going to be running in to the tank (or a nearby ranged that's staying out), and then teleporting out.

On the pull, ranged will be spread out around the ring, and you should start your rotation from there, moving closer to Festergut when you put your instants up, and getting as close as you can while staying out of melee range before casting your circle.

Why not stay at 30 yards? Further to run in, and longer travel time for haunt. Affliction is better closer to the boss.

Why not drop the circle on the tank? The Blighted Spores debuff ticks AoE shadow damage. The tick makes it more important to GTFO than GTFI: Run in, 'port out.

This, obviously, varies by strat: We use a single-clump strategy, other raids do it differently. Adapt.

Rotface

Drop it somewhere in the middle where you can DPS Rotface. Use it to return from running a Little Ooze or after a Big Ooze's Unstable Ooze Explosion.

Professor Putricide

Did I mention that DT removes all snare effects? No? Well, it doesn't on this fight, quite. The major snare in the PP fight is the Volatile Ooze Adhesive. DT doesn't actually remove the snare, but it does still 'port you. This allows you to move less when repositioning before the ooze spawns, and still give the raid maximum DPS time on the ooze if you're targeted.

Drop your circle as far to the South of the room (the left as you stand in the door looking at the table) as you can. When your raid positions for the volatile ooze, be sure to be within 40 yards of your circle, but beyond that, you can be as spread out as you like. DT if (and only if) you get targeted.

Blood Prince Council

Not hugely useful, unless you have a static position for Prince Taldaram, and get targeted by Conjure Empowered Flame, when you can use it to port further away. YMMV.

Blood Queen Lana'thel

Drop your circle in the center on the pull. When she gives you Pact of the Darkfallen teleport to the middle.

Valithria Dreamwalker

Only useful for switching sides to burn Blazing Skeletons etc.; i.e. not much.

Sindragosa, Queen of the Frostbrood

This is going to vary hugely by strategy for Phase 3, but for the first two (alternating) phases, you're going to be providing a point of reference for positioning ice tombs, and using the circle to GTFO of Blistering Cold. You'll also be a reference point for the other ranged who lack your teleport to know when to turn around and start up the pew pew again.

The Lich King

TBD.