PvE Demonology Warlock Tanking

If you fondly remember tanking Twin Emperors as a Warlock in Vanilla WoW, or if you’ve enjoyed playing a Warlock Tank in Season of Discovery, there’s good news for you: Warlock Tanking is back in Mists of Pandaria Classic. All you need is Glyph of Demon Hunting and you’re good to go! But of course, playing a completely different role will require you to know a few things first.

Important Caveats

One important thing to note about tanking as a Warlock is that you will not have the full toolkit of a “real” tank. Don’t expect to be main tanking for progression raids, but you can definitely have some fun in dungeons and other content.

As a Warlock Tank, your taunt doesn’t generally work on bosses, similar to how pet taunts don’t. You will therefore need to build threat with your damage. You will gain significantly more threat from your damage while Dark Apotheosis is active, but you will also deal less damage due to the way it changes your spells. Most importantly, you don’t get Vengeance or crit immunity as a Warlock Tank, two important features of most other tanking builds.

You won’t be able to select the Tank role in the Looking For Group tool. You’ll have to form your own group, and your teammates will have to be comfortable with running an instance with a Warlock Tank considering all of the caveats listed above.

Dark Apotheosis

Glyph of Demon Hunting gives you the Dark Apotheosis ability, which is the stance that enables tanking. It’s a half-demon form that gives you access to some of your Metamorphosis abilities as well as some new ones, and it also decreases the damage you take. Your Mastery: Master Demonologist improves this stance, further improving its damage reduction effects.

Dark Apotheosis replaces some of your spells with ones that make more sense for tanking:

• Shadow Bolt and Touch of Chaos both become Demonic Slash
• Soulshatter becomes Provocation
• Twilight Ward becomes Fury Ward
• Fear becomes Sleep

You’ll also be able to use these abilities outside of Metamorphosis:

• Aura of Enfeeblement
• Aura of the Elements
• Carrion Swarm
• Demonic Leap (won’t transform you)
• Immolation Aura
• Void Ray

Additionally, Banish and Soul Fire will cost Demonic Fury to cast.

Rotation & Cooldowns

You won’t need to change much about the way you play as a Demonology Tank. Your normal DPS rotation and gear should work just fine. You’ll primarily want to weave in some of your new abilities and remember to use your defensive cooldowns.

• Provocation is your taunt; remember to use it so the enemy stays focused on you. (Note that it doesn’t work on bosses, however.)
• Demonic Slash replaces Shadow Bolt and Touch of Chaos in your rotation.
• Make use of your new Fury Ward ability for defense, as well as Unending Resolve, your Healthstone, and any other defensives you have from talents.
• Be especially cautious when using any ability that drains your health: Burning Rush, Health Funnel, and Life Tap could be dangerous to use while actively taking hits from mobs.

Stats & Gear

If you want to equip your Warlock specifically for tanking, you’ll want to go with your normal stat priority except that Mastery will be more valuable than Haste and Stamina will be more valuable than Intellect:

1. Hit Chance (until 15% Hit cap)
2. Stamina
3. Intellect
4. Spell Power
5. Mastery
6. Haste
7. Critical Strike

You won’t find much tank-oriented gear for cloth wearers or Intellect users, but you may want to grab some tanking trinkets. These two have both Stamina and Mastery on them:

• Lao-Chin’s Liquid Courage
  • 1750 Valor Points – requires Revered with Shado-Pan
• Jade Warlord Figurine
  • Trash Mobs in Heart of Fear or Mogu’shan Vaults (Heroic)