Welcome to the Demonologist Tank guide!
The Demonologist is one out of the four tank classes in the game. The Tank Demonologist consists out of a load of health, strapped in a ridiculous amount of damage mitigations. No special tank mechanics whatsoever in comparison to the 3 other tank classes.
You'll be in the Giant form for the most part, except for using movement abilities.
Demonologist in its Giant form
The official Allods Online video announcing the Demonologist class.
The Class resource: Obsession
The Demonologists' Resource is Obsession.
We generate this with our Resourcefillers.
You could say nearly any ability but Torturer's Blades fills our Obsession, as Torturer's Blades is our only spender.
Our big fillers are Tide of Madness, Shadow Flight, Rift of Pain, Chaos Explosion and Perennial Hunger.
You'll naturally use these as you go by your rotation, so you shouldn't struggle on Obsession.
If you do, then you will have to pump more stats into Supremacy, but we'll touch on that later on.
The Tank build
The tank role consists out of playing on the Giant form, barging into packs using Demonic Onslaught. Followed by activating your best damage mitigations first such as Torment for the Shackles of Agony buff. Torturer's Blades and Rift of Pain for Wall of Blades buff.
Using Veil of Darkness for your 100% uptime of 40% mitigation.
Save your Veil of Madness for panic moments, applying Defense to someone near you or somehow losing on your Veil of Darkness.
The Sphere of Negation is another mitigation but locks you out of using anything else. So that's basically visually shouting out for help.
The Tanking rotation
As seen above, starting combats with Torment will give us Shackles of Agony, which is a 50% mitigation. It'll prevent oneshots from groups and is strong to use off-cooldown. We follow-up everything with a Torturer's Blades when Obsession allows, which builds our Wall of Blades giving another 5% per stack, boosts our Chaos Explosion damage later on and reduces cooldown for our Veil of Darkness reducing another 40% mitigation permanently.
We follow-up with Dark Fire which is an aoe thanks to our Omnivorous Flame ruby, restores Obsession and assists also in our Chaos Explosion.
Again Torturer's Blades, and then Rift Of Pain.
Rift of Pain gives us a Wall of Blades for each target hit thanks to the Wall of Pain ruby, gives obsession and aggro.
Again Torturer's Blades followed by Chaos Explosion.
Chaos Explosion gives more Obsession per target hit, increased damage per Wall of Blades effect we had up to 3, and is generally a big aoe damage.
Having done that, you finished the starting rotation and you can continue spamming Torturer's Blades followed by any ability coming off-cooldown first.
You'll have used off-cooldown mitigations such as Veil of Darkness so you can keep that active thanks to the Torturer's Blades.
Chaos Explosion
Rift of Pain
Torturer's Blades
What tanking as a Demonologist is like
Tanking as a Demonologist feels quite robust. You're a big pack of health stacking up numerous mitigations to slow down going to 0.
Your mitigations are:
Veil of Darkness: This is your main mitigation. 40% mitigation and the duration can be extended to permanent uptime with Torturer's Blade via the Eternal Night (ruby effect).
Torturer's Blade: Builds up your Wall of Blades, reducing incoming damage by 5% per stack, up to 5 (25%).
Rift of Pain: Refills Obesession. Also gives 1 stack of Wall of Blades (5% mitigation) per target hit, as well a Shackles of Agony (50% mitigation) per target hit via the Wall of Pain (ruby effect).
Torment: Gives the Shackles of Agony buff (ruby effect). Another 50% mitigation.
Astral Plan: An insane 75% mitigation! But doesn't work for Physical Damage. Usually great for AOE's that aren't physical Damage.
Veil of Madness: A 60% mitigation used as a tool rather than a rotation. Consider it a panic button. Can also be used to apply Defense to your nearest member thanks to Aura of Madness (ruby effect).
Sphere of Negation: The same as Veil of Madness. Giving an extra CC immunity duration, at the cost of not being able to do anything else while channeling Sphere of Negation. It will refresh your Wall of Blades durations though.
Spamming Torturer's Blade is going to take Obsession, a lot of it.
Obsession refillers we recommend using are:
Tide of Madness: A total of 100 Obsession split in 50 upon use, and 50 in the next 10 seconds.
Dark Fire: Refills 20 Obsession, and an AOE damage over time via the Omnivorous Flame rubies.
Torment: Great ability! Next to serving as a mitigation, also restores 15 Obsession.
Desecration: As a last resort, gives 10 Obsession. Usually, you shouldn't be needing it, the others should suffice.
My hint to manage your Obsession whilst tanking would be to prioritize the lowest cooldown 1st.
So that should go
1) Torment,
2) Dark Fire,
3) Tide of Madness,
4) Chaos Explosion,
5) Rift of Pain. Again,
Desecration only if you have no Obsession and all of the aforemnetioned are on cooldown to use Torturer's Blade.
We've also got some great tools.
Ill Will: Is a CC immunity by default, but with the Will of Chaos (ruby effect), becomes a great tool to help us tank. Shows that you love your healer too! TIP: Chaos of Explosion also benefits from the Will of Chaos (ruby effect).
Apotheosis: Is a variant of Ill Will which also benefits from the Will of Chaos (ruby effect). I recommend using it before Reincarnation too, because Reincarnation is based on your maximum hp%, and thus heals a greater value. I simply consider them a combo package.
Dark Victim: Similar to Reincarnation, but it will leech hp from your allies, albeit little, to heal yourself to full in most situations.
As you can see, quite an arsenal to keep the damage at bay.
But how does it all play out?
You'll always want to pop Veil of Darkness and charge in with Demonic Onslaught at every start of combat. With Thunder Onslaught (ruby effect), you're going to give a fat AOE knockdown on top of it.
OLD PLAYER?
Since the Conviction nerf, it no longer is beneficial to run 750 and extend the Knock Down effect.
Once you're in the pack, you want to focus on spamming Torturer's Blade to lower Veil of Darkness cooldown so you can chain it.
Of course, it requires Obsession, so you'll want to use the biggest refillers to save as many GCD's as possible for the Torturer's Blade.
If for any reason you fail to chain Veil of Darkness, remember that you're always going to have mitigations active such as 5 stacks of Wall of Blades (5%/stack) and Shackles of Agony (50%).
Next to all that, you still have Veil of Madness and Sphere of Negation as panic buttons to bridge the Veil of Darkness downtime.
And if all that wasn't enough, you can still help your healer out with Ill Will, Apotheosis + Reincarnation and Dark Victim.
The Demonologist is a great utlity tank that feels quite flexibile.
About the Demonologist stats
Stats, that scary math that every player tries to avoid when they look for exactly the serenity and peace an mmo has to offer. But not you! You're that player that goes the extra mile to finetune their damage, or healing, and thus want to learn about stats.
You've come to the right place!
First of, it's worth noting that certain ratios of stats might be hard to come by, as the amount you have available to you increases over time, as new layers unlock, more stats become available from your gear.
So try adjusting the stats accordingly while maintaining the ratio's.
To continue of with stats, you'll want to use an addon called StatManager.
This little helpful thing helps you manage and change stats in a wink!
Be it different stat setups you want to try out, different ratios, or different specs between DPS'ing and tanking, you'll want to use StatManager.
You can download StatManager here.
if you want a quick guide on how it works, that can be seen here.
Offensive stats
Supremacy is used to generate Obsession. So that we can spam that Torturer's Blade easily and often to reduce our Veil of Darkness cooldown.
750 Supremacy is highly recommended.
A 1/2/1 ratio of your base stats is a good starting point to go from there. If you lack Obsession as you play to use Torturer's Blades consistently, then push Supremacy higher until you no longer need more.
Defensive stats
Survivability plays a big role as of 15.0.
Every tank scales on it and so does the Demonologist.
Make sure to run 750 at minimum of it. On later layers with leftover stats, you can go for 1000. It helps greatly on self healing via the Thrill of Chaos (ruby effect).
Dump everything else into Vitality as that's your biggest factor to stay alive. The more HP you have, the more you will heal from Thrill of Chaos (ruby effect) also, as it scales of your max hp%.
Vitality plays a bigger role than Survivability in this scenarion, so take all possible gear pieces to Vitality:
Earrings, Necklace, Weapons, Boots, Pants, Belt.
An example of the 1/2/1 ratio for Base stats.
Consumables, help yourself!
Now, I am not saying getting drunk is a good thing, but drinking certain concoctions could have benefits!
The consumables are pretty general and none really class specific.
Damage Consumables
[thematic name of patch] Tonic of Concentration (Alchemy): Generally a good potion for solo content such as Trial of Blood, Openworld and random PvP. It applies Valiance so bear in mind you'll have to set your stats specific for that. It does conflict with your support if they run Power, so try not messing with that.
[thematic name of patch] Potion of Proficiency/Determination/Brutality (Alchemy): Use these if you're a mixed damage class. Meaning, your overall damage consists out of more than 1 damage type.
Examples are Scout doing Elemental and Poison, Summoner doing Poison and Holy.
The Demonologist wants to use Determination for PvE, and Proficiency or Brutality for PvP as we use Holy and Physical Damage.
If you are a singular-damage class, then use these instead (Does not stack with Proficiency, Determination or Brutality potions).
Arcanum of Elemental/Physical/Natural/Holy Damage (Al Rihat): Increases specific damage types by 5%.
Singular-damage class examples are Warrior as Physical, Mage as Elemental.
You can easily see what damage types you do via a DPSmeter.
The Demonologist is a mixed class doing Physical and Holy damage.
Small healing potions & mitigations - all these share cooldowns.
[thematic name of patch] Potion of Healing (Alchemy): Restores a fixed amount, great for any role but tanks. Tanks are better of using Decoction of Astral Aegis or Infinite Tonic of Magical Armor. These share cooldown but the damage they will reduce is most likely more than the healing you'd receive.
Decoction of Astral Aegis (Order): Reduces all incoming damage by 30% for 8s.
Alchemists can craft variants of Decoction of Astral Aegis per damage type.
Infinite Tonic of Magical Armor (Mini-seasonal compass rating): Same as Decoction of Astral Aegis, but only absorbs Physical instead of everything and lasts longer.
As a Demonologist tank, you want to use Decoction of Astral Aegis.
Healing potions & mitigations - all these share cooldowns.
[thematic name of patch] Potion of Restoration (Alchemy): Restores a % amount, great for everyone.
[thematic name of patch] Potion of Absorption (Alchemy): Use these if you got a healer to avoid overhealing.
Vial of Areisa's Blood (Mini-seasonal compass rating): Special heal potion as a reward from compass ratings given at each end of a layer. It has an infinite use until the end of the current layer, and comes with a HealOverTime instead of a full pump heal and a self puri.
Utility
Infinite Potion of Astral Vision (Mini-seasonal compass rating): Very good for PvP scenario's. Works everywhere.
Common Potion of Astral Vision (alchemy): Very good for PvP scenario's. Works everywhere.
[thematic name of patch] Potion of the Marathoner: Increases movement speed for ridiculous good durations.
Stat food
Stat food in general exists in many forms, but does the same in general.
You can have 2 active, one offensive and one defensive.
Which are which is based on their stat. Do they give an offensive stat? Then it's offensive food.
As new patches unlock, where you get them and itemname change, but the effect is always the same.
Currently in 13.1, you can get them from Eden, and also from your Order NPC in Astral Academy.
Offensive food
Energy Drink (Expedition)
Something (Children)
Bitter Infusion (PvP only)
Defensive food
Canned Herring (Expedition)
Something (Children)
Jug of Yogurt (Order)
Boar Ribs (Order)
Cheese Soup (Order)
Wild Berry Juice (Order)
A final word
First of, we want to thank you for reaching the end of this guide.
It takes a good chunk of time and effort to make this guide, just like any other guides we made.
If there were things you'd doubt or think are incorrect, We'd be more than glad to hear about it and make the adjustments.
Every class develops infintely and so changes are inevitable. Hence, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy on every class guide, but we strive for exactly that.
If you feel like giving a person thank you, you can reach us via the footer or head over to our donations page.
Thank you again, and we hope we made you a better player :)