I love demo, as I have said in prior threads on the spec, I have mained it for years. For this reason I am passionate about the spec and thus want to put forward my case on the 11.2 changes incoming and the dev notes.
Blizz have definitely made some mistakes with demo over the years, removing awesome cooldowns like meta and nether portal are up there. Making doom and the rng doomguard is also one that feels off, multi-dotting was not a good addition to demo at all, the fun is all in building a huge army semi-reliably with rewards for playing better. The skill ceiling was very enticing part of demo, the bigger an army you made, the more damage your tyrant did. They then capped that.
What I want to get at mainly here is that increasing simplcity of the spec is not enjoyable. Dragonflight season 4 as an example was a time I would say was a very miserable point to play demo. We were forced to build crit/vers for damage, dealing way too much damage with a dot and our tyrant hit like a wet noodle. On top of that, it felt like the skill ceiling was very low for the spec.
Now in 11.2 there will be more crit relliance and the tyrant imp cap is reduced to 5 and in ptr it does pitiful damage. THIS IS NOT WHAT MAKES DEMO FUN.
We already have a plethora of easy specs in the game, if you want an easy warlock go destro and if you want an easy pet class go BM hunter. Why can’t we have demo keep a solid skill ceiling and be one of the few specs appealing to someone who wants a challenge?
I was really hoping in 11.2 we might be seeing a rise in complexity again, a return to the glory days of demo lock, perhaps even a removal of doom and maybe making our current tier set baseline or bringing back some old spells (ya know, maybe even decimating bolt seeing as we are one of the two specs to keep nothing from shadowlands).
Perhaps I am just ranting but I feel strongly on this. I want to see more complexity with demo, I know plenty others who also feel the same way.
Blizzard, this is my plea to please think about Demonology differently. Please consider increasing the spec’s skill ceiling, making the spec more enjoyable for those who care about it. You’ve taken meta. Fine. You’ve taken nether portal. Fine. But please, don’t reduce the spec to what you have stated your intentions are in the recent tuning update.
And to the community, if you agree that demo should stay complex then please, say so. That honestly, everyone should feel welcome to share what they love about the spec and hopefully we can show Blizzard a better path for development on the master summoner of WoW. Thanks for your time all.
At this point, it bothers me more the removal of NP then it did Meta (I still belive its possible to give us something similar, like becoming tyrant or something, the ultimate demon lord as a demon ) but yeah, I agree with the doom part, not very fond of multidoting and seeing it doing more dps instead of the tyrant itself. i wish they could do a rework of the spec in some way, not totally but in a way. we’ll see what the future brings on demo locks.
PS - if I coudl ask for something, I would ask the venthyr ability (IC i think) that applied curses and get curse of elements back so we could bring something to raid apart from cookies!)
I’m trying the ptr and honestly Demonology seems very strong to me. I often complain about the developers’ choices, obviously the loss of Metamorphosis was a very hard blow, but I never liked the old builds where you had to pump a high number of imps to then have the big boy tyrant.
In the ptr currently the tyrant is a real burst as it enhances all demons by 25% instead 15%, furthermore the introduction of the master summoners in the talents makes the spec much more fluid and fast, going from 15% to 25% cast speed. In a pve key it seems great to me, no longer having to sit there calculating the “perfect” tyrant based on the number of imps.
In a pvp key it is a very positive thing, as the problem of the spec was the excessive casting of demons. In addition, a pvp slot will be freed up. The right tree has been enhanced as I wanted, and the felguard really hurts. This way, I can use a spec that I used previously with doom and felguard enhanced, avoiding charhound for superior mobility and immediacy in dealing damage.
The corruption instant is something useful to stop the cap of flags and try to avoid restealth, as well to hit totems. The bonus set is very nice for demonology, especially diabolist with the eyes of the inquisitor old cap talent of DF. For a first release, “it’s okay” since lately it seems they do almost nothing for the class. I hope for improvements in the warlock tree
p.s. Many are complaining that Demonology will lose the 5 second reduction to dreadstalkers in PvP, but the increased casting speed of dreadstalkers, charhound, tyrant and the free PvP slot are really remarkable
I must say the master summoner talent looks great. Everything else tho looks incredibly boring and takes a lot of fun out of demo. Just having your felguard do any of the heavy lifting is passive and really not the move.
Having to pump big imp packs and get the perfect tyrant, that was the skill ceiling, that is what let good demo players get an edge on others. I think we may be in disagreement here but appreciate your contribution as goes with all other contributions on this thread
but it’s not just a question of the “perfect tyrant” that if someone is good he knows how to get and if he is not good he doesn’t get it. It’s very situational like “burst”, it depends on too many factors that are not only the skill of the player such as having to avoid damage.
In mythic+ it is not always obtainable, in pvp then it is really difficult to get it and even if one did get it… just a fear, a root or a column and the whole burst is lost.
In ptr it is a burst that is decidedly less “brainy” and more immediate as well as faster. The current changes in ptr are to limit the problems of the spec, that is an exasperated slowness in producing damage and a burst that depends on often external factors
I totally agree with you but unfortunetly after posting dozens of feedback here or on some other forums I think I lost all my hope at this point. Not only demo but warlock as a class overall lacking a lot compared to some other classes and I don’t think anything will change anytime soon with this management. I have been playing my warlock for 14 years now and sadly I feel like I have no other choice than reroll now.
dunno why cant they just either make demos demons like BM hunters strong, or just revamp playstyle entirely - instead of shadowbolt and demonbolt and lol corruption, for example summon various demons with different types of debufs/dmg profiles (kinda like diabolist spec)
probably some top end raider whined about something and blizzard decided that he represents the entire community like when they removed metamorphosis because they can’t just l2p
An idea that I have is instead of Tyrant maybe add in Metamorphosis (give it another name and that’s it), extend only the main demons like Dogs, Vilefiend and Grimoire plus have the damage amp aura buff on you like a beacon and, when you go into this form, you actually summon extra imps (imp swarm from mop) as opposed to extending the already existing ones. Furthermore this form could enhance your spells like HOG to summon extra demons and demonbolts to summon 1 extra demon as well (or just keep it with imps).
In the current iteration tyrant damage is 1-2% of our total damage which is ridiculously low.
I was about to write something like this, considering that the tyrant now has no sense as a source of damage in itself and is just a buff bot… it would be way better to reintroduce darksoul: knowledge in its place in order to increase the damage of the demons, the duration and maybe add some bonuses to the warlock’s spells
They either go full on with the theme of being a demon summoner by giving us MORE demons to summon to fill the role of tyrant and at the same time give us some actual utility for m+ and raiding other than gateway and cookies.
Examples are
Imp mother : make so imps cant disappear while she is up, 1 min cd. Would be a good ST dps buff
Aranasi : spider demon that can incap or web a mob, serve same purpose as DH’s spell “Imprison”
Inquisitor : Could serve same as Aranasi but could even be used as a way to give us a large cc ability that mimics Shadowfury but instead of a stun its a root like hunters “binding shot”. Personally i would like them to give us a personal buff (Dark soul please) and have some sort of negative. Maybe make us unable to move for a time or some sort of heal absorb.
Antaen : Big damage with a long CD, summon a gateway to Argus and a Antaen blast a certain area/mob over 10 seconds, perhaps extend the duration by sacrificing certain amount of imps (goes in hand well with imp mother)
The only problem currently is warlock is just a tightly tuned class, we either are S++ or a literal hinderance to the group/raid.
It has gotten better over the last couple expansion and i think the only thing holding the devs is the leadership or the fact they refuse to be more open minded to adding new stuff.
I do know and hope the see our posts here on EU forums because i do believe we brought up before about adding more demons such as overfiend, charhound and giving us “enchanced/greater” verisons of normal demons (2set from undermine)
At the end of the day we are at the mercy of World of Warcraft devs.
I would like to say one thing: ok the concept of the “master summoner”, but I don’t understand why everyone (developers included) intends it as if the warlock had to necessarily summon a huge amount of demons.
As far as I’m concerned, it would be enough if fewer were summoned but that they did much more damage. The same imps for me should not passively appear every hand of guldan, I would much prefer to have a lot of damage on impact of the hand of guldan (uses 3 shards and it’s chaos school) and reintroduce the old talent “imp swarm” with a CD that summoned 5 imps that hit the target.
Maybe as soon as they are about to run out of energy, they could automatically throw themselves towards the target imploding. This thing would allow us to no longer have the problem of out of combat in pvp and aggro in mythic +
Furthermore, it would be appropriate that the right talent tree is not dedicated solely to the felguard but in general empowers the demon chosen as “primary”. I would like to use the succubus for example, why do I have to use a melee colossus? Not only that, why not have the everlasting demon? Couldn’t we have a temporary summoning of a very powerful demon?
As a final talent, instead of immutable hatred, it would be optimal to bring back grimoire of synergy for example.
And the nether portal: is it that complex to make a very simple CD similar to the destruction dimensional rift? An instant CD portal, maybe with charges, that opens a demonic passage and from which hordes of demons come out and attack the target?
They are removing “Guillotine” and I don’t like that one bit .
Replacing Active talent for a passive one is stupid . Who exactly is it bugging to keep it as choice node there ?
Also It was good for aoe coupled with bilescourge . What do we use for aoe now ? That’s right Imps (Implosion , which has been a trash skill forever) and passives .
The only fix “Guillotine” needed was a hook to cast at target , so you did not have to manually place it , like rain of fire does atm .
Also the nerf to Tyrant is fairly significant .
It’s not reduced to 5 from 10 demons .
It is reduced to 5 from 15 and damage reduced by 150% , because " Reign of Tyranny" is also removed .
The only good changes are the cast speed talent and instant corruption .
I dont think we are gonna be able to change thier minds on demonology not being a master summoner. Wow devs are set in thier ways most of the time and the only time its possible to change a class is if the WHOLE community complains and if there is a mayor bug/glitch.
This has been a problem for roughly 4-5 years, there are simple fixes but they refuse to acknowlegde it as a problem.
The short period of me playing pvp as demo i loved the talent that made succubus give you an aura buff that made so SB casted 30% faster, i totally agree with you that as demonology you should have a variety of choices for when it comes to your main pet and shouldnt be exclusive/forced to felguard.
the new demonology changes are quite good, they finally understood that it was necessary to switch pact of imp mother and umbral (which has finally been made a normal talent, with a 100% dot application).
The capstone buff immutable hatred and demonic brutality are very good and so they become talents of the right tree that can be taken. I really liked the doom and immutable hatred combo, which was reset by the centrality of the dogs of sargeras and all the buffs connected to the dreadstalkers and especially the bonuses of the tier season 2.
I don’t mind the change of master summoners, but I admit that a +4% mastery is something that leaves many unsatisfied.
The disappointment is due to the fact that once again the talent tree warlock has been totally ignored
about affliction it is now clear that at least until the new expansion there will be nothing new. The thing is honestly very absurd, since at least some QOL changes could have been made before (I think of the age-old problem of the vile taint cd and the application of the dots that with the shadow priest has been solved for a long time and now even a double charge will arrive with a decrease of, I think, shadow crash).
The even more absurd thing is that for the umpteenth time even more emphasis will be given to malefic rapture, given the bonuses of the tier set and the three tormented crescendo stack.
I don’t like destruction as it is, the two hero talents are really ugly and have nothing to do with the concept of destruction, hellcaller is too dot-centric and diabolist makes no sense for lore (decades asking to be able to summon the pit lord from demonology, and then they also give it to destruction who shouldn’t have enough knowledge to summon it)
) but yeah, I agree with the doom part, not very fond of multidoting and seeing it doing more dps instead of the tyrant itself. i wish they could do a rework of the spec in some way, not totally but in a way. we’ll see what the future brings on demo locks.