To start this out, i should say that it mostly will be relevant for PvP and arenas. I don’t care about PvE, i don’t believe that PvE is an environment where class/spec design can truly be tested. And this will probably be a long post so…brace yourselfs.
Demonology in PvP (BGs and Arenas) faces challenges that expose demo unreliable design. I made numbers of topics about control over the demons, and lackluster desing of these demons - by desing i mean desing of their spells/abilities/passives.
I recently decided to try arena with my friend, and i must admit that i don’t have even 1.8 so rating fappers could leave this disscussion right now XD, but from what i seen from my POV and games of other demo locks with higher rating, we face same problem no matter what our rating is.
One of them most serious problems lies in the mechanics of summoning our demons. We are “master summoners” yet we need to have a target to land a Hand of Gul’Dan in order to summon demons to fight for us. This can be easily exploited in arenas by simply huggin the pillars. We can’t summon demons while our enemy is behind the pillar. And we face the situation where we need to cast shadow bolt in order to gain shards, then cast hand of Gul’Dan in order to summon demons, for them in return to cast fel-fire bolts in order to deal damage.
This is three layers of casts already. For class with zero baseline auto casts and low mobility this is more than enough to make gameplay clunky and frustrating.
-
My idea is to give demo a separated spell that will summon wild imps for same cost of shards 3 shards for 3 imps. It will allow us to preemptively summon group of imps in arenas.
-
- We won’t be able to summon dozens of them, we still will be limited by shards, but it will help to deal with enemies from the start, and pillar huggers, because these imps will create some pressure during fights.
-
- This will allow us to utilise our CCs more efficiently during the fights. Right now Destro is the only warlock spec that can easily utilise “Fear” chains in order to do damage. Such change to wild imps summoning could open a possibility to more prominent use of Succubus in PvP.
-
And because of such change to wild imps, hand of Gul’Dan should be changed or reverted to the MoP/WoD desing - to insta cast ability, with two charges that will leave shadowflame DoT on the target. It will solve our problem with lack of DoTs and give us opportunity to deal damage on the move.
-
- Alternativly hand of Gul’Dan could leave a debuff on target instead of shadowflame DoT, debuff will increase damage that target will take from the demons. This will create a synegry between us and our demons.
I ask for such changes because in current design your demons serve as DoTs that have ingame physical body, and method of their summoning is highly unpractical on arenas. I may be not the best Demo PvP player, but lack of demonology players in general in high rank plays implies that problem lies not only in my skills but in demo desing itself, in comparison to Destro or other more popular classes/specs. And what i see in PTR of Shadowlands is not looks great. Some changes are good - Demonic consumption, second rank for dreadstalkers and wild imps. But these changes merely treats symptoms and not the core problems of the demo design. Demo needs more reliable damage dealing mechanics.
3 Likes
Tbh when I see demonology design compared to boomy or ele that don’t cast ANY single spells the while game, I really wonder why demo have to hard cast and takes forever btw.
I’m not an hardcore player but I managed to get 2k2 last 2season in 2s and 2k in 3s and my God that was painful and really hard when you have no tools to deal with the others class in terms of fluidity and dmg.
To me the version of the actual demonology just doesn’t work because everyone can outplay you without any difficulty.
3 Likes
its very possible that demonology just isnt designed to be the PvP spec, not every spec in game needs to be or even should be really good or specifically designed for PvP, considering that there are other specs like destro if i remember correctly that is very good for PvP.
Back in the days you could have played with any spec PvP.
Imagine having spec only for mythic + …
3 Likes
Hard to take anything you say seriously after this
In PvE no mob or Boss will force you to be creative about your playstyle. It just DPS rotation, with predictable effects like at this %of boss health boss will use that ability, on other #of boss health another ability will be activated.
In PvP things are much more different.
1 Like
Well… You’re not always allowed to perform your rotation in PvE, in the way there are mechanics that forces you to move, thus destroying demon’s build up. PvE is a great environment to test a spec.
Problem is, PvE is still a highly predictable inviroment. You know what all trash and bosses will do, depending on difficulty they may have slight alteration in their spells but nontheless they won’t switch tactic in the middle of the fight if something will go wrong. Demo was tested in PvE environment in Legion and BFA and look to what disaster it led. In PvP spec is underdesigned, before blizzard added Implosive potential no one wanted demo in their party. Core design is broken, core mechanics are unreliable and broken.
No spec needed to be designed specifically for PvP - all specs should be designed to be viable for all content. This is the only way of designing classes/specs in game. If current game designers can’t design all specs for all activities, then they should be removed from their respective positions, because we as players deserve more.
Current design clearly shows inequality between specs and huge gap in their efficiency. Why DKs (frost and Unholy) can play in PvE and PvP without any issues, why BM and Surv hunters can play in any activity without problems? Why all rogues can be good in PvP and PvE, why havok DH can be supreme in both PvE and PvP.
And in current situation why Demo/Affli is bad in PvP, why Shadow priests has huge problems in PvP, why MM has zero synergy in PvP.
I believe that i as demo player deserve better then crap that blizz gave us in Legion and in BFA. I believe that all unpopular spec that suffer from one problem or another deserve better treatment.
1 Like
I’m trying to say that even in PVE demon has many flaws…
Ok i understand your point, but in PvE it is not as near bas as in PvP.)
Y’all here whinin bout demonology not doing well in pvp, pff
Sips from my affliction cup
I would love to talk about Affliction troubles, but Jinks has already occupied that niche =)
but every class/spec doesnt have to be good in PvP, if all of the warlock specs were good in PvP that means they are op and need to be nerfed.
try telling that to blizz who are designing the soulbinds and covenants to not allow you to make any of your specs good for all content.
try telling that to anyone who tries to play sub rogue in PvE
i agree that the spec left something to be desired in legion but overall im quite happy with how things are playing for demo atm, i am not a PvPer so i cant talk to that specifically but for the most part demo is fine in all PvE situations.
the design of a spec is basically down to personal prefernce, which is why blizz can never get it right, the only way to make things work now would be to bring back the old mop stuff but have it as a 4th spec for warlocks, because there are plenty of people that wouldnt like to see the current demonology go away, and others that really dont like it. and im sure even if they did that people would be annoyed because the mop spec wouldnt be called demo, blizz can never get it right, regardless of what they do there will always be a group of people that are annoyed.
basically every spec has flaws in every aspect of the game, thats why class design is kinda wonky in BFA, once the borrowed power stuff is gone none of the classes work properly.
It’s a stupid statement, everyone should be able to play his spec in EVERY mode.
Nobody is asking for his spec to be Op everywhere but viable atleast.
Demonology is completely trash, if you do only pve you probably think it’s OK because like said above me you have nothing else to do than stand still and cast. In pvp you have a lot of things to deal with and it’s impossible with the current state of demo lock.
And no not everyone wants to be forced to play another spec (which is stupid af imo).
1 Like
there is a specific difference between everyone being able to play your spec and peopel complaining about it not being good, you are more than able to play the spec in PvP, you just cant expect to be getting as far with it as others, which is perfectly fine.
you actually believe there is nothing to do in PvE other than standing still and casting? have you never done a single dungeon or raid?
no one is being forced, i myself quite like the play style for aff, i have played it most of the expansion, i also wanted to make sure to get the keystone master achivement before it was removed, unfortunately i understood that aff doesnt owrk that well in dungeons, so i just played another spec, i picked warlock because i like all three specs, if you dont you might be better off finding something you enjoy playing more, because sticking to a single spec on a DPS pure isnt a good idea. because there is always a chance that a certain spec will be useles or undertuned meaning that its very much suboptimal to play
only thing which make demonology pupu in pvp is that it takes soooooo long to ramp up your damage which is crazy(and then enemy can los it completely which is stupid). You should have either way EVERY spell instant like BM hunter or base spells like hand of guldan and so on bufffed by 300% and more…
In pve you are close to never move compared to pvp, you don’t do any pvp if you think like that.
Yes if you want to be competitive you are ‘’ forced’’ to play something else because blizzard rather work on billions stupid mechanic instead of classes.
I’ m being tilted like everyone else when their spec is trash and for demo it looks like there is close to all the time. If demonology was fine I would not be there like the other asking over and over for a rework.
i have already stated i dont do PvP and im not trying to say that you dont have to move around in PvP, but this idea PvP players have that all PvE content is just stupidly easy and takes no effort is idiotic, part of the issue with demonology and why it isnt one of the best PvE specs in the game is because of its ramp up time as well as struggling if you ever have to move, which is unfortunately quite a lot.
you literally have 15+ done on a lot of dungeons in this season, are you trying to say that you were perfectly able to stand still for the entire dungeons and just pump damage, because if thats the case your either blind or the luckiest player in wow
I’ve never said pve was easy, but it’s completely different than pvp especially arena you can’t imagine.
I’ve done a lot of m+ but tbh a lot of them I didn’t even know the tactics so Idk what to say tbh but you don’t have to move that often.
There is mechanics when you can predict when you’ ll have to move so you can play around.in pvp you can’t.
I never said that. I said that PvE environment will never push class design to its limits, thus in PvE you will never test true potential of the spec. In PvE you face limited predetermined mechanics, in PvP you can face same things as in PvE and much much more, because Players tend to do diffirent things…unless you are DH and you do one thing over and over again…desing…
My idea is simple, if class designed in such way, that it doesn’t have problems in PvP then in PvE there won’t be problems that you won’t be able to solve with your toolkit. Sadly it doesn’t work vice versa.