Demonology Rework is NOT it!

Classes Warlock
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Hi guys, I am a Demonology Warlock main and have been playing said spec for 13 and a half years. I have seen it’s highs and it’s lows. Of course we all love the glory days of the amazing Mists of Pandaria Metamorphosis gameplay but there have been some over, more recent eras where demonology has shined.

I wanna focus on the early 10.1 demonology warlock, amazing design with a very solid ability to express your skill with the nether portal, pit lord, fel covenant, reign of tyranny tyrant build. This season also hosted a solid alternative for less comfortable played focusing on immutable hatred and the tyrant. I would say Nether Portal has been our best cooldown in terms of both fantasy, coolness (especially with the pit lord), skill expression and fun! Some people don’t like it however, fair enough, that is why we have had the viable immutable hatred option and it has been fine. Recently Nether Portal, Pit Lord and Reign of Tyranny received substantial nerfs making them completely unviable, removing their skill expression and decreasing fun by a lot. Upon hearing news of a rework I hoped they would revert demo back to the damage done with 10.2 with this aggrovating multi-dotting, non-summoning, lack-of-spec-fantasy tier set but no, instead it appears we are losing one of demo lock’s best designs to date.

If this were to be lost for metamorphosis then fair enough, trading one amazing design for another would be grand but no, we lose an amazing fun cooldown to be replaced with shadow bolt buffs, more crit interactions and super boring attack speed alterations without even returning reign of tyranny (or tyrant in general) to its former glory. This is not the rework we want and I beg of Blizzard please do not do this!

If I were to make suggestions for a rework, my easy answer would be to completely revert us to Dragonflight season 2 start. It was a great era for demonology and probably the best it has been since MoP meta. My harder answer would be to change the talent tree to be like that of shadow priests with 4 major capstones (or whatever the end part of the talent tree is called) being: a master summoner (the DF s2 Nether Portal/Pit Lord talents), a tyrant focus (pre DF s3 tyrant talents), a personal power build (involving talents like metamorphosis, thal’kiels consumption, fel covenant (some don’t like so optional) and sacrificed souls) and a section for the felguard (the current felguard section is fine, great for more casual players).

I really hope we see a more solid rework for demonology in The War Within which keeps Nether Portal and Pit Lord in the game and reintroduces skill expression with features like “your pit lord does more damage based on the amount of demons you have active up to 20” and the original reign of tyranny tyrant. A reversion to Grand Warlock’s Design would also be preferable on all 3 specs.

13 Likes
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I’ve never felt so happy about rolling off of my warlock as I was after seeing this supposed “rework” on wowhead. God damn.

Edit: https://www.wowhead.com/news/war-within-alpha-development-notes-build-3-arcane-mage-and-demonology-warlock-339170

4 Likes
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Gotta agree with almost everything you said, nether portal was a very cool cooldown, a bit clunky a times, but as you said allows some skill expression. But sadly I have to agree with the removal of the NP, as cool as it was, it was too polarising, it’s either good and you have to take it in any single target situations creating leaps and valleys, or bad and it’s not worth using. However, I do not enjoy what there replacing it with, some shadowbolt stuff, and %buff to our dmg or our demons. NP was a spectacle, always fun to see. These changes remove a lot of the fun from the spec tree, our spec tree is way too abundant with %buff to our spells and our demons, compared to the aff change (I know it’s not perfect but the changes were far more drastic), demo changes are very bland and don’t hype me up, apart from the doom change which is nice I guess (dumb down version of doom brand), the other changes will come down to sims, since the talent choices are very bland with no real appeal. I’d like to see the return of tyrant doing dmg again because it’s painful to just see our cooldown hit less than shadowbolt .One last thing I don’t understand their obsession with nerfing core generation, nobody, like really nobody wants to cast shadowbolt. Ever since 10.1.5, the devs have been on a crusade to reduce core generation, and I don’t understand why, since shadowbolt doesn’t interact with most of our kit apart from the soul shard generation.

3 Likes
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AHAHAHAHAHAHA THEY’VE REMOVED NETHER PORTAL THE MOST DEMONOLOGY-WARLOCK-ABILITY THEY’VE EVER MADE HAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA BLIZZAR DHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH god I wish I wasn’t so attracted to the lore and had never came back after they removed meta after WoD I hate this game and company so much at least they fixed Doom after how many expansions like 3? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA wow devs are something else really they can’t just let something be fun for more than an expansion they just have to ruin everything they see because they know 99% of the playerbase doesn’t even care as long as they can tOp DpS or be fotm in pvp

5 Likes
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As I said. Ever since they went towards this summon a “demon army” playstyle the spec has only gotten worse each and every expansion.

No surprise they removed nether portal seeing as it was a clunky ability. We already get to summon a pit lord in WWI, so no surprise there.

All they had to do was bring back MoP/WoD playstyle as an option. Smh

2 Likes
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I dont know if you read the full blue post, but they did state they want to pull NP back and rework it and reintroduce it at a later date where it would fit better.

As a metamorphosis fan, you shouldnt complain as you at least have a chance of getting the ability back.

Quote “We’d like to spend some time workshopping a new design for Nether Portal and have it return as a healthier addition to Demonology’s toolkit in the future.”

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they’ve redesigned demo like 49 times since wod. can they just stop, it’s clear this version with a gazillion pets it’s not working. revert back to mop/wod and call it a day.

i swear all the warlock class changes go to demo, destro has had the exact same playstyle since mop but it’s only gotten progressively worse each expansion.

aff is still stuck with MR which everybody loathes.

can they pls just listen to us

1 Like
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Blizzard :

“best we can do is ingame shop mount,maybe here and there another tmog each month.”

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Revert the changes to Imp Gang Boss, move Grand Warlock to the class tree, revert improved Tyrant and Netherportal to before 10.2, add Doom Brand (S3 tier) as a new capstone. Also return return the “Unstable soul” CSs as part of the class tree, Aff gets Haste, Destro gets Crit and Demo could get Mastery.

I swear the warlock class designers at Blizzard don’t seem to play warlocks with all these reworks that have been going backwards somehow.

2 Likes
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The most baffling thing is that they keep wanting to nerf Demonbolt and nerf the spec’s mobility… like… why??? Demo is already the least mobile spec in the entire game having to hard cast literally every spell other than demonbolt (since they essentially removed instant cast dogs too…) and every other class is getting mobility creep AGAIN.

Can’t wait to try and cast 3 shadow bolts between every hand of gul’dan in PVP, I’m sure the 2 melees training me won’t micro CC me for 2 minutes straight :clown_face:

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tldr but demonology rework should be just bringing back mop/wod meta gameplay ;-)))))))) just saying

1 Like
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I think that ship has well and truly sailed… then had an outbreak of scurvy, hit a cliff, and sunk…

Meta is the Demon Hunter class-defining skill, Warlocks “borrowed” it for a while, but when actual DHs came around for people’s “I wanna be like Illidan!”-fix, that was the end of it.

I actually like the demon-summoning theme, it’s unique, but i don’t know why Blizz keep chipping away at it so much, lots of the changes come down to “You’ll be summoning fewer demons”, and having droves of demons (And different ones, even if the difference is mostly cosmetic) is what makes the spec fun.

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What about Kanrethad Ebonlocke?

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That’s old content Blizz can’t be bothered to update, and NPCs are rarely a good indicator for what players can or can’t do, Blizz can always say “Yeah, that one NPC was special” and leave it at that.

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Everyone can turn into a Demon, if he has enough Fel energy.
Even Murlocs.

Kanrethad Ebonlocke was in MoP and returned with Legion.

3 Likes
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True.

People don’t understand that there is a difference between a Demon Hunter Meta and Warlock’s “Meta”.

Demon Hunters basically fuse themselves with the Demon and control the Demon with tattoes and willpower etc. to harnest their power. Whereas Warlocks tap into fel energies and the more they tap into that power, the more “Demonic” they become.

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Illidan got his meta from Gul’dan according to wc3 campaign

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From his skull, yes. ^^

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Illidan and Demon Hunters are a separate thing, we need to keep this in mind.

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Yeah,thats my whole Point,he got warlock meta from Gul’dan.