First i will start with recognition - yes there are some players who enjoy current demonology design/gameplay. Yes i understand your reasons for loving current spec, i do…i really do. But we must admit one simple thing - current demonology broken by so many levels, that spell buffs/nerfs or talent changes will not revilitiase spec in current gameplay meta and especially in PvP.
Lets take a look what did the old talents(pre MoP) and modern talents (MoP/pre legion) work.
Pre MoP talents worked as a tool to shape your character in the way you wanted, because all warlocks has access to all base spells, and trough talents you could shape your char into that specialisations.
In MoP talent version all specs was diffirent from the beggining, and talents was all the same for specs. But it played well because spec base difference required different talents, and same talents affected different specs differently. On top of that this talent trees provided several different playstyles within spec/talents with different choices. And most important thing warlock toolkit was complete without talents, talents was that Extra thing that helped to shape your playstyle…yes there was some talents that was obviously better for some warlocks/specs.
Just look at MoP talents ideology:
http://wow.mmosite.com/tools/mop_talent_calculator/#Va!1.....
15 level row - Self heal/preservation themed talents:
- Dark Regeneration - Restores 20% of maximum health over 12 sec to you and your pet, and increases all healing received by 25% for the duration.
- Soul Leech - your shadow bolt, incinerate and malefic grasp
- Harvest of life - Drain Life deals 50% more damage and 100% more healing.
30 Level row - CC
- Howl of terror -Your howl causes 5 enemies within 10 yds to flee in fear, disorienting them for 20 sec. Damage may cancel the effect.
Being hit by a damaging attack reduces your cooldown on Howl of Terror by 1 sec. - Mortal coil - Horrifies an enemy target into fleeing, incapacitating for 3 sec and healing you for 25% of maximum health.
- Shadowfury - Stuns all enemies within 8 yds for 4 sec.
As you see, each row had a specific theme for talents, and if at first glance same talents acros all specs looks kinda boring or lame, in more deep analysis we can understand that such design worked well because each spec worked perfectly without any talents at all.
And what do we have now in terms of spell/talents/PvP talents/Az talents…there is a lot of “non base optional” crap.
Talents:
Trough talents we aquire the crutial active spells and passives for our specs.
There a lot of very bad talents.
There a lot of broken talents.
There a lot of previosly base line spells that now serves as talents.
Talents in the same row can serve diffirente purposes.
In current gameplay design each spec needs some talents/az talents to be at least semi-viable, additionaly some previosly base spells is now a PvP talents - Hello demon armor that skiped demonology spec.
Additional demons - pack that doesn't listen to you.
In legion demonology shifted from Metamorphosis gameplay to puppeteer gameplay.
From pure visual stand point it kinda looked cool…i guess, but not as impactful as old Meta visuals. But we here talk about gameplay, and oh boy, in legion gameplay was bad, not without some bright sides, but in general it was bad.
Lets start with basic demons like wild imps and dreadstalkers.
- game tooltip doesn’t tell you what these demons would do (well we all know that they will likely attack target). Tooltip doesn’t tell you that dreadstalkers will jump on target and try to use Dreadbite.
- And spell tooltip doesn’t tell you how much damage dreadstalkers will do with their melee attack
- When they are summoned you have zero control over them.
- You can’t switch their target if you need.
- you can’t call them back to quickly flee the combat and leave combat state.
- Dreadbite jump will miss the target if target moves faster then 120% of the base speed. It means that all classes exept priests can evade dreadbite just by moving.
- When dreadstalkers land on the ground after dreadbite they will stay in same spot for ~0.5 to ~1.2 seconds. This delay allows enemy to easily leave dreadstalkers melee range.
Hand of Gul’Dan and wild imps.
- This is AoE spell that is key part of base rotation.
-
In the most cases it might not be a problem, but in PvP it greatly hurts demo-locks, because it is the only base spell that summons wild imps, and in tight PvP battles HoG can break CC like fear on enemies that could be near to your main target. Doring MoP/WoD we didn’t had such problem, because HoG could be ignored in such situations due diffirent mechanic, and not being a Key spell to gain or spend demonic fury.
-
It basically leaves no room for precise single target damage output.
- Cast time on the spell 1.5 seconds that requires 1-3 casts of shadowbolt that also requires 2seconds to cast. Lack of insta cast on HoG really hurst gameplay flow. In total we need to wait from ~3.5 seconds to ~7.5 seconds before we will summon any wild imp.
- Wild imp summon animation - this is another time waster that serves only as visual noise. When you land a HoG on the target you will need to wait additionaly because animation that will spawn wild imps will travel from yout target to your location, and more distance to the target = more time to wait before imps will appear near to you. ADDITIONALY you will need to wait another 2 seconds before imps will finish their cast of Fel firebolts, and also the projectile will need to reach the target. (All cast time was used as reference without consideration of haste).
- When they are summoned you have zero control over them.
- You can’t switch their target if you need.
- you can’t call them back to quickly flee the combat and leave combat state.
- In BFA they summons around you, not around target like it was in Legion, this puts them in huge combat disadvantage on the long distance fights.
Demonic Tyrant
Put main burst capabilities on the shoulders of NPC that we can’t control was the worst thing that could happend…well not really the worst but a really bad move from gameplay designers.
- Demon requires too much preparation to be viable.
- Non Demonic consumption build and demonic consumption build requires too many time to provide somewhat decent damage output. It needs at least 2-3 stacks of x3 imps to deal decent damage.
-
- You need to utilise demonic core procs in order to summon tyrant in time, while imps are still present on the battlefield. This requires you to summon dreadstalkers and wait 12 seconds until they will dissapear and give you two stacks of demonic core, or summon 2-3 wild imps with HoH (from 5.5 secons to 7.5 seconds of your time) and then sacrifice them with Power siphon talent, and only after that start preparation chain: gain x5 soulshards > HoH > Demonbolt > HoG > Demonbolt > HoG > Summon Demonic Tyrant. This is overcomplicated mechanic, that is too damn vulnerable to any CC, lose line of sight, interupts.
- Tyrant is vulnerable to any CC.
- Tyrant has 40 yd range of cast, that makes him vulnerable to any fast enemy who can just run away from demon in order to evade damage.
- When he is summoned you have zero control over him.
-
You can’t switch his target if you need.
-
you can’t call him back to quickly flee the combat and leave combat state.
A gameplay disaster.
In order to understand why current demonology is bad puppeteer spec, we should understand what makes a good puppeteer spec/gameplay.
- Game Engine that can provide such gameplay.
- AI and Control.
- Good desing of your minion’s abilities.
And before i start just look how good puppeteer class plays in another Blizzard game - Diablo 3
Engine - ok, WoW engine is old, but it could do it’s job when devs knows their limitations. And with Demonology, they has forgot that game engine can’t handle NPC in such way, that it would provide demonology warlock a compedetive gameplay. Look at paragraph 5 of dreadstalkers, the delay of AI responsiveness is one of the most if not the most frustrating things in tech side of our demons. Demons like dreadstalkers or vilefiend suffers from that delay the most. Imps and Tyrant feels not so terrible because they have range attacks and delay doesn’t looks that bad, but it still there.
AI and Control -
-
AI of our demons is an absolute disaster. Navigation or just navmesh are broken, my demons can’t jump from the cliff on the ground if angle is too narrow, they can’t jump over the fences…NO, they will try to run around the fence and catch my target.
-
Control is another thing that ruins demo on the BGs. You can’t force your demons to switch target, so in dynamic situations you just have almost zero capabilities to do significant damage to diffirent target… you saw that another enemy has low HP…forget it, you will need to summon new demons to attack that new target, the old demons will have their fun with someone else. The lack of control is also hurts demonology in PvP. You can’t force demons to leave combat and run to you, in order to escape combat and leave combat stance, oh no you will be force to wait until your demons will expire or will be killed, and only after that you will leave combat stance. This lead demo to a disasterous situation that is multiplied by bad overal class design.
Good desing of your minion’s abilities - Let’s just say, outside of raw damage, they don’t bring much on the table. Dreadstalkers, Wild imps, Vilefiend, all those demons from Inner demon and Nether portal talents do only damage and nothing more - no debuffs, no buffs just damage, that is also unrelyable due bad design of those demons.
Dreadstalkers and Vilefiend - two types of demonic beasts that design to deal melee damage, run with 100% speed, just like normal character in the game. In the other hand hunters’s animals all have access to some sort of sprint. In the mage where 80% of the classes are mobile as hell, our demons run with base speed and do just regular damage.
As you see, current design of demonology was made with one purpose - look pretty. Demonology is a puppeteer spec in requires more attention then normal caster spec, you need to desing not just spells but tons of additional NPC that demonology summons on the battlefield. But devs doesn’t wanted to spend some extra time to polish demo, nope they just left it in semi operational state and left. And there lies one question - Why did you change the demo with MoP / WoD when it worked flawlessly?
This is how Ion described WoD demo.
In is not super intuitive, it requires a lot of UI mods.
Well let me tell you what you was needed to be avare of in old demonology spec.
- Cost of your spells in human and demon form.
- How much Demonic fury do you have ATM.
- Where is your main demon.
- How long curruption or Doom will be present on your enemies.
And what do you need to be avare of playing current demo.
- How much shards do i have.
- How long my Imps will exist (each stack)
- How long my dreadstalkers will exist
- How much energy does my imp have in order to do max damage of implosion.
- how much of my imps do i have in order to summon my max tyrant.
- Where is my main demon.
- when my dreadstalkers will expire to give me a demon core proc.
- How much of demon core procs do i have.
Current demo requires a fel tons of UI mods or very complicated weak auras setup.
Current demo and warlocks in general feels not like a well thought class, it feels like some cheapearly access crap, thta was made to look cool and powerful, but not to work.
In legion Ion said that warlocks will not recieve any mobility and instead “We’d rather double down on Strengths”
And next thing that they did, they has put demon skin and dark pact on the same talent tier.
What is going on? i thought that tanky caster should be…tanky.
And now, absolutely imobile caster, with almost zero insta casts, with questionable self heal, and damage mitigation capabilities has no place in WoW fun sector of the game.
How warlock should defeat his enemies, if they just can ran away in first sight that they might not defeat warlock, and warlock has zero tools to stop them.
We cant catch our enemies, and if situation becames dire, we cant escape, because our mobility was pruned to the point of nonexistence.
Why MoP/WoD version of demonology was a reliable spec?
MoP/WoD demonology was not over complicated spec.
Yes, it had some learning curve. You had to learn your abilities in non demon form, and how they change in demon form, cost of the spells, how to properly switch form to achieve maximum result. You had to learn how to use your demons, when to use wild imps, when to switch your main demon. There was some parts that rellied on your main demon AI, but it was one demon witch you could control. Best thing of old Demo was the feelings and experince that this spec gave you.
If you wanted to burst some target it was your doing, it was you whom dealt the killing blow, it was you whom bursted that enemy. You was in control of your gameplay. Your damage was your own, it was not splitted between gazillions of your imps, even number wise you feelt satisfaction when chaos wave landed a crit upon your enemies.
Now you had to relly on big ammount of demons that you can’t truly control. Burst rotation is overloaded with preparation. You don’t feel satisfaction gazillion of your imps do some witch slap damage, or they atatck wrong enemy.
In Diablo 3 necromancer feels good because
- Engine provides good tactile feedback when your minions attack target
- Sound and visual are on same level of quality.
- There is no delay between their attacks or actions.
- You can easily control them, their AI respond quickly on your commands.
And current demonology doesn’t share same level of quality as necromancer in D3.
P.S. This topic was made in several days, there a lot of thoughts that i will likely share and update that topic, but for now i will release it as it is now. I hope that you will forgive me my grammar errors, and i hope to see your thoughts on the matter.
Mobility.
Lack of mobility in current gameplay meta leads to very uncomfortable and unresultsfull gameplay. Not only we don’t have a mobility in the traditional way, the CD on our gateways and circle are extremely long.
First - our mobility has a territorial based design.
What does it mean? It means that we are only able to use our mobility spells in certain theretory, where we has placed Demonic gateways and Demonic circle.
Why this is no longer viable option to escape or catch the enemy?
- Increased cooldown for these abilities.
- Increased mobility capabilities across almost all classes. It is no longer a viable option, because melee can catch you with one GCD with zero effort, or in few seconds due passive speed bonus - like 130% outlaw rogues or 120% HDH.
https://www.twitch.tv/sleepy_dremora/clip/ZealousTransparentWaffleRitzMitz
- Clip doesn’t show the actual good usage of the gateways, but rather shows how easy to melee to cross 40yd distance.
- A great techical ussues of demonic gateways.
1.1 The navmesh problems - the ussue where visualy you can place gateways but game doesn’t allow you to do it.
1.2 Spell doesn’t tell you what kind of terrain could be between point A and B of gateways - you can easily place gateways on the two sides of canyon but next time on simmilar location game will not allow you to do that.
1.3 Issue with gateway vertical placement - in some not rare situations, you can place demonic gateways on the top of the some building, but you only will be able to use gateways from the top gateways not from that was placed lower on the ground.
And even now you can see, that i only managed to activate gateways that was placed on the top of the building only with second click.
Have a nice day.
Things to update:
- Pet design.
- Talents synergy.
3. Lack of mobility - done
![:confused:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/confused.png?v=6" ":confused:")