Hello fellow Warlock players !
A little introduction - I’ve played warlock and mostly demo since the days of SL till LK, then stopped and re started in Legion, just mostly bantering around, hitting 2.4+ as demo in 3s and chillin’. In BfA I’ve gone up to 2.6xp, but I’m mostly sleepin’ and waiting for changes.
(Yeah I know I missed the glorious MoP/WoD Meta ownage, but then again I can be more non biased so… a good thing I guess !)
I’m here to discuss what possible changes people would want to see in the future, PvP wise and just chat a bit, waiting for the next season.
I would like to see more of high rated people joining the discussion, but of course everyone is free to drop their bit after all we are just chattin’ and everyone is free to have an opinion ! So without further nonsense, here’s my take on what works and what doesn’t.
Known issues with Demo currently and in the past:
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Metamorphosis - Obviously I haven’t experienced it(except the first version of it), but for blizzard to try to change it over the years so much they didn’t like it so I doubt it would come back around, even if everyone is basically rioting about it so I won’t speak much about it.
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The lack of instant meaningful from the WARLOCK directly(!) casts:
1.In the past for instance we used to have Shadowflame, a point and click instant that does some dmg,leaves a dot and generates 1 soul shard.
While in current version of the game we do have Soul Strike, it’s still a bad design for it’s purpose, yes it’s good to kill totems, stop drinks and use it as second pseudo gap closer for your main pet. But for the purpose of shard gen it’s kinda on the down side and buggy.
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Doom
Doom … Oh, doom what have they done to you. Many of you might say it’s pretty much the same spell, but the thing that made Doom strong was the fact that you could apply it from Hand Of Gul’dan, so you could basically get shards back by spending them and hitting multiple pets and spreading dooms, so compared to Legion, BfA version is nothing more than just sharing the same name. -
Tyrant - your main source of intended (!) damage in this expansion, a clunky and far too slow AI that can be stopped in multiple ways and still not doing enough damage to be reliable.
I’ve said intended, because thats the way devs wanted for the spec to play, viability wise Db succubus spec is way more viable at higher cr.
I get the whole idea of the master pet summoner and all, but that has huge flaws when we are talking about competitive and I’ll expand more on those thoughts down below.
- What I would wish to see in future demonology builds:
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Remember when I talked about instant damage generators? Yes, while we are supposed to be hard casting killing machine (which don’t get me wrong I don’t want to turn us into fire mages or anything) I would want to see some more reliable gen’s. Be it making doom back baseline and adding a similar talent on that row to make Hand apply it. Or Shadowflame/Felflame/Whatever you want.
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Dreadstalkers. Make them instant B A S E L I N E.
Yes, in Legion having a honor talent for that made a lot of sense with how everything worked around Demonic Emp. and TK, but not in current demo kit so having them baseline is just what has to be the next step. -
Kick, please for the love of god we are the only spec with a kick in our honor talents, pretty sure that would help PvE Demo fellas too.
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Demonwrath or anything similar, moving channeling gen is something many of us miss I wouldn’t die not having it, but it was nice while it lasted.
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Make a spell or bake it into our current kit, if we are keeping the tons of pets and master or summon gamestyle - a spell that makes ALL our pet’s attack the target we want. Heck if you want just put it in our Felguard (or main pet) Attack button. We need to be able to hard swap at will.
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Overhaul of the pet AI in general, but thats just an optimistic idea, I realize how difficult that would be with current engine… It’s just a wishful thinking.
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While Tyrant on first glance is cool and all and I have no problem with having him, personally. It’s way too clunky. The whole idea of having a big badass demon empowered by sacrificing your lesser demons is cool and everything, but holy moly is it clunky. Tyrant with current WoW engine would never work flawlessly and reliably when it comes to PvP and thats a big no no, cause reliability is key in competitive.
I would like to see our main source of burst(!) not dps, burst damage a reliable cooldown that comes from the warlock itself. And I can’t say TK or Thalkiel’s Consumption if you want did not perfectly fit that criteria.
In fact I would personally love to see them expanding on it, when the azerite traits are gone in Shadowlands and Tyrant doesn’t do big damage, maybe make Tyrant to fullfill the role of demonic emp. buffing the duration of your demons and letting you setup more and more to do a big TK. It wouldn’t be toxic for the game either since demonic emp. is gone so the % hp increase is gone too and numbers could always be tuned easily. And it would be far easier and healthier to learn from the perspective of a new demo player, not as steep and mechanical as in Legion. Still has counterplay since the main setup pieces would be casted (Tyrant and TK) and you still need the time to properly setup the imps and everything.
In fact it makes great sense and in my mind completes the master pet summoner idea.
You summon horde of demons, empower them with a commander (their duration) and then the warlock sacrifices a portion of their life to blast the foe with it. And in the downtime you still strike your enemy with fel magic and throw demons at them.
Thats my 2 cents on improving the spec, I’ll be glad to hear your guys opinions and thoughts.
Have a nice day !