My ideal Demonology warlock 2.0 (very idealized)

Ok I made one of these long ago, however that post wasn’t very good and full of typos and bad grammar as I wasn’t as good with English as I am today (yes there will still be typos problably)

So most of us can probably agree, that demonology was better with Meta. Now I understand that Meta was in lore a demon hunter thing, I also understand it would play very similar to shadowpriest right now and I understand that Blizz wanted to reinforce the zoo fantasy, however I will take all of this into an account in this post and try to come with reasonable solutions in this.

HOWEVER just to note, this is very unrealistic and idealized and is not really meant to be guideline for updating warlock, but simply my opinion on how the class should look like.

I cant think of much more to say, so lets get right in. By the way I am making this from PvP perspective so keept that in mind and this is going to be heavier on the Meta side of things so don’t be surprised its so similar.

Now I know some people want to make something like this too, so I’d love to hear your own versions or corrections of mine.

Playstyle
Alright, so old demonology was all about generating as much fury as possible and dumping it into cool and interesting spells, while new demonology is all about summoning of demons to aid their master in his goals of destruction. As for how my demonology is played, the basic idea for me was. Take best of the both, and so I choose to combined the zoo playstile of demonology and use that as means to generate the resources to get into a state similar to what demonology was prior to Legion. I will now go in depth and look how that will work.

Resource

Demonic corruption-
Ok so while I underestand that Blizzard kinda wanted to streamline the resources of warlocks and even though I love the idea of soul shards, I am giving them up here, this might be very controversial, however looking at other classes, even pure DPS as mage, we can see multiple resources still being used across the spec and with demonology being very distinct from Destro and Affy, I think this is possible.

So Demonic corruption will be a resources whose sole purpose is to feed the passive ability of the same name. You will use your builder abilities to generate this resource like you did with demonic fury, it will be on a bar and will slowly go up with your skills, capping at 100.

Passives

Demonic corruption-
Now this is the Meta of new demonology. This ability may or may not be passive and may or may not be called like this, that is up to further discussion, however it is going to rely heavily on the source.
So, the idea is, as your Corruption (resource) increases, you will slowly start to get corrupted, with the visual effects increasigly visible on you.
(The way I imagine this is that the ground under your feet and around your hands burns in same shadowfel flame as corruption and you might gain extra features like Fel horns, Wings and maybe even claws, that will be purely cosmetic and will be magical/etherial not physical like those Demon hunters have, think Meta without the torso and legs)
When your demonic corruption reaches 100% this passive will either directly transform you, or allow you to transform into the fully corrupted form, which will change your abilities.

Soul link-
Same as now

Soul leech-
Same but now includes the Demon skin ability

Mastery-
Increases damage of your demons and gives Wild Imps and Hand of Gul’dan x% chance to summon x additional imps (like up to 3 so we aren’t getting ridiculous)

Wild imps/inner demons-
Gives you x% chance to summon imps while in combat (or even outside that depends on how it would be ballanced), this chance increases with how much Demonic corruption (resource) you currently have.

Sou leech-
Same stuff

Builders
So to get to higher demonic corruption, we of course need to build it up with our abilites, I have designated several abilities to do this, including abilities of your demons which will work as the resource now making you their master rather than the other way around.

Shadowbolt-
Classic ability, this will be literaly the same as it is, rather slow-ish, low damage ability which will generate low ammount of Demonic Corruption.

Call Dreadstakers or other DOT-
Next spell demo will use will be some sort of DOT that shall generate very low ammount of demonic corruption with each tick. Here I list dreadstalkers as an example but I am aware of their technical problems so it could be literaly anything else too.

Hand of Gul’dan
-This is going to be most likely isntant spell or one with short cast time. This spell is going to have two charges and summon imps.
Imps: (this also applies to wild imps)
-Imps from HOG will work as in Legion, however they will not
cost anything, imps shall periodically cast felbolt, when this
ability critically strikes, it will generate you additional Demonic
Corruption

Demonbolt-
Works like in BFA, your DOT ticks and imps will have chance to grant you stacks of demonic core. This is going to make this ability instant. The ability itself will function exaclty the same way, doing more damage and generating double the Corruption than Shadowbolt.

Spenders

Demonfire (though one with cooler animations than whatever our tyrant is doing rn)-
An ability dealing shadowflame damage, replaces shadowbolt while you are corrupted. Demonfire is going to be your big nuke on which you will be spending your demonic corruption. This is going to be single target ability with high damage. This ability may have CD or cast time so it is not spammable and requires some management if you want to pull as much damage as you can out of it. Now the base damage of this ability does not have to be so high, but it will take in account and increse its damage by x% for each wild imp/demon you have out.

Hellfire-
Replaces HoG when corurpted. You know how that works. This ability will deal AOE damage in all directions, while periodically draining it your demonic corruption.
(this works nice due to the periodic loss, it looks good with the fantasy too. I dropped any DOT refresment as that is already present for Spriest voidbolt and all the same I dropped abilities applying doom when you are corrupted since people would compalin it’s “too complex”)

Other abilites

-Summon Felguard/Wrathguard

-Shadowfury - now also instacast

-Demonic cirlce- yes that is supposed to be there

-Demonic tyrant- Now just deals same damage doomguard style, increases crit of your demons (to increase Corruption generation) and makes them last longer, however is not the core of your burst.

-Demonic command- Allows for target switching by commanding the imps to attack the target of this ability.

-All the other abilities we have rn

Talents

Alright so, lets look at talents tier by tier

Tier 1-lvl 15

Wild wild imps (look I can’t make up good names)
-Your DOT has chance to summon wild imp whenever it ticks

Demonic strenght
-Same burst CD as it is now. It might, or might not replace Felstorm when chosen. I dont find that important but apparently some people do.

Bilescourge
-I have chosen to keep this ability here. The idea I have for this is it shall replace Hellfire with a cheaper AoE ability that can be put into whatever location you want, however has a CD. The point in this is you can now control your AoE and drain less Corruption, however on the other hand this ability won’t be usable as often.

Tier 2- lvl 30
Demonic leap-
I admit I put it here because I wanted to include it and had nothing for this particular spot, however I like this ability and think it deserves a spot.
This ability works exactly as it did before legion and allows you to jump a little. Perhaps it would be too similar to some other abilities or too much mobility but thats up to you to decide.

Power siphon-
Works good in BFA so I am keeping it as it is.

Doom
-Maybe give this talent a little buff but I think it can be kept as a sort of execute in a weird way.

Tier 3-lvl 45

Dark regen-
Demon skin is now part of soul leech as it should be and to substitute for passive x active defense dichotomy I have decided to replace that with one focused around healing x burst. So I put this little heal here in case someone wants to choose this over Dark pact and decides healing themselves is for some reason more beneficial than soaking the damage into shield.

Burning rush
*Yeah it stays

Dark pact
-In case you don’t want to heal, the shield is still available for you

Tier 4- lvl 60

Imp swarm
-Stops wild imps passive isntead giving you on demand imps for your personal use. Not sure about the exact number but should be enough to kinda match the number of imps you are going to generate through wild imps, only giving them at one time instead for some bursty stuff.

Soul strike
-Works the same expect for generating corruption instead of SSs obivously.

Summon vilefiend
-I don’t understand this ability that well since Im am not PvEer but I think it should stay. In PvE you don’t have problem with boss running around pillars to my knowledge so this talent is fine even despite the technical problems of Demo in PvP.

Tier 5- lvl 75

Howl of Terror
-Exactly the same as in pre-legion days. AoE CC for pretty decent time that is meant to actually CC people.

Mortal coil
-This stays. its excelent talent that can have many different uses and should remain for the game until the very last day.

Unstable rift
-Demonic gateway is created instantly and upon use either grants movement speed buff or defenive buff.

Tier 6- lvl 90

Chaotic core-
Upon hiting enemy demonbolt has chance to refresh demonic core. This chance is lower, the more cores you have. (but it isnt too high on 1-2 either or you’d be getting 3rd free core all the time)

Demonic inspiration
-Everytime you spend Demonic corruption your imps gain increased chance to critically strike

Grimoire of (I do not recall the name)-
The one that le’ts you summon aditional demon, right now only felguard is avaliable and I understand adding more might class with stuff like call felhunter so either this needs to be somehow handled or we just stick to felguard

Tier 7-lvl 100

Soul engine
-Whenever an imp experies, gain stack of haste buff up to x stacks

Deseperate power (yes I stole Azerite trait name)
-Every 20 points of the corruption you loose, when in corrupted form increases the damage of your demonfire

Dark Soul: Supremancy
-Generates x corruption per second and increases your corruption generation by x% for 20 sec

Honor talents:
I’d keep mostly the same though maybe give us Demon armor, tho I feel like demon armor is so mandatory it should be baked into the baseline spec but either way I’m fine with or without it anyway.

Alright that is all, I might expand on this in future. Please give your ideas on your own overidealized version of demo.

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I like some of the ideas especially the ability to force all your demons to switch targets. I didnt like the fact that there were too many abilities centered around imps. I think you should consider looking into some of the new demons that were introduced in legion such as the Jailers, Aranasi, and the inquisitor. Good ideas non the less

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Thanks I am glad you like it.

As for the imp thing, the reason I use imps here mostly is the fact that they have no major problems. With Dreadstalkers, you can have a little delay before they start attacking, not to mention having to catch up if the target moves, while imps can simply snipe the target and their range is pretty good too.

Still I understand that other demons are important too and I know lot of people want more demons introduced. I will think of how I can fit that into my ideal Demonology because I also think it’s pretty important and I’m not satisfied with some of the talents I came up with and could replace them with intersting demons.

Thanks a lot for feedback.

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This sounds a lot like Voidform and that’s the problem.

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As I said there, I am aware of that, however
1.This is idealized version
2.Through this essay I have also started I want this to be different in lot of mechanical ways
3.I know Blizz wouldn’t like it but personally I see no harm here
4.Lock used Meta for 11 years and I made my first lock 7 years ago in Cata, I am not sure I really want to give up the old demo concept for barelly functional pet spec that does not work too well with WoW and does poorly on PvP unless your target is standing still for 10 minutes

Anyway as I said in the essay I am aware of this problem and I knew it even while making this. However I still take this as my ideal demonology.

Voidform is old demonology metamorphosis.

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Yes I also do not understand why they did that either. Like I get they wanted to change META to something else but they just gave our mechanics to another class. Not that I did not enjoy shadowpriest, they are cool but why did we loose 11 years of developement over that and only got spec that wouldn’t even exist if Blizzard knew enemies can move.

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Reason is simple…
WoD was released and dev-team started to build Legion xpac. They knew, that with their current vision, DH with their Metamorphosis that work as simple DPS CD they would look like some inferior crap in comparison to WoD/MoP Demonology Metamorphosis. Additionaly, DH was one of the main things that sold Legion, and if in game was another class with similar spell, that worked better, DH wouldn’t be popular as Blizzard wanted them to be.
This was pure business decision, they said infamous " We’d rather you didn’t play Demonology"

This was one of the first steps to dwindle Demonology player base, in order to prepare them to rework of the spec.
They decided to change demo to puppeteer, because people loved that design idea, so they thought that if they change demo to puppeteer they will atract more people to the spec/class. They didn’t cared if spec will work at all, the only thing that they needed was visual representation of puppeteer gameplay. So they took concept of their D3 Necromancer and tried to recreate it in WoW.

And it didn’t worked well for many various reasons…i will make a topic about that soon.

Yeah I know about DH and that was attoricous decision but more so Im wondering why our caster cousins got Voidform, I never got that.

Anyway as we know, this incarnation of Demo is completely ignorant of PvP and does not mechanically work so Blizzard better come with some solution.

Let’s not exaggerate: current demonology would be significantly better in pvp just by making a few changes like making most summons (nether portal, dreadstalkers, vilefiend) instants and making the tyrant melee (or optionally melee).

The current iteration have a lot of issues, but let’s face it, even if we preferred metademonology, a lot of the issues puppeteer-demonology is facing are not structural, and can be solved with small changes, such as the ones mentioned or making soul strike work with every demon.

Ahhh this is why I make disclaimers…

Anyway

I understand your mentality and I to a degree would agree. But I am demo lock and I care about my spec a lot.

And no, even if you tweak it a bit it’s stil not enough. First of all Dreadstalkers have delay before they start attacking and have to run if target moves, that is a design problem.

Second of all what we have is not good. If you want me to talk about how I’d patch up demo check my other post but as I said all is mentioned in the early paragraphs.

Anyway as I was saying, no current demo is not the way to go and I want Blizzard to know that and I want them to really feel it so I think more loud we say it the better.

Anyway this isn’t really the theme of this post and I did not intend to write such a large essay for this

Made destro version too

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