This talent should simply spawn demons based on the number of soul shards used.
Instead what it does is to spawn demons when you use soul shards. The number used is irrelevant.
Why is this bad? Well you are always supposed to maximize your soul shard usage, aside when during portal? Why wouldn’t it be bad from a gameplay prospective, it’s inconsistent.
Also, why is stolen power right below portal? It makes no sense, at least connect it to sacrificed souls too.
I think it should honestly be a passive that spawns nether portals at random during combat so it’s less of a long cooldown for a large disruption to normal warlock play - the pitlord being activated if you summon so many demons while the portal is up.
In basically any spec you are suppose to maximize your resource usage.
For example, you never would want to cast a 1 combo point finisher, just like how you don’t want to use 1 soul shard to cast hand of gul dan, because why use 1 shard for 1 sec cast, when you can use 3 and get 3 times as much efficiency out of the same gcd?
Nether portal throws a wrench in this design, and not in a good way, because it forces you to do things in an un optimal and weird way.
So, no, it’s not a good way to swap your priorities.
Th idea of it being a passive is not bad. It’s not like this talent is terribly powerful for a 3 min cd anyway.
Unless you also take the capstone, but then it’s not 1 talent, it’s 4.
The Pitlord is powerful but then again weak because you can cc him… that’s really bad for a 3 min cd. Would be better in pvp of he would buff your pets depending on shard spent. So he will give a short time cc immun then the 3 min are fair
I dislike nether portal for a different reason. Since the start of bfa until the end of sl, demo was sort of unique in the way that it had strong 1 min cds with tyrant and demonic consumption. Now tyrant is incredibly weak, even with the new budget demonic consumption. Instead, we got a 3min cd as our main powerful cd. Having our main dps boost at a 3m cd is very frustrating and imo makes the spec significantly less versatile. Not to mention that if you get a mechanic while doing the “fun” rotation of shadow bolt hand and have to move, the pit lord and the 3m cd will be wasted.
The problem is guiliottine is even worse, the damage is does is just not enough, the best one is by far sigil. It’s cool to use, and it’s quite strong.
Tyrant is just pretty awesome, getting like 30 imps or something like that. It’s also not disruptive to the rotation. In fact it makes it better.
Portal spawns demons every time you us a soul shard ability, it’s not based on how many soul shards you are using.
So whether you use 1 soul shard or 3 it’s irrelevant for portal.
That’s why it’s terrible from a gameplay prospective, because it goes against logic, and good spec design of maximizing your global usage.
I don’t know what they were thinking when they designed this ability, but diversification just for the sake of it, is not a good idea. If you wanna diversify by making good abilities that actually interact in a positive way with your rotation, that’s good, but not when it’s just done for the sake of “change”. That’s irrelevant, if the change is not good.
Unless you want to re define words and say that you are still maximizing soul shard usage because portal spawn demons regardless of how many you use. But i hope you won’t make such an argument, because it’s utterly ludicrous.
I know how it works, it’s been exactly the same since it was introduced in BFA. If you don’t maximise, there’s a massive difference between a 200k pitlord and a 700k pitlord.
All right, so basically you have no idea what makes an ability well designed. Now that i know that you know how this portal works i can just safely ignore what you are saying, because you’re probably not thinking a lot about this. If you seriously think it’s just fine like it is.
It is the best nether Portal version we ever had. Bitte it is stronger than Tyrant if done right. But for pvp not as good for me. I don’t like the style.
Remember when i said “Unless you want to re define words and say that you are still maximizing soul shard usage because portal spawn demons regardless of how many you use. But i hope you won’t make such an argument, because it’s utterly ludicrous.”
I didn’t say this just because, i have a gift, or a curse, of generally being able to understand what people are trying to get at. And it seems i was correct.