Nether portal

Classes Warlock
1

With the release of the War Within, blizzard removed Nether portal with the promise of reworking it into something later and reintroducing it later in the expansion.

What do you think should it be doing as an effect?

I always thought that the ability was cool thematically, and felt like an ultimate ability, being the warlock that you are, you open a portal and see all types of demons come out of it, which if you didn’t play in Dragonflight or before, this ability spawns demons that cannot be summoned in any other way, it can even proc a prince malchezar from the original karazhan.

But functionally I always thought it has to be reworked, because it just didn’t function that well with the spec.

With a 3 minute cooldown, it used to spawn a demon from the twisting nether, every time you spend soul shards, but the problem is that it didn’t care how many soul shards you spend on a hand of Gul’dan, it always spawned one demon, so the obvious suggestion everyone wanted is that to maybe make it spawn a demon for every soul shard you spend in the duration, and this feedback was definitely heard by blizzard because it was quite the popular opinion back in the day, but for some reason they didn’t do it, they probably didn’t like it or something.

I didn’t like having a second cooldown that also requires you to stand still for 17 seconds because tyrant is already that and quite annoying, and actually impossible in some situations, so absolutely make this a choice node with tyrant.

So what I’m going to do today is maybe think of a few versions of the ability that I think it can be brought back as, and maybe some of you can share your thoughts/redesigns of the ability.

  1. Have the portal automatically spend soul shards and summon demons until you’re at 0 shards so you spam shadowbolt and demonbolt, kind of like breath of syndragosa for frost death knights but it wouldn’t be as problematic as breath because obviously we are a ranged class and we also have demonbolt so if you can just save your demoniac procs for whenever you have to move during the ability or if you’re running too low on shards.

A hungry demon portal that keeps eating souls forever is peak class fantasy imo.

  1. Have it only summon imps that can be imploded, so that way you can have an single target cooldown called tyrant, and an AoE cooldown called Nether Portal, picture a cooldown that guarantees pact of the imp mother procs every 3 minutes for 15 seconds, so you basically summon double the amount of imps and then you implode for massive amounts of AoE damage, doubling down on the snap AoE implosion playstyle that no other warlock spec has, which we need in fights like rasha’nan and obviously mythic plus.

  2. if there’s something problematic, it doesn’t have to be related to spending shards or the actual rotation of the spec, demonology is already hard as is, maybe it’s okay to have an alternative cooldown to tyrant that is somewhat easier to use, as tyrant setups are very hard in some fights, to say the least, so just a button that you press and it summons as many demons as blizzard wants, is one option, not everything has to be complicated.

Tell me what are your ideas and thoughts about the topic, I’d like to hear them as well!

2

meh,i’d take Mop/WoD demo over everything,demonology has been a hot mess ever since its rework in legion.

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3

Fairly simple really, make the portal pop out demons based on the number of shards spent, instead of one per spending spell, to discourage 1-shard HoG-spam. (Which was the downside to the old spell)

Maybe even make the portal “Charge up”, so stay still for the spell’s duration (Just show that swirly shadow thing used for most minions), and at the end have it open up and bring out demons based on shards spent for the spell’s duration in one go.

Basically, anything that results in even more demons is fine by me, if i wanted to become a demon, i’d roll a DH.

4

^^ this.

This is also what made it so counterintuitive, similar to SKB for firemages but actually IMO more extreme in impact, so that even when it was numerically the better choice many wouldn´t take it. “Oh, Portal is up, time to play the 1 shard minigame I never asked for… Oh no, a DC proc… oh well, at least I can HoG 2x in succession…” :wink:

5

I only play Demo for world content and Delves because of the Tyrant set up. But I really liked the concept of Nether Portal and I really hope they bring it back.

I would like to see Doom and the Doom Guard moved to the right of the tree and Doombolt volley (the tier set proc) returned. I think we only need one Doomguard out.

6

I would like to se NP return in a way that fits more into the spec.

But on the doomguards, nooo, more demons >less demons… and when you get a really lucky proc streak and have 3+ doomguards out in a multitarget fight it´s just hilarious watching them all go Kazzak mode on anything stupid enough to have a red nameplate :joy: :beers:

That was what made Torghast so much fun, 90 imps, 10 doggos and 7 tyrants is just pure madness in the best possible way, esp since that was when the number of demons still directly influenced tyrant power but wasn´t capped :wink:

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