We all know and understand that current warlock design is bad, and i’m not talking about your precious numbers, of your big-thick slimy chaosbolt, no. I’m talking about reall class design. And above all broken classes and specs, demonology is a chief among them. You can scream that warriors have some problems, or affliction is bad, but none of these specs are based around outdated mechanics, in our case our main weakness is our demons, our pets.
And Let me elaborate this, they are our main weakness not because of their damage, or bad abilities(this is also a problem, but i will save it for another topic). Our main problem is really outdated and bad game code of our demons. And what i mean by game code… well it is really C++/Sharp or any other programing language that fuels the tech side of the game. Right now, all demonology demons has inefficient and bad code that backs them. Simple example is our control tools over our non main demons.
Just look at my attempts to control wild imps on my demonology warlock.
And how easily i can switch target of my ghouls on my unholy DK
It is true that you as demo warlock could switch targets of your imps if you will CAST SEVERAL SHADOWBOLTS at your desired target, but this is not execuse to have inferior control over your minions of one class, while the other has superior version of control.
Another major problem is that our demons are threat by developers as a simple DoTs with physical body. All our demons directly affect our combat state, if we in or out of combat. BUT none of them are able to proc any of our effects, trinkets, racials, Azerite traits, leech effects.
This creates a huge disadvantage to the demonology.
Let’s take as example vision of perfection azerite trait.
Any class/spec in the game is able to proc it with DoT damage, i have litteraly proced 3 infernals using only immolate, and infernals was spawned rom pereodical damage not from direct-initial damage.
But i as a demonology don’t have any baseline DoT spells, so i’m from the beginning cannot proc such effects as often as rest of the classes. And with in mind that your demons could be the source from 40% to 70% of your damage, you miss a fel tons of possibly good proc effects in combat.
Another problem is the Leech effect, no matter how much leech do you have, your demons will heal only themselfs, and not you. Your main demon, vilefiend, wild imps, tyrant all of them heal only themselfs, because their damage counts as a different source than yours. This fact alone is extremely lore and game-design unfriendly to the warlock. But with that fact in mind, for some reason, your demons directly affect your combat state, and if only one wild imp will be hitted by some random AoE damage, YOU won’t be able to leave combat until source of that AoE won’t be killed, or wild imp will despawn.
And main issue actualy lies in blizzard devs, i have one simple question for them - Why you not just designed warlocks around deeply flawed mechanics, but also made such bad job with technical design of the spells and all that surrounds Demonology?
You - Blizzard made a big decision in legion to revamp demonology, from Metamorphosis gameplay, the one that was maybe not really friendly for newcomers but had not over complicated design with really good and dept in gameplay mechanics, that didn’t heavily relied on such unreliable mechanic as Pets.
Demon start to fight after I cast 3 spells