The colossal issues of Basics of Demonology spec and warlocks in general

Classes Warlock
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Lets start with basics.
Warlocks can summon five demons for permanent service - Imp, Void Walker, Fel hunter, Succubus and Felguard.

Each demon in the past had a utility and play.

  • Imp had a HP buff like priest and could and still can dispel negative effects from Warlock or Ally.
  • Felhunter could dispel positive effects from the enemies and Interrupt them.
  • Void walker could disarm melee enemies.
  • Succubus could knock back enemies.

Each of these demons had a use and was a part of warlock toolkit. But late design of the Demonology renders all other demons useless because

  • They do not scale that well with stats
  • They have at baseline less Stamina and attack power
  • No talent improves their Stats in demonology skill tree

Demo was robbed of choice of play style and demon of our liking.

But what Felguard provides to us?

  • Healing reduction effect - That is useless in PvE game modes.
  • Weak baseline AoE ability Felstorm - That has a core design issues with basic WARLOCK toolkit - Soul leech - But I will touch it later.
  • In order to be relevant in AoE damage Felguard requires a Demonic Strength Talent - that is also has issues with Soul Leech.
  • And worst decision of any class designer in all game history - Axe toss - a combined Interrupt and Stun ability on the 30 sec CD.

And let’s talk about Axe toss for a second.
Axe toss is a problematic ability that was designed like this because Warlock Interrupt is given to the felhunter, and because class designers didn’t wanted to give Warlocks a baseline interrupt or Design demonology in the way so any Demonology’s Prime/Main demons were on par with each other in terms of Single target damage… they decided to give interrupt to Felguard but instead of new ability they combined it with an axe toss. And this creates numerous bad design effects for Demonology in PvE and PvP.

PvE - We all have been in situation when tank pulls the group of mobs and one of them is a range caster. Normal class would just use an interrupt to break the cast of an NPC and forcing NPC to walk into the main group of mobs where that NPC would be cleaved. But for Demo if that mob can be CCed, then Axe toss would first interrupt that mob, and then when actual axe would reach the mob, axe toss would stun the enemy. And we would get a situation where Interrupted mob would stay the duration of Interrupt in stun, instead of walking to the tank. This sucks! The only scenario where Axe toss would work “OK” is when NPS is an immune to CC and not immune to interrupts.

And what about PvP? Well no class designer has ever thought that Combined effect of an Axe toss is a bad idea for PvP because unlike any class, Demo have is forced to waste CD of an Interrupt and Stun with one button. And on top of that It means that if you interrupted the enemy and gave the diminishing on Interrupt of any school of magic, you also gave that enemy the diminishing on Stun. This situation alone renders Demo to be not a good team member to numbers of classes who’s main CC is stuns. On top of that your own castable CC - shadowfury is now less efficient because you had to use an Axe toss to interrupt someone - the healer for example.

The lack of baseline interrupt for warlock also negatively affects choice of demon for Affliction and Destruction warlocks. In 99% of content non demo warlocks summon
Felhunter because of interrupt - spell lock. Other demons have zero usage:

  • In is so rare when game makes use of Imp and his dispel.
  • And almost no usage of Succubus, she only has seduction and slow in her utility toolkit, and seduction shares diminishing with Fear and Howl of Terror, and Slow can be applied via Curse of Exhaustion or Shadowflame(if you among those who use it >_<). The only usage of Succubus is dueling people, because in PvE and PvP - SoloQ/3v3 - the game modes that devs allegedly build their balance around she has no play.
  • Void walker only us useful in leveling or delves if you run them solo, and that’s it he is useless after that.
  • on top of that These four demons deal so little damage that it is almost a mandatory to pick a grimoire of Sacrifice to compensate their lack of damage.

But let’s get back to the Demons and forcing of a Felguard.
Doesn’t it feel weird that picking a demonology makes 4/5 of your summoning demons useless?
Imagine Beast mastery Hunters that by design is forced to play with one type of beast - A corocolisk for example. Not everyone loves those beasts and it has a limited toolkit.

Why not make all demons useful for the demo? Bring their ST damage on par and add something extra for Imp, Void, Succubus and Felhunter?

  • Imp - bring back HP buff and add passive to make wild imps better when main Imp is around.

  • Voidwalker - bring back disarm and add passive that would make Soul leech better when Void walker around.

  • Succubus - replace her slow with knock back and add passive to enhance warlock’s spell damage damage or Make her enhance shadow based damage of other demons.

  • Felhunter - remove interrupt and give it to the warlock, add spell that work as grounding totem of shamans but with a twist where Felhunter could cast spell back with the reduced efficency, add passive to make felhunters dispel to heal warlock as well.

  • Felguard - remove interrupt from Axe toss, add a passive to felstorm to reduce enemy’s armor to some amount for each time felstorm struck that target - this would be useful for PvP and PvE.

With that change all Felguard specific talents should be replaced with talents that improve Prime/Main demons in general.

7 Likes
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Yes, yes, yes! Make our demons more impactful. Make the warlock the interrupt!

I agree with everything you say.

1 Like
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I fully agree with you, the very fact that in 2024 the warlock still has to go around with the voidwalker to do quests and now also delves makes us understand how in many ways the concept of class itself is totally prehistoric on many things.

The fact that although in DF they had finally tried to insert the spell lock (as a talent) to retrace their steps a week later, is surprising. It would be enough to give the basic spell lock and remodulate the other demons accordingly to avoid broken situation, (for example the sacrifice voidwalker for the shadow bulwalk together with the silence, or the succubus beyond the silence).

The justification for removing the spell lock from the pvp talent demo because “the spec has a lot of cc” clashes with classes full of cc and micro cc like rogues and dj unholy who have the kick. Having introduced the kick in pve with axe toss against targets immune to stun was a disastrous choice.

The fact that Demonology is anchored to the use of only one type of demon (without the chiuse of sac the demon) is a wrong choice, a few years ago there was the pvp talent to use the succubus and enhance shadow damage (like the old sacrifice did by sacrificing that type of demon and I remember that the sacrifice was a Demonology talent) and lowered the cast speed of the shadowbolts and I had a lot of fun, but they removed it.

In general I would like the warlock to be able to freely choose to use a demon or sacrifice it to have different powers and various gameplay

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I was an advocate of Succubus PvP talent for a while “pleasure through pain” - wrote a lot about it on different account - my main warlock was Dâedra.

A lot of issues and bugs in warlock comes from the lack of desire to design warlocks properly or test warlocks beyond target dummy.

The fact that soul leech is bugged and abilities like a Wither stops generating the shields despite being our top 5 damage abilities shows values of the quality of the test.

In fact it uncovers so many layers of issues, like I bet that WoW devs look for some class youtubers or WoWHead writers who plays the class/spec. But the laser focus of those creators on the PvE and purely on the damage values to keep spec worthy of picking for Raids or M+ shows that those big Writers is also single minded on the damage aspect of the game and doesn’t want anything else beyond reasonable damage numbers.
None of them in years have spoken about lackluster and limiting design of demons, none of them has ever tried to speak about limiting design of demonology locked with the Felguard, that is absolutely goes against the gameplay customization of the spec and also renders all new and shiny demon models useless for demonology because of Felguard centric design. And Blizz listen to those players who has youtube channels, blogs on WoWhead instead of players who plays the spec not just to be good in PvE, who is invested in class fantasy, class design and the quality of those elements.

And the Blizzard aproach as well is wild - I had to pay ~120$ for epic edition to get access to the beta… where all my feedback and all my bugtests would have been ignored. The class design situation is just terrible. We just got the release of the Xpac and already knew that in next big patch number of classes would get revamp of class/spec/hero talents… so where was class devs during the Alpha/Beta? I’m sure that tons of those issues has been reported months prior to the release of the TWW.

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do you have a demonology void elf? I’m sure I’ve seen videos on youtube with that name, in torgast if I’m not mistaken. I also bought the Epic version to play the Beta and try to give my contribution, but…

We are still talking about those who still haven’t fixed the graphics of the Demon Bolt even though anyone who has a very obvious graphic defect can see it, being truncated in half. And the same ones who left Doom for years who had a 5% chance that if its damage killed a target a Doom Guard would be summoned, meaning it was more likely to win the lottery.

Until two weeks ago the Demonology Diabolist was unplayable due to buggy demon AI and broken talents, and it’s absurd how almost all the classes with the DF talent branches have become very solid while the warlock is confined to having either the mortal coil or the howl of terror and the shadowfury at cast time.

Do we want to talk about corruption with cast time for destruction and demonology? It seems to me that they often have no idea what a warlock is. But someone also suggests how to do it, nothing.

The same minimal graphic bug of the double skull of tal’kiel is incredible that it is not resolved after months, also because if you try the PTR 11.0.5 this glitch does not exist (let’s hope that in a week then…).

1 Like
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please return friendly dispel to felhunter!

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It was on the imp. Felhunter was an enemy dispel, and in the past it was

https://youtu.be/9O4jYoNPa90

Yeah I had a void Elf, I’ll return to that char and Account one day,

I have a big guess, but I think that the second skull is actually a skull that appears in cinematics, thus is why it is bigger and flies weirdly. And now for some reason it doesn’t mark as “Hidden” outside of cutscenes.

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Initially the felhunter had self dispel magic, I used it with a macro to eliminate the paladin’s stun and fear. It also had Paranoia to see stealths, but it was too OP of a thing that they decided to remove it. To give it to the DH later.

This vid… I remembered well then!

In PTR 11.0.5 the glitch is no longer there, hopefully also because it is one of the most beautiful weapons in Legion (especially when it talks to you)

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I kinda like the “bring variety to demo” suggestions , but am NOT on board with “put interrupt on the warlock” part . The interrupt on pet is unique tool , which lets you stop someone from mashing your face in , when you are sitting in a sheep or stun .
For destro and affly you already get the interrupt on the lock , by using sacrifice .

For demonology we had a pvp talent that interrupted people , when you were using a pet that was not a felhunter . So that one can come back as baseline spell perhaps . You are right that interrupt on the axe toss is useless most of the time .
Alternatively let demonology instant summon their main pet . This way we can be true masters of pets and juggle pets if we need interrupt , dispell , ets at the cost of 1 soul shard . I see no reason why summon pet cast time is even a thing right now , considering hunters can just pop magically 20 pets out of thin air , but for masters of demonic summoning magic , this is not possible .

Also you forgot that half the demonology talent tree basically buffs felguard . This will need to be uncoupled , so that these talents affect other demons .

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The talents that buff FG’ damage need to work with all Prime/Main demons, and talents like demonic strength, Immutable hatred, guillotine need to be removed and replaced with things that would work with all demons or Design to give each Demon something cool and unique.

For example - Demonic strength may stay but this talent need to give something special for all demons.

  • Succubus instead of seduction someone would mind control someone and force that target to fight for her for 4-6 seconds.
  • Imp - For next 8 seconds all imp fire bolt would leave a stacking burning DoT on the target.
  • Voidwalker - Curses the enemy - Any damage dealt to non voidwalker would be reflected back on the attacker at the reduced efficiency.
  • Felhunter - steals up to 3 beneficial effects from the target sharing them with the Warlock.
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At this point I’d like to see subjugate demon reworked into something resembling a hunter’s tame beast. By all means keep it limited to exclusively demons but…there’s so many cool demon models out there.

The update in the barber shop to change the cosmetic appearance works nicely, though there’s still a lot of unused models and I’d like more effort put into making each demon - or at least the type of demon - have more engaging abilities.

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we agree that a spell lock independent of the caster is superior to use it from CC with the felhunter, but I personally would prefer to have the spell lock on the warlock so that you can use any demon and not just one. Plus lately you pretty much always use SAC if you use Destruction or Affliction in PvP.

On the subject of the talented branches of Demonology all focused on the Felguard, it would be enough to do what was done for that of the BM hunter (which although I have never seen in life, is certainly made in such a way as to use various pets)

1 Like
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It’s something I’ve always thought, it would be a really great thing. And I would prefer that demons could be modified by the warlock’s trainer and not the barber

2 Likes
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I interrupt would be only on felhunter it means that Fehunter would be used in 99% of situations in PvP and PvE and any form of variety would be doomed from the start.

1 Like
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in TBC/WOTLK at least, felhunter’s devour magic worked both on allies/enemies

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Well maybe my memory failed me here.

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before shadowlands i can remember how all demons had a base cast time of around 2sec , was much faster to swap between demons , also the pvp talent of spelllock for demo got removed sadly

3 Likes
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In SL blizzard in their Eternal wisdom decided that summoning demons must be a chore, so they has increased the base cast time. It was pure PvP change and the wildest part is, they have listened to all PvP whiners who cried about demons and decided to punish warlock. And at the same time DK summons ghoul instantly and can heal ghoul with coils better than we with Health funnel, Hunter ability to call pet had 2.5 sec cast time and was on nature magic school - try to find anything else rather than healing ability for pet on that school of magic for hunters, and makes had 2 second cast time on water elemental.

3 Likes
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%100 On the spot and really well explained. Tho… Blizzard will never make the game better. I even would say, they would abandon warcraft to a dumpster already if they could. But we still keep paying even for this BS and 0 service they are giving us now. so they act like they care and keep milking the cow. that’s it.

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in full masochism I decided to level another warlock and make him a dracktyr to play him in Visage. The Wing Buffet racial is what should be the talent (unused since it was brought back into the game) Shadowflame.

(Do you remember the beautiful Carrion Swarm in MOP to use in demon form… (i I had a macro to cast her when entering and exiting Demon form so as not to lose Fury… good times), with the graphic effect of demonic bats? Something like this would be VERY welcome