Demo was ruined in Legion, people was deceived by alluring puppeteer gameplay. At some part demonology really became this puppeteer - a demon master who summons army of demons to the battlefield and command them. But did it worked in class fantasy and gameplay ways?
Blizzard replaced quality of demons with quantity, not thinking about problems that puppeteer will experience in this game engine.
We are really summoned army of demons in battlefield, but it was simple imps and dreadstalkers - the lowest demons.
We could get big army of imps, but we didn’t commanded/controlled them, they just attacked target that was hitted by HoG, and of that target died, then well we could force them to any desirable target that we wanted to attack.
On top of that, we summoned weak demons that was needed to be empowered by us. So we basically played a demonic battery?
The problem with Legion/BFA demonology is that you don’t feel that it is you are hero of the action. It was you who casted that sweet soulfire into your targetm it was you who transformed into demon and crushed your foes, it was you that scary boogeyman who was in the middle of the action. And what we have right now, you play some sort of portal manager who stays behing, weak and not interesting.
Demonology never was about quantity it was about quality of you and your demons.
Even in TBC and WotLK when demo gameplay was not so good as in Cata or MoP it was still about improvements of you and your personal demon.
Your talents emphasized that ideology.
Few brief examples:
Demonic Empowerment - Grants the Warlock’s summoned demon Empowerment.
- Imp - Increases the Imp’s spell critical strike chance by 20% for 30 seconds…
- Voidwalker - Increases the Voidwalker’s health by 20%, and its threat generated from spells and attacks by 20% for 20 seconds…
- Succubus - Instantly vanishes, causing the Succubus to go into an improved Invisibility state. The vanish effect removes all stuns, snares and movement impairing effects from the Succubus.
- Felhunter - Dispels all magical effects from the Felhunter.
- Felguard - Increases the Felguard’s attack speed by 20% and breaks all stun, snare and movement impairing effects and makes your Felguard immune to them for 15 seconds
Master Demonologist - Grants both the Warlock and the summoned demon an effect as long as that demon is active.
Imp - Increases your Fire damage by 5%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Fire spells by 5%.
Voidwalker - Reduces Physical damage taken by 10%.
Succubus - Increases your Shadow damage by 5%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Shadow spells by 5%.
Felhunter - Reduces all spell damage taken by 10%.
Felguard - Increases all damage done by 5%, and reduces all damage taken by 5%.
As you can see, warlock ideology was about quality of you and your demon. Maybe not all demons was equally useful in battle, but this talents emphasized class fantasy and lore behind your demons.
Even in WoTLK when blizzard introduced Metamorphosis to demonology, it was logical development of the spec.
In the MoP, in “Green fire quest” we can learn that teqnique of Metamorphosis is already well known for warlocks and they use it.
Jubeka’s Journal day 36:
Remarkable! My first attempt to summon a higher order member of the legion failed as spectacularly as planned. The shivarra broke free almost instantly after Kanrethad completed the ritual.I expected the frail human to be struck down while I banished the creature. Instead, in the instant that the shivarra’s razor-sharp blades sliced through the air, Kanrethad’s form shifted and the blades bounced as if striking stone.
Unlike the typical form of metamorphosis, he did not complete the demonic transformation… perhaps his research has been more successful than I expected.
So lore arguments about Metamorphosis and warlocks could be closed.
MoP Demonology gameplay was intense and rewarding, it was your fight and your experience. Your victory was achieved through your and your personal demon’s work.
To be fair you could summon additional demons to the fight, it was wild imps that was summoned by your Wild Imps passive or Imp swarm glyph. But they was situational and not permanent.
Demo was not so immobile like now, sure you needed to stay and cast spells to gain fury, but then your gameplay drasticaly changed while you used Metamoprhosis - it was brief but good change of phase, from immobile caster to agressive and mobile demon.
Now, you stay and summon more demons to…stay and summon ever more demons. There is no dynamic in that gameplay. If we forgot for a minute that we summon demons to deal damage, and look at our actions from the side, it would look like we play like vanila-WotLK warlocks, we are immobile and slow.
Blizzard didn’t improved or evolved our gameplay! From pure gameplay perspective it is degradation of what was in MoP/WoD.
god I hate this company so much
AoE tanking was also fun. God I miss MoP so much…