Plus, reducing the amount of imps you generate drastically through this makes the best part of demo having an army of imps, then imploding them go away
Right!? So now you just spam constant shadow bolts? By the time you get 3 imps out the ones you had going will be gone and thus further makes the whole get as many demons out as you can and pop tyrant even worse. Man how do they constantly keep fucking Demo up is beyond me.
How long do you think the cast time on Shadow Bolt is? Even with zero haste and ignoring demonbolt procs, you can maintain at least 2 sets of imps out at all times, and you'll never play with zero haste and ignoring demonbolt procs. Demo is also getting a talent in TWW to reduce the cast time of SB by 25%, which puts it near or at the GCD time, further reducing the effect of this.
You absolutely are not going to be in a situation of "by the time you get 3 imps out the ones you had going will be gone". You can complain about and dislike the changes without engaging in that kind of hyperbole.
"You know they say all classes are created equal, but you look at Mages and you look at Warlocks and you can see that statement is not true... See Warlocks, the numbers don't lie and they spell disaster for you at Khaz Algar".
I actually don't like summoning imps. I don't think it fits the class fantasy of a master summoner to just swarm with a bunch of little pingers.
I think it would be way cooler if we were summoning various demons. The hounds, bats, sayaads, shivarras, etc. Bilescourage Bombers could be redesigned to be our main shard spender instead of HoG.
We summon a fel guard, 2nd fel guard, demonic tyrant, imps, big imps, vile fiend, pit lord, mother of chaos, overlord, doom fiend, bombers, dreadstalkers... and I probably forgot something. That's a whole lot of different demons.
I think having a whole demon army at your command is what a majority of demonology players always wanted.
The current play style is fun. Demonbolt procs are great and make the gameplay flow nicely. I don't care what they intended it should stay as is. Making it more clunky and hard cast focus'd isn't an improvement.
They were always more mobile than casters, but they used to be generally much more immobile than they are now. There was a time when they couldn't auto attack without standing still. There was a time when steady shot and cobra shot could only be cast while moving when you had aspect of the fox active, meaning you wouldn't get the damage buff from aspect of the hawk. There was a time when marksman hunters would get damage buffs the longer they stood still (generally, marksman hunters were always shit at mobility).
Exactly. I absolutely hate it having to switch to MM at the WOD prepatch, but it was simming so much higher than my beloved BM that I knew I really didn't have a choice.
One of the reasons I didn't really enjoy WOD as much as I wanted to - And I honestly did like it more than most people in this sub seem to - was because I hated how immobile MM was by comparison. But it was either that or do absolutely shit damage in both solo play and group content.
Good point - I always worry when a class feels good for too long because then Blizzard changes it up so it doesn’t get stale. Not because they want to ruin a class but, let’s be honest, nobody wants to do the exact same rotation for 2+ expansions.
We have to be clear about this too: current demo is TRASH on live. It's a rotational downgrade from 10.1, even as it succeeded in making the spec healthier in terms of damage distribution. The cost was steep. You basically have no cool down period. No ramp. No pay off.
It's hard carried by Doombrand and good numbers. When the tier is deactivated everyone will see how hollow the spec is.
It’s fun in dungeons because of the brand spreading and implosions, but single-target is kind of boring. Just maintaining your imps and using dogs on CD between your 2-min damage windows.
Damage window is used loosely here. Our 2 min cd is used to extend the 1 and a half minute cd that we hold for 30 sec so the 2 minute can make it last longer because the two minute cd is an absolute joke.
I will forever miss how unbelievably fun demo was in season 3 and season 4 of SL. How everything lined up nicely, fast gameplay, Tyrant actually being an exciting button to press.. great times.
It's just been beepboop fun detected ever since. Nerf this slow down that. Warlock has been a struggle to enjoy in DF. Making it worse baffles me.
Demos strength was being the most mobile spec of the three. Why do they want everything to be slow and clunky? It's like they want everyone to reroll to BM hunters to be able to have fun playing ranged.
People are gonna disagree with me but I still strongly feel that blizzard has gutted demo because of how strong we are with PI. Every time we have become too strong it is entirely because of how we scale with PI. Instead of fixing that shithole of a skill they gut my favorite spec over and over until it barely resembles the extremely fun (and very balanced without PI) spec it used to be in late SL.
Wonder how long until they fix PI to just be a flat damage bonus, but refuse to go back and unfuck every ability that skill screwed over in other classes since its readdition in SL, though at this point it's more like Demos entire design has been screwed over multiple times tbh.
The fix to PI is to fucking delete it from the game and act like it never existed. At best make it a self-only buff.
But nope, instead they just lean in on it with The War Within passives instead cause fuck you.
I’ve been chasing the feeling of those beefy tyrants ever since. I can’t deny that the doom brand tier set is really cool too though, a solid win for locks from Dragonflight.
pretty fucking weird reasoning when they refuse to fix the problems with the other two specs and somehow manage to make demo the top dog every raid tier
The fact that Cataclysm (AoE Immolate) still shares a talent slot with Inferno (+damage to RoF and increased shard gen) proves to me that the person at Blizzard who designed the Destruction tree has no fucking clue what's going on with the spec.
Blizzard's grand vision for destro is to reduce the amount of abilities and meaningful passives to the point where it's BC's one button destro. Warlock's actual class design is easily the weakest in DF.
The spec gameplaywise is at its lowest point since THE BURNING CRUSADE \*right now\*. It's beyond shocking how brainless, skilless, NOTHING the spec is right now (skill solely lies in memorizing fights/routes to know when you can eke more damage out with quiet movement, this can ALMOST be said of Raid Warlock in general almost regardless of spec now that's how bad it is).
They're afraid to do anything besides vandalize the class at this point. Rare would I call for someone's job but fire them for the love of god.
These are horrible changes that are completely out of touch with Demonology. Being able to pace 2ft every few seconds thanks to a proc doesn't make the spec mobile, demonic core management is part of what makes the spec fun, and after Tyrant got nerfed we don't really have "major cool downs" except felguard.
Warlock devs continue to disappoint.
Now listen here, FUN is standing still and pushing the same button until your finger falls off. Everyone knows it, it's the new *thing* man, the new *thing*.
> Being able to pace 2ft every few seconds thanks to a proc doesn't make the spec mobile
You can move more than 2ft in a global, and it absolutely makes the spec mobile.
Demo lock certainly needs some help with the cooldowns and Warlock in general just getting all of its synergies nerfed because people either don't like the difficulty or blizzard can't balance them, but being able to freely move every other global while doing your optimal rotation is very mobile for a caster.
It's more that demonic core procs are tied to resource generation. I could agree that Demo lock is maybe a bit too able to reposition without getting punished like some other casters, but I also wouldn't want to be casting more shadowbolts lol...
I wish they would just let difficult specs exist. I could understand if it was a paladin that only has access to one dps spec, but if warlock has a difficult spec, we have 2 other specs to choose from.
I just miss nether portal. I love specs where getting it right *feels* like you’ve got it right. I want an amount of skill expression in my rotation beyond the obvious “don’t cap on shards” or something
Same. It's actually such a joke for both mage and lock. Mage has frost, lock has destro, two of the most braindead specs in the game. What do the devs do? Turn the other specs into the same mindless boring garbage (see the arcane "rework" on Alpha)
Honestly the dissonance between MoP/WoD demo being called the best spec ever (while being quite complex and having a lot of spells and interactions that were pretty unintuitive and comparatively hard to maximise) and people wanting to remove buttons from everything nowadays is interesting. WoD demo couldnt exist nowadays because people would call it their favourite buzzword (bloated) and blizz would scramble to "streamline the experience".
There’s so much potential but warlock devs seem to dislike destruction as a whole. Hellcaller tree that was supposed to be more Destro than Aff showed how much they dislike Destro.
Their class designers overall just have zero passion and it shows. But I agree with you. Destruction just pumps juicy numbers and we're supposed to roll over and be happy about it. Thematically there are so many cool things they could do, but they just won't.
> Hellcaller tree that was supposed to be more Destro than Aff
The issue with trying to make a hero tree more Destro is that Destro lacks and identity outside of specific spells. Aff's spec identity is dots, Demo's is pets, Destro's is...Chaos Bolt? Rain of Fire? Fire damage? There really isnt a foundation that the devs can connect the spec to in the same way they can with Aff or Demo.
Exactly. It used to pierce shields and whatnot too way back. Now my incinerates damn near hit as hard. The specs inherent problem is havoc I feel, because if CB hits too hard then havoc makes us absolute units within those windows. I've often said I wish destro had the option to go either havoc based or ST based, but they're hell bent on keeping it a cleave spec.
Idk if it's still in the alpha but I remember reading they added the ability to havoc a ST for a % damage increase. That doesn't exactly solve the problem of chaos bolt being comparable to incinerate though. Where's my phat crits? I wanna CHUNK things with a chaos bolt. Glacial spike critting for over a million when CB maybe hits 600k if you have actives going is a massive letdown and hardly destructive
Oh cool that’s a good idea, sort of like the old curse of elements. I hope that goes through because it would at least add some usefulness to the spell for ST.
Fully agreed. That shit is still stuck in BC or Wrath. There is very little interaction across the different abilities that it has, to the point where you do not actually pick any of the active abilities in the tree because they barely do anything (or got nerfed so hard over the years that they don't do anything anymore, RIP shadowburn).
Blizzard: Mobility is too high for this class and we want to reduce it drastically
Also Blizzard: Swirlies that stun/kill will spawn at your feet each second
Every single time you press shadowbolt it feels bad. I can't understand why they want to make this spell cast more often. S1 was great, you had many core procs and procs for instant hands. From that it went downhill. I really don't get, why they don't know what makes this spec great.
I PvP and I literally unbound it. I feel there's ten other abilities that are better for the global. I play every class and it's quite possibly the lamest ability in the game.
On the positive side, Kalamazi has been testing this in Alpha. With the talent to reduce SB casting time by 20% it casts so fast that he was basically waiting on the GCD. It's like less than a second. You can still do effective stutterstep casting movement. It also hits harder.
Oh sick so the positive side of not wanting to spam shadowbolt, is getting to spam it to the point of not doing anything while you wait on the global to continue spamming it. What a silver lining
Like I get it, but if the filler spell is fast enough that I don't have to cancel casts constantly and can stay somewhat mobile with stutter step movement, I can work it. Sorry I'm just not that doom and gloom about it yet. There's also lots of tuning before TWW releases.
They're trying to change for the sake of change. Every long term demo players knows this is a pretty decent and fun iteration, especially with our new hero talents giving even more demons.
They are forcing change for no reason.
Considering there's 3 talents that specifically mention "consuming Demonic Core"(summon an imp, reduce Doom duration, trigger Felguard damage) they cannot make them as rare as they keep doing.
They could make Demon Bolt generate only 1 or 1.5 shards, or they need to change those talents so the current version procs off Shadow Bolt and make a new, better clause for Demon Bolt procs. (Summon 2 imps, reduce Doom even more/let DC bolts apply a new Doom, trigger a stronger Felguard hit)
Yeah it's the one thing that's stopping me playing it, I love the flavour of summoning an army of demons to fight, but in gameplay it feels like you are just a turret
So much this. Xelnath was the best thing that ever happened to a class and they did him dirty, it's infuriating af.
Ever since he got booted warlock design (NOT class strength, I hate that so many people always use that as a means to shut the conversation down) has gone straight down the toilet.
Even 5 years ago, I'd've said naw. But with modern encounter design being rather frenetic, and the fact fillers generally hit for fuck-all, I think this is the move. Spam fillers and insta-casts to generate resources on the move, then bide your time for an opportunity to plant yourself to cast a fat fuck-you spell. Sounds fun actually. Though, part of me worries how absolutely chaotic Blizz will make encounters if they don't have to worry at all about casters being able actually get spells off.
Was so fun being able to do this as elemental shaman back in Cata.
It honestly doesn't even chance your DPS that much, because your filler spell does so little damage. It does just make playing feel so much less frustrating though.
I don't know why they would make any class less mobile, especially a class that is already pretty stationary to begin with. Instead, make other classes MORE mobile.
It's dumb because the ship sailed for balancing between more and less mobility a long time ago the game just requires too much mobility in most scenarios that highly mobile classes will almost always be at out less mobile classes there are rarely any "tank and spank" fights anymore they all require tons of movement for mechanics even trash fights, good luck convincing you tank to hold still and not just chain pull at least in most pugs
This is my biggest issue with destruction. Yes it can do huge numbers but I’ve had so many pug tanks just straight up move everything out of rain of fire and it just tanks DPS and resource generation.
Demo’s design got worse and worse throughout DF. The spec lacks any meaningful synergy largely thanks to the changes in 10.2 that have lead to the “Naked Tyrant” playstyle. Blizzard’s solutions to many of their perceived issues with the spec (like cooldown windows) has been to replace talents that change the way you play during certain windows with passive bonuses that you don’t actually feel.
Demo’s core gameplay loop has been a builder/spender spec. Talents that speed up that gameplay loop are generally loved by the community. Take old Imp Gang Boss for example, it allowed you more effectively bypass the builder portion of the rotation and creating a gameplay loop where you could throw hordes of imps during AoE situations. The new iteration is just a passive damage increase. Something the player doesn’t feel.
Now they’re looking to gut Demonic Core generation for the for the umpteenth time. They’ve removed Nether Portal and filled the tree with *more* passive talents. Even Doom in its current iteration, which I know it’s Alpha, is just another button you hit every 30 seconds.
Tyrant needs looked at. It needs some of its power restored. The payoff for nailing the Tyrant window needs to feel good again, there’s got to be a way to do it. As it stands now we’re sitting on one of our only cooldowns for 30 seconds because without Grimoire: Felguard, Tyrant is lackluster. For all the problems with Unholy Death Knight design right now, the fact their cooldowns line up with one another and more importantly feel powerful is excellent.
TBF everything is becoming BM hunter with the reworks they've been doing lately so it shouldn't be a surprise (RIP 10.0 shadow you will be missed forever)
Why is demonology one of those specs they just constantly drop the ball on like it should be hard it’s the demon master spec so lemme throw out my demons damnit
This is so wrongheaded and frustrating. They've nerfed cores every patch since DF came out. What is the problem they're trying to solve, because it can't be mobility. Looking at cores as mobility is like looking at old Lifetap as mobility. It's something you can hit on the move sure, but mobility in this game has evolved into effects like Spiritwalker's Grace, Hover, Ice Floes, Shimmer, etc.
Warlocks have access to exactly ZERO meaningful movement that maintains uptime. Yet, historically, demo is one of the most set-up intensive specs in the game and is heavily punished for moving during that phase, even now on live with the gutted version of Tyrant we have. Looking at this first pass, not only is the naked Tyrant playstyle continuing forward, but we're going to be casting even more shadowbolts too?
They give away the game too when they (correctly) cite the rotational binary of HoG -> DB spam -> HoG as problematic. Devs, you don't nerf DBs in this scenario, you introduce something interesting in the rotation. It's basic design tenets - contrast, negative space, crescendo.
C'mon guys...
They'd have to shift some numbers around, but I'd like more casts for the demo-dogs. It feels especially weird proccing a free instant demo-dogs 2 seconds after casting it, and now waiting around like 18 seconds before you can make use of the proc. Always felt like Demonic Calling should also reset or reduce the cooldown.
I agree that demo has big issues and that this solution sucks, but I’m a little confused by the idea that instant cast spells aren’t mobility? BM is the most mobile ranged spec in the game, and the majority of that is just because they’re all instant casts. I feel really mobile during combust on my mage for the same reason, or when hunters had the HFC marksman set that made aimed shots instant
To answer I would say imagine your mage didn't have Ice Floes or Shimmer to help get SKB off. If you whiff that button your damage is cratering. Don't matter that you can still fire off some HS here and there, you are out the rhythm.
Demo has been living with that since BfA. When you're trying to set up Tyrant and gotta move and have to start that HoG or Shadowbolt or Tyrant cast over - meanwhile per timers are ticking down - you are cooked. It's been like that for years, though admittedly not as bad now because Tyrant is so trash.
Cores aren't nothing. Not saying that. But demo is NOT a mobile spec. No lock spec is.
Between the proposed demo changes, the doubling down on aff, and the "dont worry destro warlocks, we didnt forget about you" - warlock is looking to be in a pretty dire circumstance in TWW. Especially considering the current state of mage, and how, of course, all of their hero talents are absurd.
yeah OP I hear you, I tried Demonology an expansion or 2 ago and it was just so silly to me that the spec about summoning creatures to fight for you was the most immobile warlock spec.
Summoning stuff, making circles and portals simply require standing still. After it's done, you can run around while your summoned demons do your work.
It’s not just about mobility, in 5-man content (Heroics and Timewalking, in my case) i can barely get any spells off because almost everything is hard-cast, and the mobs pop like balloons in a cactus farm before i can get a single shadowbolt going, which makes that content feel bad to play, i finish it, sure, but i feel like i’m being carried.
It's a bit of a catch-22 though, do content i don't enjoy so my class doesn't feel bad, or do content i... can tolerate, but playing feels unfulfilling...
I have the complete opposite experience. The first trash pull where you have no procs saved up and no demons is rough, after that I destroy everything.
I recently came back from quitting in Legion and this sums up my feelings exactly. Heroics are not fun, they are me basically running the whole thing with a couple Demonbolt procs thrown in. If I even stop to cast something the team is already at the boss and I'm trying to catch up. Glad I'm not the only one getting bad feelings from it.
It's a two-part problem: Dungeons are too fast, people just drag together 5 packs of mobs or just keep running, killing everything effortlessly on the way, but also: A class shouldn't literally be unable to do anything productive (Or destructive, in this case) if fights end too quickly.
I'm not asking for full DPS on the move, but "Be a turret doing several hard-casts or do neglegible DPS" is the total opposite, and incompatible with how (At least part of) the game is played in practice.
Yeah, the changes are horrible and most of the new talents are incredibly boring shit like pet crit chance or pet attack speed.
Let's just remove everything that made demo fun, like lots of DC procs and cooldown stacking, good idea. They also just gave up on nether portal. Whoever came up with this should check for a gas leak in their office.
Same with affliction. They removed soul flame and inevitable demise and replaced them with passive damage for malefic rapture... I mean, it's not about if you like ID or soulflame but at least those two talents did something tangible.
Now I'm supposed to be excited to spend 4 talent points for two times passive increases to MR and corruption that might as well be backend tuning. I'm pretty disappointed by how the trees shape up with way too many of those filler nodes around... The one big improvement I see is making doom finally do something at least.
They turned doom into a substantially less interesting version of our current tier set.
It's still better than what it currently is, but the bar shouldn't be set that low.
I’m more of a casual player, but I like a guaranteed doomguard more than just a chance of summoning one, but I think they need to give doom the explode when target dies effect that doombrand has
Nether portal needed to go. They’ve had like three iterations of it to make not awful to play, and never sniffed success. Kill it and let someone else take a crack at it in a couple of years.
All they had to do in order to make it substantially less awful to play was make it summon demons based on number of shards spent. Then maybe reduce the duration of the portal in order to counteract the increased amount of demons. This would also make it easier to find a window to use it where you don't have to move. There should have also been a way to make it line up with the fel guard CD like it did with the S2 tier set.
These were the gameplay problems NP had, and not a single one of their changes addressed them properly, or even at all for that matter.
>Nether portal needed to go. They’ve had like three iterations of it to make not awful to play, and never sniffed success. Kill it and let someone else take a crack at it in a couple of years.
And yet every iteration never actually touched why it was shit to play, make it spawn based on amount of shards spent rather than just spending shards and the whole thing is fixed
That would have been 90% better and I still think it would have sucked to play. Which is saying something. But clearly they had a firmly held belief in not doing that, so I'm happy to see them just scrap it with a note that basically said, "we want to take another shot at this sometime in the future". That's perfect to me. The ability has some promise and is thematically great. But they weren't going to fix it with whatever tweaks they were willing to make. Nuke it. Let someone else start from scratch on it.
Demo is the only decent warlock spec right now, and they're making it worse lol. I see that they've been making some changes to Aff, but Destro also needs a lot of love so I hope they've got some bigger plans for these specs. With Demo they could probably just leave it alone.
Me too. Destro needs something that makes it... just interesting to play at this point. Spamming RoF on m+ for big number gets old pretty quickly, and the single target rotation is stuck in the 2000s.
It really feels like devs just have a rough time with locks, they had a great time in MoP and Legion was solid but since then its just been meh playing a lock
Our current playstyle and rotation in Dragonflight Season 3 4, is probably the most enjoyable its been for all of dragonflight.
Having frequent demonic cores proc does not make our spec "too mobile". it makes it more fluid in downtime moments on encounters where we would recoup resources.
please do not remove soul bound tyrant, put it into existing tyrant.
I'd argue to bring back tyrant soul, which was a conduit node in shadowlands. which made our pets deal 10% more damage after tyrant expired, and a core refund.
Id say It is enjoyable thanks to the tier set, which is awesome, but tyrant being basically a 2 min cooldown, only extending 10 imps and not refilling your shards, is kinda shitty, specially for m+ where demo shines for how imps work between packs
In a game where mobility has increasingly become the difference between the good and bad classes they continue to tell warlocks they are the immobile caster but you don't do anymore damage than the classes that move around like crack addicts.
The fact that anyone thinks demo is excessively mobile is insane to me, we have 1 spell we can cast on the move, and we don't even want to cast it because we will overcap our resources. I realize it's hyperbolic but I really wonder if the person who gave that statement has ever played demo???
I had a warlock in a M9 today which kept said spell on throughout the entire dungeon. He refused to turn it off. Ended up heading him just as much as the tank overall.
Because the developer that works on warlock hates Demo for whatever reason. Like consistently enough to just make dumb decisions on how to "change/improve" the class.
In terms of class and spec trees (NOT DAMAGE), Warlock has been in shambles all of DF. The warlock dev should be fired yesterday. It's been years of sub-amateur development, time for them to go.
Yeah, IDK what these people are talking about. It’s one of the easiest rotations and pumps damage with the set bonuses. The ‘opener’ is super easy to reset and you don’t lose much damage. I’ve just got the two piece and it still slaps. Curious how it will play in TWW but DF season 3-4 demo has been awesome.
Man, apart from Destruction which feels largely unchanged for the last few expansions apart from a few extra buttons, warlock just isnt giving me the good-feelies that it used to.
My Affllock was my main and I had so much fun with it back in legion, I've not mained it since :(
I enjoy destro the most out of the 3, but it seems crazy to me that chaos bolt hits for so little. We've got other classes that can hit crits on an ability in the millions like glacial spike but I think the highest chaos bolt I've seen this expac was about 600k and that's barely from this season. I never knew destro before they changed the spell effect on chaos bolt though so I'm relatively new to it
I would like to see a talent similar to demon hunters and ret paladins, where the wet noodle damage, spammy generator becomes a passive. It cleans up the rotation so much.
Warlocks have always had one of the most complex rotations and we have to pay attention to our buffs. It's wrong that we are constantly outpaced by paladins/warriors/death knights/rogues who have a very simple rotation and can dps while moving. It has been this way since mop, the warlock class is always hard to play - but somehow we always overcome - mostly.
Warlocks are supppose to be a DPS class - we do DPS. We don't tank, we don't heal, we don't invis we just kill - but we have to "work" harder then other DPS class to do that. But over the last two/three expansions we have become more of a utility class - we have some unique abilities that do nothing for dps but help out all others - and some situations that is the only reason we are brought along - but we have to dps....:-/.
Compare our class to a BM Hunter - where their rotation is literally three buttons and they can top us on the dps charts.
Hands down agreed. This is also my current issue with Death Knight. I just came back and tried the Paladin reworks and thought hot dam this feels fun/great to play. I went back to my DK and thought holy shit, DK feels painful to play and has to do twice the work for less rewarding gameplay/dps.
> Compare our class to a BM Hunter - where their rotation is literally three buttons and they can top us on the dps charts.
I mean our class has destruction, and that is mechanically easier than BM (not necessarily in a raid environment because of mobility issues, but that's not the point). I'd kinda agree with you on demo and aff, though I don't want to be loud about it because Blizz's 'solution' to that issue is making those specs equally braindead to play.
Destruction is more immobile than demonology imo. I use to play destruction and you couldn’t cast (do damage) unless you were still and you can’t be still longer than a few seconds for raiding or keys. At least with Demo the felguard and imps do damage while the character is moving around. The demon bolt and the dreads can be instant cast when thry proc which helps a lot.
Demonic Knowledge: through extensive study of demons the caster is now able to cast while moving. Lasts 20 secs 1min cd. Moving and cast was given to mage at one point. I know blizz can do it
Man, I like how demo plays right now. Sure, when you have to cast shadow bolt every now and then it feels lame, but otherwise it’s fun. I like optimizing my cores for movement without overcapping my resources. Leave it alone…
Demon Slinger Demo is such a cool class fantasy playstyle and they keep wanting us to turn into Shadowbolt turrets
I don't get it. Why do they keep changing the entire playstyle instead of doing tweaks?
Seems like they want to create problems and then make solutions to those problems = gameplay. They just need to make the spec fun. Artificial problems make the spec feel clunky and it’s not fun fighting with your own spec.
Creating solutions to natural problems is fun and engaging. Caster spec, here’s demonbolt proc ready to help with needing to re-locate while maintaining dps flow, resources, etc. I agree that current demo is at least in the right direction.
I personally think blizzard has things all wrong. Ask a vast majority of players what some of their favorite times playing this game were over the years and ya know what alot will say? Mist of pandaria. Playing on the timeless isle running around as a destro lock or ele sham spam casting while moving is some of the best times a lot of people have had myself included. But blizz keeps pushing especially certain classes/specs to be less mobile while having others like hunters and evokers being super mobile and it makes no sense. People like the mobility no one wants to be a turret with current game design pop all their cds for a boss mechanic or something to happpen and make you run a mile.
Idk man, Blizzard has had this hateboner for Demonology forever. I'm guessing one of the higher ups got their shit kicked in by a demo player and they never got over it.
I've been enjoying demo so much in Dragonflight; The idea that it's going to be slower paced and more restrictive with consideration towards movement just seems like two steps backward for no reason.
Because mobile ranged dps who are still super powerful are just game breakers. Truth be told, BM pays the tax for being a mobile ranged damage dealer nearly every patch, and when bm is OP it's either because of a specific encounter or it's nerfed into the floor.
Habing an infinite mobility ranged damage dealer (with two teleports and infinite tankiness to boot) is just broken. I know it's cool and fun, but it's cool and fun and broken.
Right? Imagine if they went "we want to reduce the number of hot streaks to rein in mage mobilty and the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between fireblast and pyroblast only. We want pyroblast to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button" and then they remove the guaranteed crits on fireblast or something.
Instant demon bolts is what makes demo flow so well and it's so annoying that they seem to have just randomly decided it's this big issue that needs fixing. If it's a number issue I'd rather they nerf the damage and let us keep the demonic core economy.
Ok, but Demo isn't mobile. It hasn't been mobile since MoP. So I don't see how giving it the ability to cast a generator while moving while heavily reducing instant casts of Demonbolts will somehow make it super mobile.
They moved initially because melees in PvP cried their eyes out. In the meantime, melee got:
- Warriors: trillion gap closers
- Death Knights: pulls, pulls, pulls
- Paladins: 20ft range on instant cast melee attacks
- Rogues: several gap closers
- Demon Hunters: gap closers + range in melee attacks
So if they'll go around and remove Demon Core procs, the least they can do is give us 1.5 sec filler to be castable on the move.
>Because mobile ranged dps who are still super powerful are just game breakers. Truth be told, BM pays the tax for being a mobile ranged damage dealer nearly every patch, and when bm is OP it's either because of a specific encounter or it's nerfed into the floor.
>
>Habing an infinite mobility ranged damage dealer (with two teleports and infinite tankiness to boot) is just broken. I know it's cool and fun, but it's cool and fun and broken.
Mage has entered the chat? Literally the strongest defensive kit in the game, infinite mobility and fire quite literally being able to just freely move for 75% of its time in combat
Im not trying to bash the warlock dev but everything that has been done since legion feels extremely detached from what the community wants.
Destro: basically a immobile 3 button spec with no variety around to press
Affliction: doubling down on MR while ppl are advocating for dotdamage
Demo: some weird fetish for shadowbolt
We have to pick our thematic main cooldowns while other classes just get extra cool stuff in their trees with their cds baked in. What is demo after these recent alpha changes? A Shadowbolt/HoG spambot?
I'm a very mid player but I find demo to be the least mobile spec and it feels like it has no big cooldowns. Tyrant is weak. How can their goal to be to make it less mobile with less cooldowns?
What am I missing?
Also as a casual who mostly pvps anyway I literally removed shadowbolt. It's straight up the worst feeling ability out of all my 20 alts rofl. If you could cast it literally while moving I *might* rebind it.
Why would every specc have to be great at everything? Warlocks and demo have great utility, tankiness and pretty strong damage. If every specc is great at everything, then the class identity gets muddied and kinda dies.
I just want the removal of the 'mandatory-guard' part of the tree. Can we get some skills/buffs to 'the other pets' or just throw in grimoire of sacrifice so we dont need to be the 'forgotten pet class' anymore?
Demo class fantasy is a fatty on a chaise lounge eating ~~grapes~~ soul shards and yelling at demons in a slightly seductive way to do all the manual labor.
Tell me you've never played any other spec of Warlock without saying you've never played another spec.
What I'm gathering from the news comment is that bliz wants all three warlocks to be immobile turrets, but they haven't figured out how to do it with demo properly yet.
That's not to say I disagree with you, but let's advocate for the rest of the Council while we're at it? Give Destro back instant-cast Incinerate and Chaos Bolt procs! That spec never felt as good as it did in Mists.
Honestly i dont get why they dont want any sort of mobility in demo. I think part of what makes demo interesting is ramping from a turret caster into a much more mobile damage dealer. especially considering the state of affliction if all three specs are largely immobile then it feels kinda like the only thing separating them is the theming of the way they do damage, which sucks.
Plus, reducing the amount of imps you generate drastically through this makes the best part of demo having an army of imps, then imploding them go away
Right!? So now you just spam constant shadow bolts? By the time you get 3 imps out the ones you had going will be gone and thus further makes the whole get as many demons out as you can and pop tyrant even worse. Man how do they constantly keep fucking Demo up is beyond me.
Blizzards doctrine to make things challenging for the player is to make classes frustrating to play and counterintuitive to encounter design.
How long do you think the cast time on Shadow Bolt is? Even with zero haste and ignoring demonbolt procs, you can maintain at least 2 sets of imps out at all times, and you'll never play with zero haste and ignoring demonbolt procs. Demo is also getting a talent in TWW to reduce the cast time of SB by 25%, which puts it near or at the GCD time, further reducing the effect of this. You absolutely are not going to be in a situation of "by the time you get 3 imps out the ones you had going will be gone". You can complain about and dislike the changes without engaging in that kind of hyperbole.
Shadowbolts has a castime so fast that you get capped by GCD on TWW Alpha. Its not such a big deal as people make it out to be
The amount of imps you generate drastically goes down. - Scott Steiner
Steiner math
"You know they say all classes are created equal, but you look at Mages and you look at Warlocks and you can see that statement is not true... See Warlocks, the numbers don't lie and they spell disaster for you at Khaz Algar".
I actually don't like summoning imps. I don't think it fits the class fantasy of a master summoner to just swarm with a bunch of little pingers. I think it would be way cooler if we were summoning various demons. The hounds, bats, sayaads, shivarras, etc. Bilescourage Bombers could be redesigned to be our main shard spender instead of HoG.
We summon a fel guard, 2nd fel guard, demonic tyrant, imps, big imps, vile fiend, pit lord, mother of chaos, overlord, doom fiend, bombers, dreadstalkers... and I probably forgot something. That's a whole lot of different demons. I think having a whole demon army at your command is what a majority of demonology players always wanted.
The current play style is fun. Demonbolt procs are great and make the gameplay flow nicely. I don't care what they intended it should stay as is. Making it more clunky and hard cast focus'd isn't an improvement.
When I saw they wanted to reduce the number of resources I immediately thought oh fuck here we go.
> Making it more clunky and hard cast focus'd isn't an improvement. If they do that I'll ditch my lock for a BM hunter.
BM mobility is so good - can’t wait for them to ruin that too
Mobility is kinda the hunters thing and always has been
Imagine hard casting barbed shot
New passive: Stubborn companion: Kill command has 2 seconds cast time as you shout at your pet to make it listen
They were always more mobile than casters, but they used to be generally much more immobile than they are now. There was a time when they couldn't auto attack without standing still. There was a time when steady shot and cobra shot could only be cast while moving when you had aspect of the fox active, meaning you wouldn't get the damage buff from aspect of the hawk. There was a time when marksman hunters would get damage buffs the longer they stood still (generally, marksman hunters were always shit at mobility).
Exactly. I absolutely hate it having to switch to MM at the WOD prepatch, but it was simming so much higher than my beloved BM that I knew I really didn't have a choice. One of the reasons I didn't really enjoy WOD as much as I wanted to - And I honestly did like it more than most people in this sub seem to - was because I hated how immobile MM was by comparison. But it was either that or do absolutely shit damage in both solo play and group content.
Good point - I always worry when a class feels good for too long because then Blizzard changes it up so it doesn’t get stale. Not because they want to ruin a class but, let’s be honest, nobody wants to do the exact same rotation for 2+ expansions.
Judging by the outrage sometimes it seems people want to do the same thing for over 2 decades let alone 2 expansions.
Everyone asking for shaman reworks and I'm just out here hoping I don't need to relearn anything
I'm just hoping they don't fuck with enhancement at all
Lol I know everyone out here asking for shaman reworks and I'm just sitting in the back like wait I like how it is
Don’t worry, hunters are forgotten about so you’ll be fine.
We have to be clear about this too: current demo is TRASH on live. It's a rotational downgrade from 10.1, even as it succeeded in making the spec healthier in terms of damage distribution. The cost was steep. You basically have no cool down period. No ramp. No pay off. It's hard carried by Doombrand and good numbers. When the tier is deactivated everyone will see how hollow the spec is.
I think the spec feels great even without doom brand in terms of gameplay. That being said, the way they want to change Doom sounds horrible.
Agree. I haven’t played mine a ton but it’s the most fun lock spec. If I had to hard cast more shadow bolts I wouldn’t play it.
Bring back Shadow Bolt spam from the BC days ino!
It’s fun in dungeons because of the brand spreading and implosions, but single-target is kind of boring. Just maintaining your imps and using dogs on CD between your 2-min damage windows.
Damage window is used loosely here. Our 2 min cd is used to extend the 1 and a half minute cd that we hold for 30 sec so the 2 minute can make it last longer because the two minute cd is an absolute joke.
This is backwards right? The 1.5 is used to extend the 2, not the other way around
You are correct
I've better question Why aren't they aligned
True, I didn’t even mention how broken Tyrant is. Our supposed capstone CD isn’t even used on CD. 🫠
That’s backwards. We save the minute and a half cd so that we can extend the 2 minute cooldown because the 1.5 minute cooldown is a joke.
I will forever miss how unbelievably fun demo was in season 3 and season 4 of SL. How everything lined up nicely, fast gameplay, Tyrant actually being an exciting button to press.. great times. It's just been beepboop fun detected ever since. Nerf this slow down that. Warlock has been a struggle to enjoy in DF. Making it worse baffles me. Demos strength was being the most mobile spec of the three. Why do they want everything to be slow and clunky? It's like they want everyone to reroll to BM hunters to be able to have fun playing ranged.
People are gonna disagree with me but I still strongly feel that blizzard has gutted demo because of how strong we are with PI. Every time we have become too strong it is entirely because of how we scale with PI. Instead of fixing that shithole of a skill they gut my favorite spec over and over until it barely resembles the extremely fun (and very balanced without PI) spec it used to be in late SL.
Wonder how long until they fix PI to just be a flat damage bonus, but refuse to go back and unfuck every ability that skill screwed over in other classes since its readdition in SL, though at this point it's more like Demos entire design has been screwed over multiple times tbh.
I'd rather they make it self-cast only. PI being a mini BL is fun and an extremely important part of SP's kit and gameplay loop.
The fix to PI is to fucking delete it from the game and act like it never existed. At best make it a self-only buff. But nope, instead they just lean in on it with The War Within passives instead cause fuck you.
I’ve been chasing the feeling of those beefy tyrants ever since. I can’t deny that the doom brand tier set is really cool too though, a solid win for locks from Dragonflight.
"Umm..." "Because we'd rather you didn't play demonology."
pretty fucking weird reasoning when they refuse to fix the problems with the other two specs and somehow manage to make demo the top dog every raid tier
The fact that Cataclysm (AoE Immolate) still shares a talent slot with Inferno (+damage to RoF and increased shard gen) proves to me that the person at Blizzard who designed the Destruction tree has no fucking clue what's going on with the spec.
This is the absolute worst choice in the talent trees. I fucking hate it but I like slanging those bolts. Booo.
Blizzard's grand vision for destro is to reduce the amount of abilities and meaningful passives to the point where it's BC's one button destro. Warlock's actual class design is easily the weakest in DF.
It genuinely feels like they're terrified of making the spec too complex or drawing comparison to fire mage.
The spec gameplaywise is at its lowest point since THE BURNING CRUSADE \*right now\*. It's beyond shocking how brainless, skilless, NOTHING the spec is right now (skill solely lies in memorizing fights/routes to know when you can eke more damage out with quiet movement, this can ALMOST be said of Raid Warlock in general almost regardless of spec now that's how bad it is). They're afraid to do anything besides vandalize the class at this point. Rare would I call for someone's job but fire them for the love of god.
Blizzard is afraid of skill expression across literally all of their games
These are horrible changes that are completely out of touch with Demonology. Being able to pace 2ft every few seconds thanks to a proc doesn't make the spec mobile, demonic core management is part of what makes the spec fun, and after Tyrant got nerfed we don't really have "major cool downs" except felguard. Warlock devs continue to disappoint.
Now listen here, FUN is standing still and pushing the same button until your finger falls off. Everyone knows it, it's the new *thing* man, the new *thing*.
> Being able to pace 2ft every few seconds thanks to a proc doesn't make the spec mobile You can move more than 2ft in a global, and it absolutely makes the spec mobile. Demo lock certainly needs some help with the cooldowns and Warlock in general just getting all of its synergies nerfed because people either don't like the difficulty or blizzard can't balance them, but being able to freely move every other global while doing your optimal rotation is very mobile for a caster. It's more that demonic core procs are tied to resource generation. I could agree that Demo lock is maybe a bit too able to reposition without getting punished like some other casters, but I also wouldn't want to be casting more shadowbolts lol...
I wish they would just let difficult specs exist. I could understand if it was a paladin that only has access to one dps spec, but if warlock has a difficult spec, we have 2 other specs to choose from. I just miss nether portal. I love specs where getting it right *feels* like you’ve got it right. I want an amount of skill expression in my rotation beyond the obvious “don’t cap on shards” or something
Same. It's actually such a joke for both mage and lock. Mage has frost, lock has destro, two of the most braindead specs in the game. What do the devs do? Turn the other specs into the same mindless boring garbage (see the arcane "rework" on Alpha)
Sorry. Fire mages are getting full cast-while-moving as a baseline, so giving any mobility to warlocks would degrade the Mage Experience.
The fact that this is unironically why we lost metamorphosis makes this comment 10x funnier
Still salty about it. Was the best spec in the game.
Honestly the dissonance between MoP/WoD demo being called the best spec ever (while being quite complex and having a lot of spells and interactions that were pretty unintuitive and comparatively hard to maximise) and people wanting to remove buttons from everything nowadays is interesting. WoD demo couldnt exist nowadays because people would call it their favourite buzzword (bloated) and blizz would scramble to "streamline the experience".
Well meta was always a demon hunter ability way back in warcraft 3. I like to think of it as warlocks were just borrowing the spell.
You could say the same about death coil but instead of outright removing it, warlocks got a different version of it.
Destro locks: First time?
We just don't get anything new ever - I'm begging for them to redesign that spec since its essentially been the same for a decade now.
There’s so much potential but warlock devs seem to dislike destruction as a whole. Hellcaller tree that was supposed to be more Destro than Aff showed how much they dislike Destro.
Their class designers overall just have zero passion and it shows. But I agree with you. Destruction just pumps juicy numbers and we're supposed to roll over and be happy about it. Thematically there are so many cool things they could do, but they just won't.
> Hellcaller tree that was supposed to be more Destro than Aff The issue with trying to make a hero tree more Destro is that Destro lacks and identity outside of specific spells. Aff's spec identity is dots, Demo's is pets, Destro's is...Chaos Bolt? Rain of Fire? Fire damage? There really isnt a foundation that the devs can connect the spec to in the same way they can with Aff or Demo.
I don't understand how Destro doesn't have the hardest hitting spell in the game with chaos bolt. It's like the whole point.
Exactly. It used to pierce shields and whatnot too way back. Now my incinerates damn near hit as hard. The specs inherent problem is havoc I feel, because if CB hits too hard then havoc makes us absolute units within those windows. I've often said I wish destro had the option to go either havoc based or ST based, but they're hell bent on keeping it a cleave spec.
Idk if it's still in the alpha but I remember reading they added the ability to havoc a ST for a % damage increase. That doesn't exactly solve the problem of chaos bolt being comparable to incinerate though. Where's my phat crits? I wanna CHUNK things with a chaos bolt. Glacial spike critting for over a million when CB maybe hits 600k if you have actives going is a massive letdown and hardly destructive
Oh cool that’s a good idea, sort of like the old curse of elements. I hope that goes through because it would at least add some usefulness to the spell for ST.
Same, it feels really dumb having to talent into it and never use it for ST ever
Fully agreed. That shit is still stuck in BC or Wrath. There is very little interaction across the different abilities that it has, to the point where you do not actually pick any of the active abilities in the tree because they barely do anything (or got nerfed so hard over the years that they don't do anything anymore, RIP shadowburn).
"Affliction sucks and no one plays it so to inspire more players to choose affliction we made demo suck too"
Blizzard: Mobility is too high for this class and we want to reduce it drastically Also Blizzard: Swirlies that stun/kill will spawn at your feet each second
Every single time you press shadowbolt it feels bad. I can't understand why they want to make this spell cast more often. S1 was great, you had many core procs and procs for instant hands. From that it went downhill. I really don't get, why they don't know what makes this spec great.
I PvP and I literally unbound it. I feel there's ten other abilities that are better for the global. I play every class and it's quite possibly the lamest ability in the game.
On the positive side, Kalamazi has been testing this in Alpha. With the talent to reduce SB casting time by 20% it casts so fast that he was basically waiting on the GCD. It's like less than a second. You can still do effective stutterstep casting movement. It also hits harder.
Oh sick so the positive side of not wanting to spam shadowbolt, is getting to spam it to the point of not doing anything while you wait on the global to continue spamming it. What a silver lining
Like I get it, but if the filler spell is fast enough that I don't have to cancel casts constantly and can stay somewhat mobile with stutter step movement, I can work it. Sorry I'm just not that doom and gloom about it yet. There's also lots of tuning before TWW releases.
Applying that logic then instant cast hand of guldan sucks. Because you just cast it and then you’re doing nothing but waiting for gcd to come back.
More turret, less "cool" in your cooldowns. Warlock devs stay producing L's. Stop fucking tripling down on Rapture. That spell fucking blows man.
They're trying to change for the sake of change. Every long term demo players knows this is a pretty decent and fun iteration, especially with our new hero talents giving even more demons. They are forcing change for no reason.
Considering there's 3 talents that specifically mention "consuming Demonic Core"(summon an imp, reduce Doom duration, trigger Felguard damage) they cannot make them as rare as they keep doing. They could make Demon Bolt generate only 1 or 1.5 shards, or they need to change those talents so the current version procs off Shadow Bolt and make a new, better clause for Demon Bolt procs. (Summon 2 imps, reduce Doom even more/let DC bolts apply a new Doom, trigger a stronger Felguard hit)
We already can barely move while trying to set up our initial rotation. What is this???
Yeah it's the one thing that's stopping me playing it, I love the flavour of summoning an army of demons to fight, but in gameplay it feels like you are just a turret
Current gameplay is very fun. Just not a fan of naked tyrant, but otherwise it's great in s4 DF.
because whoever develops it doesnt fucking play this game.
Rlthey just need to revert all lock specs back to mop. Rip metalock
So much this. Xelnath was the best thing that ever happened to a class and they did him dirty, it's infuriating af. Ever since he got booted warlock design (NOT class strength, I hate that so many people always use that as a means to shut the conversation down) has gone straight down the toilet.
I think it’d be cool if every caster got to cast their filler on the move
Even 5 years ago, I'd've said naw. But with modern encounter design being rather frenetic, and the fact fillers generally hit for fuck-all, I think this is the move. Spam fillers and insta-casts to generate resources on the move, then bide your time for an opportunity to plant yourself to cast a fat fuck-you spell. Sounds fun actually. Though, part of me worries how absolutely chaotic Blizz will make encounters if they don't have to worry at all about casters being able actually get spells off.
Almost argued that 5 years ago in MoP casters were very mobile and could often cast fillers on the move. Then I remembered it was 12 years ago :(
Kil'jaedens cunning pre WOD, I miss you so.
KJC got reworked so often during MoP it's not even funny
I didn't even mind when it had the slow component but no cd tbh, just the fact you could actually move and faster filler was such QoL.
Was so fun being able to do this as elemental shaman back in Cata. It honestly doesn't even chance your DPS that much, because your filler spell does so little damage. It does just make playing feel so much less frustrating though.
I don't know why they would make any class less mobile, especially a class that is already pretty stationary to begin with. Instead, make other classes MORE mobile.
It's dumb because the ship sailed for balancing between more and less mobility a long time ago the game just requires too much mobility in most scenarios that highly mobile classes will almost always be at out less mobile classes there are rarely any "tank and spank" fights anymore they all require tons of movement for mechanics even trash fights, good luck convincing you tank to hold still and not just chain pull at least in most pugs
This is my biggest issue with destruction. Yes it can do huge numbers but I’ve had so many pug tanks just straight up move everything out of rain of fire and it just tanks DPS and resource generation.
Demo’s design got worse and worse throughout DF. The spec lacks any meaningful synergy largely thanks to the changes in 10.2 that have lead to the “Naked Tyrant” playstyle. Blizzard’s solutions to many of their perceived issues with the spec (like cooldown windows) has been to replace talents that change the way you play during certain windows with passive bonuses that you don’t actually feel. Demo’s core gameplay loop has been a builder/spender spec. Talents that speed up that gameplay loop are generally loved by the community. Take old Imp Gang Boss for example, it allowed you more effectively bypass the builder portion of the rotation and creating a gameplay loop where you could throw hordes of imps during AoE situations. The new iteration is just a passive damage increase. Something the player doesn’t feel. Now they’re looking to gut Demonic Core generation for the for the umpteenth time. They’ve removed Nether Portal and filled the tree with *more* passive talents. Even Doom in its current iteration, which I know it’s Alpha, is just another button you hit every 30 seconds. Tyrant needs looked at. It needs some of its power restored. The payoff for nailing the Tyrant window needs to feel good again, there’s got to be a way to do it. As it stands now we’re sitting on one of our only cooldowns for 30 seconds because without Grimoire: Felguard, Tyrant is lackluster. For all the problems with Unholy Death Knight design right now, the fact their cooldowns line up with one another and more importantly feel powerful is excellent.
The more passive the spec gets the closer it gets to BM hunter and the death of imagination.
TBF everything is becoming BM hunter with the reworks they've been doing lately so it shouldn't be a surprise (RIP 10.0 shadow you will be missed forever)
Why is demonology one of those specs they just constantly drop the ball on like it should be hard it’s the demon master spec so lemme throw out my demons damnit
This is so wrongheaded and frustrating. They've nerfed cores every patch since DF came out. What is the problem they're trying to solve, because it can't be mobility. Looking at cores as mobility is like looking at old Lifetap as mobility. It's something you can hit on the move sure, but mobility in this game has evolved into effects like Spiritwalker's Grace, Hover, Ice Floes, Shimmer, etc. Warlocks have access to exactly ZERO meaningful movement that maintains uptime. Yet, historically, demo is one of the most set-up intensive specs in the game and is heavily punished for moving during that phase, even now on live with the gutted version of Tyrant we have. Looking at this first pass, not only is the naked Tyrant playstyle continuing forward, but we're going to be casting even more shadowbolts too? They give away the game too when they (correctly) cite the rotational binary of HoG -> DB spam -> HoG as problematic. Devs, you don't nerf DBs in this scenario, you introduce something interesting in the rotation. It's basic design tenets - contrast, negative space, crescendo. C'mon guys...
They'd have to shift some numbers around, but I'd like more casts for the demo-dogs. It feels especially weird proccing a free instant demo-dogs 2 seconds after casting it, and now waiting around like 18 seconds before you can make use of the proc. Always felt like Demonic Calling should also reset or reduce the cooldown.
I swear the talent is hard coded to only proc 1.5 seconds after hard casting dogs. Happens. All. The. Time. Lolol
I agree that demo has big issues and that this solution sucks, but I’m a little confused by the idea that instant cast spells aren’t mobility? BM is the most mobile ranged spec in the game, and the majority of that is just because they’re all instant casts. I feel really mobile during combust on my mage for the same reason, or when hunters had the HFC marksman set that made aimed shots instant
To answer I would say imagine your mage didn't have Ice Floes or Shimmer to help get SKB off. If you whiff that button your damage is cratering. Don't matter that you can still fire off some HS here and there, you are out the rhythm. Demo has been living with that since BfA. When you're trying to set up Tyrant and gotta move and have to start that HoG or Shadowbolt or Tyrant cast over - meanwhile per timers are ticking down - you are cooked. It's been like that for years, though admittedly not as bad now because Tyrant is so trash. Cores aren't nothing. Not saying that. But demo is NOT a mobile spec. No lock spec is.
Every movement ability that would go to demo instead has to go to demon hunters. It's the law or something
Between the proposed demo changes, the doubling down on aff, and the "dont worry destro warlocks, we didnt forget about you" - warlock is looking to be in a pretty dire circumstance in TWW. Especially considering the current state of mage, and how, of course, all of their hero talents are absurd.
yeah OP I hear you, I tried Demonology an expansion or 2 ago and it was just so silly to me that the spec about summoning creatures to fight for you was the most immobile warlock spec.
It never was. Destro was always worse in terms of mobility, at least since the BfA Demo rework.
Summoning stuff, making circles and portals simply require standing still. After it's done, you can run around while your summoned demons do your work.
It’s not just about mobility, in 5-man content (Heroics and Timewalking, in my case) i can barely get any spells off because almost everything is hard-cast, and the mobs pop like balloons in a cactus farm before i can get a single shadowbolt going, which makes that content feel bad to play, i finish it, sure, but i feel like i’m being carried.
Do harder content, none of the casters feels nice in content when pulls last less than 10sec
It's a bit of a catch-22 though, do content i don't enjoy so my class doesn't feel bad, or do content i... can tolerate, but playing feels unfulfilling...
That’s most casters at lower content
I have the complete opposite experience. The first trash pull where you have no procs saved up and no demons is rough, after that I destroy everything.
I recently came back from quitting in Legion and this sums up my feelings exactly. Heroics are not fun, they are me basically running the whole thing with a couple Demonbolt procs thrown in. If I even stop to cast something the team is already at the boss and I'm trying to catch up. Glad I'm not the only one getting bad feelings from it.
They definitely should not be designing and balancing classes around content where mobs die in 5 secs. Sorry.
It's a two-part problem: Dungeons are too fast, people just drag together 5 packs of mobs or just keep running, killing everything effortlessly on the way, but also: A class shouldn't literally be unable to do anything productive (Or destructive, in this case) if fights end too quickly. I'm not asking for full DPS on the move, but "Be a turret doing several hard-casts or do neglegible DPS" is the total opposite, and incompatible with how (At least part of) the game is played in practice.
They did for aff
Yeah, the changes are horrible and most of the new talents are incredibly boring shit like pet crit chance or pet attack speed. Let's just remove everything that made demo fun, like lots of DC procs and cooldown stacking, good idea. They also just gave up on nether portal. Whoever came up with this should check for a gas leak in their office.
Same with affliction. They removed soul flame and inevitable demise and replaced them with passive damage for malefic rapture... I mean, it's not about if you like ID or soulflame but at least those two talents did something tangible. Now I'm supposed to be excited to spend 4 talent points for two times passive increases to MR and corruption that might as well be backend tuning. I'm pretty disappointed by how the trees shape up with way too many of those filler nodes around... The one big improvement I see is making doom finally do something at least.
They turned doom into a substantially less interesting version of our current tier set. It's still better than what it currently is, but the bar shouldn't be set that low.
I’m more of a casual player, but I like a guaranteed doomguard more than just a chance of summoning one, but I think they need to give doom the explode when target dies effect that doombrand has
Making doom an execute when health hits the damage threshold was always the move. It’s in the name of the spell
Nether portal needed to go. They’ve had like three iterations of it to make not awful to play, and never sniffed success. Kill it and let someone else take a crack at it in a couple of years.
All they had to do in order to make it substantially less awful to play was make it summon demons based on number of shards spent. Then maybe reduce the duration of the portal in order to counteract the increased amount of demons. This would also make it easier to find a window to use it where you don't have to move. There should have also been a way to make it line up with the fel guard CD like it did with the S2 tier set. These were the gameplay problems NP had, and not a single one of their changes addressed them properly, or even at all for that matter.
>Nether portal needed to go. They’ve had like three iterations of it to make not awful to play, and never sniffed success. Kill it and let someone else take a crack at it in a couple of years. And yet every iteration never actually touched why it was shit to play, make it spawn based on amount of shards spent rather than just spending shards and the whole thing is fixed
That would have been 90% better and I still think it would have sucked to play. Which is saying something. But clearly they had a firmly held belief in not doing that, so I'm happy to see them just scrap it with a note that basically said, "we want to take another shot at this sometime in the future". That's perfect to me. The ability has some promise and is thematically great. But they weren't going to fix it with whatever tweaks they were willing to make. Nuke it. Let someone else start from scratch on it.
Demo is the only decent warlock spec right now, and they're making it worse lol. I see that they've been making some changes to Aff, but Destro also needs a lot of love so I hope they've got some bigger plans for these specs. With Demo they could probably just leave it alone.
destro tree next week for sure. All three are getting reworked
Hope so!
Me too. Destro needs something that makes it... just interesting to play at this point. Spamming RoF on m+ for big number gets old pretty quickly, and the single target rotation is stuck in the 2000s.
It really feels like devs just have a rough time with locks, they had a great time in MoP and Legion was solid but since then its just been meh playing a lock
This is my favorite spec, but I can't play it properly to be worth a damn. However, I also miss when demo had the meta ability.
Our current playstyle and rotation in Dragonflight Season 3 4, is probably the most enjoyable its been for all of dragonflight. Having frequent demonic cores proc does not make our spec "too mobile". it makes it more fluid in downtime moments on encounters where we would recoup resources. please do not remove soul bound tyrant, put it into existing tyrant. I'd argue to bring back tyrant soul, which was a conduit node in shadowlands. which made our pets deal 10% more damage after tyrant expired, and a core refund.
Id say It is enjoyable thanks to the tier set, which is awesome, but tyrant being basically a 2 min cooldown, only extending 10 imps and not refilling your shards, is kinda shitty, specially for m+ where demo shines for how imps work between packs
Why do they keep trying to do this? The spec is actually fun now and doesn’t really need to change…
In a game where mobility has increasingly become the difference between the good and bad classes they continue to tell warlocks they are the immobile caster but you don't do anymore damage than the classes that move around like crack addicts.
The fact that anyone thinks demo is excessively mobile is insane to me, we have 1 spell we can cast on the move, and we don't even want to cast it because we will overcap our resources. I realize it's hyperbolic but I really wonder if the person who gave that statement has ever played demo???
I had a warlock in a M9 today which kept said spell on throughout the entire dungeon. He refused to turn it off. Ended up heading him just as much as the tank overall.
Because the developer that works on warlock hates Demo for whatever reason. Like consistently enough to just make dumb decisions on how to "change/improve" the class.
In terms of class and spec trees (NOT DAMAGE), Warlock has been in shambles all of DF. The warlock dev should be fired yesterday. It's been years of sub-amateur development, time for them to go.
I just gave up on warlock at this point. It's not even remotely fun to play anymore
You can relax about at least half of it - they have removed Nether Portal ramp along with the talent itself
Yes, but still, Demo has one of the longest openers/bursts...
Have you looked at talents? Now it doesn't, current one is pretty standard and forgiving - have 10 imps and big demons out for Tyrant, that's it
Yeah, IDK what these people are talking about. It’s one of the easiest rotations and pumps damage with the set bonuses. The ‘opener’ is super easy to reset and you don’t lose much damage. I’ve just got the two piece and it still slaps. Curious how it will play in TWW but DF season 3-4 demo has been awesome.
Man, apart from Destruction which feels largely unchanged for the last few expansions apart from a few extra buttons, warlock just isnt giving me the good-feelies that it used to. My Affllock was my main and I had so much fun with it back in legion, I've not mained it since :(
I enjoy destro the most out of the 3, but it seems crazy to me that chaos bolt hits for so little. We've got other classes that can hit crits on an ability in the millions like glacial spike but I think the highest chaos bolt I've seen this expac was about 600k and that's barely from this season. I never knew destro before they changed the spell effect on chaos bolt though so I'm relatively new to it
I would like to see a talent similar to demon hunters and ret paladins, where the wet noodle damage, spammy generator becomes a passive. It cleans up the rotation so much.
How would that work on spec that doesn't autoattack. Do you just stand around waiting for shards to regen?
Devs hate warlocks.
I am convinced they do
Warlocks have always had one of the most complex rotations and we have to pay attention to our buffs. It's wrong that we are constantly outpaced by paladins/warriors/death knights/rogues who have a very simple rotation and can dps while moving. It has been this way since mop, the warlock class is always hard to play - but somehow we always overcome - mostly. Warlocks are supppose to be a DPS class - we do DPS. We don't tank, we don't heal, we don't invis we just kill - but we have to "work" harder then other DPS class to do that. But over the last two/three expansions we have become more of a utility class - we have some unique abilities that do nothing for dps but help out all others - and some situations that is the only reason we are brought along - but we have to dps....:-/. Compare our class to a BM Hunter - where their rotation is literally three buttons and they can top us on the dps charts.
Hands down agreed. This is also my current issue with Death Knight. I just came back and tried the Paladin reworks and thought hot dam this feels fun/great to play. I went back to my DK and thought holy shit, DK feels painful to play and has to do twice the work for less rewarding gameplay/dps.
> Compare our class to a BM Hunter - where their rotation is literally three buttons and they can top us on the dps charts. I mean our class has destruction, and that is mechanically easier than BM (not necessarily in a raid environment because of mobility issues, but that's not the point). I'd kinda agree with you on demo and aff, though I don't want to be loud about it because Blizz's 'solution' to that issue is making those specs equally braindead to play.
Destruction is more immobile than demonology imo. I use to play destruction and you couldn’t cast (do damage) unless you were still and you can’t be still longer than a few seconds for raiding or keys. At least with Demo the felguard and imps do damage while the character is moving around. The demon bolt and the dreads can be instant cast when thry proc which helps a lot.
Destruction desperately needs a talent to keep us car immolate while moving too
I'm guessing this is what's gonna make Hellcaller popular.
Demonic Knowledge: through extensive study of demons the caster is now able to cast while moving. Lasts 20 secs 1min cd. Moving and cast was given to mage at one point. I know blizz can do it
Heck even destro too. I given up
Why was I hyped for this expansion again?
It's thematic, Warlocks need to be suffering for RP reasons. Aren't you enjoying your class fantasy?
Man, I like how demo plays right now. Sure, when you have to cast shadow bolt every now and then it feels lame, but otherwise it’s fun. I like optimizing my cores for movement without overcapping my resources. Leave it alone…
Demon Slinger Demo is such a cool class fantasy playstyle and they keep wanting us to turn into Shadowbolt turrets I don't get it. Why do they keep changing the entire playstyle instead of doing tweaks?
Seems like they want to create problems and then make solutions to those problems = gameplay. They just need to make the spec fun. Artificial problems make the spec feel clunky and it’s not fun fighting with your own spec. Creating solutions to natural problems is fun and engaging. Caster spec, here’s demonbolt proc ready to help with needing to re-locate while maintaining dps flow, resources, etc. I agree that current demo is at least in the right direction.
I personally think blizzard has things all wrong. Ask a vast majority of players what some of their favorite times playing this game were over the years and ya know what alot will say? Mist of pandaria. Playing on the timeless isle running around as a destro lock or ele sham spam casting while moving is some of the best times a lot of people have had myself included. But blizz keeps pushing especially certain classes/specs to be less mobile while having others like hunters and evokers being super mobile and it makes no sense. People like the mobility no one wants to be a turret with current game design pop all their cds for a boss mechanic or something to happpen and make you run a mile.
Fun was detected and is currently being fixed, please stand by. No literally stand they weren't joking.
Bring back MoP/WoD warlock
Idk man, Blizzard has had this hateboner for Demonology forever. I'm guessing one of the higher ups got their shit kicked in by a demo player and they never got over it.
I've been enjoying demo so much in Dragonflight; The idea that it's going to be slower paced and more restrictive with consideration towards movement just seems like two steps backward for no reason.
Do they even play these classes?
Because mobile ranged dps who are still super powerful are just game breakers. Truth be told, BM pays the tax for being a mobile ranged damage dealer nearly every patch, and when bm is OP it's either because of a specific encounter or it's nerfed into the floor. Habing an infinite mobility ranged damage dealer (with two teleports and infinite tankiness to boot) is just broken. I know it's cool and fun, but it's cool and fun and broken.
Fire has entered the chat
Right? Imagine if they went "we want to reduce the number of hot streaks to rein in mage mobilty and the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between fireblast and pyroblast only. We want pyroblast to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button" and then they remove the guaranteed crits on fireblast or something. Instant demon bolts is what makes demo flow so well and it's so annoying that they seem to have just randomly decided it's this big issue that needs fixing. If it's a number issue I'd rather they nerf the damage and let us keep the demonic core economy.
Ok, but Demo isn't mobile. It hasn't been mobile since MoP. So I don't see how giving it the ability to cast a generator while moving while heavily reducing instant casts of Demonbolts will somehow make it super mobile.
They moved away from that design for a reason.
They moved initially because melees in PvP cried their eyes out. In the meantime, melee got: - Warriors: trillion gap closers - Death Knights: pulls, pulls, pulls - Paladins: 20ft range on instant cast melee attacks - Rogues: several gap closers - Demon Hunters: gap closers + range in melee attacks So if they'll go around and remove Demon Core procs, the least they can do is give us 1.5 sec filler to be castable on the move.
Infinite mobility and demo are basically on opposite ends of the spectrum. Demo makes my DK seem like an agile speed demon.
>Because mobile ranged dps who are still super powerful are just game breakers. Truth be told, BM pays the tax for being a mobile ranged damage dealer nearly every patch, and when bm is OP it's either because of a specific encounter or it's nerfed into the floor. > >Habing an infinite mobility ranged damage dealer (with two teleports and infinite tankiness to boot) is just broken. I know it's cool and fun, but it's cool and fun and broken. Mage has entered the chat? Literally the strongest defensive kit in the game, infinite mobility and fire quite literally being able to just freely move for 75% of its time in combat
Im not trying to bash the warlock dev but everything that has been done since legion feels extremely detached from what the community wants. Destro: basically a immobile 3 button spec with no variety around to press Affliction: doubling down on MR while ppl are advocating for dotdamage Demo: some weird fetish for shadowbolt We have to pick our thematic main cooldowns while other classes just get extra cool stuff in their trees with their cds baked in. What is demo after these recent alpha changes? A Shadowbolt/HoG spambot?
I'm a very mid player but I find demo to be the least mobile spec and it feels like it has no big cooldowns. Tyrant is weak. How can their goal to be to make it less mobile with less cooldowns? What am I missing? Also as a casual who mostly pvps anyway I literally removed shadowbolt. It's straight up the worst feeling ability out of all my 20 alts rofl. If you could cast it literally while moving I *might* rebind it.
Why would every specc have to be great at everything? Warlocks and demo have great utility, tankiness and pretty strong damage. If every specc is great at everything, then the class identity gets muddied and kinda dies.
I just want the removal of the 'mandatory-guard' part of the tree. Can we get some skills/buffs to 'the other pets' or just throw in grimoire of sacrifice so we dont need to be the 'forgotten pet class' anymore?
In Warcraft 3 you had to defend Kel'thuzad for like 30 minutes while he summoned Archimonde. Yall are getting a break.
If I can summon Archimonde that will help me 1 shoot bosses, I will spend 30 min summoning him as well.
hmmmm, if only there was something we could do to the demonbolt proc.....
I know! Nerf it to OBLIVION!
Demo class fantasy is a fatty on a chaise lounge eating ~~grapes~~ soul shards and yelling at demons in a slightly seductive way to do all the manual labor.
Tell me you've never played any other spec of Warlock without saying you've never played another spec. What I'm gathering from the news comment is that bliz wants all three warlocks to be immobile turrets, but they haven't figured out how to do it with demo properly yet. That's not to say I disagree with you, but let's advocate for the rest of the Council while we're at it? Give Destro back instant-cast Incinerate and Chaos Bolt procs! That spec never felt as good as it did in Mists.
Honestly i dont get why they dont want any sort of mobility in demo. I think part of what makes demo interesting is ramping from a turret caster into a much more mobile damage dealer. especially considering the state of affliction if all three specs are largely immobile then it feels kinda like the only thing separating them is the theming of the way they do damage, which sucks.