Developers’ note: We’re working to reduce the peaks and valleys of Demonology’s throughput by depowering Call Dreadstalkers. This will allow us to compensate by increasing the throughput of Demonology’s other rotational spells. We hope to have those tuning adjustments soon.
Lastly, the Demonic Core economy has been too generous in Dragonflight. We want to return Demonology to a place where Shadow Bolt is frequently cast, Demonbolt damage feels impactful, and the number of instant casts available is a bit more limited.
Can we get more context as to why these changes are being made? The developers are making the statement that they want to change the feel of the spec. But why do they feel that these changes are needed? What inputs are they using to determing that the live iteration of demonology needs to be updated?
The current iteration of Demonology is fun to play. The 90 second cycle enabled by the tier set allows for a good flow of gameplay in M+ where you are always planning and prepaing to have your cooldowns up for the next pack, and in raids where you know that another cooldown cycle is coming.
Reducing the number of demonic core procs will make the spec more awakard to play by disconnecting Grimore: Felguard from Demonic Tryant. If the issue is the amount of damage that this combo is doing, then the damage itself should be tuned via the damage of spells, not by breaking the synergy between the two spells. Being required to delay the use of Demonic Tyrant to line up with Grimore: Felguard (or casting them standalone) will just desynchronize the spec and make it feel worse to play. If the issue is the # of instant casts, then the 2pc bonus should be buffed to maintain the synergy between the two spells.
Shadow Bolt being prioritized and frequenly cast is not an exciting change for the spec. Outside of any shard generation, it is not an exicting spell to cast. It hits for basically next to nothing and turreting it seems like it will just make this spec feel like a worse destro warlock in terms of feel.
I understand the comment about ‘peaks and valleys’. It isn’t great to go into a pack or boss in M+ without cooldowns up and be less impactful than the tank, but this is currently mitigated by the knowledge that those cooldowns will be back up shortly – and when they are up, the peaks are great. Dropping the ramp and burst on a pull and seeing a huge peak is fun, dropping it mid fight and seeing the impacts and increased throughput is fun. What inputs are you using that are telling you that burst windows aren’t a fun way for a spec to produce its output?
Without additional context, this really feels like an example of “It isn’t broken, but we’re going to fix it anyway.”. I know posting here is basically dropping this feedback into the void, but in the off chance a developer sees this, please reconsider these changes.