Alpha5 (May 14th) Demo thoughts (a big step in the right direction)

Classes Warlock
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Alright, so I have to start by saying this was overall a very positive set of changes. In case you haven’t looked at them yet (high level overview):

-these new talents have done a lot of work to make Vilefiend into a formidable move. They’ve given us 2 variations, and decreased the Fiend and Tyrant cooldowns so burst windows are more frequent. There are also talents increasing Felhounds damage when Fiend is active, and it gets a new move.

-Doom now summons a Doomguard at the end of its duration (was dispel) that will cast 5 Doom Bolts.

-Several moves now generate Soul Shards. Vilefiend on summon and Doom on expiration.

I made a huge stink about Demo, so I definitely want to say I’m glad I was wrong about the dev having no direction. These changes paint a clear, and pretty cool picture, of how Demo is going to play. Less cores, but stronger demons instead of stronger Shadowbolts, which is really all I think a lot of us were asking for. Really do love the direction.

Now, on that note, there are still some concerns I have:

-Diabolist must-pick. New node gives Tyrant a 70% damage increase, plus a 20% damage increase for your demons. Destro also gets some more bite to their Infernal. These are great, maybe a little too great. Currently, I can’t see why anyone playing Destro or Demo would pick other hero talents. Right now it feels like Affliction has two choices, but Demo and Destro only have one.

-Imp/HoG builds dead?? With the new changes in place, I can learn to let old Demon Bolt go in exchange for the very cool looking demon buffs. However, I think the point still stands that HoG effectively dies with DB. Where there was theoretically choice before of specing into Felguard, Hounds/Stalker, and a massive imp army, the latter seems to not be viable anymore. I’ll write another thread about my thoughts on this.

Overall though, how we feeling fellow Locks? Do these changes ease some of the anxiety? Is there anything else you’d like to see changed? Personally, I’m revitalized about WW just knowing we have a direction that’s not spamming SB, but I’d love to hear your thoughts?

11 Likes
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Im in love with my new vilefiend. Wish I could have it all time instead of that dumb felguard but well

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Generally looks pretty good for demo actually, not great but good.

Whats up with removing Grand Warlock’s Design tho?

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Well, Demonic tyrant is now a 1 minute cooldown so it is basically irrelevant for demo now.

I am kind of in the same boat. These changed are looking better.

Top hope right now is seeing a reworked nether portal come back one day.

Doom and its related talents actually look pretty good now!

EDIT: Oh, and those vilefiend improvements? Awesome.

3 Likes
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They stopped the flow of garbage, but i can’t say it’s anything special either.

The frost dk rework and ww monk and mage is far higher quality.

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They removed it but made it baseline. instead of 1.5min it 1min

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ive been tolds the dev needed to be fired last week by “perfectly sane individuals”. where is that energy?

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They still do on certain class thats for sure. But for lock im quite happy to have been heard and made the vilefiend a better pet

2 Likes
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Demo has been off my radar since Legion.
These changes are bringing it back for me personally. I love the capstone with the hounds. It’s visually fun, simple to understand, takes 5 seconds to swap out, sounds appealing in most content.

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id argue this makes tyrant more relevant for sure

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i love these, 1 minute tyrant with him doing noticeable damage and the vilefiend changes are so cool. Would love to see tyrant give 5 shards when summoned and the dog core changes reverted still.

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Sounds like good changes, haven’t seen the details yet but am hopeful now.

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The changes a pretty solid and a step in the right direction. I hope they remove Guillotine/IH and replace them with a reworked NP for a solid single target focused set up as right now there is no reason to take them over Doom or Vilefiend. (Not to mention IH is nerfed with the reduced core generation)

There is also some notable pathing jank introduced in the tree that needs to be addressed

  • You can grab Mark of Shatug / F’harg without taking Vilefiend
  • You can grab Shadowtouched without taking Wicked Maw or Foul Mouth

While not jank, Imp Mother is locked behind Umbral Blaze. With Umbral Blaze being a single-target focused talent, having Pact of the Imp Mother locked behind feels strange when building for aoe.

2 Likes
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my most favorite part about the new tree are the cooldown adjustments to vilefiend and demonic tyrant.

You could get a vilefiend that lasts for 45s every 15s, which is crazy to think about especially when you give it all the talents that roids it up to be a raid boss. You can almost imagine it to be a permanent pet

Main complaint, aside from nether portal not existing, is the pathing of some talents feel so odd, especially when I’m going for the capstones

1 Like
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I think one thing I’m confused about is gutting the HoG/Imp spam and then basically forcing implosion as something you now HAVE to take in the talent tree. I’d rather just dump implosion all together and focus on the big demons doing some awesome AoE with the imps just being background damage at this point.

4 Likes
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I like how when the notes were posted last week all you kids were crying. Now that people actually tested it, magically the consensus becomes “wow great step in the right direction”. A prime example of why devs should ignore the community at every turn.

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It is what it is

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Except the changes made last week were horrible and poorly thought out. The changes they made today is a massive overhaul and a near complete rework of Demo’s spec tree. The difference between what we had last build and today’s build are night and day.

This take is a prime example of ignorance.

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My biggest issue with the new demo design is, weirdly, that it has too many one point talents. I don’t think there is a single two point talent in the entire tree, which makes it really awkward when you can take every talent you want and still have 1 or 2 points left over and the only places left to put them are abilities you don’t like.

Also, why can you take talents that require vilefiend to function (houndmaster’s gambit, mark of shatug, mark of f’harg), without taking vilefiend? That seems like an oversight.

1 Like
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Super bland talent that horseshoed your gameplay.

It’s been replaced by better stuff