I am definitely aware of the hate shadowbolt has gotten. I haven’t played much demo this expansion but I have played it a decent amount before and try to see both sides.
From a player’s perspective, they would obviously want more instant cast spells that are stronger and give more shards than their filler. It’s ideal if you can cast shadowbolt as little as possible. More resources, more mobility, more damage.
From the dev’s side, if players are getting off way more free demonbolts than shadowbolts except during a few unlucky spots where they run out of demonic core charges or at the start of a fight, what’s the point of even having shadowbolt? To me, that sounds like an ability that needs to be reworked.
Even if the changes translated into a bit of a dps increase due to shadowbolt changes, a lot of people are going to be unhappy about the decrease in mobility and instant cast spells. Perhaps they are trying to make demonic core have a role similar to conflagrate where it’s part of your rotation, but you try to have a charge in case you need to move rather than just spamming it all the time.
Obviously that’s all speculation on my part. My guess is they plan on boosting shadow bolt to the point that it’s a viable damage source and demonic cores are going to be used as more of a mobility function or for some limited burst. That might make it easier for them to tune around? But I can also see how that might be too much like shadow destro with felguard.
If you had to chose between a few of those things, like keeping more bursty cool downs, generating lots of demonic core charges, etc, how would you order them as far as priority?
This also goes for any other warlocks who play demonology. What is the priority order of the things you would want to keep about current demo in regards to the changes you’ve been seeing?
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atm all warlock specs have way too much cast time. demo for example is being pushed into shadow bolt spam which we dont want. instant pet procs are happening way too little. sometimes go a 5 min fight with maybe 2 procs
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then dont play demo lock…?
I just want more demons, and the ability to have more than just my main pet + imps permanently summoned
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I hope they’re paying you homie, what a well thought out response. Sincerely appreciate you. There is something I want to clarify though: this sincerely isn’t about Demonic Cores. If you’ll hear me out for just one more post I’ll answer this a little more succinctly.
Take one more step back from here. I’m not looking at this from an instant cast, mobility, or utility perspective. I wouldn’t be happy if Demon Bolt was my main cast either. The problem here is the spec having it’s own personality.
Let’s say the Demonic Core/Nether Portal changes go through. Imagine these are the other changes instead:
-Hand has a 3 second CD, but can now be cast with no soul shards to summon 1 imp
-Duration of Felhounds/Stalker is increased by 5 seconds
-Imps now have a chance to cast Greater Fireball
Obv not a game developer, and these would have to be tuned. The point here though is that these changes reduce mobility, lower burst, and make you hard cast while giving demonology demons. That is philosophy issue that we’re trying to fight against. We’re want our active rotation to be summoning things.
The point is, people are more mad at the Shadowbolt spam than they are at the Core nerfs. Of course there’s gonna be complaints about lower DPS, but the big issue here is that Demo is the only summoner spec in WoW. You could give me the flashiest new hard cast in the game and it’ll feel bad because my DPS is coming from a character spell and my summons.
Change the damage profile, reduce our mobility, whatever, but don’t turn Demo into a spec that relies on hard casting powerful spells for most of our damage. There are plenty of other specs in the game that do that, let us be summoners
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That’s fair and a good way to put it. Even if shadowbolt becomes incredibly strong, that’s not what gives demonology its feel. It’s the horde of demons that you’re summoning that gives it the flavor.
Obviously there needs to be some type of filler spell to fall back on when you’ve got nothing else, but ideally you want most of your time spent summoning and supporting your army. Is that what you’re getting at?
There’s been some push back here and there on destruction and how chaos bolt factors into our rotation. It used to be a significant portion of our damage profile and in larger chunks. It’s still a decent amount of our overall damage, but it doesn’t hit quite the same. We can get more casts and it can increase the amount of damage a target takes, but each individual chaos bolt has less oomph. To some, those big chaos bolt nukes were a large part of the identity.
So more hard casts of spells means it takes longer to get to the fun bit where you’ve got a ton of demons running around. Whatever changes happen, try to keep the focus and majority of your time getting those into play?
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Wait… Warlocks got a dev after Xelnath and Blizz Burned their bridges with eachother? Figure Warlock stuff has been a mixture of throwing darts and dirt at the wall to see what sticks and what-knots since WoD…
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Relax Karen. Its just a game…
They really need to do something about the talent bloat and wall of two-point nodes that Demonology has been saddled with in the new Alpha build.
Also, bring back Improved Dreadstalker!
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This is 100% it!! No special treatment, of course we need a filler spell like everyone else, but these changes are throwing off that balance. Idk if you play Mage, but imagine you’re a Frost mage. Now imagine you no longer get any Flurry procs, and in exchange Arcane Explosion deals way more damage. It’s like, why pick Frost then?
I mean this with the utmost sincerity: If Shadowbolt didn’t get any damage buffs, but summoned 1 imp or some other small demon, this and many other threads wouldn’t have been made. That’s all we want is demons, for better or worse. If we’re hard casting so be it, just gimmie a summon with that cast.
Again Akaril for what it’s worth, I really appreciate you taking the time to understand.
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Shadowbolt should be removed from demo, the entire spec should roam around demonbolt, empowered demonbolt (insta cast, more dmg, imp proc etc) and SUMMONING ARMIES OF DEMONS.
If anything remove the infinite army of imps and put 5-8 max big pets, 4 felhounds, 2 tyrantes, etc etc.
End this forever Shadowbolt crap, move out of classic old stuff, let’s get crazy here.
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Not a problem. I’m hoping to get into the alpha or beta soonish so that I can test some of the changes that I’ve been hearing about as well as the hero talents and seeing how those feel with each spec.
Hopefully we can come into the next expansion feeling good.
Roll a destruction lock , then you can fear Alliance while they immolate and have fire rained on them.
I made a post about my disc priest stinking , but I love my warlock, don’t change a darn thing.
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