So I was playing around with my demo talents and was playing with soul strike (think that’s what it was called) or the talent that makes the imp more powerful. My questions are is the soul strike worth it and if anything what is the rotation for using the skill that makes imps powerful (sorry can’t think what it called I’m at work so hard to look up)
Not too sure what spell you’re talking about.
Soul Strike is a spell, but it’s something for your Fel Guard. I don’t really know of a talent that makes your Imps stronger, the idea is they’re expendable and sacrificing them is often a gain.
Actually maybe it’s called expendables lol
Priority
ST:
Demonic Core’d Demon Bolt
Soul Strike
Shadow bolt
AOE: if you use the talent that makes soul strike cleave.
Soul Strike
Demon Bolt
Shadow bolt
higher on the list means its more important/stronger.
I rather wish Demonic Core applied to Shadow Bolt’s as well. It’s possiblt to skip Demon Bolt and opt for other talents so i don’t see why they did not make it apply to both.
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now that you mention it, it does seem rather rediculous that demonbolt is not a mandatory talent to take; that seems monumentally trap for any new player that ends up pathing without it. On the other hand, maybe blizzard believes that new players are smart enough to not play demonology without it.
The thing is, if you had demonic cores being consumed by Shadow Bolt it would be pretty terrible, as you could no longer keep some of them “hanging” to be used for later.
And it would also be pretty senseless considering Demonbolts are just flatout better shadowbolts considering it generates 2 shards, so spending cores on them is not good.
unless you opt to take other talents than Demonbolt.
and let me get ahead of the arguments that will come and concede, yes under the current model and implementation Demonbolt is better even baseline for just the shards and is further improved by SPENDING talent points to further boost it.
But i’m talking about the problem with blizz saying players can choose whatever talents they want but allow parts/pieces of a class/specs kit to be incomplete or inefficient UNLESS you choose specific talents.
If the “intent” is for players to “choose” Demonbolt because their kit revolves around that and demonic core then WHY make it a talent choice one could** skip instead of giving it outright to the spec to begin with.
And IF it is to be a choice then the base kit should be balanced around Shadowbolt either WITH or WITHOUT Demonic core and NOT around Demonbolt.
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Ok maybe just hard to explain this throight text but do people actually use shadowboot as a filler or?
My understanding is Shadowbolt one kind of filler when you don’t have Demonic Core for for DemonBolt, 3 shards for Hand of Guldan, any other CD’s to use, etc.
I’v heard people say in some builds they never use SB if they get lucky with Imp Implosion and getting more Demonic Core procs. But lets set aside 1 specific build and let’s also set aside “optimal” or min/max builds.
It’s possible to lean heavy on the right side of the warlock Demo tree and avoid Demon Bolt but the spec as a whole should not be penalized because of it, in the sense that: the spec is designed or “intended” to work or function only if you take Demonbolt and through it Demonic Core as a talent choice but not actually give it to you as part of your kit.
you only use shadowbolt when you don’t have anything better to press (3 shard hand, demonbolt with the proc, dreadstalker etc.)
It is also purely related to ripped through the portal being overpowered, and mandatory to use. It is not a fringe build, or 1 specific build, but all of our builds use this talent currently
The sad part is, in reality, the vast majority of settings in which anybody is actually playing demonology optimally (which is more often than not due to the prevalance of wowhead, discords/class resources), will end up using Ripped Through the Portal as you gain an extra demonic core proc from having the third dog.
second, demonic knowledge has increased the amount of core procs we get in general, and you will likely get a proc in the 20s window you have your dogs on cd.
third, as demonic core procs have increased it compounds the amount of imps we can have out within our dreadstalker cd further increasing the chance for rng demonic core procs.
fourth, inner demons gives us a chance (albeit minor chance) at also getting roughly 1 proc within our dog window.
Fifth, soul conduit reduces the overall amount shards needed to be gained by the player by 10% on average, squeezing our spell priority in the middle (primarily with hand of gul’dan casts).
Overall, in general, you’re looking at 4 on the low end, to 6 ish on the high end of core procs within each guarunteed triple proc window (dreadstalker cd). If you low roll and have 4 core procs, you’re going to cast at least 1 shadowbolt to bring your total shards to 9 which translates to 3 hand of gul’dan casts. That’s currently 8 globals, with 1 of them being shadowbolt. If you get good rng with soul conduit, as well as your core procs, you might end up casting a single shadowbolt (or in extremely lucky circumstances even fewer times) every 20s or so. This also doesn’t even factor in the free 2 core procs you get using power siphon, which is currently used in most settings.
That’s pretty bad. The culprit is that extra guarunteed core proc we get from the 3rd dreadstalker. I would be ok if the rotation at least had some rng and variance like it did pre-three dreadstalkers, where shadowbolt has some interaction. Now it just feels bad to press shadowbolt when you are flooded with the ability to use demonbolt.
I think its very much this situation, special this bluepost is relevant on this.
The TLDR is that not everything in the talent tree is a choice, instead they are very obvious picks, picks who you will always go forth.
It’s the Demonbolts, the Unstable Afflictions, the Conflagrates, the Dragonrages, the Apocalypses, the Demonic Tyrants.
All talents who you must pick because they are essential either due to how the spec works or due to the might of its effects.
In another part of the bluepost, they do say this:
- In short, yes. There are limits and guardrails here, such as those abilities that are automatically given. And furthermore, our goal in designing the trees is not to trap players in complicated choices in order to make a functional build; in fact, it’s the opposite—it’s to set up the trees with intuitive paths that lead you to reasonable builds. But a key philosophy of this rework is to keep the player in the driver’s seat of their character’s growth within their class."
So, while you do have choice in what to do (and you can choose to screw yourself over) there are talents who do follow a “path of stones across the river”, paths who are intuitive due to the talents placed there.