Demonology talent rework I would like to see to solidify playstyles, address pain points, and improve fantasy

Classes Warlock
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Just wanting to put down my thoughts on the current iteration of the Demo lock tree and where I think it could be improved upon for both efficiency and fantasy, giving us an option to have a lot of demons vs. Empowering our main ones. The lower left side is relatively okay. The proc rates on some talents could be increased to be more consistent, but overall it feels like the left side is the more demons side with Pact of the Imp Mother and Pact of the Ered’ruin.

Starting with the lower left side talents:

  • Umbral Blaze: This talent should be removed and baked directly into HoG. Essentially making it a dot on HoG casts. Remove the reapplication bonus. As it stands it does such little damage it actually has no value whatsoever other than the requirement to path into Pact of the Imp Mother. Replace the talent with PotIM. Replace PotIM with a new talent that applies Doom on HoG casts (Hand of Doom).

Fantastic, now remove Umbral Blaze, please.

  • Doom Eternal: Another talent that should just be baked into other talents. Either into Impending Doom or Pact of the Ered’ruin.
  • Pact of the Ered’ruin: Increase the proc rate (perhaps not if Hand of Doom exists) and the Doom Guards should be empowered by the Tyrant, as well as Tyrant getting benefit from Doom Guards if summoned while they’re out.

Not so sure a simple buff to damage is good enough.

Now onto the middle talents:

  • Dread Calling: Increased proc rate and it should last until the next cast.

While a damage buff is very much appreciated here, I still think the fundamental problem lies in the long cast times with 3 of our “cooldowns”. Increase the proc rate and make it until next cast. Or when it procs, it resets the cooldown on Call Dreadstalkers, allowing for instant cast weaving. Similarly to other modernized casters.

  • Mark of Shatug: Gloom Slash - should increase your and your pets single target damage by a relatively decent amount while the Gloomhound is active. This should be THE single target choice. Or even 2 cleave.

I don’t think this is going to make enough of a difference to choose GH over CH. After playing with this talent after the buff, it was substantial enough to work with (albeit, still not scaling with haste, could be improved further with haste scaling and a nerf to damage). The pain points still revolve around how much casting we have to do.

And now the right side:

  • I think Dreadlash and Wicked Maw should trade places on the tree.
  • Swap Bilescourge Bombers/Felstorm with Grimoire: Felguard
  • Bilescourge Bombers: Instead of a targeted location ability, the bombers divebomb your target, allowing the packs to move but still take the intended damage.
  • Swap Shadow Invocation with Fiendish Oblation
  • Grimoire: Felguard BUFF! :white_check_mark:

I think a larger buff is warranted.

This is far better and will probably see play now. Substantial improvement.
Now just fix the duplicate summon of your main felguard (I don’t think it’s intended).

  • Fiendish Oblation: Choice node - 10% damage increase to Grimoire: Felguard + Immutable Hatred/Guillotine - Immutable hatred works the same as the capstone talent or if Guillotine is chosen, the Grimoire: Felguard will throw his axe at the current target upon summoning, dealing damage as the capstone talent does.
  • Fel Sunder: Instead of Felstorm being the ability that procs the buff, make it Legion Strike.
  • Improved Demonic Tactics: REMOVE - Replace with Immutable Hatred.
  • Demonic Brutality: REMOVE - Replace with Guillotine - yes, this means we can choose both. We’re buffing our Felguard completely on this side of the tree.
  • Immutable Hatred/Guillotine: Replace with a new talent - Grimoire of Supremacy: Fel Lord (Or Pit Lord, if Blizzard really wants to give in). This will change our Felguard into it’s much stronger counterpart, the Fel Lord (Like Zakuun) Increasing all of its damage by a flat %. Maintains all it’s normal abilities.

Not nearly good enough. After playing for some time, it was just one of those buffs you don’t really notice. I’m sure it was good enough, but I didn’t notice anything of substance.

I would absolutely like buffing up our felguard as a playstyle. Forgoing more demons (Doom Guards) for the Fel Lord or Pit Lord. We’re master summoners after all. Why shouldn’t we be able to handle one of these two high ranking demons? Plus, making Guillotine and Immutable hatred actually viable will help immensely with more consistent AoE.

The left side could maintain the single target focus. Leaving the right to be our more AoE oriented. Forgoing Guillotine for doom or something like that would make a viable build with both the Fel Lord and at least Doom. Perhaps there could be a build that tosses the Gloomhound/Charhound aside to give us the opportunity for both DGs and a Fel Lord/Pit Lord.

Finally, please, make Tyrant instant cast.

Core economy is going to be much better, big positive reversion here.

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YES. YES! Preach, Netherlord!

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Or make it a choice node with Metamorphosis, as an instant cast alternative that’s a little weaker in single target, since it doesn’t get buffed by mastery, but stronger in aoe, since it buffs personal dps like implosion, HoG, and Doom.

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With Demon Hunter existing, I don’t think Demo lock will ever see Meta again. Demonology has become the summoner fantasy and meta doesn’t really fit into that anymore. But more choice is always a good thing, if Blizz decided to bring it back, I wouldn’t be opposed. I still would want Tyrant to be instant cast though!

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I like this idea, right side fel lord, middle change the dreadstalkers for vilefiends and left side can be we get dire imps.

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Perhaps instead of Umbral Blaze, the talent could be Dire Imps. I would prefer it to be Hand of Doom, but I like the idea of stronger imps! I would even say replace Imp Gang Boss with Dire Imps.

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“Demonology Talent Tree Rework”
I don’t know about y’all, but I am exhausted of hearing that. Not just from the players but the devs too.

Your proposals are good, though.

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What I would like is an out of combat channel that lets you summon five imps or something. Maybe make it a class thing that gives the other specs a way to get five shards prepull.

That, and a talent that cause dreadstalkers and vilefiend to give your active imps a bit of energy back, just enough to help extend their duration when ramping into tyrant.

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Oh, for crying out loud, I know I might love what’s here if I read it. And I don’t enjoy being schooled by absolutely everyone after coming off a strong expansion before, but… I can’t seem to have a single build before something changes that throws it all off! XD
I know “Adapt”, but I’m not the kind of person who rips builds off Wowhead, Icyveins or Raider!

OKAY! Throwing my fear for change aside, I wish Demonic Tyrant did not exist, or was completely optional and not specifically benefited and not optionally benefited by the Hero Talents. I fell out of love with it when I learned it provided no more soul shards, I freed up space to have char hounds and doom going on as well and they STICK IT IN THERE LIKE A SORE THUMB!
I wish though going down one route was made… acceptable. As well as combinations of the two but optionally, everything optional. And that’s the thing about Hero Talents, they force you to play a certain way either way, despite being mostly passive. it’s weird.
I know, Probably will be corrected by 20 year warlocks who use corruption and curses first before other spells, but it’s still irritable, that stupid tyrant!

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If Tyrant was instant cast, I don’t think this would even be necessary!

I know, I get it. But we can’t sit by while our talent trees latest rework left a lot to be desired. I think it’s almost there, these few recommendations could tip it to a place that is really fun and relatively engaging without changing too much of what’s already been changed!

I get it! I usually do this as well, but after getting comfortable with the spec, I tend to try to branch out to see if I can’t make what’s there better. After looking over the talents, these are the pain points that I think could be addressed without completely overhauling the whole spec.

One of my biggest gripes. Nothing felt better than popping Tyrant with a slew of demons out already, only to get a huge chunk more out. Having 35+ imps out on a good Tyrant summon was so cool!

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Yeah, I miss Old Tyrant, now he’s just… There, I guess.

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I hate how they capped Tyrant at 15 imps too. There are cases where I’ve been at like 20+ with Tyrant ready and knowing 5 will just not get benefit feels rather lame. I understand their point though, Demo’s damage with old tyrant was literally ALL Tyrant. I actually think currently, the damage spread across the kit is really well done and pretty balanced. Nothing is way too high. There are a few things that are incredibly low (umbral blaze), but for the most part, the damage spread is nice. An overall aura buff could be applied though. No longer being solely carried by Tyrant is an okay trade-off to me.

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Remember the Glyph of Imp Swarm from a hundred years ago? It essentially front loaded your inner demons imps by summoning a bunch right away, but disabling the passive when on cooldown. I could see that making a return in some form.

Yeah… At the very least, I am pretty sure the 20% damage boost from Diabolist is uncapped, so there is that.

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I mean, he does still provide three if you go Soul Harvester! But yes, they did make him so mandatory, they might as well make him baseline at this point.

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Should baseline provide 3.

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10/10 good takes. My suggestions for Demo are as follows:

Bake Imp-erator into Imp Gang Boss.
Bake Demonic Brutality into Tyrant.
Bring back Borne of Blood but at a reduced rate,
Have Soul Strike do more damage on execute phase but take away the Soul Shard gen.
Bake in Doom Eternal to Pact of the Ered’ruin.
Have the Doom Guard’s Doom bolt from pact cleave.
Finally, buff our Mastery.

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Remind me what this was please!

I think we can maintain the soul shard gen while this becomes a soft execute!

Agreed, mastery feels weak as it stands.

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Basically the idea that Hand of Gul’dan could proc Demonic Cores. Which was a piece of what made demonology so much fun for me: you started slow, using shadowbolt for slow shard gen, but the more you spent shards, the faster things got. It felt great when every piece of your kit could help accelerate your rotation of generating shards and spending them. TWW cutting a lot of Demonic Core generation really ticked me off.

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Oh wow. I assume this is part of the reason why people have been saying demonic core procs are a lot less frequent than before. Was this a DF thing? I didn’t play my lock In DF, big regret there.

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Yep, and dreadstalkers used to guarentee 2 cores on fading. They purposely cut a lot of cores out because it made us too mobile compared to other warlock specs. Which feels like they should have left us alone and buffed the others? Maybe give destro a ht that makes immolate instant cast, or something

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