I honestly wish he elaborated on his thoughts about Cataclysm. Maybe he did and I just can’t find it, but I’d be interested in knowing what he had in mind instead. It’s no secret that warlocks went downhill after Xelnath was fired, and he’s the reason why MoP warlocks were so good in the first place (well, him and his secretive Black Harvest team) so clearly he knew the class. Just makes me wonder what he thought Destro needed instead of Cata.
On the subject of Demo, it really shows how behind the times warlocks are. An expansion or two ago, interrupts weren’t really needed at all outside of a few exceptions, and in most of those cases you just needed one or two people on interrupt duty. Similarly, mobility wasn’t really all that important, even when we had KJC it was more of a nice to have thing than an important skill, and the game had a much higher focus on single target and multi target cleave than full aoe. We were fine then, and well balanced for the time.
Since Legion the game has been changing, with more and more mobility required fights in raids, and in the new M+, and BFA amped it up by having huge interrupt requirements everywhere and heavy AoE becoming the new big strategy. Other classes either already suited the new gameplay, or evolved to fit it. Not warlocks. In many ways we regressed back towards the old Vanilla turret casting days. The only advance we’ve gotten was the removal of Life Tap, which was an antiquated skill that was needlessly holding warlocks back since about Cata when all the other dps specs were already shifting away from mana management requirements.
In short, we’re running specs that would have been fine some 10 odd years ago, but are terrible by todays standards. We quite simply do not fit the game as it is today.
The only advance we’ve gotten was the removal of Life Tap, which was an antiquated skill that was needlessly holding warlocks back
Oh man dont i know it. I “like” how demo feels atm, but that could just be because i have played lock for 15+ years and got way to used to tapping after 3 casts because for some reason we were factored into having half the GCD because of mana.
In recent memory the two best changes to warlock have been removing life tap and adding in our passive shield.
Err getting back to the topic. I can not for the life of me understand why we didnt really get demons in the demon expansion. Or even afterwards quoting that “since their masters are either killed or imprisoned, these demons will serve you… for a price” kind of thing. Dreadlord (lore implications atm though, but they are demon), pitlord, eradar, hounds, morag, even dreadsteeds and the billion variations of and of them. Heck we even have the power to open portals to other planets to a degree (if nothing else, the Scepter of Sargaras). We have had two expansions around demons, and have gotten squat, where this will be the second DK expansion that is literally themed around them.
As a side note, I do think its bad we are seen as only taking power from demons. Warlocks seek power wherever it lies. Void, demon, elemental, mechanical. We take and we bind. Warlock only taking from demons is archaic by now.
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Simple answer, because it’s another thing DHs stole from us. Under normal circumstances Legion would have been very special for warlocks and would have had focus put into our command over demons. But this was the expansion to introduce DHs, and so all the anti-demon focus was put into them.
While not sure on his total thoughts for cataclysm his blog went over the process for warlocks then and it was intense I doubt they do much of this now sadly. It is a very good read none the less. https://xelnath.com/2018/05/15/the-mop-warlock-what-you-knew-and-what-you-never-knew-you-missed/
Yes this would rock kind of like a totem but would make so much since in what the class says that it is . The master of summoning demons and using them for damage . Heck make them part of the kill all you imps button too for the extra AOE damage and charges .
i think that maybe blizzard needs to either give demonology the ability to summon 2 different demons or give demonology inner demons baseline.
Now if inner demons was baseline i would scrap the whole imp summoning it does and have it summon a random primary demon that we dont already have out. For example if we have a felguard out then it will summon a succubus, imp(the main one), voidwalker, or felhunter. Allow a new one to be summoned every 5 seconds and to be active for 10 seconds. We gain access to 2 abilities for their duration. So if succubus is summoned u have 10 seconds to hit the charm special button to charm a target for the succubus duration. So we will have access to 2 special buttons on our action bar.
Inner demons would still have a chance to summon a non primary demon as well. With the chances increasing everytime one is not summoned.
As for promce malkazar, i think he should be added to the nether portal spell. Using it automatically summon prince malkazar upping the nether portal damage.
It’s not just a Demonology problem. Warlocks have needed a baseline interrupt that isn’t tied to a specific demon ever since Mythic+ made interrupts a requirement for high level keys. You are forced into using a Felhunter in almost every instance, but the class damage profile is balanced around using other pets, which means warlocks have been uniquely hamstrung in that particular segment of the game since its implementation. The fact Blizzard hasn’t recognized this and made the change in all these years is a testament to just how awful they are at understanding their own game.
It’s been this way for 16 years now though, so I wouldn’t count on it changing.
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