Demonology Warlock (A thread for Issues, Fixes, and Future Reworks)

Classes Warlock
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Background Information:

Demonology Warlock has been my favorite specialization since I started playing the game in The Burning Crusade. I played Demo exclusively until the Legion rework where I finally changed my class, but I have never stopped caring about Demo. In this post, I would like to discuss my personal view of Demonology since the spec currently has so many flaws not only by concept, but by execution, and I feel like a lot of people seem to not be recognizing this. Because of this, I would like to provide a single thread where we can all discuss Demonology’s problems. I will be listing each problem and point separately so that responding and elaborating is easier.

Side note:

Before I begin, please understand that Demonology has been almost completely unplayable in PvP since the changes in BfA. It has consistently seen the least representation in 3v3 over any other non-tank specialization. From what I have read in recent Demonology discussion, most people glance over this fact when trying to provide solutions for the spec.

Current issues I have with Demo:

The way current Demo is designed is extremely similar to Affliction in that both are DoT caster specs for Warlock, but Demo’s DoTs can suffer from poor AI, CC, line of sight, being outranged, killed, etc.

The concept of summoning a small army of such low ranking demons makes almost no sense considering the fact that literally any spec of Warlock has been able to summon permanent Terrorguards and Abyssals as pets previously. Unholy DK already fulfills the fantasy of summoning a small army of low ranking minions way better than Demo does, and it makes more sense for them. It does not make sense for a “Master Demonologist” to be summoning such insignificant demons, even at mass.

Summoning demons in the amount we do currently will never allow for any meaningful interaction, which I feel is a big missed opportunity for providing the spec with a unique playstyle.

Another horrible flaw is the fact that the spec relies so heavily on ramp. Don’t get me wrong, the ramp problem can be mostly solved by removing cast times on summons, but that would only really work in PvE. In PvP, even if everything was instant cast for Demo, one break in our rotation from being CCd, having to CC someone, being forced to play defensively, etc. would still be enough to almost completely negate our ramp. Ramp just does not work in today’s climate and the spec would have to see a significant rework to be able to meaningfully address this issue since just making everything instant cast is a very lazy solution.

Even if Demo had 0 ramp, people can still just CC, line of sight, or outrange your demons to make them completely useless which proves another issue: relying so much on immobile pets for damage does not work. This is mostly only a problem in PvP, but that does not demean the fact that this is a problem.

My opinion on Pre-Legion Demonology:

The fact that Demonology was reworked at all in Legion is extremely baffling. It was a perfectly working spec. It was viable in all forms of content, and every problem that Demo had previously could have easily been solved by adjusting numbers. It was an extremely solid specialization with great movement, burst, reliability, and uniqueness. It fit a completely unique playstyle that no other spec has ever come close to mimicking. It seems the only reason it was reworked was because Demon Hunters were being added to the game and they also have an ability named Metamorphosis. However, all they had to do is rename Metamorphosis for Demo to Demonic Transformation and they could have coexisted seamlessly. The two abilities didn’t look or function within the specs similarly whatsoever. Meta for DH just increases the damage of 2 abilities. Meta for Demo changed how ~5 abilities functioned entirely.

My ideas for a potential rework:

I really think Demonology could use another rework. Preferably I would just like to see a revert to MoP/WoD. I know that a lot of current Demo players don’t prefer that playstyle. That is irrelevant considering most players of Pre-Legion Demo didn’t like the reworked playstyle so I think it’s fair. However, if for some reason a revert can’t happen, I would love to see demons deal significantly less damage across the board, but have them buff the caster similar to how Imps did Pre-Legion (they buffed Soulfire outside of execute window). This would keep demons as an extremely important part of the spec while helping Demo fit a completely unique playstyle/niche. This would also potentially fix most viability issues in PvP and other highly reactionary environments while making it significantly easier to tune.

Alternatively if we were to completely change Demo, I would love to see them tone down the ramp and have the spec shift more towards summoning one or two meaningful demons, and have the rotation focus on empowering them and interacting with them. This is a much healthier design concept and would help Demo fit a completely unique playstyle rather than borrowing from Affliction and Unholy as it does currently.

Important:

I understand that Blizzard almost never does major reworks mid-expansion so if you guys would like to discuss temporary adjustments to help the spec play better for the remainder of the expansion, that discussion is more than welcome below.

Regardless of if you agree or disagree with me, I would love for everyone who cares, or previously cared about Demonology to discuss this topic further. Hopefully someone important at Blizzard will read through this topic and gather information from the community so that this spec can shine once again.

Thank you for reading!

Edit: I thought of a new idea since I originally posted so I added it in under the potential reworks section. I also cleaned up the post a few minutes after the first edit to make it substantially easier to read.

18 Likes
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I personally enjoy the rework.
I have played warlock as my main since BC on this character. Until the Legion version I avoided Demonology as Meta didn’t appeal to me. Not taking anything from those that liked it just my opinion.

My thoughts on a Demonology adjustment:
I’d love to see Blizzard have Demonology get a meaningful buff to certain spells and abilities depending on which demon we have active. All the current abilities can stay with some tuning but the talents will need an overhaul.
The imp can give a buff to implosion to increase AoE.
The voidwalker would increase soul link, duration of defensive spells, and just have more health overall as a strong tank pet but low damage.
The felhunter would lower the cool down on dreadstalker and give us and our pets a stealth detection passive similar to flare.
The succubus would give some form of leach aura buff for the whole group and really buff her seduce ability mostly for PvP.
The Felguard would be single target. Give them soul strike without needing a talent and have soul strike apply a damage increase effect for your damage spells , not other demons.
Few other things: I’d like to see Inner Demons and Doom base and nether portal act more like the destro weapon ability from Legion. This would open some talent slots you can fill with things like summoning Infernal or Darkglare or some new strong demon on a CD.

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According to Ion the team doesn’t look at classes or see anything wrong with demonology for example that needs to be overhauled because ion and his team broke the spec. they don’t read player feedback but claim they do.

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Love your idea. Want to use other pets and not being locked to felguard.
For PVP, i think a rework in the last row could solve the problem.
None of them is really useful for it.

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Very nice post keep it up

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They should bring back metamorphosis

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Literally just stop timers when they can’t reach a target up to twice their duration for pets, buff or bake in Sac souls, buff NP, and add something to assist our ramp up time either in the form of a dramatically higher damage footprint or a passive similar to decimation procs and we could call the spec g2g.

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Personally I preferred the legion version of Demonology, once they gave us 3 soul shards to start with, though I still think halving the cast time of Shadow Bolt would be a huge step forward.

Also, if you stopped playing demo in Legion then you really missed out. Thal’kiel made every dungeon and raid fun to play with his on-going commentary.

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You can still have him. Xmog your offhand to the skull and he chatters at ya to this day

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It’s why endgame legion demo was so good, or atleast part of it, due to Demonic empowerment being your filler and Sbolt
Only being casted when it was made instant cast by DE.

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The only way I see meta coming back is as a burst CD similar to cata, with it giving flat damage increase based on mastery, of gameplay changes are added with it, it would likely only be cast time changes to spells, and not stance dance of mop/wod.

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I think our rotation is find tbh. All we really need is just a simple flat out damage buff like a mastery and/or intellect buff.

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The spec is close to be good. I played Demono a lot in Mythic+ at the beginning of SL. I have 908 IO as demono that i got before we start doing 12+ keys where i switched Destruction (after the buff) cause Demono was simply not viable. Here’s the problems i had with the spec and why i switched (the first 3 points).

  1. Ramp up time and secondary pets despawning. Anything will make your pets despawn. Fly path, portals, RP, elevators, … there’s so many things happening in Mythic+ that makes your pets despawn and you have to redo the ramp up every time. You lose a lot of DPS. A solution would be to simply add time on the pets and make them follow you when you take a portal or fly path like the main pet. Adding time to the pets would also increase the dps a little bit.

  2. You hard cast everything. Aff can reapply dots on the move. Destruction with the legendary can always cast Conflagrate on the move. Demono has nothing if it doesn’t have proc. This spec is a pain in the *** to play in Theater of Pain. A partial solution would be to make the dogs insta cast like in pvp and make the talent reset the CD when it procs. It would potentially give you another thing to cast on the move not always but at least sometimes. Having the possibility of 4+ dogs up would also increase the dps a little bit.

  3. There’s part of some keys where DT is super hard to cast to its full potential and casting DT when it’s the right time is a big part of the spec DPS. Specially when volcanic is up it can be hard to summon a perfect Tyrant. ToP with volcanic there’s part of the dungeon it’s almost impossible to cast DT. A solution would be to make it a faster cast. Make it 1.5 sec. Even better make it insta like the infernal and DG. The spec is so undertune i don’t see how it would break it. Making the DT cast faster would also very slightly increase the dps.

  4. Imp implosion is harder to play than non lock people think it is. It’s not clear for people who did not study the spec when you should implode your imp. The whole thing with the imps decay and whatnot is super vague. I’m not even sure there’s a way to track your imps firebolt in Weak Aura and i played the spec a lot. I think blizzard should try to find a way to make this spell more seamless. I think it would be more simple if the imps would throw a fel grenade doing aoe on a CD and costing 1 or 2 shards and would not despawn. It would be easy to calculate at how many targets spending the shards would be a dps gain.

That’s the only thing i can think of for now.

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A) all major summons (anything over hog) should be instant cast. Now the only hard casts are shadowbolt and hand really. Shadowbolt needs to be chopped down in cast time as well.
B) gfg needs to be a 1.5m cd
C) many of our talents should be baselines tbh. ID and SS for easy. And imo if we being real real real? The entire 3rd row. That’s burning rush to give us some medium range mobility which is one of the biggest places we struggle with mobility. Cores give us small scale mobility to avoid mechanics but we really want things that allow us to actually handle raid mechanics i stead of individual mechanics and gateway and teleport see nice but also are restricted on CDs. That’s DP to give us a semi-spamable defensive. One minute just feels so nice. And yes that’s demon skin to make us beefier overall because we are sold as the tanky caster and this is part of how we can be again. Just gives all warlocks this whole row baseline and make a row that modifies our defensives or mobility instead of granting them.

Perhaps most important imo is bsb. I’m not even a huge huge fan of it and would rather it be demonic strength on 30sec cd maybe tuned a little lower but we need that pickup snap aoe and to smooth out aoe cycle. St needs heavy ramp up but stays pretty clean after at least.
D) buff Demonbolt dmg and probably hand a little
E) once these chances are made we can readdress because the situation will be different.

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Implosion is nowhere near that hard.

Why do people get so confused?You don’t track their firebolt just their energy and tbh basically just watching to see when a pack will despawn.

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Hard was probably not the right word. Let’s just say it’s not super clear from the get go when it’s a gain and not. The spec is underplayed and the guides are not as great as some of the other spec (anyway the last time i checked). When i started to play it i was confused with the spell. I had many questions like : Must i cast it everytime i have imps up? Must i wait to have enough imps? Must i wait for some them to be about to despawn? … I mean when you compare this spell to Divine Storm or Beast Cleave it’s a lot more esoteric anyway for me at first it was. I personally really don’t like the spell at all. I love having an army of imps by my side.

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Ahh ok. Yes
Poorly communicated I will endorse heartily.

The spell itself is pretty easy and quite flexible I find, but it is poorly communicated in-game. Really need to look at guide sites to grasp. Once you do it should be smooth sailing but the requirement is silly. But then blizzard has shown themselves to be fairly bad at communication bon the whole

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sad to see a warlock reroll to a furry, we used too burn trees brother now you praise them ?
on a serious note i posted this before but blizz needs to bring meta back as a melee cooldown. you are a caster outside meta then you meta and gain charge and become a melee dps for the duration. FEL CLAWS

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It just needs a 40 yard range like druid aoe. 8 yards ain’t enaugh for 15+ strats where DH run all over kitting huge packs. I do less dps than a regular pull when my guild tank helps with 14s.

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Now that’s what I used to love about it.

In PvP You could really punish melee by charging in and using immo aura, was a great defence aswell.

Felt like pretty engaging gameplay to me.

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