I would be perfectly okay with it just being a cooldown like it was in Cata instead of a stance. I honestly think “ideally” they wouldn’t just do a full revert anyway, I just felt like that’s the simplest way to get Demo working in a way that I personally feel is more well designed. Meta could work with the current design and just replace Tyrant which I feel would be a massively positive change in and of itself.
In my opinion, the best design of Demo would be the idea that I had, focusing on summoning 2 major demons, buffing them and interacting with them, while also having Meta as their main damage cooldown. I like the idea of summoning demons, I just feel like our main burst cooldown (which is Tyrant currently) should be more in the player’s hands rather than in an NPC because it just feels better and functions more reliably that way. I’d love to hear your opinion since we’ve discussed on the forums in the past.
40 yard isn’t necessary(not that i would mind) but i agree that 8yards is a little… pointlessly restrictive. while i grasp the notion of Demo being the stacked cleave master, this role is meaningless unless encounters are written to cater to this and right now that doesn’t happen a lot for various reasons.
Demo overall works well. The biggest problems i have with it, other than how reliant we are on tyrant and haste/movement problems, is fantasy. I have had the same demon forever, literally forever. This might not bother me so much if half the game wasn’t designed around demons and yet hunters get new skins every .5 patch. There are tons and tons of demons. More importantly there are tons of named demons (though we only take the name of Gul’dan?) I remember when we had Archimonde’s Darkness, Mannoroths Fury, and Kiljaden’s Cunning. Our class is weirdly disassociated with our lore because DK stole some then DH stole some.
IDK, I feel like after taking down the lord of the burning legion, dismantling the legion from the heart, fighting the hidden titan at the heart of the legion… some of those demons might want to join me? Have a random summon of Jaraxxus? Malcazzar? Get some dreadlords (yesyes they might not be demons, its a lame excuse after 15 years) or pitlords? And warlocks were always meant to have demonform. Sure it was displayed by a demonhunter in WC3, but from the skull of a warlock and he was ranged with chaos damage.
Seriously, with all the history we have, I cant believe after all this time we dont have more or different demons. Customization is my biggest problem.
I personally disagree that Demo works well currently. I don’t think it works well in any capacity but I respect your opinion. It definitely has issues with tyrant, haste, and movement though for sure, and fantasy was one of the major points in my post. It’s pretty stupid that we’re still summoning Imps, except now it’s a major focus of the spec rather than just a minor mechanic to make the spec more fluid.
Not sure I agree with summoning such powerful demons as Pit Lords, Dread Lords, Jaraxxus, etc. I think Doomguards and Abyssals are good enough and personally I’ve really been missing having them as primary demons. Idk if a hunter-like taming system would be reasonable to ask for, like don’t get me wrong it would be cool but I’m not sure hunter players would be happy with Warlocks basically stealing a main part of their class. Just give us more glyphs or a barber shop option to change each demon and most people would probably be happy.
I 100% agree on your demon form point. There’s still lore supporting Warlocks having a demon form. Just bring it back and name it Demonic Transformation instead of Meta and it’s g2g. The two abilities functioned way differently within their specializations, and they don’t look similar whatsoever.
I love the way Demo plays at the moment. It feels like a summoner spec and it’s great when it works. HOWEVER, there are some noticeable issues with the spec. A decent ramp up time is one of them, and I think giving wild imps a bit more time to live would help that.
I don’t agree with the statement that we need more cooldowns like Meta. The issue with Demo at the moment is that when we move from group to group in dungeons we lose alot of dmg. In my opinion Blizz needs to give us some more insta cast spells and adjust the lifespan of wild imps.
I do Not like how demo plays currently. The spec has some very deep mechanical issues that prevent it from being a decent spec. This is compounded by the fact that blizz has made wow into this fast-paced always moving game and demo is stuck in the context from 5 xpacs ago. The same goes for arcane mages and even destro locks. I do not mind the summoning build but there is too much insignificant casting and summoning that does almost no dmg while waiting for the 1 tyrant cd to do dmg. Inevitably, every fight turns into a spam hand/DB while waiting for everything else.
If blizz wants to somehow retain demo, they need to make demon summoning more impactful, both spell and damage wise, they need to streamline the spec by getting rid of the horrible purple blob (shadowbolt,) while making many spells insta-cast to just bring the spec up to par with the current game’s playstyle, and they need to figure out what niche the spec fits into then make changes to the spec to embrace that identity. A large issue with warlocks in general is their lack of identity.
Same, they need to bring incinerate and shadowbolt for demo.
shadowbolt : just a filler as it is rn
incinerate : gives 2 soulshards, same cast time as demonbolt currently, instant with the proc like the current demonbolt
soulfire baseline : super long cast time, 3 soulshard. casts 75% faster after damaging a target lower than 30% hp for 12 sec. this literally will make the spec 10 times better
Unfortunately its essentially voidform for priest now.
And i meant how it plays because its similar to a combo point system, its like a casting rogue. We have generators and spenders. It might not be the most inspiring mechanics, but its solid over RNG shards.
As far as more powerful demons, i disagree with you assessment. I have been able to summon infernal and doomguard (RIP doomguard) since vanilla forever ago. I have beaten some of the most powerful beings in known lore, demons should flock to me because of either my strength or the souls i offer them.
As far as demonstables, I appreciate hunters, but i couldnt care less if they feel hurt for us taking a single mechanic they have monopolized on from them after all i have “gifted” to other classes. Id also be game for equipping my demons, but that has its own drawbacks…
Meta is actually not anything like Voidform whatsoever. I don’t know why so many people make that connection. That’s only with a talent, and the only thing similar is that you have ramp up your resource to be able to get the most out of your burst. The only thing it does is give you Voidbolt and a damage buff. Meta completely changed how ~5 abilities functioned and depending on the expansion, it was an entire stance that you frequently shifted in and out of, not a cooldown.
Also I just don’t see the point in being able to summon powerful lore demons. I’m perfectly fine with summoning things like Doomguards and Abyssals. If we were able to summon Pit Lords, then that would thematically make 0 sense because realistically that would make us one of the most powerful Specs in the game, but in reality we still have to be balanced so our massive Pit Lord would be doing comical damage compared to its actual significance.
I make the comparison because (granted i dont know how it plays now) your playstyle was molded around building demonic fury (another thing given to DH) and shifting into demonform to drain your fury on various abilities, only to start over. It was two sides of the coin really.
I understand what you mean damage wise for how strong they are, but is that any reason to keep them from us? We ARE one of the strongest specs in the game. Demons have gotten TWO expansions! We are one of if not the most powerful mortal warlock, and im not even positive we are considered mortal. There is no reason infernal and doomguard has been shuffled as much as they have been. Why give us new demons if we had old ones? Why a tyrant when i can enslave dreadlords (yes, i have before. it was the original model as well)? Or even a pitlord using its beam for its attack. Or having different summons, a pitlord for cleave as they are known for cleave damage from WC3 or a commander for ST damage? Thats another thing, demonic consumption mentions demonic commander, why say that when is called demonic tyrant? Its like the tyrant is malleable and they intend it to be swapped out.
I get what you are saying. I appreciate it. But man, I took down a titan a couple years ago, powerscale is pretty skewed. There has always been a kind of hierarchy to demons and the burning crusade warlocks have kept working through, but instead of giving us justice, we are fed new irrelevant demons instead of using exsisting lore and making me feel complete. Where did the tyrant and vilefiend even come from? There are tons of established demons we have asked for, why create new ones? Warlock is also unique that we have many many many established named demons that we do jack-all with. Why cant i occasionaly summon a random lore demon (like the random malcazzar) to help me? Even if theres no mechanic change, it feels like i am missing 90% of my roster.
Sorry if it feels disjointed, theres just no real reason (other than clutter on screen) that we should not be allowed some of these, if only in skin.
edit: also our other subtheme is never really explored. I can rip portals open whenever i feel like it. Why cant i get a demon to punch through a portal or rip my enemies apart with my knowledge? The entirety of shadowlands is old news to warlocks… souls, portals, binding ourself to a pact for more power.
hand of guldan should be allowed to cast on move, just like hunters steady shot, call vile fiend and tyrant should be instant cast. major problem of demonlock is almost every skill has cast time and must stand still to cast… and warlock has no tool to get away from melee
Ya I think something like that would be an easy way to make the current design a bit less clunky to hold us over for the rest of the expansion. Honestly Hand of Gul’dan should also just be instant cast like it used to be. Demo needs more than just simple changes like that to fix all of its inherent design problems though. Hopefully Blizzard realizes this when they start working on class changes for next expansion.
Maybe they’ll start doing meaningful changes during major content patches. That would honestly be a huge improvement for the game. You can catch up to speed in new patches extremely quickly anyway so if someone doesn’t like the changes and they want to reroll it’s not really an issue. Only being able to meaningfully iterate on specs every 2 years is extremely stupid. We need more frequent and meaningful spec changes across the board, but especially to specs like Demo, Arcane, Feral, etc. Arcane has pretty much always struggled with poor design. Feral is still basically just a Rogue clone since it lost its unique identity in Legion.
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if some of the torghast powers (nerfed) slide their way into our normal ability toolkit. What if we had a CD where HoG costed 5% of our HP for 15 seconds instead of shards? Or A tyrant could summon another Tyrant? Idk, I feel like the abilities are actually there but blizz for one reason or twenty just does not care or know how to balance demo. It scales well but I suppose they don’t want to make a complex spec of managing demons, cds, empowerment of demons and self-morphing. Part of it is probably due to the trimming of the class dev team and part of it is Ion clearly said he’d rather we not play demo lol.
Atleast with doomguard it was an instant cast. This cast time tyrant is a dps loss. Nether portal cast time dps loss. Corruption cast time dps loss. Did the devs even look at demonology and think that they caused the spec to loose so much damage. If these things were instant cast things would change. If hand of guldan applied doom like In legion things may change. If we had kiljadens cunning baseline we may stand a chance (the passive version)
Let’s face it the spec fixes are all just more hard casts into a spec that can be completely interrupted.