Sometime ago i made one for the class tree, now this one is for the spec tree of Demonology.
I love demonology, from all specs in the game, my favorite one, everything it does i have tender care for.
As such, please forgive me if I end up having some strong words and some bias towards it.
DEMONIC CORES
- 9.2 teached us that we can generate a lot of Demonic Cores to the point overflow at the tail-end of tyrant is not very controllable.
- DF talent tree also provide us with a lot of demonic core generation upgrades, including [2] tier set bonus of 9.2
- Increasing the maximum amount of Demonic Cores would help control this overflow better.
NETHER PORTAL
Nether Portal has a very strong flavor for the spec, people want to love this spell and want to play with it, but there are issues that plague it.
- Nether Portal is RNG, its coolest summons [like Malchezar] are either extremely rare or never happen, having Malchezar always be the first Nether Portal summon would be very awesome, even if that means turning him down in terms of damage.
- A lot of the power of Nether Portal is locked behind Summon Demonic Tyrant, casting Nether Portal and having its Demons without Tyrant is a 50% weaker Nether Portal as it lacks the Tyrant +15s duration, but NP/Tyrant Cooldown’t don’t always match very well, specially with wilfreds.
- Demonic Consumption and Nether Portal have an extremely problematic relationship that empowers DeCon to be vastly stronger than it currently is in SL.
- Many Players don’t like the 1-sharding rotation that the nether portal forces on you, and now with The Pitlord gaining benefit from spending more shards being gcd-inefficient also becomes confusing.
- Nether Portal forces the Warlock in a very imobile window of damage, while being an extremely long setup, ramp and delivery of damage, this is made even worse with the Nez’hul volition talent.
- Gul’dan Ambition is at the time a pathetically weak capstone, who doesn’t have any cool ability and just does auto-attacks, having it execute some form of spell upon being cast like Dreadstalkers, GFG and VF would be nice, suggestion: Pit lord Felbreath.
THE EXPENDABLES
I used to love this trait back in legion, i still love the name, but the design of it no longer fits how Wild Imps work.
- This effect requires and depends on Wild Imps despawning, but Summon Demonic Tyrant will freeze Wild Imps energy consumption for 15s, meaning they do not despawn.
- This forces the need for you to implode Wild Imps after summoning Tyrant, in order to buff him and the other new demons you summoned.
- But this goes very much against the design and intentions of Demonic Tyrant, to the point part of the DeCon rework was all about Tyrant no longer “eating” the wild imps away from you.
On a side note, its position would make more sense together with the Forces Horned Nightmare Talent, than together with Sacrificed Souls.
STOLEN POWER
This is not a trait that I loved in legion, and with Demonic Bolts already being a “instant cast better version of shadow bolt” this trait is a little meaningless.
- Like The Expendables, this trait makes more sense tied together with Sacrificed Souls.
- Making Shadowbolt gain more of it than Demonbolt also doesn’t make sense, especially after the Shadowbolt buff as it has similar spellpower as Demonbolt.
- Because Demonic Core makes Demonbolt a Instant cast, it already acts very similar to Stolen Power, this defeats a little of its purpose.
- Buffing Demonbolt feels much cooler and rewarding than Shadowbolt, this is part of the reason Decimation Bolt in Shadowlands Beta got changed to only work with demonbolt on demonology.
Overall, this talent is a relic of a time when we didn’t have instant cast Demonbolts as a separate spell from shadowbolt, but now that Demonbolts is a “instant cast shadowbolt x2” having another effect who is a “instant cast shadowbolt x2” is on the odd side, even more so with how many demonic cores effect exists, including demonic core generation tied to wild imps.
EDIT: So, i don’t know where i got the instant cast part, but it don’t exist; but that actually make this talent even worse.
SACRIFICED SOULS
I think there is a future for a style of build on Demonology focused on improving the damage of the player and not of the demons, but sacrificed souls have a few issues on it.
- For a talent called sacrificed souls, it cares more about having your pets being ALIVE than despawning/sacrificing themselves…
- Due to this, this talent has negative interactions with situations where you want to sacrifice your pets, exemple, Implosion and AOE, as imploding removes all Wild Imps making Sacrificed Souls weaker in M+ or hybrid scenarios who alternate between AOE and Single Target.
- Having this buff exists around stacks built by summoning/despawning demons could help solve that, the spending would be either time-related [like Niya’s grove invigoration] or as you cast demonbolt.
- Because Shadowbolt got buffed to similar levels of Demonbolt, and Stolen power benefits more Shadowbolt than Demonbolt, this can make situations where you prefer to cast a Shadowbolt instead of Demonbolt, even though Demonbolt positions itself as the “better shadowbolt”.
- I would prefer if this talent would buff Demonbolt and Hand of Gul’dan or just Demonbolt but at a bigger strength, while also considering a better mechanic to handle the stacks in hybrid/aoe scenarios.
FORCES OF THE HORNED NIGHTMARE.
- I don’t enjoy this effect, I think the side that summons more wild imps is much cooler and more interesting to play with than the side of “duplicating your hand of guldan.
- Overall, i think Higher proc-chance with lower power are more interesting to engage with, and between the two effects [Hand of Guldan Damage and extra Wild Imps] i rather enjoy and see more interactions with the side that increases Wild Imps.
- An effect like https://www.wowhead.com/spell=165450/item-warlock-t17-demonology-2p-bonus or Archimonde’s Trinket from WOD would be a much cooler design than the current Forces of the Horned Nightmare who divides the value between More Imps and More Hand of Guldan damage.
HOUNDMASTER’S GAMBIT
I love the Dreadstalkers, second coolest pet in Demonology, behind only the Wild Imp, but this talent might be troublesome due to the higher power it carries vs the low % chance and variable frequency of its trigger.
- It’s a very powerfull effect, summoning more Dreadstalkers when the tree gives you so much synergy on dreadstalkers, resetting becomes powerfull.
- But it’s also a very RNG-heavy effect, a reset closer to the cast is nuts, a reset after 18s is almost nothing…
- Buffing the proc chance could help the RNG, but would complicate the balance as it’s already a very strong effect.
- I think Ripped through the portal + Carnivorous Stalkers is a combo of talents who do a similar function of this talent in a better, less RNG way [More Dogs summoned and more Dreadbytes effects].
- I would like something in the spirit of this talent, but more controllable and less abusable? or some other form of improvement like the wild imps who rode dredstalkers in legion?
IMP GANG BOSS
- Very Cool effect, i love myself better imps/different imps with cool interactions, this is all of them.
- The Talent is very non-functional without implosion, yet, you can/need to pick it to have access to Nether Portal in a pet-focused build.
- This Talent makes more sense closer to the Implosion talent, as its tooltip seems to indicate it’s a AOE-only version of the T28 [4] bonus, very well designed, very creative.
IMPLOSION
- I have a problem with this talent being locked behind Shadow’s byte.
- This talent would be better positioned where Shadow’s byte currently is, with Imp Gang Boss occupying the space where Implosion currently is.
- I think this is among the best AOE spells in the game in terms of design.
- The Talent Tree has a lot of Wild Imp damage buffs, do take care about keeping a balance between Implosion and Single Target, to avoid imploding becoming a damage loss at 2 or 3 targets.
GRIM INQUISITORS DREAD CALLING
I love this legendary, and am very happy to see it on the talent tree.
- this talent makes more sense positioned where IMP GANG BOSS currently exists, as this would be a good pet-focused talent to give access to Nether Portal Tyrant on a single target pet-damage style build.
BLOODBOUND IMPS
I love the idea of this talent, very good.
- I would consider this talent is better positioned where currently Grim Inquisitors exists, and having Shadow’s byte occupy its current place…
INNER DEMONS
I love the idea of Inner Demons, but there are a few pain points on this talent.
- The Wild Imp side of this talent does not scale with haste, it’s always 1 imp every 12s, for 5 imps every minute, each imp always casting 6 felfirebolts.
- The Random Demon is very rare, only happening once every 2minutes on average.
- The Random Demons are as RNG as Nether Portal.
- Sticking with only one side of the coin, and improving it could probably result in a cooler design.
DOOM AND ITS IMPROVEMENTS
I won’t lie, I don’t like the current Doom,it’s a glorified shadowbolt, 1 GCD = 1 Shadowbolt and some damage, it doesn’t feel demonological.
And I hate this, because it had versions who felt much more like Demonology than this.
- Cataclysm Expansion, 1min Duration, 15s Tick-rate, Critical hits? Summon a Ebon Imp.
- Mists of Pandaria Expansion, 1 min Duraiton, 15s tick-rate, Critical hits? summon Wild Imps.
- Legion Expansion, 20s duration, 20s tick-rate, same as now…difference? Hand of Doom made it apply Doom on AOE; Imp-ending doom? made Doom summon Wild Imps.
Those versions felt a lot more like Demonology than the version we have now, Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria also had the benefit of being more like real dots with high gcd efficiency in spread-cleave.
- Discarding the Soulshard in favor of going directly for Wild Imps would be an improvement to the idea of Doom as a Demonology DOT.
- Hand of Doom would introduce gcd efficiency and AOE capacity of Doom, but could be problematic with the existence of Implosion due to a powerfull combo of Doom ticking on 10 targets, summoning 10 imps and you imploding all of them.
- Having it occupy a less prestigious space in the talent tree would be better, as not many enjoy playing with Doom.
Otherwise, if we are to stay with this version of Doom, it’s just not a very loved ability by most demo players.
SUMMON DEMONIC TYRANT.
- I love this spell, it’s cool, it synergizes with all your demons, it empowers them, it truly feels like a CD who summons a powerful second-in-command for you.
- But its synergies with longer cooldown demons can make feel like you never cast them without Tyrant, a good example of that is both Nether Portal AND Grimoire Felguard who’s Tyrant extend the duration of those demons by 90%~100%. [from 17s to 32s for GFG and 15s to 30s for NP Demons] and without Tyrant feel even weaker than a 2min and 3min CD should be.
- Its position on the Spec tree, at least for its baseline version could be a little higher up in the talent tree.
CONCLUSION
If i dare, considering the positional changes i spoke around this thread, and just to give a better visual of how i see some talents would be repositioned, here is a doctored tree.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1001294081500131529/1009639433831714826/unknown.png
The objective of this tree is not to say “oh the tree should be like this” but just a visual exemple, as i am aware if any developer is reading this, they can find way more creative ways in designing the tree while offering better positions to some of those talents.
-
Do note that i deleted Doom because i couldn’t find a good position in the tree without warping its shape.
-
Also, i did not touch on the Right-side capstone because its NYI.
