Demo's tree design issue: is the tree too top heavy?

Classes Warlock
1

I think one of the common complaints for Demo is the amount of filler talents bloating the tree. I took some time crunching some numbers, starting with the top of our tree where we need to spend at least 8 points proceed further down. Let’s take a moment to compare how many nodes and how many total points other specs have to spend and compare it to Demo.

Average total nodes: 11
Median total nodes: 11

Average total points: 12
Median total points: 11

Demo total nodes and total points: 15

While they are a couple of other noticeable outliers, such as MM and BM with 16 total points, Demo holds the record for total number of nodes at 15. This fact alone might not be problematic but coupled with 5 filler talents and the pathing needed to grab Power Siphon and G:FG later on compound the issue.

The filler talents in question:

  • Shadowcaster
  • Annihilan Training
  • Fiendish Prowess
  • Shadow’s Bite
  • Fel and Steel

Filler talents have a purpose, but with 5 filler talents, with Rune of Shadows being debatably a 6th, it is impossible to grab all the core talents with 8 points or less.

  • Implosion is locked behind Shadowcaster
  • Rune of Shadows is locked behind Annihilian Training and Fiendish Prowess
  • To grab Power Siphon you have to at least take Shadow’s Bite
  • To grab G:FG you have to at least take Annihilan Training and Fel and Steel
  • Soul Strike/Vilefiend requires Fel Invocation to be worthwhile

And on top of all this we still have to grab Demonbolt, Demonic Strength, Carnivorous Stalkers, and Dreadlash (in aoe)

Having so much of our toolbox sitting at the top of our tree means we have to backtrack using the next 9 - 20 points to grab them all. This leads to a talent point drought by the time we start thinking about how to access the bottom of our tree. This is especially noticeable in our aoe build where we must spend an extra point in Shadowcaster to grab Implosion. Rune of Shadow is in a similar position but it is too early to tell how impactful/important this talent will be.

These are not the only issues Demo has, but if we have to start somewhere take it from the top.

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2

As Kalamazi showed, we have too many talents and too many two-point talent nodes.

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3

Demonology isn’t too top-heavy, its too saturated. Especially with two-point nodes.

You see many other specs taking 3 capstone spec talents out of 5 or 6 options. Demo has three, and we only play one. That’s awful design by any stretch of the imagination. Our other two specs suffer from the same problems to an extent, but not nearly as badly.

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When they added Fel Invocation and Shadow Invocation, the tree definitely became too burdened with talents before the first gate. There were 20 or more passives that they could have thrown out for these two instead of adding in additional nodes. The placements for Malefic Impact and Imperator would have been fine for them with a couple of dropped connections so that people were forced through the preceding selections.

Umbral Blaze, Demonic Brutality and Cavitation need to be 1 pointers. IGB and Dread Calling being two pointers are fine as they lead to 2 capstone areas.

Those fixes along with a more centralized placement of tyrant would address the pathing issues.

But let’s be honest, demo has one of the worst trees in the game right now after this rework. The amount of passive, zero interaction fluff in the demo tree is maddening. The spec will still play fine, but this talent tree has descended slowly into vanilla levels of boring.

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