Implosion and Soul Strike
There are nodes that affect these abilities even though you don’t have to take the ability. See Bloodbound Imps and Imp Gang Boss for Implosion and Antoran Armaments for Soul Strike.
Implosion should be baseline, rather than being forced into it for the nodes mentioned above to grant their full value. The Bloodbound Imps node is the most egregious as it provides zero value unless you take implosion.
Suggestion to replace the Implosion node: Implosive Potential Light: When Implosion damages at least 2 targets, grant 1% haste to the Warlock for 12 sec for each Imp exploded. A maximum of 15 exploded Imps can grant this benefit.
For Soul Strike, swap it with Bilescourge Bombers and give some value to Demonic Strength in Antoran Armaments (AA), while modifying AA’s effect on Soul Strike to be single target focused. This would give a choice between Single target and AoE on both of those choice nodes and AA would provide its full value.
Also, Bilescourge competing with Demonic Strength is rarely going to be a choice depending on tuning and they are two different themes (Summon vs Pet Ability). This suggestion puts choices together thematically and makes all 4 abilities valuable depending on the situation (ST or AoE)
Node 3-2 Changed to Vilefiend or Bilescourge Bombers (Demon Summon Choice)
Node 3-3 Changed to Soul Strike or Demonic Strength (Felguard Ability Choice)
Bilescourge Bombers and Demonic Strength are both cleave/aoe whereas Soul Strike and Vilefiend are both single target, that’s why they’re paired as they are.
Implosion is in a terrible place on the tree, being surrounded by single target boosts all around. It would make more sense if Implosion, and its following talent, were swapped with Doom, and its following talent, given that Doom is single target (and pretty much everyone hates it as a Demonology talent).
My issue is that if they do not drastically improve BSB’s interactions within the tree, it will be on the shelf for another expansion. The same goes for the single target node with VF and Soul Strike. One of them will always be the go-to for Single Target encounters.
Also, Soul Strike being an option with Vilefiend on the left-leaning side of the tree doesn’t make thematic sense, as Soul Strike’s enhancements all exist on the right. Bilescourge fits better with Vilefiend as a Summoner’s choice and gives a valid choice between ST and AoE, which won’t require jumping through hoops to balance them in a way that they are both useful.
Now, if they took this opportunity to grant BSB enhancements on the left side to where it was a valid choice node, this could all be irrelevant, but something needs to happen with the ability to make it valuable. The tree HEAVILY favors DS as it is.
I personally don’t see anything wrong in Bloodbound Imps or Antoran Armaments as the “main meat” of their effects still exist without the skill, Bloodbound is still increasing the demonic core generation from wild imps by 50%(+5% on the baseline 10%) and Felguard is dealing +20% damage.
Imp Gang Boss on the other hand i concede that its single target value is very low (+20% damage compared to a regular wild imp on a 10% proc chance).
I see this in two ways.
N.1: Implosion is much more than our AOE, we also use it to move the damage of wild imps from 1 target to other or to get rid of wild imps quickly if needed [for a skip for exemple] and not having it is a loss of QoL.
This makes me wish implosion was baseline.
N2: Other specs and classes have their AOE spells as talents, and would be a little unfair to give this advantage to demonology.
Thats a good idea for a trait, not sure about the values but overall yeah, the current 5% would be too powerfull of a trait on the talent tree.
Antoran Armaments should already be improving the damage of Demonic Strength, just like it increases the damage of regular Felstorm and any other source of damage who comes from your main Felguard.
Overall, this is how i would like to handle some of positioning in the talent tree.
While many of you may think it actually summon demons, the truth is it don’t.
As far as spell effects goes, its more of a Rain of Fire spell.
In Fact, all damage done by Bilescourge Bombers is attributed to the player as the source of damage, this means that effects like the +15% Damage of Demonic Tyrant don’t affect it[while it affects Demonic Strength]…
Mastery affects Bilescourge and Implosion only because they are whitelisted in it, but they are not whitelisted inside the Tyrant +15% pet damage effect.
This i made worse with the presence of effects who increase the damage of Felguard, who should increase the damage from all Felguard damage sources [ Auto attack, Legion Strike, Felstorm, Demonic Strength and Soul Strike]
This position Bilescourge Bombers as a talent choice who grows worse with each talent node that you pick that Upgrade the damage of Felguard [ Wrathful minion, Antoran Armament, Fel and Steel, The Expendables]
To topple that, the playerbase have a dislike for Bilescourge Bombers as its a Soulshard spender, even during moments in BfA where it did more damage than DSTR or Dreadlash people favored those in place of it.
TLDR; Bilescourge Bombers is a glorified Rain of Fire on a CD, its not really summoning pets.