Agreed its almost like it should be in the class tree and not in the hero talents.
2 Likes
I beg to differ. Affliction could definitely use a boost to it’s single target. It is lacking IMO.
I was talking about rotational wise. Yes I agree Aff needs a buff to ST maybe in FM
1 Like
Hey! Thank you for hearing us out. Hope I can offer my insights accurately. I have been playing Demonology since the start of Legion and love the summoner theme. Warlock since Burning Crusade. Occasionally I will moonlight as Destruction but not great at it.
Positive summary is I love this whole tree being passives. No extra buttons I need to manage. I have the freedom to play as I have been and not worrying about managing a new cooldown.
Negative summary is it feels kinda meh. The three new demons do one attack and bugger off until I trigger another. Then if I want to min/max then I need to time and stack the specific demon with the rest of my cooldowns. I won’t do that but there is will be guides and meta telling players to do that. I am not a fan of a guide telling me I need to hold my Tyrant and extra 20-60 seconds to hit a maximum window of stacked buffs. I would prefer a summon(s) that was more consistent. Maybe some shadowflame imps that pop off enemies like blisters.
I’ll talk more directly about the talents.
Diabolic Ritual:
Great that it is passive. Don’t take that away. But rotating three major demons doesn’t it the mark for me. My suggestion would be to replace Diabolic Ritual with Ruination. See my feedback about Ruination at the bottom for more details.
Cloven Souls:
This is the problem demon that may require stacking cooldowns with summoning an Overlord. If you want to keep the current build then I would suggest giving him a different effect than putting a debuff that buffs mine and my pets damage. Maybe he can apply Curse of Weakness saving me a GCD.
Touch of Rancora:
This can also require timing to make sure I am buffing a specific soul spender. I don’t want to micro manage that buff. My suggestion is building off Ruination and add Feltouched Skitterer on top of the imps summoned. (More Pets!)
Secrets of the Coven:
Seems fine with the current build. I like gaining 4 souls in a barrage. My suggestion is instead making it so we have a 6th soul shard. More freedom of resource management.
Soul-Etched Circles:
No notes. Its fine. Don’t like or dislike it.
Annihilan’s Bellow:
No notes. Its fine. Don’t like or dislike it.
Cruelty of Kerxan:
If this requires me to hold a cooldown until my current ritual finishes then it is bad. My suggestion, since the planet of Kerxan was doomed to fail against the legion then add doom dot to targets hit by Ruination. Don’t need to soul shard gain. Just a dot that deals some damage and has a chance to summon a Doomlord.
Infernal Machine:
As the current build stands this is my default pick. Its way better than Cruelty of Kerxan. My suggestion is having it add more shadowflame imps to Ruination. (More Pets!)
Infernal Vitality:
Love it. No notes.
Infernal Bulwark:
Love it. No notes.
Flames of Xoroth:
That is just boring. Flat damage increase to fire and demons. Meh. Xoroth is the home of the Dreadsteed! My suggestion is give us a proc to summon a charging Dreadsteed that runs towards our target and explodes! Maybe a low proc. Would like to see one every 60 seconds or so. Not too often. Not too rare. Or if you are feeling really spicy, give us a clone of Divine Steed spell. But its our Dreadsteed instead. Can leave a fire trail behind it burning enemies that walk in it. Ooo, that is spicy!
Abyssal Dominion:
This a problem talent. I love syncing my Tyrant with Grimoire: Felgaurd. Giving Grimoire: Felguard a 30 second cooldown reduction is powerful. So powerful it will demand I take this tree and ignore Soul Harvester. I don’t want to feel forced to pick either tree. My suggestion add the Overfiend to Call Dreadstalkers.
Gloom of Nathreza:
Another meh talent. Flat damage percent increase. Boring. If you want to keep the flat damage then have it apply to Ruination.
Ruination:
As it is right now, demonology doesn’t gain anything here except changing out Hand of Gul’dan to chaos damage. And occasionally for Destruction they get to summon three imps. My suggestion is move it the top of the tree and make it the focus of the tree. Instead lets just fuse Hand of Gul’dan with Chaos bolt. Replace Hand of Gul’dan and Chaos Bolt. You spend two souls to summon a meteor that deals aoe chaos damage and summons two shadowflame imps. This spell always critically hits and its damage is increased by a percent equal to your critical chance.
So now Destruction is feeling like a Diabolist summoning shadowflame imps regularly but doesn’t have to manage them. Not stacking with other cooldowns. Just more fire gatling guns on the field. Pew pew pew!
For demonology we are summoning one less imp per cast but we are casting more frequently. And add on those Feltouched Skitterer I mentioned above. They can function like imps shooting a ranged shadowflame spit.
Overall my suggestions above may not synergize with each other well or make it easy to balance. I hope the ideas pitched above offer inspiration that might spark better ideas.
3 Likes
Just bumping my own post, which to date I have NEVER done, but I feel really strongly about the rework suggestions I outlined. It would TRULY make the tree feel MUCH better allowing Cata to be chosen early on, RoF baseline, and smooth out access to GoSac. 
2 Likes
Is it just me or did diabolist get some changes?
No longer cast several shadow bolts??
Also to add to this since now that ability was change to be an infernal bolt and dealing fire damage does this mean this now gets no bonus from any of demos spec talent nodes. Looking at other hero trees, seems like thier hero talents nodes receive benefits from their spec tree and bonuses that are applicable from their spec talent nodes.
Also can they please do something to flames of xoroth. Idk something other than that %2 idk something more mechanics than just do more damage.
Having been playing diabolist for a bit now I have some issues to bring forward.
First 2 are demonology as a whole, rest are diablosit.
1- Demonolgy being the demon spec, should not have demonic circle as their default, but instead their default talent should be fel domination, makes far more sense.
If anything, I would say maybe swap it to be it gives soulburn demonic gateway, fits the theme better, and gives demonic gateway more of a use in more content, as right now demonic gateway is only useful in a few encounters here and there, and being able to cast it instantly, would be really good.
(Also totally not bias cause I hate demonic circle cause I really don’t like having to set it up CONSTANTLY in M+)
2- Demonbolt is NEVER hard cast outside of pre-pull, and with the speed our spec gets these days, and just how quickly we build/consume demonic core, demonbolt being able to even be instant cast is… awful.
Can we please have demonbolt be literally just, unable to be cast unless you have demonic cores? instead of a buff, have it be charges, cause it is so annoying to press it, then either cause it ran out, or you accidentally pressed it, start a 4 second cast time…
Now for the diabolist specific.
1- I feel ruination is not supposed to be able to cast while moving, if this is intended cool, but idk if it is intended to be such?
2- Touch of Rancora giving 50% cast speed buff for your next cast is cool, but when it happens it is just… so jarring, I know it happens at set times, but during combat it is just such whiplash to just “boom” a spell is cast super fast out of no where, when you have buffs of haste it atleast lasts awhile so you have the feel, but the massive 1/2 cast time for one spell it just such a shock in combat.
3- Soul etched circle is ok, but I would prefer if it was just something else, that or replace the howl of terror option, as literally no one uses howl of terror.
4- The demons really suffer when you are doing content with anything that dies quickly, like if you trigger any of the demons, it takes them like a solid 2 seconds to even do their effect, and if the enemy dies in that time it just wiffs.
Like ruination takes forever to land, and with it being such a HUGE damage ability, and when it wiffs for whatever reason it sucks, they really need to be faster, especially the fel lord, as it takes FOREVER to do its attack.
Oh yeah, and it is super weird that the talents that effect demonic tyrant also work with nether portal, which kinda just… forces you to use both. I mean I already hear people theorizing putting 1 point into nether portal JUST to have it so you can proc the shorter cooldown ritual, and that is awful. Nether portal really needs a rework or right out removal.
Especially since destruction can ONLY trigger it with summon infernal, but demonolgy can trigger it with tyrant AND nether portal?
maybe bring metamorphasis back? hmmmm???
2 Likes
To add to the big issue when the demons spawn from ritual having a weird lag to do their abilities.
The hero mechanic demons are bugging out in mechanics where the boss room has a floor and then port into the middle portion where there’s no floor, Also please let those demons retarget new targets on your attack command if you don’t have one selected.
I’m seeing the weird bug where they just stand around not doing anything because a mob died too soon, so our hero mechanic just stands around wasted.
This should be corrected asap. Lest we have another bug in raid encounters where our hero talents don’t work due to dungeon/raid design…
As you have acess to alpha, i would recomend posts to be directed to Feedback: Warlock Updates it probably have more likely chance to be read in there.
This post here was pre-alpha so it might have gone inactive for them as they now shift for feedback from people actively playing ingame on alpha.
Remember to follow the guidelines in it of how/what they are looking in feedback too.
BLIZZARD. I merely ask one question.
The Mage and Warlock class selection screen shows two different idle casting animations, but Warlocks share the Mage’s idle stance in the live game.
That particular idle animation fits the class identity of a menacing, chaotic-magic throwing warlock. It’s been datamined as far back as BfA beta, used in a unrelated BfA daily in Mechagon, marked on Wowhead as “IdleLockReadyCast” and never implemented.
Why do we not have it in the live game when it’s clearly used in the class selection screen?
At the time of posting it was still locked, but I will post there shortly.
That thread can only be posted for people with alpha acess, if you have alpha acess and can’t post on it try logout and log back in.
For people without alpha acess class section of the forum is the only place to post rly.
Done and done.
I miss Dreadscar Rift…
Ok, I only main Destruction for warlock and I have to say that any of the hero talents scream much Destruction to me. I do like Diabolist a lot though, don’t get me wrong. The HTs are supposed to be class related and not spec related. However, why did you make a mini Smolderon cast chaos bolts there… Make it some other demon, it’s odd. Especially for warlocks that use the fel fire (like me), that minion just doesn’t make any sense.
Also, Nathrezim as pet when? I’ve been waiting this for years… Make a Nathrezim cast chaos bolts instead of the mini smolderon mob, that will already make me like the tree better.
Good job anyway, one of the best trees together with DK’s Rider of the Apocalypse. I didn’t check Hellcaller completely yet but it sounded good, less aesthetical though I suppose.
I am not sure if I like that idle animation, especially on a void elf and blood elf like us. It just looks odd. Would fit undead though, etc.
They will probably do it at some point I think, I hope it looks good if they do.
The thing with the animation, it fits class identity. The mage one looks calm and casual about flinging fire, frost, and arcane, which is all fine and good.
However, the more forward-leaned, crouched down and menacing expression gives off vibe of a dangerous warlock flinging chaotic fel magics, afflicted curses, and unloading barrages of demons.
I’d prefer something more similar to the Chaos Bolt/UA/Hand of Gul’dan animation as an idle stance.
I agree about class identity, but Idk if that one would really look good in game. It looks slightly awful in the character creation screen.
Why don’t you just play Affliction though? It seems like you are not much into Demonology.
Warlock is better now than it has always been (I speak for Destruction). Perhaps it’s time to remember we are not stuck in 2004 and things naturally evolve.