Continuing the discussion from Midnight Alpha Test Development Notes:
This might be a hot take, but I don’t think it’s entirely criminal to press “AOE” spells in single target. An easy example for something like destro would be adding a talent that says “after you cast chaos bolt X number of times you get a free rain of fire cast at 500% damage.” IMO slamming chaos bolts into a boss while hellfire rains on them sounds badass and extremely visually appealing. But this obviously wouldn’t be viable in mass AOE bc nobody is casting chaos bolt in that situation. To translate this to DEMO I would just say implosion deals 200% damage to its primary target. I feel like slamming exploding imps into a bosses face SHOULD do a lot of damage. That alone would solve the problem demo needing more buttons in single target, it’s visually appealing bc everybody likes implosion, and the added doom guards just make it even better. I feel like stuff like this could keep all spells relevant in each situation, while also in some cases keeping the class intuitive but adding the slightest bit of a dynamic rotation. And I’m a big visuals guy and AOE spells generally have good visuals.
The issue is that your rotation starts to be essentially the same at all times in all situations, which the devs have previously, to some extent, tried to avoid.
Different tools for different situations keeps combat dynamic. Yes, AOEs look visually impressive, but I think they should match the context of the fight. It would be silly casting a giant wide-radius rain of fire on one tiny enemy simply because it was optimal for your rotation.
That’s the real hot take here 
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Gotta be careful with Implosion around these forums. There are many people who hate that spell lmao.
I don’t mind pressing AoE spells in single target but I really can’t imagine they’ll go that route with the current direction of the game. At least not often. While it’s not reflected everywhere in the classes right now… they keep harping on clarity, approachability, complexity. Using an AoE spell in single target and knowing when to use the spell pushes against all 3 of those things.
Luckily though, for Destro, casting Chaos Bolts fire titan death beams from the sky currently so it’s kinda what you want visually at least lmao
I don’t mind Implosion, though admittedly I liked the Legion AoE better. Still adding the Doomguard cleave attack to it really sounds fun!
Blizz clearly no longer has a problem with the rotation being the same all the time no matter what… or they wouldn’t be reducing most specs down to a handful of buttons always hit in the same order with the same timing.
And yeah, saying everyone likes IMPlosion is a take. Give me BSB instead for my AOE, and let me keep my number of Imps maximized.
I don’t hate it… I hate not figuring IF and when I should use it.
With the new improved implosion talent, guaranteed doomguard spawning from implosion and the imp cap it should be much easier to know. The logic, barring any odd tuning, should be. Need AoE? Max Imps? Implosion. Enjoy your Doomguard (who also AoEs again).
I’ll assume the amount of targets needed to make Implosion worth it vs keeping the imps out will be the same as Chaos Bolt vs Rain of Fire or Unstable Affliction vs Seed of Corruption.
The talent is an endcap, that has a 10% chance to work…
And relies on IMPlosion.
So the juice is not worth the squeeze, as they say.
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You’re talking about Doomguard? It’s 10% base and an additional 10% chance per imp spent. 9 imp cap, not including Ancient Imps, gives the spell a 100% chance after using Implosion. Even if for whatever reason you go 6 imp cap and take Ancient Imps the Ancient ones will still count toward the imps spent and also give 100% chance to spawn the Doomy after Implosion.
Either way Doomguard is coming out when you hit Implosion unless you don’t go Ancients and only take the 6 imp cap, then your chance to summon him drops to 70%. I don’t see anyone realistically taking that route. Even if you do 70% chance is still pretty good.
My route is dumping the IMPlosion meme off my action bar, and only because I have to waste the one talent point to get past the blocking node on the tree that is IMPlosion.
I loath throwing away the demons on meme spells.
So no, I will not be spending a point on Summon Doomguard.
I’m not saying you have to. I was merely correcting the information you had wrong.
I’ll admit, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Implosion. Always enjoyed the animation of Bombers more. Though I don’t mind the spell in general because I’ve never had a problem sacrificing demons for power. Dating back to Burning Crusade, the strongest build was around sacrificing your Imp or Succubus for a buff that made either Incinerate or Shadowbolt go nuts.
It is funny though that the concept is the same between Bombers and Implosion. Bombers has you opening a portal to send demons to kamikaze to their deaths and Implosion sends the imps in to do the same. I guess the difference is that the imps stand by your side for a bit and the bats don’t.
Maybe Implosion would feel less like a meme if the animation was sacrificing them to create a large spell that we threw at the enemies rather than them flinging into their deaths.
I digress. To keep with the topic of the thread. I think there’s already a strong amount of passive cleave in all 3 Warlock specs. If anything I think Aff and Demo could use some better animations for their single target spells. Using AoE spells to supplement that lack of oomph being carried by the single target rotations, and lacking buttons, doesn’t seem like the right direction to me.
Are the bats actually throwing themselves at the target?
Whatever is happening is too quick and cluttered for my visual system to process, I just catch that something Fel is raining down on the target.
Yea, it is a rather quick animation but it’s little flying demon bat creatures coming out of the portal to explode at the area you directed them toward.
That’s sad, I’d rather they were actually dropping bombs…
It kind of makes sense from the standpoint that demons respawn, though it would be neat if they had a special alternate animation for the bats and implosion any time you’re somewhere they can die permanently though that might be a lot of work for a small detail. Especially one that doesn’t come up often.
On topic though I don’t mind AoE in the single target rotation as long as it doesn’t end up overshadowing the rest of the gameplay like it does with arcane mages have with arcane orb on spellslinger.
Remove summon pet from single button rotation.
If they brought back the talent that some imps would respawn back on implosion usage then I’d be on board.
I’m really hoping they do. With the cap on imps it would be super easy for them to balance around the returning imps as well.
As an aside, for Ancient Imps I don’t know why they don’t just have them never expire. Let Power Siphon always pull from them and let them count toward Implosion and gain all other bonuses but the perk of the talent is that they never go away.
Feels like it would make them more capstone worthy, make sense with power siphon being the gateway talent and fix the issue around the internal timer
I mean if they can let unholy dks putrify(implosion) their lesser ghouls to have them revive after as a death magus through reanimation which used to be demo’s imp implosion chance revival talent that whenever you used implosion you had a chance to get an imp back.
I don’t see why demos can’t have the talent back
What I love is how the developers can think of cool ideas for unholy dk or just outright take ideas from other specs talents but can’t do the same for demo.