Implosion in Midnight

Classes Warlock
1

Haven’t seen a post just for it. So, I figured I’d go ahead and make one. How do y’all feel about implosion, and more so how they’ve integrated it into the new talent trees for midnight?

Personally, I’ve never liked Implosion. To me, it goes directly against my reasons for playing Demo lock. I play to summon and maintain an army of demons. Sacrificing them just sounds meh to me. I made a comment about it during the TWW alpha and there was a fair bit of discussion about it, but absolute silence from the devs. Would be nice to get some feedback from them about it, but I figured I’d also ask all of you how y’all feel about it.

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2

I purposefully avoided using it in all of TWW so that summarizes how I feel about it.

Pushing a button that might be a net negative for your DPS, while being mathematically too complex to figure out when that happens (due to all the interactions it has), is just simply not good design. Fantasy-wise, I’d rather focus on building an army than deleting the army for a moment of AoE damage.

The devs keep placing Implosion in an unskippable part of the talent tree so they must really like it for some reason. They doubled down on it by emphasizing Wild Imps so much in the tree, making the Doomguard depend on it, and disabling Hand of Gul’dan’s AoE when you have max imps.

Really wish they would get rid of the ability and/or provide a true alternative.

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3

With how they’ve structured it this time I like the direction. Implosion will be used often, even in single target, aside from Tyrant windows where you’ll want them up. You use implosion when in need of demonic core stacks because now each imp increases the damage of implosion by 5% (giving 45% increase at 9 or 60% increase with ancients). Paired with this 3 of the 9 are gonna be bosses which have a higher 20% chance to give a core when imploded.

Maybe I don’t mind this direction because of the way I’ve always viewed the demons we summon. We aren’t Hunters gaining companions to take care of and hunt with as an equal. Demons are useful, a resource, a means to an end… expendable. Especially something like the imps. With the way they’ve set it up it’s clear when to use implosion and when not to. If I need cores for movement or I’m in an AoE situation, hit it. If I’m in a Tyrant window or single target situation, let the little guys go crazy and I’ll shoot fel lasers instead.

With the way they have it set up now, we’ll have 9-12 imps, 4 dogs of varying types, summoned demon of choice, Soul Keeper, Doomguards, hero talent demon(s), and Tyrant. It’s not like we’re lacking in demons. I like the direction, though it would seem I’m the clear minority when browsing the forums. Either way I prefer Aff so I hope Blizz hears yall out.

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Even if you are in the minority, I made this post for everyone to give their opinions. So, I’m happy you shared yours. To be quite honest, I figured I was the one in the minority considering how they’ve doubled down on implosion. I haven’t taken too hard a look at Aff, but just the little bit I saw got me hyped for maybe playing my Aff lock a bit (I’m one of those goobers that has a character for each spec to play on). Though hopefully, if enough feedback is given, the devs will listen to it. I know from the TWW post I was talking about, most people that didn’t like implosion didn’t want it outright removed, just an alternative to not have to sacrifice the imps.

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5

If they make Implosion so it’s good to use at 3+ targets, then it’s fine, I guess. Until tested, there’s no real way of telling if it’s better.

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6

I technically have Implosion because other better Talents are gated behind it.

But the button sits on the bottom right of my screen at the low end of my rightmost action bar, and I might use it once a week for lols.

I also didn’t take any of the talents that sacrifice my demons, I never want to gut the number of demons I have on the field, I want as many as I can get out and fighting.

Now Blizz seems to think that more of those talents should be used to block actually good talents, like Inner Demons being replaced with Ancient Imps, which is gated behind the talent that sacrifices imps to get cores.

I really just do not care, at all, if Implosion is mathematically better, or “optimal” in endgame play, or whatever. I don’t like it, I effectively never use it, and I won’t use it in Midnight… if I stick around.

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7

You avoided your single most powerful aoe spell? Yikes…

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I just hate the ability, what can I say. It wasn’t really clear to me when I would be destroying my DPS on a pull by pushing it, at least in many fights, and so I avoided it.

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9

…its not complicated, when you need aoe damage you spawn some imps then implode them for big aoe damage…

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Blizzard doesn’t see it that way.

Developers’ notes: Our first goal for Demonology as we move into Midnight is to address Demonology’s reliance on addons to monitor Wild Imp energy to make decisions on when to cast spells like Implosion […]

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11

Since when does imp energy effect implosion? They are talking about people using add ons to know when to Tyrant on time. Or for you to see how many imps you have out before you implode.

It is not rocket science, need aoe dps? Spawn imps, implode them for big aoe dps.

It is shocking that you can’t grasp this or use a minuscule amount of effort to read about the ability.

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Yes, because I’d rather have the Imps up and firing, and generating cores, that can be recycled via Demonbolt into shards, which power HoG, which creates Imps, which… you get the idea. I hope.

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…you get cores from imploding

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I mean, some of us really just don’t like the spell that much. Personally, I took the talent cause I had to, but I never put it on my bar or used it. Tbf, I also never qued for anything and focused only on doing stuff solo because I know that’s my decision and I wasn’t going to subject someone else to it.

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15

Yeah, to be straitforward, I just don’t like sacrificing the demons, I also don’t take any of the other “sacrifice your demon to…” talents.

1 Like
16

Since some people think “it’s simple,” I’ll expound upon why I think it carries an opportunity cost that’s almost impossible to evaluate.

If you are, say, a Frost Mage, casting Frozen Orb or Blizzard is basically a question of whether there are enough enemies that will live long enough to justify the GCD/cooldown. That’s something a player could reasonably intuit or figure out. Abilities like Whirlwind or Blade Flurry are even simpler: when you see AoE, you press the button and do damage.

With Implosion, you are trading all of your imps’ single target damage in. The amount of damage that spending that GCD does depends on the number of imps, which can vary, even as you are going to press the button since they despawn whenever they finish their casts (this specifically is why the developers are changing the imp energy system in Midnight). It depends on the number of targets, like all AoE. It’s also quite possible for the AoE to not hit all of the targets in a pull, which is not easy to observe given its visual effects or lack thereof.

And you are weighing some notion of how much damage that singular ability use does versus:

  1. what damage those imps could have done if you had allowed them to stay alive, which is fairly significant, and
  2. spending those GCDs instead to push towards faster HoGs, which equates to more AoE cleave from, e.g., Diabolist summons.

Blizzard recognized one small part of this in the first sentence of their Dev Notes as quoted earlier. Unfortunately I don’t think their changes in Midnight address all of the core issues, while simultaneously attempting to steer players towards needing to use Implosion. It’s going to need some major revisions (or more realistically, a good alternative) for me to change my mind.

FWIW, it basically never mattered this expansion unless you were aiming for very high end content.

I was regularly at the top of the damage meters in the M+ runs I did while never using Implosion a single time. It’s not a special feat, especially on these forums, but I cleared 2500 M+ score last season in delve gear without making any sort of effort (I was just helping a friend who wanted the achievement).

Maybe my anecdote is not convincing enough for some folks, so I simmed it on Raidbots to double check my personal experience over the past year.

If you were to use Implosion vs. never using Implosion in sustained 5 minute fights:

5 targets: 4.4% increase in damage
3 targets: 1.4% increase in damage

These numbers are if you never missed an enemy outside the 8 yd. radius, do not factor the enemy count dwindling over time, and notably, assume you were pressing Implosion with algorithmic perfection that I am arguing is incredibly unrealistic for most players and most fights given the way the skill is designed.

If your group does massive pulls where seconds matter AND you are loaded up on addons AND you are attuned with the Loa of Implosion, then it might be important. Otherwise, the difference is fairly negligible.

(TL;DR) I stand by my statement that the ability is terrible, hard to use correctly, and add that it hasn’t mattered much overall.

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17

They’re doing the opposite of what I’d do to address “The Implosion Problem”.

I’d just get rid of Implosion.

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18

They added a new talent that makes implosion do increased damage per imp spent. Imps over the course of TWW have been continuously buffed without ever buffing implosion. Which is why the damage felt lopsided. That’s being addressed now with the talent being added.

Further than that, when you use implosion you can spec to get a guaranteed Doomguard and a influx of cores that will not only fuel more damage to demonbolt directly but also feeds the Soulkeeper demon that will be our Apex. Which leads to spawning more imps to use for more power or to blast down a single target.

Keeping Imps up when doing ST is still there. During movement and AoE situations the button should feel impactful to hit with the damage it does, the demons it summons and the access it grants to more cores to fuel more damage from you and the Soulkeeper.

It all feels very in theme for a Warlock and I’m not sure where the problem is.

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19

The way to fix Implosion is to get rid of it.

Instead of distorting the entire spec around what amounts to a meme talent that’s grossly out of character for some warlocks.

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20

Then how the heck would we do aoe dps? It sounds like you just need to learn how to play the spec.