Gonna use this post to copy paste what is removed from the above post
This is highly niche and specific but quite a number of Warlocks are going OOM in 8.3, especially after the addition of the Corruption vendor where it’s generally recommended the Expedient Corruptions (+x% haste form all sources) is the “safest” and best Corruption for all three specs. It can be assumed then that this may become a recurring problem. Returning Life Tap for this end-game haste overload reality would be cool, albeit otherwise useless.
or instant resummon our demon on a CD, such as the Flames of Xoroth ability (1 min CD, instant resummon), Demonic Rebirth (2 min CD, 20 second aura reducing cast time by 50%), or Fel Domination (3 min CD with a 5.5 second cast time reduction).
At the same time, with the recent Deathbolt nerf, and the changes to the spec in Shadowlands clearly moving Affliction away from “burst”, maybe Deathbolt should be removed, especially given it’s power now is drastically reduced with the removal of UA stacking + Darkglare extension combination. The loss of UA stacking also makes the Darkglare significantly weaker as well . Deathbolt is now a PVP Talent.
There is a disconnect between Malefic Rupture’s awesomeness and it’s graphics/visuals. Can this be changed at all? Make it look as powerful as it feels? Maybe shadowy-blood explosions? Anything really?
As it stands with Writhe In Agony, Agony takes 30 seconds to stack .
Limiting Unstable Affliction to being only castable on one target when the stacking aspect has been removed feels too limiting. Is the intent here to remove the cleave aspect to Affliction, as it used to be where Aff was more single target, Demo more AOE, and Destro cleave-centric?
Regarding Haunt, while Malefic Rupture is welcome and many are excited, there doesn’t seem to be a big differentiation between Haunt and Unstable Affliction. It has been proposed to increase the damage % increase and the CD on Haunt and simply make it a DoT to make it more meaningful and different from UA, or alternatively remove the damage % increase on UA and buff the damage, to balance against Malefic Rapture as both are spenders and orient MR to AOE and UA to ST.
UA problems addressed, UA can now be cast on multiple targets and damage % increase removed on UA.
Demonic Strength and Soul Strike Talents are popular talents, but really seals us into Felguard/Wrathguard. This in turn affects the aforementioned lack of a baseline interrupt. Could DS and SS Talents be altered slightly to give an ability to other Demons of equal DPS so we can have more functional utility as Demonology Warlocks, rather than being forced to sacrifice our choice in talents or our DPS for the sake of an interrupt?
Alternatively rework Demonic Strength and Soul Strike so they apply to any demon (e.g. Demonic Strength could simply be a sort of Immolation Aura on the pet, Soul Strike can just be “demon strikes the targets soul”).
Regarding the particular and specific problems of Demonology not having a baseline interrupt given the way 2 of our Talents are Felguard specific, the primary solutions being articulated are:
* Give Warlocks an interrupt as a whole, on par perhaps with Axe Toss (ie 30 second CD) with a shorter counterspell duration. Pros: Freedom. Cons: Goes against historical design, which Blizzard has For Very Important Reasons Unknown To Us Players™ or something.
* Give an interrupt to Axe Toss or an interrupt to Felguard. Pros: Ability is already there. Cons: baking both abilities into the same CC that is our historic Stun affects us negatively wrt diminishing returns.
* Give Demonology only, or even Warlocks as a whole “Call: Felhunter”/Grimorie: Felhunter baseline; we’re Master Summoners right? Cons: Clearly affects PVP Talents dynamic.
* Give Demonology, the Master Summoner™ Class, two pets as Beastmaster does, but in our case only one of each type of Demon is possible, and give us a “Command Lesser Demon” button. Pros: would be cool, simple as, fits the fantasy, breathes life into the spec. Cons: Probably way more Dev Time.
* Rework Demonic Strength and Soul Strike to general demon talents. Pros: Frees us from DPS loss for an interrupt whether by no-Felguard the entire fight or summoning for 6 seconds in the fight. Cons: Again, Dev Time, and also particularly affects the Class-Fantasy-Legacy-vs-Design dynamic as Felguard is historically the Demo demon.
Alpha testing has shown that neither Felstorm nor Implosion is affected by the new target cap equation for many other AOE. Is that intentional or was it just not implemented for warlocks yet?
Hand of Gul’dan’s imps are staggered when they spawn rather than spawn at the same time, which affects timing when summoning Tyrant. If you wait for all three to spawn, the first one is about to despawn or does when you finally get the Tyrant cast off.
Doom damage on Alpha is worse than on live, on top of the variety of issues already mentioned at the beginning. A suggestion here given Doom was Demo-only for two expansions as revert it to MoP/WoD design, with tick rate of 15 seconds, spawning one imp each tick.
The fact that Doom takes one whole minute to tick, and only summons a Doomguard if the target dies specifically from Doom, and a 5% chance even if that occurs, AND this Doomguard now needs to be enslaved regardless unless one picks the Improved Doom Talent specifically as demonology, doesn’t make sense and feels extremely gimmicky. Doom should be returned to a max 45-60 second duration with a 30-ish second tick that summons an already enslaved Doomguard on an X% chance (more than 5%).
Additionally, if we use Enslave Demon on the Doomguard, it will presumably replace the demon we have out, which in turn means the loss of our Felguard if Demo and possibly the loss of an interrupt if it is needed. What abilities does this enslaved Doomguard have? Will it have an interrupt? Guaranteed DPS increase, or at least equal to the other demons? Will it interact with the Demonology Talents that depend on having a Felguard to even function at all?
Suggestion: Improved Doom Talent removed, make Doom tick faster and the Doomguard chance either increased and turned into an auto-enslaved guardian or removed outright (thus more easily balancing the DoT, honestly probably better to axe the Doomguard), and replaced with something else, perhaps an Azerite Trait that could become a Talent. Another more radical opinion is to remove Doom outright entirely 100% axe it.
Making Baleful Invocation at least partially baseline (3 shards?) would go a long way to improving Demonology’s “quality of life” gameplay dimension. Even if it meant a proportionate damage reduction of Tyrant.
There is a general complaint of clunkiness in AOE for Destruction, particularly due to a lack of control. A common ask is allowing Fire And Brimstone Talent to go back to being a controllable toggle, if not a baseline toggle, where F&B Immolate would AOE apply immolate, of course taking into account tuning. Another suggestion has been to grant Cataclysm as a baseline Soul Shard spender instead. In both cases Rain of Fire would remain but perhaps would have to be tuned accordingly. Some have also suggested returning Hellfire not just for Demonology but maybe even baseline for all specs, or at least Demo and Destro, both for the sake of flavor and for the diversification/extended support of Warlock AOE.
The speed of the rotation and the interaction between spells is also a point of concern, as gestured to in the Azerite feedback. A suggestion is to bring back Backdraft affecting 3 Incinerates or 1 Chaos Bolt once more, also to give us more control and flexibility in our rotation. Another ask is to perhaps have an option to have “mini infernals” spawn again, perhaps as a smaller proc when Infernal is on CD. Regarding Infernal CD, maintaining a 3 minute CD remains excessive given that it signifies that the balance between During-Infernal damage and Outside-of-Infernal damage is significantly large. Reducing the CD and/or buffing the primary toolkit (and perhaps reducing Infernal damage) seems necessary, similarly to the needs of Affliction.
Internal Combustion Talent being triggered by a spell with travel time has negative consequences. Can the Chaos Bolt Consume the target’s Immolate when the spell is cast rather than when it lands?
There is currently a predominant tendency to feel obligated to spec into Grimoire of Supremacy Talent. It is apparent to many that Destruction is balanced around this tendency, due to it being so powerful. Could the damage produced by this Talent instead be returned to our spells, to both allow for greater freedom of Talent Choice and to bring power back into the spec itself? As it stands, as another warlock expressed it, “the skill floor is low but the ceiling is all RNG”. Keeping the damage within that Infernal window means we’ll do bad damage outside of that window by design necessity. Likewise reduce the Infernal AOE so Destro can have stronger AOE once more.
Destruction is the least mobile spec of Warlocks; perhaps return Shadowburn for execute and as a mobile part of our toolkit as well as return Fel Flame, both in line with unpruning as well as the former allowing for a space in our Talents to address the needs aforementioned.
Additionally, rather than Havoc copying any spell within a certain timeframe (thus forcing the spec to be played a certain way in lining certain cooldowns up along with being forced into certain talents), could it instead just copy a certain number of spells as it was before?
Previous version of above post here: