Been testing out a Fire Mage vs Destruction Warlock, and finding the lock a bit difficult.
Fire just rides crits and keeps pumping out instant casts while hopping around.
Destruction has a LOT more hard casting, but the worst part is slowly building up soul shards to cast spells. It feels tedious and fiddly.
Obviously Desto has better cleave with Havoc, and better burst aoe dps with stacking things like Infernal and Catclysm, but overall it doesn’t feel great. Mobility is another sore point.
Just wanted to whinge a bit. Love the Warlock class fantasy but the gameplay feels obsolete compared to mage.
Nah, its not you. Warlock design is behind 1 or 2 expacs. Most classes have moved on to short cds, high instant burst, lotsa on demand mobility and other tools.
Locks are stuck with long hard cast damage, long cooldowns, ect.
And it shows in their representation in most content outside of affliction for raiding .
It’s not terrible per say, but its not up to date to today’s standards.
I roll mages all day as demo. Actually had a mage attack me in the Maw yesterday and was like what is this guy smoking?! He realized his decision was a bad one very quickly and started spamming sorry. But that wasnt enough to keep him alive! MUAHAHA
I mean. It’s a relevant talking point here.
If class/spec A has to manage a [numbers are random to illustrate a point. Don’t get hung up folks] 6 button main rotation weaving in 4 cooldown buttons they push every 30-120 seconds in order to get to the same output as class/spec B has to manage a 3 button main rotation with 2 cooldowns they push every 30-120seconds then class spec A does have to work harder and they aren’t seeing a commensurate feedback and that makes the class worse off.
I don’t think the number of buttons matter all that much. For me it’s the possibility to **** up your rotation that matters. It’s easy to throw your dps down the toilet as a lock. Other classes can just press their buttons and having to unexpectedly move or do a mechanic wont throw their dps down the toilet. The fact that i have to reduce my DPS to increase my dots duration to make my life easier in mythic+ is depressing.
Another valid point but I’d argue that generally speaking it’s easier to fowl up, say, affliction rotation than balance. Each additional button and each additional cooldown add to the burden and.how much proper usage also adds to the burden. Right now warlocks have 2 specs that are button bloated compared to the rest of the world and proper usage is highly punishing. One of those specs churns out dps like mad and that makes it a little easier to bear for most folk. Demo well. If you play demo you do it cause you find it fun. Leave it at that lol
Bro i love demono and don’t play it because it’s such a frustrating spec to play outside of Thorgast. Last time i played demono was a ToP 15 with volcanic and for like 2 platforms i simply could not summon my Tyrant. There was always something happening preventing me from summoning it. There’s a running joke in my group that ToP was designed by an intern and he could not design proper mechanics so he put swirly on the ground everywhere instead.
I love the spec. It’s so fun to have 50 imps following me in Thorgast. I really wish blizzard would go all in with the demons army spec instead of this stupid imp implosion crap. Extremely fun to play in Thorgast. Highly frustrating everywhere else imo. Your DPS go from OMG it’s great to arrggggg the ramp up is killing me.
Do certain classes need to put in more effort than others, just to achieve the same dps? Yep! It’s always been like that…but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. I actually like that I have a lot of buttons and cooldowns to keep track of, what I don’t like is how hard we’re punished for missing one or two because we had to do mechanics. But hey, that’s life, and for all the whinging we do, we’re still subbed and playing the game…
I dont know, playing Demo is rather complicated while Destrot is the easiest in terms of executioj. Affliction being the middle man dude to “more buttons” than Destro. It kinda goes like this:
Destro: Keep Immolate Up, try to keep Conglat debuff (more fire damage on target), Incinerate to build Shards then Chaos Bolt/Rain of Fire as Spenders.
Affliction: Keep Dots Up, Keep Shadow Embrace Up, Dump with Malefiction Rupture when you got the most DoTS up. Snipe Shards with Drain Soul.
Demonology: Oh boy. Rough rotation, Precast demonbolt, Hand of Guldan, Vile Fiend, Grimoire Felguard, Shadowboltx2, Dogs then Hand of Guldan. Have at least 6 or more imps then Tyrant. Hand of Guldan and then Implosion… then priotize…
The problem with Demo is the setup. You need to move or eat a mechanic? Welp there goes my imps and probably my dogs now my Tyrant will be a waste of a cooldown. Restart the process… oh the Fire Mage just pressed Combustion and is just jumping up and down on his Rune of Power while doing 10k dps… yeah ok.
That demo setup is incorrect I’m afraid.
Let’s see.
Assuming nf which is bis
Demonbolt precast>Soul Rot>G:FG>Vilefiend>build to 5 shards>Dogs>5 shards>hand>3 shards> hand> tyrant> buff trinkets/racial>standard rotation
You look NL but with the standard build you wouldn’t be much different. Slot DeciBolt in in place of soul rot.
This rotation is beyond disgustingly wrong, because nobody in their right mind would choose night fae over the necrolord master race.
But yeah that’s the rotation I use, except with decimating bolt after the 5 shard HoG drop after tyrant for the intel boost.
So basically as lost just corrected with the rotation, your casting Hog way to early.
The basis is to basically use GFG as your tyrants pet trigger, meaning GFG will basically be the timer you follow to know when you need to tyrant, as it lasts the longest, thus you use it first, giving you a 15 second window.
VF is next, followed by the 2 shadowbolts, purely to proc Demonic calling, and to align the dogs timer with GFG, as they last for a shorter time frame.
After dogs is when you dump into HoG, as your initial HoG imps in the rotation you pointed out would have despawned by the time you tyrant, or if you followed their timer you would have lost several seconds of ramp up which would further empower tyrant.
