Look like a worse version of bfa demo in raiding, m+, and pvp.
Idc about the numbers it pulls alone.
The class design and flow of the spec is exactly the same looking, but worse without all the bfa stuff(essences, inflated stats, traits) and that says a lot cause bfa demo is nothing to brag about.
Many haven’t tried it. And from your post it sounds like you haven’t either. Every class is going to feel worse with the stats from leveling gear. It’s going to have growing pains. But that doesn’t mean Demo will be bad. Just wait to play it before you make a definitive decision.
Ok, let’s start.
Demonology actually have quite a few improvements in Shadowlands, It has baked in Balefull Invocation 5 shard generation on Tyrant, Imps Spawn Faster and last longer, Dreadstalkers cast is shorter and move faster between targets, some talents received buffs and Demonic Consumption is Easier to Use.
Demonology problems exist from the following:
1 - At the star of an expansion you have very low secondary stats, and that means Demonology is slower and Demo does suffer being slower, specially without EP Azerite.
2 - It have Diminishing Returns and Target Caps, something the other two locks don’t have, this does hurts its AOE potential.
3 - It’s undertuned, outside of Tyrant DeCon being quite an powerfull ST burst CD, your overall DPS ends up being a lot less than Aff or Destro
And then we go in the design of the spec, who is supossed to be good in both Single Target and stacked cleave, but it ends up being worse in both of those aspects when compared to Destro (who have 2 -target cleave and CD AOE) and Aff (who have Multi-dotting and basically passive AOE now)
Is this the end of the world? no, its not.
Will it be buffed or improved? Can’t say
Some of those aspects will get better as you gain gear, with more haste demo will become faster, and some of the borrowed power does improve Demo speed (with extra instant cast demon bolts) and AoE (with both a buff on felguard and dreadstalkers)
Is Soul Strike still a talent? …
…Follow up question, can we just make Soul Strike baseline and not be specific to Wrathguard?
Yes, it’s still a talent.
Generally, i am against the idea of “make talent x baseline” but Souls Strike is more than just an damage gain, it’s a great qol improvement as it gives a way to quick switch targets with felguard.
Yeah it’s currently lacking a lot compared to what it even has now. I don’t think a number tuning will fix anything either. It’s going to need some changes, which apparently we “should” be seeing some changes in the next few weeks.
Demo is all hard casts, starting an expansion with no haste makes it the worst, building shards is going to feel bad forsure but it is expected.
For the amount of hardcasts required the damage reward sure isn’t there, or doesn’t seem to be.
I’ll hold back on going off about it until we see it in action but without proper haste it’s not going to be that good, unless explosive potential is somewhere in a conduit or something I don’t know.
It feels clunky and out of place, wish it would dissapear
The real question is why demonology is all the time the weakest warlock spec and the most terrible of all classes?
It feels like blizzard don’t want us to play it, I feel so angry to hope everyday that they will rework and make it atleast viable everywhere.
I don’t want to play afd/destro or another class :<
It sort of exists in a legendary effect, but only works when you Implode on 3+ targets.
Yeah, it’s on a legendary but the effect is incredibly poor for most content:
Implosive Potential - When Implosion damages at least 3 targets, gain 5% Haste for 8 sec for each Imp exploded.
Slot : Head, Waist
The most charitable thing I can say about this legendary is that it’s not designed to be the first Demonology legendary you equip. You can currently only equip one legendary, of course.
It’s so bad - useless, really - on most boss fights that it’s hard to justify in M+ or raids. Maybe in 9.2 or 9.3 when we can equip a second legendary it will be a viable secondary option for certain content.