Very Quick Beta Impressions from a Demo Lock

[Neinball]

Update: Added more indepth look at Meta, Demon Hunting Glyph and Pets here:
mmo-champion.com/threads/1102007-Very-Quick-Beta-Impressions-from-a-Demo-Lock/page2?p=16072067#post16074298

Ok, going to start off with this is a REALLY quick impression, as I was only able to mess around for about 10 min with the beta this morning before having to go to work >.<

General lock stuff that caught my eye:

Spellbook - layout has complete changed, no longer do you have affliction/demo/destruction tabs it’s just Active and Passive tabs now with all your racials, auto attacks, etc thrown in. Was not in a guild so I don’t know if guild perks are added into another tab when you join or not.

Glyph of Shadowbolt - Does exactly what it says, your shadowbolt is split into 3 bolts and the damage is split evenly across them. If your shadowbolt hit for 9k, this glyph will cause you cast 3 bolts that hit for 3k each. Each little bolt has it’s own separate crit and miss chances. The spell effect is super cool and they shoot out from behind you and loop back around to the target like homing missiles, you still need to be facing the target to cast it.

Talents - look like they can be swapped out with dusts of disappearance. I had none on me to try it but the UI had dust listed in the bottom corner just like glyphs do for swapping.

Grimore of Supremacy (talent) - New demons rock! I picked this up before actually looking at the base demons so sorry I can’t tell if these reflect new abilities given to all demons or are only on the improved demons. I only summoned the each of the demons for a few seconds, looked over the abilities briefly and moved on to the next demon so I’m missing some spells/changes for sure.

Fel Imp

Cauterize - Not the actual name. Does initial damage to you (1.9k dmg to me) and then heals you for 3% of your total health every few seconds for what looked like 10secs (30sec CD).

Shivian

Bladedance - is the same as whiplash but looks like it doesn’t have the same range that whiplash did, she also has a basic melee attack in addition to bladedance now so she’ll run into melee range and start casting and auto-attacking at the same time.

Mesmerize - I didn’t get a good look at this ability to see how it might of differed from Seduction but it has a smart autocast now. If left on autocast she will automatically cast it on any enemy that stuns/slows/sleeps/fears you.

Beholder

Demon Lick - Not actual name but the icon is a tongue, replaces Shadow bites with the same functionality but the tooltip was bugged and didn’t give damage values.

Optic Cleanse - Again not the actually name of the spell but this replaces devour magic. It now says “Steal helpful magic buff from target” instead of dispelling buffs, also upon stealing the effect it heals the lock and generates 40 demonic fury. The wording of the spell makes seem that it acts like spell steal but grants the buff to the demon and not the lock, I had no one to test this out with so I’m not certain of it’s functionality.

There was one other ability that I could of sworn it had that was another damaging attack but can’t remember it at all (this was the last pet I summoned and I had to run out the door before I could get a good look at it, sorry.)

Voidlord

Disarm - 10 sec disarm “Slaps the weapon out of opponents hand” gotta love that description!

Threatening Presence - Increases the threat generated by all of the Voidlord’s abilities and attacks.

Wraithgaurd

No noticeable differences from the Felguard

I did not test the Abyssal or Terrorguard

Glyphs - You can tell gylphs are still in flux and that locks are still being tweaked as there are very glyphs for locks at the moment.

Demonology Impressions

Meta/Demonic Fury - The topic on everyone’s mind!

-Demonic Fury stacks up to 1000
-Being in Meta form DOES passively drain fury, you cannot stay in the form permanently. I tried spamming drain life and other fury generators while in Meta to prolong it but it still drained down. I was not timing how long I could stay in meta but plan on doing that later.
-Pet attacks (legion strike, whiplash, flame bolt, etc) also generate 24 fury. I did not test if legion strike generates fury per hit or per use.
-Many spells change while in Meta
Shadowbolt -> Demonic Slash - costs 40 fury - instant - was hitting for 25k instead of my normal 15k shadowbolt.
Fel Flames -> Twilight Ray - 40 fury - instant - 40 yard AoE ray that hit for 21k and still would refresh the duration of corruption on targets by 6secs. In addition to being 40 yards long it looks to be about 10 yards wide it was easily hitting the target dummies next to my target without trying to line it up. All I can say to this is HAWT DAMN!! PINK LAZER BEAMS!!
Fear -> Sleep - Sorry did not get a chance to see the differences >.<

I was unable to get a look at hellfire/immo aura, shadowflames/carrion swarm or any other abilities so this list is not final there may be more out there!

Wild Imps - passively makes it so your shadow bolt summons an imp every 20 sec when the ability is not on CD and you can cast it for 100 fury to summon a bunch of them at once. They last for a little over 20secs as I consistently had 2 up at a time. No matter how you summoned the imps their attacks generate fury. Demonic slash did not seem to summon them at all. This is a very interesting ability, the passive ability allows you to use meta more often but the active ability will greatly increase the duration of meta at the cost of decreasing your meta uptime while it’s on CD (you summon no imps while it’s on CD.) I’ll be looking forward to testing out this ability a lot in the coming weeks.

Hand of Gul’dan - This one is going to take a bit to get use to. It is now a targetable AoE like Rain of Fire with a reticle you place somewhere on the ground to cast it, but unlike RoF the reticle doesn’t go away when you click a location on the screen. At first I thought it was broken so I clicked around a few places and used up all my charges only to have it start raining purple meteors of death all around me. Even though it’s weird to have the reticle stay up after clicking somewhere this is pretty cool since you’ll only need to use the spell once to bring up the targeting for all your charges instead of having to click the spell, target, click the spell, target, etc. I feel I could do a much better job of describing this functionality but the words escape me at the moment.

Glyph of Demon Hunting - Did not try this out yet, but damn I want to. It’ll be interesting to see if Demonic Slash will generate enough fury to keep you in meta permanently.

Later tonight once I get home and finish my raid I’ll spend more time and do a more thorough write up.

[Count Zero]

Glyph of Shadowbolt - Does exactly what it says, your shadowbolt is split into 3 bolts and the damage is split evenly across them. If your shadowbolt hit for 9k, this glyph will cause you cast 3 bolts that hit for 3k each. Each little bolt has it’s own separate crit and miss chances. The spell effect is super cool and they shoot out from behind you and loop back around to the target like homing missiles, you still need to be facing the target to cast it.

I may have stood up and screamed "THAT'S THE COOLEST SHIT EVER" when I read this. I cannot confirm or deny.

Also, did the tooltip on the voidlord threat thing specifically say it buffed the VL's threat ? The wording on the db tooltip seems pretty vague, and people in the tank glyph thread are debating whether it increases the void's threat or the lock's threat.

[Jessicka]

Same animation as the attacks you do on Tharon'ja in Drak Tharon Keep while in skeleton form by sounds of it.

[Malefic]

Same animation as the attacks you do on Tharon'ja in Drak Tharon Keep while in skeleton form by sounds of it.

I can confirm it's that exact animation.

[The Ogdru Jahad]

Same animation as the attacks you do on Tharon'ja in Drak Tharon Keep while in skeleton form by sounds of it.

exactly what I was thinking...I hope they updated the graphic though at least, just kept the animation.

The hand of guldan change sounds interesting, it'll be cool to rain a shit ton of them on a group. Is it now aoe now or something?

[Netherspark]

Hand of Gul'dan seems awkward, from what you say we have to use up all 3 charges before it will even cast?

[Strafer]

Amagad, can't wait to test this shit out.

[Neinball]

exactly what I was thinking...I hope they updated the graphic though at least, just kept the animation.

The hand of guldan change sounds interesting, it'll be cool to rain a shit ton of them on a group. Is it now aoe now or something?

Yeap, it's an instant cast AoE now.

I may have stood up and screamed "THAT'S THE COOLEST SHIT EVER" when I read this. I cannot confirm or deny.

Also, did the tooltip on the voidlord threat thing specifically say it buffed the VL's threat ? The wording on the db tooltip seems pretty vague, and people in the tank glyph thread are debating whether it increases the void's threat or the lock's threat.

I don't recall but I'll make sure to check when I get back home.

Hand of Gul'dan seems awkward, from what you say we have to use up all 3 charges before it will even cast?

Yes, there is a delay between you casting and it landing, it's not very long maybe only a second or two at most but I was rushed and impatient lol. Even so, clicking to quickly will drop multiples as it didn't seem to trigger the GCD at all when spamming it which could be frustrating if you didn't want to do that especially since you don't get any fury from targets that already have the debuff.

[Jessicka]

Right, so Demo rotation is looking like Shadow Bolt/Soul Fire as caster, then Demonic Slash in Meta (maybe Soul Fire execute while Meta?), with Corruption as basics, then Bane of Doom and Wild Imps every minute?

[Count Zero]

Wild Imps

couldn't tear me away

sorry, had to say it

[Deleted]

I may have stood up and screamed "THAT'S THE COOLEST SHIT EVER" when I read this. I cannot confirm or deny.

Also, did the tooltip on the voidlord threat thing specifically say it buffed the VL's threat ? The wording on the db tooltip seems pretty vague, and people in the tank glyph thread are debating whether it increases the void's threat or the lock's threat.

It is indeed the coolest thing ever.

[Count Zero]

it is indeed the coolest thing ever.

i ... I ...

Ok, I'm back. Got kinda choked up there for a minute; this is so beautiful

[Depravitty]

That looks hawt

[Neinball]

I think Twilight ray/fel flames is going to see some use while in Meta. It was looking like it was hitting for almost as much slash did, with the 6 sec refresh on Corruption it may be worthwhile, but that will be for the theorycrafters to figure out. Otherwise that's really about it, they cut a lot of spells and procs we use to rely on. Wild imps will probably be a little more complicated then blowing on CD since it's passive looks very powerful at the moment and really cuts down on fury generation if it's passive is not active.

[Rushgarroth]

It is indeed the coolest thing ever.

OH MAH GAWWWD

Heheheeee yo dawg i heard you like some awesomejuice!

[Samania]

It is indeed the coolest thing ever.

I can't even describe the feelings of joy I am having right now without going into TMI zones....

[noaim]

Does a glyphed shadowbolt generate 3x the fury, or is it only a visual benefit?

[Prothall]

Demon Lick would be an awesome name for a spell, though. Just like Nom Nom Nom in Cata, before they changed it.

[Raxxed]

Does a glyphed shadowbolt generate 3x the fury, or is it only a visual benefit?

Wow, that's a really nice question

[Count Zero]

Oh god ... I need to get Cunning of the Cruel now ... so that between the trink, Dragonwrath, and hopefully this glyph being available in pre-MoP patch ... I'll be a shadowboltin' maniac. It'd be like ... I'm not even going to finish the thought I had there. It's NSFW.