[MoP] Misc Demonology Notes

[Gobuchul]

Oh? Hm, I'll double-check to see how it works.

edit: So far it looks like i was correct, nearly all DoTs and AoEs aren't affected by GoSac. Touch of Chaos doesn't seem to be affected, but Void Ray is. I did a brief combat log naked (to limit procs and crits), and can post that if you'd like to sift through it. Oh, and I found out something else that surprised me, apparently GoSac's double buff lasts 25 seconds, not 15. Not sure if that's Demo-only or for all specs. In any case, they really need to update that tooltip.

Well either that or they really need to fix how the spell works in-game...

Anyway, thanks for testing this. I posted a question in the class balance thread asking for clarification.

[Grubjuice]

They think changing stances to use an ability is bad design for Death Knights and Warriors, but it's good design for Warlocks. Go work that one out.

Yes stance dancing by design is by design, stance dancing as an unintentional effect is an unintentional effect.

[Jessicka]

Yes stance dancing by design is by design, stance dancing as an unintentional effect is an unintentional effect.

You understand the stance dancing I'm referring to, as used in the simulationcraft profile uses Touch of Chaos to maintain Corruption and in order to do that manually cancels Touch of Chaos before Meta is ended in order to prevent any in-flight ToC bolts refreshing Corruption without the Meta buff. Does that sound intended?

[Count Zero]

Yes stance dancing by design is by design, stance dancing as an unintentional effect is an unintentional effect.

Yeah, I've been scratching my head at Blizz's apparent inconsistency with a lot of matters, but I guess maybe it's a matter of "It's not ok to do X unless I say you can. OK you can do X." As in ... before, with the Drain Afflic nerf, where they specifically mentioned its similarity to SPriest playstyle with regard to Afflic using a channeled filler. Then in MoP they give us a channeled filler.

Seems so arbitrary ...

[Grubjuice]

You understand the stance dancing I'm referring to, as used in the simulationcraft profile uses Touch of Chaos to maintain Corruption and in order to do that manually cancels Touch of Chaos before Meta is ended in order to prevent any in-flight ToC bolts refreshing Corruption without the Meta buff. Does that sound intended?

oh right yeah, that's f***ed up, but i would never bother doing that. It's too difficult for my skill level, and looks more like a trap for for non-leets who think they are leet.

it should be added that GC has already commented on the problem of Drain Soul twisting for perfect Haunt uptime for Affliction, stating that it is unintentional and Affliction will continue to be rebalanced until there is no incentive left to do it. I would bet he is also receptive to complaints about meta-twisting to get 100% corruption refreshes by Demonologists, if we make sure he is aware of our dissatifaction with the potential for cumbersome exploit.

/addendum:
for reference

Haunt Uptime and drain Twisting
Haunt is balanced around Nightfall procs. While it may currently be a small DPS upgrade (3%?) to swap Drain Soul and Malefic Grasp, the intent is that you use Drain Soul to generate shards when you need to hit a burst window or of course below 20%.
I feel like my statement was confusing. Let me try again:

•Haunt is balanced around Nightfall procs. We don't assume you can keep Haunt up 100% of the time.
•Currently (meaning at this moment on beta) it may be a small DPS increase to swap Malefic Grasp for Drain Soul. This small increase has led players to speculate that you're supposed to do that.
•You aren't.
•The primary intent is that you use Drain Soul in execute rage.
•The secondary intent is that if you know a part of the fight is coming up when you absolutely need to kill something, that you can drop your DPS by using Drain Soul to build up shards to keep Haunt up 100% of the time during that window. This will hurt your sustained DPS, so if that is all you care about, don't do it. Your friends may yell at you though if you can't beat the encounter.
•If the temptation to twist channels is still there, we will keep nerfing Drain Soul until that is not the case. At some point however, we will discourage locks from using Drain Soul for the burst window scenario mentioned above, because the total DPS loss wouldn't be worth the momentary DPS gain. That would be unfortunate.
•Therefore we have to be careful not to make Drain Soul too good or too bad.
•If that means that very skilled locks can occasionally sneak in a Drain Soul for an extra shard for a small DPS gain, we're okay with that. If it looks like lots of warlocks are trying to do that rotation though, we'll continue to nerf Drain Soul.

Theoritically they could do something similar to prevent meta-twisting, like stop corruption from benefitting from metamorphosis' damage bonus and increase its base damage to balance it.

[Xelnath]

That's exactly what's going to happen.

Corruption will not benefit from Meta's boost when adjusted by touch of chaos.

[Count Zero]

That's exactly what's going to happen.

Corruption will not benefit from Meta's boost when adjusted by touch of chaos.

And the same for Doom/Caster ??

[kornoth]

Doom is never affected by the caster stance , we only refresh and cast it in demonform, there is no ToC like corruption for doom.

[Jessicka]

About time.

Can't wait to confirm what these changes do though...

* Hellfire is now a Demonology Spec ability. Generates 10 Demonic Fury if it strikes at least one target.
* Metamorphosis: Chaos Wave now also reduces movement speed by 30% for 6 sec.
* Metamorphosis: Demonic Slash has been renamed Metamorphosis: Touch of Chaos. Now also extends the duration of Corruption.
* Metamorphosis: Immolation Aura While using Metamorphosis, your Hellfire spell (was Rain of Fire) no longer deals damage to you and does not need to be channeled.
* Metamorphosis: Void Ray (New) While using Metamorphosis, your Fel Flame spell transforms into Void Ray. Warlock - Demonology Spec.

1, Yay Hellfire!

2, Chaos Wave, need to check whether this is a new effect or whether it applies Shadowflame.
3, I presume this means the autoattack is gone, also much better for controlled multidotting.

[yolmez86]

Could someone tell me what the point of void ray is? just to have a "skill shot" in the game? doesnt seem worth it.

[Fallensaint]

The slow is just a slow (though it does stack), it's all in the spell data.

Also, since MMO-Champ didn't link it, here's the new Touch of Chaos. As far as I can tell, it's damage, cost, and ICD are identical to Demonic Slash's, but the new ToC does Chaos damage and refreshes Corruption. Given the name and mechanics change, it's likely that the old ToC is removed from Meta, though it's still in the game files.

[Jessicka]

Could someone tell me what the point of void ray is? just to have a "skill shot" in the game? doesnt seem worth it.

It's Meta's AoE spell basically, you dot up with Corruption, go Meta, hit Immolation Aura and spam that between Waves of Chaos.

Edit: I can't help but feel the animation and sound could benefit from being a little more epic, along the lines of a mauve, horizontal version of the Boomkin's Orbital Ion Cannon as oppose to the purple streak of piss it is at present.

[Grubjuice]

is void ray targeted now? or is it still aimed?

Will hellfire still allow us to move as we channel it (like on live?)

Will we still have to the stance dance to always refresh corruption from meta to gain the damage bonus?

[Deleted]

The spec is not bad at all atm, but i find the Meta rotation low and borring ( spam Dslash).

I propose to change Void ray:

Void ray ( Demon form only): instant, no cooldown, cost 40 demonic fury: inflicts x damage + y damage over 5sec, with a total x +y damage about 30% more than a demonic slash to avoid some sort of spaming.

This could make a " rotation" in Demonc form, with 2 spells instead of 1, and a very short dot ( 5sec), to manage, which could be more interesting and smart.

[Jessicka]

Void Ray is fine for what it is.

I think the model they're aiming for for Meta's rotation would be WoC on cooldown and filled with Slash for single target. Similarly Caster is HoG on cooldown with Shadow Bolt filler. Molten Core will be more about managing your output, either using it in Caster for the additional Fury it generates, or in Meta to get your damage out in a smaller window - on average it'll probably end up working out just about equal for Patchwerk, with the real metric of skill being in terms of timing everything and lining up your abilities to the encounter itself.

DoTs are DoTs, they go on everything and are managed appropriately.

[Deleted]

Void ray or something else, but the spam Dslash in meta is kind of boring imo

And with the new patch making even easier the rotation ( Dslash up the duration of corruption) ...

I think 2 skill in meta instead of 1 would be nice

[Dariela]

Void Ray is fine for what it is.

I think the model they're aiming for for Meta's rotation would be WoC on cooldown and filled with Slash for single target. Similarly Caster is HoG on cooldown with Shadow Bolt filler. Molten Core will be more about managing your output, either using it in Caster for the additional Fury it generates, or in Meta to get your damage out in a smaller window - on average it'll probably end up working out just about equal for Patchwerk, with the real metric of skill being in terms of timing everything and lining up your abilities to the encounter itself.

DoTs are DoTs, they go on everything and are managed appropriately.

That sounds simple enough to describe in a sentence or so, complex enough to keep me engaged, and coherent to boot.

[Grubjuice]

we should really stop refering to 'D/' as 'D/' and refer to it as touch of chaos now. Lest we confuse the discussion. D/ is now a Dark Apotheosis ability only.

____________________

I don't really have anything to say about Meta's Single target spells. I am more interested in discussing Demo's AoE now that Hellfire has been brought back. before we had the choice of Harvest Life and Rain of Fire:

According to Wowhead (which is probably not-up-to-date) Rain of Fire did apparently (534+50%SP)*4/6 (which =356+33.3%SP) dps and Harvest Life did (357+33.4%SP) dps. In other words they scaled more or less equally, but Harvest life moved with moving targets and granted demonic fury and healed the caster, whereas rain of fire as far as i could tell was static and did not grant fury, so obviously HL was better for AoE (which was totally innapropriate as an optional survival talent should not outcompete a baseline talent for dps).

Now I don't know what the current Spell power scaling of Harvest Life is but according to MMO Hellfire currently supposed to do (267+25%SP) DPS and Rain of Fire is still (534+50%SP)*4/6 and presumably Harvest Life is still (357+33.4%SP) .

Unless something is changed to make Hellfire scale better than it currently does, it does not seem like it will become our baseline AoE spell in Caster form. Harvest Life still has all the benefits it did before and still scales equally to RoF and better than HF.

So I would love for someone on beta to test these spells to see if the scaling data on MMO and Wowhead are accurate and what sort of damage each ability is doing; and if necessary post about on the Beta forums.

____________________

Addendum:
it's possible that the Hellfire tooltip is just out of date and is based on Cataclysm's baseline Hellfire tooltip without the effects of the Cremation and Inferno talents; for example cremation increases HF by 30%. that would be (267+25%SP)*130% = (347+32.5%) which is on par with Hellfire and Harvest Life's Scaling. If we presume that '30%' actually means 1/3 (blizzard often does this in its tooltips, 1/3 is called '30%') then (267+25%SP)*133.33% = (356 + 33.33%SP) which is identical to both Harvest life and RoF.

Presumably Hellfire is supposed to perform in MoP as if the Cremation and Inferno talents were built in but that has not been implemented or it is simply not reflected in the tooltip.

____________________

If i Had my 'druthers, HF would do more damage, harm the caster and requires us to be in melee range and Harvest Life would do less damage, heal the caster and work at range. HL would be the the safe utility AoE; and HF would be the risky max-dps ability.

[Jessicka]

Void ray or something else, but the spam Dslash in meta is kind of boring imo

And with the new patch making even easier the rotation ( Dslash up the duration of corruption) ...

I think 2 skill in meta instead of 1 would be nice

There should be 4: Touch of Chaos (formerly Slash), Soul Fire, Doom and Wave of Chaos. Touch of Chaos will be used like Mind Flay to refresh Corruption across multiple disparate targets, Void Ray for when they're clustered up.

[thrill]

Void Ray is fine for what it is.

Does it work properly on terrain differences now?

Unless something is changed to make Hellfire scale better than it currently does, it does not seem like it will become our baseline AoE spell in Caster form. Harvest Life still has all the benefits it did before and still scales equally to RoF and better than HF.

So I would love for someone on beta to test these spells to see if the scaling data on MMO and Wowhead are accurate and what sort of damage each ability is doing; and if necessary post about on the Beta forums.

The datamined info makes it sound like RoF is gone for demo, is that wrong?