Demonbolt- Level 100 Warlock Talent WoD

[Drakile]

I am a bit late to the party on this one, but what is the point of Demonbolt?
I am merely curious if the warlock community has figured out how useful Demonbolt will prove to be overall?

[Zervek]

It won't be useful. They don't know what to do with us..

[Gwiez]

Possibly the idea is that you use it while imp swarm is still giving you demonic fury while you'd otherwise be close to the fury cap.

[Grizelda]

I think it helps you store fury for procs or buffs. I THINK.

[Zathrendar]

Just give it a good animation, demo could do with more of those now that Carrion Swarm is gone.

[Skayth]

The point of it, seems, to be opener, and when ever you are low on fury.... you use this. But any demonology warlock knows full well, beyond the opener, we store fury.... Above the hundred point, min, and we simply stance dance. This spell is almost entirely useless, not to mention, fkn button bloat. While the other two specs get passives, we get another damn button on our filled bars.

[Scathbais]

At 600% spell power at 1000 Fury, Demon Bolt is potentially the hardest hitting nuke in the game. If cast at 1000 Fury, you spend 300 and can then burn fury down to 40 and immediately be back at 340. For situations where you gain lots of DF quickly (e.g. quick dying adds) it can really produce excellent damage.

The real question is whether a Demonbolt cast every x seconds is better than having a permanent Terrorguard. I will leave it to the theory crafters to figure that one out once we get close to a final beta.

Way too early for people to claim it is useless compared to the other options.

[Bullettime]

At 600% spell power at 1000 Fury, Demon Bolt is potentially the hardest hitting nuke in the game. If cast at 1000 Fury, you spend 300 and can then burn fury down to 40 and immediately be back at 340. For situations where you gain lots of DF quickly (e.g. quick dying adds) it can really produce excellent damage.

The real question is whether a Demonbolt cast every x seconds is better than having a permanent Terrorguard. I will leave it to the theory crafters to figure that one out once we get close to a final beta.

Way too early for people to claim it is useless compared to the other options.

It really depends on how they handle Metamorphosis and snapshotting. If they treat Meta's damage bonus like trinkets, then obviously you'll spend less time stance dancing and you'll be doing more just burning. In this scenario, Demonbolt would be solid to extend the amount of time you spend in burn mode.

If they treat Meta like Eclipse or Tiger's Fury where it snapshots, then it becomes pretty much pointless as it maintains the constant stance dancing gameplay and never really goes super hardcore burn mode.

[Count Zero]

It's to store Fury for when you otherwise would have gone out of Fury but still have big procs up

[Grizelda]

I have to admit after playing Demo for a while it does seem that it builds fury too slow. This may help.

Or they could just make fury build and or spend faster for a more immediate, responsive feel. I'm thinking of a car that accelerates and brakes better but has less of a top speed? That might be more helpful in a world without snapshotting.

Probably better for me to let the hardcore Demo locks sort this out.

[bio347]

One thing Demonbolt does is allow for a larger Fury pool. What I mean is, if you use it at 1000 Fury, then shift out and get back up to 1000, you effectively have 1300 Fury (obviously you'd never do so at 1000 because of waste, but you get the idea). That is useful when you know a burn period is coming up (trinket, Dark Soul, boss phase, etc.), particularly during execute or if you have a lot of MC stacks (due to the Soul Fire perk making it cast super-fast).

Honestly, it does feel a bit odd and awkward, but the whole Meta thing in the first place is a little odd and awkward.

[Grizelda]

Because stance dancing is odd and awkward.

[Mormolyce]

Just give it a good animation, demo could do with more of those now that Carrion Swarm is gone.

You pick up and imp an chuck it at your target's face.

THIS WASN'T IN MY CONTRAAAAAAAACT!!!

[Jessicka]

They said recently that specs that had an important snapshot would gain something else. I can only guess that this is that, a button to press when you have a lot of procs up as we do right now with doom. Having to get back below 100 Fury though to get the Fury back might feel a little awkward for that, restricting it to use just at the start of full burn phases. I'm not sure that limitation should stay, makes it too infrequent and a bit weird to use.

[Bullettime]

One thing Demonbolt does is allow for a larger Fury pool. What I mean is, if you use it at 1000 Fury, then shift out and get back up to 1000, you effectively have 1300 Fury (obviously you'd never do so at 1000 because of waste, but you get the idea). That is useful when you know a burn period is coming up (trinket, Dark Soul, boss phase, etc.), particularly during execute or if you have a lot of MC stacks (due to the Soul Fire perk making it cast super-fast).

Honestly, it does feel a bit odd and awkward, but the whole Meta thing in the first place is a little odd and awkward.

Basically. Demo rarely really worries about hitting rock bottom of their Fury pool due to using it around limited duration trinkets.

Demonbolt lends itself well towards a constant long burn phase by extending the duration, but it's kind of awkward looking given the current implementation and usage of Metamorphosis. It seems like no matter what level of Fury you're at, you wouldn't be able to properly use it.

Extending the execute is the main thing I could see its use for. Outside of it, I just can't see any level of Fury that would be worth playing around Demonbolt., especially with the gameplay of only really using Meta during trinkets and hardcore burning. But even then, you generally have enough Fury stockpiled to go the duration of a trinket without needing another kick start. And when compared to a perma Terrorguard......

[Dyptheria]

@thread

Early days obviously, but if this makes it live, they'll likely make it spec-based as opposed to talent based since it requires Demonology anyway; the whole point of talents is/was to give players situational choices regardless of their chosen spec.

It won't be useful. They don't know what to do with us..

Because stance dancing is odd and awkward.

I agree with these sentiments to a certain degree. I ran as Affliction/Demonology for a few months (mostly as Demonology since I like the Felguard as a pet) but I find Demo to be awkward and "unnatural", due to the shapeshifting. I was opposed to the whole "turn into a Demon" idea from the start, and I think Blizzard have made a whip for their own backs with it.

It's probably too late now, but I would rather have seen Demo evolve into a spec where the DPS boost comes from the pet(s); perhaps keeping up as many "wild minions" as possible, and spending Demonic Fury to do so.

[PickleballAce]

It's probably too late now, but I would rather have seen Demo evolve into a spec where the DPS boost comes from the pet(s); perhaps keeping up as many "wild minions" as possible, and spending Demonic Fury to do so.

IIRC this was actually one of the early iterations of Demo in MoP Alpha according to Xelnath, but what they feared is that players would ask why their pets are more powerful than they are.

EDIT: Decided to find exactly what he said, so here you go:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post19592350

Since we're past the point where anyone else would ask... Demonology started out as an experiment into a god-of-war style AoE melee class while in demon form and a ranged nuker in human form. It turned out that sucked because once you were in melee and ran out of Demon Juice, the monsters you were AoE'ing obliterated you without AoE Cleave abilities.

After that didn't pan out, I tried out Demonology as a true tank spec. That turned out to be a lot of fun, but other designers (correctly!) protested against the total removal of the demonology DPS style. So I tabled the tank spec, as it was clear that couldn't be fleshed out until Demonology-as-DPS was solved.

The next iteration was Demonology-as-a-summoner, where every Demonology ability was done by proxy via a summoned demon. This was very *cool*, but felt sluggish and I kept asking, "why are my pets more awesome than I am?" as I spammed Shadow Bolt fillers between summoning Imps and such. This lead to the next iteration of Demonology Warlock - master of indirect magic.

Rather than summon creatures, Demonology started using objects. I repurposed Hand of Gul'dan as a frequent nuke rather than location-based buff. Carrion Swarm reintroduced the bats. Finally, Ion Hazzikostas (Watcher) had the brilliant idea to make *all* of your basic nukes get upgraded while in Demon Form. I loved this idea and it felt like it clicked.

It had a lot of overlap with Druid Eclipse, so I did my best to give it one differentiating point - that your trinket choice differentiated how you played the spec. Reactively, with proc trinkets, or in a planned way with on-click trinkets.

Once that was done, I looked back on everything I did and asked what I wanted to keep. The tanky-lock was the only thing I missed, so I put that on a glyph and shipped it. Turned out my understanding of how much dodge and parry had fallen behind the times since WotLK - so the 75% damage reduction from Dark Apotheosis broke the game.

Thankfully, Jimmythenumbers and Big Bear were able to talk me down off my high-horse and it got sufficiently nerfed before it went live.

Did that help?

[Bullettime]

@thread

Early days obviously, but if this makes it live, they'll likely make it spec-based as opposed to talent based since it requires Demonology anyway; the whole point of talents is/was to give players situational choices regardless of their chosen spec.




I agree with these sentiments to a certain degree. I ran as Affliction/Demonology for a few months (mostly as Demonology since I like the Felguard as a pet) but I find Demo to be awkward and "unnatural", due to the shapeshifting. I was opposed to the whole "turn into a Demon" idea from the start, and I think Blizzard have made a whip for their own backs with it.

It's probably too late now, but I would rather have seen Demo evolve into a spec where the DPS boost comes from the pet(s); perhaps keeping up as many "wild minions" as possible, and spending Demonic Fury to do so.

Imo, the main thing is simply the cooldown on Metamorphosis. It's already gated behind Fury costs on abilities and natural decay in form. The piddly 10 second cooldown adds an extra timer to work around when dancing to reapply dots and what not or dealing with Hand of Gul'dan vs Chaos Wave. Dropping the cooldown to the GCD would allow a seamless move in between forms and make the stance dancing aspect feel a bit better.

[Magpai]

Seems to be a big nuke + a way to bank fury. Would be useful if you hit fury cap, and don't have dark soul or a nice proc to bleed it off. Then the next time you're using fury... there it is.

My questions are, does it have a cooldown, and is only your most recent use banked? My guess is no to both, the latter being more relevant. So you could potentially have unrefunded fury spent on this spell. But if you're capping anyway... I mean isn't that the idea behind heroic strike on a warrior? It's like when you have a bunch of fury, or maybe you have a proc or something and want to dump a bunch of fury into demonbolt to take advantage of it. And then the refund when you're low is just kind of a little bonus, or just something to keep you from not regretting spending it on demonbolt if you get a strong proc or otherwise need fury to spend later.

Imagine this: You're nearing fury cap. Dark Soul will be off cooldown before too long, but you'll be capped by then capped. Then a trinket procs (or you get a damage buff, or the boss gets a damage debuff), but dark soul's still on cooldown. So you bleed some fury with demonbolt, hit hard, spend more fury on touch of chaos and then dark soul comes off cooldown and you're lowish on fury. So you activate dark soul, spam more touches and when your fury gets low, you get 250+ back which is enough to get you through it's duration.

I could see it being a fun talent to learn to master. I think it sounds great.

The point of it, seems, to be opener

An opener? Seems counterintuitive since you're so low on fury at that point.

- - - Updated - - -

or if you have a lot of MC stacks (due to the Soul Fire perk making it cast super-fast).

Somewhat off topic, but the perk also causes it to reduce the mana cost further. On live, the proc also is responsible for changing it from 160 fury to 80 fury. So will this also reduce the fury cost of soul fire, down to 40?

[Drsolders]

I say nerf them till they are like Spriest now (but they will have utility?) and buff shadow priest until they are #1

#bitter spriest

Seriously though I hope they don't nerf them too hard