Best replacement for Metamorphosis?

[G3istly]

yeah, super awesome, a stream of rabid dogs and other trash hitting for a wet noodle even considering the 2pt18 @ 5 stacks /yawn
At this point they couldve just bumped the dmg/spawn rate of fel imps with 4p achieving a waay better result in both usability and effective output

Having random melee guardians popping with zero interaction with the spec mechanic, being a result of a proc is far from interesting/compelling

You wouldn't know fun if it bit you in your face.

[Jessicka]

You wouldn't know fun if it bit you in your face.

I think they would notice that. What they're not noticing is which pets are theirs amongst the melee crowd of face biting pets and melees, since that stuff happens whether they like it or not, and they've no control over that, and you can't really see amongst it from 40 yards away. That's kinda the point we're making.

All that said, given these set bonuses and trinkets; I really would not be surprised if this "summoner" spec does go down that rather underwhelming path. It wouldn't be the first time these sorts of bonuses have been used to trial new talents and abilities.

[Baconeggcheese]

Yeah I'm worried about it, pet focused specs are always terrible gameplay in this game. The last thing we need is more melee clutter as well.

I already don't pay attention to my pet at all on most fights outside of the uber rare occasion that the pet positioning and spells matter. Guess I'll see how this turns out anyway, demo was already my least favorite spec so eh.

[G3istly]

I think they would notice that. What they're not noticing is which pets are theirs amongst the melee crowd of face biting pets and melees, since that stuff happens whether they like it or not, and they've no control over that, and you can't really see amongst it from 40 yards away. That's kinda the point we're making.

All that said, given these set bonuses and trinkets; I really would not be surprised if this "summoner" spec does go down that rather underwhelming path. It wouldn't be the first time these sorts of bonuses have been used to trial new talents and abilities.

I'm aware of that. However, trading one set of numbers for another set isn't exactly fun either though and I'd at least like the illusion of having an army of minions even if I'm not fully in control or able to spot them in a cloud of melee users. The issue I'm finding is that a lot of people are hung up on making changes to the class that revolve around raiding. I realize a lot of suggestions are impractical because of it but we need to focus more on what could be fun and less on how feasible it is.

Edit: I just had an idea. Well, it's not my idea but I was playing Nox (as a Conjurer) and I realized that the system they have could technically work for warlocks. Basically the Conjurer is a class that charms/summons enemies and you can have four lesser enemies, two medium enemies or one greater enemy under your control at any time. You can mix and match as well so you could have four imps or two imps, a bat and a spider or a scorpion and a wolf and so on. Obviously we wouldn't have those creatures at our command but the idea itself could work well for Demonology and would (or at least should) give them an excuse to make new demons as well.

[Jessicka]

That just sounds like the Hunter's Stampede Pokemon deck that caused everyone nightmares before it was nerfed to the ground.

And that is very much also a PvP rather than raiding concern.

[G3istly]

That just sounds like the Hunter's Stampede Pokemon deck that caused everyone nightmares before it was nerfed to the ground.

And that is very much also a PvP rather than raiding concern.

How does that sound anything like Stampede? I'm not talking about pushing a button and having a bunch of uncontrollable minions pop out.

[Jessicka]

How does that sound anything like Stampede? I'm not talking about pushing a button and having a bunch of uncontrollable minions pop out.

The original version of Stamped had the pets all use their special abilities, which meant players would build a deck of the best most complementary abilities. There was no skill or choice in gameplay, it was just overpowered, as well as caused a bunch of issues with loads on players PCs when you had multiple players using it.

[G3istly]

The original version of Stamped had the pets all use their special abilities, which meant players would build a deck of the best most complementary abilities. There was no skill or choice in gameplay, it was just overpowered, as well as caused a bunch of issues with loads on players PCs when you had multiple players using it.

Again, what I'm talking about is not the same as using Stampede; it's not meant to be a one-and-done deal. I don't know how else to explain this to you, I assumed it was perfectly understandable.

[Jessicka]

Again, what I'm talking about is not the same as using Stampede; it's not meant to be a one-and-done deal. I don't know how else to explain this to you, I assumed it was perfectly understandable.

You're talking about a permanent equivalence which would not just be outrageously overpowered (if 30s each 5 minutes wasn't bad enough), it'd have horrific button bloat to control them all.

[G3istly]

You're talking about a permanent equivalence which would not just be outrageously overpowered (if 30s each 5 minutes wasn't bad enough), it'd have horrific button bloat to control them all.

If you could summon a thousand imps but each imp did one point of damage, would you consider that overpowered? Instead of sitting there trying to shoot down the idea, why don't you use that peanut rattling around in your head to come up with solutions to make it work or alternative ideas?

[Baconeggcheese]

I just had an idea.

My issue with it becoming a pet spec is how will it have engaging gameplay for the player since this game has a horrendously dated pet UI and AI.

The UI simply isn't good enough to realistically give multiple mobs a lot of depth, so it'd have to be something along the lines of having a few mobs (whatever combo works out) and then a few command demon style buttons so you get several abilities depending on the mobs out and the rest is just automated.

Personally I find that kind of thing horrendous game play because of how poor the pet ui / ai is in this game, and it would still confuse me that I'd have become so powerful that I can command a small army of lesser minions and yet for some reason I'd rather use them than that power that lets me control them.

Not to mention the added lag and clutter having multiple constant minions will cause. I dunno... I guess I'll find out if I like it any more or less than the current situation soon enough. I'm more concerned with what they might do to destro and aff anyway, I actually can't stand aff these days and I don't want them to screw up destro as its probably one of the best designed specs in the game.

[Jessicka]

If you could summon a thousand imps but each imp did one point of damage, would you consider that overpowered? Instead of sitting there trying to shoot down the idea, why don't you use that peanut rattling around in your head to come up with solutions to make it work or alternative ideas?

That would be retarded. I honestly don't see any reason to make such drastic changes; Demon Hunters are using an entirely different Energy based resource system and play in melee, not at ranged as Demonology does. In MoP, there was a lot more damage put onto Demons because the 100 talents didn't exist to be such a focus, and the way Doom worked with Snapshotting meant we had an interesting, interactive way of summoning additional ones as a part of the rotation. Shifting back toward that model would be fine by me.

What I don't want to see is the spec turning the game into an RTS, overbloated with individual controls per Demon - which taking Kill Command as a metric, would be slow and unresponsive. Similarly creating an analogous talent to Dark Transformation or Beastial Wrath solves nothing when trying to fix Meta for Demo being "too similar" to DH's Meta.

[Ultramad]

Alright I'll throw my hat into the idea pit.

So we have a resource which we build up through the use of our pet active time and our spell usage. This resource when it is high enough can be used to channel a spell to fuse the active pet and the Warlock. This fusion will change the Warlock's form into an empowered version of the currently active demon and empower/change their abilities.

Duration: X based on fusion resource available.
Cost: X
Grants new spells based on current pet summoned
Dark soul had twice the effectiveness when in Empowered Demon Form.

I think that would be a pretty good meta without being meta. It's even got some ability to give us a bit of differing gameplay based on pets.

[G3istly]

That would be retarded. I honestly don't see any reason to make such drastic changes; Demon Hunters are using an entirely different Energy based resource system and play in melee, not at ranged as Demonology does. In MoP, there was a lot more damage put onto Demons because the 100 talents didn't exist to be such a focus, and the way Doom worked with Snapshotting meant we had an interesting, interactive way of summoning additional ones as a part of the rotation. Shifting back toward that model would be fine by me.

What I don't want to see is the spec turning the game into an RTS, overbloated with individual controls per Demon - which taking Kill Command as a metric, would be slow and unresponsive. Similarly creating an analogous talent to Dark Transformation or Beastial Wrath solves nothing when trying to fix Meta for Demo being "too similar" to DH's Meta.

I'm going to ignore you now before I say something I'll regret.

- - - Updated - - -

My issue with it becoming a pet spec is how will it have engaging gameplay for the player since this game has a horrendously dated pet UI and AI.

The UI simply isn't good enough to realistically give multiple mobs a lot of depth, so it'd have to be something along the lines of having a few mobs (whatever combo works out) and then a few command demon style buttons so you get several abilities depending on the mobs out and the rest is just automated.

Personally I find that kind of thing horrendous game play because of how poor the pet ui / ai is in this game, and it would still confuse me that I'd have become so powerful that I can command a small army of lesser minions and yet for some reason I'd rather use them than that power that lets me control them.

Not to mention the added lag and clutter having multiple constant minions will cause. I dunno... I guess I'll find out if I like it any more or less than the current situation soon enough. I'm more concerned with what they might do to destro and aff anyway, I actually can't stand aff these days and I don't want them to screw up destro as its probably one of the best designed specs in the game.

I completely understand your apprehension and it's certainly justified with how Blizzard has been handling things recently but there isn't much else they can do. At this point it's virtually guaranteed that we will lose Metamorphosis and everything that goes with it but going back to having one minion and nothing outside of that would ruin any enjoyability one could derive from Demonology. Having new demons would be nice and all but the issue with that is that we already have minions now who serve little to no purpose and I'd rather not have even more who will make the ones we use useless as well. While having multiple minions is sure to bring a slew of problems with it, it at least resolves that particular issue while also fitting the "Summoner" theme that they seem to want to head toward.

Unfortunately the only idea I have to reduce lag/clutter is to make the minions visible only to you but then that would become an issue for the warlock. Perhaps an option to turn off effects from other players? Though I imagine that might look incredibly silly. I don't necessarily agree with you regarding Destruction but I do regarding Affliction. I think the biggest thing they could do to help it right now is to take the focus away from using Drain Soul and give it back to the DoTs. I am curious to hear how you would change it, that is, if you have any ideas.

[PickleballAce]

Well...Jessicka's point stands. People think about all these wondrous ideas without thinking about how they're going to work. The number one culprit is the "OMG CAN I HAZ PITLORD?!" stuff that gets repeated ad nauseum.

Great, so we've got a Pitlord now. Do you make him gigantic and be a huge nuisance to melee or do you make him small and unobtrusive while at the same time taking away a ton of the cool factor? Just because it worked on Kanrethad doesn't mean it's going to work in a raid.

The Demonology as Summoner is another popular direction, but it comes with a ton of problems that have already been covered. Knowing what we know right now about the way pet AI works for us, we have two choices. We can clutter our screen with a bunch of pet bars and have control over our zoo, or we can just make them all guardians and be at the mercy of the atrocious guardian AI. I mean, I love our Wild Imp army but what else can we do?

I think we're just looking for directions that aren't forcing us to put a lot of faith in Blizzard finally figuring out how to get pets right, while making them interesting.

[G3istly]

Well...Jessicka's point stands. People think about all these wondrous ideas without thinking about how they're going to work. The number one culprit is the "OMG CAN I HAZ PITLORD?!" stuff that gets repeated ad nauseum.

Great, so we've got a Pitlord now. Do you make him gigantic and be a huge nuisance to melee or do you make him small and unobtrusive while at the same time taking away a ton of the cool factor? Just because it worked on Kanrethad doesn't mean it's going to work in a raid.

The Demonology as Summoner is another popular direction, but it comes with a ton of problems that have already been covered. Knowing what we know right now about the way pet AI works for us, we have two choices. We can clutter our screen with a bunch of pet bars and have control over our zoo, or we can just make them all guardians and be at the mercy of the atrocious guardian AI. I mean, I love our Wild Imp army but what else can we do?

I think we're just looking for directions that aren't forcing us to put a lot of faith in Blizzard finally figuring out how to get pets right, while making them interesting.

No, it does not. Unless you are being paid by Blizzard, the only thing any of us needs to do is come up with the ideas (if you want to, you're not obligated to) because it is literally their job to figure out how to implement it and make it fun. Besides, all she is doing is crying about what she wants instead of what would make the class fun for everyone.

[Jessicka]

No, it does not. Unless you are being paid by Blizzard, the only thing any of us needs to do is come up with the ideas (if you want to, you're not obligated to) because it is literally their job to figure out how to implement it and make it fun. Besides, all she is doing is crying about what she wants instead of what would make the class fun for everyone.

When the ideas that players to spewing up are as follows:

- Pit Lord; massive obstructive pet that just does more passive damage.
- Merging with your pet; ignoring the aesthetic aspect that's never going to happen, just takes us back to issues with pet twisting or back to when Meta actually used to dismiss your pet. It's not really a new idea, it's an already failed experiment.
- Pet Empowerment; quite how ripping off DK's Dark Transformation in an effort to not homogenise Meta with DH's Meta actually achieves anything other than homogenising with DKs instead, is baffling.
- Lots of pets; either passive and unnoticed like the lots of pets we have right now with trinket and set bonuses, or if actively controlled means astronomical button bloat, and I ask how exactly do you make Kill Command feel different from Lash of Pain or from Shadow Bite when it's just a sluggish button that uses an instant use ability somewhere detached from yourself.
- 'Be like Beast Mastery'; completely nebulous and again solves nothing by copying another spec so as to not copy a different one. Completely absurd when the spec you're starting with already has plenty of distinctiveness from the those you're trying to avoid copying.

That basically sums up all the ideas I've seen on here and elsewhere. I'm not the only one who's pointed out how a lot of these ideas are impractical, don't work or are otherwise undesirable. And no, the idea isn't to make the spec 'fun for everyone', because that's impossible; chasing away people who already play it in an effort to bring in those who don't, who are already happy playing the game on other toons, is fucking about as retarded a design gamble as it gets.

[Ultramad]

When the ideas that players to spewing up are as follows:

- Pit Lord; massive obstructive pet that just does more passive damage.
- Merging with your pet; ignoring the aesthetic aspect that's never going to happen, just takes us back to issues with pet twisting or back to when Meta actually used to dismiss your pet. It's not really a new idea, it's an already failed experiment.
- Pet Empowerment; quite how ripping off DK's Dark Transformation in an effort to not homogenise Meta with DH's Meta actually achieves anything other than homogenising with DKs instead, is baffling.
- Lots of pets; either passive and unnoticed like the lots of pets we have right now with trinket and set bonuses, or if actively controlled means astronomical button bloat, and I ask how exactly do you make Kill Command feel different from Lash of Pain or from Shadow Bite when it's just a sluggish button that uses an instant use ability somewhere detached from yourself.
- 'Be like Beast Mastery'; completely nebulous and again solves nothing by copying another spec so as to not copy a different one. Completely absurd when the spec you're starting with already has plenty of distinctiveness from the those you're trying to avoid copying.

That basically sums up all the ideas I've seen on here and elsewhere. I'm not the only one who's pointed out how a lot of these ideas are impractical, don't work or are otherwise undesirable. And no, the idea isn't to make the spec 'fun for everyone', because that's impossible; chasing away people who already play it in an effort to bring in those who don't, who are already happy playing the game on other toons, is fucking about as retarded a design gamble as it gets.

Right, but we don't have to come up with 10 good ideas. We only have to come up with one. We just haven't come up with it yet. Nothing wrong with coming up with things that don't work, that's part of the process.

Keep the ideas flowing!

[Aedus of Incendium]

1) RAIN OF CHAOS: drop 3 meteors at target area for impact damage and spawn 3 lesser infernals at target arena -- each deal small aoe damage over time, and chases/melee your primary target.
Glyph of Fel Hellfire: Infernos no longer move nor attack, instead they channel fel hellfire dealing more damage over time at their locations. These infernos are like the ones Mannoroth use: deals damage over time at an area; recast to Re-position infernos (have cooldown).

2) FEL TAP: Sacrifice 20% of your maximum health to empower your demons, making them grow larger, deal 25% more damage, takes 50% less damage, immune to controls, for 10 seconds.

3) GRASP OF THE VOID: Summon a voidwraith that moves towards the target. Once it reaches the target, it will deal auto attacks that slow target for 90% until it dies or expires. 2 charges.

4) FEAST OF MANA: Summon a felhound that remains stationary, dispelling a single buff on a random target in line of sight every 10 second interval. If attacked the felhunter will chase the target and deal damage plus burning 2% of their mana every attack. 3 charges, long cooldown.

[Deleted]

Jesus, please no more pets.
The game is already a zoo with more completely useless pets then players in pvp that just bloats your screen with useless.

How about, just delete the class instead, after all what's the point now with DH's coming, like 0.2% of playerbase will play Warlock, put resources somewhere that matters and let Warlocks get a free class change.