[BETA] Demonology Warlock Discussion

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

So what is this dark star demonology rotation i have heard of? Could someone tell me?

[Smog]

@Jessicka I despised old Demo and equally despise new Shadow, but I do genuinely thank you for being helpful and offering a recommendation.

[Jessicka]

@Jessicka I despised old Demo and equally despise new Shadow, but I do genuinely thank you for being helpful and offering a recommendation.

Let it be noted that I have contributed something positive.

[Deleted]

So what is this dark star demonology rotation i have heard of? Could someone tell me?

Equip your tier and class trinket.
Spam HOG, empower and SB.

Enjoy the flood.

@Jessicka I despised old Demo and equally despise new Shadow, but I do genuinely thank you for being helpful and offering a recommendation.

I wasn't a fan of it, I've always tried to play demonology ever since classic, even when it wasn't particularly viable. If I could get away with it, I'd often play it. I didn't like how it shifted focus to a completely meta-oriented or felguard-less spec.

I respected it though. Gameplay-wise I thought it had a lot of interesting things going for it.

[Deleted]

They should make the T18 and class trinket bonuses baseline. Demo with them is way more effective and fun than it is without them. They'd probably have to tune down the number of random demons summoned but aside from that...

[Gaidax]

TBH what we see right now means only one thing, with proper tuning Demo will be very viable. If you think about it - what we experience live is merely inflated damage, so even with all its mechanical downsides Demo can be just fine if it's tuned accordingly.

Artifact is a great place for that and there are a lot of modifiers that can reach the potential of T18 and Trinket. Things like Imperator becoming a larger bonus and The Expendables becoming becoming a rolling buff for you and you already will have most of power restored.

Basically if they will hit this sweetspot between the pre-patch retardation and current Legion state, it will be okay.

[Deleted]

What we are seeing now would require about a 50% damage buff though lol

And demo still wouldn't be good at target switching or cleave and be screwed by it's immobility

Sadly I think you are being wildly over-optimistic if you think we're going to get anything close to the current T18/trinket nonsense, it is just ridiculously overpowered and if you bake it into the artefact you basically screw players without that, I really do not like gear crutches

All the evidence we have seen is that dps is being fine tuned, we aren't seeing big changes

and demo? Well, they just nerfed Thlkiel's Consumption lol

Also note that in current live, you are ignoring like half your rotation, it's literally a three button spec where you ignore everything other than spamming Shadowbolt, Hand and DE, you don't even have to bother about using Hand efficiently.

[Gaidax]

What we are seeing now would require about a 50% damage buff though lol

And demo still wouldn't be good at target switching or cleave and be screwed by it's immobility

Sadly I think you are being wildly over-optimistic if you think we're going to get anything close to the current T18/trinket nonsense, it is just ridiculously overpowered and if you bake it into the artefact you basically screw players without that, I really do not like gear crutches

All the evidence we have seen is that dps is being fine tuned, we aren't seeing big changes

and demo? Well, they just nerfed Thlkiel's Consumption lol

Also note that in current live, you are ignoring like half your rotation, it's literally a three button spec where you ignore everything other than spamming Shadowbolt, Hand and DE, you don't even have to bother about using Hand efficiently.

Hardly, I'd say 15% would be enough to make it VERY powerful. Right now in pre-patch it's bloody OP, 1/3rd of that power from T18/Trink would still be powerful.

It's single target is already good in Legion, add 15% to that and you can take Implosion without a problem and that one spell fixes half of the issues Demo has really.

[wooters]

Hardly, I'd say 15% would be enough to make it VERY powerful. Right now in pre-patch it's bloody OP, 1/3rd of that power from T18/Trink would still be powerful.

It's single target is already good in Legion, add 15% to that and you can take Implosion without a problem and that one spell fixes half of the issues Demo has really.

can you stop being an apologist for this whole class already? locks are shite through and through and you are not doing it any favours defending it

[ThePhantombox]

It's single target is already good in Legion, add 15% to that and you can take Implosion without a problem and that one spell fixes half of the issues Demo has really.

can you stop being an apologist for this whole class already? locks are shite through and through and you are not doing it any favours defending it

Oooooooh, he comin at you with the stupid bomb.

[wooters]

Oooooooh, he comin at you with the stupid bomb.

lol...perhaps. but seeing the class being torn to shreds..and then defended by white knights..it is somewhat painful

[ThePhantombox]

lol...perhaps. but seeing the class being torn to shreds..and then defended by white knights..it is somewhat painful

I was making fun of you, because you're wrong, and it's funny.

[Vynny]

So I've been seeing a lot of people talk about Demo's movement capability, but most people say that it's movement is crap when it seems like one of the most mobile casters in the game to me. I mean, the demons are just walking dots that deal a lot of damage so even though you lose 1 to 3 shards whenever you move, your actual dps doesn't really go down because the demons are doing the damage not you, and you can make up a tiny bit of those shards by using demonwrath on the move. I mean, compare that to a class that primarily relies on hard cast spells and how whenever they're moving their dps pretty much drops to 0 and you see it's miles better than that, right?

[ThePhantombox]

So I've been seeing a lot of people talk about Demo's movement capability, but most people say that it's movement is crap when it seems like one of the most mobile casters in the game to me. I mean, the demons are just walking dots that deal a lot of damage so even though you lose 1 to 3 shards whenever you move, your actual dps doesn't really go down because the demons are doing the damage not you, and you can make up a tiny bit of those shards by using demonwrath on the move. I mean, compare that to a class that primarily relies on hard cast spells and how whenever they're moving their dps pretty much drops to 0 and you see it's miles better than that, right?

Well yes and no, what you said is true on paper, but what many people (including myself) found out after playing it was that since both demons and empowerment have such short durations, you need to be constantly recasting them or else you lose all that momentum. Keep in mind if your demons time out, you need shards to get more. For example, if you want to resummon your imps and you have no shards, you need on average 4 casts of shadowbolt. At a 1.5 sec cast time (and I'm being pretty generous with haste on that), that's 6 seconds of nothing but shadowbolt, and that doesn't even count the delay the imps have on spawn, and the time you need to cast empowerment before they REALLY start doing any damage. So it's really unforgiving if you have to move and lose shard generation, and demonwrath doesn't really help unless you have a few targets for it to hit, since 15% is pretty low.

[Gaidax]

can you stop being an apologist for this whole class already? locks are shite through and through and you are not doing it any favours defending it

If you want a high-five and circle jerk around nonsense like that you can find plenty at official forums. If you would remove your doom and gloom hate-shades for a moment, you would see that I indeed agree that a buff is in order, but what is needed is far from the magnitude some of you storymakers make sound.

Yes, take Legion Demo, add 15% to its output across the board and it will be damn strong, despite its limitations.


Also, as for apologist, you can see that I am pretty balanced in my opinion, I do err on a positive side, but after playing Warlock for 11 years I am confident it will be all right. All this shitposting like your fine example happens every damn time and every damn time we end up being one of the best DPS specs live one way or another, so I am not really impressed by all the QQ shitstorm around. It got old for me back in late 2000s.

[mkultra55]

There's so much about Demo I love. I've always enjoyed Summoner type Classes and the concept behind the Artifact both from a Lore perspective and all the little flavor tidbits is great.

That said the one thing that makes the spec feel a little cumbersome to me is the cast time on the Summons. I wish Call Dreadstalkers and HoG were instant cast. It would make the spec flow so much better IMO. They're already CD or Resource limited abilities and Demo already has to hard cast Shadowbolt and Empower regularly. That's enough to keep in line with other casters.

Summons are just DoT's with an external graphic. They have short durations and should be mechanically similar to Agony and Corruption for Affliction.

[Shoeboots]

can you stop being an apologist for this whole class already? locks are shite through and through and you are not doing it any favours defending it

You don't have to agree with him but he is making arguments and backing them up with examples. For you to just call him an apologist and declare the warlocks are categorically garbage with no explanation doesn't do anything but make me dismiss anything else you have to say.

[Deleted]

So I've been seeing a lot of people talk about Demo's movement capability, but most people say that it's movement is crap when it seems like one of the most mobile casters in the game to me. I mean, the demons are just walking dots that deal a lot of damage so even though you lose 1 to 3 shards whenever you move, your actual dps doesn't really go down because the demons are doing the damage not you, and you can make up a tiny bit of those shards by using demonwrath on the move. I mean, compare that to a class that primarily relies on hard cast spells and how whenever they're moving their dps pretty much drops to 0 and you see it's miles better than that, right?

But the demons hit like wet noodles without demonic empowerment

And without Shadowbolt you run out of shards so when the lot you have out despawn you got nothing

[Orwell7]

So I've been seeing a lot of people talk about Demo's movement capability, but most people say that it's movement is crap when it seems like one of the most mobile casters in the game to me. I mean, the demons are just walking dots that deal a lot of damage so even though you lose 1 to 3 shards whenever you move, your actual dps doesn't really go down because the demons are doing the damage not you, and you can make up a tiny bit of those shards by using demonwrath on the move. I mean, compare that to a class that primarily relies on hard cast spells and how whenever they're moving their dps pretty much drops to 0 and you see it's miles better than that, right?

The same could be said to BM hunters. The pet is doing your damage right? But you need to cast Kill Command, which cost Focus, which you generate via active abilities.
If you don't do anything your pet won't do anything.

Same for demonology - if you don't summon your pets (which all cost soul shards), and dont empower them, you lose damage.
Also, which class is dependent "primarily" on "hard cast spells"? Please elaborate, we will make you point invalid.

[FertsBlert]

What we are seeing now would require about a 50% damage buff though lol

And demo still wouldn't be good at target switching or cleave and be screwed by it's immobility

Sadly I think you are being wildly over-optimistic if you think we're going to get anything close to the current T18/trinket nonsense, it is just ridiculously overpowered and if you bake it into the artefact you basically screw players without that, I really do not like gear crutches

All the evidence we have seen is that dps is being fine tuned, we aren't seeing big changes

and demo? Well, they just nerfed Thlkiel's Consumption lol

Also note that in current live, you are ignoring like half your rotation, it's literally a three button spec where you ignore everything other than spamming Shadowbolt, Hand and DE, you don't even have to bother about using Hand efficiently.

Why are you playing warlock then?

Locks have been all about the gear crutches since vanilla man, it just that for most of the time locks are comparable to other specs then they get the right trinkets and are suddenly OMGWTFBBQ overpowered. This time though locks have serious design issues which make them unpleasant before you get the gear (or after the gear you had is outdated by leveling if you have the T18\trinket) more than likely there will be trinkets down the track that make locks insane AGAIN. Just seems to be the way it's done.