[BETA] Demonology Warlock Discussion

[Yorindesarin]

no, the problem with doom isnt that its useless on adds, the problem with doom is that the moment you get doom to tick below every 15, impending doom essentially becomes the go-to talent for everything except burst aoe. i will agree tho that implosion competing with impending doom and improved dreadstalker seem out of place but i think that has more to do with lack of room in our talent tree than anything else. also i wouldnt mind seeing some "summon wild imp" protection added to impending doom so that if a target dies with doom on them but without doom having dealt its dmg then you would either get a shard or get 1 wild imp that way doom is always useful even in burst aoe.

See I think the issue personally with doom is the fact that it takes too long for the pay out so to speak. If they made it a 30 second DoT that ticked every 6-7 seconds~ and made it back the way it is now (crits = imps) tweak impending doom so that it doubles the imps on crit or some such. I feel as if Doom is in Demo right now for the sake of it being Doom. It's literally no longer really a special DoT like it should be. Its just something you throw up wait the duration of and get a pay out. Kind of a bad idea imo. Making it have smaller tick durations again and actually interact with the new playstyle would work a lot better. We already have quite a lot of shard gen. Doom giving shards seems a bit odd to me.... The idea of a DoT is that damage is spread out over the duration of the period which allows you the safety net of "Okay so I wasn't doing XYZ. BUT at least Doom ticked and gave me an imp".

Also I finally see a dreadlord mention... To then have it gone. :'( I think their whole "demonology can only control X much of the legions minions" is bullshit. Imo if we turned the skull to our side... We could find a dreadlord who wants to up his ranks/become the top dog and does so via working with us to destroy the legion. Though I guess you could argue if this happened eventually wouldn't demonology warlocks become the bad guys... YES WE WOULD SCREW YOUR MENTALITY OF "the hero has to be good". We are Warlocks damnit. We get power via any means necessary!

[Esinar]

So they haven't worked with demonology warlock's mechanic yet. All these weeks spent... just to choose which demon they should use for the lvl 100 talent. From Inquisitor - Dreadlord - Beholder (using ToT Durumu's model)

This.

So many people are fixating on talking about the Inquisitor change, but hardly anyone is talking about the fact that warlocks seem to be the only class build after build with no significant changes... Hell, Affliction has had absolutely NO changes (bar bug fixes and some minor number tweaks) since it's initial release back in early December ffs... it's almost like they're ignoring feedback... one person says "that's okay" and suddenly Blizzard believes that the rest of the negative feedback is wrong. I'm not on the US forums, so please somebody go there and make them listen. Would love Blizzard to actually pay attention and give us their feedback on upcoming changes or ideas.

[Jessicka]

This.

So many people are fixating on talking about the Inquisitor change, but hardly anyone is talking about the fact that warlocks seem to be the only class build after build with no significant changes... Hell, Affliction has had absolutely NO changes (bar bug fixes and some minor number tweaks) since it's initial release back in early December ffs... it's almost like they're ignoring feedback... one person says "that's okay" and suddenly Blizzard believes that the rest of the negative feedback is wrong. I'm not on the US forums, so please somebody go there and make them listen. Would love Blizzard to actually pay attention and give us their feedback on upcoming changes or ideas.

We have a talent that's Imps riding Felstalkers. The 'cool aesthetic' is everything for this spec.

[Esinar]

We have a talent that's Imps riding Felstalkers. The 'cool aesthetic' is everything for this spec.

Whilst the visuals are ultimately important, they shouldn't be Blizzard's primary concern this early in the development cycle. Making sure this new spec plays well and can work efficiently without being severely punished in many encounters should be the number one priority... aesthetics should come later. I wouldn't design a race car by first making sure it looked cool.

You say Imps riding Felstalkers is one of the cool things that's everything to the spec, but Improved Dreadstalkers is completely devalued by haste making Impending Doom a straight-up DPS increase at higher gear levels. Lets fix the problems first. I'd hate for it to get close to Legion and there to be no changes because "visuals" are everything.

[Walterion]

Whilst the visuals are ultimately important, they shouldn't be Blizzard's primary concern this early in the development cycle. Making sure this new spec plays well and can work efficiently without being severely punished in many encounters should be the number one priority... aesthetics should come later. I wouldn't design a race car by first making sure it looked cool.

You say Imps riding Felstalkers is one of the cool things that's everything to the spec, but Improved Dreadstalkers is completely devalued by haste making Impending Doom a straight-up DPS increase at higher gear levels. Lets fix the problems first. I'd hate for it to get close to Legion and there to be no changes because "visuals" are everything.

Agreed. I do hope that they are actually working on it and then release a lot of stuff together in one bundle, rather than small tunes every patch. Pet AI is a big issue that this spec will run into if it is not properly tuned.

[Jessicka]

Whilst the visuals are ultimately important, they shouldn't be Blizzard's primary concern this early in the development cycle. Making sure this new spec plays well and can work efficiently without being severely punished in many encounters should be the number one priority... aesthetics should come later. I wouldn't design a race car by first making sure it looked cool.

You say Imps riding Felstalkers is one of the cool things that's everything to the spec, but Improved Dreadstalkers is completely devalued by haste making Impending Doom a straight-up DPS increase at higher gear levels. Lets fix the problems first. I'd hate for it to get close to Legion and there to be no changes because "visuals" are everything.

I actually hate the talent. It's entirely aesthetic over substance, and something of a joke. But others seem to think it's cool, so that's fine I don't have to pick it.

- - - Updated - - -

Agreed. I do hope that they are actually working on it and then release a lot of stuff together in one bundle, rather than small tunes every patch. Pet AI is a big issue that this spec will run into if it is not properly tuned.

There are other specs that aren't even playable yet, Destruction, Frost, for example, so I'm not expecting miracles right away; the priority should be getting stuff into at least a playable state.

[bio347]

This.

So many people are fixating on talking about the Inquisitor change, but hardly anyone is talking about the fact that warlocks seem to be the only class build after build with no significant changes... Hell, Affliction has had absolutely NO changes (bar bug fixes and some minor number tweaks) since it's initial release back in early December ffs... it's almost like they're ignoring feedback... one person says "that's okay" and suddenly Blizzard believes that the rest of the negative feedback is wrong. I'm not on the US forums, so please somebody go there and make them listen. Would love Blizzard to actually pay attention and give us their feedback on upcoming changes or ideas.

You're completely blind if you haven't noticed people whining after literally every patch that nothing has changed. Seriously. It's basically all that goes on around here.

[Baconeggcheese]

but hardly anyone is talking about

You've hardly read any posts then.

We're bitchin bout it plenty. You should hear me in mumble too, its just a symphony of me going *OH HEY LOOK, MORE WARRIOR AND MAGE CHANGES GO FIGURE!*

[Soulzar]

One of the loudest complaints of Demo the first week was how hard it was to track your pets in the default UI. A week later we have a new build with built in tracking for Demonology Summons in default UI. Just because we don't have sweeping spell changes [yet] doesn't mean they are not listening to feedback.

Seed of Corruption Sow the Seeds bug has been fixed, tormented Souls spawn rate has been adjusted, Infernal is no longer the size of the world, Shadowy Inspiration correctly works off Empowerment and not HoG, Demonic Calling proc adjusted, Change to Empowerment charges, experimentation with Inquisitor talent demon, Multiple pvp talent changes/additions, UI updates

Our list doesn't compare to some classes, but its not like we've been left alone on an island to be forgotten by time.

[Xandy]

I know we've seen some fixes and some minor changes, but a lot of the player feedback has been pretty drastic and we haven't gotten a response on that front which is frustrating. I don't feel abandoned by the devs but it is certainly frustrating to put a lot of time into suggestions/alpha feedback and to receive no response regarding our suggestions.

[Zinnin]

I am honestly bewildered that you're telling players that want to have fun using these talents they've earned through playing the game and levelling, that the fun is in working out not to.

- - - Updated - - -

I think maybe people might like working out how much character power they've gained, but then tend to be confused and frustrated when they work out that they haven't.

I think that you are distorting what i'm saying.

There are 243 talent combinations when a class has 5 rows of talents. If talents are of varying levels of depth, effect different gameplay aspects, and in general are targeting different types of players, encounter scenarios, and difficulty level there are bound to be some talents that don't work 100% effectively with each other. There is also bound to be some talents that work slightly over 100% effectively with each other.

What talents do and don't work together is entirely based on the scenario. Are you doing single target? Power Trip and Improved Dreadstalkers work extremely well together. Hand of Doom and Demonbolt don't work well at all. Sustained AoE? Impending Doom and Demonbolt work well together, Implosion and Inquisitor don't. Burst AoE? Implosion and Inquisitor work together, but at a single target loss, however there is the option of Implosion and Demonic Servitude: Infernal which would replace your 24 second cooldown with a 60 second cooldown that has no cost to you.

243 talent combinations, out of those only 27 are builds that have both Inquisitor and Implosion.

My opinion is that there are so many varied talent combinations (that will clearly require more tuning) and that players should be able to explore those 243 talent combinations. If everything was equal, didn't effect each other and there was no 'right' or 'wrong' exploring those talent combinations wouldn't be nearly as exciting.

I have surprised myself playing 7.0 demo a few times by trying talent combinations that I wrote off at first and then realized were better than expected. I've also been surprised by how varied my build options could be and I still got about the same results.

There are hundreds of different scenarios and encounters in WoW, I find matching those encounters to the 243 talent combinations to be exciting. There will be times where Inquisitor / Implosion isn't the best choice. There will most likely be some scenarios where it is.

[Esinar]

You're completely blind if you haven't noticed people whining after literally every patch that nothing has changed. Seriously. It's basically all that goes on around here.

You've hardly read any posts then. We're bitchin bout it plenty.

Hehe, maybe I should've been clearer. I'm talking about the feedback threads on the official Legion forums not here. Ofc people moan here that's a given, but Devs don't reply here do they?

I know we've seen some fixes and some minor changes, but a lot of the player feedback has been pretty drastic and we haven't gotten a response on that front which is frustrating. I don't feel abandoned by the devs but it is certainly frustrating to put a lot of time into suggestions/alpha feedback and to receive no response regarding our suggestions.

Agreed. It gets to me that feedback from other classes seems to get a lot more attention proved by either a Dev reply or by an immediate change to play style, where as our feedback threads don't. It would put me at ease just to know what their thinking is on certain aspects.

Maybe they are taking everything we say on board and we can see some upcoming changes in the near future, but going back to what I said before, this doesn't mean people should stop pushing for answers and pushing for changes to the important stuff, rather than slipping into a discussion of why we should or shouldn't have a certain model of Inquisitor or w/e BS that is. Worry about that after the 'core' issues have been addressed.

[Baconeggcheese]

I think that you are distorting what i'm saying. snip

I think what she said was fair in its meaning and isn't distorting much of anything.

The premise presented with dserv + gosac is an extreme, but its still very much the same ideology. The two talents are in direct opposition of each other, one actually makes the other weaker (as well as traits that do the same). Implosion is in direct opposition with 2 of our 100 talents, I don't see why one would defend that design.

Taking implosion with demonbolt is nearing the level of gosac+dserv, especially once you've gotten imp to the breach which sort of makes implosion a trap talent all together. The only thing intuitive about that is that you shouldn't take the two together pretty much ever outside of some crazy niche situation that blizzard would likely have to intentionally make. The same goes for dreadlord + implosion, one directly lowers the value of the other, the degree in which it does that isn't as important as the fact that it does it at all.

I don't believe (off the top of my head) we have any talent combinations currently that do something to that effect besides dserv+gosac, I'm not sure why you're so supportive of expanding that kind of thing from a design philosophy standpoint.

I apologize for being that guy but, I recall how much you enjoyed mop demo despite that being wholly one of the least intuitive designed specs that has ever been made. It's not exactly surprising to me that you would be defending something similarly complex yet unintuitive. Which is again the reason blizzard gave us for why they left demo under tuned on live and why its getting overhauled, because it was for a fact too complex for the average player... and the types of things you're defending now are just as if not more nuanced and complex.

I really have no clue how you genuinely expect a new or inexperienced player to wrap their head around such nuanced bits when they according to blizzard already can't handle wod demo which is largely far far easier to understand.

I'm talking about the feedback threads on the official Legion forums not here.

Feel free to do so instead of posting about it here, I sometimes consider posting in that thread with a like *hello? is anyone there?* but then go *meh* because frankly if they wanted to reply to the aff feedback or whatever they would.

I spent all of wod beta posting feedback and even got a response from celestalon once and then they proceeded to not change anything. So I'm pretty jaded about expecting much to come from our feedback. Responses don't mean much of anything either unless they flat out say they're changing something to something else.

[Gaidax]

I don't think the handholding and replies for moaning are needed, if they read it - it's already good then. If they would reply to every last thing, they would be busy developing customer relations all day instead of the damn game.

[Xandy]

I don't think the handholding and replies for moaning are needed, if they read it - it's already good then. If they would reply to every last thing, they would be busy developing customer relations all day instead of the damn game.

You're describing an extreme which contrasts the situation i think, no one is asking for their hand to be held nor are we moaning (well, most of us anyway). A lot of very good suggestions and feedback have been provided on the official forums, and all I'm asking for is some acknowledgement that specific issues are being addressed... a bloody sentence would do.

[bio347]

You're describing an extreme which contrasts the situation i think, no one is asking for their hand to be held nor are we moaning (well, most of us anyway). A lot of very good suggestions and feedback have been provided on the official forums, and all I'm asking for is some acknowledgement that specific issues are being addressed... a bloody sentence would do.

They have, in fact, given you your sentence. Multiple times, in multiple places. "We read everything on the forums." The world would be a better place if people would just believe that instead of being crybabies because dev-sama won't acknowledge me!~

[Baconeggcheese]

They have, in fact, given you your sentence. Multiple times, in multiple places. "We read everything on the forums." The world would be a better place if people would just believe that instead of being crybabies because dev-sama won't acknowledge me!~

People like you said shit like this all the way through wod beta all the way up until the point where they didn't listen to ANY of our feedback and changed nothing.

It's very clear that other classes / specs are getting more attention right now, which is fine if its just for right now. People are concerned because as recently as the last expansions beta the same thing happened and they never got around to us.

[Xandy]

They have, in fact, given you your sentence. Multiple times, in multiple places. "We read everything on the forums." The world would be a better place if people would just believe that instead of being crybabies because dev-sama won't acknowledge me!~

Apparently asking for feedback on specifics is conflated with being a moaning crybaby here. "We read everything on the forums" is not feedback, that's just a blanket statement which should be obvious to anyone in the alpha... I'm just asking for a response to specific big issue, a sentence here, a sentence there... the cornerstone to any healthy relationship is communication, which is a two way street; again, not asking for the whole fucking world here.

[Zinnin]

The premise presented with dserv + gosac is an extreme, but its still very much the same ideology. The two talents are in direct opposition of each other.

I disagree it's in direct opposition, and I've shown why. Minor negative synergy =/= complete opposition.

Taking implosion with demonbolt is nearing the level of gosac+dserv.

This isn't true. Implosion is on the GCD. In sustained use cases you want to Implosion when the Imps are about to expire. This mean that Implosion replaces using Demonbolt in that GCD, but since you should be timing Implosion at the end of their duration after that GCD is up the Imps should have been despawned anyways. Adding any active button at all will lower the value of Demonbolt slightly (Shadowflame, Grimoire of Service, Soul Harvest all technically lower the value of Demonbolt slightly), not just Implosion and in Implosion's case it will only lower the value of Demonbolt more than another active if you are often killing Wild Imps off far before their duration would normally end.

Example:
You are generating enough shards in between Call Dreadstalkers to cast Hand of Gul'dan once in most single target scenarios.
This means that you would never have more than one wave of Wild Imps at any given time. If you properly Implosion at the last ~2 seconds of Wild Imps duration, you are spending a GCD on Implosion every 15-17 seconds.

Shadow flame has a 14 second cooldown which means if you are using it on cooldown (Not capping charges) you are actually losing more Demonbolt casting time than Implosion.

I don't believe (off the top of my head) we have any talent combinations currently that do something to that effect besides dserv+gosac, I'm not sure why you're so supportive of expanding that kind of thing from a design philosophy standpoint.

I'm not supportive of talents canceling each other out 100%, which I've said. The fact you are distorting my posts to say that I am is going to make me step away from the conversation. I don't mind minor negative synergies, just like I don't mind minor positive synergies. Implosion and Inquisitor =/= Demonic Servitude and Grimoire of Sacrifice, and I find comparing the two silly.

Responses don't mean much of anything either unless they flat out say they're changing something to something else.

There are often changes based on player feedback. I remember Soul Shatter being removed and brought back due to player feedback. Just look at the subtlety changes recently, all due to feedback.

[OOMM]

I remember Soul Shatter being removed and brought back due to player feedback.

Wouldn't mind that back again or maybe I'm the only one who uses it all the time.