Possible Demonology Changes

[Deleted]

Hello fellow warlocks. I have been playing a warlock on and off since start of Wrath, with it becoming my main during end of Cataclysm. Over the years I watched warlocks grow in power, only to have a sudden fall from grace with the patch 7.0. Now I am not saying warlocks are terrible DPS, it's just that they feel more clunky and require more micromanaging than most other pure DPS classes. Since I main Demonology, I decided to put my ideas on paper and present you with my view of how warlocks could look, while still retaining the fabled class fantasy Blizzard envisioned for them. This is a very lengthy post, it took quite some time for me to create it and I didn't want to post it in other threads that talk about possible warlock changes and future expectations, because of its size.

When talking about Demonology, I have to say that I am very happy with current fantasy design it has. At first, I was very skeptical with the removal of Metamorphosis based game-play, but I grew to love this fantasy of a caster that summons hordes of demons to do his bidding. What I don't like about demonology is the fact 80% of those demons are imps and feldogs, and I have addressed this in my version of a rework. I also don't really understand why would a caster who summons demons who fight for him and take bulk of the damage, be so very tough and resilient, but that's not so much of a burning issue atm, so I haven't addresses it. The spec changes I envisioned haven't took other specs and PvP version of Demo into consideration, so there might be some overlapping, but noting to great. Also, as English isn't my native language, there might be some mistakes, but you will be able to understand most of what I wrote. With all that said, here is how I would change demonology.


MASTERY CHANGES
With big changes to Demonic Empowerment (further down in the text), Master Demonologist also needs a major overhaul. A direct damage increase like "Increase damage of your demons by X" is rather boring an uninventive. Instead, this new mastery would heavily affect Demonology's gameplay and make master a very viable stat.

REMOVED: Mastery: Master Demonologist: Demonic Empowerment also increases the damage of your demons by 14.0%.
NEW: Mastery: Potent Summons: Your non permanent demons last X% longer. Your permanent demons deals X% more damage.


SPELL CHANGES

Demonic Empowerment

Demonic Empowerment is one of the main reasons Demonology feels tiresome, boring and cluncky as hell. It's just terrible when you summon a powerful demon via talent or a CD just to have it hit like a wet noodle if you don't buff it with DE. I understand reasoning and fantasy behind it, of a summoner empowering his minions, but I think implementation of this spell was completely wrong (and this is something Blizzard acknowledged). To further this problem even more, Demonology's mastery is tied to this spell. I think removing this spell wouldn't be such a good idea. Instead I think it should be reworked in a strong buff spell with a lengthy CD. With that in mind, taking Tier 4 talent Soul Harvest would give us 3 CDs which is a bit too much, so this talent would be reworked to accommodate changes to DE.

Core Changes

OLD Demonic Empowerment (buff on minions): Empowers your active demons with dark energies, increasing their haste by 50% and health by 20% for 12 sec.
NEW Demonic Empowerment (buff on caster): Strengthen your connection with Twisting Nether, empowering your active demons and all future summoned demons with dark energies, increasing their haste by 10% and damage by 10%. Instant cast. Last 20 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.

Related Artifact Changes

OLD Summoner's Prowess: Increases the haste and health provided by Demonic Empowerment by 2/4/6%.
NEW Summoner's Prowess: Increase the haste and damage provided by Demonic Empowerment by 5/10/15%

Related Talent Changes

REMOVED Power Trip: Demonic Empowerment has a 50% chance to generate 1 Soul Shard when used in combat.

OLD Soul Harvest: Increases your damage and your pets' damage by 20%. Lasts 10 sec, increased by 2 sec for each target afflicted by your Doom up to a maximum of 30 sec.
NEW Soul Harvest: Each time you generate a Soul Shard, cooldown of Demonic Empowerment is reduced by 0.5 seconds.
---
Demonwrath

Demonwrath is one of those spell that are really poorly designed. While it's true that it gives us something to cast while moving, it's still very strange and really doesn't fit too well in overall class design of a mighty summoner who uses demons to hurt its enemies. Therefore, Demonwrath should be completely removed and instead of it, Summon Darkglare should be a new baseline spell for AoE. However, seeing that summoning Darkglare would, at the same time, be a powerful single target spell, it should be tweaked in a way that discourages it's use on single target.

Core Changes

REMOVED Demonwraith: Causes your demons to crackle with demonic energy, dealing Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yds of any of your demons over 3 sec. Castable while moving.
Demonwrath damage has a 15% chance to generate 1 Soul Shard.
NEW Summon Darkglare: Summons a Darkglare for 10 sec that launches Eye Lasers at all targets afflicted by your Doom. Darkglare deals 5% increased damage for each target afflicted by your Doom, beyond the first one. Instant cast. 3 Soul Shards. 10 sec cooldown

Related Artifact Changes

REMOVED Legionwrath: Increases damage dealt by Demonwrath by 10/20/30%
NEW Ocular Rifts: Increases damage dealt by Darkglare by 5/10/15%

Related Talent Changes

REMOVED Summon Darkglare: Summons a Darkglare for 12 sec that launches Eye Lasers at all targets afflicted by your Doom, dealing Shadow damage. Instant cast. 1 Soul Shard. 24 sec cooldown.


ARTIFACT CHANGES

Thal'kiel's Consumption

Thal'kiel's Consumption is a very strong active artifact ability thar fits Demonology's spec fantasy really well. However, with removal of Demonic Empowerment and minion HP buff, this spell should be tweaked a bit to compensate.

OLD Thal'kiel's Consumption: Thal'kiel drains 8% of the life from your demon servants and unleashes a blast of Shadow damage at your current target equal to the life he stole. 2 sec cast. 45 sec
NEW Thal'kiel's Consumption: Thal'kiel drains 12% of the life from your demon servants and unleashes a blast of Shadow damage at your current target equal to the life he stole. 2 sec cast. 45 sec
--
The Expendables
This artifact perk further increases Demonology's ramp up time. In order to reduce it, a very simple yet effective QoL change should take place.

REMOVED The Expendables: When your Wild Imps expire or die, your other demons are inspired and gain 1% additional damage, stacking up to 10 times.
NEW Reimpforcement: Whenever you summon Wild Imps, your other demons are inspired and gain 1% additional damage for each summoned Wild Imp, stacking up to 10 times.



TALENT CHANGES

2nd Tier

Impending Doom

Even with upcoming buffs to Impending Doom, I still think it's a kind of lackluster and boring talent. Giving it more synergy with summoned demons would be much better while still mainlining a strong fantasy.

(CURRENT) OLD Impending Doom: Doom also summons 1 Wild Imp when it deals damage.
NEW Impending Doom: Your Wild Imp's attack on targets with Doom have a chance to trigger it prematurely and instantly deal 50% of it's damage. (The original DoT is still left on the target and ticks normaly)
--
Improved Dreadstalkers

With Impending Doom now being a single target choice, Improved Dreadstalkers should be reworked to reflect this change. They should be redesigned as a talent for movement heavy fights. With this in mind, PvP talent Master Summoner should be reworked to accommodate this change.

OLD Improved Dreadstalkers: Call Dreadstalkers now also summons 2 Wild Imp.
NEW Fel Hunt: Reduce cast time of Call Dreadstalkers by 0.5 seconds and make it castable while moving.

3rd Tier

Mortal Coil

A spell that has absolutely no place in PvE talent tree at all. Extremely situational and picked by almost no one... ever. Needs to be removed with something that offers more (useful) utility.

REMOVED Mortal Coil: Horrifies an enemy target into fleeing, incapacitating for 3 sec and healing you for 11% of maximum health. Instant cast.
NEW Stored Souls: Your Soulstone is now an instant cast and reviews your target with 100% health.

4th Tier

With Power Trip removed, a new talent is required to fill its place. According to Icy Veins, this tier offers strong damage increases. Since Power Trip fiddled with a maintenance spell, the new talent will also be themed around one.

NEW Demonic Alchemy: Life Tap restores 20% more mana.

6th tier

Grimoire of Supremacy

Bad spell with underperforming demons. Bad interactions with almost everything that deals with Inernal/Doomguard. One of the ideas is to buff these demons, that's boring. This is a better solution:

OLD Grimoire of Supremacy: You are able to maintain control over even greater demons indefinitely, allowing you to summon a Doomguard or Infernal as a permanent pet.
NEWGrimoire of Supremacy: Summon Infernal and Summon Doomguard gain another charge. They still share cooldown . (You can also have both Infernal and Doomguard up simultaneously, but not 2 demons of the same kind)
--
Grimoire of Service

Rather poor choice now that we have strong Supremacy. Instead of doing what it currently does, Grimoire of Service becomes a passive spell and fills the role of Grimoire of Synergy. This change would probably require some tweaks to the way permanent pets work, but it would still be fun. In case this is too complicated for multi-million dollar company that is Blizzard, there is a simpler solution that won't cost us 2 raid tiers.

OLD Grimoire of Service: Summons a second demon which fights for you for 25 sec and deals 100% increased damage. The demon will immediately use one of its special abilities when summoned. Instant cast. 1.5 min cooldown.
NEW Grimoire of Service: You can now control 2 permanent demons.
ALTERNATE NEW Grimoire of Service: You can now control 2 permanent demons. Second demon does not have any special abilities and follows the same commands as the first demon.
--
Grimoire of Synergy

As mentioned above, new Grimoire of Service will fill out the passive role of Synergy, but with more appealing "visuals". This leaves us with Synergy being removed in favor of something more interesting.

REMOVED Grimoire of Synergy: Damage done by you or your demon has a chance to grant the other one 40% increased damage for 15 sec
NEW Grimoire of Abundance: Hand of Gul'dan, Call Dreadstalkers and Summon Darkglare, have 33% chance to summon double the amount of demons. These demons are unaffected by Potent Summons.

7th Tier

With removal of Summon Darkglare, a new talent needs to take its place. I have been tinkering for a long time, and I really think a master demonologist that commands a skull of one of the most powerful summoners who ever lived should be able to summon an extremely powerful demon. For a cost, of course. This would be and extremely powerful, yet gimmicky spell (something along the lines of Surrender to Madness and Vanilla version of Summon Infernal and Summon Doomguard) and as such, it would not be suitable for all instanced PvE encounters.

NEW Ritual of the Pit: Use all your demonic knowledge to summon and bind a powerful Pit Lord for 40 seconds. Pit Lord has a strong single target and AoE attacks. Cost: 5 soul shards. 80% mana, 80% health. 10 seconds cast time. 5 min cooldoown

Pit Lord's Abilities:
Demonic Impalement: Pit Lord continuously impales his primary target, dealing strong physical damage.
Rain of Terror: Fel meteors while Pit Lord is active, hitting all enemy targets around him (something like old Starfall from druids).


SET BONUS CHANGES
With the new mastery, 4-piece ability of Legacy of Azj'Aqir becomes a bit too much.

OLD Legacy of Azj'Aqir (4) set bonus: Dreadstalkers last 4 sec longer.
NEW Legacy of Azj'Aqir (4) set bonus: Dreadstalkers deal 35% more damage.

[Deleted]

too powerful changes. well tried

[Walrock]

I'm sure you put quite some effort into this, but you should post those things on the official forums if you want to make an impact.

And I'm gonna leave what Ghostcrawler, a former Dev, said days ago about feedback:
"So there is this (somewhat insulting) maxim that gets floated around that players are supposedly great at identifying problems and terrible at suggesting solutions. I don’t like repeating it, because it has this unhelpful implication that players are stupid.

Players aren’t stupid. They just don’t know the whole code base. I don’t know the whole code base. The tech director probably doesn’t know the whole code base.

Usually, the actual issue is that in software development, it’s often really hard for people not intimately familiar with a specific part of the code to predict how easy or hard an idea will be to implement. You get better at it of course, but I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years now, and I still get surprised when solution X takes 4 months to implement and nearly-identical solution Y takes 10 minutes.

Players are about as far removed from the code base as one can be, so often the solutions they come up with aren’t feasible, sometimes for very pedantic reasons.

There are other reasons the suggestion won’t work. Maybe it just feels wildly inconsistent to the rest of the game. Maybe it would cause a lot of bugs. Maybe it would be easy to exploit. Maybe it would cause weird player behavior.

So, yes, strictly speaking if you want to be as efficient as possible in your feedback, focus on explaining the problem. State the problem very clearly. Don’t assume the reader, even a dev, understands your shorthand. You might end up talking about two totally different things. Then state the consequences for the problem. That’s it. Suggestions on how to fix it are probably most useful as a way for us to reverse engineer what the specific problem is, but again, it’s more efficient just to state that clearly in the first place.

As an aside, I’ll risk making another sweeping generalization here and opine that player feedback is nearly always too long. There must be this other maxim somewhere that the length of a post is somehow proportional to the strength of the post, but that’s just not true in my experience. Players love bullets. Posts with lots of bullets get upvoted, as if the writer must certainly be an authority on a topic if they can come up with so many things that are busted or so many reasons why something being busted is bad. But longer isn’t automatically better. Longer is automatically less efficient however. You are probably burying your good stuff in a sea of words.

We are busy. You don’t want to make us digest a wall of text just to distill out the really critical information. You want to write like Hemingway: use just enough words to get your point across, and no more."

TLDR: Good feedback= describe the problem, short and direct, no suggestions, few words

[casterbator]

too powerful changes. well tried

I wonder how can you understand the power of it, he didn't list any damage changes to anything.


These are required QoL changes mostly and Rixos did a much better job than the current warlock developers.

Not only these changes are original but they are also well-thought and in line with a summoner class.

[Cheze]

I like the idea of re-imagining empowerment as a longish CD rather than a rotational ability, but this would leave the rotation with an awful lot of shadowbolt/demonbolt spam in it

[Tinkabell]

Thanks However, I can't post this on official forum, since I have an EU account and it's a well known fact that EU forums are ignored by the devs. Even if I could and did post it, it would probably be ignored as were hundreds of suggestions made by warlocks during alpha. I just wrote this for fun and to start a conversation about would a revamp similar to this one actually be good and something demo players would enjoy.

If you want, I could post it on the US forum and give you the link for it and give you credit.

[Deleted]

What changes are too powerful in your opinion?

You would have too much demons active in the same time with your changes (mastery), that would result in a too strong Thal'kiel Cosumption i think. You also have improved the damage of TC i see, the burst would be insane. Okay you've removed Imp from doom but still.

To be fair I'm not really convinced by most of your changes because you want to modify how it works instead of just improve spells that are not working perfectly currently. Demo really doesn't need a full rework.

One of the few idea you had that i really like, is the change about The expandables, clearly it would works better in that way.

[Deleted]

I like the idea of re-imagining empowerment as a longish CD rather than a rotational ability, but this would leave the rotation with an awful lot of shadowbolt/demonbolt spam in it

The ratio between builder/spender would be still the same, so you would just HoG more frequently.

[Deleted]

This is exactly what I've always wanted with demo warlocks. You put my thoughts into words and did that great. Of course it looks OP at a first glance, but number balancing will of course be a thing. This specc would just be more awesome than the current one and that is what, I think, warlocks currently lack. Dogs and imps for a master in summoning? No thanks.

[Lucrece]

I like the idea of re-imagining empowerment as a longish CD rather than a rotational ability, but this would leave the rotation with an awful lot of shadowbolt/demonbolt spam in it

You mean like destruction warlocks?

What caster doesn't use fillers most of the time unless it is to renew dots? That's why they're called fillers.

You want to add rotational buttons, make deathglare baseline on a 12 sec cd.

[Deleted]

This is exactly what I've always wanted with demo warlocks. You put my thoughts into words and did that great. Of course it looks OP at a first glance, but number balancing will of course be a thing. This specc would just be more awesome than the current one and that is what, I think, warlocks currently lack. Dogs and imps for a master in summoning? No thanks.

Glad you like it ^^

[Joryy]

I think most of your suggestions are sweet. I absolutely agree that
a) Baseline AoE should be a demon summon
and
b) Empower should be a cooldown (THE cooldown).

Grimoire of abundance is also sweet, though it would probably make more sense without the randomness ~ 1 extra DS/imp.

The new mastery idea is cool, but it has problems with breakpoints and haste breakpoints and quadratic scaling. I also feel the feeling of wanting a big splashy summon too -- why does the summoner archtype spec get upstaged by sindragosa?

[Deleted]

I think most of your suggestions are sweet. I absolutely agree that
a) Baseline AoE should be a demon summon

I don't really know for aoe, you and OP seem to think that Demonwraith is useless as it, is but i really don't share that opinion. This can be usefull in PvP just to generate more shards and also probably our main spell to detect invisible foes. If we could only use Darkglare we would never be able to have those advantages, and i would see it as a nerf of our possibilities.

Currently when I have to move in ToV M on Odyn every few seconds to dodge orbs, go to runes (which are sometimes on the other end of the room from where I'm standing), switch targets all the time etc., I lose so much ramp time it's just stupid. That's why my guild put me to just focus on boss and ignore everything else. And that's not interesting or engaging. With changes like these, I would be able to switch targets while maintaining good damage on my primary target. On fight like Odyn I would also be able to move more with talents like Fel Hunt and baseline Darkglare without losing insane amounts of DPS I currently do.

You have to play play with darkglare so you can have more mobility and have less problem when you have to move. Also it makes easier P1 and P2.
1st demo on that fight on Warcraftlogs is also playing AOE's style, but i admit i can't tell how he got so much DPS, i know he has the kazzak's belt & Sin'dorei but still.