[Suggestion] Warlock (extra) pet mechanic

[gevarya]

I've been playing on my warlock for a very long time and as a class that specializes in all demonic arts I find it quite restricted with just 4 pets (+ 2 enslaved ones).
So I came up with an idea (well not mine but rather from another small game from the 90's).

Here goes;
Basically there's a lot of demons out there. My idea involves creating a new soulstone (not the existing one but rather a new soulstone. Let's call it soulcrystal to avoid confusion). We make it cost like 1 soulshard.

This is used to capture the soul of another demon (mobs in world or dungeons; basically anything you enslave). To make it not so easy to capture one's soul, let's go with a weakened demon (e.g. only able to capture if the health is at or below 25%). With the soul of that demon stored inside your soulcrystal you can keep it indefinitely (let's say the same as spellstone/firestone).

Now for the purpose; this soulcrystal can be used in pve/pvp (exclude pvp if some demons prove to be OP) to release this demon to do your bidding. Basically a combination of enslave demon but then saved for another occasion.

That's the basic idea.

Some variations I thought up first/later;
- Soulcrystal could store demons and save them as your pet. This would come close to hunter way of taming pets. It would also contradict the lore of how warlocks don't care for their pets so much to keep them forever unlike hunters (sidenote: funny how our demons always are the same name-wise. DK pets are more realistic to the idea; using random generated names to make ghouls random)

- To avoid warlocks stocking up on all kinds of demons perhaps limit the amount of soulcrystals to 1 (making it unique). To make it different from hunters we make the soulcrystal consumed upon breaking it (using it). Then means you can save it but only used 1 time. If you want to use an enslaved demon again you need to create a soulcrystal and capture one again.
Downside is that it's not so practical when using in raids since it's harder to quit the raid just to go capture a new demon for your next encounter.

- Since enslaved demons isn't a new mechanic in the game there's not much tweaking (from my perspective) needed). The skills are the same as when you're on the spot where you enslave the demon. The only thing that's different is that you are "having" the enslaved demon later on (called when needed from the soulcrystal).

- Perhaps make the enslave demons scale with the player's level. This allows players to go capture low level demons and still make them useful on higher level fights. This would likely require more tweaking like the doomguard scaling.

- Make the demon start out enslaved when used. Perhaps 10 min enslaved - 20 min cooldown.



If you have more suggestions/ideas surrounding this topic please share.

[CrimsonRipper]

There's a lot of demons in Outland... but hardly any at 80 in Northrend... save for a few dogs in Borean Tundra, and the rest of them in a small-cave on a remote island near Icecrown.

If we're going to see any more of the legion (I doubt that until say after Ulduar or at next expansion), then this would be an interesting concept to toss around.

Additionally, each pet we get is meant to fulfill a certain role. The imp is ranged dps with his fireball spammage, the succubus is CC and threat reduction for pve, the voidwalker is for tanking small mobs, sometimes small raid bosses like one of the Horsemen, felpuppy is for affliction dps/pvp utilities. As for Felguard, Infernal and Doomguard, those are your high damage and special pets.

What else would we have access to? What demon could we enslave really?

There are Shivara, Nathrezim, Eredar, Pitlords, Eyeball monsters... k not sure about those.

Other than that our selection of demons seem pretty much covered.

[Luztra]

This idea has been tossed around a lot in the past. Maybe not this specific form of it but talk about warlocks being able to perma-enslave demons from the world. Blizz has always turned it down, not wanting to turn locks into quasi-hunters. Although I'd say it would be kinda cool to have one of those Satyr demons like from Felwood in my arsenal.

And a small bit on the names thing you brought up, typical lore requires a person to know the demons real name in order to summon him from another realm. This is probably why warlocks stick with the same demon names, but just my guess.

[jjam6217]

Plus it would end up in more horrible pet balancing issues, i'd rather current pets become equally useful and sometime down the line some new skins (Outland voidwalkers w/ armour etc)

[Verth]

Let's say you find a realy awesome demon, enslave him and go raid.
Then a noob pulls and the tank is AFK. The raid wipes and the demon is lost.

The idea of another demon would be good, but taming one to help you is not like it.

[gevarya]

while it is true about the statement that blizz didn't want to turn locks in hunters. But look at the situation now. Call me crazy but what I'm seeing right now is the merging of classes (class skills then).

To summarize:
- in the past all classes were unique. Every class brought their own role/utility into the raid. For paladins it was auras. For Shamans it was totems. Other classes had buffs. Now the buffs from different classes doesn't stack anymore. What blizz did with this was basically "if you don't have a shaman for his totem, don't worry. Just bring a paladin since his blessing of wisdom is the same as the mana spring totem." "Need an attack power buff? Don't worry. Plenty of other classes that can bring it with them."

- same thing about the class roles. While it changed for the better (kinda) it also made many classes not so required. A warrior can tank as effective as a paladin, druid or death knight (considering that the player isn't unskilled). Same thing with healers. DPS is even easier. Any class can easily fit into the dps role and do it quite effectively. The only distinction was their utility but that's slowly fading now as many buffs are sharing the same category now.

So conclusion; since blizz is intending to have easy replacement for any class (which is quite nice since raid groups are small now compared to the past) what better replacement for the pet class than by another pet class. Hunter and warlock are the only 2 (effective) pet classes in WoW at the moment.