Demonology: A Detailed Critique and Analysis

[Mr. Elite]

Demonology: An Analysis

This is a post that is intended to CONSTRUCTIVELY criticize both the Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King models for the Demonology specialization, through both tier analysis and general design analysis as well as analyzing the demons themselves.

Some people may state that taking the time to write this is useless, but I am hoping some kind soul would be able to post it in the US/EU beta forums.

(Disclaimer, I know analyzing the trees in their current form might be stupid, but hey it is feedback that gives the developers the best ideas)


First let me start with my critiques of the design of the Demonology specialization.

My first character ever in the World of Warcraft was a Warlock. I started just after the start of Burning Crusade and leveled my Warlock through Demonology. The main attraction of the Warlock was the myriad of versatile demons the Warlock had access to, and with the original thought that I would be able to use them all to a greater effect as a Demonology Warlock. Throughout every game I have played I have always enjoyed being a summoner type of class.

However to my dismay I found as I leveled, especially as I got my Felguard, I found myself using my pets less and less. In fact after I had talented my Felguard, I never brought out any of my other pets while leveling until I dinged level 70. The Imp, Succubus, Voidwalker and Felhunter really just paled in comparison to the might of my Felguard. As a 'master of demons' it sure felt as I was pigeonholed into using the same demon for 98% of most content, switching out only maybe in PvP.

In Cataclysm Demonology Warlocks will be getting the Felguard at level 10. To any new Warlocks leveling up, this will completely downplay the use of all the other demons as well as just make it so the player won't have time to learn how to use each demon. I honestly feel that giving the Felguard so early to a new player will completely downplay the achievement of acquiring a new pet. For example, a player will finish their Succubus quest and not even using the pet once after its initial summon, just because compared to the Felguard it is useless while leveling. There is almost no situation while leveling where I would use another pet. That is bad design in my honest opinion.

Another problem, I find to be quite major, with Demonology is the fact that ever since Vanilla their have been little to no interaction spells with our demons. Unlike Beast Mastery Hunters who have many spells like Kill Command, Mend Pet, Bestial Wrath, Intimidation, Master's Call, Eyes of the Beast, Misdirection (to a degree), and most importantly Pet Talents, Warlocks only have Health Funnel, Soul Link (Which is a boring mandatory passive) and Demonic Empowerment. Which brings me to my next point.

Demonic Empowerment could basically be a Felguard only spell as it is only used by the Felguard. In no situation would a leveling, raiding, PvPing Warlock use Demonic Empowerment on anything else but the Felguard. Why? Because that is the only pet that is worth having out at almost any given time. Would a serious Warlock ever use Demonic Empowerment to buff the critical strike chance of an Imp? Would Demonology Warlocks even bring an imp out? More on this spell when I go over the tiers.

It honestly seems as if Demonology is moving away from buffing your Demons and making them interesting and going to a tree more centralized around the Warlock itself. Why might I say this? Because the more you go down the Demonology tree the less you see talents involving demons at all, ending with a talent that does absolutely nothing for your demon at all. Demonic Pact could just be a passive that the Warlock provides, there would be no difference.


Onto the tiers,

Tier 1:

Demonic Embrace - Solid tier 1 talent that is usable by all trees, no qualms here.

Dark Arts - This talent was both an amazing an awful change to the Demonology tree. Amazing because it did what the old talents should have done. Provide buffs to all your demons to make each one of them more useful as you specced Demonology. Instead of taking Improved Imp or Demonic Brutality you could take one talent to make more of your pets useful. This talent is bad because it was the primary reason all the other demon talents were removed. Instead of making each talent useful and improving multiple demons they removed them and added this talent. Not only that but this talent only improves the damage of a 3 pets and doesn't really change the utility provided by each demon. Because of this, while it does improve the damage of more than one pet, we will still only see the Felguard do it doing the most damage.

Fel Synergy - A very nice talent that remains useful all game and is great for all talent trees. always loved it.

Tier 2:

Soul Link - Ugh, the amount of discussion surrounding this talent is endless. Mandatory for almost all pvp warlocks, it honestly needs to be removed and Warlocks be rebalanced around not having this ability as a crutch. Either that or base line.

Daemonic Aegis - A useful talent useful for all talent trees. A bit boring but it works. It would be awesome if it made the secondary effects of our armors effect our pets, like increased healing from Demon Armor effecting are pets.

Mana Feed - Honestly I hate this talent, it is both boring and borderline useless. No other talent tree needs it, and demons shouldn't be balanced around having it. Its design makes it either mandatory or useless.

Master Summoner - An interesting lower end talent that makes summoning more bearable. However Soul Shard -> Demon Summon completely makes this talent useless and most other specs will not be picking this up. I can see some situations in raids where the demon dies, but then again this can be avoided with proper micro-management and heals.

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Now I am under the understanding that the first two tiers of the new talent trees are supposed to be useful to the other talent trees and are not supposed to spec defining however there is a problem. So far the talent tree seems great in that prospect offering talents such as Daemonic Aegis, Fel Synergy, and Dark Arts to the Warlocks in general. However talents like Mana Feed, Master Summoner, and Soul Link are incredibly passive and honestly don't change how one plays much at all.

Moving on to the main Demonology talents,

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Tier 3:

Impending Doom - A very cool unique talent, and definitely useful. I love it, good job Blizzard!

Demonic Empowerment - Continuing on from last time, this ability is catered for the Felguard, and is meant to be the Warlocks own mini Bestial Wrath. There is a problem though. Hunter's Bestial Wrath outclasses this spell a million times over. This is honestly a glorified pvp trinket for your pet. A warlock will not be using this for their Imp, Felhunter, Voidwalker, or Succubus in almost any situation. In my honest opinion it should be redesigned and should trade places with Summon Felguard as the new baseline spell for Demonology. As of now it feels to much like a passive boost. Wouldn't it instead be nicer if it had an active quality to the spell that made the user want to have pets other than the Felguard out?

My proposed changes are as follows, rename the skill from Demonic Empowerment to Demonic Tactics.

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Demonic Tactics
6% Base Mana

Causes the Warlocks summoned demon to cast a spell that varies based on the demon.

Imp - The Imp casts an empowered Fire Shield on the target causing it take reduced fire damage and to damage enemies that hit the target.
-Reasoning: Fire Shield is being removed and this allows Demonology Warlocks to make their Imps have more utility than other non Demonology Imps. The effect would obviously be more powerful than Fire Shield used to be

Voidwalker - The Voidwalker summons a dark vortex underneath the Voidwalker dealing damage every second to those who stand in the vortex. While in the dark vortex the Voidwalker is bolstered, gaining an additional 15% maximum health. The Dark vortex lasts 15 seconds.
-Reasoning: Gives the Voidwalker a Consecration-like spell and makes him a better tank. Much more interesting than a passive bonus.

Succubus - Allows the Succubus for the next 20 seconds to not have to channel Seduction.
-Reasoning: Makes the Succubus' Seduction spell much like Polymorph and allows the Succubus to use her other spells and not just be stuck on cc duty. Makes the Succubus a much better utility pet, especially with Whiplash.

Felhunter - The Felhunter cast a redirecting magic field around the target, causing the next direct damage spell cast against the Warlock to be redirected to the Felhunter, healing the Felhunter for the damage that would have been done.
-Reasoning: Gives the Felhunter more utility in both PVE, absorbing spells for tanks, and pvp absorbing spells cast against the Warlock or his/her friends.

Felguard - Imbues the Felguard's with a burst of Fel energy, removing all movement impairing effects and causing it's melee attacks and Cleave spell to do Chaos damage for the next 9 seconds. The Felguard's Cleave will also hit an additional target.
-Reasoning: Makes the Felguard much more interesting mechanic wise.
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This would first of all make me actually WANT to use my other demons more especially in group content like heroics. It would give the utility pets, Imp, Succubus, and Felhunter a much better use in a group, it would make the Voidwalker a much better tank both in solo and instance content, allowing it to offtank multiple adds, and it also makes the Felguard feel more active, as opposed to a DOT with a charge effect.

It also honestly gives the Warlock a bit more interaction with his demons. These are just examples however. I don't care what Blizzard decides for spells, but honestly something more active and interactive with the demon would be so much better than we have now, an almost passive increase that only benefits the Felguard, and maybe the Voidwalker. It would also make it a more attractive spell than Summon Felguard as a base talent, as it involves all of the Warlocks pets and allows the Warlock to utilize his different pets while leveling more.


Improved Health Funnel - An interesting talent that makes Health Funnel really good, especially for leveling. It also is for keeping your pet alive in raids when it is on critical health. It honestly would make a more interesting tier 2 talent in place of something like Mana Feed, and would be useful to other talent trees.


Tier 4:

Molten Core - Mixes up the Demonology Warlock rotation and makes it more fun. No comment.

Hand of Gul'dan - No comment, adds a unique Demonology spell to the rotation, and appears to be useful in both single target and AoE situations. Would be cool if this had some application with your demon.

Ancient Grimoire - Unique bonus to Demonology. Would be awesome if they reduced the cooldowns of the pets in question, by like 1/2 minutes.

Tier 5:

Nemesis - For some reason still effects the nonexistent Fel Domination. Probably an oversight. Would be cool if it effected Demonic Circle, the Infernal/Doomguard summons or Hand of Gul'dan as well.

Inferno - Just an awesome talent.

Decimation - No comment.

Tier 6:

Cremation - Is somewhat redundant with the addition of Felflame not to mention that the effect is a little lack luster as such a deep Demonology talent that has nothing to do with Demons.

Demonic Pact - Meh, a passive raid increase that doesn't improve your pet in any such unique way.

Tier 7:

Metamorphosis - The only beef I have with this spell is that in the end of a tree that is focused around improving your pet, this talent does nothing to improve your pet. Make it increase your current pets damage/threat by 20% and it would be fine. Other than that, epic warcraft 3 spell.
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Does anyone else see a problem with the Cataclysm Demonology tree? I certainly do. Out of all the 19 talents in this tree only 8 talents involve the Warlock summoned demon. Out of these talents only 2 of them actually improve some of your demons.

These talents are,

Fel Synergy
Dark Arts
Soul Link
Mana Feed
Master Summoner
Improved Health Funnel
Demonic Empowerment
Demonic Pact

All but one of these talents have an active portion to it. The rest don't even have a proc related them. Compare this to the WotLK tree which has 18 out of a total of 27 talents that involve your demon.


Not to mention Blizzard removed one of the more interesting talents from the tree, Master Demonologist. This talent at least gave some incentive to have another pet out instead of the Felguard, and was pretty unique to. I honestly thought this would become a Demonology perk in Cataclysm.
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Player Suggestions:

These are list of player suggestion both from me and other forum goers of mmo-champion. These are here to promote discussion and maybe we will get a rare chance to have these posted on the Cataclysm Beta Boards. We can make a difference!


1) Introduce a demon based proc that somehow changes gameplay.

2) Reintroduce Master Demonologist or the Improved Demon talents that were removed either as talents or passives for having the Demonology spec.

3) Rework Demonic Empowerment to be more active.

4) Make the user want to switch out pets more and facilitate it through talents or spells.

Example: Provided by Neichus,

"Improved Soulburn Summon: whenever you use Soulburn to summon an Imp, Void Walker, Succubus, or Fel Hunter your Soul Shard is refunded. You must have an active minion and the new demon must be of a different type than the old one for the shard to be refunded."

A talent could decrease cast times or increase damage of certain spells, or maybe even reduce Metamorphosis cooldown the more one switches his pets out.

5) Make the Felguard more than just a DoT with a health bar. His moves are uninspired and boring.

That's it for my Analysis. I really hope some kind (or evil) warlock soul would post this on the Cataclysm boards, as right now I feel like this should be a big concern.


Thanks for taking your time!

[Neichus]

You may want to notice that you copied your post twice over, making it an extremely intimidating-looking mass of text.

Other than that, I'll go ahead and throw in my two cents on the topic:

1) I don't like the Fel Guard. I think he's boring and utterly uninspiring in terms of mechanics. I didn't like when they put him in and I still don't like him. I essentially had the same conception as you did of Demonology Warlocks: that by being a specialist in pets one should be uniquely situated to use all their different bonuses. That the selection of pets should be something a Demonology warlock does based on the encounter. Personally my own dream would be a talent like:

Improved Soulburn Summon: whenever you use Soulburn to summon an Imp, Void Walker, Succubus, or Fel Hunter your Soul Shard is refunded. You must have an active minion and the new demon must be of a different type than the old one for the shard to be refunded.

I think the biggest problem Blizzard ran into was that at the bottom line so much of the pet utility came at the cost of DPS, and for a DPS class that just causes problems. I'll touch more on that below.

2) I think your suggestion for Demonic Empowerment is interesting (I've certainly dreamed of more interesting Empowerments than the present ones) but I don't think it would be an appropriate Level 10 ability. Too many of the demons are far off and for many people who are just starting WoW or Warlocks, it's going to be a little bewildering to have a Level 10 ability like that.

3) The biggest thing I have to disagree with you on is that I think it's a good thing that they're shifting the emphasis of the tree away from pet damage. In this game pets are a DoT with a health bar when it comes to damage. Buffing pet damage has no real interest in it. I actually find it interesting that you mention BM Hunters as a good example of how a pet tree should be when if you notice they've ripped out a lot of the pet talents as well for Cataclysm.

That said, it would be my hope that if they did take the emphasis off of pet damage and onto the Warlock again, we could feasibly see the use of different pets under different circumstances because it wouldn't be such a big DPS hit to the Warlock.

[Jonirenicus]

I agree with your post some what, but i like what they are doing with the tree, im one that believes that demonology is better centerd around the Felguard, Affliction the felhunter and Destruction the succubus or imp. I do want more of the deeper talents to be centerd around the Demonologist pet "Felguard"
And yes they need to change Demonic Empowerment, I'd prefer it be an Felguard and Warlock its self only spell. And great idea with Nemesis effecting our guardian spells, would be really awesome if it reduced their cool downs by 30% as well.

Great post though i just don't agree with it entirely.

[Garrim]

I see good things and bad things with this. I read this entire post and understand many of your concerns. I've lvled as demo and raided with it, currently I think a lot of the cool things about it have not been scrapped. And since it is such a long post I would like to comment on a few things that I think are the core of your arguements.

Demons: As a master of demons it makes total sense to me to be able to summon an unique and far superior pet then the other two trees. I honestly have no beef with one being superior in pretty much every concievable way when compared to the others. Think of it like a sword, a samurai sword to be more exact. The first sword version was a straight bladed sword, similar to chinese swords. However they found that by curving the blade and giving the back side flexability while the bladed side hardness, they produced two weapons in one. A shield and a sword, it allowed for deeper and faster striking with better offensive and defensive capabilities compared to any other sword in the world.

Now what do sword and demons have in common? Easy, the concept that shaped all of them. Many weapons were used for different scenerios, such as disabling, allowing you to climb, easier to produce/train with. In Blizzard's eyes demons are tools by the warlock to do damage, same as a sword was used to do damage my a warrior. Although the sword wasn't the best at very specialized roles (think succubus for CC, felpuppy for magic users) such a climbing or chopping, but it was simply unmatched in pure damage and was the hardest to master (such as summoning a felguard) making it the logical choice of a standard weapon to people that had the time/resources/means/responsiblty solely dedicated to war. In this way think of the samurai as a demo warlock and the felguard as his sword.

Now pet dmg does need to be buffed, a lot, or warlock DPS. My lock wasn't my first toon, in fact I started leveling him around 5 or 6 weeks into ToC and wanted to make him my main over a shaman, but couldn't due to guild needing a healer and not another DPS (Cata this is changing). So in my 5.3k GS (not amazing but all I personally am able to test with) I found that my imp as destro on a training dummy did 834 DPS. In 3 seprate 10m raids with similar buffs in VoA my pet did an average of 850ish DPS. As demo on a target dummy my felgard did around 930 DPS on average and in 2 VoA 10m raids did just over 1k.

Now considering that demo locks are suppose to do far and away more dmg with their demons, I found this part of my DPS somewhat depressing. Blizzard said they do not want to buff our pets as they did not want most of our dmg to come from pets, and since we had pets that did more dmg and more raid utility, I found that the spec was being short changed on DPS.

TL;DR- I would like to see demo pets do more damage since the talents that do buff the felguard seem lacking compared to how close a destro's imp is on DPS. However I see no problem with felguard being the trumph card of demons.

[volrat]

I do agree with most u pointed, will take some time to' make a deeper reply, i find some trouble posting with iPhone on the beach.

[Mr. Elite]

1) You may want to notice that you copied your post twice over, making it an extremely intimidating-looking mass of text.

2) Improved Soulburn Summon: whenever you use Soulburn to summon an Imp, Void Walker, Succubus, or Fel Hunter your Soul Shard is refunded. You must have an active minion and the new demon must be of a different type than the old one for the shard to be refunded.

3) The biggest thing I have to disagree with you on is that I think it's a good thing that they're shifting the emphasis of the tree away from pet damage. In this game pets are a DoT with a health bar when it comes to damage. Buffing pet damage has no real interest in it. I actually find it interesting that you mention BM Hunters as a good example of how a pet tree should be when if you notice they've ripped out a lot of the pet talents as well for Cataclysm.

1) Thanks, edited the post.

2)That would be awesome. They could also make a talent that could increase your damage after summoning a pet, to make Warlocks want to switch haha!

3) I disagree here. That is because you are both right and wrong. You are right because currently all pets are is a DoT with a health bar. However if the Warlock was to get more interactive with his pets, through either personal spells or new demon spells, the pet would become more than a DoT and something that becomes integral to your actual rotation, something skill-based. No where in my post did I say anything about pet damage. I was talking more of interaction between master and demon, and adding more utility to the demons themselves, so they could be more than a glorified DoT. I cited BM Hunters as a good example. While they gutted a lot of passive talents, they added extremely interesting ones like Fervor, something that effects both you and your pet and more importantly spells like Focus Fire. a spell that increases your damage that is dependent on your pet constantly attacking. Not to mention passives like Invigoration. While yes they cut many hunter pet passives, they added a whole lot more interaction and benefit to having the pet out. In fact, 15 out the 19 talents in the Beast Mastery tree involve pets. Some are even devoted to them. Most of them have some active or in battle benefits as well. Add 3 Pet Talent trees to this as well as a host of different moves, and you have a very versatile talent spec that is devoted to their pets.

TL;DR- I would like to see demo pets do more damage since the talents that do buff the felguard seem lacking compared to how close a destro's imp is on DPS. However I see no problem with felguard being the trumph card of demons.

One of the problems I find with the Felguard, even though it was supposedly 'meant' to be the chosen weapon of Demonology is that it lacks any micro management at all. Their is no interaction with it. You roll Demonic Empowerment into your rotation using a macro and that is it. Their is nothing interesting about the Felguard. Not only is it's damage mediocre it also lacks the utility brought by all other demons to bring slightly higher dps.

[Dethh]

[QUOTE
(Disclaimer, I know analyzing the trees in their current form might be stupid, but hey it is feedback that gives the developers the best ideas)
[/QUOTE]

Maybe post where more developers might see it?

[Mr. Elite]

I don't have access to the Cataclysm beta forums or the live ones as I cancelled my account until cataclysm due to being bored with 3.5 content.

[Belzubub]

Nice post. I like creative feedback eventhough I dont agree with all of it, I still think that it would give the developers some ideas.
Well done

[atomsk]

erm... something's bugging me: where did you read that warlocks were going to get the Felguard at level 10 ? That's simply not true as far as I know. It's no longer a talent point it seems, but the spell is learnable at level 50 in the list of beta spells and abilities...

[Mr. Elite]

http://...............cata.wowhead.com/talent#I (remove the dots)

Not to mention the fact that it was posted on the front page as a change awhile ago.

[herbal tea]

I don't like that only Felguard is used too, but it's the players choice on which pet to summon.
May be Dark Art can change this situation a little bit(?). I haven't tried.

Soul link ~ I think damage should go both way. currently it is more like damage reduction, but IMO damage sharing should be the meaning for this spell. Then with the total amount of damage remaining the same, nobody should say it is OP anymore.

[mysticx]

I don't like that only Felguard is used too, but it's the players choice on which pet to summon.
May be Dark Art can change this situation a little bit(?). I haven't tried.

It may be the players' choice which pet they summon, but each tree has one pet which by far beats the others (And felguard as "You picked demo, grats!"-spell and "overpowered imp" still in destro, that looks like it's staying), so when the choice is "That one pet or gimp yourself"... Well, that's not much of a choice, is it?

[Quaritch]

as someone who is in love with demonology i found this post very well thought and imformative, and i give you props as such.

OT: some ideas and comments i would like to make. first off i like your idea about switching demonic empowerment with felguard as the baseline, seems a much better choice. the felguard is a powerful demon, shouldnt be thrown into the arms of a lvl 10 player. however i dont agree with your complaints about only ever using one pet, as a master of demons you hone your art till you summon and control one very powerful demon, with the rest of your demons being better then average, but the felguard is powerful. yes it could use some more interesting mechanics but when you think about it that could be said for almost any pet now, but looking forward yes you can see some new toys in mind for pets (think succy(

you touch about soul link, and in my mind there are 3 choices:
1) remove it and re-balance the class. i dont like this idea as i love the spell, think its a great concept.
2) make it baseline. a nice idea, but it makes the spell less special and takes away from the power of demo
3) make it demo exclusive (deeper in the tree). this might make demo more viable in PvP, giving demo locks a lot of survivabilty but compared to other specs, and will solve the issue of those specs having to be balanced around the presence of SL.

of those i prefer choice 3, but might end up not working out from a balancing perspective (we might still have to use it to survive and therefore be pigeonholed into that spec). given that choice 3 doesnt work id then prefer choice 1.

My biggest issue with demo is the lack of dmging abilities. felguard and meta and demonic empowerment are the only ones we really have, and non of those really count as they dont do direct dmg, they just buff you or create a source of dmg. however cata seems to be fixing this issue. when you look at it as things have panned out so far demo as gotten the most attention of the 3 trees, and hell weve needed it. to make demo as powerful as it is right now blizz had to add around 15% flat dmg into our tree. the direction cata seems to be going in has me very excited. the key one in my book right now is the fixing and normalization of demonic empowerment, allowing you to now have multiple demo locks in a single raid without conflicts of buffs.

i agree with 90% of the rest of your commentary one the new talents, impending doom seems like amazing fun.

however there is one thing i have yet to see, and have a feeling we aint going to getting it with everything else weve alrdy gotten. unless i have completely missed it demo was supposed to get a spell called demon, which would be about chaos bolt in size and CD but would also debuff the target to increase pet dmg done. i love this idea. even if the spell did no dmg but just debuffed the target, i would love it. but with it doing dmg it fixes one of the issues i pointed out earlier which is the lack of demo direct dmg abilities. but between that and hand of guldan weve got something to use.

and another thing...looks like demo locks will still be kings of aoe...specially moving aoe, pop meta, cast hand of guldan, cast imo aura, start channel hellfire, and watch as your screen fills with beautiful yellow numbers all over the place and that purple bar on the dps meters shoots right up to the top.

[Ragnarokex]

My first char in WoW was an undead warlock and it still is my main (now human) with over 250 days played. I started this toon just b4 BC came out and all throughout levelling I used my Voidwalker as my only pet, occasionally switching to Felhunter cos it looked cool.
When WotLK hit, I levelled Demonology because levelling is just that little bit easier when your in Demon form and have Soul Link + Felguard.
Sure, sometimes your pet may seem like an enhanced DoT, but the fact that its enhanced gives it that unique ability.
The Felguard may replace all other pets whilst levelling, but when your level capped, you will start to 'experiment' and maybe the felguard wont be the best demon for you.
The main point here is that WoW has changed in 3/4 years since I first started and thus the levelling of a warlock has also. Not really a thing you can change its just the Devs have seen that hey maybe Warlocks will enjoy the Felguard more whilst levelling compared to the other minions.
As to the interaction with them, the Devs will tell you that warlocks dont really give too much about them as they are weapons in a toolbox.
If you start comparing us to the hunter interaction and say why cant we have that, then all classes would end up being the same and the uniqueness of choosing a class would only be limited to a handful of abilities rather than the 30-40 we currently have.

In Cataclysm, yeah I will probably level as Demonology because of the Felguard and Demon form.
change is good.

[Jessicka]

Well, these are my thoughts:

The first few tiers are all very lacklustre; with Molten Core and HoG on the fourth tier, that puts you at level 40 before the talents actually become interactive and spec defining - it's a very long wait and is likely to see people get bored with it before they reach that point; everything is very passive - especially the survivability talents higher up. The Felguard, I also agree is not a fun pet, it provides nothing but damage.

Going deeper, I think the tree is far too AoE focused. In a game where they're moving away from AoE, I fail to see how and why they've focused 4 points of tree defining abilities into AoE effects, I simply don't get it at all; really really strange direction to take it after all the effort they've gone to to move Ret's away from being too AE/Cleave focused.

Talent specific, I'm not impressed with HoG/Cremation, it's a nice idea but I can't see it working in a fight with any semblance of movement - you simply wont get the potential damage nor cremation effects from the flames, greatly decreasing it's value, perhaps to the point of none.

Inferno is also very 'meh', there's nothing to increase it's damage to make Hellfire more desirable than RoF or SoC, and still remains the huge element of danger of standing in the middle of mobs when you do use it - ie looking at melee threat numbers rather than ranged. The extended range seems pointless, since AoE situations invariably pull mobs into a small space on top of the tank anyway which is easily covered by RoF or SoC anyway. The increased area is also likely to damage mobs outside of the tanks' circle of influence, drawing threat onto you thus increasing the risk of using it still further.

Between these, that's 4 mandatory talent points you will seldom get the maximum effect from, around which we'll be balanced; it seems a expensive loss in that respect, and in that these are central, class defining abilities.

[5648945621]

Make Soul Link baseline is all i can say. I honestly dont know why they havent done that yet since they are trying to remove must have PvP talents.

[herbal tea]

I think the Demo talents are not agressive enough. There should be more talents like Impending Doom. Talents like Hand of Guldan, Inferno, Molten Core should be given to Destro, while talents like Empowered Imp should be given to Demo. Destro should be more about direct damage, while Demo should be more about warlock-pet double teaming the enemy.

[Garrim]

I hope Demon Bolt will make it into Cata, but I fear that it will not. Hellfire will not be used with Immolation Aura as I believe Immolation Aura has been taken out so Hellfire will take it's place and can be channeled while moving. The greater range of Hellfire I believe is so you do not have to stand directly in the middle of the mobs, but just behind the tank. Also with the way Cata dungeons are shapping up, it should be a problem to not pull other groups as you will pull groups away from one another.

[Dethh]

I don't have access to the Cataclysm beta forums or the live ones as I cancelled my account until cataclysm due to being bored with 3.5 content.

Then why don't you wait and see the finished product and go do something else since you cancelled your account from being bored till Cataclysm. You don't play the game and don't have access to the beta forums but you want to address developers with your ideas? Your logic isn't logical.