Fixing Demon Soul and Soulburn

[Deleted]

Hello everyone.

As you probably know, Blizzard have done a pretty poor job fitting in Demon soul and Soulburn into the game and I feel we have been let down as a class on many of the amazing things they promised. Demon soul is now very badly balanced and costs a shard. A shard we were promised would be used as a cool new resource that spiced up fights and made spells more interesting.

Suggestions:

Harvest soul changed to an instant, in-combat cast that replenishes all 3 shards, costs a big chunk of your health and has a 5 min cooldown. Or even better make it a class-specific passive that regenerate shards in a somewhat equal pace. Shards are never going to be balanced unless we have a chance to regen them in combat.

Demon soul split into regular Demon soul and Soul burned Demon soul. 2-3 min cooldown on the ability. Non-soulburned Demon Soul could possibly have a lower CD.

Regular Demon soul: Mostly PvP/situational oriented ability.

Felhunter: Deals 10-20% of all your DoT's up on the targets total damage instantly.
Imp: Current demon soul effect. Might need some nerfing.
Succubus: A shadowy-thunderstormish effects is cast down from the skies onto the warlock. All nearby enemies take X damage and is thrown back Y yards.
VW: Current effect.
Felguard: The Felguards next cleave attack deals 500% extra damage.

Soul-burned Demon soul: Pushing damage. Mostly sefull in fights where DPS is preferred over utility. Ex: Not being focused in PvP, PvE tank'n'spank encounters. Duration buffed.

Felhunter: Current effect.
Imp: All your fire DD spells are added onto a rolling ignite-like debuff. Damage increase should be about the same as Felhunters.
Succubus: Same, but Shadow spells.
VW: All the voidwalkers attacks taunt the target, and all damage dealt to the Voidwalker is reduced by 50%.
Felguard: Current effect, somewhat buffed to result in the same DPS increase as Felhunters.

What would this do?

It would balance the PvE-portion of the spell and provide fun uses of both ways to spend shards for both PvE-ers and PvP-ers. It also forces PvE-ers to use Soulburn for things other than Demon soul as the cooldown on Soulburned Demon soul is greater than the rate of which you can regenerate shards.

Any thoughts?

[gherkin]

I disagree entirely for more reasons than I have time to write.

Basically, you're trying to balance the spell. In doing so, you're unbalancing the class. We will be balanced against using all our shards twice in a 5 minute fight with this, and any time we don't we do less dps than everyone else.

I personally prefer the current iterations - you have three cooldowns a fight, but you can give up one cooldown for a utility button (resummon pet for example). That sounds fine.

What we need is a way to sacrifice either a large chunk of mana (and thus gcd's via life tap) to get one shard back. This would buff Destruction - they don't have to tap as often and thus the extra shard will balance out the lowered base dps. This would break even on Affliction and Demonology, allowing them the extra "Ohshit" button to have that added utility.

[Tasttey]

What we need is a way to sacrifice either a large chunk of mana (and thus gcd's via life tap) to get one shard back. This would buff Destruction - they don't have to tap as often and thus the extra shard will balance out the lowered base dps. This would break even on Affliction and Demonology, allowing them the extra "Ohshit" button to have that added utility.

What about adding the chance to regain a shard as a small percentage when we Life Tap. Its a spell that's commonly used (ok, not so much with Destro but its still used) and over utilizing it would mean wasted GCD's and lower dps.

[gherkin]

It would have to have a massive ICD when it does proc because in a typical fight you should life tap about 15 times. With a 4% proc rate you could feasibly get 3 shards back across the whole fight - you might not be able to use 4 shards.

Honestly, add fights + drain soul = shards. We just need a button that gives us one in non-add fights. Link it to the Minions IMO. Summon a minion for a minute and after he goes away you get a shard.

[Deleted]

I disagree entirely for more reasons than I have time to write.

Basically, you're trying to balance the spell. In doing so, you're unbalancing the class. We will be balanced against using all our shards twice in a 5 minute fight with this, and any time we don't we do less dps than everyone else.

I'd personally prefer using Demon soul (flat, boring buff) twice, and Soulburn + Soulfire/any other soulburned spell 4 times over spamming nothing but Demon soul, knowing that if you need to use a shard for something else, you're gonna suffer alot in DPS.

A longer duration Demon soul buff paired with a longer cooldown gives us the option to actually use other spells. We'll be losing hundreds of DPS if we use a shard to summon a new minion in the current design, but you'd only lose the DPS of one instant Soulfire over a period of 5 minutes if you screwed your pet up in my design. Which is almost nothing.

I'm glad you agree that we need a way to gain shards in combat though.

[gherkin]

Also, keep in mind that one demon soul use is worth about 2-3% dps across a single minute, or ~1.5% (3 demon souls) across a 5 minute fight. That is ~150 dps in projected lvl 85 green gear, or upwards of 250 in raiding content.

That's not a lot - it's something, but it's not a lot. Losing .5% dps because I didn't pay attention to my pet or I needed to do something else instead is a pretty decent trade off.

[Garrim]

I think the whole Demon Soul should be something that's a bit sweeter. I think it'd be sweet if say:

You teleport to your demon's location, merging your soul and body with theirs, while gaining the ability to cast and attack for X secs. Your melee hits are based off your spell power. While in this form you may preform any of your demon's abilities (not on the GCD)or your own. During this time your spells will hit for Y% more damage. Last X secs. When the effect is done you are teleported back to your orginal position. Shares a CD with Demonic Teleport, 2 min CD.

Imo that would be really sweet. I can't say I like the way Soul Burn or Demon Soul are working. Soul Burn is a good idea, but we have nothing to really want to use it with unless you count SoC+SB (which is only on AE pulls and something Blizzard wants less of). Instant pet is ok but at the same time, it can be a crutch. I say that because they'll consider us using 3 shards for DPS in a boss fight, but if you always keep one of them as an 'Oh shit my pet died' shard and one as an 'Oh shit I need to somehow save myself' shard, then you kind of only have one to work with.

[Deleted]

I just really want them to remove the shard cost of Demon Soul, I could understand the whole trading DPS for 'utility button' thing if they hadn't just messed around with the talent trees so that people didn't have to lose DPS for utility. Also, if i have to give up DPS to for this 'utility button', I'd rather it worked in some other way than giving up use of my brand-new-super-cool lvl85 cooldown.

[Deleted]

i thought the whole idea for using the new shards was to make it a decision?
Burning ur shards as fast as u can so u can use them again in the same fight doesn't really sound as such, thus the restriction to them being only 3 per fight.
I still don't understand why ppl go on with that? IF they change them warlock dps will be ballanced around using more than 3 shards per fight..if they stay dps will be ballanced around using 3 per fight and the end result will be the same, just hopefully 3 shards will be easier to ballance and will be more of a way to make u think about before using them.
My 2cents

[rhorle]

With the current implementation raiders will likely not use much of the utility. The pet shouldn't really die during a fight with its stats, healing and other stuff. I just can't see any of the current utility aspects actually being worth the price of dps in a boss fight.

The problem is soul shards are still a little bit annoying. They just seem like a early concept of dk runes. I'd honestly prefer to see something like the holy power mechanic combined with the new dk rune type. Where we have something called "soul power" that each spell generates filling the shards back up. None of the utility is super awesome that it would be used that often, and any dps stuff would just be used for whats best one 3 times a fight.

I also find it odd that Seed + shard will regain a shard. Doesn't that make the choice to use the shard pointless? And make limiting shards just another clunky annoying system if we start tacking on shard gains to justify abilities.

[Deleted]

The thing is, as it stands now, if you used all your shards on demon soul (which seems to be the most powerful shard spell), then in a 5-minute fight, you'd get to use it 3 times. However, in a 10-minute fight you'd also only get to use it 3 times, which would have the same effect on DPS as a current demo lock deciding not to use meta for half the fight.

(This was in response to Blankspace btw)

@rhorle

When i heard about Holy Power i felt kind of cheated, that's how i initially hoped Shards would be.

[Deleted]

i thought the whole idea for using the new shards was to make it a decision?

That fact was changed the second they made Demon soul require a shard. Shards are now part of a rotation, and if you aren't playing as if they were, you're underperforming.

There aren't many situations where burning a Shard would save you anyway so there's no real reason to save them. If you die in PvE, you screwed up with aggro/positioning or your healer screwed up. I doubt there'll be many cases where the 20% extra health from your healthstone using Soulburn would save you. Saving the shards and losing a few points of DPS in order to avoid certain riskfactors is a pretty thought, but it won't pay off.

[rhorle]

It would have to have a massive ICD when it does proc because in a typical fight you should life tap about 15 times. With a 4% proc rate you could feasibly get 3 shards back across the whole fight - you might not be able to use 4 shards.

Honestly, add fights + drain soul = shards. We just need a button that gives us one in non-add fights. Link it to the Minions IMO. Summon a minion for a minute and after he goes away you get a shard.

Is that assuming glyph of lifetap remains as it is? (boss fight/45 seconds=life tap amounts). Because I can see the glyph changing due to blizzard not really needing a band-aid booster in with mastery and stuff.

And yeah I think something tied to pets would be an interesting way to regain a shard if it stays as is.

---------- Post added 2010-08-12 at 08:39 PM ----------

That fact was changed the second they made Demon soul require a shard. Shards are now part of a rotation, and if you aren't playing as if they were, you're underperforming.

There aren't many situations where burning a Shard would save you anyway so there's no real reason to save them. If you die in PvE, you screwed up with aggro/positioning or your healer screwed up. I doubt there'll be many cases where the 20% extra health from your healthstone using Soulburn would save you. Saving the shards and losing a few points of DPS in order to avoid certain riskfactors is a pretty thought, but it won't pay off.

Yeah to me much of the utility aspects are designed for solo play and the niche situations that arise from pvp. But really that is a bad way to design it imo since it means you won't use that stuff that often and it is no variety. I could see burning a shard when tanking an elite mob solo, or needing a few extra seconds of life. But even then you would likely still want to use them for dps

[Jessicka]

Well, I said this in another thread but I'll repeat it here.

As it stands we have a situation where Shards provide us with utility (Soul Burn) or DPS (Demon Soul); that utility can't be better than any other class's because that would provide a reason to take a Warlock over another class. However, that leads the Warlock utility to be inferior because it's limited by shards, and also limits the Warlocks DPS, meaning it's less useful to have a Warlock to provide that utility or to DPS; ie a reason to take someone else over a Warlock; they can do the same thing without the shard limitation or loosing as much DPS. It's a paradox that simply can't be 'balanced', the only thing you can do is remove that utility from requiring a shard. This then obviously devalues the Shard mechanic as a provider of utility, so it becomes even more marginalised.

As a DPS cooldown, as has been repeated over and over - if the fight lasts more than 6 minutes, we're inferior at DPS to any other class, because we were balanced around getting 3 uses of the cooldown in 5 mins; not just burning it on cooldown every 2 indefinately. So on longer fights, there's cause to leave the Warlock at home. It's also not exactly 'interesting' then either as a mechanic, it's just a 2 minute cooldown like Metamorphosis; but one that may need to be sacrificed to resummon a demon or provide 'utility'. The way to reconcile this would be to weaken Demon Soul as an ability, so it just isn't as necessary nor such a big loss if you burn a shard on something else.

In terms of regenerating shards in combat, I don't agree with that either. If it's a DPS increase to use the shards on cooldown, and regenerate them, then we have suddenly the single most clunky resource mechanic in game - however it's done, regenerating shards will involve some DPS downtime which simply wont be possible on many fights. It wont be 'fun' or exciting either, it'll be a necessary and laborious process.

None of this sounds particularly fun, exciting, or a big moment. It all sounded like a good idea at the time they announced it, but reducing Soul Shards to Demon Soul in PvE has basically killed it; it's become a 2 minute cooldown, just like everyone else has, but one we might not actually get to use - potentially because of some kind of bugged mechanic like your pet despawning as they are prone to in Sindragosa and Razorscale. As it stands, in most encounters shards may as well not exist; and that's the saddest thing about it.

[rhorle]

It is easy to balance, you make it a utility that benefits the person, not the raid. Do you take a mage over a shadow priest because dispersion only does 90% damage reduction?

[Jessicka]

Demonic Teleport and the Lich King would like a word.

[gherkin]

The 4-5 Warlocks we bring to Heroic LK say hi.

[rhorle]

Demonic Teleport and the Lich King would like a word.

No one disputed that certain self utilities have niche benefits on fights. Do you also only take mage or shadow priest casters for sindragosa? (dispersion and iceblock through instability. Did you only take rogues and mages for normal putricide? (vanish and invisibility tear gas). Do you stack mages and hunters for heroic putricide? (iceblock and feign death for oozes)

Plenty of abilities have situational uses that make them over powered but don't give a real unfair advantage where you would always take that class. Lich king can easily be done with out having 5+ locks. Even 4-5 still gives a pretty random chance you will be getting non locks picked up.

Its easy to design self utility spells that are worthwhile and aren't something another class provides. Which is what you were talking about, not demonic circle by the way. As if a mage could blink from the val'kyr to the platform you wouldn't take them over a lock because a mage doesn't need setup (and can move less with defiles when a warlock might need to change the teleport location).

[Ravemstr]

I don't get it why people expect so much from the shards. Or the things triggered by them.

Right now shards are used for:
- utility - soul well, summoning stone, soulstone, pets
- minor damage increase - Soul Fire

In Cata shards are used for:
- utility - Soul Burn + Teleport, Soul Burn + Summon pet
- minor damage increase - Soul Burn + Soul Fire, Demon Soul

What were you people expecting? A spell that costs a shard, but that shard refreshes in 0.00001 seconds, that has a 5 seconds cooldown and gives you 10% more damage for 5 minutes and stacks 100 times?

We are not a class based on cooldowns!
We are not a class balanced around cooldowns!
And, hopefully, we will never be!

That means we won't ever get a "OMG! That's like the most awesome thing in the game!" spell. Well... we had Fear but they took that away! qq

[Deleted]

Classes are balanced around the spells they use, and in Cata that will include a cooldown (Demon Soul). Of course it's never going to be 'lol u all b dead', that would be silly, the issue is though that we can only use this cooldown 3 times a fight, which means on longer fights, the impact will become more and more saturated.

EDIT: If other classes had 'x times per fight' personal cooldowns it wouldnt matter so much, but AFAIK they dont.