[MoP] Misc Demonology Notes

[Fallensaint]

So I've been giving some thought to how to safely balance Demo's damage without over-nerfing it. Part of the problem is that Demo's damage in MoP is somewhat comparable to Destro's damage in Cata: there's a lot of little damage sources. A flat nerf across the board would likely leave Demo in a similar state to live Destro, where no one source of damage is very threatening. So, if possible I think it would be best to prune some of the less-significant or extraneous damage sources, and leave the good parts of Demo alone.

First, I think Meta's "melee" attack should be removed. While it started out as an interesting mechanic, it's currently just a vestigial ability from an old design that's eating into our damage budget. It's not a very interesting effect and, if given the choice between axing it or reducing the damage of another ability, I'd go for the axe. Alternatively, it could get a longer swing timer, have it's swing reset after a spell cast, and become unusable while casting, which would allow it to exist as flavor but preventing it from contributing any notable DPS (essentially becoming a built-in wand attack).

Second, there's Wild Imps. Now, I like the wimps as a mechanic, and I like them as a source for MC procs and fury generation, but the little guys make up a whopping 15% of our DPS. That is the single largest source of damage Demo has. While I kind of like that the little guys have some punch, I think it would be best if they took a damage hit. Additionally, it might be worthwhile to remove the cooldown reduction effect from Imp Swarm. While I'm fine with using Imp Swarm to game the system and stack 5 imps with a proc or cooldown, the cooldown reduction from haste makes it a definite DPS gain and a must-have glyph.

Third, if we're still over budget after removing "melee" and nerfing the wimps, I think that the majority of our remaining balance nerfs should go towards our DoT damage. I like the contrast provided by Demo's slow filler and fast nukes compared to Destro's fast filler and slow nukes, and if possible I think that should be maintained.

Balancing Demo's AoE is a bit tougher (as I haven't seen any AoE sims outside of the 'lock ones). Nerfed DoTs would certainly lower Demo's multi-DoTing, and there's the recent Void Ray nerf to consider, but if I had to guess then any future nerfs will likely happen to Immolation Aura.

[darthades]

@Fallensaint

rly? you are proposing the nerf of most of the spec PvP damage, i tough you cared about PvP =(

Do you have dps parses for classes other than mages? because everyone is doing same or more damage than demo/aff, especially monks. It looks like mage's dps is the one that needs buffing

I like the contrast provided by Demo's slow filler and fast nukes compared to Destro's fast filler and slow nukes, and if possible I think that should be maintained.

Except the amounts of time spend on each is not even remotely comparable, demo spends 80% of its time with slow casts while destro only slow cast is chaosbolt, nor even close of a comparison.

The only place to nerf the damage without "finishing an almost dead horse (demo PvP)" is a shadowbolt/soulfire nerf.

[Grubjuice]

I like pie charts with about 10 slices on them all roughly evening sized

[Fallensaint]

I do care about PvP, but I freely admit I am largely ignorant about it. While I can see there would be implications for reducing Corruption, Shadowflame, and Wild Imp damage, I can't really say the same for Doom with it's slow tick time or Meta's melee with it's constant but pathetic damage.

It is entirely possible that I'm playing chicken little here, and that either the mages and Destro are going to receive a 20% buff or there's some hidden flaw in Simcraft messing with the numbers, but I personally don't think that's the case. If we do end up getting a damage balance nerf in the future, I don't think a flat 15-20% off Demo would be a very good idea. In my opinion, it's better to be wrong and cautious in this situation. I also don't hold too much stock in raid logs. For a given player low on the meters, it could be that their class is poorly balanced, or the person doesn't know how to play (in MoP or in general), or the fight is just poorly suited for their class/spec, or the log could be old and the situation has changed since, or the log didn't capture the whole fight (like for Gara'jal), or their gear is crap. I don't know enough about the people involved to make a fair judgement. Combat dummy logs are a bit different, but I haven't seen anyone do any serious dummy logs outside of one shaman.

As for nerfing just Shadow Bolt and Soul Fire, I don't think that's a good idea. There's some pretty tight balance going on between Shadow Bolt, Soul Fire, Fel Flame, and Touch of Chaos, and messing with that balance can cause problems. Also, your time-spent estimate is off, Demo spends about 40% of the time casting Soul Fire and Shadow Bolt, every other spell used is instant.

[Zinnin]

Honestly if they want \ need to nerf warlocks, I hope they swing the bat at our cooldowns (mainly doomguard). SOO much of our damage is loaded into cooldown that even if our overall dps is good we are still weak at things like target switching \ burst and fights like ragnaraos where normal cooldown usage just doesn't fit in well.

[Jessicka]

I'd start with removing the melee swings and put Touch of Chaos on 1.5s GCD, then think about both the Doomguard/Infernal and Wild Imps since they are very passive and not very smart anyway. Number of damage sources isn't really the issue, we have more on Live.

[Teye]

Thank God none of you work for Blizzard. The last 2 or 3 pages worth of "suggestions" have been laughable.

[Jessicka]

Thank God none of you work for Blizzard. The last 2 or 3 pages worth of "suggestions" have been laughable.

I happen to think the last 42 pages have been incredibly constructive and I could easily go through and pick out specific details that have led to a very positive development of the spec. There are still issues for sure, but 'it's still Beta'.

[Deleted]

•Glyph of Demon Training: Your Imp's Firebolt cast time is reduced by 50% and fires in bursts of three.

So basicly this glyph lets the imp fire 3 Firebolts in less then 1 second? Its like having a minigun as pet.

[Micke]

A quick and dirty summary of how I view demonologys spells and mechanics from a pve PoV:

Shadow bolt - not sure if it really has to be 2.5 sec for the sake of "feel"?
Corruption - Design intent: keep it up normally? Actuality: stance dance refreshing to not lose gcds.
Soul fire - Design intent: simply use the charges whenever you get them? Actuality: Only use in caster form >25%.
Hand of guldan/chaos wave - Design intent: use whenever off cd? Actuality: Only use in caster form ever.
Doom - No problem.
Wild imps+glyph - No problem.
Touch of chaos - Design intent: use whenever there are no soul fire or chaos wave charges up? Actuality: Use only this and doom in meta >25%.
Void ray - Design intent: replaces touch of chaos in a aoe situation? Actuality: hard to use efficiently in practice.
Immolation aura - No problem.

What I'm wondering is, what would the dps difference be between following the (assumed, correct me if I'm wrong) design intent vs actuality rotation, is it just minmax a few % we're talking about or is there a flaw in the design vs reality?

[Count Zero]

What I'm wondering is, what would the dps difference be between following the (assumed, correct me if I'm wrong) design intent vs actuality rotation, is it just minmax a few % we're talking about or is there a flaw in the design vs reality?

Ahhh very good question.

Assuming I never win a beta key in a contest or anything, I cannot wait for this PTR can show up so I can give my own legit input ...

[CDShaidar]

Are your numbers showing that Chaos Wave is a DPS increase for all AoE or just for targets that live less than 6 (~11 if stacking still behaves the way I last checked) seconds? I haven't checked it recently and I'm not at a computer with a beta install.

My brief testing shows the following, ignoring fury costs and gains at the start:

comparing 2 back to back Chaos waves to 2 back to back HoGs+ Shadow flame. I'm in very high mastery gear (4917 mastery, 16.2% in caster, 48.6% in meta). there are two versions of HoG casts one where you clip the final tick giving you 11 ticks 5 at one stack 6 at 2 stacks or a no clip giving you 12 total ticks, all at one stack.

two Chaos waves are doing 132% the damage of a "rolled" HoG and 184% of a non rolled HoG. All of this scales linearly with the number of targets and thus is irrelevant.

Now if we do a simple conversion of fury to ToCs for a "damage value" per point of fury, we get the "damage cost" of two CWs compared to 6 ToCs for the same 240 fury the 240 fury makes the ratios 43% for rolled and 48% respectively but lets add in the ~3 SBs we could get off in the same GCDs we get 72% and 82% respectively.

taking into account fury generation is much harder as both the SF ticks and the "filler" SBs generate fury, luckily 12 ticks of SF is almost exactly the same as one SB for fury generation. With some reasonable approximations I get that they are with in 5% of each other for single target that lasts at least 20 seconds. AoE gets much more interesting as you have to start calculating how much extra fury you have and how much time you have to spend it and at 4+ targets you are dumping that extra fury into Immolation aura and not ToCs.

What does this all mean? I guess the main thing to take from this is that, unlike using MC procs above 20% in vs. out of meta, you can actually end up with a dynamic choice here based on number of targets and how long you expect them to live. I think that the "sweet spot" is where you choose CW for adds that will live less than 10 seconds (bloods on DWs head) but longer living adds or adds that aren't urgent dps needs (bloods on the wing/arm platforms) will be better to use the extra fury and dps on the main target?

Keep in mind I did this all with a calculator, pen and a target dummy. So errors I'm sure are rampant but nothing should effect the main point

[Micke]

So chaos wave = short burst aoe?
And soul fire in meta = short single target burst?

And both of them at the slight cost of overall dps (which is fine)

is that the design intent or it just happend to end up that way? If we get alot of cho'gall adds/spine fights then sure, otherwise too niche perhaps?

[Grubjuice]

So chaos wave = short burst aoe?
And soul fire in meta = short single target burst?

And both of them at the slight cost of overall dps (which is fine)

is that the design intent or it just happend to end up that way? If we get alot of cho'gall adds/spine fights then sure, otherwise too niche perhaps?

Demonology is already designed around having on demand burst at the cost of consistant damage, so it fits with the general design philosophy of the Spec.

To fix soul fire they would need to make (Mastery benefit+Fury Cost) in Meta = (1/2Mastery benefit + Fury Yield) in caster. but to do so in a way that does not unbalance the equation as gear scales is not possible just by fixing the SP coefficients, it would take a major change in mechanics, and the current mechanics are not useless because you can you still stroe MC charges to use SF(meta) dynamically for burst phases.

CDShaider's analysis of dynamically choosing between HoG/CW was really interesting, But a little difficult to conceptualize without some opportunity to really test it in practice. Demo already has a rather large AoE toolkit with ImmA and Felstorm, so it gets complicated the more spells you are managing.

[Micke]

Demonology is already designed around having on demand burst at the cost of consistant damage, so it fits with the general design philosophy of the Spec.

If you are refering to holding meta cd on live then yeah sure, though that works for a much longer duration which is a more common situation, and it can work at a shorter duration aswell. I was just worried about its narrow niche.

And yeah the amount of aoe spells demo now has is getting slightly redic... :P

[Grubjuice]

If you are refering to holding meta cd on live then yeah sure, though that works for a much longer duration which is a more common situation, and it can work at a shorter duration aswell. I was just worried about its narrow niche.

And yeah the amount of aoe spells demo now has is getting slightly redic... :P

No i mean in Mists, now that Metamorphosis is a toggle ability, our raison d'être it to bide our time building up fury in off-phases and spiking our damage in burn phases when ever we want to. The ability to control meta (rather than just holding it off like on live) means we are very bursty but also with huge troughs and peaks in our damage.

[Micke]

Ok, though there is no overall dps loss in doing that which you mentioned, that is just doing the normal rotation essentially, as far as I know, only chaos wave and soul fire in meta would be a singletarget dps loss, overcapping on fury isn't a problem either due to 10 sec cd on meta so easy to bleed off before a long burst. Making a choice that will be better for the situation at hand, but worse over the longterm for dps is interesting gameplay and I'm all for it, however the problem I have is that chaos wave and SF in meta was more advertised to be used on a consistent basis in every situation, not simply just for the cho'gall adds/spine fights that occurs once in a blue moon.

If you check back on the previous page I list demos spells and design intent vs reality, I feel very strongly about this topic because I dont feel we've (or I) have been given enough information regarding the overarching goal and feel for the spec, unlike destro and aff I am quite far away from fully understanding their intentions with the revamp on some cases, and I feel the practical playstyle of demo severly clash against all blizzards previous designs and intentions with virtually every spec in the game. I want to know if they have unknowingly strayed from the original path or if they are fixing some possible unintended gameplay features of the spec still or if it's actually exactly the way they want demo to be.

[Deleted]

Hellfire actually generates 3 fury per target on the beta server instead of 2 as is stated in the tooltip

[Grubjuice]

Hellfire actually generates 3 fury per target on the beta server instead of 2 as is stated in the tooltip

oh that's good to know! : )

[Kaizers]

So canceling meta with aura of elements on hearths you. wtf blizzard.

Edit: Actually Curse of Weakness Aura does it too.