Grimoire of Supremacy - some ideas for new pet abilties

[Jessicka]

I've been pretty vocal about what I'm not looking forward to in MoP, but believe or not there are some things I am looking forward to. Blazing Speed and Grimoire of Supremacy are two of these. The new pets for the former have as of yet, unannounced new, stronger abilities. I've given these some thought as to what I think they should be, and thought I'd throw those ideas out there, the idea behind some of these is clearly to offer utility a raid group might otherwise lack in a similar manner to BM Hunters, while trying to be a logical extention of present abilities:

Fel Imp:
Singe Magic -> Cauterizing Flames: Removes all magical effects from the target, and heals for 5% of their health over 5 seconds, while preventing the application of magical effects.

Void Lord:
Sacrifice -> Void Shield: Summons a shield over an area, reducing damage taken by friendly units by 25%.
Consume Shadows -> Paranoia (Passive Aura): Greatly increases stealth detection to all nearby friendly targets within 30 yards.

Shivan:
Seduction -> Skewer: Skewers the target stunning them. In addition Skewer inflicts X damage every 2 sec.
Whiplash -> Spinning Pain Spike: Leaps towards an enemy, grabbing them and inflicting significant Physical damage.

Observer:
Devour Magic -> Consume Magic: Dispels magic in a 15 yard radius, removing 1 harmful spells from each friendly target and 1 beneficial spells from each enemy target. Affects a maximum of 10 friendly targets and 10 enemy targets. This dispel is potent enough to remove Magic effects that are normally undispellable.

Wrathguard:
Pursuit -> Intercept: Charge an enemy, causing X damage and stunning it for 1 sec.
Gains: Bloodlust.

The Guardians obviously can't have controlled abilities, so I presume they'll just receive more powerful versions of the current spells. That said, I'd rather receive them on a separate talent in place of Sacrifice, but that's been another thread I made on the EU forums and had a mixed reception.

[checking facts]

the shivarra must retain seduction. her bottom seduces me

on a side note, I hope this observer isn't the beholder, but void hounds (AKA two headed dogs full of eyes)

why? because it makes more sense to trade a dog for another dog than a dog for a big eye.

the beholder could be a new eye of kilrog lol

Devs want the whole system to be easier to min /max for casuals and new players but.... just for the pvp part, Sacrifice is useless since there are no pets utilities... CCs, dispels.

I don't think sacrifice will be useless, but it won't be "petless warlock".

for demo you sacrifice on metamorphosis time, for destro you sacrifice on soul fire phase, get humongous burst, than you get your pet back.

I don't know about affliction though lol

anyway, I would never take sacrifice because I love my pets and I couldn't bear the thought of hurting them to do more dps lol

[Nfariessence]

Interesting, but very complex to add new and different utility for the pets instead of... more of what they do now. If you ever had to use the Succubus whiplash on Heroic Cho'gall attempts, you know how infuriating it can be to manage. It sounds like a good idea to make the effects you don't use now (outside of duels, or mega-high-end PvP) like Singe Magic, Flee, and Whiplash into new and more potent abilities, but I'd rather not have to tie my choice of pet - and likely spec because of it - to a tricky one-off ability for a specific encounter. Plus dear god we've already got too many effing abilities that have to be macroed and keybound as it is, I can only imagine having to make 5 more that I'd only need for 1 encounter per tier.

I'd rather them take the current demons, increase their base damage by 10%, and then change their normal attacks into something more - like:

• making the Imp's Firebolt do more damage and send off tendrils of Doomfire that gravitate towards nearby enemies
• making the Felhunter's Shadow Bite do more damage, and have a chance to duplicate a tick of one of the Warlock's shadow DOTs each time it bites, or chance to refresh one of their DOTs (without penalizing BoA, of course).
• making the Succubus' Whiplash do more damage, and constricts the enemy so that every action they take for 10 seconds causes Retaliation*
• your idea for the VW Sacrifice sounds fine.
• making the Felguard's Felstorm do more damage, making it leave an Impale bleed on all targets it hits.

What I'm afraid they'll actually do, however, is buff their damage by 15%, give them new artwork, and call it a day.

* See GuildWars2 for a description of Retaliation - in short for every action you take you do damage to yourself, stacks in intensity.

[Phoenexis]

Awesome ideas Jessicka, however you might want to include cooldowns so that we could have an idea on what to expect, seeing as they sound a bit overpowered, not that I'm against that!

I was personally thinking the following: All upgraded pets retain their current abilities, however they gain additional ones that share the same cooldown. The current abilities would be on a shorter one while the new ones would have a big cooldown, but more utility. This would give us choice as to what we use, how we use it and make us think what would be ideal for the situation.

Here are a couple of ideas:
Imp: Phase twist.. Negates any direct source of damage taken by the target during 6 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds. 1 minute cooldown.

Voidwalker: Void Field. 30 seconds cooldown. Places a Void Field on the chosen area that lasts 20 seconds. Enemy players within the Void Field are slowed by 30% and prevented from entering Stealth and Invisibility, while party and raid members' movement speed is increased by 20%. (The Void Field's size is equal to the hunter's Flare)

Felhunter: Uncontrollable Hunger. 3 seconds cooldown. Dispels a magical buff from an enemy or a magical debuff from an ally, dealing 2000 damage to the dispelled target. (Although I like your Mass Dispel idea more).
OR, Nether Storm. 2 mins cooldown. The Observer conjures a Nether Storm, reducing magic damage taken by all targets within 40 yards of it by 50% and burning enemy mana equal to 50% of their dealt damage. However, the unstable energies released also cause allies to take damage equal to 50% of their spent mana. Lasts 10 seconds. After the effect ends, the caster remains incapacitated for 20 seconds due to its lack of energy.
I really like this ability because it fits the "risk" element that warlocks have. Something that Blizzard is really emphasizing on in MoP.

Succubus: Spinning Pain Spike. 1.5 mins cooldown. The Shivan grabs a targeted enemy and all of its allies within 7 yards of it and then leaps to a chosen area, releasing its victims and dazing them for 5 seconds.

Felguard: Nether Vortex. 1.5 mins cooldown. Places a Nether Vortex on the chosen area, lasting 12 seconds. Enemies within the Nether Vortex are interrupted and knocked down every 4 seconds in addition to taking 2000 shadowflame damage every second.


I brought up the idea of abilities sharing cooldowns because it offers us choice. Maybe I'd like to knock off an opponent from a bridge instead of using Spinning Pain Spike for example, or simply dispel a debuff instead of taking a major risk. However now that I think about it my idea might be flawed since the talent reinforces our demons, so the abilities should be better versions of themselves.

[smegdawg]

@ jessicka - I like all of your ability ideas because they provide utility rather then increased damage, except for the Shivan.

Rather then have have seduction turn into skewer, I think it would be more appropriate to make it something like:

Mass Seduction - Causes all enemies within a 15 yrd radius to run towards the Shivan. Upon reaching her the spell is broken and players resume control of their character.

Spinning pain spike sounds to much like felstorm. This one is a little more difficult to replace because I doubt that she will retain her whip(/sadface). Turning whiplash into something similar to your skewer sounds about right though so that it continues involving the weapon for this ability.

@Nfar - as I said before I would prefer to have the new abilities focus on untily rather the damage. If the pets are all based off of utility, then I don't have to be pigeon holed into using a specific pet for a specific spec. That being said, having the felhunter refresh a dot would be awesome.

[checking facts]

I don't know. I think rather than a radial AoE, the shivarra seduction should be a conic AoE pointing backwards

[Jessicka]

Seems a couple of those abilities need explainations; I'd kinda assumed they'd be obvious since they are abilities already present in game.

Spinning Pain Spike isn't an AoE ability, it's the ability the Mistresses of Pain use in the Lord Jaraxxus encounter in ToC. Basicially they pick the player up, jump, spin round and hammer them into the floor some distance from where they originally were. It's analogous to the present Succubus Whiplash in that it's effectively a knockback, the difference is that it would be single target, but move them further away and deal a bit more damage.

Similarly, Skewer would be a CC like Seduction, but rather than a channelled charm effect, it would be a stun or root and so not share DR with Fear, and the Shivan would be able to carry out other actions during the effect. In both cases, neither would be autocastable, or rotational DPS abilities.

Obviously some abilities would have cooldowns, but it's not really numbers I'm interested in - it's the effects of the utility itself.

[Beenieshaman]

Why are you guys want more CC, we would already have a lot in Panda and it's a lvl75 talent so i guess it would be damage gain.

[Nfariessence]

Those are all creative... but do we really need more CC's for PvP? Lord knows we haven't CC'd a damn thing in PvE since TBC, so it sure as heck isn't for that? We already have 22% of our talents being CC's for PvP... do we really need another?

[Jessicka]

Those are all creative... but do we really need more CC's for PvP? Lord knows we haven't CC'd a damn thing in PvE since TBC, so it sure as heck isn't for that? We already have 22% of our talents being CC's for PvP... do we really need another?

It's a discussion I've had a few times in guild; a lot of classes have pretty huge toolboxes, but only ever seem to hit on average 4-7 buttons with any regularity in PvE. That's a problem on the road the game's been travelling down for the last couple of years, and I would like to see a bit of a change in direction. That's for the instance and encounter designers to worry about though, that's where the real problems lie; DS has been a massive disapointment for me in that respect, with the only time that anyone opens their toolbox is to kill an add every 45s or so on a single encounter. Otherwise, it just feels like timing the use of defensive cooldowns you have bound anyway for those 'Oh shit' moments. The only other utility is basically dependent on how our damage is dealt, be it through AoE, multidotting, burst, or Bane of Havoc; those allow the class to shine but it's just doing what you'd do anyway.

It's not that I want more CC, none of the CC abilities are actually additions, they are upgrades and tweaks to replace abilities we have anyway. What I would like is more tools, and the opportunity to use them. Barrier, Mass Dispel, Knockbacks: They're the kind of things I've had to, or seen people over the years have to go really out of their way to get specific specs into the raid to provide using the alt and off-spec merry-go-round. It's bad enough being so constrained with a 10 man group to have to do that, but I think it's a case of either make tools like these a little more available or eliminate the mechanics that require them. I know which I'd rather see.

[Nyaldee]

Too overpowered to even consider. I especially liked "Paranoia (Passive Aura): Greatly increases stealth detection to all nearby friendly targets within 30 yards.", even though Blizzard went a long way over years to remove all bonus steath detection for the sake of balancing pvp.

[Phoenexis]

I'm all in for everything except Paranoia and your version of Spinning Pain Spike. There'd be complications with the knock back since it's only one target and Whiplash just seems better in general. I doubt they'd re-implement Paranoia too.

To Smegdawg, I don't think that Mass Seduction is a very good idea seeing as it would require too much pet management. Seduction by itself is a great ability, and doesn't really need to be replaced.

Abilities should be upgraded as Jessicka has proposed or demons should get new abilities and we'd have a choice between using the original spells and the new, more powerful ones. They'd share cds like Dark Soul, with the older versions having shorter cooldowns.

For example: a has a 10 sec cd and b has a 20 sec cd. If you use a then both are on a 10 sec cd, if you use b (which is more powerful in some situations) then both are on a 20 sec cd. I really like this idea because it gives us a lot of choice in gameplay.

[smegdawg]

'

Consume Shadows Special Ability
10% of base mana
Channeled
The Voidwalker consumes nearby shadows to bolster its form, recovering 30% health and mana over 6 sec and greatly increasing stealth detection to all nearby friendly targets within 30 yards. Cannot be used while in combat.

Still in game and a great way to find rogues who think they are stealthed.

I like the shared cooldown model. But if that is the case do the new spells have to be better versions of the original spell? Or are ther completely new spells. Like would seduction become a more powerful CC, or a damaging spell?

[Xelnath]

The new Grimoire of Supremacy spells:

Fel Imp: Singe Magic -> Sear Magic - Dispels 1 magic debuff from up to 5 allies within 15 yards of the target.
Voidlord: Void Shield - Reduces all damage taken by 60%. 3 Charges. Deals Shadow damage when the voidwalker is hit
Shivarra: Seduction -> Mesmerize: Channeled CC, works on all non-demon, non-elemental creature types
Observer: Spell Lock -> Optical Blast: Spell Lock that interrupts.
Observer: Devour Magic -> Clone Magic: Steals a spell from the enemy
Wrathguard: Legion Strike -> Mortal Cleave: Applies a full version of mortal strike.

Poke holes in it.

New pet abilities:

Imp - Cauterizing Flames - Applies a HoT to the Warlock. Heals health over time.
Voidwalker - Shadow Bulwark - Last stand style HP boost
Voidwalker - Disarm - 10 sec duration, 1 min cooldown.

Missing pet abilities:

Voidwalker - Sacrifice. Now a talent

[Phoenexis]

'

Still in game and a great way to find rogues who think they are stealthed.

I like the shared cooldown model. But if that is the case do the new spells have to be better versions of the original spell? Or are ther completely new spells. Like would seduction become a more powerful CC, or a damaging spell?

I was thinking the same flavor instead of the same purpose. Here's what I had in mind:
Imp: Phase twist.. Negates any direct source of damage taken by the target during 6 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds. 1 minute cooldown.

Voidwalker: Void Field. 30 seconds cooldown. Places a Void Field on the chosen area that lasts 20 seconds. Enemy players within the Void Field are slowed by 30% and prevented from entering Stealth and Invisibility, while party and raid members' movement speed is increased by 20%. (The Void Field's size is equal to the hunter's Flare)

Felhunter: Uncontrollable Hunger. 3 seconds cooldown. Dispels a magical buff from an enemy or a magical debuff from an ally, dealing 2000 damage to the dispelled target. (Although I like your Mass Dispel idea more).
OR, Nether Storm. 2 mins cooldown. The Observer conjures a Nether Storm, reducing magic damage taken by all targets within 40 yards of it by 50% and burning enemy mana equal to 50% of their dealt damage. However, the unstable energies released also cause allies to take damage equal to 50% of their spent mana. Lasts 10 seconds. After the effect ends, the caster remains incapacitated for 20 seconds due to its lack of energy.
I really like this ability because it fits the "risk" element that warlocks have. Something that Blizzard is really emphasizing on in MoP.

Succubus: Spinning Pain Spike. 1.5 mins cooldown. The Shivan grabs a targeted enemy and all of its allies within 7 yards of it and then leaps to a chosen area, releasing its victims and dazing them for 5 seconds.

Felguard: Nether Vortex. 1.5 mins cooldown. Places a Nether Vortex on the chosen area, lasting 12 seconds. Enemies within the Nether Vortex are interrupted and knocked down every 4 seconds in addition to taking 3000 shadowflame damage every second.

Although now that I think of it the Void Field might have to change since it's basically a Flare with an Ice Trap. I like Jessicka's Mass Dispel idea, but it needs to have that warlock-ish flavor. Maybe a combination of Nether Storm and Mass Dispel could give something interesting?
Also I like your Last Stand and Disarm ideas for the Voidwalker.