Demonbolt- Level 100 Warlock Talent WoD

[Thelxi]

I hope they scrap this crapola and come up with something better.

[Magpai]

@thread

Early days obviously, but if this makes it live, they'll likely make it spec-based as opposed to talent based since it requires Demonology anyway; the whole point of talents is/was to give players situational choices regardless of their chosen spec.

This is not true. They already have talents on live that have different effects depending on spec. They've expanded on this idea going into Warlords.

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I hope they scrap this crapola and come up with something better.

There are two other talent choices...

[Jessicka]

And I think people will pick either of those two. Demon Bolt looks interesting, but at the same time a bit less intuitive than the others. With that in mind it's hard to de how to fit it within encounters to get the best out of it since it completely commits you to burning out on Fury once you hit it. I'm interested to try it out, but ultimately I will likely bind that key to Cataclysm.

[Magpai]

And I think people will pick either of those two. Demon Bolt looks interesting, but at the same time a bit less intuitive than the others. With that in mind it's hard to de how to fit it within encounters to get the best out of it since it completely commits you to burning out on Fury once you hit it. I'm interested to try it out, but ultimately I will likely bind that key to Cataclysm.

I think there's enough of a market for high skillcap talents to justify Blizzard leaving it in though. The others are a passive and an active but not particularly complicated skill, so the tier has plenty of skill level variety.

[Jessicka]

I think there's enough of a market for high skillcap talents to justify Blizzard leaving it in though. The others are a passive and an active but not particularly complicated skill, so the tier has plenty of skill level variety.

Of course, but complexity and opacity are two very different things. On the fact of it, you press this at the top of your burn phase, then empty all of your Fury pool. That is not complex, at all. It does seem to have some hidden depth to it though, which intregues me, which is why I want to test it, but I'm not actually sure if there is anything more to it than that. Cataclysm on the other hand, is absolutely transparent, not only does it offer a big hit at the top of your burn phase in the same, it also offers some other clear opportunities on top of that, without the drawback of potentially losing Fury.

[Dyptheria]

@Magpai

That was my point. None of the Talents on live are <choose a spec>-only. I think Blizzard should maintain the policy of making Talents cross-spec.

[Soulzar]

I just don't see Demon Bolt being PvE focused. Granted I don't PvP at all so I could be completely off with it being more geared to that market, but in PvE ... having a spell with that kind of Dmg modifier that has no cooldown and a ranging scale factor based on your current fury just does not follow the standard Damage per Cast time.. damage per resource... or cast on cooldown model

So you are banking up fury, hit 1k.. blast off your Demon bolt.. boom you have 300 fury banked for your procs and burn phase... but.. why would you need 1300 fury for a burn phase when you again have a maxed out demon bolt? What point is the banked fury then? 300 fury for a 600% modified spell seems reasonable...and if the scaling on dmg/fury ratio remains constant... it would be logical to say its either always better dmg per resource.. or never...regardless of how much fury you have.

The ability to get your fury refunded if you burn yourself dry just doesn't seem to flow with how and when you would want to be using that kind of dmg modified spell. I don't see gaming a secret stash of fury being a goal over using your hardest nuke whenever possible.

Now if it was 300 fury cost always......

[Jessicka]

@Magpai

That was my point. None of the Talents on live are <choose a spec>-only. I think Blizzard should maintain the policy of making Talents cross-spec.

I think that risks harming spec distinctiveness. One of the points I've raised about the changes to Mages is that while they're trimming back button bloat, shifting those things to the talent tree is going to make that the place that puts too much definition on how you play the class rather than your chosen specialisation. It's good in that respect that some talents do change along with spec, as it allows the specialisation to maintain its flavour.

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I just don't see Demon Bolt being PvE focused. Granted I don't PvP at all so I could be completely off with it being more geared to that market, but in PvE ... having a spell with that kind of Dmg modifier that has no cooldown and a ranging scale factor based on your current fury just does not follow the standard Damage per Cast time.. damage per resource... or cast on cooldown model

So you are banking up fury, hit 1k.. blast off your Demon bolt.. boom you have 300 fury banked for your procs and burn phase... but.. why would you need 1300 fury for a burn phase when you again have a maxed out demon bolt? What point is the banked fury then? 300 fury for a 600% modified spell seems reasonable...and if the scaling on dmg/fury ratio remains constant... it would be logical to say its either always better dmg per resource.. or never...regardless of how much fury you have.

The ability to get your fury refunded if you burn yourself dry just doesn't seem to flow with how and when you would want to be using that kind of dmg modified spell. I don't see gaming a secret stash of fury being a goal over using your hardest nuke whenever possible.

Now if it was 300 fury cost always......

If it is hitting that hard, why would you use it just to bank Fury when you can have it hit so much harder with all your procs up at the top of the burn phase? Then follow it up with a couple of Chaos Waves, double Felstorms, Imp Swarm... I think this might be a little broken for PVP. Assuming you could ever actually cap your Fury, which I guess would be a challenge by itself

[Soulzar]

If it is hitting that hard, why would you use it just to bank Fury when you can have it hit so much harder with all your procs up at the top of the burn phase? Then follow it up with a couple of Chaos Waves, double Felstorms, Imp Swarm... I think this might be a little broken for PVP. Assuming you could ever actually cap your Fury, which I guess would be a challenge by itself

And that basically is the question I have yet to see a good answer to.

You don't sit capped at 4 embers waiting for procs, you dump a CB to prevent capping while maintaining enough for when you get a proc. Same deal with Demo, You maintain high fury for your procs, and dump some to prevent capping. Only if you are going xxxx-40 will the fury store mechanic even be used... and I see most times you just spending ~300 fury to prevent capping when the spell is at max power. The Fury store mechanic, while seemingly being a core component of the spell and its use.. seems to not fit with how you would want to use the spell in PvE.

I would make sense if you are about to cap fury, to toss out a max strength demon bolt, to "burn off the 4th ember" and continue building fury again in anticipation of your procs. Then you get said proc... it would again make sense to use the massive 600% modified spell, only now the fury store of first one is "wasted". And further to that, if the ratio of fury/dmg is constant(assumed), why wouldn't we chain cast it? Why would we use ToC or Soulfire? Unfortunately we need more of the finer details of the spell to work out these questions and get answers, and we are still in the dark.

That is why I feel it may be geared more towards pvp , where the rules of sustained dps don't cloud its potential uses/benefits as much. As you pointed out, it def looks to be more burst orientated and particularly beneficial in situations where you can't free cast to gain large fury pools.

[Count Zero]

Because Alpha isn't even live yet. It will see more changes before the summer's over. I think it's pretty clear what the intent is, even if that intent is not yet holding up to reality.

[Dyptheria]

@Jessicka

I think that risks harming spec distinctiveness. One of the points I've raised about the changes to Mages is that while they're trimming back button bloat, shifting those things to the talent tree is going to make that the place that puts too much definition on how you play the class rather than your chosen specialisation. It's good in that respect that some talents do change along with spec, as it allows the specialisation to maintain its flavour.

I agree with you on this 100%, but I still maintain my position that if a Talent is in the Talent tree it should be available to all specs, even if that means changing its behaviour accordingly, which as you rightly say will maintain (or increase) spec flavour. While I can understand Glyphs being effective for this spec or that, I think that players should not be shut out of a given Talent because it's Affliction/Destro/Demo-only.


@Rethul

Thanks for that link. An interesting position to take, but I still think Demonology as a summoner of uncontrolled Demons could have been made to work. It would certainly have been less clunky and more natural than what we have now, in my opinion anyway.

[luckydevours]

If i was in charge i would delete the last two talent tiers (lvl 90 and 100) and start all over again, since the current ones in the WoD alpha are complete and utter dog shit.

[Magpai]

@Magpai

That was my point. None of the Talents on live are <choose a spec>-only. I think Blizzard should maintain the policy of making Talents cross-spec.

I think it's kind of cool to have talents that unify the specs and that are available regardless of your choice in talents. Having shadowfury available to all three specs for example was one thing I really enjoyed about the Mists warlock changes.

[Dyptheria]

I think it's kind of cool to have talents that unify the specs and that are available regardless of your choice in talents. Having shadowfury available to all three specs for example was one thing I really enjoyed about the Mists warlock changes.

Agreed.

[Zulantu]

Correct me if I'm wrong. I understand that the shadowflame DoT won't snapshot the meta bonus outside of meta, but will do increased damage during meta. With regards to Demonbolt, it seems to be equal to ToC in DPET/Fury around the 150-200 range. What I started doing was basically the normal MoP rotation, but staying in meta for the entire shadowflame DoT. I noticed that while using the HoG trick I was able to dump fury and come out fine. After the last HoG I entered meta, lead with demonbolt and spammed ToC til forced out of meta. Then back to the normal rotation until nearing another two charge HoG.

When doing this during darksoul, following a napkin math/rough rule of only casting one demonbolt per meta and only when above 150 fury, the mana return allows you to re-enter meta a second time and dump the mana returned which held for almost the full duration of dark soul.

I'm in no way sure that this is optimal and I don't have any numbers/math to add any sort of credibility, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Edit- Archimonde's Darkness allows enough delay to generate enough fury, after the opener, for a full meta Dark Soul before stacking twice. There also seems to be a strong synergy with the new Dark Soul glyph that reduces CD and duration of Dark Soul.

I actually found this rotation to be extremely enjoyable. The natural flow is friggen outstanding!

I'll have to get off the dummies and run a few dungeons to get a better grasp of it, but it's feeling great so far.

[Deleted]

Shadowflame will only benefit from caster form mastery. It effectively snapshots when it is cast, not when it lands.

Meta weaving Shadowflame is dead. If it's doing more damage in Meta, then it's just not been fixed yet.

Demonbolt will be most optimally cast at as close to 1000 fury as possible.

[Osiria]

Just a question, does Demonbolt replace Soulfire in Meta? I don't know much about the (few) changes on Beta.

I mean, I think Demonbolt would only make sense if it were some kind of Soulfire morph for Meta. We already use Soulfire while morphed in certain occasions when the right procs are up so, it could become a safer way to use SF without wasting procs and DF.

[Jessicka]

Just a question, does Demonbolt replace Soulfire in Meta? I don't know much about the (few) changes on Beta.

I mean, I think Demonbolt would only make sense if it were some kind of Soulfire morph for Meta. We already use Soulfire while morphed in certain occasions when the right procs are up so, it could become a safer way to use SF without wasting procs and DF.

No, it's a whole new spell.

[Osiria]

No, it's a whole new spell.

So, what's exactly the priority now? It's weird to have both Demonbolt and Soulfire conflicting in case procs pop up.

[Jessicka]

So, what's exactly the priority now? It's weird to have both Demonbolt and Soulfire conflicting in case procs pop up.

Use DB once at the start of your burn phase, use up Fury until you get the refund.