Redesigning Demonology: How would you do it?

[jason1975]

As stated in the 6.2 Q&A the developers feel that demonology is too complex for the average player. They said it needs to be redesigned in a future patch.

How would you do it?

Please no QQ about the 6.2 demonology nerf.

[Joryy]

We're going to see fewer DF spenders. Right now we have ToC, SF, CW, and immo. Two of those are going to get cut. Quite possibly we will see demonbolt as the baseline playstyle.
Probably also going to see HoG stacking die.

In return, I expect to get a Kill Command type spell -- where you press the button, but the damage comes from your pet.

[Xar226]

Somewhat random question: I only played Demo once in a great while (my lock isn't an alt I play much), but I was surprised at the comment that it needed an addon to play properly. What, exactly, is an addon needed for? I mean yeah, I use some weakauras for my lock just like I do for every other toon to manage DoT times and such, but that is just a QoL improvement for me; the same information can be found in the default interface. Is there something I'm missing here? HoG stacking doesn't seem to require an addon -- just look at the DoT time, or after a few times playing with it you'll learn exactly how many casts you can squeeze in between the first HoG and needing to get the next out. What am I missing?

[jason1975]

Please stay on topic.

[Deleted]

considering the reasons given for the overhaul, you can expect a dumb-down akin to what happened to moonkins:

demonic fury regenerates automatically
way less spenders
touch of chaos either removed or no longer instant
probably either corruption or doom removed and merged into one dot

[Netherspark]

What needs to change is:

The conflict between Hand of Gul'dan and Chaos Wave
Juggling multiple fillers via Molten Core stacks
Dots being restricted to specific forms

So remove Corruption completely and make Doom castable in all forms. De-link the cooldowns of Hand of Gul'dan & Chaos Wave, possibly ditching the charge system as well. Reduce the proc rate of Molten Core, cap it at 3 stacks and make it enhance Soul Fire's damage.

Those 3 small changes will remove the excess complexity, while still retaining the core and identity of the current spec.

[laughtrey]

I'd like a more stance-dance version of Metamorphasis instead of a resource dump. Right now it's kind of a stance dance AND a resource dump, it should be one or the other. Only having to pay attention to Molten Core procs instead of MC and Demonic fury would simplify it a bit. Being able to apply doom and chaos wave without a restriction would be nice, but give everything in demon-form a sort of Demonbolt effect where the more you cast it in demon-form, the more mana it costs until you let it reset. Instead of having HoG/CW charges, they just cost more and more mana that after the 2nd or 3rd cast it costs more than your mana pool. You can even have casting the spells in humanoid form reduce the cooldown on the debuffs, so moving in and out of demon form as fast as you can has a skill curve.


I want the demons to be more even, right now as Demo you only ever use Felguard/Wrathguard or Terrorguard/Doomguard based on your talents. I want to be able to use the Felhunter or Observer more often as Demonology if I so choose. I don't know if the way to do that is to get parity in their damage or give them more interesting attacks.

If it's a more overhaul-redesign sort of way I'd like to see Demo locks be more like a necromancer/witchdoctor type class with the demons. Instead of the one pet and multiple imps that spawn automatically/with imp swarm, It'd be cool to be able to summon 2-3 demons that mix and match buffs or abilities, so like having a voidwalker out will make you tankier, but move slower. Succubus will have you increase spell power, but also take more damage. Felhunter will make you move faster, but cast slower, so choosing your buffs/debuffs you get from your demons would be a cool little meta-game depending on the fight, and it's more about demon control than casting soulfire/shadowbolt.

[Kirroth]

-Redesign HoG/CW. Between the need to stack the DoT and the travel time delay, it's both needlessly tricky and impossible to tell the optimal use without a detailed guide. Also the burst AoE of CW is holding us back from getting decent sustained AoE abilities.

-Scrap stance dancing. Some abilities generate Demonic Fury, some abilities cost Demonic Fury, there's no more having to toggle Meta on and off.

-Put the spec's focus clearly on demon summoning. More abilities that interact with the demon pet, BM Hunter style. Abilities that consume DF to summon temp pets instead of casting a powerful DoT or nuke.

[PickleballAce]

This assumes that stuff like Molten Core, Hand of Guldan charges, Chaos Wave and stance dancing are the source of player problems, and it also assumes that the changes we're making are not necessarily what we want, but with the goal in mind of simplifying the spec.

- Molten Core and Soul Fire removed.

- Chaos Wave removed. Hand of Guldan merged with Imp Swarm. Deals damage on impact and summons a pack of wild imps.

- Remove Doom, but return Immolate to Demo. I like "two DoT" Demo as the middle ground between Aff and Destro, and returning Immolate would give more of the "Shadow and Fire" flavor back.

- Fel Flame returned for all Warlock specs. Fel flame becomes becomes Touch of Chaos in Metamorphosis and remains a Fury-burning single target nuke.

- Shadow Bolt in caster form becomes Shadow Bolt Volley in Metamorphosis and becomes our Fury-burning AoE nuke.

- Hellfire would be channeled on a target (or the caster), and would remain our caster form AoE.

- Replace Drain Life with Shadow Ward (absorbs Shadow damage). Shadow Ward when cast in Metamorphosis becomes Fury Ward and consumes Fury to absorb all schools of damage.

- Life Tap remains, but Mana regeneration is increased when the player is in Metamorphosis.

- Grimoire of Sacrifice returned to Demonology (BUT MAH DEMON FANTASIES!1). Either Grimoire of Service or Grimoire of Synergy would be removed, and the other would remain as the "old demons" talent.

- Demonbolt could be cut altogether, or be a replacement for ToC, but the damage would be reduced, with it gaining a small amount of splash damage to secondary targets.



I still like the concept of caster form abilities becoming something else in Meta, but:

Immolate would NOT change while in Meta, and gain no extra benefit.
Corruption would NOT change while in Meta, and gain no extra benefit.
Hand of Guldan would NOT change to a new spell in Meta, and would gain no extra benefit.
Hellfire COULD not change to Immolation Aura, and would gain no extra benefit.

Only Shadow Bolt, Fel Flame and Shadow Ward would change functionality in Demon Form.



TL;DR a basic priority list could be...

(Single Target)
Maintain Immolate, can be cast in any form for simplicity.
Maintain Corruption, can be cast in any form for simplicity.
Hand of Guldan on CD, can be cast in any form for simplicity. Could re-work to have no need to stack intelligently.
Shadow Bolt as your caster filler.
Dump Fury with Touch of Chaos.

(AoE)
Hand of Guldan on CD
Hellfire as your caster filler.
Dump Fury with Shadow Bolt Volley.

[Jetjaguar]

- Remove Doom, but return Immolate to Demo. I like "two DoT" Demo as the middle ground between Aff and Destro, and returning Immolate would give more of the "Shadow and Fire" flavor back.

- Fel Flame returned for all Warlock specs. If no Fel Flame, simply make Corruption deal a small amount of direct damage.

- Shadowbolt in caster form becomes Shadowbolt Volley in Metamorphosis and becomes our Fury-burning AoE nuke.

- Fel flame in caster form becomes Touch of Chaos in Metamorphosis and remains a Fury-burning single target nuke.

- Replace Drain Life with Shadow Ward (absorbs Shadow damage). Shadow Ward when cast in Metamorphosis becomes Fury Ward and consumes Fury to absorb all schools of damage.

- Life Tap remains, but Mana regeneration is increased when the player is in Metamorphosis.

- Grimoire of Service removed for all specs and replaced by Grimoire of Synergy. Grimoire of Sacrifice returned to Demonology (BUT MAH DEMON FANTASIES!1)

- Demonbolt damage reduced, but it now does a small amount of splash damage to secondary targets.

- Imp Swarm made a short-term baseline cooldown (30 or 60 seconds), that consumes Fury to summon five Imps.


I'm on the fence with changes to Hand of Guldan/Chaos Wave and Soul Fire.

I would make HoG completely stack the damage on the second application so you don't have to wait for the first dot to tick down. I would make Soul Fire with MC only useable in meta. I'd make Chaos Wave not give you a MC stack.

[kornoth]

They are going to make demonology a real pet spec, like BM hunters. Everyone knows that they test some stuff with the set bonus, look at the class trinket and the t18 bonus of demo, you will understand. the damage will come from the demons, and no more from you, maybe they'll add some stuff to buff demons for aoe/burst.

And maybe they are going to delete metamorphosis but I hope not.

All I want to see is metamorphosis coming back as a cooldown, and the more demon you summoned from the neither, the more powerfull you become, because you will sacrifice them all when you turn into a demon. the more you delay your cooldown, the more powerfull you get. This will be a demonology spec.

[fakaroonie]

I' quit 3 or 4 months ago, and after Ion's answer to warlocks, I'm SO glad I did.

For Demo I'd keep Felguard as the main dude, nevermind the Doomguard, it's boring.
Metamorphosis on CD, kept for spamming them Soul Fire stacks.
Shadow bolt to go to affliction, and Demonbolt talent gone, but used as a filler instead of SB.
Hand of Gul'Dan as a 15-20 sec aoe cooldown.
Dots: Doom + a new dot, not Immolate, not Corruption (if they wanna keep going this way and make the 3 specs use totally different spells, which imo is a bad idea)

And... remove the damn resources from all classes really. Holy Power, Shards, Demonic Fury... what ever happened to Mana ? Soon they will remove HP, and add 3 bars as lives...

Resources are possibly the worst thing that came to WoW. 3 lines FULLY charged? Click this shiny button to release OMEGA AWESOME ABILITY. No more lines? Spam filler.

[Deleted]

Demonic fury removed and replaced by a molten core stacks bar. So the bar has 10 pins, one molten core buff represents one pin so 10 stacks of molten core represents 10 pins.
Meta has been merged with dark soul which becomes "Dark Soul:Metamorphosis" (Which does sound badass.)
Our new mastery is increased damage during dark soul, caster form and more damage from your pets.
No extra abilities in metamorphosis, just increased damage.
Hellfire removed.
Hog no longer has charges, and doesn't generates molten core. (Hog is your new aoe.)
Doom no longer generates imps from crits. (To reduce raid clutter from imps.)
Doom and corruption gets merged, think corruption=1 doom=0. This is how the dot would work. 1-0-1-0-1=Doom hits, corruption hits, doom hits, corruption hits and so on. Big damage, low damage, big damage low damage and so on.

The thing with soul fire and molten core is that save it up for your big damage which is CD's and trinkets or you could use it in caster form if you need some quick damage but if you do you will lose some of the burst from Dark Soul:Metamorphosis.

Tadah! A demonology warlock specialization much more friendly for the "average" world of warcraft player.

What i have solved: Hellfire melee, less raid clutter from imps, precious fps, hog charges confusion and a new and understandable CD.

[Cathbadh]

I wouldn't.

Ok, Ok. The only real complexity I see is maintaining a 2 stack of HoG, so remove that. Then balance us entirely on our level 100 talent - on whether we're going to Demonbolt (I don't like it but I get it) OR Cataclysm or Servitude. Make us choose between being good at (and only good at) AoE or good at single target, or good at movement but not able to do both. Make us choose between being able to cleave down all the adds on Furnace OR be able to burn down the 4 shielded adds. Make us be able to smoke Gruul during p1 but not able to do much of anything during p2 aside from refreshing our dots or vice versa. 3 significant playstyles based on talent choice. We retain the toolbox but can't use all the tools on the same fight. Maybe round it out with allowing us to stat for Demo only or Aff+Destro. Changing a spec and changing a talent set on a fight by fight basis aren't all that different as it is.

[Bullettime]

They need to actually decide what they want Demonology to be. It currently has a split identity between the master of demons and the whole "demon within" vibe and just becomes a jumbled mess.

But personally, they need to streamline Demonology to one or just two resources instead of having mana, Fury, and then Molten Core acting as a pseudo third. The handling of Meta vs caster form is really awkward too where things like Chaos Wave are worse than double stacked Hand of Gul'dan or where you have to stance dance to place dots. Meta overall is pretty awkward where it's both a stance and dump at the same time and everything is blah.

[Elise the Seeker]

This assumes that stuff like Molten Core, Hand of Guldan charges, Chaos Wave and stance dancing are the source of player problems, and it also assumes that the changes we're making are not necessarily what we want, but with the goal in mind of simplifying the spec.

- Remove Doom, but return Immolate to Demo. I like "two DoT" Demo as the middle ground between Aff and Destro, and returning Immolate would give more of the "Shadow and Fire" flavor back.

- Fel Flame returned for all Warlock specs. Fel flame becomes becomes Touch of Chaos in Metamorphosis and remains a Fury-burning single target nuke.

- Shadow Bolt in caster form becomes Shadow Bolt Volley in Metamorphosis and becomes our Fury-burning AoE nuke.

- Hellfire would be channeled on a target (or the caster), and would remain our caster form AoE.

- Replace Drain Life with Shadow Ward (absorbs Shadow damage). Shadow Ward when cast in Metamorphosis becomes Fury Ward and consumes Fury to absorb all schools of damage.

- Life Tap remains, but Mana regeneration is increased when the player is in Metamorphosis.

- Grimoire of Sacrifice returned to Demonology (BUT MAH DEMON FANTASIES!1). Either Grimoire of Service or Grimoire of Synergy would be removed, and the other would remain as the "old demons" talent.

- Demonbolt could be cut altogether, or be a replacement for ToC, but the damage would be reduced, with it gaining a small amount of splash damage to secondary targets.

- Molten Core and Soul Fire removed.

- Chaos Wave removed. Hand of Guldan merged with Imp Swarm. Deals damage on impact and summons a pack of wild imps.



I still like the concept of caster form abilities becoming something else in Meta, but:

Immolate would NOT change while in Meta, and gain no extra benefit.
Corruption would NOT change while in Meta, and gain no extra benefit.
Hand of Guldan would NOT change to a new spell in Meta, and would gain no extra benefit.
Hellfire COULD not change to Immolation Aura, and would gain no extra benefit.

Only Shadow Bolt, Fel Flame and Shadow Ward would change functionality in Demon Form.



For instance, a basic priority list could be...

(Single Target)
Maintain Immolate, can be cast in any form for simplicity.
Maintain Corruption, can be cast in any form for simplicity.
Hand of Guldan on CD, can be cast in any form for simplicity. Could re-work to have no need to stack intelligently.
Shadow Bolt as your caster filler.
Dump Fury with Touch of Chaos.

(AoE)
Hand of Guldan on CD
Hellfire as your caster filler.
Dump Fury with Shadow Bolt Volley.

No, diff spells in each form makes demonology annoying to play.

[Skayth]

My redesign?

A complete overhaul, to the point its no longer what it currently is. I would make it truly a warlock, all about demons and summoning them.

My demonology revamp would bring about many harsh changes and cutting of abilities.

To begin with, I would cut metamorphosis. Relying upon this ability to do any damage is the bane of our existence, and has been since its inception, WoTLK and only in execution, when before, we relied upon our demons to do our damage. So this ability and its all “meta” abilities are cut, but doom.

I would then cut hellfire and Lifetap. As it is, and by design, they do not want us in melee one bit, so why the hell do we have an aoe that is melee only? Well, good bye bad design ability, and give us a new ranged aoe. I would then cut Lifetap as it is, now, a poor excuse to even keep us cutting our hp, forcing a healer to heal us, if we do just as much damage as everyone else, or now, less than.

For corruption, I would make doom and corruption become one ability. It would tick like corruption now, last 1 min like doom. It can no longer be dispelled (pvp purposes). If it kills a target, it will summon a Doomguard (bring back that old ability of it, just for fun), but you need to enslave it.

Soul Fire is now our nuke. No more wet noodle shadowbolt. Post 25% it begins to hit harder. Each hit has a chance of summoning an imp, based off RNG, but after the 5th is 100% if you hadnt summoned one before hand.

Shadowbolt becomes shadowbolt volley, our aoe. (think old harvest life, but with shadowbolts now)

Hand of Gul'dan has a cooldown now, and no charges. It does leave a dot on the main target, even though it does aoe instant damage to all. Now summons 3 imps on cooldown.

Now, you are able to have 2 pets out permanently, even if you are using supremacy. Service will be changed for this spec, to become an “enrage.”

Your new resource will be Demonic Summons. You can have only 3 charged at one time. Each rune is used for 2 new abilities, depending on the need. First is for demonic gateway (single), where you summon 3 demons(examples in par) to do you bidding on your target, 1 a minor (hellhound), 1 a medium (Satyr), and 1 powerful (Vanguard). The other ability is Rain of Chaos(aoe), where meteors rain from the sky, hitting the ground (aoe), and 2-3 infernals rise from the and attack your targets. Demons last 20 seconds. Each spell has a has a cast time of 2 seconds.

At the beginning of the fight, you start with one of the summons. You build up summons over the fight with your pets doing damage and off your Doom and Soul Fire. Shadowbolt volley has a chance to build it. Summons should be build so that you can summon demons 10 seconds after the last set expired. You cannot use one summon immediately after the other, with a 10 second cooldown, to push away from stacking and attempting use as burst.

The idea is to Demonic Summon>Doom>Hand of Gul'dan on CD> Soul Fire

Also, bring back fel fire.

Demon Bolt will be changed to something different.

This spec basically gives back demonology to a demonologist warlock, and revolves around summoning demons, like warlocks should be about.

[Deleted]

i like how most ppl's solutions for demo actually makes it more difficult to play, ppl forget that they want the spec to be streamlined, easy and intuitive to play, most of the things here are anything but easy and intuitive to play.

i can totally see blizz changing demo to be something similar to hunters(using some abilities to build fury and then using other abilities to spend spend) but with meta being something permanent like spriest's shadowform and then doom and corr being built into 1 dot. HoG gone but changed into chaos wave but still has all the attributes of both chaos wave and HoG(fury generation+molten core procs), no longer has charges and the 2 stack dot dmg is standard but instead has a cd. shadowbolt castable while moving and autocrits while the target is below 25%. soul fire only castable using fury and autocrits like now. molten core procs reduces the fury cost and cast time by 50% and increases soul fire's dmg based on mastery. immolation aura moved to pets.

[Deleted]

I would make one of the fury spenders an ability that summons a demon (like the satyr or hellhound).

Also since HoG/CW interaction is most likely gonna take a hit, the whole aoe department of demo needs to be looked at. Shadowbolt volley? Kinda screams fnb incinerate, but it's a pretty cool / vanilla spell.

[Jessicka]

Molten Core redesigned: Proc chance reduced, but generates in stacks of 3, up to 12. Timer removed, decays out of combat.

Hand of Gul'dan: Remove stacking mechanic.

Chaos Wave: Cut it.

AoE redesign: Cataclysm baseline, lower damage but 20s CD. Cut Felstorm. Cut Immolation/Hellfire. Add spammable ranged AoE spell, SB:Volley would be nice, or even keep Chaos Wave but not as a switch from HoG.

100 Talents: Servitude does Pitlord. Demonbolt replaces Molten Core/Soul Fire. Cataclysm replaced by something more imaginative.