Is the new demonology just affliction 2.0?

[Scrotch]

Disclaimer: My experience is just brief target dummy testing on live with all the different classes/specs with a few talent variations. I don't know how artifacts will change things, so this is pretty much just a first impression (which still should hold some value, as first impressions are important).

But yeah, to me the new demonology seems to play a lot like affliction. Just instead of watching dot timers, it's watching demon uptime timers - it really feels like a different skin to the same play style. Warlock just doesn't seem to have three distinct specs to me.

Is anyone else feeling that way, or is it just me?

[Deleted]

Affliction 2.0? no.

Also, you do not really have to watch many timers. It all boils down to: Summon Demons (doesnt matter if its service, darglare, doomguard, imps or Dreadstalkers) -> Demonic empowerment -> summon demons -> demonic empowerment -> fillerspells rince and repeat.

The only things you have to watch out for are: not being Soulshard starved, doom 100% uptime and dreadstalkers on cd. And sometimes mana.

[khul]

Many specs have timers you have to watch, but I see what you're trying to say. So yes, this is pretty much Affliction with legs.

[Phraun]

You're not wrong. It's effectively affliction with physically manifested dots.

[FelPlague]

why would you have to watch timers for demo? there is no clipping, its not like you can only have 1 group of imps and 1 group of dreadstalkers out so you need to use them when they are about to end... its just a simple rotation.. the only similarity is your doing a "dot like" damage, and your buffing it

[Taeron]

You're not wrong. It's effectively affliction with physically manifested dots.

Not entirely.
With affliction you can multidot. Tab target, cast all dots, your DPS increases.
With demo, if you tab targetted HoG or any demon summoning spell, it would do the same damage as it would on a single target.

If all affliction dots had a shard cost, and the ability to stack on each other, then yes it would be the same. Currently, the only similarity is timer watching and unstable affliction

[Kirroth]

But yeah, to me the new demonology seems to play a lot like affliction. Just instead of watching dot timers, it's watching demon uptime timers - it really feels like a different skin to the same play style. Warlock just doesn't seem to have three distinct specs to me.

Is anyone else feeling that way, or is it just me?

Sorta. The way I see it, Demo is the old new Afflic. It's the crappy Afflic of Mists and Warlords where your DoTs are worthless unless you juggle extra maintenance buffs or spam filler to make them stronger. Meanwhile the new Legion Afflic is more like the old Afflic of BC and Wrath, where you've got powerful DoTs with insane durability and self-healing. It's just tempered by the UA resource cost so that your multi-target damage gets throttled to acceptable levels.

Aesthetically, the new summoner Demo is rocking. Mechanically, it's definitely not my cup of tea.

[Uzkin]

It's not affliction 2.0. If affliction dots had the limitation of not allowing multidotting then the specs would indeed be quite identical. But multidotting is at the core of affliction gameplay leaving the current demo at best a mechanistically inferior mockery of it.

[Deleted]

Silly thread, if the demons would do all their damage in a single swing it would be Destruction 2.0, I assume?

Demo is as similar to Affliction as playing Rogue is...

[Deleted]

Am I missing something or is there no need to be keeping an eye on the demons?

You need to ensure empower is on them, but you need it on them so fast that you're usually empowering straight after the summon unless you're chaining two summons very fast, in which case you can get away with 1 empower cast.

As far as I'm aware, you only really need to monitor your felguard.
If you empower after every cast and ensure that your felguard remains buffed with empower, then everything should have it, or am I mistaken?

Right now it feels surprisingly fluid with empower casts, they just follow a summon cast as part of a two button combination. Easy, and absolutely nothing like affliction.

You've got doom + empower on FG to monitor right now. Things might change with the artifact, but that's not affliction by a long shot.

[Smog]

@Nagassh You're effectively correct, unless Implosion is taken (which it typically will be for everything but pure ST fights), in which case you need to monitor the imps uptime and be imploding them at optimal times. While this is typically the GCD immediately following the cast of the next HoG, it isn't always. And occasionally a wave of Imps will actually expire before getting another cast of HoG off (depending on the situation), in which case you need to be monitoring their duration to ensure you implode them prior to them expiring naturally.

Another imp situation worth monitoring is if Soul Conduit is taken and you get extremely lucky and chain two HoGs in close succession. There is a duration at which it isn't worth imploding the first wave, even after casting a second (depends on gear level, but my rough rule of thumb is 8+ seconds).

Dogs you never have to monitor, they're literally fire (empower) and forget.