Q&A - Demonology confirmed failed experiment

[Crayola Memes]

Man, if they get the "master of demons" thing right, ill be psyched. I really was only planning on playing classic, but if demonology becomes cool again I'm no doubt ordering BfA and race changing my lock to zandalari.

[Kithelle]

What do you want them to do if they don't know what to do. That's absolutely an excuse. If they do something without having a good idea of what to do chances are that the spec ends up worse for it.
Also simple fixes were usually given to other classes/specs because they had been previously tested (e.g. shardbits for destro).

Not really...they knew DE was very clunky and a lousy ability...if they couldn't think of anything else then how hard would it have been to just deleted DE and balance demon damage without it?

Instead without even trying they just waved the white flag and told people not to play Demo.

[Lucrece]

I just hope we get cool demons. The dogs and imps look like garbage. I want a pitlord/dreadlord cd and more summons like the conquerors in argus or other big demons.

More importantly, I want all the warlock specs to feel more like Gul'dan....they are so far from the potential coolness that Gul'dan showed for warlock magics.

[Maleific]

Instead without even trying they just waved the white flag and told people not to play Demo.

Well this time they didn't just come out and say it lol.

Is this argument about warlock Metamorphosis or about the word "stubborn"? Yes, I am stubborn. Like I said before, I'm not going to change my mind on warlock Meta, no matter what anyone say.
You say you aren't stubborn but also dismisses a good lore reason because you don't like it. That's what lore is, explanations and excuses for things to happen. If its pre existing or a retcon doesn't matter.
I said before and will say again. It's a make believe world. No fact is set in stone. I think locks can have Meta and you don't, that's the end of the argument.

I too preferred the MoP model for demo where there was synergy between the warlock and his demons. And that's what demonology was always about, synergy between the player/ demon(s) in one form or another and has largely been missing from Legions Zoo model.

I have however given up on us seeing anything remotely meta-ish in the future (even if it was just the wings). And never understood that "they have it so you can't" mentality.

Even in Legion they're the masters of fel magic now, we just make gateways and summon.

I just hope we get cool demons. The dogs and imps look like garbage. I want a pitlord/dreadlord cd and more summons like the conquerors in argus or other big demons.

More importantly, I want all the warlock specs to feel more like Gul'dan....they are so far from the potential coolness that Gul'dan showed for warlock magics.

Tbh I actually liked when demo was kind of the half way spec combining shadow and fire. Good DoTs with good direct damage and a stronger demon. Things currently have shifted too far into the pet focus imo, but would be all for less imps/ dogs and options for bigger demons like Fellords.

[Kathranis]

I think the general direction of the new spec can probably be discerned from his comments. That it doesn't feel empowering, that it feels like you're juggling too much stuff, that there's too much ramp time.

Personally, I'd like to see the rotation slow down so that each individual spell and demon summoned has more impact. Especially with the warlock animation revamp slated for the BfA pre-patch, it would be a great opportunity to make sure that every minion you summon feels powerful and meaningful. I don't think I'd mind summoning demons less frequently if each demon you summoned actually did something that looked cool when the show up. IE, you summon two Felstalkers that pounce on your opponent, then howl and deal an AOE blast, then vanish. Then you summon a Felguard who leaps into the air and slams his sword down, then vanishes. Etc.

I also feel like it might be cool if the rotation were more about progressing through stronger and stronger waves of demons, with each new wave being sacrificed to fuel the summoning of a new, even more powerful batch of demons, perhaps culminating with something like a Pit Lord. That's what the new legendary in HS is built around -- a multi-stage ritual resulting in a powerful summon -- and yet warlocks have no such fantasy in WoW. Of course something like that could also have ramp issues.

[Deleted]

Blizzard themselves said the following -



So a long way from a "failed experiment", but not a fully successful one.
And they said they liked the fantasy of it, just not the execution.

Ignoring half the statement does not "confirm" what you say it does..

Pftt, it's a classic political admission of failure, in other words, admit it failed but don't actually say so. Whena politician says "our policy was not a complete succcess" that's the closest you'll ever get to "it was a dismal failure".

If stuff like this isn't a "complete success" then they wouldn't admit to it failing at all. Remember in a Q&A these guys are effectively doing a PR sales job, not actually providing you with meaningful information unless they already decided it's information they want to give you, which is why it's not an interview style thing but where they pre-select the questions they want to answer. Which is also why some of the most asked questions get ignored but when someone asks "will Paladins get a pink transmog?" they go into mind-wearying detail for several minutes over it. When they say in a PR job stuff like this, they actually mean "it was horrid and all but a few people hated it because the playstyle was awful and the way it did damage was completely contrary to how you need to do damage in a game that is all about on-demand burst"

They are right, the basic idea was that dmeonology should be a master of demons was right - but then it always has been, demonology was about demons. They tried to take that further but the actual design was horrible.

Instead of a "master of demons" meaning yeah you get to call up this impressive scary army to fight for you, what you actually got was the same old boring main demon you've had forever, a handful of temporary, highly unimpressive dogs and imps (which you can't control), and you got to spam demonic empowerment because without it they hit like soggy noodles. And oh yeah, all the joys of melee pets and the highest ramp ever seen in a game whose contemporary design is all about burst damage and punishing ramp classes more than ever before. Oh and the truly bizarre thing of replacing the cool Inquisitor (a brand new model for Legion) with the stupid eyeball from several expansions back.

So the idea was right - it always has been. The intention was to actually implement the spec fantasy, but the reality was, it was an absolutely awful design.

So irredeemably awful in fact that it requires an expac rewrite from the ground up, the problems were so entranched that it was not possible to rejig even in a major patch.

Demo as it stands needs to go die in a fire and be totally rewritten, hopefully learning from the mistakes made.

But demo is always going to be hard, because they want lots of player actions to do damage, and a "master of demons" design carries an implict "you summon an army and then it doe sit for you", which reduces to the AI doing your dps. Hence demonic empowerment and temporary minions.

I got very excited when they first spoke about demo. Then I played it!

[Deleted]

The fel Lord PvP talent shouldve been baseline or a regular talent Kno, it's such a fucking cool spell. You are summoning and elite fl guard that's just destroying the area.

[Craaazyyy]

so they gonna make it even worse.. just like they did with every other class/spec.. especially warlocks

[jontunnel130]

at least you always have 1 for sure or 2 competent dps specs. when they botch hybrid classes and do nothing you're only options are to reroll,

[ComputerNerd]

Is this argument about warlock Metamorphosis or about the word "stubborn"? Yes, I am stubborn. Like I said before, I'm not going to change my mind on warlock Meta, no matter what anyone say.
You say you aren't stubborn but also dismisses a good lore reason because you don't like it. That's what lore is, explanations and excuses for things to happen. If its pre existing or a retcon doesn't matter.
I said before and will say again. It's a make believe world. No fact is set in stone. I think locks can have Meta and you don't, that's the end of the argument.

I presented an example, you responded with calling me stubborn.
You say it isn't set in stone, which again isn't an argument.
You have your preference, but keep presenting it as something else.

That wasn't a good lore reason.
It was made up to explain it.
There was no other way to do so, because there wasn't one.

It was established on demon hunters first, fact.
You not liking that does not change it.

[Sylar Hao]

what would you think about making the Felguard a permanent guardian, much like Hati, and you learn in the spellbook Felstorm and Axe Toss so you can control him, while you can summon any of the other demons? When you are demon you pretty much never use the other demons, and this way we could actually feel like master summoners.

[Arvei]

Demonic empowerment is obviously the spell in biggest need of revamp/removal. It would be cool if each warlock spec also had their own flavor of self-healing, since drain life feels really lame for both demo and destro.

Bring back some form of ember tap for destro.

For demo, it'd be neat to see maybe something like an instant cast self-healing spell that drains life from your pet and transfers it over to you as a percent over a certain amount of time. Maybe give pets some passive life leech to compensate for this with a possible PvP talent to boost its strength in PvP where pets usually get targeted and die too fast at the moment.

[oathy]

so they gonna make it even worse.. just like they did with every other class/spec.. especially warlocks

Ironically if they want to see how a lock (all specs) works go back to the start.
the core elements are there, They just need to update not eviscerate
as others rightly posted IMHO Gul dan showed how locks are supposed to operate

[Mammon]

Well, your original point was that you didn’t want people asking for Meta back. My point is that it is a vain hope since there is people like me, that liked it and want it back. I never said I didn’t like or disagreed with DH being the first users. I just don’t think that means warlocks can’t also have it. I just brought the lore up to point this out.
And I’m not presenting my preference as anything other than my preference. Everyone has different reasons, so it will boil down to the preferences.

[Xorn]

Blizzard themselves said the following -



So a long way from a "failed experiment", but not a fully successful one.
And they said they liked the fantasy of it, just not the execution.

Ignoring half the statement does not "confirm" what you say it does.



I at least provided some argument based on its origin, while you simply call it stubborn.

Take the Illidan encounter in the black temple.
Thats an example of where it was present on a demon hunter before it was present on player warlocks.
That appeared in Cataclysm.

Technically it appeared in Wrath, along with Haunt for Aff and CB for Destro.

I'm mixed on Meta myself, tbh. I didn't much care for the stance dancing that it had going for it, but I DID like the Demonbolt rotation it had going for it in Highmaul. For some reason, I liked the whole build fury for 45 seconds and then dump it all into 4 casts. However, if you missed that last cast your damage was WRECKED. Plus, you don't need Meta do do that.

And has others have said, I definitely would like to see some of the mechanics from the Gul'dan fight become incorporated into Warlock spells, the same way DKs got things like Remorseless Winter, Defile, etc

[Deleted]

Why not use imps as a ressource ? Something like you need to sacrifice X imps in order to summon a much bigger demon .

[thebigman154]

Of course there will be people asking for Meta back. Just like you stubbornly say that Meta doesn't belong with Lock, people like me will stubbornly say that it does. Since this is a make believe world, both sides have their reasons and neither side can prove anything.

blizz could bring it back saying bla bla bla demo meta is diferent cause reasons

[Deleted]

"demonlogists envied demon hunters their power, and made a pact with xxx so they could have it too"

Jeez, people talk like lore is a problem.

It's made up stuff guys, they can do whatever they want and say 'when you notice something like that a wizard did it'


For demonology, the idea os fine. But you don;t feellike a master summoner when the best you can do is a felguard and a handful of the lowliest demon trash there is, namely imps and dogs. That'slike claiming you're a magician when all you can do is to use a children's magic set bought secondhand.

Demonic empowerment is there because of the need to make you, the player, do something to do your dps instead of the AI pets doing it. But it's absolutely horrible, having to empower your demons constantly just adds to the feel they are weak trash. It didn;t help that they severely nerfed the visual effect on that.

It's also absurd that you get to summon this huge and powerful demon but only in PVP.

A 'master of demons' should have access to at least a Pit Lord or Fel Lord. The lowliest demon should be at least a felguard and you should have more than one of those.

I'd say that the other two lock specs are pretty 'spammy' - so there's room for demo to be more a proc and cooldown one, kind alike frost mages are.

I'd give demo some impressive demons as cooldowns as a start. What is going to remain an issue is pet control. The game engine itself evidently only allows multiple pets as guardian types, so sadly, demo will continue to have problems with switching.

Given the way that player computer shave grown massively in power but remain running the same engine as over a decade ago, the idea that having a lot happening on the screen is a problem doesn;t wash these days. This is evidenced by the big increase in visualand other effects in boss encounters, which are much 'busier' than they ever were.

[Deleted]

All specs are spammy, that's the idea of WoW, to press buttons to deal dps. Most of the time, movement kills your buttons. Sometimes you get weaker buttons as instants or charges etc.

<random rant inc>

From a lore perspective, why would a shaman/mage change to a warlock? That is to gain more power quickly (and die horrible in the end). What we see in the movie is Gul'dan draining life/souls to gain his power. This works very nice in Affliction and to me could replace lifetap for all specs. Warlocks steal power from everyone else to fuel their magic.

A BDO wizard/witch has a short channel spell to get back to full mana (and drain/dmg the enemy). Rift uses "Charge" for a kind of builder/spender mechanic on Mage. I'd like that kind of mechanic for demo, just like we did with Meta. I liked the fact it made ME feel powerful when I unleashed my demonic fury with Meta. I liked the fact I summoned imps as a byproduct of my spells and they returned me some fury over time. I liked the fact imps stood in range close to me and when I had allot because of multiple dooms ticking it was a huge firing squad sustaining me.

I don't like the lore aspect of short minion summons. It diminishes the effort required to summon a demon to the point where everyone can summon a demon and I'm only special/stupid enough to do it. You pull something from another dimension for 10sec? Why go through all that effort when that energy in the form of a fireball/lighting/felbolt/etc seems much more efficient.

I like the 10 casts then poof for imps before. Reduces the doubledipping in haste and I think Demo should be a slow caster instead of spamming stuff over and over again. Lorewise I feel summoning stuf should be the slowest type of magic, but should be the heaviest type to balance it as well.


For current Demo:
It wouldn't be so bad if all the summons did X attacks then went away. Preferably a higher amount so they last longer and maybe a 1min max duration.
It would be nice if DE was an Aura on me so the new demons get it straight away. Beter even if it was a bloodlust type of spell we only press 1/min or so and/or it would buff the next X summons we do.
It would be nice if we used the non-felguard pets for something.
There should be a reward for rampup specs and we shouldn't need rampup on rampup mechanics.

[Baconeggcheese]

Why not use imps as a ressource ? Something like you need to sacrifice X imps in order to summon a much bigger demon .

You could do that but you'd have to turn them into something that is more passively or extremely rapidly generated otherwise you run into the same if not worse ramp issues. It could work if they were effectively energy or DK runes in how quickly they popped up and were spent. This also has the problem that the imps themselves do damage, so unless the damage they do is so incredibly trivial then you have this awkward trying to min-max when you sacrifice them that just isn't enjoyable game play.

but when you get down to it, do we really want to be highly focused around imps again?

Personally I think mop / wod demonology got imps right, where they were this sort of extra thing that popped up around you. They were something the lock was practically ignoring as some kind of small trivial army that took up none of the locks time or effort which seems very appropriate for what they are, while still being visually appealing as you were surrounded by the things. Imps should never be a main source of strength for locks, that's just not what they were ever meant to be.

Destro has that same issue, why is the master of destruction running around with the weakest demon having it do a significant portion of our damage? It doesn't help the fantasy or the gameplay.