Demo Changes!

[garonne]

Implosion isn't a very good talent sadly, you sacrifice a lot of your st for aoe gain, in a m+ it would blow if you have a purely st boss, unless the damage was good even ST.

implosion isn't a talent. its also not to be used in a single target situation at all. Also, most classes if not all, sacrifice single target for aoe unless its a talent (which implosion is not)

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What I liked was that at 33% chance you could HoG at 3 soul shards and still get 4 imps. More HoGs, less shadow bolt spams. I don't know, just felt a little more fun.

that was the whole point of the talent. it was 33%(technically 33.33333~%) chance per shard, which basically amounts to 100% chance. it was a guarantee you'd get 4 imps.

[Werst]

Vilefiend can be good if its tuned high enough. Its role would be a hard swap or burn down priority target. Yes, in a throughput single target its boring but that clearly isn't its role, we have other tools for that.

I'd prefer demonwrath to shadowbolt, especially since its shared with affliction, but also for the aoe/cleave mobility. Sadly I don't think we will be permitted THAT much mobility mo matter how much fun it would be. It would also REALLY help QoL with tagging mobs since we almost have to spec doom for that as it stands....(times you miss fel flame lol) So how IS demo going to deal with totems in pvp? Pet stomp macro's probably not going to work...casting a 2.5 sec shadowbolt? Really?

Implosion isn't bad its tuning just needs to keep the shard recapture or otherwise factor in the energy spent/energy left somehow. I look at it as an unfinished equation with tons of potential.

[Coffeh]

that was the whole point of the talent. it was 33%(technically 33.33333~%) chance per shard, which basically amounts to 100% chance. it was a guarantee you'd get 4 imps.

I know, which is why I was sad they removed it.

[garonne]

I like Demo as it is in Alpha right now but there are still a couple of issues I can think of:

Summon Vilefiend(talent) has to be the most boring thing ever, this thing is nothing but another mindless melee singletarget pet that you summon, never see and forget about. Surely something more interesting should replace it? Like the cool and pruned Darkglare?

Casting Shadowbolt to generate Shards in aoe situations feels silly, I like Channel Demonwrath, bring that back please. It also gives us an additional chance at soulshards while on the move, which feels nice and it makes us interact with our Felguard as its position matters.

Nether Portal(talent): 3 soulshards, 3 min cooldown and a 2 second cast time on top of that. Ridicilous and clunky.

The Demonic Tyrant is a poorly chosen demon for what it does. It's one of those huge eredar melee fellas. Why not give us something more caster-like, a dreadlord or an Eredar spellcaster? Inquisitor? Doomguard?

Last and the least of my concerns: the animations. It's alpha so I expect that to change, but right now we're not exactly flashy. We have the same ancient demon summon animation and only the Call Dreadstalkers visual is new and cool, if barely visible. The rest is barely visible too. Imps just randomly pop out of nowhere next to us with no animation whatsoever, etc. Things just need to look way cooler, imagine the Legion symbol appearing in the air above your character and then this cool legion/fel warp in animation happens as your summoned pets appear and your cast finishes.

1.) the darkglare is basically the aoe version of vilefield. the talent is also in a single target row, not much difference.

2.) use more descriptive words apart from clunky. you're gonna get a ::roll eyes:: from blizzard. however i agree, the nether portal has every restrictive requirement in the game. a cast time, a resource cost, a cool down and you have to cast spells for it to be effective. I can't think of another spell in game thats as costly as this one and to make it worse, its not even a demon per shard but a demon per cast which is absolutely poop.

3.)doubt we'll be getting a dreadlord according to what blizzard said in the past. however a doomguard or doomlord would actually be the perfect demon summon as it is literally a demon commander.

this is me going on a tangent but lord of flames is a great spell that i think would fit well with demo (on a much shorter cd with no debuff). jailer would be great for cc. could be the banish replacement with a pet. just think demo would be cool if the effect of their spells had demons tied to it. and not with a soul shard cost, just a demon for visuals purposes. (similar to how the call demon abilities worked in legion pvp)

4.) the imps actually pop out of the hand of guldan effect after it lands. its just that the distance from the point of landing to the caster is long and it requires the imp to be up in a certain time so its fast and you dont really notice it.

[Deleted]

Not really feeling the Imp Mother 2.0 Demo iteration as well. Blizzard will never be able to convince me that imps and dreadstalkers as baseline combat summons is befitting of a "master of demons". I really thought based on what the devs said in that AMA that they'd take Demo in a direction of summoning fewer, more powerful combat demons with caster interaction as the primary theme. Like maybe our Hand of Gul'dan working like Nighthold Gul'dan's Hand of Gul'dan, summoning Jailers, Inquisitors, Overfiends, etc.

Also has the Doomguard been pruned? Really thought it would show up as a baseline Demo summon. I always thought that the master of demons would have completely different baseline summons than Affliction or Destruction. Maybe the Infernal, Doomguard, Shivarra, and Felguard. Ah well, a man can dream.

How about Prince Malchezar?

[Baconeggcheese]

How about Prince Malchezar?

That's just a remnant from the old tier proc, could stay but its a large leap from actually having it as a summon.

[-aiko-]

From what I've messed with, it honestly doesn't play out much differently than live. Which I wouldn't call a good place for things like aoe for example just by virtue of the mechanics.

Were we playing the same spec?

It plays completely differently on alpha than it does on live. I'm not sure if it's a good change yet, as it's not done yet (no new mastery, abilities not quite finished, etc) but it doesn't feel like live Demo at all.

[Baconeggcheese]

Were we playing the same spec?

It plays completely differently on alpha than it does on live. I'm not sure if it's a good change yet, as it's not done yet (no new mastery, abilities not quite finished, etc) but it doesn't feel like live Demo at all.

That was in reference to destruction if you follow the convo.

Though calling demo completely different seems... a stretch.

Its the literal same core, they just replaced DE with DB. If you take all the passive talents (the left row) its basically the exact same spec, with other talents its just adding buttons to that same foundation. "Completely different" it is not.

Definitely better though.

[garonne]

That was in reference to destruction if you follow the convo.

Though calling demo completely different seems... a stretch.

Its the literal same core, they just replaced DE with DB. If you take all the passive talents (the left row) its basically the exact same spec, with other talents its just adding buttons to that same foundation. "Completely different" it is not.

Definitely better though.

Cmon now, the same way calling demo completely different is a stretch, it's also a stretch to say it's basically the same spec. this is an oversimplification. The core youre talking about is sb, hog and dreadstalkers, however even among those 3 spells dreadstalkers alone itself is different in duration and cd. Then there's no doom that also gave shards and could be used to spread cleave, no de which was integral to our rotation; It alone being gone changes things some. New passive that changes the speed of how we build and also our mobility. Even our cd is different. It doesn't just summon and does damage, but also buffs our demons damage and duration. And that's just our base spells.

It's not completely different but it's also not the same spec.

[Lucrece]

I wish it were different in a good way but I agree with Bacon that it is essentially the same in being a dot spec with pet visuals. Still has ramp up, still is massively haste reliant, and it doesn't really pack priority target burst.

It still also has shit target switching.

If BfA hadn't gutted Affliction as an overreaction to the last 2 tiers of legion, there would still be no point in picking demo over affliction.

[garonne]

I wish it were different in a good way but I agree with Bacon that it is essentially the same in being a dot spec with pet visuals. Still has ramp up, still is massively haste reliant, and it doesn't really pack priority target burst.

It still also has shit target switching.

If BfA hadn't gutted Affliction as an overreaction to the last 2 tiers of legion, there would still be no point in picking demo over affliction.

Damage for demo (and other classes) are nowhere near balanced so I think it's inaccurate to say whether it will have priority target burst or not. Apart from mages and hunters and destro, demo is doing similar damage to all the other classes with no mastery. What you said could remain true if the damage is bad but it could be false with talents like demon strength, bilescourge and vilefied. While the first two are aoe, they hit pretty hard (bilescorge doing 5-6k over the 6 sec on 1 target)

When it comes to target swapping, implosion actually alleviates some of the problem. The imps will explode for the damage they had left when used one a single target. And dogs have a long enough cd that you can plan to use them for priority adds. If you've already used dogs, then at the end of their duration you get 2 demoncore to start up your rotation again.

Demoncore has reduced the haste reliance it had previously. It still relies on it but not nearly to the same extent. In fact the gear on alpha is garbage to what we'll have in raids and the rotation is already fluid with such low haste. and besides, every spec has their go to stat, it is what it is.

everything that you said is still there has been improved upon.

[FelPlague]

love the concept of demonic commander, but again it is just demonic empowerment but with a cooldown, it makes you want to gather as many demons in as possible, and the even worse part i think is timing, less then a second can define if you are getting an extra 4 imps and like 4 demons for 15 more seconds, or lose them. and with it being on the GCD this could be some pain of trying to fit as many as possible, to only lose some demons last second before it.
I wish the demonic commander was "Demons you summon will last 15 seconds longer" instead of being a thing you use part way through.

I like "Buff then cast" not "Cast then buff" specially with this cause its just going to be annoying and clunky again, specially in movement heavy fights, so many massive amounts of demons, about to empower them then you need to move and your fucked.

[-aiko-]

Ah my bad, I missed you were talking about destruction. It's the curse of your post being on a new page and not having a quote I suppose! However...

Though calling demo completely different seems... a stretch.

Eh, I disagree.

While it shares many of the same core spells and mechanics (Shadowbolt, Dreadstalkers, Hand of Gul'dan, imps, soul shards, etc) the way they work and how you build your resources really is quite different. It would be a stretch to say the spec itself is completely different, but I said it plays completely differently. On Live it's about spamming Demonic Empowerment and Life Tap, basically. Very clunky and annoying. Feels more like a maintenance spec than a fun one.

Both of those things are gone with alpha demo, carving a path towards reliable casting and a smooth generation of soul shards. Demonic Core is also a brilliant passive for the spec, imo. It removes the feeling of maintenance by providing you the means to keep your army alive throughout the entire fight. Summon demons, receive instant casts when they expire for an influx of soul shards, summon more demons, repeat. It's a cycle that doesn't rely on RNG at all. A solid core that you can expand on and modify through interesting talents. I'm quite fond of Demonic Calling/Soul Strike/Inner Demons/Nether Portal myself, though I have no idea how it compares on a DPS standpoint.

Anywho, not really intending to be argumentative just wanted to make it clear what I meant so anyone reading can hopefully see how the spec is evolving into something much more enjoyable. I agree with you on it just missing a nuke and spread AoE option though. In fact, in its current form I think it's AoE in general feels like pure garbage.

[severan]

I wish it were different in a good way but I agree with Bacon that it is essentially the same in being a dot spec with pet visuals. Still has ramp up, still is massively haste reliant, and it doesn't really pack priority target burst.

It still also has shit target switching.

If BfA hadn't gutted Affliction as an overreaction to the last 2 tiers of legion, there would still be no point in picking demo over affliction.

The burst is much improved. Implosion will transfer all the remaining damage in your existing imps to a new target. Instant demon bolts which can be proced with a talent or banked and hit hard. A short CD on demonic tyrant with talent. A short CD vile fiend. Bile bats on short CD that do decent damage and are instant.

Ramp is greatly reduced. No doom. Only 3 shard hogs. Don't need 10 imps to die to buff your main pet. No thalkiel consumption. You're very quickly at full power.

It's been much improved in its two main weaknesses in legion.

[Roujeaux]

Exactly where in the AMA did they say anything that made you think they would have demo summon fewer but more powerful demons?

When they literally said they were thinking about it in the June 2017 Dev reddit AMA at https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._2017/djbbyxi/:

"Rotationally, summoning less, more powerful and interesting creatures is a direction we’ve talked about internally and would also like to pursue in the future. "Master of a pet army” is a fine fantasy, but often doesn’t really have much gameplay in practice. When you summon a lot of AI-controlled pets that just deal damage and don’t have interactive abilities, they end up being mostly just visual clutter, lag, and noise that provide little actual gameplay. A world where Demo might go in the future is: It has a 1 baseline melee pet that can also tank (e.g. Felguard). It has 1 baseline ranged DPS pet (e.g. Doomguard). It can talent into 1 of a number of temporary summons that provides some damage (e.g. Mega Imp) or utility (e.g. Succubus). Maybe each of the baseline units would have 1 cooldown ability which we’d expect players to have on their main actionbars and treat as their own spell (e.g. Felguard's Stun or Doomguard's Counterspell). We’d want to keep an eye on how many total pets you have out, and definitely reduce it from where Demo is at now."

This is the Demo direction that seemed more interesting. Shocktrooper Demo sounds more appealing and representative as a master summoner to me than Imp swarm Demo. I guess the devs changed their minds....

I saw an Alpha vid where a streamer specced into all the currently availabe Demo pet talents, where he summoned a screen full of pets in about 3-4 GCDs. They were everywhere. It did look cool, but seemed like a functionality nightmare at the same time (I can only imagine healers Tab targetting through all that trying to heal you, and with that many pets up caster DPS will need to be diminished to compensate). My first thought was "yea, no way all that's going live".

Doom as a talent feels off, as DoTs have always been a traditional part of the Warlock class kit. Maybe instead it was just time to kill off the gimmicky "one tick damage" effect, let it deal normalized damage over time like other DoTs, then add some type of meaningful, core Demo rotation contribution effect.

Shadow Bolt as a shared filler with Affliction annoys me. Demo has been using Soul Fire for years now. Soul Fire filler with Demonbolt nuke, or vice versa, makes more Demo "class fantasy" sense to me.

Demonwrath removal feels like a mistake. It always seems like it should have been properly positioned as Hellfire's replacement. Demo has on Alpha what looks like quite a few gimmicky abilities. I think the devs should have nailed down a solid, effective, efficient core single target caster rotation with aoe spells first before piling on the summon mechanics.

Demonic Tyrant is a good move for a spell addition, but I would think that as a master summoner it would be positioned as Demo's signature Shard spell (with altered functionality of course) instead of being relegated to cd status. Tyrant would be a perfect fill of the "hole" left from removing Meta. I dunno I just feel things like Inner Demon and Nether Portal should be the baseline direction of Demo, and the "swarm" spells should be the talents.

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I think it's fine as long as there are actual more powerful demons around to use. That Demon Commander or whatever that's called now is a good idea and it could be good to see some other guy like that which you call occasionally.

Imps and dogs are ok as general fodder. If they'd make Demo constantly spam supposedly powerful demons, very soon they wouldn't feel so powerful at all.

Yea for what I suggested to work HoG would have to go back to its old 15 sec cd version, with the more powerful demon attacking X times before departing like Wild Imps do now.

Demonic Tyrant could become the signature Shard spender. I would love to see a test iteration where it functioned similar to Meta, as a 10 sec cd toggle summon that consumes 1 Shard per X sec, suppresses Shard generation while summoned, buffs you as well as all active demons, and does big single target damage.

Seems like the devs are doubling down on the swarm spec however, so we'll have to see how things work out.

[Shandalar]

I am actually concerned about:

-First tier talents: cant see the point here. Ok, its the AoE round, but all of them are pretty similar and u will just took the one dealing more dmg. Seems that it will be the uber felstorm. The dogs one feels bad.

-Doom: no sense actually. Horrible talent. At least it should summon a Doomguard.

-Summon vilefiend: boring. Feels out of place in that round. I cant understand the sense of this talent really, its just a "super dog" that doesnt proc Demon Core. I can see it just with Sacrificed Souls to get more long uses.

-Soul Conduit is always going to be the to go talent wherever it is. Needs to be erased or made baseline with less proc.

-100 tier round has no sense. Specially Nether Portal. It is going to never be used as it is. Should be baseline.

-Lack of AoE shard generator. Demonwrath should come back. Its silly actually. The lose of Implosion generating shards is bad too.

-Lack of mastery. Even Discipline Priests got a new mastery, why Demon dont?

[Lucrece]

Well, the lack of mastery is only a positive as it shows they haven't fully committed to one design.

[Kirroth]

-First tier talents: cant see the point here. Ok, its the AoE round, but all of them are pretty similar and u will just took the one dealing more dmg. Seems that it will be the uber felstorm. The dogs one feels bad.

Pure AoE or ST talents rows is the new normal. In this case you get the choice between a 20s rotational AoE burst, a 30s cooldown ground targeted AoE, or the big 1m AoE cooldown. That's probably about as much variety as an all-AoE talent row can try to offer.

-Doom: no sense actually. Horrible talent. At least it should summon a Doomguard.

Yeah, Doom's a bit odd. The other two talents on the row are SS efficiency talents and Doom is just "extra damage every 30s". We'll see what happens, but keep in mind that it's not on a very powerful row so you're not getting a summon on top of the damage.

-Summon vilefiend: boring. Feels out of place in that round. I cant understand the sense of this talent really, its just a "super dog" that doesnt proc Demon Core. I can see it just with Sacrificed Souls to get more long uses.

-Soul Conduit is always going to be the to go talent wherever it is. Needs to be erased or made baseline with less proc.

Don't underestimate summons. If you don't take SacSouls, every GrimServ and every other Vilefiend is getting buffed in both duration and damage by DemTyrant. And Inner Demons might be competitive if they can fix its issues.

-Lack of mastery. Even Discipline Priests got a new mastery, why Demon dont?

Dude. They're not going to launch a spec with a dead Mastery. It's still Alpha, give them time.

[Baconeggcheese]

@garonne @-aiko- I'm not saying its the same spec, I said its the same core. Its less an overhaul than it is refining the same design by removing the worst parts and putting better feeling things in their place.

[Bearded Sith]

You guys whining about how bad Demonology looks like BfA have:

1) Not played it.
-I have, it's a blast! Tons better than Legion, and I'm one of the few who actually enjoy Legion's Demonology.

2) Haven't played much of Legion Demonology.
-I have, and I enjoy it! It's not great. It has it's flaws, that's for sure. But after quite a few reworks of the spec and some positive Tier bonuses make it "enjoyable".

3) Are unrealistic.
-I hate general categorizations, but the stereotypical Millennial mantra of "Give me everything always" might apply to *you* here. Even if the generalizations aren't true, people are definitely acting this way.

4) Are expecting MoP Demonology.
-GET OVER IT! Metamorphosis is gone, always will be gone, and will never EVER be returning. Get over *yourself* and move on!

With that negativity out of the way, sit back, and enjoy the "fun" of the new Demonology spec. If it's still not something you're on board with, move along. Play something else. ALPHA isn't even done yet, let alone BETA. Relax and enjoy the videos and information coming out and wait for BfA to go live.

TL;DR - CALM DOWN PEOPLE!