Demo Changes!

[Verazh]

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.

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

And there is plenty of caster interaction with demons now.

We do have a default baseline summon that is different than aff and destro, its called a Felguard.

I think most of the changes have been for the better and theres some really fun stuff in there, like summon random demons passively and the Nether Portal functionality. I also really like the Demonic Tyrant, with the option to either spec to have it more often or to sac your imps to buff it (hits like a truck atm).

[Rukario]

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.

Pretty much what i think as well...Imp mother 2.0, behold the mighty summoner of imps!

Fear his power...

[Maleific]

For demo, i'd like a mastery that increases the damage of you and your felguard based on how many demons you have active.

[Khrux]

For demo, i'd like a mastery that increases the damage of you and your felguard based on how many demons you have active.

I feel like this is very likely, given the approach Demo is getting as a mass summoner. The removal of TKC as a means of capitalizing on volume of demons summoned could very well be replaced with a mastery that rewards the caster in damage throughput.

They can ultimately go 1 of 3 ways at a base level;
1. Mastery buffs pets
2. Mastery buffs caster
3. Mastery buffs caster and pets

Option 1 is just Beastmastery all over again, leading you to feeling redundant and more like your the actual pet instead of the caster.
Option 2 can work well with the current iteration of Demonology as a spec that summons masses of demons constantly, so that your using the demons to fuel your own caster strength. This is an active and rewarding mastery that will scale with other stats (haste) and has a higher skill ceiling, by reward those who execute the rotation well.
Option 3 could work in one of two ways, either a flat % inc for master and pet simultaneously (Zzzzzz) or a variation of Grimoire of Synergy that alternates the bonus from you to pet and vice versa on a proc.

Ultimately I'd prefer option2, giving me something to pay attention to, something to reward good execution and something that interacts with how I gear or what talent setup I use.

[Deleted]

How worried would you be about mobility if the proc rate was lower?

I'm sure getting/saving 2 MC stacks (Demon Core needs a new/old name to be a viable abreviation ) should be easy with 4 max available. That's 2 GCD before you need to spend shards anyway. That should really help with short bits of movement. And if Dogs despawn midmovement you get 2 more. With 10% chance on Imps, you can't really depend on those tbh. Like I said earlier, we probably spend 10 shards per 20s or so standing still which would result in 1 MC from 10 Imps on average.

[Werst]

I really liked the fixed proc from dogs and slimmer chance from imps....its a solid baseline without too much RNG you can build from. The spec is finally getting some mobility which makes it feel much nicer to play. It still has ramp but the cycle up is far smoother/quicker now. We still feel a bit too imp mother-ey at times but that is hardly the fault of molten/demon core. Being able to quickly dispose of imps via implosion is a remedy but the shard recapture needs to be fine tuned still.

I'm a bit worried we will be haste centric again but mastery can be tuned to be powerful enough to at least match. I wouldn't go overboard with complicated mastery. Flat pet damage is the ultra simple but something like a ratio of damage and haste where the caster/lock gets haste and the pets get damage would offset a haste addiction but would lead to itemization issues in later tiers. A combo of haste/damage to the pets is just live DE "always on" but would effectively work same as flat damage but just makes things more mathy.

The imp mother issue could be solved by making riders cause 3x+ shard HoG's summon a doomguard who does the extra damage of multiple imps the talent would otherwise provide. As it has departed the game from all specs it would kind of fit. If you drop HoG with less than 3 shards you get imps...if you hold your focus for 3x you can get the DG. Implosion damage can easily be adjusted similarly. I mean in MoP we had carpets of imps, this expac was imp mother or bust, now we are shaping up to be imp throughput...why not make it a bit more appealing and the DG is not being used anywhere else anymore.

[Lucrece]

I just want to ditch the imps and dogs and get jailors, shivarras, fel lords, and nathrezim. Bring back the deathglare as well.

[Shandalar]

Another build and still no mastery. I wonder why, its the only spec of the game without mastery actually.

They have changed riders because it was so obviously to go talent into nearly every single situation to give some cleave to the dreadstalkers.

[rhorle]

I just got an invite and played around a little and I think I'm enjoying the feel of the demo changes. Almost seems a little to much going on but that could just be because I haven't played it much to get used to all the proc's and abilities. And I haven't set up my naga mouse for keybindings yet.

[Werst]

Riders was really good...extra imps (a defacto resource) was strong for implosion or throughput so its logical it would get changed or the others buffed. I'm really quite glad the dogs get cleave...especially with demo's lack of sustained aoe. I kind of wanted that as a talent option all legion but it works here as well and now we don't have to worry about burst windows, maintenance buffs, or scaling of damage between lock vs pets longterm as much. I'd call it a smart change that still feels like a satisfying talent.

Still think a 3x shard HoG could drop a doomguard just for visuals of less but more powerful demons and adjusting demon core/implosion/energy vs tyrant is easy math.

I think mastery is the least necessary part of the equation and will be the best designed once the other aspects of the spec are more fully established. Otherwise you are making design decisions on outdated information. So in that regard I'm not surprised we haven't seen a mastery be implemented yet. Its a fair bet it will be pet damage of some kind but I would much rather have a fun spec first and let them think up the mastery that best fits that second. Clearly we still have lots of changes to come so mastery may be premature as yet.

Bataclysm really feels copy/paste from RoF in destro...seems a perfect slot to use the eyeball from live except without the pre applied doom pre-requisite. Just tune it for more damage in a shorter time frame and targets anything in combat that isn't in CC broken by damage or even pulse aoe waves (or cone?) of shadow damage around a selected ground placement. Still mostly cosmetic/thematic issue. Or skip the eyeball from live and make one of those inquisitor eyeballs that rotates the weed whacker beams.

Overall still intrigued to see where this evolves...

[Gaidax]

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.

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.

[Coffeh]

I'm really hoping Riders comes back.

[Baconeggcheese]

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.

There is a wide variety within the talents atm that bring you from *legion with DB instead of DE / LT* to *this spec has so many different buttons and spenders I barely ever cast SB or hog*.

Its to the point where it worries me tbh, destro really doesn't have that level of flexibility within the spec and demos on a path to becoming the new legion aff just in terms of mechanics.

[Gaidax]

Destruction has enough function as is, it seems to have good AoE baseline now (because you have to take AoE talent one way or another) and it keeps its cleaverino, which is very useful. If balance is right and it drops in same place like now, except with more powerful nukes not watered down by pets and guardians - there won't be much to complain about in my book. That would be good ST, great cleave and on top of that decent AoE by default - that's a pretty strong kit already.

[Baconeggcheese]

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.

My concern with demo atm is that it has very high flexibility within the talents, really all it lacks is a nuke and spread multi-dot since the focus continues to be clumped aoe.

[MHMabrito]

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.

[Coffeh]

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.

My concern with demo atm is that it has very high flexibility within the talents, really all it lacks is a nuke and spread multi-dot since the focus continues to be clumped aoe.

Well, there's two things I don't like with demo on Live: demonic empowerment spam, and the doom dot. Both are gone (or optional) in BFA. So I'm happy. We're still in really early alpha so hard to form informed opinions. I would say I liked it better last build. Riders just seemed to make the spec more fun.

[Baconeggcheese]

Well, there's two things I don't like with demo on Live: demonic empowerment spam, and the doom dot. Both are gone (or optional) in BFA. So I'm happy. We're still in really early alpha so hard to form informed opinions. I would say I liked it better last build. Riders just seemed to make the spec more fun.

I mean, it was mostly just more imps. Didn't add a lot to the spec but ended up being a real obvious choice. Think its ultimately healthier that its gone.

[Coffeh]

I mean, it was mostly just more imps. Didn't add a lot to the spec but ended up being a real obvious choice. Think its ultimately healthier that its gone.

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.

[Deleted]

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.