New demo is cool. Id rather get tweaks to polish it up than condemn Demo to 2 more expansions minimum languishing as blizzard tries to have old demo and demon hunters coexist just in the vain hope that some old glory might be regained.
MoP demo was fun. It is gone. This demo is also fun and fits the lore and the current state of the game better. It just needs some tweaks.
Did you play mop demo though? it's not that bfa/sl demo is awfull, it works, but it suffers from the same "no choice" syndrome of many legion and onwards speccs. In mop/wod demo (and aff, and dest...good times), the choice of which spell to cast wasnt always "the next in the rotation", but involved small intelligent thinking. Small mistakes were alright and wouldn't be the end of the world, but you were rewarded for judging the situation correctly.
I don't wanna make this sound more complicated then it is, so i'll just give an example. When do you cast aoe (implosion pretty much) today? whenever there are 2 or more targets pretty much, and for the azerite haste buff. When do you cast Immolation Aura in mop metamorph form?
Glad you asked. Its always a damage boost (its an activable aura, you can cast other stuff during it), but its prolly not worth the fury cost below 4 targets or so. But even in 4 targets, it will make you run out of fury (and thus metamorph form) faster. So the question becomes if you wanna do as much damage to as many targets evenly, or if you wanna be able to focus a single target with strong metamorph dmg for longer. This has actual meaning in tough content vs dangerous mobs like raids, high m+ keys or pvp. Even outdoors, you sometimes rather finish single mobs faster rather then do even dmg on them all but keeping them all alive and hurting you.
This kind of decision is done in a sec once you get used to the specc (you see 5 mobs, you think if one of them is super dangerous, you say "hm not really" and activate hellfire), but it adds so much room for decision making and personal input. Maybe you save some fury and not go immo aura cuz you know some burst aoe class will almost solo it anyway, so you save good fury for the next pull. Maybe you use it even while low on fury to kill lots of small but dangerous mobs fast. It becomes more interesting then "which button seuqence will do the most dps", and even that question becomes less clear cut.
There were ton of similar cases like this (when do you use Touch of Chaos? whenever you need to extend corruption, or dont have soulfire proccs, or a mob is gonna die fast but you still wanna help out, or you wanna do good dmg while moving). MOP warlock design as a whole was about those tiny moments of decision making, but demonology really stood out. I liked Aff and Dest just as much or even better due other reasons, but i have to admit MOP Demo is the most interesting, unique specc WoW gave birth to. and it was also changed and lost the most in the legion and onwards revmaps.
honest to god, HoG being instant would suck a big boon to the viability of Demo. would love to see that change so it can compare to Destro and Aff
I've felt for a while that demo should be the mobile warlock spec. That's pretty much the only way for demo to find its place next to the toolkits of destro and affli.
I propose that EVERY demo ability, except Shadowbolt and Summon Felguard, is made instant cast. This would still leave it less mobile than e.g. BM but it would now have a strength that destro and (to a lesser extent) affli doesn't.