Reworking Demonology: More Active Gameplay

[Outed]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share some thoughts on the state of Demonology. A bit of background: I started WoW Classic late (end of Phase 5 after my military service) and fell in love with the Warlock and grinded all the way to Rank 14 (High Warlord) doing non stop PVP.

I joined Turtle WoW three months ago and fell in love with the game and the warlock all over again. The dev team made Demo tree 100x better than standard vanilla. I've been playing it non stop in PvE, PvP, and even Warlock tanking.

Because I love this spec, the recent Soul Link nerf really hurt, especially for PvP. These last 3-4 weeks I have spent a lot of time theorycrafting a custom talent tree. So this post isn't a request for lazy, flat buffs, but about replacing lost survivability with fun and active survivability mechanics (See Demonic Pursuit, Soul Funnel, Demonic Aegis and so on)

In my opinion the historical Soul Link downgrade from 30-25% and recently to 20% is a bit too much. Demo has no extra spell range (unlike Destro or Affli) and zero mobility, making us too squishy for the current high burst meta.

The goal of this post is try to explain, how its possible to edit the warlock demo talents to reward good play by turning passive stats into active gameplay choices.

Row 1 (Minimal changes)

Fel Stamina (Down to 3 Ranks)

The Change: Pet gets 20/30/40% (with rank 5 it was max of 50%) of your Stamina and 2/3/4% (with rank 5 it was max 5%) reduced crit chance.

The Logic: Dropping it from 5 to 3 points matches Fel Intellect. You lose a tiny bit of top-end stats (50% HP and 5% crit reduction), but it frees up 2 points to spend deeper in the tree.

Demonic Embrace (5 Ranks)
The Change: Keeps the Stamina bonus, adds 2/4/6/8/10% total Defense, but increases the Spirit penalty to 2/4/6/8/10%.

The Logic: No real benefit in PvP, but scales perfectly for the niche Warlock Raid Tank build. The extra defense is balanced somewhat balanced by an extra 5% reduction in spirit.

Row 2 (This is where things start to become a bit more fun)
Soul Funnel (up to 3 Ranks (from 2 ranks))

The Change: Funnel spells transfers 10/20/30% missing HP/Mana (draining 35% from you (was 30% before)).
New effect: Health Funnel ticks give your pet 4/6/8% of your Armor for 20 seconds. Each tick refreshes it. Stacks up to 5 times (Max 40% transfer).

The Logic: Pets get melted by melee now that Felhunter/Infernal armor was cut by 30%. This rewards active play; you have to pause DPS and channel to armor up your pet when it's targeted + the health from the warlock part is upped to 35%, which means the warlock loses more HP/Mana with the funnel spells.

Demonic Aegis (3 Ranks)

The Change: Boosts the Demon Armor spell:
Armor effectiveness by 40/80/120% (was 20/40/60% before)
Shadow Res by 20/40/60% (baseline)
and HP5 by 20/40/60% (baseline)

The Logic: Warlock PvP gear has the lowest armor of all clothies. This gives a real defensive choice. Since it's a magic buff, Priests and Shamans can purge it, and melee can use Sunder/Expose Armor. It allows healthy counterplay unlike passive Soul Link. Wont affect magic users, as its armor, not overall damage reduction.

Fel Intellect (3 Ranks)

The Change: Pet gets 20/30/40% (was 10/20/30%) of your Intellect and 5/10/15% casting mana regen.

The Logic: Intellect scales the damage of pet abilities, like Firebolt and Lash of Pain and so on. At the moment, the normal 30% scaling is not enough to give the pets abilities meaningful damage increase.
If an extra 150 intellect from drape of nobility increases the damage of lash of pain by only 11-13 damage, then the scaling is really weak...

The extra 10% would help out to the point where, for example, the mentioned drape of nobility procs would boost pet damage slightly more for a few seconds + This slight buff MIGHT open up hybrid specs (like Demo/Ruin) that want to focus on pet damage without running a greater demon.


Row 3 (The real fun stuff)
Nether Studies (Moved from Row 4 to Row 3)

The Change: Boosts Succubus' Soothing Kiss, Voidwalker's Torment, Imp's Blood Pact, and Felhunter's Tainted Blood by 15/30/45%.

The Logic: Changing the old Seduction buff to Soothing Kiss gives the Succubus a real PvE threat reduction niche. Moving it to Row 3 helps leveling locks right when the Voidwalker starts struggling to hold threat.

Row 4
Demonic Rush (New Talent - Replaces Sinister Pursuit)

The Change: Direct damage spells give you and your pet a 15/30% speed boost for 3 seconds.

The Logic: This is our answer to Grim Reach and Destructive Reach. Since Demo doesn't get extra range, we get a short mobility tool instead. It forces you to stay offensive to stay mobile, helping with kiting and positioning. This, in my opinion is a mega awesome, active and higher skill requiring buff to a warlocks mobility.

Improved Stones (Up to 3 Ranks)

The Change: Boosts all stones by 40/50/60% (was 25/50% before), Firestone crit by 50/75/100% (was 50/100% before), and Healthstones healing by 10/20/30%.

The Logic: Bakes the old Master Conjurer talent into a single 3-point talent. Putting it deep in Row 4 stops other specs (like deep Affli) from taking it just to abuse rank-stacking Healthstones.


Row 5 (Perhaps more intriguing changes)

Power Overwhelming

The Change: Breaks all CC on the pet. Gives 10% damage (was 20% before) and 10% attack speed for 8 seconds (was 10 seconds before). Pet takes 25% (was 40% before) base health as damage over the duration.

The Logic: A fair trade-off. A slight buff and a nerf at the same time. Lowering damage to 10% drops PvE burst, but the 10% attack speed helps with spell pushback against enemy casters. Lowering the self-damage to 25% means your pet won't instantly lose too much hp when using the ability in PvP.

Unleashed Potential

The Change: Reverted to trigger only on direct damage crits. Gives your pet 10/15/20% (was 5/10/15% before) of your Fire/Shadow spell power for 20 seconds. Funnel ticks refresh it. Stacks up to 3 times (Max 60% transfer).

The Logic: Making it crit-only raises the skill ceiling, making stacks harder to get, this will require much better handling of your greater demons. But if you play well and manage your crits/funnels, you get rewarded with a much higher spell power cap (60% instead of 45%).

Here is a link to the custom talent tree I made: https://www.talent-builder.dev/tree/Fi7zZP_DZy

Thanks for reading! I'm incredibly passionate about Demo and I really think it has huge potential on OctoWoW. Hopefully, these ideas spark some good discussion with the community and the dev team on how to make the spec as fun and active as possible.