Demonology..where are you taking us Blizzard?

#1 - April 12, 2012, 6:26 p.m.

Can you shed some light on what direction you plan on taking this spec by the start of MoP?

If you want to turn us into a mele caster...that's fine and all, but we still need a rotation to be able to cast. In the current beta build I feel like I'm having trouble just filling up my main action bar.

We're down to 1 dot now with the removal of bane of doom and 3 direct damage spells, 2 of which are 2+ sec cast times. Whatever single target rotation we currently have...if we have one, feels akward/confusing and rather boring.

In regards to meta and fury, Im still not liking it. I either feel like I never have enough when I need it(most of the time at the start of a fight) or that i have to conserve what I do have because fury costs are so high on most abilities.

Do you plan on making fury our only resource for spells while in meta? Or do you plan on making only our special abilities cost fury and continue to allow us to cast mana based spells in Meta? In the current build corruption and HoG arent even castable in meta and Shadowflame still costs a full fury bar.

What I personally would like to see happen is...

Put meta back on a cooldown. When we trigger meta, give us a full fury bar and make only our special abilites cost fury(Immolation aura, Carrion Swarm, Demonic Slash and Ray of Twilight). It will be much less confusing this way. We'll still have the option to either blow all our fury at once or manage our fury expenditure/generation to prolong the duration of meta as we see fit. The important point here is that we would have the ability to damage when we need to...be it at the start of a fight or in an emergency situation. As it is now we have the option to either cast meta with 200 fury which is barely enough to cast one spell or wait for 30 seconds for the fury bar to fill up and then cast meta. I just dont feel like im in complete control of my dps output this way.

On to specific spells....

Ray of twilight is currently broken. It is not following the terrain so if Im standing on top of hill and trying to hit someone at the bottom all I'm doing is shooting a fel flame out into space. Even though I like the concept of laser beam spells, I'm not exactly sure how useful being able to hit all targets in a straight line is going to be anyway. I'd rather see another bonus effect on this spell like maybe have sparks fly off the target of the spell and hit nearby enemies for a lesser amount of damage...that would be a bit more useful.

Hand of Gul'dan. I'm still not sold on how this spell now has an area target. It would have been fine to have left it a single target spell that does aoe around the the target we cast it on. I'm sure I can eventually get used to this regardless..just seemed like an unnecessary change

Carrion Swarm. I havent leveled to 86 to try this yet but I would hope and it may already be that the area of effect of this spell is larger than that of shadowflame. Shadowflame after all this time still has a rather small impact zone.

I think it would be a lot easier for us warlocks to give meaningful feedback on this class/spec if we had a better understanding on what direction you are going with them. I'm presently confused with the current state this spec is in.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#36 - April 13, 2012, 5:06 p.m.

You aren’t intended to be a melee caster in Meta. Things like Demonic Leap, Carrion Swarm and Immolation Aura are more situational and fun toys than core rotational spells you need on a challenging raid boss. We did experiment with Demo spending more time in melee earlier on, but we have backed off of that for some of the reasons you guys mention.

The basic rotation is something like: Keep Corruption up. Use Hand of Gul’dan on cooldown. Respond to Molten Core procs with Soul Fire. Use Shadowbolt when there is nothing else to do. Fel Flame is for movement. Breath of Gul’dan is for melee.

During Meta, all of your rotational spells should cost Fury. You shouldn’t have to pay nearly any attention to mana.

The basic mechanic of Demonic Fury is to build to 1000, go into Metamorphosis, and then pop out again when you reach 500. If you need that extra dps *right now*, you stay in Metamorphosis until you run out.

There’s a bug right now where when you exit Metamorphosis, it drains half of your remaining Fury. It’s the same bug causing the DK spell conversion to drain all of your runic power.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#41 - April 13, 2012, 5:27 p.m.

Is our Metamorphosis rotation expected to be similar to our caster from rotation? Right now, since Meta has no way to apply Shadowflame it's pretty much just Demonic Slash spam until you get near 500 fury.

Use Demonic Slash and use Soul Fire when you get a Molten Core proc. The Molten Core procs will come from Wild Imps.

Wild Imps has changed so that imps consistently proc from your Shadowbolt and Demonic Slash. The Wild Imps in turn can proc Molten Core. If you like the old Wild Imps mechanic, you can recreate it with a glyph.

We are experimenting a lot with Demo, so let us know how these latest changes feel. We don't feel that the older design of Demo (use both Fire and Shadow spells with lots of demon damage) was super compelling. It is a spec that has wanted a home for some time. Affliction and Destruction by comparison have a stronger kit.