Saturday, October 24, 2015

Envisioning Demonology Sans Metamorphosis

Historically, Warlocks have borrowed a lot from the WCIII Demon Hunter hero. In WCIII, the only Warlock units appeared as variants of the regular Shaman unit in the missions where Grommash and his Warsong were hopped up on Demon Blood.

In Wrath, Demonolgy got Metamorphosis as a powerful cooldown - it was at the bottom of the talent tree (meaning you had to invest the most talent points to get it.) Through Wrath and Cataclysm, it was really just a big boost to your damage that would persist for your average cooldown length (I want to say 20 or 30 seconds,) but it wouldn't really change your rotation.

The Mists of Pandaria Warlock revamp changed this tremendously (wow, between the spec revamps and the Green Fire chain, Mists was a pretty Warlock-friendly expansion despite their not really being central to the lore.)

The Mists/Warlords version of Demonology makes Metamorphosis the central ability of the spec. You spend your time trying to maximize the amount of Demonic Fury you can generate so that you can burn it off in demon form. You need to carefully toggle between the two forms to ensure that Corruption and Doom are up on your targets, and depending on talent choices, you either need to save stacks of Molten Core for when you're demonized or you need to burn them off to get ready for a blast of Demonbolts.

Assuming that Metamorphosis will be going away so that Demon Hunters can have exclusive access to it, that means big changes.

Demonic Fury itself might not really fit in a post-Meta world. Right now, DF is really just the resources that you use while a demon. That said, it doesn't have to disappear. You could easily make spells like Doom, Soul Fire, or Demonbolt cost DF, perhaps requiring a kind of build-and-spend rhythm that simply isn't locked away under the transformation. Might that make things too easy, though? Being able to refresh corruption in the middle of a Demonbolt spam session might make the spec too simplistic to play.

The biggest thing, though, is that they need to come up with a new theme. They have the beginnings of one, though. Demonology has always been about summoning demons, and as we won't be able to become demons ourselves, it seems inevitable that we'll turn the focus to our minions.

The key here, I think, is to make sure that this doesn't feel like just the Warlock version of Beast Mastery. BM Hunters, in case you didn't know, have two of their major rotational abilities based on the performance of their pet. Kill Command is their hardest-hitting ability, and it's performed by the pet.

I think that you could find a way to distinguish the two specs by allowing Beast Mastery to focus much more on the individual pet - kind of the idea that the Hunter has established a close, deep bond with his or her pet. Demonology, on the other hand, would be the Warlock who wishes to command an army of demons.

Right now, Wild Imps is one of the coolest features of the spec, even if it is essentially just passive. But that idea that a Demonology Warlock is summoning a small army really feels distinct from other heavily pet-based specs.

I could even see a de-emphasis on DoTs - perhaps just having us use Doom instead of Corruption (radical, I realize) - and instead focus on various spells to either summon more imps or to empower said imps.

As an example, I think it would be totally in-line with Warlock flavor to have an ability that causes your imp to charge the target and explode - sacrificing the Imp for a burst of damage.

But what of the Felguard/Wrathguard?

Well, at this point there is some interactivity - hitting Felstorm/Wrathstorm is a pretty heavy supplement to burst AoE. The problem is that direct control over the minion starts to feel a bit too much like Beast Mastery, and empowering the minion feels a bit like Unholy Death Knights. Perhaps the Minion is fine as it is, and Demo can put more of a focus on the swarm of Imps that follow them around.

If Demonic Fury is handed over to Demon Hunters along with Metamorphosis, one wonders what secondary resource Demo should have. I think it's become clear that most classes and specs benefit from having one of these, even if they aren't all that different from existing ones. I could imagine building up "Control" or something, which would allow you to use more of those minion-summoning or minion-altering spells. Controlling demons is an act of willpower, and it makes sense that a Demo Lock would have to build up that willpower to perform more complicated feats.

Blizzcon's about two weeks away now, and if Blizzard is on top of things, the beta should follow not too long after. This is one of the specs I'm watching most closely.

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