How Do You Solve A Problem Like Demonology?

“Or the Tale of How Demon Hunters Stole Our Shit”

Before 6.2 landed, Ion Hazzikostas was quoted as saying Demonology would get a bit of an overhaul in the new expansion, and in the meantime here’s nerfs to discourage you from using it in its current state! This was going to be a post where I speculate on what Demonology would become, but what’s this?

Icy Veins did an interview with Tom Chilton and Ion Hazzikostas which you can read here. There’s a lot of details in there, but juicy juicy gossip for Demonology Warlocks among us!

Demonology Warlocks will be masters of summoning and controlling demons. Metamorphosis sort-of came to dominate the class, but the devs are refocusing the spec on demons. Affliction will continue to be about ‘decay’, and Destruction about ‘bursts of fel fire’.

BYEBYE META FORM

This was the direction I was going to go with this. Demonology becoming a summoner of demons, rather than becoming demons themselves. What do I think we’ll see?

• Metamorphosis cut: This is the obvious one, seeing as Metamorphosis is going to be the primary ability of Demon Hunters. This means we’ll be staying in caster form forever and ever.
• Corruption cut, Doom stays, usable in caster form: Doom already ties into the whole summoner philosophy, as critical strikes summon imps. I believe this will stay, and function as normal, and replace Corruption. Possibly make it tick a bit faster.
• Hellfire/Immolation Aura cut: These are an annoying part of Demonology AoE, as to use them you have to be in melee range of your target. Unfortunately, you still count as ranged, meaning you expose the melee classes to ranged mechanics (think Garrosh’s Desecrated Weapons, or Kilrogg’s Death Throes). I foresee these being cut, OR Hellfire staying, but rather than AoE centered on you, have it set a target on fire and pulse AoE damage.
• Cut Shadow Bolt, Soul Fire becomes filler, no more Molten Core: Bake Molten Core into the ability itself. Give it a chance to summon an imp on hit. Shadow Bolt gone because frankly it has a cast time comparable to Chaos Bolt, with damage comparable to 0.2 Chaos Bolts.
• Cut Chaos Wave, have Hand of Gul’dan on a 8 second cooldown with no charge system: That’s pretty self explanatory there.
• 2 permanent demons: They want us to be the masters of controlling demons? Then give us the ability to control 2 demons at once. Have a second splash menu, make you unable to summon two of the same demons. You can run around with a Voidlord AND a Fel Imp!
• Cut Grimoire of Service: At least for Demonology. Replace it with Grimoire of Something Else, and make it a cooldown that buffs all your demon damage by x% for 20 seconds. Like Dark Soul, but for your demons!
• Add Demon Summoning abilities: Have a new 10 minute cooldown IF you take Demonic Servitude where you can summon a Pit Lord or something as powerful. Have an ability on a 30 second cooldown that summons 2 random demons for 15 seconds. Those Felstalkers we saw in 6.2 would be cool. Maybe other demon models we can’t usually control too!

• Some form of AoE demon summoning ability: Have infernals rain from the sky briefly, or allow us to summon 3 Felguards/Wrathguards that do their bladestorm-like ability, then vanish.

Do bear in mind these are rough ideas. I’m no developer or theorycrafter, I have no idea how feasible these ideas are, but food for thought, eh? It’s merely one guy’s opinion, and I’d like to hear yours!

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