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Demonology Warlock State on Shadowlands Alpha - Legendary Powers, Covenant Abilities, Axe Toss Interrupt
暗影国度
由
NotWarlock
发表于
2020/07/14，04:05
Feedback and opinions on the current state of Demonology Warlock and its issues on the Shadowlands Alpha, including thoughts on the upcoming Legendary Runeforged Powers, Covenant abilities, the Interrupt change to Axe Toss and more!
About the Author
I am known around these parts of the internet by my in-game name of
Not
. I have been playing a Warlock since the start of Cataclysm and have not really deviated from it since. I was the founder/creator of
Lock One Stop Shop
, a website that was made for Warlocks, by Warlocks.
You can catch me online on
Twitter
,
Twitch
, and
Youtube
.
Introduction
Normally at the end of an expansion Demonology peters out and lies stagnant in the water however this time around we find ourselves in a weird state of reflecting what we'll be losing without Corruption and Azerite. The biggest thing that we will be missing going into Shadowlands is arguably what makes the spec enjoyable to play in the first place; biiiiiiiig Haste %.
We recently got a bit of a bump for Shadowlands seeing
怨毒祷告
getting moved baseline with
召唤恶魔暴君
(a very good thing) but there is still a lot to be desired for and much that could be changed.
There are other Warlocks out there that have commented on Demonology that I will be sharing their feedback here as well as my own but keep in mind that this is a still a very small sample size of opinions and may not reflect your own thoughts.
THDLock Demonology FeedbackKalamazi Warlock Feedback
What has changed?
I'm only going to touch base on Demonology specific changes and not general Warlock changes (except for pet summoning). There has not been much significant change to the overall talent tree with nothing removed and only a few talents changed, along with a few spells changed.
Pet Summons
All pet summons take 6s baseline. A new ability,
邪能统御
, allows for instant pet summons once every 3 minutes.
Pet summoning taking 6s baseline is a huge quality of life decrease. It feels clunky while leveling and your
召唤恶魔卫士
is dying more regularly than you remember and one instant summon every three minutes is just......not enough. Not to mention this completely eliminates any chance you will have to "quickly" swap pets back and forth in M+ for interrupts if your group absolutely needs you to interrupt.
Talents
魔性征召
changed to make
召唤恐惧猎犬
cost 0
灵魂碎片
, up from 1.
This talent is already very widely taken and will continue to be taken with this change. In most situations this will be procced and available to you for every
召唤恐惧猎犬
cast except for your first cast unless you are lucky enough for it to proc on a pre-cast.
能量虹吸
changed to make
恶魔之箭
have 30% increased damage for two casts.
Given that this talent is on the same row as
魔性征召
and never used throughout the entirety of BFA it needed something to help it's case to be used. I don't think that the additional damage on
恶魔之箭
will make this talent worthwhile however since you will still have to play around sacrificing your imps near the end of their life cycle to maximize their damage.
恶魔吞噬
drains 15% health of
all
active demons, empowering
召唤恶魔暴君
based on total HP consumed.
Harkening back to the Legion days of
萨奇尔的吞噬
this change gives the talent I think even more of an edge over the other two options. Not only are you able to keep all your Wild Imps but you are able to leverage other demons to make your Tyrant even stronger. This will also make your Tyrant get stronger as your gear/item level gets better since your health scales your demons health.
虚空传送门
/
内心之魔
demons attack power increased.
While this change does increase the power of these talents I still don't believe it will be enough of a change to warrant playing with either. The frequency of spawn from
内心之魔
is fairly low and too random to rely on the additional demon spawn.
虚空传送门
, on the other hand, has such a high opportunity cost to cast that even one misplay during the cooldown or even prior to you casting it has a very high cost. Not to mention the talent still promotes an entirely different playstyle while active, playing into you generating one
灵魂碎片
at a time then spending it immediately instead of encouraging players to maintain their normal casting priorities.
虚空传送门
needs to be changed to cast the same number of demons per
灵魂碎片
spent (3
灵魂碎片
s for 3 demons, 2
灵魂碎片
s for 2 demons, etc) for it to be a worthwhile option.
Spec spells
召唤恶魔暴君
generates 5
灵魂碎片
s when cast.
Outside of giving Demonology an interrupt this is the most requested change asked for. When
怨毒祷告
was introduced it changed how we play around our
召唤恶魔暴君
cooldown for the better and made for a much smoother transition into our cooldown phases. This addition is a much welcome change.
Wild Imps spawn instantly (no more random spawn) and teleport to the caster if summoned out of line of sight & gain 1 additional cast for their duration.
Throughout all of BFA (and most of Legion) you could spawn your Wild Imps in a such a way that they would spawn but not cast due to them spawning out of line of sight, thus not spending any energy and making
恶魔吞噬
even stronger. This change will move players away from the cheese and back into managing your demons properly. The extra attack doesn't hurt either.
Overall there are some very good changes coming to the spec and some changes that I think still should be made.
Covenant abilities
Kyrian
碎魂奉纳
: Is an interesting option for Demo that could really set you up for big AoE in M+ but outside of that type of play there is not too much that you will be able to utilize this for in group content. It could have some implication while leveling and doing general world content but if you're looking to raid this probably isn't your go-to.
召唤执事者
: Fairly underwhelming given you already have a Healthstone all the time.
Necrolord
屠戮箭
: An execute type ability that will likely be the go-to for raiding given the power of execute in general. It amplifying Shadow Bolt is OK and gives you a reason to like pressing the ability.
血肉铸造
: While not all too exciting to have yet another absorb (on a 4s channel) when you're already basking in damage reduction and shields is mostly underwhelming but could prove useful if you're able to get the extra absorb from channeling near a corpse.
Night Fae
灵魂腐化
: Could be interesting to give yourself a different form of AoE outside of Implosion, however you likely will not ever have a use for the secondary ability with Drain Life outside of questing.
灵魂变形
: Not too useful given will almost always have Burning Rush,
恶魔传送门
and Demonic Circle available to you. Having a pseudo blink could be nice however.
Venthyr
灾祸降临
: This ability is interesting because of it providing you with a (random) curse between Weakness or Tongues while doing decent damage in both travel and explosion. The downside of this is that the curse is random and you will often see Weakness on a caster and Tongues on melee, obviously not ideal.
暗影之门
: Another teleport with a short cast time could prove very useful in M+ to enable skips or to be used to avoid raid mechanics however suffers from the same thing as
灵魂变形
where it shares with a lot the Warlock mobility toolkit.
Conclusion
Overall I think all the covenant abilities have their place for Demonology outside of possibly Night Fae. There is a strong chance Demonology will be looking to go Necrolord or Venthyr with a slight edge towards Venthyr simply because both abilities you gain will actually be useful and used in most content.
Legendaries
威尔弗雷德的超级召唤魔印
- This legendary is still likely going to be very powerful, much as it was in Legion, but could really desync your
魂缚暴君
with other cooldowns (
魔典：恶魔卫士
,
召唤邪犬
,
虚空传送门
, on use trinkets, etc) which may result in you delaying
魂缚暴君
and possibly 'wasting' the effect of the legendary. I do think that this will be a very widely used legendary regardless.
恩德雷思之爪
- Interesting for solo content, not so much for other things in game.
恶魔协同印记
- It's hard to pinpoint if this legendary will be useful for Demonology since
魔性征召
makes your
召唤恐惧猎犬
free to cast. Unless
能量虹吸
is more widely used and/or
末日降临
is taken out and replaced by something that.....isn't
末日降临
I don't see this being used ever.
黑暗之门柱石
- Could be interesting for the sole purpose of instantly replacing your
恶魔传送门
for your raid. N'zoth for example if this was available could have been a gamechanger being able to quickly and effortlessly replace your
恶魔传送门
for the raid to use.
内爆潜能
- At first glance this legendary seems really powerful but is locked behind you hitting 3 targets, which pushes it more into a niche space for M+ and Torghast than anything else. The stacking 5% Haste will feel extremely good and make you want there to always be 3 targets to implode on, especially if there is no cap to the stacking Haste %. If you can go into a new pack of trash mobs in M+ with 9 Wild Imps out then implode them and get extra Haste to start your pull it will be a very very strong tool to use but is offset by the fact that it is a 'dead' legendary for single target. It should be noted that if you recast
内爆
it overrides the previous buff, even if it is weaker and is not affected by the pandemic effect.
冷酷审讯官的恐惧召唤
-
召唤恐惧猎犬
are a fairly consistent source of damage and this will just passively increase their damage. Typically being able to use 6-9
灵魂碎片
s between cooldowns will give them a nice little bump just for doing your normal rotation.
恐角梦魇大军
- The extra cast of
古尔丹之手
does damage and duplicates the spawned number of Wild Imps as the
古尔丹之手
it procs off it making this legendary quite an interesting choice in particular for M+ where reducing the cooldown of
魂缚暴君
is not as important since it's already a 1.5 minute cooldown.
邪蛛的燃烧核心
- I can't see a reason to have this legendary equipped given the actual damage Demonbolt does is not that extreme and is primarily used as you get procs to bolster your
灵魂碎片
generation to get more Wild Imps out.
Wishlist/What should be changed?
Interrupt
The number one thing on every Demonology Warlocks wishlist is to have an actual interrupt. As of the current Alpha/Beta build there was a change to to
巨斧投掷
that allows it to also interrupt
dungeon and raid boss targets
that are stun immune. The wording of this post does not really tell the full story and could actually still not be a great solution to the Demonology interrupt issue. This is how I'd like to think it will work:
If mob is stunnable,
巨斧投掷
stuns.
If mob is stunnable but on full DR,
巨斧投掷
interrupts.
If mob is boss target and not stun immune,
巨斧投掷
stuns.
If mob is boss target and stun immune,
巨斧投掷
interrupts.
This way makes it actually kind of useful in M+ situations but not always since if the mob is stunnable but you need a hard interrupt (think the
野生的啸天龙
in Atal'Dazar, requires hard interrupt since after they are stunned they will continue trying to cast their fear) no amount of stunning will help, especially if it works the way Blizzard has phrased it literally:
巨斧投掷
now interrupts stun immune targets, such as dungeon or raid bosses.
If taken exactly as phrased then it will not interrupt stun immune dungeon mobs that are full DR and will
only
interrupt dungeon or raid bosses, making this addition to
巨斧投掷
really really really really really really really underwhelming.
It seems likely that the interrupt change is to be taken as written with a blue post on the
Shadowlands Warlock Feedback
thread saying:
Axe Toss will only interrupt your target if they are permanently immune to stuns. We will monitor how this plays out and make adjustments if necessary
Given that there are multiple talents that are linked DIRECTLY to
召唤恶魔卫士
that are used very frequently we are directly punished using
召唤地狱猎犬
or talenting out of the better
召唤恶魔卫士
specific talents (
恶魔力量
&
灵魂打击
) which feels really bad being the only ranged spec without some form of actual spell interrupt (even Moonkins get one, albeit on a longer CD).
Both Kalamazi and THD mention in their post that we could get some form of talent similar to Beast Mastery Hunter's
动物伙伴
where we can control/have the abilities of multiple pets, giving us more of a "Master Summoner" feel like we are led to believe we are. I think there is some room to put
灵魂打击
baseline as well and have it replaced with the Animal Companion type talent that would enable us to talent into have both
召唤恶魔卫士
and one of our other demons
恶魔掌控
ability available to us.
Conclusion
: This change does not help Demonology with its issue of not having an interrupt. There are plenty of scenarios where you need a hard interrupt and just stunning the mob will not cover what you need it to do properly. Think of it this way, Beast Mastery Hunters who use a Spirit Beast get: a heal, dispel/purge (on the same button) and a defensive CD all on one pet. Meanwhile Demonology, who is supposed to be a "commander of demons" that twists the souls of said demons to have "devastating power", can't even interrupt a normal dungeon mob.
Haste
Another big thing that we should be looking at is the loss of
爆破潜能
(minorly) and the loss of an extreme amount of Haste that simply put, make the spec extremely fun and more interesting to play. Losing all the bonus Haste we have currently is going to be a major blow to 99% of Demonology players and will turn our already long cooldown setup to be even longer and be at a much higher disadvantage if you have to stop halfway through. All the Haste we have now is a large factor in the playability of the spec and having nothing to offset this is going to be a major burden.
Cooldowns/GCD
As much love as
召唤恶魔暴君
gets there is also the issue of it even having a cast time to begin with. I don't believe there is any other spec that has a major cooldown with both a cast time and GCD associated with it on top of a more 'complicated' setup to execute. There can be a lot improved with removing either the cast time or the GCD on the ability, or both. Even now if we took all the demon summoning related talents you are looking at having 6 Wild Imps out, 2
召唤恐惧猎犬
(minimum),
召唤邪犬
(1.5s base cast) and
魔典：恶魔卫士
(GCD locked) out before casting a GCD locked, 2s base cast
召唤恶魔暴君
. That's a lot to set up for a 1.5 minute cooldown and makes the spec fluidity that much more clunky and this is further compacted going into Shadlowlands by having essentially no Haste again.
Doom
末日降临
is.......not good. It hasn't been good in quite some time and simply does not fit the Demonology theme, toolkit or lend itself to the spec in any form. A 20 second hasted DoT generating a
灵魂碎片
is simply not good. Sure, the tuning is OK and numerically it is/was the best talent in that row for all of BFA but no one played it for a reason and it should not continue to be a talent we can choose. That row is filled with talents that support/involve our summoned demons and this talent slot could occupy something similar to a form of
恶魔增效
. Now, this doesn't mean it has to be a carbon copy of that spell so we are spamming it but make it some form of cooldown that enhances demons.
Totems for Demons
Get away from using the totem system to track demons. Currently (both in BFA and in Shadlowlands) you can despawn your
魂缚暴君
(and other demons) by pushing it off the totem bar that is currently used. THD has a great clip explaining/showing this:
This is a.....huge thing that needs to get changed/fixed.
Conclusion
Overall there are some good and some bad things to look forward to going into Shadowlands and the biggest thing you will notice is that Haste really makes the spec work in a much more reliable and reasonable way. It makes the spec feel like it should be played that way and playing it any other way is wrong or just too slow (which in most cases it is, given our very long setup for our primary cooldown).
Covenants and soul binds (not much information available about them yet) should provide us with enough variety and choice to keep things interesting but no Covenant ability really truly morphs or adds that much to the Demonology toolkit.
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