10.2 PTR Warlock Damage Testing for EVERY Spec! Demo is Not TOO Far Behind...

[@theocharisrokas5120]

Blizzard really has an obsession with the 3 malefic rapture concept..I d trade the 50% dmg boost on MR with a more generic concept of MR increasing the duration of dots

[@jozeff3329]

Kala, i just want to say: you're the absolute GOAT dude, the fact that you're SO consistent with uploads and testing and keeping us up to date with all of these things is FANTASTIC! Best WoW content creator out there.

[@Kalamazii]

Appreciate it dude!

[@Devutrix]

Genuinely feel like 10.2 Warlocks will be the worst ranged dps to bring to M+. The tier set bonus' are super underwhelming.

[@Kalamazii]

I think the baseline profiles are ok on their own for destro and aff, but it would be nice for tier to build upon them.

[@Redire7]

I know it would require probably a pretty substantial restructuring of the tree, but would it make sense to have Nether portal and Reign of Tyranny be a “choose one” node? It would make two different builds of either tyrant buffing and extending the big army of portal demons, or having less demons overall but the Tyrant is more powerful itself. Idk it seems Bliz hates how the two synergize and would rather nerf them and make the spec as a whiple feel worse but I’d rather they experiment a bit to add some variety Also I really hope they revert the Inner Demons change, I love when I see a little fella just show up and start fighting randomly

[@alohaitsjeff]

does shadowburn have any actual value? or are we just taking it to get to Conflag of Chaos?

[@ZomgZomg007]

20:23 as you were casting Tyrant, grim of felguard didn't get extended? He is not extendable anymore? or does your WA not track his timer? nvm i see the extend, its just your WA doesn't recognize the extend.

[@Kalamazii]

Yeah just a broken WA

[@SupaFireHD]

I mean i don't mind NP being gone with its weird soulshard-sequencing.. But i liked the army of demons that came with it making me feel like Gul'dan in the Legion-Intro.. it feels weird to me that they even gutted the Tyrant buffing the currently active demons.. Hope i'll be able to keep throwing imps around without falling too far behind!

[@AbothGaming]

is it even worth swapping to the new tier set if you wanna play demo (like no joke) have you tested i know this might sound CAP as fuck but old tier set with 1 minute tyrant and class trinket still might do MORE dmg

[@MultiHeyo]

The most annoying part of blizzard trying to make demo locks use more shadowbolt is the fact that our mastery doesnt even work with it. If they want demo to have more sustained dps they should just buff imps and dogs thats all.

[@dawnb2057]

IMO, they should just reduce the cooldown of the abilities to make it smoother for instance splitting the old damage profile of the 3 min cooldowns into a 1 min cooldown with 1/3 of the power. This would make the spec even more engaging IMO. It would reduce the chance your dps from being destroyed by something that prevents you from fully executing the 3 min cooldown. It would have the same base damage but prevent it being Uber buffed by long impactful cooldowns, perhaps reducing the damage based on borrowed power which also seems like something they are going after. Also, them trying to put as much power into demo’s casted spells like the other specs doesn’t work because their power is in their pets. They are treating them like they are the same and the same adjustments work, but they are not.

[@tiagopassarela]

Why are you casting soulburn during portals if you dont have the pitlord stacks anymore?

[@drewz9807]

Is Rain of Chaos viable?

[@korkax9051]

What they did to demo is disgusting.

[@ayayashiba1231]

Wtf, shadow bolt doing 5.5% of our damage!! Insane buffs😂😢

[@kavx4208]

we've been hated since MoP, both final patch BFA and SL were fun times for demo thought but it has always been due to borrowed power

[@CapnSnackbeard]

I'm beginning to wonder whether they occasionally break classes just to have something to do later.

[@martinjp6792]

As an aff player forced to play demo it makes me happy to see the spec gutted, so we can actually play something else for once.

[@GuntherGriesser-be7tt]

how good is the spriest ? s tier ?

[@dw5572]

Blizz should just have the destro 4 piece open a portal above your target and drop something like a fel meteor that does aoe damage. Would be good in raid and m plus, and would more then likely look sick!

[@cimnex]

Thing with destro is it just feels incredibly slow and basic now. Without Madness, at 32% haste Chaos Bolt is a 2.3s cast that hits for like 140-170k. So you stand still and cast that, weave in some Incinerates and rifts in between Eradication refreshes and that's literally all the spec does. Meanwhile the frost mage is over there shooting off Ice Lance procs left and right, and throwing Glacial Spikes that crit for 400k. Fire is constantly weaving in and out of Combustion and chaining Pyroblasts into each other. Warlock as a whole feels like it's regressing and getting more and more basic as the expansion goes on. Edit: I just wanted to mention that Grim Feast is still a capstone talent.

[@jmezo6656]

Visually those portals for Destro look sick!!

[@Miller1107]

Having to take Dimension Rift on Destro means I won’t be playing Warlock this season. Blizzard gave us beautiful new talent trees this expansion with tons of choice.. only to force us into builds and choice nodes based on tier sets.

[@Evilkneevle]

The problem is destro with rift is not applicable for m+ imho

[@Miller1107]

@@Evilkneevle M+ is all I play these days. I’d agree with that.

[@Evilkneevle]

@@Miller1107 yeah, same for me

[@betahumanx]

How do you make friendly targets to display color of their class in the text?

[@Clerigon]

Look at how much the mage dev improved ALL 3 specs in the course of this expansion, meanwhile lock keeps going backwards and failing further behind, It give the vibe that the dev has no vision and its just throwing darts in the dark.

[@ThirstyBaer]

Aren't those AFF numbers basically the same as live?

[@erichall090909]

Tad bit higher. Noting he didn’t potion or have raid buffs or pi. And his Ilvl isn’t much changed from live

[@Archaelyon]

Is this a conscious effort to purposefully reduce specs like Demo and Unholy down well below average DPS so that when they receive PI they're not too far ahead? Surely they should just be removing PI or making it a self buff because more and more it seems like they're trying to tune the receiving specs down to cater for PI remaining. Why are they so stubborn, things like PI and Augvoker clearly distort DPS tuning and make balancing a nightmare. Make PI a self-buff only & then tune Demo up to a respectable level without the worry of PI being a thing. These devs, genuinely..

[@kylesummers4884]

Bro how do I adjust my purple resource bar for soul shards, when I moved the WA south (Y axis) it overlaps my abilities on cd with the resource bar.

[@leviathan8624]

Just bring back MoP demo back and discard this clusterfuck of a tree

[@Maddawg1984]

Tyrant hitting like a wet noodle just feels wrong Demo is Dead Warlock has 2 specs now.

[@Afcoen]

Hope demo gets reworked, they want us to keep casting shadowbolt and demonbolt that bad by gutting tyrant and portal to the ground

[@PsychKenn23]

I'm REALLY hoping that the change to RoT in Demo is a first step to moving GWD to the class tree. It felt like Demo got way more value from doubling on that node so nerfing it could be good if that let you take both. Other than that they need to buff Pit Lord, maybe increase IH a bit, and honestly AoE for Demo is all that is in a decent but not great spot.

[@simes007us]

I'd love to see cataclysm moved to baseline or the mirror side of cdf. Instead of extended immolate

[@itsNowOrNever13]

When even you can't find anything good in the new demo rework, you know it's bad :(

[@nerzawow7929]

You call it a rework? Rework is changing all gameplay like SP got last seasons. Is just buffs/nerfs right now

[@ideadlift20kg83]

I wish they would reduce the amount of casts you have to do by at least 1 on Affli. It becomes so god damn tedious after a while.

[@GelipeGod]

I am not an expert by why dogs are 15 secs cd in 24:30 ? Just wanna ask :)

[@Kalamazii]

Good catch! Not sure but ill take a look

[@SjaduK]

At this point just copy paste MoP demo and be done with it. There's just so much that doesn't work in this spec: Doom is still in the game for some bizarre reason, since literally nobody ever takes this talent. Netherportal has always been a clunky cooldown that never worked properly with your rotation. And now the only thing that gave the spec some form of Skillcap is nerfed to a point where it's impossible to fuck up. All you damage basically come from passive sources right now if you follow a basic rotation.

[@thu6muff1n]

I know you didn't mention it in this vid, but I really think we need to stop advocating for GWD in the class tree. It'll just be a 100% pick, so why not just baseline it? They can give destro a talent that adds some variable cdr so you still get those crazy reductions in aoe, but for aff and demo who cares, know what I mean? As for Demo, NP needs to be redesigned, not removed, and if they want to make the spec less cooldown dependant they need to "finish" the core rotation. Since BfA the gameplay has been Sb/DB, HoGs and DS on cd until tyrant is up. There's no opportunity for decent damage in that unless we count DeciBolt Demo in shadowlands. The spec needs to return to the damage profile it had during MoP and WoD if they're really struggling with tyrant balance (and it seems they are). Note, not asking for meta back. I'm asking for a rotation that has natural ebbs and flows, preferably with on demand burst if needed (which is what meta gave us).

[@askejepsen1109]

Yeah demo looks interesting ;)

[@Evilkneevle]

Wish blizzard would make aff lock the way to go in m+ again like it was back then in legion😅 thanks for your efforts Kalamazii

[@Sacredarrowable]

17:42. Dawgs??

[@Nagassh]

I don't think most of the demo changes were bad once tuning gets sorted - the snowbally / synergistic nature of how tyrant WAS functioning feels like it was probably restricting design space. That said, I'm growing increasingly jaded with how the talent tree has worked out and I HOPE it gets some serious attention at some point. I'd hoped we'd see some interesting new talents in the expansion but it feels like there's nothing in the tree bar old baseline abilities, talents or borrowed power (Azerite, tier, covenant stuff), and as the expansion has rolled along every patch seems to be removing some of the semi interesting ones to replace them with passive % damage amps that should be background tuning. It's getting to the point where it feels like we've traded the old talent trees for a new one where we have a bunch of extra button clicks to do tuning to Chaosbolt etc on the spec tree and a class tree where we're now struggling to afford Banish. There's huge potential in the talent system but it's being squandered by choices Blizzard have made to cram it with things that should be baseline like ROF and being too creatively bankrupt / conservative with low power talents that they use % amps as talents far too often - ability amps are WORSE gameplay wise than the 2% haste / crit talents that people were initially complaining about being "filler" in trees during beta.

[@Blaylock2]

I agree I really wanted a talent tree like the old ones . Not having to choose your spells but having talents to accentuate your spells and at the bottom they put like a new super spell to pick . But I feel they fell short .

[@PsychKenn23]

I agree that many abilities for a lot of classes should be baseline, and that the talent trees need work. Sadly I don't think we'll get any major fixing until the next expansion because warlocks are functional if not clunky so they're prioritizing classes that are just out right bad. Here's hoping that next expansion we get some attention... along with other classes.

[@TLTeo]

Honestly I really think that the generally decent raid tuning of at least one Warlock spec has hidden the fact that the class has a couple of awful trees compared to others. As you said, the class tree is incredibly rigid and you're spending like two thirds of your points (at least) on mandatory throughput, Demo is just in a weird place with its burst potential (which imo is overrated because it relies so much on externals anyway). Aff and Demo at least have become a little bit better, although I agree that the replacement for Madness is kinda boring and the Rain of Fire/Cata side is absurdly stupid.

[@Ryuzaki365]

Prince Oleg himself

[@blackblade99009]

i'm honestly not a fan of affs set bonus. there isn't really any single target precedence. like it feels someone took the criticism of "aff has no aoe" from like 9.0 and finally did something about it nearly three years later.

[@elexes]

at this stage im not to worried. its far to early to press panic. once the flow of the specs are good

[@Kalamazii]

Agree

[@CharlieWinterTV]

I was wondering lately how the fuck they managed to completely destroy everything great about Demo spec, It was perfect at the start of the expansion.

[@RodrigoLinhares]

Please just make Grimoire sync with Tyrant already, Blizzard. I'm so sick of this thing being the one spell that isn't timed with everything else.

[@WhoMify]

Every time i love some lock spec they have to destroy it.. demo is so fun thanks the tyrant nether portal synergy.. we are goin back to chaos bolts

[@RandyOrton667]

Yeah and that's all only single target warlock is more useless in m+ than in the other 2 seasons

[@gala5000]

if they just make corruption apply siphon life ill only play aff

[@fist095ct]

Can't believe that a group of devs came up with such trash ideas about tier sets and lock pruning

[@jameslumpkins4609]

Still gonna play demo they will fix it destro to rng and aff is nit what it used to be

[@Narconecrotix]

I really hope they fix demo, this is a fricken joke....

[@deepzz4056]

Tbh I’m ok with demo crashing and burning. I don’t particularly enjoy it and I don’t like having to play it because it’s such a strong option most of the time.

[@alexanderadams9008]

could be cool to attune yourself to different rifts, like if there were an aoe rift you could choose to recieve the majority of procs in

[@Jake_Etc]

Kill nether portal. It was a good experiment, worth trying, didn't work. Doing all your damage at once and then nothing for the next 3 minutes is not good design. Give us back good tyrant. Demo keeps its identity as a bursty cooldown based spec but on a 1 or 1.5 minute cycle instead of 3 minutes.

[@slugfest513]

Tyrant has 4 talents points investment just to be below umbral blaze lmao

[@brettdaniels22]

They need to stop gimping demo by removing synergy / capping mechanics and make it more deterministic. Class designers seem to be running in circles, while ignoring the two equivalent player inputs can yield NP windows with one being half the damage output of the other due to demon procs.

[@ammox4683]

Seems like Blizzard is hellbent on making Warlocks turn their brains off when playing, they're removing all the skillcap talents that made warlock interesting and difficult to master, I did see a lot of people complain about Madness well gz we have a generic +% talent in our tree now that we HAVE to take, Demo will be better off if they make it a support class they already do tank damage so just make it so their demon buff players and gg, lastly Affliction hasn't changed one bit since Castle Nathria and by the looks of it it's going to be BiS next raid tier meanwhile they still haven't fixed Siphon Life or MR being the most boring and convoluted Shard Spender we have, the fact we still have to juggle with Siphon Life, Haunt, Shadows Embrace and off timer CDs like Phantom Singularity is truly mindblowing, meanwhile DKs have a nice 45 second assortment of CDs to perfectly align with army and gargoyle, why can't these people make decision for all classes?

[@ammox4683]

@@NickAug47 as opposed to what?

[@ammox4683]

@@NickAug47 And it's even lower now, I actually don't think it can get any lower but anyways that was my point, wether you think it was boring or not it's irrelevant the spec skill as a whole was determined by Madness and now that's gone hence my comment.

[@ammox4683]

@@NickAug47 Sad thing is with how easy they're making it to play warlocks now and the random % buffs blizzard tends to throw at us on random tuesdays I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being S tier again in Raid, it just sucks that they're making them extremely boring to play.

[@moritzmonaghan9421]

I really like the changes to demo myself. By limiting tyrants buffs, it makes the spec less punishing, and allows for other spells to be buffed to give more consistent damage. Of course this is all reliant on tuning.

[@SjaduK]

Consistent damage is not really desirable in WoW anymore. Although I also prefer it, it's just objectively better to have huge amounts of burst due to buff stacking. There's no amount of tuning, that can change that, apart from tuning raids and m+ differently. Also Demo turns more and more into mindnumbingly boring spec. That's not a good thing, since there already is a WL spec that fills that nieche: Destru.

[@durango3063]

Demo looks so sad man ....

[@positvechao]

demo is not that bad COPIUM

[@w8ing4adeath]

Demo looks so undertuned, noooo :(

[@davidezequielchamorro2618]

Im going to kill some one for this demo changes.

[@yacidra9165]

hello dude pls in the future when you make video put a description that you are testing only single target of spec's or just test aoe too

[@farmerjoe258]

Destro is terrible. Class is dead to me

[@Beranin]

destro is fine, they haven't even done tuning yet.

[@farmerjoe258]

@@Beranintuning isn’t the problem. The gameplay and glaringly obvious issues with the spec are. And rng is great on resets.

[@Beranin]

@@farmerjoe258 they got rid of madness, we don't have to CDF anymore, outside of the mobility issue already present, the spec improved this patch.

[@smxyguardiandruid4642]

First!

[@davidw.5984]

Not only these specs are just weak, but the gameplay ist just bad - shit mobility, still big ramps, no m+ utility, etc.

[@noahcunningham2650]

No m+ utility? Brez, aoe stun, lock rocks, summoning portal in niche scenarios.

[@Jsten16]

About time demo wasnt the go-to spec. Demo is so unfun and clunky to play idk why people like it. literally the worst designed spec of any mmo to date

[@Kngkat]

Good, I hope demo stays the same so we aren't forced to play it every season in raid.

[@marcpaulus6291]

You arent "forced" to play it. You want to play it because it makes the most damg and you want to be the giga chad in dmg meters. But nobody forces you.

[@Shadhun98]

@@marcpaulus6291 If you raid mythic you are forced to play the best or else you just a troll

[@Kngkat]

@@marcpaulus6291 you just proved my point with your own comment 'makes the most damg'. You are always forced to play what does the most damage in mythic raiding or else you won't be taken or you will be lagging behind in dps. When the guild can comfortably complete mythic raids you are then free to choose whatever spec of that class. Demo has been strong for too long in raid i want to play aff on most bosses and maybe 1 or 2 as either destro or demo.

[@MarceloFay]

@@Kngkat You had the entirety of Castle Nathria to play aff on every single fight. The other warlock specs didnt have a single fight that tier. Also, Aff was also good in Nyalotha, I played other class there but we got CE with one Aff and one Destro. No demo. This expansion so far both Destro and Demo had fights, aff was just on council fights or ST. Aff damage profile does not allows it to shine for various reasons, be it tuning or if you tune ST to be good and allows you to do respectable AOE with that build, you just don't play the other warlock specs, as it was the case during Nathria (and even that season's M+)

[@Kngkat]

@@MarceloFay haha bro castle nathria was 3 years ago and aff for mythic plus was strong for only half of 1 season in shadowlands.

[@parlangua89]

Of all the things to happen in 10.2 blizzard taken a shit on demo wasn’t on my bingo cards. Literally was just talking what they were going to do without all the crutches, and here we are without crutches plus a giga nerf of the core of the class.