Demonic Empathy is the question. The current WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator calculator has it at the original version: when you or the pet are crit, then the other gets faster casting speed. That's useless PvE. They keep switching it around. Clearly if it ends up being the PvE version, it will be very attractive.


No clue about what you are saying about pets needing more crit to keep up DP. Because of the one-roll system, the chance of your pet missing is irrelevant. Anyone with an excel chart should be able to plug in pet's crit chance, number of attacks pet should make in a 12 second period, and give you the chance that DP won't fall off. Even if you do go 12 seconds without a crit (unlikely) you are unlikely to ever see more than say 3 seconds of uptime.

Edit: For the Imp with a 2 seconds cast time, DP uptime should be: 1-(1-X%)^6, where X is the Imp's crit chance. This is a declining function for X, ie going from 35 crit to 40 gives you 3% more uptime, and 40 to 45 gives you 2% more uptime. And obviously Empowered Imp will help.

I don't know how often the Felguard attacks, specials includes.

This is why 1/5 Hunting Party is broken.

[quote=Clearly;854301]Delusional poster is delusional?

At no gear level does demo EVER outdo both affliction and destruction. It can try to compete with them on certain select fights, but at absolutely no gear level is it the superior choice.

Pretty certain Leulier agrees with me on this subject.

[quote]

Your petty insults aside, both your statements that follow are demonstrably incorrect, both in theory and in practice.
Leulier most certainly does not agree with you. Input a T5 gear set....you will see.

the only fight in which demo cannot compete in T5 content is Alar. Kael is difficult but not impossible.

On the other fights, its not even "slightly" ahead....its dominant.

I won't comment on the matter anymore here, as its not really topical to the thread.

Its a shame that, rather than fixing *why* players downrank, they simply setup a THOU SHALL NOT PASS.

Make Drain soul worth casting, other than simply needing shards.
Fix over-healing or the need for fastest casting heals.
Fix the debuff being the most important part of frost spells (along with, again, needing fastest casting).

Etc. etc.

I know, I'm crazy, that'd take a boatload of work... Sucks that these segments of your game are *this* broken, don't it...

Personally I always wondered why Drain Soul didn't have the same slowing effect that Mind Flay does. It makes sense in a lore logic way, and it would make shard farming much more manageable, not to mention giving it some additional utility.

Removing downranking should hopefully make it easier for them to balance healing tighter. They've never really needed to worry about it much with damage spells, but trying to balance spell books with 3 or 4 spells is much easier than ones that effectively have 20 or 30 spells.

One interesting side effect this and the potion change could have is we may find that the heals for lifetapping that we take for granted come at slightly more of a premium, especially since we lost our inbound healing bonus. Hard to say if it will have any real impact on how we play or gear, but it is a possibility.

I use Banish rank 1 to manage the time when I am going to be rebanishing during Hex Lord. If I dont have concentration aura/nether prot helping me out trying to CC during the spiritbolts is almost impossible. I can get around this by timing when the banish will breakwith R1 and R2 banish combos. This would be negated if I could overwrite banish like mages can do with sheep. being able to break early is something that saves the raid about 15 seconds so it's not needed.

I am curious about the change to spell costs. Is there still a downranking damage penalty or is it just the same mana cost. Cause a 1.2 second shadowbolt that does roughly 40% of the damage as max rank one, is a pretty nice addition to pvp. It means you can effectively buy haste by paying for it with mana and damage.

Sucks for mages who can't use rank 1 AE to unsteath rogues though.

Thats pretty much what this whole thread is about.

Remember when the imp. felhunter talent was revealed? And it increased Shadow Bite and 'Expel Magic'? Shadow Bite could be found in the database, but Expel Magic was a mystery.

I suspect it was intended to be a mana return to the group/raid ability. It had a long cooldown--my guess it was intended to 'expel' it's own mana to the raid/party? For whatever reason, I suspect they nixxed it and moved that utility to the water elemental for the mage. Fel Intellect sounds like something a water elemental would bring (brilliance aura). When I think of 'fel'..I don't think of spirit.

Anybody else concerned that warlocks are going to need spirit...and mages aren't unless arcane as it stands right now? Seriously, fire, elemental, and frost mages have zero need for spirit unless for whatever reason they have to use mage armor, which isn't going to be their first choice.

Expel magic sounds like a self-dispel. I bet what used to be Expel Magic is now the Felhunter's current Demonic Empowerment, replacing the earlier, significantly more powerful reset-all-cooldowns effect. :*( 37/31/x looked so promising for pvp...

I wonder if expel magic dispels banish...

Things to fix meta:

1)Meta should not drop soul link or any of the buffs you get with your demon out. or simply just don't get rid of the pet when we meta
2)When you meta you should take on the demonic sacrifice effects of the pet you have out. But you would need a point in demonic sacrifice to get this effect. Maybe even chain DS to meta through demonic empowerment and fel guard.
3)Meta should be permanent.
4)Meta should have spell lock
5)Meta should have a nerfed cripple.
6)Metamorphosing should break stuns and snares
7)100% spell power to attack power.
8)Meta should have a dot
9)Instead of 360% armor maybe 200% now because soul link is still effective
10)immolation, instant fear, demonic leap, all good things and should stay.
11)Demon form procs demonic pact.

These changes would make meta a little bit more interesting and would actually make DS useful for someone who is deep demo. DS is like ruin except for unlike ruin its actually useless for anyone who goes deep into the tree that it is in.

With my current Felguard, with the talents provided at eighty using a 50/21 build, I got to well over a 17% Crit chance for him (~1 crit per 12 seconds on just white swings)

5% base,
5% Demo. Tactics,
4% 2/3 Imp Demo Tactics,
3% paladin Judgment.

Then every other raid buff is just gravy, I'm willing to bet that we'll be able to spec all points out of Imp Demo Tactics the moment we step into a 25-man raid, Then I come up with this 50/21 build (Two in Imp Succy can move to Master Conjurer if those stones are made less of a joke, If they add a demo one that would be GREAT, the spec that benefits least from a spell is the one that shares a tree with it, something is just wrong with that,)

Our last Supremus he had about 10% crit, even with a ret paladin, maybe pets aren't gaining that benefit.\

Meta at the end of the demo tree is always going to just be bad unless you can keep your pet out, or gain some other massive benefit to the tune of -15% damage, 5% damage dealt, reduced threat (Because of combined damage dealt, when you meta all damage dealt is your threat now), 2-300 spell damage, an additional DoT and Demonic Pact on your own crits.

I ran one raid as the "odd caster out" and ended up in the feral/hunter group (we also raid with a ret pally). My felguard at the end of the night sustained well over a 20% crit rate, which was over double his more typical 7-9% rate. As I recall his miss rate was much lower as well (I don't have the parse any more unfortunately). He provided solidly 3-4% more of my total dps than normal. With so many raid wide buffs I wouldn't be surprised to see him staying at 25-30% crit on a normal basis.

I strongly suspect heavy demo will start out as the highest dps build at level 80 because Felguard damage will be so high. Whether it comes down to Metamorphosis or Ruin, remember early on we'll be doing well to have 20% crit, especially in a 10 man where you won't be quite as likely to have both a moonkin and an elemental shaman (or either for that matter). Really, all they would have to do is roll a heroism type effect into demon form and it would always be viable.

It is the PvE version of 6% more dmg, blue said that for some reason it keeps reverting back to the old version whenever they change it on the web calculator. It has pretty decent uptime along with demonic pact, just wish they where not bugged and actually modified damage. =P

If Meta left our pet and and had okay starting DPS but had a Demonic Frenzy buff like the Felguard that stacked up, it probably would be okay for PVP. It's the ability to drop suddenly huge DPS while also being fully healed and armored that would be insane. But if the other team knew that they had a few moment before you got your buff stacked to +50%, or that good CC could force the buff to fade after it had built up, that might be fair in PVP.

And using it also makes you vulnerable to banish, pally fear, and the pally special damage to undead/demon skills (they are both instant, aoe version also stuns). It's the pally part that especially worries me, most of them are just itching to use those skills against something.

It's pretty much the only thing that will make meta useful from a PvE point of view. Blue did mention they were looking to add a 'DPS timer' effect to meta. I doubt it will be a heroism type buff, but I could see a 'Demonic Frenzy' stacking type buff to the party/raid melee. Right now, it's just a horribly bad talent for PvE. You think hunters would be happy with "The Beast Within" if it removed their pet, healed them to full, and they only did 70% of their normal DPS? Absolutely not, I don't know why Blizzard even thinks this is viable. I suspect they are waiting for level 80 to open up before tinkering with this talent again to keep it in balance with PvP. Arena is always the horse that drags the cart.

FG dps (with fully stacked frenzy) and BM pet dps is actually very similar... nearly identical even. The reason why BM pets do more dmg is because more often than not, hunters are grouped on physical dmg enhancing groups, instead of a caster group, thus their pets usually end up with many more buffs.

Which means raid wide buffs should help demonology warlocks a lot. Hrm, never really thought about that before, but that sounds nice.

Well yea i do agree somewhat their. We only run 1 hunter in our guild due to not having any and mostly he is in the tank grp and all he gets really is the 5% crit to his pet.I have seen his pet do 600 dps on Brut and Teron and even if my pet got the 5% more crit it wouldnt touch that.

Also according to leulier In my tier6 gear at 1400 dmg unbuffed my felgaurd dps is likw 237.I dont see 5% crit adding that much to it.

How do you test pet/melee DPS? Doesn't Dr. Boom kick your shit in if you get too close? I was getting about 230 DPS from the Imp in an Empowered Imp build in Sunwell gear. It would be sad if the Fel Guard barely beat that.

Not to derail too much (if at all) I hope, but I did have one thing that keeps nagging at me:

Do we 'need' pet talents? Or is Demonology sufficient as it stands (with maybe a couple exceptions)?

That particular question keeps on coming to mind with respect to Demonology in a raid setting, possibly even Heroics. For instance, suppose we did have pet talents of our own. Would that make them too good, or would it give them a more even chance in doing whatever it is they're supposed to do in a PVE setting, and Demonology could further enhance a given pet (Improved pet = +points?), as one might expect?

A lot of melee use the servants around the azeroth side of the dark portal to test stuff, because they can't die. They have lower armor, and you'll have a higher chance to hit/crit, but it's decent for a lot of tests as long as you keep that in mind.