MoP Beta Updates: Demonology Warlockery

I had bitched and moaned about not receiving a Beta invite for weeks on end and once I finally got my invite....I ignored it. Yes, I like to complain just for the sake of complaining. For testing's sake I copied over my hunter and my warlock and I downloaded all the necessary files a couple days later.

I checked out my hunter first, everything is pretty much the same, save for an extra cooldown talent we can choose for the 5th tier of talents. Also, hunter pets are currently showing up in their ORIGINAL sizes. Cool but very distracting.

What I was actually interested in is to check out the State of the Warlock, and if I can play my beloved Demonology again.

New Class Mechanics

The horrible Soul Shard mechanics have been removed and now we get a new resource bar called Demonic Fury. This is a bar that by default has 200 fury and we generate fury via our nukes, shadowflame, and our wild imp firebolts. The higher this bar goes, the more damage we do. The incentive to filling up this bar is because of Metamorphosis.

New Metamorphosis

I was quite excited when I first saw that Meta no longer has a 2.1 min cooldown, rather, now it costs I believe 100 demonic fury (DF) and expends 6 fury every second. In Metamorphosis form, we are unable to use our dots, this is very important, which means you MUST have your corruption/doom on your target BEFORE you meta, else you waste precious cooldowns.

Of course you would ideally cast Meta once you are at 1,000 (max) DF. Our fel flame turns into twilight beam that cleaves everything in front of us, and our shadow bolts become an insta-cast demonic slash. Instant cast spells during a cooldown are AWESOME.

New Rotation(?) Babble

It seems right now that our "rotation" is kind of funky and we should just hold off on making any sweeping judgements. Currently it seems we want our corruption/doom (doom is from a glyph that changes corruption, but it may not be better than corruption) on the target at all times, and also our shadowflame dot, which can be applied via Shadowflame breathe, or Hand of Gul'dan. All of these abilities generate DF for us, along with our Wild Imps.

Wild Imps is a demo ability that can either allow us to summon 5 imps out at once to bombard our enemy, or if we don't cast the ability, it has a PASSIVE ability to summon an imp for us every 20 seconds when we cast shadowbolt. The imps' fireballs generate DF for us.

5 imps and our current demon + our big cooldown demon = 7! We need MOAR!!

Shadowflame Hand of Gul'dan has been changed to have "charges" that refresh every 15 seconds, with a maximum of 3 charges? Or 2? Hand of Gul'dan is kind of odd now that it has a targetting reticule, and after you cast your first HoG, the targetting reticule does not go away, which means you have to click ESC to get rid of it. This makes gameplay feel as clunky as Demo is currently =P

Once our DF is full, based on this rather simple rotation, we cast Meta and go balls to the walls. Our hellfire turns into immolation aura, which is an insta cast. Then we spam our new shadowbolt, now turned into demon cleave, and I assume that our fel-flame can be used for AOE and or to refresh our corruption/doom dot on the target. This feels rather incomplete but I managed. The new Meta feels kinda burst, kind of like Bestial Wrath (thumbs up!)

Oh, I almost forgot about Soulfire! Soulfire has been changed in that it now hits like a mofo truck and always crits when it lands. It is affected by "Molten Core", which reduces its cast time and it seems Molten Core just...randomly procs? Also, Soulfire is now our absolute execute due to its increased damage (50-60ks).

The New Talents

Pretty much everything that we have points in our current talent trees are either built-in to our abilities or have been amalgamated into our abilities. For example, our beloved Molten Core proc seems to happen randomly, and it is targetted towards our Soulfires. Though the description of Molten Core, when it procs says that it can be triggered with Soulfire when a mob is hit with Soulfire at 25% or less health, Soulfire itself does not mention that it triggers Molten Core, nor could I find anything in our spellbooks that mention Molten Core *twitch*.

The new "talent" tree consists of 6 tiers of "custom" "talents", which allows us to use a new ability, or to give us flexibility in choosing what kind of utility spell we would like. For example, we can choose between Shadowfury, Instant Fear, or Death Coil.

The only talent I was really interested in was Dark Grimoire: Allows us to summon stronger versions of our demons. I immediately summoned out my Wrathguard and was immediately happy that I may never have to use a Fel Hunter ever again.

New Glyphs

I kind of like how glyphs are being played upon. Rather than having some "Mandatory" glyphs that directly affect DPS, a lot of our glyphs are pretty much utility/cosmetic effects.

Four glyphs that I would like to talk about are:

Glyph of Shadowbolt: Splits your shadowbolt into 3 smaller shadow bolts. This glyph provides no dps benefits, but it's badass! After being cast, our SB's split into 3, fly up into the air, then bombard our target for 3 hits of damage (at the same time, server side I suppose). Best. Nuke. Ever.

Glyph of Nightmares: Our felsteed and dreadsteed are now able to run on water, and leaves a trail of FLAMES in their wake. Uhh hell yeah I'm choosing this glyph! Having permanent water-walk-riding is totally OP, and leaving a trail of flames behind while cackling in the night while riding across a lake is just the flaming icing on the cake.

Glyph of Dark Apotheosis: This is the glyph that makes it sound like we can/should taunt. It gives us another ability that gives us demon wings and changes our abilities sort of halfway to what you would see in Metamorphosis (more on this later). Our soulshatter taunts, and we take reduced damage. I suppose using this ability along with metamorphosis makes us fairly sturdy since Meta provides us with crit immunity and further damage reduction.

This glyph seems to need some working on since my abilities sometimes change between shadowbolt/shadow cleave (the ability we get in Meta).

Glyph of Felguard: THIS is the most important glyph of all: Allows your felguard/wrathguard to randomly equip a 2H axe, 2H sword, or polearm from your bags.

....

......

COLLECT ALL THE WEAPONS!!!

Y'see, I was a weapon collector BEFORE transmog. I can almost confidently say that between my hunter, druid, warlock, dk, warrior, rogue, and paladin I probably own 75% of all the "cool" looking weapon models in one color or another (Except Aesir's Edge grr) from level 60-85. (Including old ZA/ZG, not including PVP weapons).

It's quite unfortunate that my warlock's weapon collection consists mainly of all the staves, one handed swords and daggers, and none of the nice 2 handers that my melee have. *twitch*

Anyways, I shan't waste any more breathe on abilities/mechanics that may not permeate through or survive till next year. I shall prepare a weapon check list instead! (Or hope 1 handers qualify!)

Truny the Weapon Collector