Sounds like the start of an AA meeting . But that is not what this post is about. It has now been some time since I dinged 80 with X and I wanted to give some feedback on how it was to play a demonologist from level 1 – 80.
I’m not very good at structured writing but will try to make my best, I have a feeling I will go back and edit this post as I come to thing of more stuff I want to say.
First of, X is specced fire, i.e. I have mainly chosen feats that has with fire spells, this also means that I have not done much testing of the electrical spells. Oh, and another thing, X is bugged and can’t cast the rank 1 version of “Waves of flame”
General Impressions of the class
If you don’t know demonologists it’s easy to think that they are something like the warlock in WoW, that is plain wrong. Sure, we have pets, but that is about it. The Demo is a offensive nuker, with decent enough group buffs. The pet we have is more like a buff than anything else.
One on one fight is where the demonologist is shining. We are very strong in this area, and better yet, with the right pet/buffs/food, we have next to none downtime. It’s possible to win against 2 mobs, but any more and you better start running. (btw, I will always be talking about mobs around your level or slightly higher level). There is a exception to this rule, where you can take on lots more, but more about that later.
Pets
We have 4 pets at level 80. Each pet brings an effect to the party while being present;
More hp,
Grp damage shield,
In and out of combat mana/ health regen,
Increased physical and magical damage of the team.
In addition to this, the pet nukes, but, that is really only a side effect as it is now, the nuke is so weak compared to what you bring to the table that its nothing. But, I regarded the pet as a very good buff, and in fights like a small DoT. Out of the 4 pets, I only really used the mana/ health regen one, even after I got access to higher level pet. It was the only one that had an effect that was big enough to make any difference. That effect is the main reason why you will have very little downtime as a Demonologist. If I had been grouping more I might have used another pet as well, depending on if there was someone else to provide regen.
It would have been nice to have had pets with more specialized tasks, so that you would have to think about, and choose pets with care depending on what you were doing.
Pet control is…. Horrid. It works so that the pet will start nuking anything you have targeted when you enter combat mode. You can call the pet off by exiting combat mode, but the pet will finish any nuke it has started … This means that if you are fighting for your life, and just barely makes it, but ends the fight with a monster target in another camp… Or if you are running in a dangerous area, and want to keep an eye on the bad guys, doing so by targeting them to check level etc, and suddenly you get aggro by something else and enter combat …
Spells
Friendly spells (Aka Buffs)
Not much to say, a lot of these are groupwide buffs and I love that, it will make a demonologist a welcome addition to a group. I always tried to keep all buffs up on me. There are a few which is essential. As a fire specced Demo, I would run from a fight if “Infernal Knowledge faded. It is that important, also the damage absorber, “dark bargain” is a given, you will probably die without it.
Hostile spells
First of, remember that I had to solo most of my career, so my selection of spells reflect that. That said, we have a lot of cool spells, or at least, they have very cool names, I mean who can resist a spell called “draw forth the heart” ? Or “Gate of Hell” ? The problem is, that I found after some testing, that most of the spells wasn’t useful bothering with….
I spent 95% of my levelling casting the same spell, “flamestrike”. A few times I also threw in a “storm chains” for good measure.
I won’t give feedback on all spell, just some of the ones I have used.
Flamestike – the bread and butter spell, used every fight
Stormchains – At first I thought this spell was bugged and was hugly overpowered, then I realised it was rather some mobs that seemed bugged and never could resist it. That meant for example that I could solo a boss in a grp instance dungeoun, once the storm chains landed, the boss never got free, and I could spend forever to whittle it down with nukes.
Fiery Torment – A stun and a DoT, the stun is very short, at first I thought this was bad, it can’t be used for any kind of crowd control, then I realised, that if the stun had been any longer this spell would have been to powerful in PvP. The DoT part of the spell is very weak. Aside from testing this, I never used this spell. Casting range is to short as well.
Draw Forth the heart – The mana given back is really not worth it, I used this spell only as a means to get rid of a pesky minion that was hitting me.
Flame body & Unholy hate – the duration of these 2 spells is way to short, especially unholy hate,, Im not even sure it stays for the time it actually takes to cast another spell ….
Sacrifice & Blood Sacrifice – Can’t cast either of these spells, getting a message saying you can’t cast hostile spells on yourself.
Firestorm – Fire AE spell, this one I liked, a lot, it has a cool concept, it decrease melee damage on the mobs as well as doing damage on them. There seem to be a problem with the spell though, at times, and no, I don’t know how to recreate it, this spell simply removes to much of the melee damage. I have used it to AE whole camps to death, killing 5-6 mobs at once. The problem is of course that it sometime doesn’t remove that much damage …
Oh, and another thing, this spell is VERY vulnerable to interruptions, and for some reason, when I raised my casting concentration from 300 to 500 I started to get a lot more interrupts than I had before…. Anyway, I sometimes used this spell to pull with, just targeting a single mob, just to make him a bit easier to fight.
Impish Trickery – Another cool concept, root & runspeed. The root works, runspeed doesn’t as far as I can tell.
Let Them Burn – I haven’t used this very much, when playing solo, it just doesn’t do enough damage to be usable, you need to kill mobs faster than this spell lets you. I can imagine its good in a group.
Impish Horde – Summons a horde of Imps that nuke, nuke and nuke. This spell is so cool, I love those little guys. Not a bread & butter spell, but good in the right circumstances.
That’s all on spells for now.
In short, I used one nuke 95% of the time, DoT’s are to weak to be bothered with. A lot of cool spell concepts, but I think some need tweaking.
Itemization
Yeah, I know, there is none yet I just wanted to vent my bitterness that X was running around looking like a roman gladiator his whole career. Now I’m just using the robe from Mithrelle, yeah, the lvl 5 one. But atleast it looks cool.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, a nuking class, strong 1vs1, good group buffs and very little downtime. Downside is of course fragility
That’s all for now folks
