Demonologist Thoughts

[Boozermonkey]

I guess this class is new with the xpac. My thoughts on it so far are that the class is quite lackluster. It is nothing at all like its big sister the Doombringer, which is an astoundingly good class. TBH, it seems like the class is half finished. The demons you get show up in your normal inventory and are tough to spot at first. The ones you get from 15 and below are all very weak. Some give you talents, which are also weak. You can skill up the second talent to get unlocks for demon slots, but these also seem to not really work either, because so far I can only unlock the main hand, first ring, and armor slot. The most useful demon for me thus far has been the imp, but have not got one of those since level 9. There are other things about the class that seem broke as well, such as their primary generic tree, which just seems not to work at all, or very rarely. So, those of you who have tried it, what are your thoughts?

[Tasidar]

I'm only level 10 on my demonologist so I don't know what I can add about the bound demons but I will share my experience with the generic tree (Black Magic) and especially the first skill, Bleak Outcome.

On paper it looks great, then you find you can barely stack it up past 2 stacks... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

I put a bit of thought into it and decided the answers weren't coming from the demonlogist's kit itself (at least not in the first few levels) so I looked at some items that would reflect or deal that the required sort of damage on hit and being hit. Prime example is that random generated lantern that deals fire damage if you are hit. I also found an axe with acid splash damage. Soon I could easily stack bleak outcome up so the second generic, Stripped Life, was proccing.

My big moment of satisfaction was being placed at level 3 of the Heart of the Gloom dungeon in a very large clearing with lots of bears, those spitting venus flytraps and the Withering Beast. I cranked up the Osmosis shield and turtled up, aiming Flame Leesh in a way that would hit the most critters. My status bar filled up so high with stuns and poisons - all my buttons turned off (fortunatly there were no sustain breakers). Still the Osmosis shield (lvl 3) kept me up and bleak outcomes stacked up high on everything in melee keeping my Vim full when they died despite the Osmosis shield drain.

I felt godly. This anecdote aside though I'm doing even worse than you with demons. I have three equipment slots open but only find demons for my mainhand. I favour the water imp personally because of the ranged grab.

Anyone else with more insight into this class?

[Tasidar]

I managed to get a Wretchling which gave me a great acid weapon sustain and I was frothing at the mouth thinking its acid cloud would stack Bleak Outcome in a big AoE but your summoned pet's spells don't count

[Boozermonkey]

I got my Demo up to 26 tonight and then died on the Temporal plane during Daikara. You get better demons after level 20. MUCH better. These ones have sustains that are really nice. By the time I died I had like 50 demon seeds sitting in my bag of all kind of types. The pattern seems to be Wretchlings = acid, acid clouds, acid spits, and acid penetrations. Then there is the Imps that are all Physical based. They have ranged attacks that hit for alot and give Physical penetration bonuses. Then you have those fiery guys that all stack fire, and give fire penetrations. Last, you have the Shadows. Didn't play much with them cuz I didn't go shadow build, but they seem to have a set of abilities when stacked that go really well with Invis and stealth, which you do get on one of the trees.

After level 20 I started to see a different type of demon set. The first one when stacked on off hand gave me a sustain sheild that was insane. It was basically a sustainable damage reflect at 60+%. Then I got a higher level shadow demon that I put on mainhand that gave me a sustainable Shadow tendrils but was fire based and did a pin attack + high fire damage.

You are right about the shield tree. It is nuts. When you get it up to 5 levels you will not die nor ever be at a loss for vim, even with 4 sustains running so long as you are mass killing stuff. Get that reflect inscription early on and it is pretty fun times. The other line (forget which) has a fireball based off your attack that is also pretty sick when you level it up to at least 3.

So for this initial run I stacked high in the shield line, the demonology tree, and the fireball tree. I used the category point on the spellshock one, and it was pretty sick. That first talent calls down 2x random meteors every attack round that hit for crazy damage. And its a sustainable. So long as you keep killin things, meteors keep coming down. Its sick.

So after getting to level 26 I have revised my opinion, tentatively, about this class. It might have potential, but it is definitely a slow starter compared to the Doombringer which is a crazy OP class from level 1 on.

[Furey]

Demonologist is a very slow start. (They are basically a bulwark with one summon). But once you hit the mid 20s and get a thaureg for your shield you become a god.

One thing to note...your skills are based on shield block value! So hi damage, though nice, is not what you want on your shield. Get a thaureg. Get titanic. Become invincible.

[joebobjoe]

Currently up to 29 or so on exploration with this character. Must agree with the Thaurherg being amazing for shields but also recommend Dollegs for the body armor slot. They effectively give you a nice extra reserve of Vim and make it very easy to top off Vim between combat (Blighted Path under sustained skills, I have it set to auto use whenever available). Also Doom Tendrils from the Daelach weapon slot is nice if you have the vim to spare, radius 2 damage and pin aura currently not using it because I wanted a decent vim pool and Flames of Urh'Rok at the same time. I got lucky with my start and got a Fire Imp from my very first kill. Most of the deaths have been due to carelessness or running into obscenely overpowered for my level monsters and trying to bury them with a pile of my dead bodies.

[spastic]

After rolling a few demonologists, I'm pretty sure that you always get a fire imp on the first kill of a demon seed infected monster.

[Doctornull]

After rolling a few demonologists, I'm pretty sure that you always get a fire imp on the first kill of a demon seed infected monster.

Is "pretty sure" a secret code for "wrong"?

Because I've gotten three Wretchlings in a row to start.

[spastic]

Ah, so you just get a random demon on the first kill? I've gotten four fire imps in a row, which has a low probability of occurring if it's a 50/50 split, but stranger things have happened.

[Doctornull]

Ah, so you just get a random demon on the first kill? I've gotten four fire imps in a row, which has a low probability of occurring if it's a 50/50 split, but stranger things have happened.

With sufficient monkeys, unlikely things are likely to happen.

[Razakai]

I made a whole lot of Demonologists while trying to escape on Nightmare in beta, and it tended to be more Flame Imps with Wretchling only happening once. But I can't think of any reason it'd be biased towards Flame Imp really, so probably just odd luck.

[Frumple]

Yeah, that power spike around level 18 is pretty ridiculous. Suddenly I go from managing to get by, but not very impressively, to throwing around demons that have ~3x my HP, never running out of vim, blasting stuff with 350+ damage blight spikes, etc., etc., etc. It's a little sudden.

I think what might be really nice for the class is a way to manipulate seeds... shift what they are, feed them to each other to increase/equalize level, etc., etc. Would make the character much less dependent on the RNG, and much more capable of adjusting themselves to the current situation without, y'know, having several dozen seeds cluttering up their inventory.

[Furey]

I'm level 45 now on nightmare, had one death so far to Gorbat because of impatience, but anticipate winning this one handily. Here are my thoughts and suggestions so far:

1. Overall - Excellent and really fun class. Love the melee/shield stuff. More fun than bulwark, more damage and defense than wyrmic, very well thought out and novel class idea. Kudos to whoever came up with this.

2. Class Trees - Doom shield is amazing. Spellblaze is amazing for trash clearing and extra free-ish damage from meteors. Very nice. Covenant I am not sure about. The first skill by itself is of little use, since you use mostly physical with fire damage. In fact, without investing in the rest of the tree, you only have two sources of darkness damage in total? However, I *could* see nice synergy between the first and third skill, but I'm just not sure if the point cost is worth it.

3. Generic Trees - Black Magic is not very good. The effects are all post death, making trash *more* clearable (but ... trash is already quite clearable), and the only skill I would like to use is all the way to the end requiring a huge investment in points to get to. The one thing that Demonologist *really* need is some stam regen, and that would fit in nice in this tree. A "Stam on hit" skill, or a "Vim into stam" skill, or something. Perhaps a skill to allow you to consume demons in your inventory to gain stam? Give you something to do with all the extra demons in your backpack?

4. Demons - Lots of fun here. Wow, so nice. The only issue I see is that you *really* rely on RNG, and some demons are *so* superior to others. A Thaureg on my Titanic shield made me flat resist 112 damage. I took no damage from any monster in the West. On nightmare. Now, I know that requires finding titanic, but finding a randart Stralite is not inconceivable, and they give a flat 85-91 damage reduction. Still OP. The problem is, you may as well throw away the rest....this one is soooo good. I'm not saying nerf it....but yeah.....nerf it. Make it so that other shield demons are attractive options. Body is a good example. You can go with a 4 debuff cleanse with fire imp (quite nice) or a +20% Global speed increase. (quite nice). so you have some options! Weapons, omg. So many nice options. Cone of acid on crit? Ignore Armor? Guaranteed flame bolts? Nature failure? I swapped out weapon demons *frequently* in game. Very well balanced.

5. Stamina. This. This. This is the *only* real problem with the class. You have exactly *zero* means of stamina regen on a class that is hugely dependent on stamina. It would be nice to have some way to mitigate the issue. On long fights (bosses or randbosses) you would get two cycles of offensive talents, and then that was it. Bump attacks for the win. To make this class more fun, I would *strongly* urge the addition of stam regen somewhere. Nothing OP and infinite like the LOLBringer, but some way to continue to use talents. Vim is infinite with the correct rings, so stam should be at least an option. I would recommend the following ways:

-> Add a talent to the black magic tree to convert Vim into stam, or a skill to allow you to eat demons to gain stam.
-> Add demons that give passive stam, or stam on hit, to rings, the same way vim is. Or, add a demon to the body to allow you to store stam.

If the stam issues were addressed, this class could well be my favorite...I really love the way they play.

Cheers, and keep up the good work.
DF

[Evershifting]

Just won with Demo on normal.
http://te4.org/characters/108348/tome/5 ... 65721b8712

And I'm totally agree with Furey.

Absorbing 250+ dmg (Temporal Rift + Thaureg + Osmosis shield) is kind of broken. Especially counting ~10% vampirism and 200+ healing from Horned target.
Regarding Black Magic, vim gain is nice but we have demon in rings, and all of them somehow get us necessary vim.

As for my wishes for this class:
Higher tier demons, based on Demon Seed lvl. I finished with this skill at lvl 8.5 just for the sake of testing =)
Some alternative in rings
Give us something to do with full inventory of deamons

This trinked idea is really fun and I hope it will be implimented in a larger scope =)

[Zul]

A lot of the demon skills are broken, making the class quite overpowered.

• Blood Shield is completely broken and makes you take no damage onces you find a good shield. It outclasses any other flat damage reduction in the game by far. (It also does a lot of damage.)
• Fiery Cleansing (or whatever it is called when you attach an imp to your armor) clears all a negative effects instead of 4, at very little cost.
• Blighted Path gives a lot of vim or damage for free. It can be charged by bumping into walls, taking no turns.

Also because of Bleak Outcome and vim regeneration by attaching T6 demons to rings, the class never has vim problems (unless you use Fearscape maybe).
The spell that converts vim to stamina should work the opposite way. Stamina is much more limited for this class.

I think Black Magic is nice, because it helps you in vaults and against strong mobs close to weak ones.