doombringers and demonologist discussion

[spastic]

I just checked this on my lvl 40 shalore doombringer. I have about 220 vim with my sustains on, it drops to 130 if I use either Flames of Uhr'Rok or Fearscape.

This causes my damage increase to drop from 20% to 11%, and my defense ability to drop from about 60 to about 30.

While the global speed from Flames would probably overcome the lack of damage since the doombringer is mostly a bump attack class, it would also make you somewhat more flimsy on what already feels like a flimsy class.

[Boozermonkey]

Yes, the Demonologist seems like a very broken class to me. I have one up to decent levels and they don't scale up well. Their generic trees seem to not work consistently, and their trademark tree also seems to not work right or is entirely broken. Probably best to steer clear of this class until some devs get around to finishing it.

[marcin]

Is Flames of Uhrok + Fearscape actually worth it as a Doombringer btw? I'm not sure it is is, because of the Vim cost...sure, I can refil my Vim, but Doombringer has quite a few sustains that lower your max Vim AND I don't think you can get ones that raise it to counter that, like Corruptors/Reavers...

My DB (normal winner, sadly offline because of the connectivity issues) got a fair bit of use out of Flames of Uhrok but didn't use (or, for that matter, skill) Fearscape because of the sustain cost. That probably was a mistake, all told, but I found that the class has so many quality sustains that I just couldn't hack two -90s. FoU seemed the better call for two reasons:

1) I initially unlocked the Fearfire tree rather than the Wrath tree (which I didn't test out until after going back west). The fire pools left behind by Fearscape Shift and Infernal Breath heal demons just like standard Fearscape fire; it's not a huge amount of regeneration, but it's certainly helpful, and both Shift and IB are rather good skills. Or, perhaps more to the point, Shift is a very good skill and Infernal Breath is probably mostly just good on Normal.

2) Being that the DB gets a lot out of bump attacks, global speed is really nice. That said, with the nerfs coming down the pipeline (including an ICD on the fire burst proc, assuming that sticks), the relative value of bump attacks is going to decrease.

I suspect that it might be better overall to unlock Wrath (generally a much better tree than Fearfire) and rely on Rush and movement infusions for mobility; with a few points in Rush to bring the CD down, that'll be sufficient. Fearscape and Destroyer are much easier on Vim and probably more useful than anything Fearfire offers, apart from the Blink. It's certainly possible to get both Wrath and Fearfire, mind you, and Fearscape Shift really only needs two points or so to be really useful.

~

WRT the Demonologist, it's really hard to say how good the class is, because so much of it is tied up into off-sheet stuff like the demons you happen to get. It's certainly an awful class in the early stages of the game (awful Vim recovery, awful damage, low survivability outside Osmosis shield ... which costs tons of Vim), but I'm finding it gets a bit more reasonable over time. I get the sense it's sort of like a shadow-based Doomed - basically useless until a whole lot of skills get maxed, and workable afterwards.

[Boozermonkey]

Yeah. Right now I would say the Demo needs to be beefed up a bit in the early game. I know with my recent attempt the best I could get was level 26, although at least 2-3 of the deaths could have been easily avoided. Still, I went through probably 6-8 starts where the guys kept dying before level 5 due to the insane starting location. Prior to level 20, this class is really underpowered compared to prettty much all others.