I want to like this, I really do. But every time I make a new Demo and play it for any amount of time, I just find myself not killing things with any speed or efficiency. BWC is the main issue I think, point for point it is the weakest active ability in game. Not sure if it’s a back-end issue or what, but when I play anything else I find the points spent in their active abilities hits harder. For example, created a few test classes and maxed out just rank one of their earliest “main” active abilities, and they all crush Demo and BWC.
Solider: Cadence or Forcewave both outpace BWC
Occultist: Dreegs Evil Eye almost triples what BWC can do
Nightblade: Blade Burst, again, is like 3 times more powerful, if not more due to utility.
Arcanist: Magic Missile does better single and AoE damage, the deeper the tree the more it is pronounced. Plus they don’t have to keep their mobs in fire like Demo does.
Shaman: Savagery does around double the damage but also buffs itself with each point spend. Demo needs Flame Touched and BWC to get the same effect and still is weaker.
Inquisitor: Word of Pain is on par with BWC in terms of weak abilities, but DW with pistols adds more damage than flame touched.
Necromancer: Drain Essence hits harder and heals you.
Oathkeeper: Righteous Fervor hits harder and gets 2 buff sources (charge and %damage increate on two damage types.
These are just basic examples of early abilities, but I’ve played demo even farther and most class combos and I can confirm, Demo never gets a damage increase to make up for BWC. In fact, other abilities come close to the under performance of BWC. My thoughts on fixing would be:
Replace all the X-Y damage ranges on their abilities. They seem to have a ton of that going on and that could be the issue of too many variables in calculating damage.
Increase the AoE range on all of their abilities. Too many enemies have the zoomies or just move at different rates to make each use of the GCD to only hit a few of the enemies you intended to hit.
Flat increase to their damage. Focus on fire damage increases to let them feel like they are more fire focused. Little too much physical/piercing/chaos/lighting damage going on.
Possibly change BWC to burn forever if an enemy is hit by it (if you don’t want to increase damage). This way I don’t have to throw like 20 of these to clear out a pack of enemies. Like a molotov cocktail is very dangerous IRL. In game it’s like throwing a lit match at someone.
Buff their DoT tick rates/duration. Maybe increase the length of all fire DoT’s and a new ability to instantly consume the remaining duration of the fire dot and deal that damage all at once.
Either that or remove the class and replace it with something else so people don’t get tricked into picking Demo, thinking they are going to be killing things with Fire damage.
thank you,
i know you probably didn’t intend so, and no offence meant as it’s your first post/community entry, but i chuckled, and chuckled good, and i appreciate that if nothing else
did you use items? there are very good MI’s for BWC. no problem to finish ultimate campaign with demolitionist only… in the community league season 5 i saw someone cleaning higher boundless dungeons with single class demo. they scale with SR.
Meanwhile i’m leveling a Pyromancer for Chaos Doom Bolt and just using BWC and so far it’s been really fast. Definitely faster than Savagery, Drain Essence, Cadence, Righteous Fervor, DEE and Panetti.
Gonna supplement it with Mines and all the RR and damage should skyrocket my killing speed.
BWC is easily one of most stacked skills in the game. It has a ton of defensive utility (through enemy damage reduction and enemy offensive ability reduction) and also improves all damage from your other skills (through flat resistance reduction). And the high potency node literally creates a lake of fire that the enemy AI is mostly happy to take a bath on. And it also adds another layer of defense by slowing down enemy attacks. It is super good.
But BWC doesn’t kill anything, it just slightly cooks them. Every time I tried to level Demo I realize I can be doing better playing literally any other class. To point, putting a Searing Ember on a weapon gives you a Fireball ability that will out damage almost every Demo ability under level 35 (for the Class, not Char Level).
Well I know this is a lie, Panetti alone levels to split itself and deals more damage while also passing through enemies. Unless you only put one point in it. The “worst” besides BWC, I would say, I Drain Essence, because you need to stand still and wait for ticks. But BWC also needs you to stand still and take hits from enemies to work, simply because if you try and kite with BWC then the enemies aren’t standing in the fire and taking damage.
What skill are you using to stun lock the enemies in the fire that last long enough to chuck 5+ BWC’s at them with the modifier? I have yet to see an ability that stuns groups of enemies in place for the 20 seconds needed for regular BWC to kill anything, or stuns for 5 seconds with the modifier? Also that stun needs to have no cooldown or else Elite+ enemies will just wait out the stun and come running. Cause on Elite+ enemies never ever stand still, most still have the zoomies.
But what was their play time? Had to be 2-3 times that of any other class, cause you need 2-3 times the number of abilities used as Demo to kill anything. Now if we’re talking fast AND can kill, my go to is Witch Hunter and go for a bleed build. Maxxing out Bloody Pox will literally kill all enemies both on screen and off screen faster than you can run. And it has a nice long root to stop all the zoomies.
It isn’t because i have tested myself and found Panetti absolutely terrible for leveling. Damage and AoE isn’t nowhere as close as BWC and you don’t have energy regen to sustain it and casting speed to actually make it effective.
No, you don’t. You literally run circles around the boss and force them to stay on the fire. If you suck at the game, just say so, don’t blame it on the skill.
Oh, it’s not that terrible, I levelled one PRM sorc up to 100 using it as the main skill lawl.
Definitely a lot better with a certain handgun that adds adcth to PRM. But adding BWC to it made it so much better lawl.
As for the thesis of this thread - Demo’s fine as long as you build into it’s weaknesses, I’m running a Stormheart + Stormserpent sab through testing and it devours SR75-76 due to obscene DPS and crit chance. It’s just not as tanky as the trickster version, which can handle SR80-81 more readily due to higher health. Though come to think of it, maybe I should add BWC to the sab so they have some damage reduction…
One thing that could help Demolistionist is finally adding 2 exclusive skills to it. Say one focused on Fire and Lightening + OA and +%health and the other on Fire Retal and converting physical to fire + some damage absorb.
I’m still wondering what OP did wrong with BWC btw… (or this whole thread is nothing but silly bait for some reason that eludes me)
The very moment you pick it up and get a few points going in it you breeze through A1 with it, crazy fast at that too.
There are mamy funny topics around 1.2 in our forum. And meanwhile the game became so much better than before. Loving leveling ssf chars now. Just my two cents about topics like this one. Agreed?
