Demonic Circle - Will it Really Help?
Demonic Circle is one of the new warlock abilities in WotLK. Many players already think of it as the warlock’s version of Blink, and most of them are right - but will it indeed be as useful as Blink?
Basically, it enables you to mark a location and then leap to the spot once every thirty seconds. Whether you can teleport yourself if the spot is out of line of sight is not yet clear (WTB beta key) but I’m hoping you can, otherwise it will significantly lower the usefulness of this spell.
But here’s the real problem: we all know warlocks don’t have any escape abilities, which is the biggest issue when facing melee classes, mostly rogues and warriors. While this spell looks godgiven, it will only help so little. The thing is, Demonic Circle will be our only escape ability, while on the other hand those classes mentioned have more than one way to catch up on you.
Warrior: Charge, Intercept, Hamstring, Piercing Howl
Rogue: Crippling Poison (plus Shiv), Deadly Throw, Sprint, Shadowstep, CloS + Vanish
Even if we teleport away from their melee range, they can still get to us within a second with Intercept or Shadowstep - Intercept even has a much lower cooldown than DC. It won’t even give you enough time to cast a Fear. There’s more than plenty of different abilities to prevent us from escaping, and our PvP trinket and Death Coil both have two minute cooldowns.
Blink would be marginally good without other abilities such as Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Frostbolt and Frost Armor. Demonic Circle would rock if it worked similar to Blink - breaking stuns and perhaps even removing snare effects - we might be able to actually kite something with our only snare, CoEx. Removing stuns would give us exactly what we need versus rogues, and we can all agree we do need something. Chaos Bolt and the revised Demon Armor just won’t do.
I had not even looked at it in that light.
The way that I read it, and hope it to be so, is like a personal summon. You have your hearth… that is cool… drop this circle wherever you want and summon your self back to that spot. I envision it to have a 1hour or 30 minute duration…
I am not in the Beta though. All my thoughts are just my hopes really.
well i gotta say that this spell will enhance our combat whit warriors, u just got to make sure they spend his intercept. i know this is kinda situational but if it’s used the right way it can save your ass.
In the matter of rogues ill have to put my sad face :(, shadow step it’s a bitch… and combined whit all of their abilities there’s no way that a good rogue let u go off melee range.
And i really hope Teleport can be used out of LoS, that will be really useful in arenas.
It lasts only 6 minutes, and has a 40 yd range, so it won’t ever be used as a Hearthstone. Cool idea though
I agree Horns, i’m not excited at all with this ability. The mechanics of it are too awkward. In a PVP situation when you’ve got to act fast, its too clumsy to lay down a circle and then summon yourself to it.
We need something like an anti snare spell. Priests can remove DoT’s, and Mages can freeze, slow people down and blink. All we can do is Death Coil, but you can’t death coil if you’re already snared. We need an instant cast snare remover. Whatever that may be.
@ Horns : /sigh Did not know that… Well my hopes for this ability were just crushed. All of that for a “meh” pvp talent.
At the moment, the spell is slightly effective against melee when timed properly, and ever so slightly more effective for Affliction Warlocks, who can keep moving while doing damage and get creative with the Exhaustion/D-Circle combo. It also helps that it puts us out of the range of most of their movement-slowing abilities–a big step in the right direction for sure.
The key to making it work is placing the circle down WELL BEFORE contact is ever made and then staying 35ish yards away from it. Once intercepted, cheap shotted, or whatever, DoT up the target, Curse with Exhaustion, then teleport, trinket if your movement is impaired, and run PERPENDICULAR to the line your target is in. You want them to stay as far away from the summoned circle as possible, and running in the opposite direction will put them right on top it as they chase you down–not a good thing, especially considering you’ll need to get closer to reapply your DoTS and do more damage. And closer means that they can attack you to, and you don’t want that happening near your route of escape.
Once you’re at about 35 yards from the summoning point, run around the edge of that invisible circle, kiting your target in an arc of sorts. Hopefully, he has blown all of his cooldowns by now, and he’ll just waste away slowly. If they try to bandage, your pet’s attacks will interrupt them, so no worries there. Pots, however, are a different story, but you should have yours too, right? =P
All-in-all, it’s a fun little twist to Warlocking. Good times.
This is crap! I am in BG and i am trying to place the circle to its max distance. by the time i click to place it, i am stunned and sliced up by a rogue, received one blow from a warrior or a hunter’s best is stunning me and causing spell cast interruption.
I think the class’s limitations are very obvious.
Ok guys I play a warrior(don’t hate me) and a lock alt, and this ability would be pretty effective. Intercept has a 30 maybe 35 yard range so you can port out of range in time to fear. Now onto what what horn said about this being the only get out of melee range ability. we still have fear, and if we had blink nothing could kill us, so I say bravo Blizzard for keeping the balance. May we never have more Oh *$@! buttons than the other classes.
Apparently you didnt know that warriors have 4 different abilities which resist fear. If I have to fear you 5 times to get you away then: A) I will run out of mana B)I will die (most possibly)
@Urm
Fear has a 20 yard range (26 with talents), and a 1.5 (1.3) second cast time - that gives warriors plenty of time to intercept back.
@Wlambros - Deathwish won’t be breaking fear effects in Wrath
Ok so its not 5 attempts to fear a warrior but 4. Huge difference.
The idea of keeping melee away with fear is so silly. And I agree on interception
Well if your undead its 5 and this ability will be very good if it removes all debuffs(or at least movement imparing). that would give us time to kite with CoEx if you have it. If not fire chaos bolts and shadowfury if your destro and pop demon form if your demo. all in all we just have to wait till the beta allows us to 80 to test it.
None of the rogue/warriors/dks/ret palas/feral druids anti cc abilitys have 40 yd range
so if you just make it far enough from your circle before they jump you, you should be ok :O
Bleh, I would much rather a self banish ability similar to Ice Block instead of this. Placing the demonic circle requires forethought which in BGs is not easy. Arenas though, as someone mentioned, if the teleport does not require LOS then it will completely OP the warlock class against melee. Especially in a Nagrand arena situation.
All of this speculation is best left until we have all of the spell details however.
the way i see it is we will be partially confined an a circle with a radius of 40yds, at least in BGs,
hopefully we can get a glyph that can inrease the range to 45-50yds
but overall i can see this being a good too, it would be nice if it could wipe threat/dots/curses/whatever as well, so it could be utilized in PVE
I see how most people here see this as a PvP ability, but not enjoying PvP makes this kind of useless to me. However Bob Dole above brought up something that I would like to see in this, Aggro reduction. Why not have it wipe some aggro when you circle away? PvPers get a way to put some distance up and PvEers get a way to not have Omen screaming at them. As a 0/21/40 lock in raids, shatter is good, though not always enough if it is a long tank & spank (especially if your the top dps of your guild you spend time running around bandaging with the shadow-priests). I would say give it a few seconds daze (not able to cast) however that would make it 100% useless in pvp…