Notes

This "rework" attempts to address some of the issues players are having with Azmodan's new rework, while also maintaining the design philosophies Blizzard seems to be aiming for with the rework. I will explain each change in depth here, but I will caution that the numbers are not intended to be final; as I have no way to test them, they are essentially placeholders. The design changes are the focus. I also don't expect this to be perfect in any regard, or to please everyone, but I think I have some decent ideas.



1) Lieutenant Attack Damage is increased: Clearly, Blizzard does not want 100% uptime of Lieutenants anymore, for their splitsoak and push power. However, they are extremely weak now. I think a good starting place to buff them (if the cooldown is not reduced) is to increase their damage, so that they are at least more impactful than Demon Warriors.



2) Demon Warrior Movement Speed un-nerfed: Demon Warriors are easy enough to avoid already on live, having 10% less MS than players, and I don't believe it needed to be further reduced.



3) All Shall Burn "completes" if the target dies: On PTR, the talents that rely on completion of the E channel do not proc if the target dies. For consistency and reliability's sake, they should, much like Leoric's Drain Hope and associated talents do.



4) All Shall Burn MS reduction changed to 20%: With the range reduction of All Shall Burn, mobile Heroes can easily escape it, and less mobile Heroes tend to have an interrupt CC. I feel that the 20% MS reduction is quite slow enough for opponents to have a fair chance of escaping or trading into Azmodan.



5) Lv. 1 Talents - The baseline quest isn't a bad idea, as it makes Azmodan less dependent on the old Black Pool in the late game (offering a higher damage cap than the usual Sieging Wrath), and the Lv. 1 talents present interesting choices for how to stack and use your Q. However, I feel the opportunity can be taken to make them more distinct and balanced, while also making his Q more reliable to account for the nerf to range and the removal of Infernal Globe. Greed is the PvE option, offering increased range for multi-lane soaking. Gluttony is the poke option, offering increased projectile speed for more reliable damage. Wrath remains unchanged as the "heavy hitter" option, with increased damage against globed targets.



6) Demon Talents - It would seem Blizzard wants Azmodan's Demons to be more teamfight-focused, looking at choices for 4, 13, and 16 talents. I don't feel like they are quite impactful enough to be talented into in the later tiers, so I believe they should be improved further at the 4 tier. Additionally, I think Demonic Hellfliers is a much more interesting talent than Hellforged Armor, now that the AoE damage component is baseline. The later talents are also made to be slightly more impactful in teamfights (while still bringing utility to the siege playstyle). Demonic Invasion (and its 20) in particular should be more interesting with a 60s CD and the new passive (Demons attack Azmodan's target if he is near): it buffs an underwhelming ultimate without increasing the ability to cheese Structures, and increases its impact in teamfights (especially with its synergy with Fifth Circle - which may be too good, in which case the number of demons could be reduced and their individual impact increased, or the talent could have an exception for Grunts)



7) Dunking Talents - The new 7 talent, "Ire of Azmodan", is intended to feel more interesting and impactful than Art of Chaos, by opening the option to go for longer single-target dunks without missing out on stacks, and it also increases his solo lane potential. The reworked Black Pool ultimate works somewhat like the current 20 upgrade, and should not only bring back dunking, as well as being more similar to the Black Pools in the Azmodan boss fight, but should also emphasize the versatility of Black Pool over the replacement, Tide of Sin.



8) All Shall Burn talents - I think the base changes to All Shall Burn should help its build quite a bit. However, the talents seem just a bit weak and synergistic overall, so I made slight changes (keep in mind that the numbers are only theoretical).



I hope this was an interesting read, and present a sort of compromise between Blizzard's newer design philosophies and all the old Azmodan players.