Demon form + Mastered Darkness Feedback (Infernalist)

Happy holidays! I wanted to post some feedback regarding the infernalist's ascendancy skills of demon form with the mastered darkness node.

My feedback is that the buffs that you get are redundant. At my current level (78), I gain +6 skill levels, 170% spell damage, and 24% increased cast speed. All of these stats can easily be replaced by a nicely rolled rare staff. The fact that demon form disables the 2 weapon slots as well, it makes the entire endeavor redundant.

In addition, you have to build your character to be able to deal with the life degeneration. This means you'll probably have to re-allocate damage nodes for things like life regen nodes.

Currently, there don't seem to be any support gems that really do anything tangible for demon form to make it any more worth using.

It makes more sense to just use a nice staff or a wand and catalyst/sceptre than to use demon form.

What I am saying is that, the advantages of demon form can be easily replaced by a staff, and by not actually using demon form. Using a staff, you'll actually come out ahead. And also you'll have 4 more ascendancy points to show for it that can be used elsewhere for better things.

Even if demon form later gets +7 or +8 to skill levels, its hard to justify - you're walking away from a lot of power and survivability.

So in the end, the only thing demon form really offers to me is the enhanced dodge roll distance. The other thing it offers is cosmetic. But in the end, it's not worth using. I like the idea of it and I like the aesthetic. But I think it needs some sort of rebalance.