State of Felguard vs Imp atm for demonology?

Just like the title says, im interested if someone could tell me what the state of both pets is atm? I recently came back to play again, I remember Felguard being buggy a while ago (when everyone was running with the Imp like half a year ago). I wonder if anything got changed by now and with what I should roll now? I kinda tried both and I cant get rid of the feeling that im still doing a bit better with an Imp and meta glyph to bump up my burn phase. But maybe thats just because I didnt find an endgame raiding guild yet so im mostly pugging and the burning phase is actually quite long in those cases?
I would really appreciate any advice and input on my issue regarding the pets choice cause I like to play demonology, I think its harder to be good with personally so there is a lot of room for improvement.
here is my armory link: http://armory.warmane.com/character/...ecrown/summary
if you can suggest something, anything, im thanking you in advance,
thank you for your input!

Feguard works at 100% glyph included, now beat imp anytime. the only situation wen ppl choose now imp is for 5% more fire crit spell for incinerate , but mostly for soul fire and thats it, still felguard is better imo.

doesnt shadow bolt also count as fire spell regarding the 5% imp crit?

Things like Shadow Bolt, Corruption, and Seed of Corruption cause Shadow damage (you can verify this by checking your combat log), and so benefit from the Felguard's Master Demonologist buff more.

Hi,

Even that Felguard seems to be working fine now, I still see people running Imp, even with Glyph. There are specs with 0/2 in Intensity and 1/2 Aftermath and 2/2 Demonic Power.

Is there considerable difference between the two specs in the end ?

Regards,

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pehoto

Hi,

Even that Felguard seems to be working fine now, I still see people running Imp, even with Glyph. There are specs with 0/2 in Intensity and 1/2 Aftermath and 2/2 Demonic Power.

Is there considerable difference between the two specs in the end ?

Regards,

---

Imp does more damage than felguard. But all demons do lower damage than they should imo.

1) If your raid is properly organized with people competent enough to provide essential melee buffs like Sunder Armor, and who also take care to buff your Felguard with stuff like Blessing of Might/Kings (which should be handled automatically when they apply those buffs to a Warrior), then the Felguard is straight up more DPS.

This is something that's very easy to arrive at the wrong conclusion for because you forgot to equalize the element of raid buffs. A lot of people mistakenly end up comparing a Felguard with next to no buffs against an Imp with almost all its essential buffs - simply because you being a Demo Lock guarantees that your Imp is going to have most of the biggest buffs it needs. Curse of the Elements and Demonic Pact are the 2 biggest ones, then there's also the 5% spell crit debuff which buffs your Imp further. Your Felguard in contrast gets next to nothing from you.

The point is, in properly optimized raids the Felguard performs better by a margin of 20-25%-ish according to Simcraft.


2) The Imp needs 5 unique talent points to be at maximum DPS (http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=18696 + http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=18127). The Felguard needs only 4 (http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=18707 + http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=30146). When you compare the two you have to account for the extra talent point the Felguard allows you. So it'd really be more accurate to compare an Imp against a Felguard with, for instance, 1/3 in http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=54347.


3) The Master Demonologist damage bonus of the Felguard is superior most of the time. The 5% extra damage to Shadow Bolt, Corruption, and Seed of Corruption is usually going to contribute more to your DPS than the 5% more crit chance on Soulfire, Incinerate and Immolate. Decimation uptime would have to be exceptionally high for the Imp's bonus to come out better. It's possible that this condition might be met in some fights (like Deathbringer Saurfang and BPC), but these fights would be the exception and not the rule.


4) The Felguard's secondary http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/spell=23825 bonus where your damage taken is also reduced by a further 5% is amazing to have for high-end heroic raiding.


5) Most demons used in raiding do just about what they should be doing, as of the most recent updates to them. If there is some kind of bug involved then it's most likely on the Imp's end.

I'll add that Felguard increases ALL damage by 5%, not just shadow damage, minor overlook from DarkenedHue.

Yeah it does that, I just meant to make the comparison using the areas in which they were different. Since the Imp also increases Fire damage by 5% it makes sense to look at it as 5% Fire crit vs 5% Shadow damage when comparing the two.

For anyone interested, here was the most recent significant change to the Felguard. The report also details how to go about testing the Felguard, as well as how to calculate what its damage should be for anyone curious enough to test it for themselves.

I also fiddled around with the Imp a little, and from a few very brief rounds of testing it looks possible to me that it might be over-performing. Made the report here if anyone wants to contribute towards locating what the bug (if any) is.