4P T13 Demo - Pet swap or Instant SoulFire

[spaztom]

Was thinking today about the T13 4 piece and pet swapping in demo. Before I got my 4 piece, I'd start with felguard, pop demon soul, and once guard finishes his spell (forgot name), I'd then get puppy out.

Now that I've got 4piece, I've been using puppy with no pet swapping. I figured starting out with the buff from the instant soulfire would cause my DG to do higher damage so if I did that, I wouldn't be able to pet swap. I do keep hearing of people pet swapping though...so I wonder if I'm missing something.

Which is better? I've not seen any numbers on this from EJ or here...

*EDIT - Need to open my eyes..several comments on this page alone about what to do. BUT, folks say do it...not why...or any hard numbers. Who knows...maybe it's a DPS loss swapping.

[Galaddriel]

You can open with your Felguard, cast Soulburn (the effect will stay on you for a few seconds) pop your Demon Soul & Meta, Felstorm, put up your dots, then summon your Felpuppy with the Soulburn effect that is still on you. You lose a shard this way, but it's better than opening with your puppy.

What I'm finding extremely awkward is ongoing pet twisting, especially in fights like H Yor'sahj where you have to pet twist for the black add phase. I'm losing alot of uptime on the 4pc trying to time for that.

[Purrberry]

Adds are up so much for H Yorsahj, it's more than likely (and I say that cause I have no concrete evidence to base this on) better to just keep felguard out and keep your 4-piece buff up as much as possible.

[Sockmaster]

*EDIT - Need to open my eyes..several comments on this page alone about what to do. BUT, folks say do it...not why...or any hard numbers. Who knows...maybe it's a DPS loss swapping.

Seriously? You come here asking for advice and then tell them that they're probably wrong because they didn't show you multiple simcraft parses?
Use your brain and think about it. Of course it's a DPS increase to pet swap at the beginning. Felguard's Demon Soul gives you 15% spell haste and 10% fire/shadow damage for 20 seconds in addition to having similar DPS to the felhunter for about 6 seconds.

Starting with the felhunter gives you 20% shadow dot damage for 20 seconds. Bane of Doom is probably the only one that will benefit from this more than the felguard's demon soul since it doesn't scale with haste. Oh and you also gain an instant fire soul. Probably the equivalent of casting a nightfall shadow bolt.

So you're saying that 20% periodic shadow damage and an instant soul fire could actually be better than 15% spell haste and 10% shadow/fire damage? Yeah, okay. You're welcome to provide your own math to disprove the warlock community.

EDIT: Just did two sims. One doing the pet swap at the beginning and another using the felhunter the entire time.
Pet Swap: 43220
Pure Felhunter: 42118

EDITEDIT: Oops didn't have 5% crit checked. New numbers.
Pet Swap: 44948
Felhunter: 43834

[Derivatives]

Adds are up so much for H Yorsahj, it's more than likely (and I say that cause I have no concrete evidence to base this on) better to just keep felguard out and keep your 4-piece buff up as much as possible.

What this guy said. =) This is what i'm going to do.