Demonology: When to use Dark Soul and Wild Imps?

[Avikur]

I always try to use Dark Soul and Wild Imps together, this means in a boss fight where each gets used several times Dark Souls cooldown doesn't always line up with imps, am I best to wait and use them together or should I be using them both as soon as they come off cooldown? Does Dark Soul have any effect on Wild Imps?

Also at the start of the fight if I'm at 200 fury I wait until I've built up 900 fury and I'm about to go into Meta and then use Dark Soul and Wild Imps, is this best or should I pop them straight away at the pull? I figure the Imps generate fury and keep me in Meta longer?

Thanks guys

[David Cavalheiro]

I always try to use Dark Soul and Wild Imps together, this means in a boss fight where each gets used several times Dark Souls cooldown doesn't always line up with imps, am I best to wait and use them together or should I be using them both as soon as they come off cooldown? Does Dark Soul have any effect on Wild Imps?

Also at the start of the fight if I'm at 200 fury I wait until I've built up 900 fury and I'm about to go into Meta and then use Dark Soul and Wild Imps, is this best or should I pop them straight away at the pull? I figure the Imps generate fury and keep me in Meta longer?

Thanks guys

I don't play Demonology since the start the expansion last time I went Demonology I ranked 18º on Spirit Kings and 50º on Stone Guards.Since the wand bug I stopped to play it. That was long time ago.

But personally i pop Imps at the start to generate fury, and I use them always on cooldown. I only use Dark Soul when I'm ready to go into meta form.ex: pop Dark Soul, pop metamorphosis.
I'm not sure how the top locks are doing it.

[Nivrax]

When I'm playing it, I'm doing prepull SB -> Guldan -> Imps -> Service -> Corr -> Guldan -> Meta -> Dark Soul -> Super buffed Doom and spam the shit out of slash while you can. The other option I seen people suggesting is holding Dark Soul for ~50 sec into the fight so you have most procs coming out of icd, but that obviously depends on fight lenght, loosing one Dark Soul in fight would be terrible.

[Jessicka]

Use Dark Soul, Service and Imps at the pull; don't wait for Meta.

The purpose of the Imp Swarm glyph is to provide 'on demand' fury, it's not really function as a DPS increase as a cooldown as such, and so it's not terribly important when you use it on a Patchwerk style fight; when used for that burst, or when you need Fury it can provide a decent bonus though. It does require more thought than just 'on cooldown'.

[Killem]

I use them for two different purposes:
- desperate need of fury (after I failed to mange it properly)
- combined with dark soul and service:felguard as burst cooldown.

I'm not sure, how to handle them, when I gain the 4 set bonus, or which Grimoire to choose, since lining them up would fuck up the set bonus.
But it's still some time until then (say hello to protector tokens and 28g50s bonus rolls ), so no need to worry.

[Baconeggcheese]

What jessicka said, I learned this the hard way especially in pvp.

Don't think of imp swarm as a dps CD, think of it as a fury builder. Would you want to put off building fury or do you want to get it as fast as possible?

[nightrianna]

i do...
pre pot
shadowbolt
HoG 1
Dark Soul macro
corruption
HoG2
Meta
imp swarm
Service
Doom
Doom Guard
ToC spam

From there on i use Dark Soul with Service because it lines up,however, later on in t14 supremacy will be the choice because felguard will not line up anymore with Dark Soul(1.60sec) and instead lines it perfectly with imp swarm.^-^

[Zinnin]

From there on i use Dark Soul with Service because it lines up,however, later on in t14 supremacy will be the choice because felguard will not line up anymore with Dark Soul(1.60sec) and instead lines it perfectly with imp swarm.^-^

For a lot of fights you will simply GoServ every other DS use and you won't miss an on use. However, even in sims where it is just using things on CD GoServ still sims out to be best even if you have BiS gear.

OT: Imp Swam SHOULD NOT be neglected as a dps cooldown.

You also should not be using Imp Swarm on cooldown, if you are using the glyph. The amount of Imps that you gain is the same from the passive effect (with the glyph in) as the cooldown. This means that leaving it on cooldown, to be able to dump imps into times when you have high damage is going to be FAR more effective then simply using it on CD. Wild Imps are going to generally be 13-15% of you overall damage, treating them just as a way to generate fury is a huge mistake.

There are no quick and easy rules with Imp Swarm, your optimal usage is going to be completely dependent on what gear you are wearing (mostly trinkets). If you don't want to spend the time to figure out when it's going to be optimal for you to use it, I would suggest just not using the glyph.

[CDShaidar]

I can't over stress how much I agree with Zinnin here, your imps scale with mastery and since you still generate imps when it's off CD there's no reason not to sync them up.

[Hellfury]

From there on i use Dark Soul with Service because it lines up,however, later on in t14 supremacy will be the choice because felguard will not line up anymore with Dark Soul(1.60sec) and instead lines it perfectly with imp swarm.^-^

DS with 4set is 1:20 not 1:60, you need tons of haste for Swarm to be 1:20

[silverhatred]

DS with 4set is 1:20 not 1:60, you need tons of haste for Swarm to be 1:20

How much, exactly. How much during bloodlust (it does affect it).

[Jessicka]

I can't over stress how much I agree with Zinnin here, your imps scale with mastery and since you still generate imps when it's off CD there's no reason not to sync them up.

I can think of plenty of reasons when not; as a general rule on PW you're right, but he's 2 expansions old and I think its important people are aware of the dual purpose of it. Otherwise we go down that path of people loosing significant damage doing it "right", for fear of doing it "wrong" when the line between the two is by design situational.

[Zinnin]

How much, exactly. How much during bloodlust (it does affect it).

You would need ~32-35% haste from gear to get it to line up, which isn't possible this tier. During bloodlust it should lineup with 0 haste.

I can think of plenty of reasons when not; as a general rule on PW you're right, but he's 2 expansions old and I think its important people are aware of the dual purpose of it.

Generally (besides maybe the pull, where you are using Imps with cooldowns anyways) if you are using Imp Swarm for fury more then a DPS cooldown you are not planning your fury usage right, or made a mistake. Imp damage it too high to be using it for utility fury gains in almost every situation.

[CDShaidar]

I can't think of a single situation where you would want to use DS but not save your Imps for it.

Edit: single non-fringe cases excluded like boss dying before DS comes up and needing fury to stay in meta until it dies etc.

[Jessicka]

The difference is not huge, its 1% or less. And I'm talking about situations where you have Imps but no DS. It happens, but whatever.

[Avikur]

Thanks guys some really useful tips here :-) If I use my Imp Swarm and then get a trinket proc or use Dark Soul do they benefit from it or do I have to use Imp Swarm AFTER the proc happens for them to benefit?

Also lots of you are talking about GoServ, I'm using GoSup, is this a DPS loss? Should I be using GoServ?

[Gohzerlock]

Thanks guys some really useful tips here :-) If I use my Imp Swarm and then get a trinket proc or use Dark Soul do they benefit from it or do I have to use Imp Swarm AFTER the proc happens for them to benefit?

Also lots of you are talking about GoServ, I'm using GoSup, is this a DPS loss? Should I be using GoServ?

The difference isn't THAT huge, but GoServ is a dps gain over GoSup. If you aren't good managing cds go with supremacy, personally i've noticed goserv performs much better when aoe'ing for both felstorms. But with 4 set I could see some people going with supremacy just because it'll be more difficult when you don't have service and darksoul macro'd together.

[Apero]

You also should not be using Imp Swarm on cooldown, if you are using the glyph. The amount of Imps that you gain is the same from the passive effect (with the glyph in) as the cooldown.

So the glyphs tooltip is wrong saying "Also increases Wild Imp's cooldown by 4 sec." ? I always thought not using it on cd would reward you with less imps overall. (fictional numbers: Without the glyph one every 15s, with the glyph off cooldown one every 19s )

[Zinnin]

So the glyphs tooltip is wrong saying "Also increases Wild Imp's cooldown by 4 sec." ? I always thought not using it on cd would reward you with less imps overall. (fictional numbers: Without the glyph one every 15s, with the glyph off cooldown one every 19s )

With the glyph in you get 1 \ 24s = 5 \ 120s, which is the same 5 \ 120s that the cd gives you before haste.

If you don't run the glyph at all you get 1 \ 20s = 6 \ 120s, which is an extra Imp. For Imp swarm to be worth it you need to make sure that the 5 Imps you summon during Imp Swarm are far more powerful then they would be passively being spawned.

If you are just using Imp Swarm on CD you are probably going to get Imps near the same strength as them being passively spawned, minus one every two minutes. It would the be better to just not use the glyph.

[Hellfury]

In the spirit of testing since I also got 4set bonus went with Supremacy and unglyphed imps to Spirit Kings 25 because of the constant reseting.

I was doing good damage so keep using that build and to my surprise ended doing 89k and got rank5 on WOL, yes the burst on the sub 30% phase of each boss suffered but I felt the sustained damage was really good having not a surge of imps but imps up constantly keeping my fury up for those moments where I had to use TOC to move like at rain of arrows, volley, shouts and even when having to stop DPS because of shields I knew I had my pets smacking the boss since they dont proc the shield.

So yeh I dont know if I could had done more DPS with service and swarm, but with 4set unglyphed imps and supremacy sure have a spot