Is observer/felhunter necessary?

[TomGreen]

I like having my imp out because i feel its unique and cool to have a caster pet when everything else is melee. Not to mention he sometimes says the funniest things xD Is it a huge hit to dps to have imp out instead?

[Last Starfighter]

Huge? Not at all. Is it a loss? Yes. But unless you're in a top guild, I wouldn't worry about it.

[yoloswagginz]

The imp is actually better in target switching situations if you aren't controlling your pet. since it doesn't waste time running back and forth and also regens energy when its not doing anything.

[Jessicka]

The imp is actually better in target switching situations if you aren't controlling your pet. since it doesn't waste time running back and forth and also regens energy when its not doing anything.

All of our pets do this, I don't know why Celastalon tried to make out that this was a unique benefit of using an Imp. It means that for target switching, the only difference is lost melee swings.

[Tehterokkar]

Grimoire of Sacrifice for Life!

[Small snowball]

All of our pets do this, I don't know why Celastalon tried to make out that this was a unique benefit of using an Imp. It means that for target switching, the only difference is lost melee swings.

But felhunter/observer has autoattack, it's a significant part of your pet's damage.

[Jessicka]

But felhunter/observer has autoattack, it's a significant part of your pet's damage.

There's significant variation per pet, but the majority is always their special attack. Missing 2-3 melee swings from your pet isn't going to make or break an encounter or recount position.

[sugarfree]

Oh this is PvE. But in PvP, it's useful in organized comps, but useless/trivial in randoms. Two reasons, first, you will only use it when you're affliction. Second, affliction sucks in randoms and felhunter does not give more circumstantial benefit than having a Succubus/Shivarra out.

[splosher]

you could easily not have a pet out at all and still beat other people due to rng procs... pets mean almost nothing. Obviously free dmg is always good and its better than sac, but saying that 1 pet is way better than another is retarded. Even if you gain 1 million damage using an observer/shivarra over an imp thats so little that its almost insignificant. Almost all locks use imp just because of the false feeling that its easier to handle when it really doesn't change anything. If you are trying to min/max your damage start with something that is extremely significant like lining up your procs for good snapshots instead of something dumb like a pet change. I use an imp in my guild and the other locks use a shivarra because they swear that its better. My imp does like 500k dmg more sometimes and there shivarra does 500k dmg more sometimes, AKA nothing much at all.

This is affliction we're talking about right? Because if you're talking about destro then just use sac because its better on any fight that you use shadowburn/chaosbolt on multiple targets (aka any fight that you would go destro on because destro isnt good single target compared to affliction).

[fiestatastic]

imp is actually slightly better on some fights and mostly better on multi target unless you are controlling the observer. there's not much difference between any of them however so use the one you like best .... even min/maxing the pets per encounter we're talking a very minimal difference (say 100 dps, not 100k, just 100) for the most part.

[andromalia]

I actually like the felpup with gosac because my guild is beyond horrible at interrupts. Other than that, I roll fel imp when I'm playing affliction unless it's Iron Jugg or Siegecrafter, etc.

[MrHappy]

generally it is a loss but i cycle imp/fel on fights where it matters because if you are doing target swaps than your imp > fel hunter due to travel time

Immersius : Imp for heal and ooze swaps with less travel time
Protectors: Imp as i help dispell raid
Nurishen: Observ sits on boss = profit
sha: Observ due to sits on boss = profit
galakras: since i'm on tower duty imp for heal and less travel time b/w tower add and lower adds
jugg: imp for heal
shammans: observer
general: observer on boss
spoils: observer due to pet eating the buffs on mantid side the heal and the damage buffs on adds
thok: imp needs to run less and helps with healing

that's as far for heroics i've gotten but for normals council i usually run observer but for heroic i might do imp due to faster target swaps and healing.
garrosh observer for the interupt for the last phase but not using the beam on CD is a dps loss so imp is about the same if not better but utility > pet dps