From what I remember from this morning, Metamorphosis gets 6 abilities.

1) An ability like Heroic Leap - 8-25 yard leap through the air and an AOE stun on landing.
2) A shadow damage Cleave effect
3) Shadowbolt
4) Immolation Aura
5) Intercept
6) Something else I forget.

And of course, Emp Imp build will have an Imp out. I imagine most raids will want 1 imp and 1 felhunter out for their raid wide buffs, after all.

A shadow strike, it seems like its an instant shadow damage melee strike hitting for about half of what the shadowbolt hits for. I commend them on their efforts to make Metamorphosis melee based but it still needs to be a form like shadowform.

DS + Infernals has never been explicitly stated as being a bugg or fixed in any patch notes has it? Given the fact that Imp DPS as destro is questionably better than DS for raids might 1 min of 160% infernal DPS per boss encounter tip the scales back towards DS? Granted one might be inclined to skip this tactic due to the reagent costs and timing issues on the summon but if you're really min/maxing...

What I want to know about the infernal is hinted at in the description

Emphasis mine. 5 minutes+ sounds like the standard 5 mnutes plus re-enslaving, but the new 1 minute duration is flat. Does that mean that the Infernal just despawns at the end, rather than turning around and attempting to punish me for daring summon it? I consider it a buff if it despawns, means I don't have to worry about it once I sic it on a target.

I'm hoping the 15m cooldown remains and its usable in arena. That way we essentially have a 3rd pet with a quick cast time that we can Soul Link to for another minute, in case the first one gets killed twice.

And yes, it just plops down dead after 1 minute.

My Imp had about 5500 hp on the beta server btw. I was quite surprised. I can't imagine any boss AOEs going as high as 28,000 damage.

If I'm not mistaken Imp DPS'ing 100% of the time should on his own provide DPS around 10% of yours, and likely before you take talents into account. Untalented Firebolts hit for more than 10% of talented Incinerates. With Improved Soul Leech and improved mana regeneration and raid buffs Imp should easily DPS 100% of the time or very close to it. I really don't understand what calculations can still say that Imp will be worse than 10% DS.

I think it would be nice to mention level of your 5.5k HP Imp.

In order to get Imp Soul Leech to equal the Imp's mana consumption rate of 180 every 1.5s, you'll need to be doing 4000 DPS to keep it topped off yourself. Obviously I have no clue how things will turn out at 80, but that seems like quite a lot, to be doing double the DPS we are now. You'll probably need a Shadow Priest or Shaman in a raid to keep that going indefinitely.

From what I can gather, an Imp's Firebolt does 199-223 every 1.5s. Add in 45% more from Empowered Imp and Improved Imp, take off 9% from its hit chance, add 3% from its 6% crit chance (what's a real value for this? I haven't ever checked), add in raid debuffs (COE, Imp Scorch, Misery) and you're in the region of 250 DPS, which barely scales at all. Though with his crits affecting your crits, his crit% would essentially be the same crit% given to you (so long as he doesn't crit 2 times in a row before you can get a shot off). Assuming its 6% (I really have no clue) that alone implies the Imp only needs to make up ~4% of your DPS.

Though there will be times when the Imp gives you a crit buff when you fired a bolt that would have crit anyway. So I guess its not as clear-cut as that.

Oh, right. That was at level 71 in my Sunwell gear.

Well that is assuming you can summon it inside now also isn't it?

16% miss rate seems like it would kill imp as a dps pet, unless I've missed something.


Pets need to scale on all ratings at a reasonable level to be viable.

Hit mechanics seem to have been reworked lowering the max hit needed to 9% and finally getting rid of that constant 1% miss rate.

Keep in mind, if they're going to make Conflag worth casting in a rotation and you're only going to go 50 points into Destruction, you have to sacrifice 3 points somewhere from the main raiding talents. Essentially, either Imp Soul Leech or Backdraft. So you'll either be a Lifetap hog or lose out on the bonus damage from Conflag/Backdraft. Either way its going to affect your DPS.

Reportedly miss rate is down to 9% (with no 1% insurmountable penalty). With Imp FF from a Balance Druid the Imp will only be short 6% hit, which isn't bad at all.

I think as it stands Imps are viable pets, but they aren't viable because of their own scaling. The Imp is viable for the crit bonus Emp Imp gives, and because Chaos Bolt will ostensibly be important to raiding. The Imp will be used not because it alone is better than DS, but because without DS there isn't a point in leaving the little guy idle.

It would be much nicer if the Imp scaled well enough on his own to marginalize DS, but it's hard to imagine that happening at this point.

It's for this reason I'm not so keen on the 7/13/51 and similar builds. You sacrifice a lot of what's going to make Destruction new and interesting to fall back on current paradigms.

I think that in WotLK Lifetapping is going to be much less common. Even without Demonic Aegis, you get 30% OOC mana regen and 30% Spirit as Spell Power. With the obvious 13 points in Demo that increases to 39%. That combined with Imp Soul Leech alone will greatly alleviate the Lifetap spam Destro is known for. Add in raid benefits from Divine Spirit, the improved JoW, nerfed but still awesome Shadow Priests and even Boomkin, and mana will probably not be as big an issue as it is now.

Lifetapping won't be useless, there'll always be times where mana is an issue (especially considering you can only Pot once per fight now). However it'll be more of an emergency maneuver than a fact of life.

JoW should affect the imp's mana regen considerably, to the point of never running out. However, all of this is moot. Yeah, he has 5.5k HP now and only takes 20% of AE damage. Still got to eventually heal him. Fel synergy needs to be closer to the top of the tree.

Well here is the curve ball, Improved Soul Leech was dropped down to 1/3 of what it was, and backdraft also gives a 30% mana cost reduction on those spells cast during it. But on the other end of Improved Soul Leech it also still gives back that mana to your pet also, so if the imp is still having mana problems after the changes it might work better.

There is a point, if the Imp gets the bonus from Totem of Wrath & Moonkin Aura. We'd essentially get double the effect from party/raid buffs, through Empowered Imp, on anything which give the Imp additional crit

Not to mention if keeping your imp out is worthwhile then it frees up the 8 extra points you would need after demonic aegis to hit DS and you can dump those back into the destro tree. Would be nice if molten core worked for your imps spells also.

One more thing, remember for raiding backlash only really gives you the benefit of 1% crit per point and crit is easily done with gear whereas some talent effects are not. So in the end it might be good to skimp on points in that talent if you need to skimp somewhere.

Well because those spells are hasted by 30%, as well as mana cost reduced by 30%, the mana consumption rate remains the same, while Imp Soul Leech is a reduction in time spent Lifetapping.

I estimate a 1/3 reduction in time spent Lifetapping with Imp Soul Leech. Currently, to sustain myself, I Lifetap about 11% of the time. So my active time spent DPSing would go from 89% to 92%, so a 3% DPS boost, essentially.

I'm not sure what Backdraft comes out to.

There's other reasons as well. If you have the Affliction Warlock for Malediction and the Demo Warlock for Demonic Pact, its probably worth your while to get Frailty to bring a buffed CoR. Then you can grab Imp Lifetap while you're there and perhaps make use of Corruption through Molten Core and a couple points in Imp Corruption. There's a lot of avenues to explore before declaring 0/21/50 the winner.

your imp should in theory gain +3% hit from a boomkin, and +3% from an elemental shaman so its down to only a 3% miss.

Avoidance sounds nice, for things like najentus, but how does it work with standing in fire. If it gets clipped by archimonde's fire its as good as dead. Or Leo if it gets clipped by a whirlwind. Also, what about bosses that do targeted massive damage. ie. rage that hits people for 15k damage over 8 seconds. Are these things going to be designed so they don't insta-gib the imp.


If you are life-tapping that much it looks more beneficial to go down rank incinerate. Also if you are the 3rd warlock your raid is probably running caster heavy diminishing the value of imp CoR. Further, putting 9 points into affliction is a pretty heavy investment considering you need 53 in destruction (and possibly 58 if there is an inscription that prevents conflag from chewing immolate) as well as 13 in demon. By opening yourself to corruption you are going to necessitate more hit gear because you won't be able to pick up suppression. Although unless they change soul shatter, it won't matter anyway we are going to have to get +9% hit from gear regardless.

Indeed. If end game, pet can survive the raid environment - and it looks like it finally can - and provide more than 10% of your damage, then DS becomes inferior spec.

With 6% hit coming from raid buffs, imp only has 3% miss chance on a boss. I consider it a bit buff from what is now. Also with ~11% crit coming from raid buffs (did I miss someone's buffs? 3% pally, 3% ele shaman 5% moonkin), pet will have ~16% crit. Not a lot, but since that is going to buff your critting, that's like having ~12% extra crit on your gear. I'm purposely lowering down the effect to account on imp giving you a crit buff on shadowbolt that was already going to crit, and 3% miss rate.

12% extra crit doesn't equal to 12% extra dps... but it's gonna be close... ~9-10% dps definitely.

So whatever the dps imp ends up to be, it is already better than DS, even if his bolts end up doing 1 damage each.

Thus, as long as imp gets the party buffs, and is able to live, it's a better solution than DS. Nasty issue if he runs out of mana... maybe consider not upgrading to his newest firebolt, if the new rank is too great jump in mana consumption?