Pet 101: Control Demon
At level 1, alongside Shadow Bolt, a warlock gets the ability Summon Imp. It's hiding in a fly-out menu where other demons that can be summoned will be found later on.
From the first time you create a warlock to when you can pick a specialization at level 10, your demon acts independently of you. It won't pull you into combat (except by proximity), but it will help you out in combat regardless of whether you want it to. It acts like a guardian, which is a pet that you can't control.
At level 10, you gain the passive Control Demon, which lets you do exactly that. You get a pet bar that is a maximum of 10 action buttons long, as well as a special tab at the bottom of your spellbook for your pet's abilities.
Every pet has three stances: assist, defensive, and passive. Assist will attack the target you attack, with a small delay if you switch targets. Defensive will attack only if you are hit, and passive means the pet will do nothing unless you command it. A pet can only be in one stance at a time.
Every pet has four universal commands: attack, follow, move to, and stay. Move to gives you a target circle to direct your pet toward a particular spot, and the other commands should be obvious in meaning. A pet can attack simultaneously but can only follow one of the positional commands (follow, move to, stay) at a time.
Commands override stances. That is, you can have a pet on passive but command it to attack a certain target. When that target dies or is otherwise unattackable, your pet will return to its previous position by default.
Every demon has certain passives: avoidance, fel energy, and Soul Harvest.
Avoidance lets pets survive the harsh AoE environments of the world.
Fel energy is the resource all demons use, and
Soul Harvest lets pets regenerate health outside of combat just like you, their master. The bulkier demons of voidwalker and felguard types have
Void Reflexes, which increases their dodge and parry chances, in addition to the other passives.
After that, each demon has certain specific abilities that only work on the pet bar or in macros. Some abilities can be auto-cast by the demon, which the player can toggle by right-clicking on the ability either in the pet tab of the spellbook or on the action bar. Be careful to toggle off threat abilities while in groups!
What pets can warlocks have?Every warlock will eventually have access to four controllable pets:
Imp,
Voidwalker,
Succubus, and
Felhunter. Demonologists get an additional controllable pet,
the Felguard. Also, two guardians are summonable (but not controllable) as linked DPS cooldowns: the
Doomguard and the
Infernal. All of these get new, more powerful forms if a warlock choose the
Grimoire of Supremacy talent at level 75 and beyond.
Even more minion types include
Wild Imps, which are small imp guardians that demonologists can summon either
naturally or
purposefully, and the
Eye of Kilrogg, which
shaman must be jealous that we warlocks still have.
Finally, warlocks can enslave other demons in the world, who may or may not have their own abilities. An example is
the Eye of Kilrogg-like mob that sits in packs of three on the ramp leading to Queen Azshara in the Well of Eternity dungeon. You can
chain Fel Lightning for a bit if you snag one of those under your command.
For the new expansion, the developers wanted to get away from spec-restricted pets. Particularly, demonology got confusing for players when the
pet with the best DPS wasn't the pet that provided
the best Demon Soul buff to the warlock. In
Mists of Pandaria, pets are meant to be purpose-restricted. Tanky pets are tanky again, while control over the demonic abilities got better.
Each warlock spec can instantly resummon a dead controllable demon. Affliction warlocks can
burn a Soul Shard on a summon. Demonologists have
Demonic Rebirth as a passive. Destruction warlocks can resummon the old pet by casting
Flames of Xoroth. Affliction and demonology 'locks can summon new pets with their methods; destruction warlocks are stuck with the pet that just died.
Summoner's reviewThe
Imp is the first demon a warlock ever meets, right at level 1, and it changes to a
Fel Imp under Supremacy. The basic attack is
Firebolt (
Felbolt for the fel imp), making the imp a ranged DPS pet. The Imp can provide a
stamina buff equivalent to a priest's Fortitude. It has the ability to
flee from sticky situations, can
burn a harmful buff off a friend, and the new ability is that it can cast
a small HoT on the warlock.
The
Voidwalker is learned at level 8 and changes to a
Voidlord under Supremacy. The basic attack is
Torment, but the only other attack the voidwalker will do is
disarm if commanded. The healthy Voidwalker has survival abilities like a
bulwark and
shield (a
better shield for the 'lord), making it a great tanking pet. It has
a taunt and in
MoP can increase its
threat generation. Make sure you toggle these off while in groups.
The
Succubus is learned at level 20 and changes to a four-armed
Shivarra under Supremacy. The Succubus can use
its basic attack at range, but the shivarra is a
melee pet thus far. Both pets can
knock back targets
in a small area and both have
lesser invisibility out of combat. The Succubus is well-known in PvP for its crowd control ability
against humanoids; the Shivarra
can CC not only humanoids, but also beasts, dragonkin, giants, mechanical, and undead.
The
Felhunter is learned at level 30 and changes to the
Observer pet under Supremacy. Both pets are melee pets, whether they like
biting or
licking. Both have
spell interrupts. The Felhunter can
remove a beneficial magic buff from an enemy, but the Observer will
steal the buff. Early beta reports showed the Observer stealing even
paladin bubbles, though I am unsure if it's still possible.
The
Felguard is learnable by the demonologists at level 42 and changes into a
Wrathguard under Supremacy. Both demons
strike with their
melee weapons, which the wrathguard dual wields, and both demons can
spin bladed pirouettes on command. Both demons can increase
threat, so can act tanky, and both can
stun and
charge to targets.
The Doomguard and the Infernal share a summoning cooldown of 10 minutes. The
Doomguard (
Terrorguard under Supremacy) is the single-target choice, for it will shoot shadowy bolts of doom at its target. The
Infernal (
Abyssal under Supremacy) is the preferable AoE choice, for it deals AoE damage, stuns all enemies in its area, and is drawn to the area it was summoned on rather than chasing a specific target.
Pet 102: Service, Sacrifice, and Command DemonGrimoire of Supremacy is only one of the level 75 talent choices. Currently, Supremacy is only favored by destruction in the latest simulations as of writing. The Shivarra is the current choice, but
it's been noted that her melee swings are modeled incorrectly.
Grimoire of Service allows the warlock to summon a second demon for 20 seconds. This demon can be any of the four or five basic pets, and it acts like a guardian rather than as a controllable pet. Naturally, the demonologists are preferring a double dose of
Felguards in the latest simulations.
Grimoire of Sacrifice got a big update in the recent beta builds. The tooltip for the increased damage output depends on spec, but affliction alone favors the talent so far.
The neat thing about Grimoire of Sacrifice that I hadn't seen before was that the master gains an ability of the recently deceased pet. The combinations are:
While my dreams of
felstorming are dashed,
Spell Lock made me happy. I'll enjoy being able to interrupt from ranged instead of waiting for my puppy to trundle over to the mob.
Pursuit seems an odd choice given that demonologists will already have
Demonic Leap, but it gives a non-Metamorphosis closer that they can use.
Seduction, unfortunately, is still a channeled cast, which means you can't do anything else except crowd control that mob. Boring!
While all these demonic abilities are great, I don't want to spend multiple macros on possible pet combinations. That's OK, because in 5.0, Blizzard gave us the ultimate pet macro right in our spellbook, Command Demon.
Command Demon changes on which pet you have out or, in the case of Grimoire of Sacrifice, which pet you
had out. If you have the Sacrifice talent, then your Command Demon spell will change to whatever ability you just gained from killing your demon. If you have Service, Supremacy, or no level 75 talent, then the spell will change to one of the following:
If you don't have a pet out at all and you aren't under a Grimoire of Sacrifice buff, Command Demon reverts to the old
Demonic Empowerment icon and does nothing special except provide an informative tooltip on what you could be doing with it.
Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses.
