Why sac your pet?

[dogwatch]

OK demon spec here. I get some very nice bufs from my pet, plus soul link, plus 35-70 resistance (depending on the pet)

I've sacced a succubus for the 10% shadow buff but everything considered my displayed spell damage is far far less without my pet and my resistance goes from 35-70 to 0. How is having your pet sacced valuable?

[Theleb]

The damage increase from saccing an Imp/Succubus when combined with the scaling coefficient from Shadow and Flame yields a much higher increase in DPS/damage than a paper doll +damage increase....and the resistances are pretty much irrelevant unless you're specifically tanking Illidan, or Leo.

For a deep demonology spec such as yours, saccing a pet isn't as effective as keeping it active of course.

[Pervlock]

well,
in some fights you will notice your pet more dead then alive, and often unable to add any damage.
Better a sacced pet and the sac bonus then no pet and all lost in that case.

Especially bossfights and some oher raids, the added bonusses may very well be waaay better then the pet.
Long fights : more mana or life or damage adds up to a LOT of survivability and or damage.
Thats when you sac yer pets most the time.

Farming to, the extra health and or mana or even the 10% damage might help you get less downtime, less chance to die and more damage overall.

When your pet is about to die, and is unsavable, or its just not worth it.

When you are about to enslave some demon to either get a kickass elite to fight for you, OR just when you are fighting a bunch of demons and want t take out 1 fast and clean to have 1 less demon to worry about, you can ac the demon pet and get that extra buff on top of another demon.

Tough pretty situational, it can be an awesome help at times. Some endgame raiders even just swear by a sacced demon one way or the other.
( most the time non demo specced locks tough, demo locks benefity way to much from a live pet most the time )
A demo lock will often sach for more health or mana, or even shadow damage. Less (waaay less ) downtime drinking health or mana pots / food.

EDIT :
And again theleb was just a sec sooner posting and waaay more to the point.
Just hope my post helps with a bit more detail.

[Theleb]

Perv raises a good point - you do need an operational pet which is why even into T6 content so many Demonologist's use 2 x T5 and the VST - I had completely forgotten about pet surviveabilty as I haven't raided as Felguard for a very long time

In an ideal world a 1/43/17 is (On paper at least) higher DPS than 21/40.

[pillows]

Simple thing is.. dont go soul link specc for raids..t5 set bonus is good for 0-40-21 but 0-21-40 is the common dps specc although boring casting nothing but cos and shadowbolt you can pump out the most dps this way.