Basically all of the guides I have read on this forum or elsewhere (not much of an elsewhere existing these days) seem to agree that to maximize single target DPS the best ranged pet configuration for the Necromancer are four Reapers using this spec (or something very similar).
Now I did some testing on a straw man, and out of curiosity - I wanted to see how big the Reapers edge is - I ran the same spec with the same rotation but used four Arcanists instead. Now there is always a bit of variance involved in a 3 minute parse, even when you do several of them, but the result seemed to indicate that the Arcanists did at least as much, if not more DPS than the Reapers.
Possible reasons for this I could think of:
- 'The Devourer' is not really increasing the total Reaper damage by 10%, but only affecting some sort of base spell damage of theirs.
- The Arcanists apply a 5% spell damage buff not only to themselves but also to the caster. In sum this could match the Reapers 10% buff.
- The Arcanists fire more rapidly, and as a result get more cabal procs. The log did confirm this, Cabal did 50% more damage when using Arcanists.
Should be noted: I did not spell weave during the tests, to keep another element of randomness (random pet deaths, how many Death God procs I get) out of the picture. But if anything, the Arcanist build should benefit more from spell weaving due to the 5% spell damage buff to the caster.
Has anyone of you noticed something similar? Why is the majority of necromancers still using Reapers in single target encounters? What am I missing?