Civilian

I saw Baps' post and decided to follow in his steps. Lets dicuss our min/maxing guys!

wowhead wotlk warlock talent calculator: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=I

raid dps increasing talents/abilities: Malediction, Improved Shadow Bolt, Demonic Pact, Fel Intelligence. Now one in each tree!

new/modified spells: Curse of Idiocy, Shadowflame, Curse of Elements (affects nature dmg now), Demonic Circle: Summon, Demonic Circle: Teleport

new talents: (won't list moved talents as that will change a lot I imagine)

• Affliction:
• Frailty
• Improved Fear
• Improved Felhunter
• Death's Embrace
• Eradication
• Everlasting Affliction
• Haunt
• Demonology:
• Demonic Empowerment
• Fel Synergy
• Improved Demoinc Tactics
• Demonic Empathy
• Demonic Pact
• Metamorphosis
• Demon Bolt
• Shadow Bolt Volley
• Immolation
• Shadow Cleave
• Howl of Terror
• Charge
• Destruction
• Molten Core
• Demonic Power
• Improved Soul Leech
• Backdraft
• Empowered Imp
• Fire and Brimstone
• Chaos Bolt

new/modified pet abilities:

• Felguard 
• Felhunter
• Fel Intelligence
• Shadow Bite
• Imp
• Blood Pact (raid wide)
• Succubus
• Voidwalker
• Consume Shadows

I'm toying with the following specs for raiding:

Affliction:

• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=I0xrbLMAoitcuAoZE00Vo
• Felhunter is mana battery? Improved Felhunter makes me wonder.

Demonology:

• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=I0gZfbczsgRq0stuAoE
• added Frailty to maximize CoR
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=I0oZfxczsgoq0stuAoE00V

Destruction:

• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=IbxZcZVcGqr0tqsAfct
• with Improved CoA and Improved Corruption to help maximize Molten Core
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=IZbxczsxoZVchqr0tVkAc0x 
• What's gonna happen to sacrificing a pet?
• http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=IZcLc0sZVcGVb0tVsAfct
• this doesn't sac a pet but does need imp to be alive... is that asking too much?
• added in Fel Domination to allow for faster summoning of imp when it dies in battle.

I don't really know how the pets will be at 80. I imagine this stuff will change quite a bit before launch.

Upcoming Warlock changes (Beta build #2)
There's been some upcoming changes posted on the forums!

Destruction

• Molten core now has a 5%/10%/15% chance, up from 4%/7%/10%
• Nether Protection has been changed; now gives you a 10%/20%/30% chance once a spell (of any school) hits you you reduce all damage from that school by 60% for 10 secs.
• Emberstorm now reduces the cast time of Immolate by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 instead of 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%
• Improved Soul Leech now restores mana to you and your summoned demon by 5%/10%, down from 15%/30%.
• Backdraft is now fixed, ranks now reduce cast time and mana cost of your next three destruction spells by 10%/20%/30%.
• Empowered Imp has been implemented and now all critical hits done by your imp have a 33%/66%/100% chance to increase your spell critical hit chance for your next spell by 100%, up from a 20%/40%/60% chance.
• Eternal Flames no longer has a chance to refresh the duration of your immolate on the target.
• Chaos Bolt is no longer implemented.

Affliction

• Fel Concentration now gives you a 14%/28%/42%/56%/70% chance to avoid interruption while casting unstable affliction and haunt.
• Improved Felhunter has been changed, it now gains mana equal to 50%/100% of its shadow bite ability and it increases the effect of the felhunter's fel intellect by 1%/2%.
• Eradication now only has a chance to increase your spell casting speed on corruption ticks, instead of corruption and unstable affliction ticks.
• Haunt now increases all damage done by your damage over time effects on the target by 20%, up from 15%.

Demonology

• Demonic Embrace now just increases your stamina by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%, independent of your spirit.
• Demonic Sacrifice now grants you an effect depending on the summoned demon for 30 minutes, instead of just flat out increasing your spell haste and spell damage.
• Master Demonologist- The felhunter effect has been changed, it now reduces all spell damage taken by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%, instead of increasing all resistances by 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1.
• Demonic Empowerment has been implemented and the succubus effect has been changed that once the succubus goes into the improved invisibility state, all stuns and movement imparing effects are removed, in addition, instead of the felhunter effect reseting all of the cooldowns, it now dispells all magical effects on the felhunter.
• Love Struck is now Improved Demonic Tactics; it increases your demon's critical strike chance by 10%/20%/30% of your critical strike chance.
• Demonic Empathy has been changed so that when you or pet hits with a critical strike, the other's damage done by their next 3 spells or abilities is increased by 2%/4%/6%.
• Metamorphosis no longer restores your health and mana when you switch in and out of the form, however, the duration of stuns and movement impairing effects are reduced by 50%

Pet Changes

• Felhunter: Paranoia and Tainted Blood have been replaced with Fel Intelligence and Shadow Bite.
• Shadow Bite (Felhunter): Deals Shadow damage plus additional 5% Shadow damage for each damage over time effect on the target. 6 sec cooldown.
• Fel Intelligence (Felhunter): Increases total Intellect and Spirit of party and raid members by 3%. Lasts until cancelled.
• Felguard: Health increased by 10%.
• Succubus: Health increased by 20%, armor increased 22%.
• Imp: Health increased 20%, Armor increased 16%, mana regeneration increased 200%.
• Voidwalker: Health increased by 20%, Damage increased by 16%. The amount of attack power the Voidwalker gains from it's master's spell damage has been increased by 45%.
• Consume Shadows (Voidwalker): Duration reduced to 6 seconds, and effect increased 66%. Now also greatly increases all nearby allies stealth detection while channeled.
• Summon Dreadsteed/Felsteed: Mana cost removed, global cooldown removed.
• Bane now also reduces the cast time of your Haunt spell.
• Infernal: Cooldown reduced to 15 minutes, down from 1 hour. Duration reduced to 1 minute, down from 5 minutes+. Health increased by 30%, damage increased by 60%, and armor increased 30%.
• Doomguard: Health increased 20%, mana increased 24%.
• Avoidance (Felguard) - Now reduces damage taken from area of effect attacks by an additional 80%.
• Avoidance: Now automatically learned for the Succubus, Imp, Voidwalker and Felhunter at level 10.

This info comes from the Warlock's Den http://wowmb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=27539

Shylugh:

What's gonna happen to sacrificing a pet?

"Demonic Sacrifice is going back to it's former self in the next patch, although it'll be changed slightly. We want Warlocks to gain benefit from using their pets in PvE, not destroying them for buffs. Demonic Sacrafice was originally created for situations where having a pet out wasn't as viable. Today, that situation is/should be coming less frequent. We realize that is because of issues with the pets (mana regeneration, some are too fragile, etc.) which are have/will be addressing." - Koraa, Class Designer (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202650616&sid=2000)

 I'm not even bothering to look at the new stuff becuase it will all change by the time of the expansion.

Ruth1ess:

Shylugh:

What's gonna happen to sacrificing a pet?

"Demonic Sacrifice is going back to it's former self in the next patch, although it'll be changed slightly. We want Warlocks to gain benefit from using their pets in PvE, not destroying them for buffs. Demonic Sacrafice was originally created for situations where having a pet out wasn't as viable. Today, that situation is/should be coming less frequent. We realize that is because of issues with the pets (mana regeneration, some are too fragile, etc.) which are have/will be addressing." - Koraa, Class Designer (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202650616&sid=2000)

Cool! looks like three pets get used for raiding now: imp for destro, felhunter for affliction, and felguard for demo. Time to revamp some specs!

[EDIT] HAHA looks like a destro lock will get stuck in the tank group and affliction in the elem shaman and spriest party heh [/EDIT]

[EDIT2] aww nevermind, Blood Pact affects the raid now just like most of the other auras type abilities like totems and whatnot. [/EDIT2]

zathrus:

 I'm not even bothering to look at the new stuff because it will all change by the time of the expansion.

Awww come on Zathrus. Join in our reindeer games

Here's some questions for ya bout aff spec....

With Everlasting Affliction (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=47205) do you still think that 5 points in Improved Corruption are worth it?

Considering the benefit from CoR, I'm wondering if points in Frailty (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=18180) might be better spent or going with points in Improved Healthstone and/or the reach talents.

From a cursory glance at those (I missed the bonus to CoR frm Frailty, good catch!) I'd say it's a toss up with what is better for the raid. Is 3% from Malediction better than 20% to Curse of Recklessness (160 armor reduction). I doubt a raid will want more than one affliction lock. Could a demo spec take frailty so we get both? I'm gonna play with those some and see.

From what I can tell it seems like maybe this is viable for demo spec: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=I0gZsxczsgoq0stuAoE. I'd bet that Devastation will have to be passed up on demo specs as well as Ruin in favor of Metamorphosis and Frailty. Would be fun to see a warlock with Metamorphisis be raid viable. I'd imagine it's gimmicky and only for fights with lots of adds.

This brings other thoughts to mind, since Improved CoA was brought to tier 1 affliction possibly have the destro lock spec that. I could see the affliction lock doing CoE from Malediction, demo do CoR from frailty, and destro doing CoA from Imp CoA for more dmg pretty easily.

We have yet to do number testing, we'll balance the tree's so that their damage is closer together. That said, Destruction has less group utility than Affliction or Demonology has, which can warrant a slight DPS advantage.

Even though you'll be casting DoTs as affliction, you'll still be casting Shadow Bolt's in your rotation. Thus haste/crit/death's embrace all benefit you.

(source)

zathrus:

 I'm not even bothering to look at the new stuff becuase it will all change by the time of the expansion.

Well speaking of this thread.....lol.

Blizz looks to be doing some changes to Firestone and Spellstone making them to work like weapon oils.

Grand Firestone

Grand Spellstone

Interesting. We can save on consumable cost! (I hope you can see this because I'm doing it as hard as I can t(^.^) )

Are any of you guys going to be speccing into malediction for 3.0.2 => wotlk raids?  If we have a boomkin that specs into Earth & moon then it will be the same debuff, however we both dont need to have this speced so it may save some talent points to be collaborating on this change.