Lololocks

[Bokeh]

o Aftermath (Destruction) - Now a 2-point talent, down from 5.
o All demon abilities and spells will automatically be learned as pets gain levels. Demon Master trainers will be removed.
o Blood Pact now works raid-wide (not just in party).

Nice buff, 1 lock with the imp out on aoe intense fights helps a lot more now, also no need to gimp tank groups.
o Cataclysm (Destruction) - Now also increases your chance to hit with Destruction spells by 1% per point.
o Curse of Recklessness will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).
o Dark Pact: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
o Demon Armor - Now increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%, but no longer has in-combat health regeneration.
o Demon Skin, Demon Armor and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
o Fel Armor - Now increases your spell damage equal to 30% of your total Spirit, but no longer increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%.

A nice change, you either have to choose demon armour for more healing from drain effects or fel armour for more damage effects, not both.

o Fel Stamina (Demonology) has been merged with Fel Intellect into Fel Vitality.
o Howl of Terror now costs 15% of base mana.
o Improved Curse of Weakness (Affliction) is now "Frailty" - Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness spell by 10/20%, and increases the amount of armor reduced by your Curse of Recklessness by 10/20%.

Very very awesome. 20% more armour reduction means lots and lots of damage. Might be interesting for 1 raid specced lock to take this, depending on how much it'd lower the locks personal dps.

o Improved Enslave Demon (Demonology) is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4.
o Improved Lash of Pain (Destruction) and Improved Firebolt (Destruction) have been merged into one talent, Demonic Power.
o Improved Shadow Bolt (Destruction) - Now increases damage by your next Shadow damage spells by 3/6/9/12/15%, down from 4/8/12/16/20%.
o Mana Feed: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
o Master Demonologist – Felguard (Demonology) - Now increases all damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and reduces all damage done to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Master Demonologist – Imp (Demonology) - Now increases Fire damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Fire spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Master Demonologist – Succubus (Demonology) - Now increases Shadow damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Shadow spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Master Demonologist (Demonology) - Most effects have been altered.
o New Talent: Demonic Empowerment (Demonology) - Grants your Summoned Demon power for a short time.
o New Talent: Eradication (Affliction) - Your Corruption, Siphon Life and Curse of Agony ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to increase your spell haste by 20% for 8 sec. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.
o New Talent: Molten Core (Destruction) - Your Shadow spells and damage over time effects have a 5/10/15% chance to increase the damage of your Fire spells by 10% for 6 sec.
o Pyroclasm (Destruction) - Now also includes Conflagrate.
o Shadowfury (Destruction) - Can now be cast while moving. Stun duration increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.
o Soul Link (Demonology) is now an 11-point talent (used to be a 31-point talent), but the 5% bonus damage from this talent has been removed. In addition, the damage absorbed by Soul Link is now 15%, down from 20%.
o Soul Siphon (Affliction): Now also increases the damage of your Drain Soul.
o Suppression (Affliction) is now a 3-point talent, down from 5. Now increases your chance to hit with Affliction spells by 1/2/3%, down from 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Unstable Affliction (Affliction): Silence effect reduced to 3 seconds, down from 5.

[Henke]

Curse of Recklessness will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health) - Shame it was a nice CC if your feared mob was running into another pack.

Master Demonologist buffs are quite amazing - Having Sucu up means 5% more damage and 5% more crit and Demonic Tactics another 5% crit - added to Devastation(Dest) - 15% crit JUST from talents.

However Shadowfury (Destruction) - Can now be cast while moving. Stun duration increased to 3 seconds, up from 2. /Aroused

A few nerfs but also a few imba buffs. Cheered me up alot. Have to start saving loads of g.... I can see many, many respec's inc.

By the time raiding starts in WotLK we Locks will have to combine our thoughts and spec to give raid biggest boost maybe 1 from each tree. Really think Demonology will be the new Destruction for raiding. Really big buffs there whereas Fire dmg seems to be order of the day if your going high in Dest.

Oh bagsies not going Assliction :-)

[Guvner]

Damn some major changes from the intial trees I saw.

Blood pact working raid wide is a lovely improvement.
Cataclysm improving spell hit is nice too as destro Locks can now work towrds the hit cap via talents (something Locks have always been jealous of Mages for).
Fel Armour now scaling with spirit is a MAJOR change. Locks finally have a stat that scales their dps as opposed to pure spell damage and right now +int's contribution to crit for locks is a joke. This will make gear itemisation very interesting indeed.
Improved Curse of Weakness / Recklessness does indeed look awesome as a contribution to threat and melee damage.
ISB has been nerfed a little...too early to tell how much this will effect dps but lets face it its overpowered as it currently stands.
Saccing a succi improves shadow damage far less but also increases +crit now. Ultimately its a nerf again but wll be interesting to see how it scales.
Eradication and Molten core look interesting though again not sure how they play. Starts to encourage the mixing it up of shadow and fire spells.
Hmmm Shadowfury on the move and with a longer stun......Nice bg and arena buff for destro locks.Doesn't mention Chaos Bolt and I am still hanging on in there that Cripple will re-emerge. I can dream. There are also a lot of other new talents not mentioned here I guess because they haven't changed.

Overall they appear to have nerfed some cc / silence, Nerfed the scalability of our spell damage through talents however thrown some crit into the mix which could balance it out, nerfed our ISB contribution to shadow damage which is probably not a suprise as its the main reason shadow casters in a grp are a bit OP, Improved the potential for raid support ie +stam buff raid wise and more threat / melee damage, forced us to strongly consider spirit as a really important stat and thrown a few pvp talents in there for kicks.

Overall very interesting indeed

[Bokeh]

Ok.

Demonic pact.

Your pet's critical hits increases the spell power of all attackers against that target by 10% of your spell power.

Survival hunters for spell casters, Gief. This is THE best raid viability buffs locks could want.

[Henke]

Odds are I will be 0/50/21 with me felguard out so unless Blizz changes the top of the Dest tree and make it more shadow and less fire orientated not much of a choice.

Although if I do go fire with a 0/21/50 build means I get Shadowfury(which I love) although a lot will depend on how much Spirit actually affects Locks/Lock spell dmg.

The time betwen getting talents and WotLK going live gives us time to experiement and get some thoery crafting read.

[Guvner]

WTF Demonic Pact increases spell power for ALL attackers now? Used to be just the Lock. Jesus thats a big incentive to play with your imp. With Demonic Empowerment thats potentially an awesome buff. Before TBC you had Locks with a max of about 1000 shadow damage maybe a bit more. In Sunwell you have Locks with about 1600/1700 shadow damage. Assuming that scales the same way to 80 you will get Locks with about 2.5k Shadow damage (Spirit based Buffage to Fel Armour on top for even more) so your talking an extra 250 damage to all casters in raid when your imp crits and I think with empowerment thats up to 50% as standard :D. Its all confirming that it looks like Lock personal DPS may drop however support and buffage is increasing

[Henke]

Demonic Pact is sexy but will be very situation dependant and I'd rather have Felguard up a lot less squishy.

But I expect them to change Eternal Flames in Dest to something which includes Shadow Damage cause its really hard to get Chaos Bolt if your staying Shadow damage unless going for both fire and shadow dmg and either Sacing puppy(missing CB to stay raid viable) or going 0/10/55 with Pimp Imp Imp Machine Gunning(still no CB[although dropping a point somewhere lower in Dest could mean you get Shadowfury and CB]).

[Bokeh]

You can get demonic pact with a felguard as well henke.

I don't think the imp talent is going to be very viable considering how squishy he is, unless you start turning phase shift on and off very quickly (macro?)

[Henke]

Yeah I know... Guv said "thats a big incentive to play with your Imp"

If I was to go Destruction spec I (probably)would have to go Imp Imp(demon), Empowered Imp(Dest) and Demonic Power(dest) to get the most out of my talents. Even now 99% of Lock wouldn't take Imp out of Phase Shift unless it was a fight that is more or less static and has no AoE effects - pretty rare unfortunately.

[Guvner]

I am making a wild stab that we are gonna see 3 main types of raiding spec:

Aflliction with a bit of demo and dest
Demo with some dest
Dest with some demo.

I think Chaos bolt may only become a pvp talent but hope not

[Adraorien]

I may be lazy, or it could just be because I really don't get all this theorycrafting, but I think I'm just gonna wait 'till everyone else tried stuff out and there's a lovely guide on proper specs again and just pick one that seems nice and appropriate to my ingame raiding/soloing behaviour ;0)

although I'll probably give demonform a go at least once, just like nearly every other lock.

[Guvner]

He he you know your the most sensible one here :p None of us really knows whats viable and not until the big dawgs try it out in proper raids

[Henke]

Just checked out the Blizzard website for the WotLK builds - changed from the Wowhead ones....and its not good.

Sacing pets......out the window.

Trying to come up with a decent build is getting harder all the time. Seem to be wasting a lot of points in the lower/mid area. Think I will be relying on the theorycrafters.

[Guvner]

Yeah it looks like they would rather we used our pets than sacced em. Can see their point but hope the nerf isnt too big and works well with other classes. Still looks like Lock personal dps is going down but raid synergy is going up

[Adraorien]

bah was just starting to get the hang of saccing pets and doing more dps :P no fair

[sacha]

Tbh, I don't have a lock, but to me saccing a substantial part of your class to get more dps just sounds wrong...

ah, well, I shouldn't invade your private space.

[Henke]

Yeah I understand your point but the problem now is in any fight with AoE or something similar we are stuck with using our Imp. Even with talents that reduce dmg taken by Demon by 15% and 22% of our Stam(5points - very high in demonology - most raiding Locks are Dest) - they are still very squishy.

Anetheron's Carrion Swarm will one shot all pets except maybe a felgaurd so to me this is really going to limit Warlock DPS on a majority of boss fights.

I've been trying to think of a time when I could let my Imp of the Phase Shift leash and let it do damage without having to res it constantly.

Mount Hyjal - Only Kaz'rogal - assuming if it goes oom it doesn't explode and no one detonates near it - personally I wouldn't risk it.
Tempest Keep - None.
SSC - Hydros(I think)
Black Temple - Shade of Akama, Gorefiend(I think).

So it does show that a HUGE majority of boss fights will require the Imp to stay phase shifted or to spec Felguard which does have survivablity but will die alot in certain fights.

Not sure if they changed the Empowered Imp talent(3rd top in Dest) but now it only buffs the Lock and not the group. So the only spec which is similar to a Survival Hunters buff is High end Demonology.

Assuming the talents stay the same I reckon a 0/50/21 build will be pretty common.

My suspected(very early build - with little knowledge of changes to come) build will be...

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/wrath/warlock/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000235203 0113500005011352012505500300502000100000000000

But a long way to go - I'd prefer to stay Dest(love to get Shadowfury back) but have to wait and see.

[Adraorien]

well so far I've been missing affliction greatly, miss my trusty mana battery standing next to me... but I haven't had a decent time with my current build yet and I must admit I do do more dmg (hehe... doodoo) now. I'll just see what WotLK will bring, perhaps there is a viable raid affl spec which will allow me to get back to my favourite activity of watching them all die slowly and painfully with barely any downtime...


or who knows, destruction might grow on me :P
that sounds weird when you don't think about the fact that it's a talent tree.. hmm