From the incidental player's perspective:

I started fooling around again with my warlock alt this week. I'd had fun with Demo in the past but Affliction was my original preference. Talents were mostly set according to recommendation but I left a couple, including Soul Effigy, off to ease the learning curve. I'd glanced at it a couple of times, and thought, "Man, that's tedious for a cooldown."

Then I finally specced into it tonight and realized it's not a cooldown. Holy mackerel. As above, I'll take Soul Conduit as far as it goes but bail to one of the other two specs otherwise. Ugh, ugh, ugh.