OK, I see the point with the "All Parses" feature. Still, there is a point to be made; which is that Zor'lok is naturally friendly toward warlocks even if there is no echo padding. Keep in mind also a significant number of guilds at all world-ranking levels (out of top world guilds, Vodka for example did) kill the echo, which is another boost to affliction - and then, killing that echo isn't padding anymore.
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Blade_Lor...14/30/default/
There's 1 month (to account for 5.1) of parses on another encounter neutral fight. It's funny because now that you take out the outliers (All Parses), affliction is no longer at the top, but is definitively in the middle of the pack - with rogues at top (possibly b/c of sprints).
(this is also a response to any affliction versus shadow posts)The hybrid tax is - officially - gone, and while you're right in saying that it still lingers to some extent (though likely not on purpose, but rather due to PvP balance/having less specs to choose from etc.), it still doesn't mean that it should.
If anything, Shadow is flat out below the pack, and Affliction is only slightly (3-5%?) better than the pack. So if you want to compare Affliction, or any well-parsing DPS spec (say, Fury, Frost DK, any mage, rogue), with shadow, you should talk about how to improve shadow without breaking PvP.
---------- Post added 2012-12-29 at 01:38 AM ----------
You can think of his argument this way: shadow, elemental, balance all bring major raid cooldowns that can help deal with some of the hardest parts of a fight. Even ret brings 2 BoPs which contributes (and yes, as I said, can help warlocks DPS more).
So if they did the same DPS as warlocks, what's the point of bringing a warlock? (or if you count healthstones, more than 1 warlock in a 25m raid).
I'm not saying a hybrid tax is right, but that's the argument for it above.