Cataclysm Changes

[chaud]

New Warlock Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

Soul Shard Overhaul

This major change regarding Soul Shards was previously announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Shards will not be required outside of combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells. Soul Burn has no mana or health costs and is off the global cooldown. Planned secondary effects are outlined here.

• Summon Demon + Soul Burn = summon the demon instantly.
• Drain Life + Soul Burn = Reduces cast speed by 60%.
• Demonic Circle + Soul Burn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting.
• Unstable Affliction + Soul Burn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect.
• Soul Fire + Soul Burn = Instant cast.
• Healthstone + Soul Burn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds.
• Searing Pain + Soul Burn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds.

Next you will find a list of some of the warlock spell and talent changes for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

• All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how Everlasting Affliction currently works.
  
• Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.
  
• Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock.
  
• Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.
  
• The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.
  
• Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Pandemic will now cause Drain Soul to refresh Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony on targets below 25% health.
  
• The ability Fel Domination will be removed (because Soul Burn accomplishes the same effect).
  
• Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, Demon Bolt. Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target.
  
• We plan to add a new talent, Impending Doom, which will give certain spells a chance to reduce the cooldown on Metamorphosis and Bane of Doom.
  
• Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock's own spells.
  
• Shadowburn will now do additional damage to targets below 25% health.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Affliction
Spell Damage
Spell Crit
Shadow DoTs

Demonology
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Demon Damage

Destruction
Spell Damage
Spell Critical Damage
Fire Direct Damage

Shadow DoTs: The damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells is increased.

Demon Damage: The damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis is increased.

Fire Direct Damage: The damage caused by Fire direct damage spells is increased.

Well that concludes this Cataclysm preview for the warlock class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.

Edit:

Warlock Cataclysm Class Changes -- Clarifications
Here are a few points of clarification on some of the popular questions or concerns we're seeing.

• On regenerating shards in combat, we will add a mechanic to regen shards if we find that we need to in order to handle variable combat length. We haven't added one yet because we really want to emphasize locks using shards at the right time and not as fast as they can with then an Evocation-like spell to bring them back again. These are supposed to be special moments in a fight -- think Bloodlust perhaps -- and not used every 20 seconds on cooldown (or whatever the cooldown ends up being).
• Demon lovers, we haven't ruled out adding a new demon, but we want to be very careful here. We've had a hard enough time finding niches for some of the current ones. So we first want to make sure existing demons are cool before we're faced with Q&A several months from now asking why the new demon either isn't cool enough, or why warlocks no longer use, say, their felhunter because of the new demon.
• The intent for Hellfire is for it to be a specialty of Demonology warlocks. Affliction would use Seed of Corruption and Destruction would use Rain of Fire.

and a couple of things from the shaman Q & A I thought worth emphasising:

Q: How can Elemental Overload proc Lava Burst when Lava Burst already hits so hard in PvP?
A: We’re going to change almost every number in Cataclysm to adjust for everything from single ranks of spells to larger health pools to new combat ratings. With much higher health pools, hopefully burst damage will go back to being a tool and not the only way to win matches.

...

Q: You didn’t address Enhancement survivability or mobility or X and Y!
A: This was just a preview and is not a comprehensive list of every change. Much more will be revealed in beta and much will change during beta.

[chaud]

Keep discussion here, no need for many threads.

[Modez]

Warlocks getting on demand CD's.

Mages will rue the day.

RUE!

[Henking]

Succubes : Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards. Naizzz

[kabshiel]

We don't want one more green fire spell. We want all our fire spells to be green! >

[HavocLock]

Nice start... looking forward to PTR

[Ormula]

These changes sound /stupid/ imbalanced in PVP. O_O dowant.

[Nak]

We don't want one more green fire spell. We want all our fire spells to be green! >

I agree! >

[xionkarl]

These changes sound /stupid/ imbalanced in PVP. O_O dowant.

Still can't do that while stunned.

[Umbra]

I hope Demon Soul changes your model. Imagine the possibilities! Orc + Felguard, Gnome + Imp, anything + Felhunter.

[Peepo]

no more clipping hurting your dps, an on the move immolate (fel flame), COD and COE on a target at the same time... all nice...

i wonder how shadowburn will fit into rotations... especially with the under 25% health buff...

[harky]

Wow. Sounds like all specs are going to have some really interesting rotation changes. Love the change for DoT clipping and haste/crit scaling on all DoTs. Soul Burn looks next to useless in PVE so far though. Oh well, Soul Shards are worse. :P

Destro looks like they're playing a dangerous game though. Mastery increase crit damage? Ouch. I assume it's just a replacement for Ruin, but that could be scary if they're not careful.

[Bakis]

Fel domination change got some pvp implications, actually its a nerf. At the moment we got a 3min cd which is much needed due to how easily our pets die in PvP. Can almost smell the upcomming tactic of training the pet to force the warlock to immediatly consume one of his three precious Soul Burns. A horrible change since the three shards are one of the big things they will balance us around. Just a horrible solution.

[Deleted]

is it just me or does this feel like cheap remade mage spells?

[Neichus]

Soul Burn looks next to useless in PVE so far though. Oh well, Soul Shards are worse. :P

Mobility after teleporting, an instant-cast nuke when you have to move, a several survival mechanisms when things get ugly are next to useless?

[scandore8472]

Succubes : Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards. Naizzz

Ya, thats pretty nice.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

I can't believe locks got a repackaged version focus magic lol. I thought blizzard didn't like copying spells from other classes.

[PurechaosSK]

Interesting for sure. The changes to haste increase DoT duration may border on making the class very face roll. Not even face roll, but if UA etc stay up for another 10 seconds each then all we get to do is press more shadow bolts/incin. Doesnt sound like as much "fun" as affliction currently is.

Alot of the other changes seem fun though.

[blargh312]

Finally, Demo won't be the only spec with a CD to pop. DoT changes are awesome and very welcome.

The rest seems a little meh, though. Fel Flame and Dark Intent are nice, but nothing new or exciting. Mastery bonuses are a snoozefest. Pandemic change sounds like it will make Aff's execute insanely boring.

[Deleted]

New Warlock Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

Urm, is it just me or did warlocks just get , shadowlance?, holy crap rerolling.

[Bakis]

Mobility after teleporting, an instant-cast nuke when you have to move, a several survival mechanisms when things get ugly are next to useless?

We need mobility after teleport in PvE? No we dont.
Do we need 1-3 instant soulfires druing a figh (0.2%) of our total damage done? No

I agree with the poster you quoted, rofl searing pain is the only PvE orineted one and who the hell use that spell