After looking at many different lock specs on the forums, I've started seeing some of the same mistakes (at least to me) over and over and over again. I want to say first that the majority of builds I've been looking at are Affliction builds for PvE, not PvP, though some of this can be applied to PvP. I will be commenting more on the PvE concerns, however.
I will address the "mistakes" I've seen with other builds while making my build, talent by talent, tier by tier. Enjoy.
The first mistake I've seen is people specing into Improved Curse of Agony. Why???? It's a complete waste of 2 talent points. Specing into Malediction is something that will greatly increase spell damage, especially after the recent +3% spell buff it got. So, why the two points in Improved Curse of Agony? It's COMPLETELY redundant, and it doesn't do anything because you're using Curse of Elements.
They don't stack people, so unless you're in a raid that's prepared and has one lock specing for Malediction and one specing for Agony, don't waste your talent points.
Put 5 in Improved Corruption, 3 in Suppression and 2 in Improved Drain Soul.
While Fel Concentration can seem like a PvP talent, it's also useful in PvE for those battles with aoe. You don't want to lose casting time. I put 3 points in it.
The next 2 points can lead to another problem I see in builds. Bluntly: choose EITHER Improved Life Tap or Dark Pact. Don't get both, because just like CoA/CoE, ONLY one is necessary, so pick one.
I'm leaning towards just forgetting about Improved Life Tap because one, lock gear now has spirit, and two, Affliction has SO many ways to regain health now, and I think that regular Life Tap will work just as well. You will have hp coming back from Haunt, Fel Armor, and Siphon Life, not to mention those times you can Drain Life. Therefore, I leave Improved Life Tap alone. Those final 2 talent points can either go to Frailty or Soul Siphon, depending on if you're the Curse of Recklessness lock or not.
(Don't worry about Amplify Curse, I really have no clue what's going on there.)
For my build, I'm assuming I'm the Malediction lock, and I also put 2 in Grim Reach and Nightfall (I've seen some locks ignore this, more on Nightfall and why I put 2 in there later), 3 in Empowered Corruption, Siphon Life, 5 in Shadow Embrace (SO much more useful than in BC), and 5 in Shadow Mastery.
Build now looks like:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
Now comes an area of Affliction I see more mistakes. I want to say my opinion of Improved Felhunter first. The first part of the talent (it gets mana for its damage) is purely for PvP reasons. You're NOT going to send in your pet during a boss fight, just not going to happen. It's for those arenas where you put your pet on the healer. Blizz has buffed the Felhunter to where when it does damage (with this talent), it gets mana, and this in turns makes it useful to have Dark Pact in PvP.
The second part is for PvE. It's an added bonus in PvP I guess because locks now get spell damage for spirit, but it's probably most important in a raid situation.
With that explained, remember we did NOT spec into Improved Life Tap. For this reason, it's probably best to spec into Dark Pact, and you have one talent point (overall) to use elsewhere. I would not spec into Improved Felhunter because the imp is better for Dark Pact. It has more spirit (Blizzard buffed the imp's spirit even more in Lich King), and because your felhunter isn't doing any damage to utilize Improved Felhunter, your imp is even better (yes, you're losing some spirit and intelligence and therefore some spell damage, but these 2 points are utilized elsewhere once we finish with the Affliction tree, keep reading). Personally, I would maybe find a way to put those talent points into Improved Imp, so your raid has more stamina (problem also solved later on).
Here's what the build looks like now; I put 3 into Eradication and 5 into Contagion:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
Which brings us to Death's Embrace and Unstable Affliction. I've seen some builds that did not utilize Death's Embrace at all. I've been in countless boss fights where the raid wiped when the boss was under 35%. Understand, however, that I am not arguing that 3 points in this is going to guarantee the boss goes down when he hits 35%. I'm saying that your dps will increase significantly once the boss does hit 35% (by TWELEVE percent!), and the boss will go down a lot quicker. It just makes the fight easier. So 3 points in there, and also 1 point in Unstable Affliction.
We're to Pandemic now, which I think is one of the most drastic changes to the Affliction tree. It allows, in a way, for your dots to "crit." While they don't actually crit, it gives random "crits" while the dot is ticking. The more crit you have, the more damage these "crits" do. This should solve the problem of gear. Affliction locks now need the crit gear too. Also, Haunt (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) can crit with its initial damage.
The rest of the tree is Everlasting Affliction and one in Haunt. We're done with Affliction, and let's put the other points elsewhere.
Talent build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
So, what to do with those remaining 13 points?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say NOT to put them all in the destruction tree. After playing some in the PTR, I've realized a LOT of your time is going to be setting up dot rotations.
My dot rotation will probably be CoE, Haunt, UA, Corruption, and Siphon Life. Here's how long, according to my calculations, this rotation will take: 1 second CoE, 1.5 Haunt, 1.5 UA, 1 second Corruption, and 1 second Siphon Life. This is around 6 seconds, but the next rotation will be shorter when you don't include CoE, around 5 seconds. This leaves 7 seconds until you need to start your next rotation. With 2.5 second Shadow Bolts, you can get TWO shadow bolts in (of course, in the ideal boss fight).
If this is how Lich King level 80 will actually play out, I'm seeing Shadow Bolt being less and less reliable for an Affliction lock, especially after hearing a friend say that his dots were ticking for around 1k (can't remember if this was beta or PTR). The cast time just kills the dot rotation. This is one of the reasons I put 2 in Nightfall. This talent procs often enough that you will still get some damage from Shadow Bolt when it does proc, and with Everlasting Affliction, your Corruption dot is reset.
I'm not saying not to cast shadow bolt at all. I'm arguing that putting the talent points into Destruction just to get Ruin is worthless, cause if you're gonna be casting one or two shadow bolts every 12 seconds or so, why do you want to waste around 15 talent points (depending on your spec) that could be better utilized elsewhere?
Also, remember that those talents don't increase your overall crit. It increases your DESTRUCTION spells' crit. Added to that, you're have to put at least 2 points in Improved Shadow Bolt, which is nerfed down to basically nothing now. So again, you're putting those talent points just to buff destruction spells, when you should be focusing on dots.
(As a side note: With points in Soul Siphon, which increases damage drained (or done) to the target, Drain Soul could be like the Shadow Priest's Mind Flay. If so, you could use Drain Soul in the seconds between your rotations to get hp back/help healers, reset duration of Corruption (there's another second back), and to increase chance to proc Nightfall.)
If this is the case, then raid-buffed, an affliction lock's dps should be comparable to the destruction warlock. I could be very wrong here, I have not researched the destruction build for level 80 much or even know the numbers. My focus is the Affliction dps lock.
With this in mind, here's how the rest of my build plays out: 2 points in Improved Imp (there's those "saved" talent points from earlier), 5 in Demonic Embrace, 3 in Fel Vitality, and 3 in Demonic Aegis (which will now improve the amount of hp you get with the new Fel Armor, and make up for those 2 points out of Improved Felhunter which I alluded to earlier!).
So, here's what the ultimate level 80 Affliction lock build will look like, according to me:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...00000000000000
Hope this post was useful to anyone having problems making a spec, curious about how Affliction dps might work in Lich King, or to just anyone wanting to read something on warlock dps builds. This is how I think affliction lock dps will unfold in Lich King. I'm NOT arguing it will be the BEST build at level 80. I'm saying this is the best AFFLICTION build for level 80. Even on that note, however, I look forward to the hate posts and those posts calling me stupid.
Bring it on, feedback's how we learn best.