So I'm raising a little undead warlock, and I'm trying to plan out talents for her. I read a post at the AB a while back saying that a Dark Pact build was the best leveling build out there, but that was before the Demonology tree got reworked. The build I'm currently looking at is:

Affliction Talents - 33 points

Improved Corruption - 5/5
Improved Drain Soul - 2/2
Improved Life Tap - 2/2
Improved Drain Life - 5/5
Fel Concentration - 5/5
Amplify Curse - 1/1
Grim Reach - 2/2
Nightfall - 2/2
Improved Drain Mana - 2/2
Siphon Life - 1/1
Shadow Mastery - 5/5
Dark Pact - 1/1

Demonology - 5 points

Demonic Embrace - 5/5

Destruction - 11 points

Improved Shadowbolt - 5/5
Bane - 5/5
Shadowburn - 1/1

This leaves me with two points sitting around. I could place them in Improved Lashy of Pain or Improved Firebolt to improve my Succy or Imp, toss them in Improved Imp or Improved Voidwalker, Improved Healthstone, or grab 2/5 Fel Intellect to make my Imp a better mana battery.

Improved Drain Soul is utterly useless and has been bugged since release. It sounds good, but the effect only takes place if drain soul deals the killing blow, which is very rare.

Improved Drain Mana is not very effective. With 2/2, it only does 40 damage per tick with the highest rank of Drain Mana. I suppose that could be mildly effective in pvp vs classes you'll want to mana drain, like shadow priests and druids, and the various ZG bosses that need mana draining. I can't recall a single time I cast Drain Mana before level 60. I think those 2 points could be put to better use.

If you skimp on the two above talents, that will leave you with 6 extra points. I highly recommend 5/5 in Suppression in the Affliction tree. It is very valuable in helping your Fear and DOTs last the full duration, and will prevent the high resist rate (in PvP) on the new Death Coil. Knowing you, I assume you'll be on a PvP server, so Suppression will be quite valuable, especially later on (40+)

Oh, and ask Lissa if you want real warlock advice. He's the expert!

For leveling, Affliction is the best choice with a smattering of Demonlogy and/or Destruction. Also your build should take into account what the main thing that character will do upon hitting 60. If you plan to raid, I would look hard at building down either MD/Ruin or SM/Ruin to try and save from respecing. If you plan to do a lot of PvP, Destruction/Affliction or Demonolgy/Destruction or Destruction/Demonolgy are good builds.

There are a number of talents that are must haves in each tree if you plan to go into that tree.

Affliction must haves:
Improved Corruption (in truth, this should be levels 10 - 14 talent points)
Improved Life Tap (20% more mana is too useful as 5 lifetaps at maximum level will net you 2.5k mana and you're just a heavy runecloth bandaid away from a free 2.5k health)
Nightfall (Invaluable to get a Shadowbolt off without interruption or a possible Coup d'grace)
Grim Reach (20% increase in casting distance is really helpful when you need a little range for certain things)
Siphon Life (another DoT that returns health to you, very helpful for soloing)

Destruction must haves:
Improved Shadowbolt (20% boost in damage after a crit, more damage is always good)
Bane (1/2 a second casting time reduction is quite a jump in DPS for Shadowbolts, Immolate, and Soulfire)
Shadowburn (a must for PvP)

Demonolgy must haves:
Demonic Embrace (15% more stamina at the cost of 5% spirit which is useless for a Warlock for the most part)
The two summoning talents (1/2 second summons can be quite useful)

I've never taken Improved Shadow Bolt becuse I assumed the debuff would be eaten by COA/Corruption ticks. Am I mistaken?

Improved Shadowbolt was probably more useful before the last couple of patches, when Corruption did fairly low damage per tick, and there were only 8 jealously guarded debuff slots.

When I was levelling up, my usual strategy was to slap on DoTs and drain tank using the Drain Life spell (heavy Affliction spec). Then at 60, I became more of a shadowbolt spammer, to the point where I never used DoTs.

Post-patch, I respecced to split points between Affliction and Demonology and mix in both nukes and DoTs.

In addition to the talents Lissa mentioned these are some of the other highlights of the trees:

Demonology

Improved Imp and Improved Healthstone - nice party friendly skills. The imp talent boosts the effectiveness of Blood Pact a lot.

Demonic Sacrifice and Master Demonologist - very nice buffs with pet or without.

Destruction

Ruin - Big crits, at least until Blizzard changes the resistance calculations.

Destructive Reach - You'll really appreciate extra distance on your spells in raiding and PvP.

Intensity - Nice if you use AoE a lot.

Chris

I've never seen that occur.

What's the matter with you? You're on a PvP server and you don't plan Improved Curse of Exhaustion into your talent build?

In affliction, these are the only talents that really matter. The rest is just gravy.

iCorruption
Fel Concentration
Curse of Exhaustion
Nightfall
Dark Pact

Instant corruption prebuffs damage, enables NF, and is anti-stealth
Fel Concentration allows your channeled spells to continue (and be mana efficient)
Fully improved Curse of Exhaustion censored any melee and runners from range--How dare you not include this? It is arguably the best Affliction PvP talent available because it is the only spammable ranged snare with no diminishing returns. Even druids have trouble running from a warlock with iCoEx.
Nightfall (though buggy and unreliable) is much needed crunch damage
Dark Pact gives you endurance in a battle. More mana --> More fighting juice.

Siphon Life and Amp Curse are pre-requisited, and should not need explaining.


SM, iLT, GR, iDL, iDM are all gravy and imo that order of usefulness greatest being left with Shadow Mastery to right ending at improved Drain Mana. Reasons are self-apparant: Incremental increases to Damage, Mana, and Range. How valueable each is depends on the user.

Reason I rate iDrain mana so low? DM is dispelled or shrugged off at the casters we need to drain from. Halfwit priests dispel drains (although its possible to drain them if they can be feared), and druids shapeshift into mana-undrainable animal forms. Additionally, the damage to iDM increased by +dam equip is being nerfed. YMMV with iDM.

Suppression: Only affects Affliction spells. Gravy talent in PvP and end game PvE. Almost useless while leveling, as you'll face few mobs with any shadow resistence while leveling and fear's diminishing returns in PvP coupled with warping bug nerfbats fear, and thus suppression to near uselessness. Additionally, suppression may have NO effect on zero shadow resist enemies when negative resists are eliminated.

Edit: Suppression is currently required for Death coil to be effective consistently. YMMV

Dunno, 70% snare (or 50% every 3 minutes) doesn't sound too impressive. Reminds me of post-Beta, pre-1.6 Hamstring I, which was mostly pointless. Figured the points would be better spent.

When you are wearing cloth, and facing rogues and warriors who can tear you apart in seconds no matter how high your stamina, then any snare is better than no snare. Death coil alleviates the need a little bit. But if you're dropping that many points in Affliction, then there is no reason in the world not to include CoEx, if you're going to be fighting other players at all.

Technically, its the weakest snare in the game. That is not its strength. Its strength lies in the fact that it is:

1) Spammable. Instant cast, no cooldown, relatively low mana cost.
2) Ranged, admittedly more advantageous on offensive and in groups than defensive (but let's face it, if you wanted a myriad of escape abilities in a caster you'd play a mage)
3) No diminishing returns. Only snare that does not diminish when refreshed.

If you're an affliction warlock on PvP servers going as far down as Shadow Mastery, picking up fully improved Curse of Exhaustion is a must.

Also, this is the only snare warlocks have. No charge, no intercept, no blink, no earthbind, no stealth, no speed skills. CoEx doesn't seem like much on paper, but you can keep that snare going forever on players.

Druids can shape out of CoEx or Cast remove curse, but with instant cast and no diminishing returns, its back on again along with a iCorruption whittling down hp.

1v1:
Rogues: They know how CoEx feels. Ask any. Hint: It isn't good.
Warriors: Limited effectiveness. Useless if warrior has intercept available.

Other classes: Very little use for direct combat purposes.

Group battles: You should know how fun hamstring is. Imagine if you had a spammable snare from 30 yards (improveable with talents) that can be kept on as many targets as you have time for. Albeit a weak snare, its enough for your allies to maintain a movement advantage.

Haha, yeah. With my warlock, at level 36, just spamming CoEx, dotting, and running like hell, I soloed a level 60 rogue (I assumed he was level 60--I recognized he was wearing the Dal'Rend set) to about 35 percent health, before the curse resisted like eleven times in a row and he two-shotted me. (An especially feeble rogue, of course. A simple sprint would've ended the fight; I dunno why he didn't do it)