Not bad... not bad

If you haven't, go familiarize yourself with the Cataclysm preview. Familiar? Good, now for me to talk.

Lots of changes for warlocks wrapped up in here, and they're not bad. Nothing overtly bad for the class, lots of things people want in forms that will actually improve the class. Even a demonic fusion that isn't just the demonic sacrifice with a different name that so many people ask for.

Big news includes ALL warlock DOTs benefitting from haste and crit innately, which is immense in many ways. Haste no longer reduces duration, but instead adds ticks to the base duration, and "clipping" only refreshes the duration, it no longer clips DOTs. Note it will still be a DPS loss to clip more than the last tick of a DOT this way - you'll be increasing GCDs spent maintaining the DOT's uptime, the tick timer reset is only one concern with DOT clipping.

New spells, Mastery bonuses (I'm not thrilled on them, but they're not bad I suppose), and more after the break.

New Spells

Fel Flame - An instant cast split-school (shadow/fire) spell that refreshes immolate and unstable affliction. Particularly with the changes to DOT clipping, this spell will probably find a place in all three spec's rotations (affliction only above 25% though) as a DOT soft refresh.

Dark Intent - Basically Focus Magic that mages have, except it works off of periodic crits instead of direct crits. With all DOTs critting base, this will be a nice one to trade with another warlock, or failing that pass to a shadow priest or resto druid.

Demon Soul - 2 minute cooldown that temporarily fuses you and your demon for 20 seconds or a set number of charges. As I said in last night's post, the class has always been saddled with a lack of cooldowns, and this is just what we need. It'll have to be a BIG one, of course, as you presumably lose your pet for the duration, but it could well be a key tool going forward.

Burning Ember - New spell for imps, stacking DOT, replacing Fire Shield. Not bad for imps, but might make for some trouble with autocast macros. Hopefully pet autocast will take advantage of spell queuing in the future.

Whiplash - Replacing succy's pathetic threat reducer with a point black knockback like shaman's have. Pretty hot, even if just for sheer grief potential at the mill in AB.

Demon Bolt - Mentioned in the talent change, new spell for demonology. Basically sounds like Haunt, but it increases pet damage.

Changed Spells
Hellfire no longer does recoil damage - could be good for saving the spell's bleak fate, but also means no more cheating repair bills.

Voidwalker's threat abilities are improved and Torment sounds like it's being made a true snap-agro taunt. Could make voidwalkers... Something, I hesitate to say they'll be good.

DPS curses (agony and doom) are being unpaired from curses and being named Bane of Doom and Bane of Agony. They're in an exclusive category with each other, but not with debuff curses (elements, tongues, weakness, exhaustion). A solid increase in warlock utility in all situations.

Metamorphosis is no longer subject to demon CC (this could also bode as a nerf to warlocks if Tree of Life form gets the same treatment).

Shadowburn is now a sub 25% execute - if it's big enough it might be Destruction's execute at last. If it's really big it might be a supplement to affliction or demonology's, unless those specs are unchained from Ruin at long last.

Mastery Bonuses
The mastery bonuses aren't as fun or interesting as Deep Healing or the Holy one that adds a HOT to priest heals, but they're not bad ones.

Affliction gets spell damage, spell crit, and shadow DOT damage.
Demonology gets spell damage, spell haste, and demon damage - demon damage applying to both pet and yourself while in demon form.
Destruction gets spell damage, critical damage (a strong boost to crit scaling for the spec), and fire direct damage.

Destruction's improved crit scaling from this may help alleviate it's ailing haste scaling - though haste may not reach such absurd levels in Cataclysm that it is currently, and Backdraft may yet get a change that itself fixes destruction's haste scaling.

Talent Changes
Pandemic is now an auto-refresh for CoA and UA, greatly simplifying Affliction's execute rotation.

Fel Domination is gone, Soul Burn>summon taking over that job.
Impending Doom - certain spells reduce the cooldown on Meta and Bane of Doom (presumably reducing the time until it ticks? Otherwise reducing the cooldown seems pointless)

Soul Burn
None of the specifics I hoped to get, except that there will be NO way to recover misused shards.

There was the laundry list of empowerment speculation I knew was coming but wasn't high on my hope list because it's honestly not that informative. Some nice stuff, though - empowered health stone acts like Last Stand, empowered UA does 30% of it's damage up front (similar to Devouring Plague), empowered drain life gains a 60% haste.