Hello guys and gals

In this guide ill be touching on the different points of each Spec, Rotation, Talent choices, and Gemming

I will be referencing different guides from the warlock den, elitist jerks and other sources i find useful, and also will be explaining it in my own words so its not a copy and paste jobby.

Also from my personal experience i will try to go into a little bit more in depth into which certain things mean etc


Will start off with the 3 main talent tree's

SPECS




Affliction - 55/0/16 - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock#vHTxCPuHuhPy_,,10952

Glyphs: Haunt, Quick Decay, Life Tap
Pet: Felhunter
Stone: Spellstone
Casting Priority: Haunt, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony, Shadow Bolt (below 25% replace with Drain Soul)

Haunt need not be cast immediately after it comes off cooldown, but should be cast early enough so the debuff stays on the target for all times. As for all specs, Life Tap to keep the buff up. Recommended starting rotation is LT,SB,Haunt, Corr, UA, Curse of Agony.
Affliction gets its favorite pet back, the Felhunter.
It is a minor dps loss to take points from Cataclysm and Improved Life Tap to get Fel Synergy (pet healing) and/or Improved Drain Soul (threat reduction). I would recommend doing these changes to the spec for actual raiding, unless you have an awesome tank. Also there seems to be a reasonable amout of AoE damage in Icecrown, so a point in Fel Synergy is useful.

Also this spec seems to have the highest dps output single target over a long tank and spank fight, also with affliction you have more flexibility to do damage on fights where you cant stand still, tho to always remember not to clip your dots as it nerfs your dps hugely in any fight, and the dots dont tick at their maximum amount

Also with the new Glyph of Quick decay is very important in affliction to stack haste, tho remember not to just pan out for all haste, you need a reasonable amount of crit/SP for affliction to do a high damage output. As your corruption will tick quicker, with a chance to crit, and a higher chance of proccing nightfall for your shadowbolt fillers, it improves dps greatly over long encounters.

Destruction - 00/13/53 with 5 talent points spare depending on the fight/raid setup - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock#fpNR2bEosqxx,,10952

Glyphs: Conflagrate, Incinerate, Life Tap (or Immolate)
Pet: Imp
Stone: Firestone
Casting Priority: Immolate, Conflagrate, Chaos Bolt, Curse of Doom, Incinerate

In destro spec, its very important to keep immolate up at all times, not just to clip global cooldowns when you miss your conflag frustratingly but it also boosts all the damage done by all your destro spells while immolate is up.

If there is no Shadow Priest/Balance Druid in your raid and your not hit capped, your going to want to put some of them spare points in Suppression for the hit, If there is a hit buff on the boss, it really depends which bosses your coming up against, i like to respec depending on the raid for the utility of my spells etc

You want to be specced into shadowfury on Anub Rekhan on Heroic modes to assist with the shadowstrikes etc

Careful planning and you can remain high on the meters, and good on the support side of a boss encounter depending what path you choose.

Also, if your raid has an unholy DK or a Boomkin, you dont want to be using curse of elements and always using doom, as this will improve your dps, and when say the boss drops below 20-30%, you want to possibly add curse of agony into your rotation, but depends on your preferences, i prefer not to as i see it as a waste of GCD (global cooldown) but other locks prefer this way.

Demonology - 00/56/15 - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock#f37Ber10NUSR4,,10952

Glyphs: Life Tap, Felguard, Quick Decay (alternative: Metamorphosis)
Pet: Felguard
Stone: Spellstone
Casting Priority: Curse of Doom, Immolate, Corruption, Shadow Bolt (Incinerate if Molten Core procs, Soul Fire below 35%)
Cooldowns: Metamorphosis, Immolation Aura (during meta), Demonic Empowerment

During a fight you will spam Shadow Bolts until you get a Molten Core proc in which case you cast 3x Incinerate. Keep all DoTs up, even below 35%. Below 35% Decimation will be activated. Soul Fire will not consume the Decimation effect anymore, and will refresh it everytime it hits the target. This means Decimation weaving is over, you can just spam Soul Fire below 35%.
Demonic Empowerment should ideally be macro'd into all other spells so it is used on cooldown. The use of Meta should be adjusted to the fight, for a tank and spank scenario just use it on cooldown.
Life Tap as usual. You might want to keep your mana up so that you don't have to tap while Meta is up, so you benefit maximally from it.

Myself i mainly see demonology as a raid buffing spec, can incredibly increase overall raid dps, and its quite easy and fun to play, tho single target dps is reduced, it will increase over all raid dps which to kill bosses like Festergut and Anub on heroic, its very important.

It is a viable raiding spec tho but dont expect to top the overall damage meters, its more if a utility spec.


GEMMING

Gemming is really important on a warlock, Blizzard to change the stat - dps values of certain stats each patch which can be frustrating but ill stick to 3.3 for now.

Destruction Spec -

For destro, you mainly want to gem for Spell power, pure hard spellpower, if your one to go for the socket bonuses on the gear, depending on the slot, you want to stack Spell power haste if they are yellow, and Spell power and Spirit if they are blue, as the spirit to spell power gain from both improved fel armour and the glyph of life tap soon add up.

Affliction Spec -

For Affi, you pretty much want to Gem the same as destruction, depending on the socket bonus which i generally ignore and go for pure spell power, you want to stack haste, so any yellow sockets put 12sp and 10 Haste gems in them, also one purple to activate your meta depending on what you want to go for.

Demonology -

Gem for pure Spell power, its a regular warlock pattern but main source of a warlocks damage comes from spells (shock horror), so its the best stats, with haste coming in second, then Critical Strike rating.



Any questions feel free to ask me, or your Warlock Class leader Billy for any information and ill get back to you as soon as i can

More to come

And thanks to the warlock den for some of the sourcing.

I've not really been serious about playing my 'lock since tBC, and I must say it was really interesting to see what happening to Warlock raiding since then - thanks for posting this!

On your affliction build:
I see being able to get ruin *and* still go fully down the affliction tree has completely changed things. With 16 points in Destruction I'm guessing you're going to be DoTing things up but still have a powerful Shadow Bolt spam for single-target DPS.
I'd question why you went for Improved Corruption, Improved Felhunter and Cataclysm over things like Improved Drain Soul, Grim Reach, Dark Pact and Demonic Embrace. Presumably you're aiming to boost your DPS, and wouldn't won't really need Dark Pact with a Felhunter, but it does make your build more situational.

On your destruction build:
Looks pretty good. (Thought I admit I'm not exactly an expert on desctruction.) Back in 2.0 I'd probably have gone for Shadow Mastery, but Fire spells are much more important now than they used to be.
Why did you miss out Soul Link, though?

On your demo build:
Again, looks pretty good.
How could you miss out Mana Feed..? If you grouped with a Shadow Priest/Shammy while raiding then I guess you might not need it, but it's worth spending a point on for grinding, surely..?

youve raised some interesting points, now let me explain them


1. - Since the last patch, they have buffed the felhunter's shadowbite to increase the amount of shadow damage done to the target being affected, meaning this is a must have for affliction on single target boss fights,

as for Improved corruption, Corruption is afflictions biggest spell in terms of damage, this talent is a must have for any affliction warlock, without it your simply nerfing your own dps/damage output, Also the SoC crit buff is good for ICC thrash but main purpose is for corruption.

Also with the improved felhunter, you want the shadowbite up 100% of the time, also you cant always gauranteed a mage/priest in your raid group, so this benefits all, including yourself as affliction.

As for not speccing into Dark Pact, If your using the glyph of life tap, life tap should be included in your rotation, so you shouldnt really need it, and its a point that can be spent somewhere more useful, as for demonic embrace, affliction is so self sufficient in terms of self healing, you dont need the stamina, and since it provides no dps difference, its 3 wasted points in that tree.

Grim reach depends aswell really, but range is just a benefit of being able to stand further away, but this is not nessecary, my Affliction spec is a pure dps build, also according to the warlock community, its 300dps higher than the spec below it, therefore making it the premium raiding affliction spec.

2.

Destruction is primarily about fire damage from 3.0-3.3, Soul link is a wasted talent points in terms of pure dps, also with all the aoe damage flying around, you dont want your imp taking extra damage as you need it for empowered imp, so its quite sensible not to use it really, since the imp is weak enough.

3.

My spec are purely for raiding mate, so grinding hasnt been considered in any of them

and any feedback is much appreciated, i love a good old warlock discussion and hopefully ive answered your questions.

Well, I never really used Dark Pact either ^_^;;

Soul Pact has saved my hide a few times though. Not useful everywhere though, as you have to have your pet phased and passive meaning less DPS. It's more a situational/survival talent.
Personally I think if it were me I'd take a few more of the one point utility talents to help out outside of raids. However that's patch 2 logic talking; possibly with patch 3 and dual specs there's no need to lower your raid DPS slightly to get them.