Well, I made a mistake above, so I could potentially be making one again....

...but I'm pretty sure you can reset diminishing returns by changing your target. I do this often with fear once someone goes immune.

No, you can't do that either. Diminishing returns are kept by the target, rather than the caster. That's why a team of 5 warlocks doesn't automatically win.

Anyone else tested this? I was told otherwise, and have experienced otherwise in my own play.

Numerous times I have feared someone to immune, quickly feared the other target, then switched back and feared the original target without immunity. Maybe it was just the timing of when the immunity ran out? I do it often though.

Put some effort in, man. Your question could be answered by looking it up in wowwiki.

There's a 15 second timeout after the last application of the diminishing returns spell. So you can fear someone to immune, and then go do something else for 15 seconds, and then come back to start it all over again. But that's how the game has worked since 1.4, released 4/8/05.

Well GL with this group set up...
I don't know I run with a pld so if we only see 1 add blessing of sacrifice hits me instantly.. -120 damage per hit makes rogues damage min. Destruction is better in 2v2 personally because you can burst down 1 of the guys. affliction DPS is too slow to kill anyone. I was running 3v3 with destruction lock / me / pld .... they focus dps on my warlock and we pretty much destro 1 of their DPS. 3-6k SBs + my ~5k burst damage meant 1 person is pretty much toast.. Them also trying to kill him and being immuned to fire / shadow helps a ton

As a rule of thumb, or as a generalization, sure.

However, its not that Affliction lacks burst, in fact, in some ways it has larger and more controllable burst compared to destro, and affliction of course has more burst than demon does.

Affliction burst is summed up with Nightfall.

Its like a paladin, you play defensivly and like a shadow priest, until night fall procs. It will, sooner or later, but you better have 12k hp + resilience to even the odds. Once night fall procs, hit your dps trinket, SB, Sburn, DC and tell your teammate to get on him. Non crit your doing 4k damage min, and if you crit a Sbolt your Sburn hits for a crapload. Its burst, just not "controllable". However, the more people you can get corruption on the more controllable it is.

And woe to the receiving end of a double NF proc.

Also, UA is pretty nice burst damage. Its also not controllable, but still exists. Once someone has dispelled UA debuff on them, they pretty much are at 50% or less hp, DC + cast time sb + Sburn isnt bad reliable dps.

I recently specced Felguard, and the biggest difference is the lack of burst I now have.

Edit: For 2v2s, as an affliction warlock + dps, your biggest problem isnt healers, its other double dps teams. Your affliction warlock will have to pull out all the tricks in the book to stay alive against heavy dps.

Wasn't nightfall changed around the 2.0-or-so timeperiod to proc independent of the number of corruptions cast? (i.e. a nerf in multi-target situations)

You must just be bad. I ran Warlock + Rogue to 2300 last season before I went into the hospital (Full S2 Warlock 24/37/0 + Mutilate Rogue in T6) and we killed the warrior first every time. Between the stuns, the wounding poison, CoT, random silences, there was no way the paladin could keep the poor warrior up.

This season I'm running with MY rogue (Preachakilla - US Horde Smolderthorn) 0/34/27 (blue's/greens and working on the Season 1 gear) and a S2/S3 Warlock and again we went 5-1 this week early in the week and faced Warrior + Paladin twice, both times we killed the warrior. The only game we lost was vs Dwarf Holy/Disc priest/NE Rogue when my cheapshot was resisted and the dwarf just took off running (I don't have run speed at the moment). I'm confident that we could have won had the cheapshot landed (he was at 7% before I got cheapshotted myself).

Depending on your spec and gear I'd go for the warrior first. A good deal of the time the paladin just cannot heal through the damage you bring to the table with this setup, especially as either Mutilate or AR-Prep. I'm confident that even at higher brackets when my gear evens out we'll still be able to take down the warrior first, even with the impending nerf to Hemo.

Is your partner using cheapshot, kidney shot and maces? Or another spec?

This is probably my favorite combo to pair up with on my 2v2 team (which also includes a holy paladin and a shadowpriest).

After running it all of season 2, here's my opinion on how you should spec and strategize from a warlock PoV -- I know little of rogues, except that the my partner is mace-spec AR/Prep.

Best spec: 27/34/0 SL/SL. Opt for the more damaging variant instead of 24/37. You don't need the point in mana feed or demonic resilience since games end in the first 30 seconds of combat. 2/3 Empowered Corruption and 2/5 Shadow Mastery.

Affliction is still too squishy for this setup, especially against another double DPS team. You don't need UA's debuff protection since healers will be forced to heal with a rogue on their partner.

Felguard is alright (provides some nice burst and timely shadowburns), but I find that if they target me, I really can't do much but CoA and Corruption. No drain tanking, no extra DoT, and if you're facing an opposing warlock (which you do quite often in 2v2), your pet is more easily banishable. Moreover, a spell lock is more reliable in chaining CC on the non-focused target than an intercept stun.

General strategy: When facing a DPS/healer, go for the opposing team's DPS first, nearly always. Yes, you can burn down warriors and with 5 stacks of wound poison, any healer will have a difficult time keeping him up. Smart warriors at the top of the bracket though will go defensive and simply wear you down in defensive stance, but hey, that's why you still see warrior/druids among the top teams. There's really not much you can do against that strategy.

But generally, by going for a frost mage or rogue or SL lock, you're slowing down their DPS which is essential for your survival. And once you kill him, even if one of you go down afterwards, either a prep rogue or a SL lock can usually take a healer 1v1. That's not the case if you go for the healer first, DPS second.

When to use CC's on healers? Unless facing a priest, especially a UD priest, use your blind early to force the trinket. You can then fear that paladin/druid/shaman for the full duration. For a pally, that will force the bubble, but you want that bubble to be used as early as possible, cause you can survive for the first 15 seconds of combat with evasion/CoS and SL drain tanking. Against priests, though, you're facing fear wards, innate talent resists, shadow protection, and if UD, will of the forsaken. Blind is the more reliable CC in such a case, so try to draw out the trinket with fears and death coil, then blind the priest once his trinket is on cooldown

Against double DPS, use blind and fears early to slow down their DPS and make them waste their trinkets early. Once blind is used, you can then start dotting up both targets. Generally, they'll go for the rogue, so protect him with fears and spell-locks as long as you can till he goes down. If/when he finally does, more often than not, a SL/SL lock can easily 2v1 two DPS who are both near death and out of cooldowns.

Ok, it's 6am, we've been playing the last 3 hours instant queue, did 18 more games, won 11 of them, lost 7 of them. The losses were either due to a gear disparity (I'm still wearing some level 60 blues in slots) or my warlock partner being half asleep.

So far as Warrior + <insert healer class> depending on what classes they are we almost always go for the warrior. The only time we don't is when it's warrior druid, this setup is still easy for us it just takes a bit of tactics switching, my partner can easily solo a warrior as 27/34/0 and I either pull the druid out of stealth or wait until he shows his face to fuck him down. Because of the inherent survivability in 27/34/0 the druid will not be able to save both himself and his partner. I blow my cooldowns immediately, shiv on a crippling and just rape the druid while my partner dots him up, puts the felguard on him and drains away.

Warrior vs Shaman can be a really big pain in the ass, we lost one and won one to this setup, the loss was more my fault than anything because the warrior did the little blink thing with the new intercept onto the pillar we were on and I fell over the side circle strafing so I had to immediately switch to the shaman who was on the ground. Unfortunately for me this team was "really" good, not only did they out gear us by a lot but as soon as I dropped off the edge to go after the shaman he dropped a poison cleansing totem and the warrior got on me. Because I have 9100 hp and almost no resilience at this point it isn't hard to see why we lost, BUT, I will point out that I also missed a kidney shot on the shaman when the warrior was at 8% and it allowed him to get an NS heal off on the warrior. I've only got 45 hit rating right now + precision and that is REALLY hurting me, along with the lack of Run Speed enchant/gem of any kind (I'll be picking up the S1 helm tonight though)

Priest + <insert DPS class> is incredibly difficult for us, between the gear disparity, bubble, heals and the fact that those rat bastard dwarves have fear ward they generally just take off running and manage to stay away, once their partner unloads on me it's all over, we fought Rogue + Priest W1:L1, Warrior+Priest L1 and I'd have to say this is definitely where having a shadow priest partner would come in handy over a warlock partner.

We also had some odd combos, a shaman rogue combo that got destroyed because I caught the NE rogue before he caught me, warlock warlock that we lost to because my partner not only forgot to shadow ward (ended up 1v1 warlock vs warlock at 50% hp for both of them) but he forgot to use his healthstone. Combine that with two resisted spell lock's in a row and we were out 18 points.

Did a mirror match twice, both times we fucked them down pretty hard, each time I got on the opposing warlock while the opposing rogue got on my warlock, both times I killed my my opponent before the other rogue even got my partner to half health, popped Prep, AR turned around and beat him down for a total of 36 points earned.

We ended the night 16-8 at a pretty unimpressive 1620 rating, but I'm confident that when my gear finally starts progressing beyond the 15k honor I can do in a day that we'll really start seeing this combo come alive. I'd still like to get a shadow priest partner on the team but unfortunately my server has about 2 decent shadowpriests and they're already locked into teams that they refuse to budge from.

I totally didn't notice that, I just saw it at the bottom of the page in "Similar threads" and assumed it was recent lol