With the changes that were posted regarding Soul Fire by Zarhym on the official forums, what kind of talent spec should we be looking at? I'm figuring that those 2 extra points would just move over to demonology or soulburn: soc or other utility talents in affliction. Also I was wondering what exactly the impact on dps would be when we no longer have this 15% haste as affliction warlocks.

Not really. Affliction is still on top of simulations; Zakalwe posted them this morning, I believe:
http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t110222-...a/#post1811449

Either way, points in Dark Arts are wasted if you are using the succubus + Lash of Pain glyph, and nothing (that I know of) suggests the Felhunter will be doing more damage than this combination.
If you would like something to be thankful for, this means we will essentially will not/will not greatly benefit from using Soulburn + Soul Fire, meaning there should be serious conversation over whether using Soulburn + instant Felhunter + Demon Soul is now more appealing. In this case, Dark Arts may be worth it, but simulation data would be nice to see.
Regardless, this is the spec I plan on running:

Edit: By which I mean I'm bad at paying attention and mean this, appologies:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Essentially putting the two extra points into 2/2 instead of 1/2 Pandemic, and taking CoE. The former is a possible (if unlikely) dps increase, while the later is for utility in 10 man raids, as summoned adds are often susceptible to slows (Maloriak, Omnitron slimes, etc.). The second point in Pandemic may be better spent in Dark Arts, if you switch pets below 25%.

On a completely different subject, Soul Swap is definitely a DPS increase on fights with multiple bosses or a couple adds, but has there been any discussion on how soul swap carries over CoA? I would imagine that every time SS is used to apply CoA from one mob to another, the game interprets this as a fresh CoA, but I've never seen someone confirm this. As a result, while I'm fairly certain that using SS to apply fresh dots onto a secondary target as its dots begin to fall off is the most effective method, I don't have any math to prove that this is better than manually applying corruption and UA to the secondary target after the initial SS dots fade, and leaving CoA so it is allowed to tick for its full duration (allowing the larger, final ticks to happen).

Oh, wow I did not know that. But maybe this should be mentioned in the OP for those who's looking for Cataclysm profession changes? Just like how the tinker change is mentioned for Engineering. I would assume non-tailors especially wouldn't know about it.

Why take emberstorm at all?

Surely your last shard should be saved for an execute range Demon Soul summon of fel hunter, shifting points out of Emberstorm and CoEx and filling out Dark art for a net DPS gain..? You'd want to time it so your last shard it comsumed on your final demon soul of the encounter, thus getting most uptime of Lash of Pain Glyph.

20% buff to your highest DPS phase? Could be meaningful enough to act on? Not sure but it would be interesting to explore.

Also thanks to Zak for the update... Really interesting that ISF loss seems rather meaningless in the scheme of things. Can this be true

Actually the numbers posted in the OP of Zak's topic are still 4.03a, it's the first reply in the thread that has 4.0.6 numbers and Demo has gone from comfortably bottom to top >_<

1st and 2nd posts show the difference between .3 and .6.

Roughly a 1200 DPS loss between the two models. Sounds about right. A nerf is a nerf I guess, I do like how every spec is lined up nicely and it's basically a decision on skill and preference.

Taking 2 points in emberstorm would be a dps loss as we won't be casting Soul Fire, unless its to burn a soul shard. Using the talents for Fel Hunter seems to be the most logical to go and at 26% swapping the Succy for Fel Hunter and popping Demon Soul to get the extra dot damage from Drain Soul during Execute since Blood Lust/Heroism/Timewarp are normally used for the execute phase as several classes have execute ranges anywhere from 35% to 25%. So 20% bonus damage when you are doing the most damage seems to be the most logical way to make use of the change.

Spec that I would use personally Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Drain Soul profits from haste. Dont' know the numbers for an Excel sheet, but i've already killed that guy in the cauldron in heroic deadmines while under the effect of his massive dropped hastefood. Amazing DPS .

Extra Ticks	Total Ticks	Haste %	Haste Rating
1	4	16,67	2134,2835
2	5	50	6402,8505
3	6	83,33	10671,4175

There ya go

I have a quick question regarding Macro use.

I'm very guilty of being a "button masher". I get away with it on my channeled spells by using a macro such as:

/cast [nochanneling: Drain Life] Drain Life

(Not sure if this is exactly right context but you get the idea)

I'm just wondering if I'm nerfing myself by using a macro like this. Will this prevent me from using Blizzard's built in anti-latency system?

There's no queue for channeled spells in the same way as for cast-time spells, but you can recast the channeled spells while there's less than <your lag> left of the channel. So if you have significant amounts of lag you're definitely nerfing your DPS by using a nochanneling macro.