I think you forget that prior to set your new talents you will have to choose a spec (affli/destro/demono) that will provide you a set of spell and abilities (a pre set template in other worlds) but yes for a given spec the same for all.

And it is the same for metamorph, hand of guldan for instance, you will not be able to use it in afflication or destro ^^
(Oh it could ba a good idea anyway to let affli to transform ^^)

A quote from the official QA makes me think DC is indeed being removed as a baseline spell for MoP:

Personally I find it makes sense to remove some baseline abilities and make players choose between them because it makes the choices more meaningful as well. The choice "What clutch CC do I want?" is much more interesting than "What's my 4th situational CC going to be?". Not to mention action bars would be way too clustered if all the new abilities were actual additional abilities to the current ones.

In the end you've got to keep in mind that it'll be fairly easy to swap between your talent choices in MoP, so you won't really lose anything, you'll just have to make a choice what you want before every fight.

Unfortunately this hasn't been properly clarified by any official source yet. I think the most information we have about it is in the quoted Q&A above.

The only reason this is palatable comes from Warlocks not being the only ones forced to make such choices. At face value, we are losing abilities. Having 4 situational CC's may seem absurd in a progression context, but in PvP, it's bread-n-butter to have 3 or 4 CC's as a lock. Looking around, I've seen that CC in general is being trimmed from the 5.0 talent trees. If the survivability and utility within the talent tree, as well as those eventually to be found within the 5.0 core and spec abilities, can match or exceed what we are losing from mass situational CC, then I can live with it. Particularly when it means that Mages may even have harder choices than Warlocks for a change.

I'm interested in how this effect will play out:

• Malefic Grasp replaces Shadow Bolt for Affliction. It is a channeled nuke which increases the damage of your DoTs on the target by increasing their tick rate by 100%.

I'm assuming it won't also reduce the duration of our dots (to match the total number of ticks they're supposed to have). This effect seems so powerful, that regardless of its damage would it replace Drain Soul under 25% as well? Drain Soul has the advantage of refreshing UA and a long cast time for ease of use. I wonder if it works on CoD, or if we'd finally have a reason to use CoA. Does it increase the tick rate by the same amount if we use it under Kiljaeden's Cunning? Does the splash damage from Illidan's Guile also have the same effect?

What an interesting spell.

It's going to be difficult to judge the power of the new talents (and Warlocks in turn) until Blizzard fully reveals what spells we get for choosing our respective spec. I believe they already revealed at Blizzcon that affliction probably won't have immolate anymore, so it stands to reason destro might lose shadow related stuff like Bane of Doom or corruption. The shadowbolt transformation also brings the possibility of one of our core base spells just being a stand-in until it transforms into something else that is tailored for your spec. Lastly, we still don't know which existing talents (not already revealed in the new talents) are going to survive the cut and be part of your chosen spec.

Malefic Grasp replaces Shadow Bolt for Affliction. It is a channeled nuke which increases the damage of your DoTs on the target by increasing their tick rate by 100%.

I either see this as either-
Our dot dps is relatively lowered so that malefic grasp as a filler replaces shadowbolt, and damage remains fairly constant.
Malefic grasp damage is much lower than shadowbolt was, so that the dot % of our dps goes up. (Yes malefic will be a 'dot' too, not the point).

If the first is true, our damage to multiple targets will take a relative drop.
If the latter, our burst would take a hit, since barrng soul swap cd, we can't get dots up straight up - while that channel will be balanced around having dots present to an extent. Maybe we will gain a mindspike style ability? (hope).

It will have to damage by itself or Kil'jaeden's Cunning will be too good for Affliction, that said I do believe the point of Malefic Grap is to basically once and for all kill how overpowered multidotting is compared to other single target classes. However I think that this is basically good news as it seems Affliction has never been allowed to be a top top single target spec because of the power of multidotting.

Also if the spec basically comes down to 3 dots and Malefic grasp, I can't see any scenario where DoTs aren't viable. If there is something that needs to be burned down soul swap \ Malefic grasp is doing full dps in 2 GCD's, basically this isn't really anything we can speculate on till we get more information what is included in the Affliction spec.

What im really curious about is if Haunt will still remain in the rotation and if the debuff will stay the same.

EDIT: I also don't think Malefic Grasp would be included in the splash damage talent if it did no damage.

Per recent Blizzard post

I don't know of any other "nuke" spell in the game that does not have a damage component.

Based on what we've heard, Affliction is pretty much going to be dots only (shadow), destro will be fire only, and demo may be shadow but with a bigger focus on the demon aspect (melee mage?). I'm pretty confident that shadow bolt will be the bread&butter nuke for demo locks, meta version non-withstanding.

For anyone who has played Age of Conan, I get the general feeling from what they have been revealing (heavy focus on the meta transformed lock) that they might try to make Demo locks more like the Herald of Xotli. For those unfamiliar, it was a caster class that had a transformation ability (old god demon thing) which allowed him to dish out powerful close range/melee DPS and increased his survivability, not to mention enhancing certain abilities. Meta as it currently stands is just a fancy +DPS buff /w some situational, but not terribly useful, abilities. Demo locks have always been the sort of odd man out in terms of clearly defined purpose and role in the end game (ignoring the group buff they could provide). Re-envisioning their role as a caster that can mix it up in melee range could be just what it needs to stand out. Blizzard has already shown they will be willing to do that with monk healers, so it's not a stretch to think they aren't above doing that with the demo lock spec.