Thats a pretty great idea, it would make keeping dots going more simple (not that its hard but its what Blizz seems to be after) whilst still provide some skill input in that reapplying them with perfect timing as they fall off would still provide more SB casting time.

As some other people have also mentioned I think something needs to be changed with Haunt, having a cast time PLUS the travel time really does make when its going to land into quite a guesstimation(especially with haste flying around (Eradication/Bloodlust mainly)), either removing the cast time or removing/vastly shortening the travel time would make reapplying it at more oportune moments a lot easier.

Once again as other people have said being able to track only your own debuffs on a target would remove the need for a dot timer if done properly (although it would have to be pretty well done, I love the way Quartz tracks target debuffs with both the bar and actual timer).

I would take this a little further. I would rework all DoTs in the game so that if the DoT had less than a few seconds left (i.e. 3s), recasting the dot would add the full duration to the effect. For example, recasting Immolate with 2s left on the DoT would immediately do the DD portion of the spell and the Immolate DoT would now have 17s.

Affliction isn't "hard" because we have all of these DoTs to put on a mob, it's "hard" because it requires perfect timing for every one of our spells to maximize DPS. The DoT needs to be reapplied immediately after the last one ends. To early, lost DPS. To late, lost DPS. That's also why we basically require a DoT timer to play the spec. This also makes Affliction very sensitive to lag.

Every class/spec has a rotation. But many of them do not require perfect timing. Not to say timing isn't important, but there's a bit of wiggle room. For example, Ret Pallys are pretty much Cooldown constrained. They have a few abilities to DPS that are all on cooldowns. It's not possible to clip a cooldown. FFB mages don't have to perfectly time all of their attacks. They have to refresh Scorch before it drops, and they want to do it as late as possible, but they've got some flex time there. If Hot Streak procs, they just have to use the proc before the buff expires. Living Bomb does have the same DoT timing, but it's one ability. These play styles are "easier" because their core mechanics have timing forgiveness built in.

Building wiggle room into DoTs by extending DoTs about to expire would make every class with a DoT a little easier to play. It would really help Affliction locks, but wouldn't change our spell list or rotation.

It's fine now because the content is no more difficult than hogger. Once we actually start to get challenging content, affliction's lack of simplicitiy will become far more of a hinderance. Regardless, there isn't much point in debating if, since it's already been decided that it's going to be simplified.

I'd prefer haunt to be more of a "focus" effect. There are many fights where there is a dps switch or a reordering of damage priority (Sarth, 4Horse, etc.) but there is a huge "ramp up" time problem with affliction in that UA and Haunt are both big chunks of our damage. Why isn't haunt tied into our pet or simply our target? The effect is applied to the target as long as either our pet or our focus is on the target increasing dots on that target by 20%. If we dot up another target, we can switch the focus to another target quickly by simply putting the pet on another target or switching focus.

The best example I can give is hunter's mark (usuable on one target, fast to put up and switch, provides a damage boost). I'd also like to see a warlock synergy with it in that each warlock can put it up on a target and affect all dots by a smaller precentage (10%?). Thus, we are once again a debuffing class and, with a little coordination, can boost our fellow warlock's damage. Also, through working together multiple locks could keep the buff up on all targets at once drastically increasing the damage of coordinated warlocks and multi-DoT management.

Furthermore, this makes affliction a bit more interesting for PVP with faster switching and focusing of damage.