3.1 Patch notes discussion
 

Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) - Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
Curse of Weakness - Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.

Talents
Affliction
Eradication re-designed: Eradication: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
Haunt: Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
Malediction: No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.

Demonology
Demonic Empathy has been removed.
Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
Demonic Sacrifice:This talent has been removed.
Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%.
New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.

Destruction
Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier .
Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.

I like all these "new" demonology talents that used to be destro and all the various excessive nerfs to us. Eradication's nerf is pure retarded.

The only good thing I see out of this patch is the changes to the imp's Fire Shield, how Fel Synergy will now be a tier1 talent in demonology (at least it'll help a bit in pvp), and I suppose the changes with suppression/cataclysm


/wrists

edit: forgot to mention that the nerf to siphon life is absolutely ridiculous. After over 4 damn years they're completely removing that from the game? get bent blizzard.

Less DPS from Immolate even with 6% new talents ( Immolate now doesn't suffer from Shadow Embrace/Haunt + MC in demonology so -34% damage )
No damage from siphone - just heal from corruption and no aditioonal damage
Nerfed Eradicatipn ( or ppm should be to high )
Now we need only 10% hit on gear

So more - than +
I think we will lose some dps

Blizz have to buff warlocks in PVP? forget it(

Interesting changes at first glance. Couple early thoughts:

1) The Siphon Life change sounds like a HUGE dps loss if Siphon just doesn't exist as a DoT effect anymore, both because you're losing a high DPCT spell and because that's one less Affliction effect per warlock for Drain Soul.

2) I'm curious as to whether the 5% crit bonus on Imp Shadow Bolt is an error (or the Mage version is being reduiced) or whether ours is really weaker than the Mage version. While the discrepancy would be odd, I wouldn't be that surprised given that our talent is in Tier 1 and doesn't really require you to do anything special (unlike Improved Scorch).

These are obviously some initial stabs by the developers to give us something slightly more usable. What I am rather stymied about is the cross tree prorogation and interrelated talents that were properly placed before. (MC in DEMO?)

I think a deep breath, and some serious testing will allow us to flesh out what works and what doesn't. As usual, round one of the PTR will have some serious deficiencies, and perhaps some surprises.

I am not certain bolstering of Demonology will work as intended, but perhaps it deserves a closer look now!

It does look like we will have some talent points left over to move into other areas to make up for the initial (what appears to be) a dps loss.

Let the fun begin?

** Looks like mmo-champion has a talent calc up already... http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=&version=9614

Wow, I have to say this isn't what I was expecting.

If they've removed Siphon Life as a Damage ability completely, and if the changes to Haunt and Shadow Embrace remove Immolate from the rotation, then not only has Affliction been dumbed down considerably, but it's also lost quite a lot of damage. I guess 1pt Pandemic and baseline 13% CoE is nice...

Decimation sounds really interesting, and is the kind of thing Soul Fire has needed for a long time. So now Demonology gets an 'execute' style effect too, by weaving SB and Soul Fire. By the fact that it includes Incinerate too, I'm guessing it's not going to be too deep into the Demo tree to allow Destruction locks access to it as well?

Aftermath change makes the talent worth taking I suppose, although I doubt most specs will take Cataclysm now. Guessing that the Conflag change won't actually have an impact on it's damage, rather just a way to reduce it to one rank? Improved Immol change is good, Improved SB change ... well I'm suprised that the mage notes don't say that Imp Scorch is being reduced...

Molten Core moved to tier 8 Demo... why??

Master Conjurer change seems crazy... 300% more crit/haste rating from the Stones? :|
And Pyroclasm... an attempt to make Searing Pain (and Imp Searing Pain) useful... i wonder if that will work.

This strikes me as almost an error in the patch notes.

Sorry that was a typo on my part. The tier hasn't been announced yet.

The MMO-Champion talent calculator has molten core deep into the demo tree. They presumable lifted the tree from the MPQ files.

It's listed as Tier 8 on MMO-Champion, is it a typo there too?

Yeah that was my first reaction... I guess as soon as someone gets on PTR we'll find out.

EDIT: MMO-Champion also has Decimation as requiring 35 points in Demo... Guess that's a no-go for Deep Destruction after all...

Even though Demonic Sacrifice is rarely used anymore, it's weird to see it being removed. I mean it was our bread and butter talent of TBC and now it'll be gone.

Improved Shadow Bolt seems to be a scorch like talent. Wonder if it's just for the player for raid wide. If it's raid wide, it looks like each raid will want to bring along someone to spam shadow bolts to up raid DPS.

It seems like Blizzard wanted to remove Immolate from the affliction rotation.
With removal of its benefit from Haunt and Shadow Embrace, aswell as Molten Core, it seems that Shadow Bolt will have a higher DPCT than Immolate. Though I haven't done the math on it yet, but I assume it will since Blizzard obviously wants to simplify affliction further.

Nemesis seems to be a fairly neutral change. The cooldown reductions seem to be about the same as what we'd gain from demonic empathy, with the advantage of being able to use immolation aura more often. Not quite the buff I was hoping for.

I think Decimation working with incinerate is for the fg/emberstorm locks who will do quite nicely with these changes.

As far as demonology goes, the biggest buff we can get out of this patch will be if they fix the Demonic Pact calculations to use the fel armor spirit bonus.

he-he
New Afli lock rotation

Haunt-agony-corraption-unstable-sb x times. lol

heh good nerfs i can say

Now i can say 0|31|40 => 3|28|40 and will do more dps:) much more it's a pitty.

SB > Haunt > UA > CoA > SB spam (plus 1 application of corruption)? Looks like where they want to head with affliction....