With 3.1 comes dual speccing – at a pretty hefty cost, however.

What is it?

Once you paid for the dual speccing….’talent’, I suppose I’d better call it, you will be able to switch between two different talent specifications at the click of a button. The ‘talent’ will also switch your chosen glyphs and action bar set ups (though how this will work with Bartender etc is yet to be seen). Importantly, this will be at no cost to you.

The easiest way to demonstrate this is, mid-raid you lose a healer. You have three tanks with you but one is largely redundant. Your Druid hits his dual spec button and there he is, fully talented, glyphed and action bar-ed as a healer. He need only switch his gear. (In comes Outfitter, proving even more valuable now.)

Sounds good, right? It is, but…

What does it cost? 

Available from level 40, presumably from your Class Trainer, you can buy the dual spec ‘talent’ for a ‘mere’ 1,000g. For level 80′s or those alts with level 80 sugar daddies, that’s no problem. But for your fist time level 40, that’s going to be quite the challenge!

Not that you’d need to dual spec below, say, level 70 anyway?

What use for warlocks?

Clearly, this option is is better suited to the Druid/Priest/Paladin when it comes to end game raiding and the like, but it’s useful for EVERY Class when you consider PVE and PVP specs. I can’t see too much point in having dual specs for raiding personally, but a warlock’s spec for PVE is vastly different from that for PVP. 

Think Destro to Demo/Affliction if you like. You know what you prefer for each kind of gaming. In this, it will shine. And, quite possibly, SAVE you money. 

I know it may well lead to me PVP-ing a LOT more, as there’s no way I could ever be bothered to respec every time. Any time I PVP I do it in my raiding gear and raiding Destro spec. As you can imagine, the results are not usually pretty…

So…overall a GOOD THING, in the Dead Man’s opinion. Does it seem like value for money to you?

So the patch notes are out and despite the fact they are, as ever at this early stage, very much provisional, let’s take a look at those affecting the warlock, shall we.

Affliction

Skills

• Curse of Elements Rank 5 now increases spell damage taken by the target by 13% (Previously 10%)
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed from the game.
• Curse of Weakness now reduces armor by 5% along with its previous effect.

Talents

• Pandemic (Tier 9) is now a 1 point talent. It now grants the periodic damage from your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells the ability to critically hit.
• Malediction (Tier 8 ) now increases spell damage by 1/2/3%. (Previously also increased the effect of curse of elements)
• Eradication (Tier 7) has been changed to: 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.
• Shadow Embrace (Tier 5) now increases Shadow Periodic damage. (Previously increased all periodic damage)
• Siphon Life (Tier 5) is no longer a spell. It is a passive talent that When you deal damage with your Corruption spell, you are instantly healed for 40% of the damage done.
• Frailty has been renamed Improved Curse of Weakness (Tier 2).
• Supression (Tier 1) now increases chance to hit with all spells. (Previously only affected affliction spells)

Demonology

Skills

• Enslave Demon penalties have been reduced. While enslaved, the time between the demon’s attacks is increased by 30% and its casting speed is slowed by 20%. (Previously attack speed was increased by 40% and casting speed slowed by 30%)

Talents

• Fel Synergy has been moved from Tier 8  to Tier 1. You have a 50/100% chance to heal your pet for 50/30% of the amount of damage done by you.
• Mana Feed is now a 1 point talent and has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 5. Your demon now gains 100% of the mana you gain when you gain mana from Drain Mana or Life Tap spells
• Master Conjuror (Tier 5) now increases the combat ratings gained from your conjured Firestone and Spellstone by 150/300%. (Previously 15/30%)
• Demonic Embrace (tier 1) is now a 3 point talent. Increases your total stamina by 4/7/10%. (Previously 2/4/6/8/10%)
• Demonic Empathy has been removed from the game.
• Demonic Sacrifice has been removed from the game.
• Improved Enslave Demon has been removed from the game.
• *New Talent* Nemesis, Tier 9, 3 point talent – Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
• *New Talent* Decimation, Tier 8, 2 point talent – When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, the cast time of your next Soulfire is reduced by 30/60%. Lasts 10 sec.
• *New Talent* Molten Core, Tier 6, 3 point talent – Your Shadow spells and damage over time effects have a 5/10/15% chance to increase the damage of your Fire spells by 10% for 12 sec.

Destruction

Talents

• Improved Soul Leech (Tier 8 ) now has a replenishment effect along with its previous effect.
• Conflagrate (Tier 7) is now 1 rank. It consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 15 sec of your Immolate or 8 sec of your Shadowflame.
• Backlash has been moved from Tier 7 to Tier 5.
• Pyroclasm has been moved from Tier 5 to Tier 7 and is now a 3 point talent. It now states when you critically strike with Searing Pain or Conflagrate, your Fire and Shadow spell damage is increased by 2/4/6% for 10 sec.
• Improved Immolate (Tier 5) now increases all damage done by Immolate. (Previously only increased the initial damage)
• Aftermath (Tier 2) now 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.
• Cataclysm (Tier 2) now reduces the Mana cost of your Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. (Previously increased hit chance with destruction spells and reduced mana cost by 1/2/3%)
• Improved Shadow Bolt (Tier 1) changed to Increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and your Shadow Bolt 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.
• Molten Core moved to demonology.
• *New Talent* Molten Skin, Tier 2, 3 point talent – Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.

The biggest changes for me are those to Cataclysm and Suppression. If you’re a Destro ‘lock (as I am) you now have to spec into Suppression unless you want to chase +Hit on your gear to over 400. With Cataclysm the cap was 368 and this was hard enough with the yawning chasm between quest/5 man rewards and 25 man Naxx. 10 man Naxx simply didn’t give +Hit.

So now I have to shift 5 points over to Affliction from Destruction – but I still need Cataclysm! We’ll see how it pans out, of course, but it looks to me like there will be work to do on resepccing once 3.1 hits.

In addition, we have Molten Core moving over to Demonology. What the hell? I have to split my points over THREE trees? Again, we’ll see…

A new talent for Destro ‘locks is Molten Skin. 2/4/6% damage reduction. I’m not seeing its use for raiding personally…

Some good things, however. The change to Siphon Life is brilliant. So good, I want to respec to Affliction just to try it out. Pandemic I also like and the fact that Curse of Elements has been buffed is also excellent. I would hope every raid now needs two Warlocks and one of them is on CoE duty. MASSIVE damage boost to the raid. 

There are other changes to the Destro tree that may balance out the moans I’ve made about +Hit and there are significant changes to the Demonology tree that I can’t really discuss as I haven’t played Demo in a loooong time.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on that, as well as everything else mentioned.