Warlock talents

Been getting the urge to level an alt again and decided to take my engineering gnome warlock out of her box. But I can see they've made massive changes to the warlock trees since I last played WoW in 2007 or so, so I could use some help! I don't like Affliction (Zzzzz.. -.-) and I've played deep demonology/destro before. Demonology is fun, but I've found it low on dps before (3 years ago), while Fire lock used to be my favourite build (AoE farming). I want to try to catch up with Cardinal's warrior and maybe do my 68->80 levelling as a team with him, so I will probably skip Demo tanking pet talents and the Felguard. I won't need utility team buffs either, as his damage will be physical.

The build I'm inclined to take is a Demo/Destro hybrid: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#IZcG0hkAdihsZAbMV0hz (just looking at talents, haven't studied any cookie cutter builds yet!). Not sure whether to go down into deeper Demo, or drop Master Demonologist for deep Destro firepower and Empowered Imp. Simply put, I want a Searing Pain/machinegun Imp build!

Now, tell me why that is a bad idea...

/listens

I've not played a lock for...well, since I crashed and burned out on teh Webby, but oddly enough I've started reading up on lock specs to level *laughs* The usual Demo/Destro hybrid is 41/30 - Felguard, but you pimp up the Immolate/Incinerate damage. I'm currently 41/20 into it, and it's working out really nicely. The Felguard can actually tank! *faint* The days of praying that the Blueberry holds everything (and you know it won't) are over. I'm on about 750 DPS at 70, but that's without most of my epics. I banked them and got a load of greens and quest rewards, so I can feel excited about the new start. Sitting on about 25% crit, 1200 spellpower.

Also, huge tip - use your firestone weapon enchant, it's fantastic (it used to suck). It gives crit and damage (I think) now, and provides a really nice boost in damage.

What about something like this?

Searing Pain doesn't scale as well as Immolate and Incinerate, which is why it tends not to be taken. Basic rotation for that build is Curse of choice/Corruption/Immolate/Incinerate/Conflag when on cooldown (and glyphed doesn't eat the Immolate). I'm not sure if it would be mana effective to reapply the Corruption.

After looking at that build, I'm quite tempted to try it now...dammit. Hope this is useful, and people with warlocks that have played them more than me, if I'm wrong, I'm sorry! Also, with the Imp Glyph, I put it there since you wanted the hardest Imp known to man, but the Life Tap Glyph is also really nice.

When you say Searing Pain doesn't scale - is that relative to gear or level? I assume you're referring to the universal tendency for shortcast spells to scale less well with spellpower than longcast spells and DoTs. As I don't expect to get very good gear (BoA shoulders and weapon, and whatever I get from quests - I avoid the AH while levelling) so this shouldn't be a big problem. But maybe SP is meant to be a low levelling spell to be used until you get 60+ abilities, then removed from your hotbars and forgotten about?

My problem with a caster+random levelling combo is things tend to die too fast, so any DoTs and long nukes never land/tick more than 1-2 times, which is why I tend to prefer AoE/instacasts (or very fast casts) for it.

Searing Pain doesn't scale well with spellpower, you are right. Our lock in my old raidgroup used it to tank in SSC, and that was about all it was used for back then. I have to admit that I don't know it's uses in WotLK, but I've never seen it recommended as a spell to be using when you have Immolate/Incinerate open to you.

Perhaps then forget the dots and use just Immolate/Incinerate/Conflag (Conflag being instant)?

I think you'll have to work this one out on your own

As I said last night, affliction is hard to beat in terms of leveling specs - it's just so disgustingly effective - he things are dying to just a few DoT ticks, you should be attacking more targets!
With siphon life and life tap you should always have health and mana to cleaves keep moving. On food, water or downtime needed.

However, eliminating affliction... Demonology is probably more efficent - don't write the felguard off as a tank! Disable the high threat ability, stick to cleaves and intercepts, and you should be seeing quite a lot of safe damage.

Of course, if you prefer destruction, just go for it? It's probably the most efficent for leveling as it's ever been.
Personally, I've never liked the fire parts of warlocks, always felt so tabled on and like a poor alone of a fire mage. Then again I haven't really given destruction a chance to prove itself in 3.0+, so what do I know!?