Warlock Talent Build Guide
Introduction
Well, let's see here. I think, in total, I've spent well over a thousand gold in respecs on my warlock. It's taken me this many swaps to find a talent spec I 'prefer', and even then I'm currently on a different spec for honor reasons. I can't even get around to levelling an alt, because warlocks are simply put, my favorite class. They're abosutely one of the most diverse talent-wise out of any of the classes, and finding a specific talent specialization that 'fits you' can be hard. So, I've decided to share some of my experiences with the most common talent specs to try and give a helping hand to new and old warlocks alike.
-Elyvin
Choosing a Build: 1-59 Levelling
If you want to be 100% optimally effective, go affliction. Hands down, this is the best grinding talent build out there.
There are two fundamental problems with the demonology and destruction trees in PvE:
1.) You will get aggro. Even with a Voidwalker taunting, you will get aggro. This means that while you fight, you're getting wailed on (We can't frost nova/blink to get range), getting your spells interrupted, and overall taking more mana/health to kill a monster than someone who just throws a few DoTs and drain tanks the enemy with a succubus or VW out. This presents you with two options: You can kill slowly and take no damage (See: Holy priest killing speed), or kill quite faster and expect to take some damage. Fel Concentration allows you to do something called 'Drain Tanking'. You're taking hits while casting drain life; this means you're healing yourself and doing damage at the same time. An extremely good thing for grinding - no downtime is good downtime.
2.) Warlock DD spells slowly rank up in damage. By 60, two to three shotting a green monster with shadow bolts or immolation + conflagrate is quite common. At lower levels, however, they deal much less comparative damage. Warlock DoT spells stay fairly even, as does Drain Life. You're simply getting more bang for your buck utilizing the latter spells more than the former.
Keep in mind, it's not impossible to level up with a non-affliction build. However, you're setting yourself up for much more pain than is necessary. Fel Concentration, Siphon Life, Improved Life Tap, Nightfall... all of these are superb talents that increase your PvE effectiveness - much more so than the destruction and demonology equivalents.
Choosing a Build: Level 60
Essentially, the world is your oyster. Have fun and go crazy. Below is a list of the most common talent builds for warlocks, utilizing the better talents in the trees. There is room for variety - just don't go sacrificing Master Demonology for Fel Intellect or something like that.
Talent Build List
Dark Pact/Shadowburn
This is both an equally diverse specialization for both PvP and PvE. Dark Pact gives you a limitless mana supply, bottlenecked only by the amount of times you can hit that Dark Pact button. This also gets you shadowburn, which is one of our only insant cast direct damage spells. Damagewise, this is the middle ground spec. You don't have the sheer damage output of a SM/Ruin build, or the burst damage of Conflagrate; However, your shadow bolts are still fairly powerful. An added boon is Curse of Exhaustion, which is not only a life saver, but great for kiting/stopping players in their tracks.
Overall, this is just about 'the best' talent path to go for the grind up to 60. Fel Concentration makes life a lot easier, and when you get Dark Pact, your downtime becomes next to nothing. At 60, it still gives a good fight against the other specs for viability.
Soul Link/Shadowburn
Simply put, the best 1v1 PvP talent spec for warlocks. With about a 95% certainty, a Soul Link warlock is simply the best 1v1 character in the game to date, even with the 1.8 nerf to soul link. When you consider that once decently equipped, a warlock should have at least 5000 health, then factor in 30% damage absorption plus another 10% vs. melee or +60 to all resists vs. casters, it's just simply too hard to kill someone like that. While they're wailing away at your massive health reserve, your DoTs and other spells do the work for you.
Getting away from PvP, this isn't the strongest PvE spec, even if you choose the alternate route of ditching shadowburn for nightfall. The thing that keeps it afloat in PvE, though, is Master Demonologist. While Felhunter and Voidwalker are your two PvP pets with this talent, Succubus and Imp are your two PvE. Simply having the succubus out gives you a 10% damage bonus, equal to that of Shadow Mastery. If you're drawing too much hate, take out the imp for 20% threat reduction. Alternatively, you can also sacrifice the succubus with Demonic Sacrifice if the mobs are AEing too much for a pet to be in melee, so you get a 15% to your shadow damage. As you can see, the sheer versatility of this build is what makes it shine so much.
Overall, this is a good path to go for the PvP minded, or the mixed crowd. If you can't stand the thought of PvP, or are on your way up to sixty, I'd reccomend you to try out one of the other builds instead.
Soul Link/Nightfall
See the Soul Link/Shadowfall build for comments. The primary difference here is completely playstyle based - you exchange extra destructive power for safety and spike damage with this build.
Conflagrate
The closest to a mage we get. Sheer burst DPS in its purest form. This build trades in the defenses of Soul Link or Curse of Exhaustion for damage, damage, and even more damage. Between Soul Fire, Immolate + Conflagrate, Death Coil, and Shadowburn, you can take targets out before their healers even realize what is going on. The 'unload'ness of this build is also good if multiple monsters aggro you at once - you can take one out quickly and work on the rest.
The one place where a Conflagrate spec'd warlock begins to falter is in the endgame raids. So far from what we've seen, all of the large raid instances have been fire focused (MC/Onyxia/BWL), which means its monsters will have obscene resistances to fire, or they're just plain immune to it. Thanks to talents like Ruin and Devastation, you can still compete DPSwise with shadow bolts, though. Just don't expect to throw soul fires at Ragnaros.
Another point some players like to point out is that people decked out in MC gear will usually have an annoyingly high fire resist. While a minor issue, it's just that - a minor issue. If someone has more than 75 fire resist in their ordinary PvP gear, switch targets and move on. Simple as that.
Overall, this is a solid PvP talent spec, and a great one for instances and PvE. If you're a fan of seeing large numbers pop over someone's head in rapid succession, this is the build for you.
Shadow Mastery/Ruin
Conflagrate's evil brother. If Conflagrate is the King of Fire, then SM/Ruin is the Emporer of Shadow. Spamming shadow bolts is what it does best, and to devastating results. It has the plus of having both a defensive talent (CoEx) and a payload of damage to boot. It works wonders in PvP, and until we get new non-fire resistant endgame instances, it's the king of warlock raid damage.
There's not too much else to talk about here. Overall, it's strong like Conflagrate in PvP, but surpasses it in PvE. If you like seeing *really* large numbers pop over someone's head periodically, this spec is for you. Plus, it has a REALLY cool looking questable staff made for it
Master Demonologist/Ruin
An odd mix of the versitility of MD and the damage output of Ruin. Ideally, this build has its roots in PvE, as it misses about the two core talents for any warlock - Improved Corruption for instant cast Corruption, and Improved Lifetap, which is mostly optional but helps magnitudes in both PvE (especially without Dark Pact) and PvP. The general idea is that you're prepared for a wide berth of situations, but in the end, you ideally want the succubus out (or sacrificed) for the damage boost so you can pump out shadow bolts SM/Ruin style.
It's an alternative to SM/Ruin if you don't dig the affliction tree, or if you want some more options. This build is not reccomended for pre-60 characters - it requires both the Master Demonology and Ruin talents to be at full effectiveness, and lacks the PvE punch you will get from affliction going SM/Ruin.