I decided to write this to help answer any gear questions for Warlocks in 3.1. For starters their are 4 major specs right now for Ulduar warlocks. These are:
1)Deep Fire Destro
2)Deep Affliction
3)FG/Ember
4)Meta/DP
The first two are straight forward in their spec and style of play:
1)Deep Fire Destro. (3/14/54)
Is a good single target DPS spec with high outputs on fights like Kologarn, Auriaya, and Hodir. It relies on 4 spells for the majority of the damage.
Chaos Bolt
Incinerate
Conflagrate
Immolate
The Glyphs i currently use for this spec are
Glyph of Chaos Bolt
Glyph of Conflagrate
Glyph of Life Tap
The opening rotation is quite simple and involves a deep understanding of your haste rating and buffs but is simply put
Imm-Inc-LT-Con-CB-Inc(3-4 times)-re app Imm-LT-Con-CB-Inc(3-4 times) then rinse and repeat from re app imm.
The pet to use for this spec is obviously the imp for the buff that he can apply.
2)Deep Affliction
This spec is great for boss fights but has good use in trash dps situations.
It doesnt have much of a rotation but is more of watching timers tick and reapplying DoT's as necessary. The most important spells are
Curse of Agony
Corruption
Unstable Affliction
Haunt
These need to stay up at all times to maximize DPS
The glyphs used in this spec are
Glyph of Corruption
Glyph of Haunt
and Glyph of Life Tap or Glyph of Curse of Agony
3)FG/Ember
The most popular DPS spec for Demonology
runs down the demo tree to get Summon Felgaurd
AND
runs down the destro tree picking up the talents from Deep Destro(except you will get Imp. SB) till you finish getting Emberstrom
Drawbacks to this spec is that for maximum dps you have to get an extra 3% hit now because you will have no points for Suppression.
The rotation is straight forward until 35%.
Imm>Corrupt>SB>SB>SB>Imm>SB>Corrupt
Then you will just rinse and repeat
After 35% Decimate comes into play
Decimate reads that all SB or Inc that hit the target below 35% make your next Soul Fire 70% faster and costs no Soul Shard. So this means that every other SB you will pop Soul Fire and weave that into your rotation looking more like this
Imm>Corrupt>SB>SB>SF>SB Repeat this and tweak for haste as needed.
4)Meta/DP
This is more of a raid buffing replacement for a Elemental Shamans ToW. Based on the Warlocks +SP during the raid it can actually out perform a ToW.
This spec provides 10% of the Warlocks SP to the raid whenever his pet critically hits the target for 12 seconds. With your pets crit being quite high in this spec that can see an up time of 90% or more.
If the Warlock fully buffed has 3kSP which is feasible in Ulduar. Then this buff will provide better buff to the raid than a ToW. The upside to this is also a better utilization of Bloodlusts and a ability to buff ones pet much like Beast Mastery Hunters.
GEAR CHOICES
In all of your gear choices Spell Power is a key factor once you are hit capped you will go then for Haste Rating (until around 15-16%) then you will stack Crit Rating on your gear. If you need to gem Go For 19SP in any slot unless the bonus is ~+6 to haste or crit then go a hybrid 9SP8Int or 9SP8spirit to get the socket bonus. Also for Trinkets you want to go for Eye of the Broodmother/Illustration of Dragon Soul AND Scale of Fates/Elemental Focus Stone(if you arent hit capped)
OK I got a question for you since I would like to do some alt-raids on my Warlock from time to time.
I'd like to keep Felguard for the most part, since he's my sexy pet. So obviously since I don't have the gear for Meta yet, I'd need to go Felguard/Emberstone. I would love if you could give me an example spec of how it would work. All my theory crafting is going off of pre-3.1 when Decimate was not available and the new Improved Shadow Bolt was not available either.
After tonight's performance, I give up on my Warlock for raiding...I did horrible.
Sooner or later I'll get my Shaman up to 80, probably the only class I can play correctly it seems.
So sorry we didn't see or answer your post the other day. I noticed you were heavy demonology during last night's raid. IMO you should try affl or dest before you give up. Jinx/Telis hasn't been 80 for even a week and he was able to get damn close to 2k dps as destro.
Like any class/spec, it takes time and patience to squeeze the most dps out of it. You can ask any of the warlocks in the guild for tips, they will either know the answer or know someone who does. Look at the other warlock specs for ideas also.
You spent the time to level to 80, it would suck to not raid the toon. I guess I can handle another warlock cutting in on my loot :P
Demonology is still a very viable raiding build, but you have to get your timings and pet control perfect. I raided with the spec after my Paladin became my main in BC, and I still crushed the meters.
That said, I am a big fan of Affliction when you start raiding. Despite everything Blizzard has done, it still scales the best with lower tier gear.
If I even raid with my Warlock again I'll try something else. I like Demonology, but I use it mostly for soloing (which my other DS spec is even more tailored for since I got the damage reduction talents also). I'll attempt using Affliction and Destro at least once before I give up I suppose. Demonology is alright if I get to the 35% mark because then I can pump out Soulfires like a machine gun, but it's lackluster until then.
Oh and I was never planning on raiding with Heigan anyways, he's more of my PvP character. Once I get my Shaman to 80 I'll probably only use Heigan to PvP. Only 38 more levels to go...
I've been raiding with an afflication build for awhile now and it has a number of things going for it: good dps, great survivability and fairly easy rotation (especially now that Soul Siphon was removed).