WotLK beta - Warlock demonology tree

Over the weekend, I spent some time on my level 70 warlock in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, exploring one of the two "starting" zones in Northrend, Borean Tundra, and doing some quests there. For the occasion I respecced from my cookiecutter raiding spec, destruction/demonic sacrifice, to a build that has most talents in the demonology tree. I've always liked the pet aspect of warlocks, and I've always leveled mainly as demonology, both pre-TBC, going from level 1 to 60, and in the first expansion from 60 to 70.

And I must say, I like the changes to the tree. First key change for me is Fel Synergy, finally something that can keep your pet alive without having to micro-manage it with Health Funnel. It should also help greatly when grouping/raiding, in situations when there's a lot of damage on the whole raid. It's not always easy to keep your pet alive in those cases and you lose a lot of damage doing so. In a lot of bossfights, demonology warlocks put their pet on the side, out of harms way, which makes you lose some of your abilities and hopefully thanks to this talent, you won't need to anymore.

Second highlight is Mana Feed, again a very nice talent that will keep your pet supplied with mana, preventing it to be OOM half of the fight.

A third talent that caught my eye is Demonic Pact, which is basically a spellcaster's version of the hunter Survival talent Expose Weakness, although it depends on the damage your pet is doing, rather than its owner. It's also a five point talent right now, compared to only three points needed for Expose Weakness, so we'll have to see if Blizzard changes it for release. But still, an excellent idea which increases the utility of a demonology warlock in raids and this should be a core talent in any raiding demonology build.

The icing on the cake is of course the 51-point talent Metamorphosis, the already-famous warlock "demon form". I'm not entirely sold on the usefulness of the talent yet, but it just looks too cool not to pick it up.

The only thing that got changed for the worse is Demonic Sacrifice, compared to the version that is now on live. As you can see it got changed from a 30 minute buff, depending on the type of pet you sacrifice, to a 20 second spell haste ability. It is very doubtful that this will be used a lot, and a Blizzard respresentative has already stated on the official forums that they are going to revert the changes, but will probably make the effect a little bit less powerful. Apparently, they want warlocks to use their pet wherever it's possible, as it wasn't their intension that warlocks sacrificed their sidekick for a buff as the best option everywhere. The idea behind Demonic Sacrifice, according to Blizzard, is to give warlocks something when it's not possible to use their pet. More information on a thread on the official beta forums. Fair enough I guess.

All in all I'm really fond of the changes to the tree, it looks like there's hope for a viable demonology spec that's also useful in raids.