Sort of. The implication is that it'll return in a highly nerfed form. My guess is it'll get the abilities back, but keep the very low duration.

For me the more important news there is that they intend on making pets less of a liability. I personally enjoy throwing Curse of Elements up on a boss and going fire machine gun with my Imp by my side. The problem being that as soon as a mob so much as breathes at the imp funny it keels over.

If they're changing this, I'd be absolutely thrilled.

Everyone will after they fix/nerf downranking in Wotlk.

A major concern or most warlocks has long been the lack of any realistic escape method vs rogues and warriors.
This has been addressed...to some extent...in the form of Demonic Circle.

It's worth mentioning that warriors lose their passive fear resist from Iron Will AND active fear defense from deathwish.
Both directly benefit warlocks, giving us at least *some* chance at pulling off an escape.
Also curse of recklesness no longer makes targets fear-immune, which is overall a good thing. Bad for those who like to use it to controll their feared mobs.

There's a few additional ways to return health to ourselves and with Soul Link at a much more accessible place (albeit a little weaker), I think locks are in for a good time.

Firestone really makes me want to poke my eyes out with dental drills, though,

What precisely is wrong with soul shard management now? Soul shards is rather a class-defining ability of warlocks, and a pretty cool aspect IMO. I enjoy having to juggle a reagent, believe it or not, and with the advent of some rather large soul shard bags it's not so bothersome anymore really.

What I would absolutely like to see is an AFFLICTION-based skill using soulshards. It's needed, seeing as how affliction has the improved drain soul talent, but no skill to use all the heaps of shards one can make with it. Yes, there's shadowburn, but one doesn't neccessarily want to sink 11 points into destruction, and without some of the deeper destro talents it won't hit for very much anyway.

I also wouldn't mind shards popping out of any mob, high OR low level. Possibly there could be a percentage, say 10% of a shard popping out of a grey mob, 100% out of a green mob, 50% chance of 2 shards from a yellow mob, 10% chance of 3 shards from an orange mob and 50% chance for 3 from a red mob. :P

...Just a thought.

When we hit 80, over 80% of the game will not yield a single shard with current rules, that's gonna be a bit of a headache, particulary if we're boosting lowbies in an oldworld dungeon etc.

Ooh, my hunter wants a Canine mount!!

Afflictor proves that he's against having your cake and eating, it too.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with desiring deep, fulfilling gameplay mechanics and wanting it to be pretty at the same time. Whatever makes you think that rank 1 drain soul is anything but a little more efficient is misguided. It isn't some kind of superhuman buff that each and every warlock should play with or l2warlock.

I could go on, but at the risk of sounding like you, I'll simply end with...

Get over yourself.

I'm sorry Aaron as an actual raiding warlock I pretty much agree completely with afflictor. I could care less what the color of spells I never use are. To me that is the bigger issue. A complete lack of options. The only difference between warlocks in a raid is how many points they've spent in healthstone.

As for Soul Shards:
When any class goes to raid they need to bring the needed reagents. We get off super easy compared to the rest of the classes. Ours come for free and we can resupply in most instances. You should be killing basilisks to get the mats for our dps food buff anyways. If anything we should complain because they don't stack like every other reagent does. Really if you are showing up to something you know is going to be multiple tries not having your all bags loaded is dumb.

Speaking of dumb, 600 mana vs. 55 mana for the same effect?

I mostly agree with what afflictor said...

The green fire. Mostly a whine by some people. As it currently stand, Incinerate, Soul Fire, Rain of Fire and Hellfire are the only fire spells I can think of with a visible fire animation, and all of them are incredibly situational. Yeah, it would be kinda cool, but so what? I use incinerate if I get locked outta shadow damage. There are a few mobs with a fire vulnerability where it is fun to try incinerate, but that is rare. Soul Fire I use on Leo, but thats about it. Hellfire and Rain of Fire I almost never use since we have Seed of Corruption.

Once the expansion hit, I expect to see a lot more fire locks, and I may even try out a fire destro build, but I won't whine if my fire isn't green

Drain Soul. 99% of my time as a warlock I have used rank 1. Once I got to late SSC/TK gear levels as destro, I started having issues farming shards. If I crit/crit, I would 2 shot pretty much anything I was farming for shards. When this started happening regularly, I would resort to one SB, then DoTs, and use a top rank drain soul. It was slow, and it was painful, but eventually they died and I got a shard. It was better than 2 shotting something and not getting my shard.

The change I would like to see for Drain Soul is make it similar to Shadowburn, but without the damage. Let me put a debuff on the target, and if it dies in 5 seconds, I get a shard, This would let me continue to farm as destruction without having to completely change my tactics. It would be nice to have this, but its not game or class breaking if they don't

Personally, I am looking forward to trying a heavy Affliction build when 3.0 hits, but will try the fire destro, will try heavy demo and who knows what else.

To sum up jtrain's complaints:

Instant Corruption: Ain't gonna happen.
Pet Scaling: addressed.
Demon Armor: completely addressed. You may not like what they did, but they made it a viable spell again. Warlocks will have to juggle their armor at times. Sounds good to me.

Inferno/Doomguard Viability: Nobody cares. They were gimmick pets. I'd rather see Improved Enslave Demon increase the length of time a demon is enslaves, or reduce the chance for the demon to break early. That would be a much bigger improvement.

Class-Specific Epic Flyers, Green Fire, Firestone are all irrelevant.

well if we arent getting instant corruption, they should at least give us the spelldam coeffiecient of a spell with the full cast time then instead of treating it like an instacast even if you dont talent for instant corruption. Blizz needs to make up their mind. If its a insta cast spell, dont make us spend talents to use it as instant. if its not an instacast, let it scale with spelldam like every other spell with a cast time.