After Saedo posted the leaked talent calculator from MMO Champion that outlines the talent "changes" for Cataclysm. I started rooting around a bit just to see what things might look like.

Of course, almost all of this could change, I haven't gotten a good feel for what the mastery system might add or tweak talents, but here are some very preliminary thoughts.

1. Not much change in any of the three trees.

2. Unless they really make Elemental shaman's Totem of Wrath competitive, there's not much change likely in terms of having a DP warlock in most raids. We're just going to be a fixture until ToW competes. ToW will certainly see some buffing in Cata, the question is if it will be so substantial of a buff as to make the DP warlock ineffective. I'm guessing not, or at least not for long. With that said, I'm envisioning this sort of talent tree as a demo-lock. Getting down to devastation could be a nice boost, how valuable this is, though, depends on how well crit scales and how this works with the mastery system.

3. I hate to say it, but a secondary spec that seems, at least initially to be a winner in the new xpac could well be a shift back to destro. The main change I see here would be Destro locks would finally have the ability to get down to master conjurer. I envision something like this. Also, the destro tree might find itself with a bit more flexibility to pick up talents which could potentially buff various pet utilities. If they're hoping to make pets more interesting in Cata, the most flexible spec here to use a variety of talented pets might well be destro.

4. Affliction looks to be about the same as it's always been. I see the big change there as a spec down to devastation (same as demo). Bottom line though, in order to get down to devastation, the afflock ends up taking a lot more unuseful talents along the way. Something's probably going to change here...I think that an affliction spec basically requires 5 points to get devastation, might not be the best option.

So, I'm sure lots will change. I hope so. These changes seem really run-of-the-mill for us at the moment.