So, Patch 5.1 has been out for a week, and the complaints are flying faster than my health pool when I pvp.  Blizzard received some harsh questioning from a variety of posters about supposed "ninja nerfs" from many of the classes.  The argument that Blizzard purposefully hides these changes in order to avoid upsetting a large number of players seems a little tunnel-visioned, but there is no doubt that players choose, not only their play style, but also their class, based on perceived balance issues, and, as in any venue, when facts that affect major issues surface, especially if it appears that there was an attempt to hide them, people become upset.

Fortunately,  Daxxarri, a community manager, clarified what happened...

Daxxari owned up to any mistakes that he might have made (though, from having a data compilation job on the side myself, I understand how frustrating it is when you've tons of data thrown at you and told the equivalent of "figure out what is important and send it to X").  

The WoW website now correctly shows many (if not all) of the important updates/changes that might affect your class.  While most seems fairly innocuous, like the gateway being on click and the 'lock minor glyph that reverses that, others are not so pleasant, especially for our pvp brothers and sisters.

The seemingly least significant changes, that "Dark Soul is now categorized as a Curse," and that the Auras of Elements and Enfeeblement "can now be dispelled as Magic effects," will give pvping some frustration, the biggest groan seems to be coming from the change to Chaos Bolt.  Instead of a gigantic, burstastic explosion of gibbed player bits, the Grimoire of Sacrifice will be switched to a 25% dot done over 3 seconds.  Blizz says that "This damage over time behaves in a manner similar to a Mage's Ignite, where each new damage over time effect rolls into the previous one. This means that no damage is lost if a new damage over time component is re-applied before an existing one fades," which begs the question of a dps loss compared to the previous method.  Back to watching clipped dots, it seems.

 Kil'jaeden's Cunning received a boon - no cast time penalty - but it comes with one little caveat: we're now slowed by 30% at 2 ticks.  PvE will have an acceptable way around this, but pvp is not so lucky.  

In all, though, warlocks seem be be getting off relatively easily.  We didn't lose any major damage dealing, we didn't accrue any major penalties, and we still get to suck out souls.