Questions questions - but do you have the answers?

[sownu]

At 60, once you have at least ~250 spell power, the only reason to ever cast immolate is if you're conflag spec.

Some people like to play conflag. It's perfectly viable, really fun, and very bursty even if you have mid-ranged gear. I've always preferred to pvp as SM/Ruin, it's a combination of burst and survivability that appeals to me. But conflag is legitimate, moreso than SL at high gear levels.

Uhh for dps conflag is shit. For burst or pvp sure, whatever.

I have 400sd, sm/ruin, and my immolate does 970 damage (initial + dot), shadowbolt does 900.

Even accounting for crits currently Immo does more damage per cast than sb if it stays for full dot duration. Maybe that changes with lot higher sd and crit numbers, idk where you pulled that 250 from.

[sownu]

Searing Pain is one of the most useless Warlock spells in Classic. Unless your shadow is locked, you've no real reason to cast it. For one it gives you threat you don't want, making it junk unless you're totally alone with no pet tanking. But it's designed for a deep Destruction build that uses purely fire... which no one goes for in Classic. It's all about shadow. Soul Fire is actually less useless since it's a big nuke you can pop on CCed targets.

Immolate is useful while leveling... but mostly junk at 60. It doesn't benefit from any of your Affliction talents or +shadow damage, meaning you probably have no talents in the thing. Again, without a deep Destruction build, you don't have the +fire to justify this spell. You may as well just Shadowbolt. If you're some kind of PvPlock using Soul Link, it might be of use for you in your offensively weak build. Other than that... probably not. I couldn't imagine using Immolate with Shadow Mastery or Demonic Sacrifice(which every Warlock has at least 1 of). No one goes past 21 in Destruction, meaning Immolate has no real place in max level builds, just like the Searing Pain.

this is 100% misinformation. NF/Conflag IS a thing, Deep Fire Destro IS a thing. Towards the middle of aq40 gearing, when all of your mages are fire, Fire Locks shine. please dont post unsubstantiated opinions based on what you think you know of the class

That's a thing but they dont shine at all in pve, unless you mean "kind of good but not really as good as ds/ruin or sm/ruin"