Scoop! Leaked notes at least partially accurate!

[Raelynn]

Then all you're saying is that Shadowbolt base damage is inferior to Fireball/Blast base damage, which I can tell by reading the spell statistics.  You can't just factor out resistance-lowering curses - they are part of the class abilities.

My observations suggest that negative resistances work in a mirror image of the way positive resistances work, which is unsurprising.  In other words, there's a percent chance to take normal damage, a percent chance to take 25% extra damage, a percent chance to take 50% extra damage, and so on.  It's not an easy calculation, but the effect is very significant.
Just start by talking Seduction.  It stops one humanoid, much like Polymorph (though you can poly beasts too).  Yeah, it needs a faster refresh, but that's not a deal-breaker.  When deciding how to apply CC, I've always considered Poly and Seduction to be identical.

Now, after that: say you need to CC another humanoid, or beast, or whatever, really.  Fear is there; no cooldown, so you can CC something else as long as the area's mostly clear.  Sure, there are lots of situations where you can't fear, but mages get nothing other than Polymorph - even a half-crippled CC like fear is one more than mages get.

Say you run into demons and elementals.  Mages throw their hands up in frustration; warlocks have Banish.  If there's more than one demon the warlock can Banish one and Enslave another; you only need it to last five minutes, and even the current form does that.

Of course whether CC is good or not depends on the situation.  Everything, at its heart, depends on the situation.  But we don't say that nothing is better or worse than another because of that.  In a general sense, Warlocks can handle a greater variety of enemies and also stop more of them.  In the worst case scenario, the only thing a Warlock can do is send the succubus to seduce - generating the same result as a mage doing all he or she can.
The mage's AoE is better, no doubt.  But, given the comparable damage, if you can address the drawbacks, warlocks can handle the role of primary AoE just fine.  There a lot of ways to do this: have a paladin spam low-aggro heals, or drink a fire protection potion, or pick up a secondary healer. 

The damage Hellfire does to the warlock is virtually negligible in a raid situation, where you might have multiple primary and secondary healers.  Hellfire's DPS is more than enough to make sure aggro stays on the warlock. 

Mage AoE is better.  But it's not better enough to compensate for the warlock's superiority in every other area.  Warlocks are just better than mages; they can solo more things and they bring more to the table in a group situation.  This isn't a call to buff or nerf anything, but even those warlocks who recognize that their class isn't gimped seem to have trouble on this point.  "We aren't as good as a mage" is an awfully baseless complaint.
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Only comments I have are that I've heard fire protection potions do nothing to stop Hellfire damage, but I could be wrong about it. It's only hearsay.

The other comment is that Mages have a one up on warlocks when it comes to beasts. You can polymorph beasts but warlocks can do nothing to them. I just wanted to point that out, since it seemed to be missed. :)

Warlocks to me seem to be as good as mages, but in different ways. Each has their own uses and they tend to be slightly better than the other in those uses. Sure you can use a warlock for AoE, but they aren't as good. Likewise, it seems that warlocks might have an upper hand in cc as you put it, but that doesn't mean mages can't do it. It's all a tradeoff.

I personally don't think the class is all that gimped. There are a few major points that need to be addressed, as in soul shards (comparable spells that don't require reagents suddenly need reagents for warlocks, time to farm them, space they take), the 8-debuff limit, and the myriad of bugs that are around concerning things such as talents not working, spells not working correctly, and pet pathing.