Warlocks used to be somewhat similar. All three specs would keep up three DOTs and then fill the time between refreshing said DOTs with either Shadow Bolt or Incinerate (or, in the case of Demonology, both - depending on whether you got a Molten Core proc.)
Mists of Pandaria did a lot of things to revamp the way that talents and abilities worked. You see, while Cataclysm had seen a pretty big set of changes to the old talent-spec system, it still suffered from the same problems.
Essentially, here's how things used to work:
Most of the abilities that a class got were baseline - regardless of spec. The only abilities or passive effects (though there were very few baseline passive effects then) that were spec-specific were from talents. While Cataclysm had you officially choose your spec at ten and get several of these things immediately, the effect was that you had a hard cap on the number of key passive abilities as well as active abilities that any one spec could have.
Talents, of course, looked extremely different than they do now. Talents were all specific to one spec or another, and in order to unlock the more advanced ones, you had to invest additional talent points in your particular tree. Cataclysm forced you to invest enough points into a single tree to get its final talent before allowing you to go into other trees, but seriously, if you didn't play before Mists of Pandaria, the talent system back then would be utterly unrecognizable.
Because you could only have so many talented abilities, it meant that most had to be baseline. That meant that while a Protection Paladin was not going to be using a lot of healing spells, they still got the full complement of Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance.
The Mists system essentially changed it so that choosing one's spec would simply determine which abilities you got as you leveled up - and without the old talent tree system, you could make an arbitrary number of new passive effects and abilities for a particular spec. Talents, then, became something for the class, rather than the spec, and they've tried to make the choices interesting (usually with decent success, if you ask me.)
So: Warlocks.
This system allowed a class that had at one time been very homogenous to become radically different between its specs. Unlike, say, Mages, who had a clear elemental theme to at least distinguish the specs visually, Warlocks always struggled to make the specs distinct.
Now, however, they play almost like different classes.
Perhaps the key to this distinction is the introduction of new secondary resources. Soul Shards were always a Warlock mechanic, and while the Cataclysm change to turn them from physical objects that would take up one of your bag slots into something that was part of the UI made them a lot more convenient, they always kind of struggled for relevance.
So Soul Shards were played with to make them interesting for Affliction (in addition to their Cataclysm-era utility, Haunt was changed to function using them and the Nightfall proc, adding a little unpredictability to the spec, which is always good.) Meanwhile, Destruction and Demonology just tossed the Soul Shards out, getting their own resources.
Burning Embers allows Destruction to build up until they're ready to release a burst of incredibly powerful Chaos Bolts, and Demonic Fury allowed them to focus the Demonology spec entirely around what was always the coolest ability the spec had: Metamorphosis.
The talent revamp also allowed them to trim a huge amount of fat away from the class. Affliction retained all of its old DoTs, because it is, after all, the DoT spec of the DoT class (even its fillers are Channeled DoTs now - it's kind of ridiculous.) However, Destruction only has a single DoT now in the form of Immolate, and Demonology, while it does like to maintain both Corruption and Doom, really uses those as just one small piece of the puzzle.
The identities of each spec have always been there: Affliction's all about DoTs, Demonology is all about dealing damage with/as demons, and Destruction's all about nukes, but those identities had always been somewhat vague and unfocused. The new system makes these identities core to the experience of playing those specs.
These days, while I don't know if I'm all that good at it (my Warlock always has slightly disappointing DPS given the gear I have,) I enjoy playing the class a whole lot.
I think the model of this revamp could set a great precedent to make a clear distinction between specs, particularly of the other pure-DPS classes. The fact that a single spec could have an entirely different resource system (admittedly something they had done earlier with Balance Druids) allows a game with eleven (and hopefully more to come) classes to still make your playstyle feel unique.
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