Blood Tap: macro or unmacro'd?

[Deleted]

I'm curious about it. Is there any possibility to prove that you should use Blood Tap unmacro'd ?
And with prove i mean Numbers, and not what ppl think you should use.

[JGWentworth]

dps, tanking, pve, pvp, spec?

[Deleted]

I'm curious about it. Is there any possibility to prove that you should use Blood Tap unmacro'd ?
And with prove i mean Numbers, and not what ppl think you should use.

Yes, there is a possibility. There's always a possibility. You should give it a try and tell us how you get on with it.

[Deleted]

depends what spec you're talking about... And no, don't have numbers just common sense.

Blood - Blood tap can give you extra Death Strikes on demand for high-damage phases, shouldn't macro it as it's mainly for survival so use the charges when you need.

2H frost - Macroing it to frost strike means you can forget about it, theoretically you might have less time with unsynchronised runes, you'll always have a death rune available for soul reaper and you'll have more runes to use on howling blast during AOE phases. Unfortunately it just doesn't return as many runes as RE and all your runes can be used on obliterates anyway. Macroing blood tap removes the RNG nature of rune returns but if you want to get the most out of Blood Tap, as usual (unless it's a purely patchwerk fight) then you'll need to bank some charges for burn phases.

DW frost - Blood tap's most beneficial with DW IMO. Use unholy runes then return one as a death rune, profit... if you have BT macrod to frost strike then doing this effectively is nigh on impossible... Macro it to howling blast and you'll get better results.

Unholy - Apples and oranges with unholy - less of your damage comes from runes and you don't use death coil as much as you use frost strike as frost. Suppose you could macro BT to death coil but seeing as most of your runes come back as death runes anyway after using festering strike then it hardly seems worth it - might aswell bank charges for when you want to convert BB/FF manually after depletion and/or burn phases.

[Terahertz]

Why would you pick Blood Tap if you cba to manually use it? Does it net more runes than the other two choices or something? :O

And vmagik is right about unholy. They store their runic power more often to quicky set up Shadow Infusion procs for their pet.

[Schizoide]

Why would you pick Blood Tap if you cba to manually use it? Does it net more runes than the other two choices or something? :

Same runic return as RC, but gives a death rune.

[Deleted]

Same runic return as RC, but gives a death rune.

Not exactly.

Casting 10 Frost Strikes with RE would restore 4,5 runes (in theory, rng can change this a lot) while BT would grant 20 stacks which would be 4 runes.

BT has less rng and you can store your stacks for on demand burst via death runes, but RE will restore more runes.

[Schizoide]

Read closely, I didn't say it was the same as RE.

[Ragethorn]

As a Blood Tank, I have it macroed to Rune Strike. Works great, imo.

[Soisoisoi]

Do NOT macro it as any spec. Ever.

If you're macro-ing it as DPS you will be better off speccing into one of the other talents. If you're doing it as Blood, you're an idiot, simply. It's an amazing tool to save up your runes and you're wasting so much potential with it 'on auto'. The whole idea is to have it on-demand rather than passive. If you have it in a macro, it's less Rune regen, and again you might as well spec elsewhere.

[Deleted]

Do NOT macro it as any spec. Ever.

If you're macroing it as DPS you will be better off speccing into one of the other talents. If you're doing it as Blood, you're an idiot, simply. It's an amazing tool to save up your runes and you're wasting so much potential with it 'on auto'.

While I'm inclined to agree with you from a "don't be a nab, manually control it" POV there doesn't seem to be any drawbacks to macroing it to HB for DW frost as long as you're still monitoring how many stacks you have and using it at the "right" time (converting unholy runes)

[Schizoide]

Like most statements that include an unqualified "ever", this is of course wrong.

[Soisoisoi]

While I'm inclined to agree with you from a "don't be a nab, manually control it" POV there doesn't seem to be any drawbacks to macroing it to HB for DW frost as long as you're still monitoring how many stacks you have.

Soul Reaper would be one example, if SR is coming off of CD and you're using HB you might just end up using those Blood Charges on another HB. You can watch it sure, but you have to realise most people who are going to macro it aren't going to bother with extra effort (no matter how little it is).

Like most statements that include an unqualified "ever", this is of course wrong.

Going to assume you just like macroing it and don't want to bring anything useful to the discussion. *nods*

[Ragethorn]

It's basically the same regen as RC, but gives back death runes instead. I don't see the problem.

[Irefusetodie]

For PvE, I have it macro'd into Soul Reaper(DW frost). For PvP, I have it macro'd into Soul Reaper, Strangulate, Necrotic Strike, IT, and Dark Transformation when I'm playing Unholy. I don't have it macro'd for Blood.

[Shiira]

While I'm inclined to agree with you from a "don't be a nab, manually control it" POV there doesn't seem to be any drawbacks to macroing it to HB for DW frost as long as you're still monitoring how many stacks you have and using it at the "right" time (converting unholy runes)

There will be times when you want to howling blast but don't want to blood tap, and there will be times when you want to blood tap but don't want to howling blast.

Also, the type of rune that you convert with blood tap doesn't matter.

A couple of not often appreciated advantages to blood tap are that you get to pool extra resources to use during cooldowns or procs, and you can soak more resources with anti magic shell without wasting them. You lose both of these advantages if you macro blood tap, but if you're outside of the top 1% that doesn't really matter.

[Schizoide]

It's still better than RC, although not necessarily better than RE and definitely not better than non-macroed if you have the temperament to micromanage your stacks.

[Irefusetodie]

For PvE, I have it macro'd into Soul Reaper(DW frost). For PvP, I have it macro'd into Soul Reaper, Strangulate, Necrotic Strike, IT, and Dark Transformation when I'm playing Unholy. I don't have it macro'd for Blood.

Let me add that I still have Blood Tap bound independently no matter the spec or situation. I just find it much easier, and quicker, to get off an ability that I need asap with a BT macro.

[Deleted]

Also, the type of rune that you convert with blood tap doesn't matter

Really? I was under the impression that, to maximise DPS as DW you either had to:

a.) game runes with RE, keeping one unholy rune available at all times so RE would return DD/FF or,
b.) With BT, use your unholy runes and make sure you return one of them as a death rune, doing the same with plague leech - frankly if you're not doing that then there doesnt seem to be any point in using Blood tap over RE. BT prioritises converting unholy runes anyway so you're not wasting anything, you're just making sure you have 5 blood tap stacks available for after you use DnD/OB/PS

[Shiira]

Converting unholy runes won't be any more of a damage increase than converting frost runes.

You can't howling blast with an unholy rune, but you can't howling blast with an empty frost rune either. Converting unholy runes isn't making them any more useful overall, you will still end up with a rune you can't spend on howling blast roughly every 9 seconds regardless of how many times you have blood tapped your unholy runes.

Honestly I don't know why blood tap sims better in patchwerk conditions, it just does. Apart from the fact that it gives you resources non-randomly when you want them there are a couple of real encounter advantages that I have mentioned already, but other than that I just don't know.