GC on Life Tap - what a damn joke

[Inactivity]

Quoted from: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5150757347

We think the mana costs for Demonology feel pretty good and of course Destruction's mana works totally differently now. For Affliction, we agree that the mana costs are too high - possibly way too high. As some of the posters above pointed out, there is also a bug with some channeled spells, most notably Malefic Grasp, that charge an extra tick at the end. That isn't helping any.

We think Life Tap as a way of restoring mana works and has been a warlock staple for a long time. We just think Affliction locks on beta right now are spending too much of their time having to do it.

Honestly, what a damn joke. Honestly, the OP's concerns weren't even addressed, specifically

1) Life Tap no longer scales with gear in terms of mana return, but scales in terms of cost (with health increase). It needs to scale, in terms of return, with Intellect/Spell Power or even scale with health (such as the current version: a % of the health siphoned is returned as mana).

2) With the loss of Mana Feed (which, in my humble opinion, should be returned) we will be life-tapping more than ever. I'm not against this (since it reduces pet micromanagement/dependency) but we would need to have costs adjusted to make sure we don't do it too much, and don't spend literally all of our health doing it.

3) In Beta, right now I'm burning literally all of my health tapping on a dummy as demonology - something isn't right. The way I see it, for the most part DPS should not need to worry too much about mana compared to healers (where regeneration stats, i.e. Spirit, become required) and we should for the most part be self-sustaining with mana without too much effort spent on regeneration. Because let's face it, wanding while waiting on mana is just a shitty game.

[Bezoar]

I agree that the removal of mana feed is a bit lame, but to be frank, i dont really mind the way life tap works, Im used to it being a pain in the ass

[Gobuchul]

3) In Beta, right now I'm burning literally all of my health tapping on a dummy as demonology - something isn't right.

Yes, you're doing it wrong - you should be swapping into meta more often. If played right, demonology doesn't have to life tap at all while doing single target damage.

[Inactivity]

Yes, you're doing it wrong - you should be swapping into meta more often. If played right, demonology doesn't have to life tap at all while doing single target damage.

I'll admit I haven't devoted a ton of time into Beta rotations and mainly have been whacking a dummy without too much attention to detail (since half the time, it bugs/lags out for me anyway) - and I've only been hitting the 85 dummy since ostensibly the raid dummies are level 93 now (too many misses). Mana definitely hasn't been a concern to me while leveling, but that's since leveling carries so much downtime at this point it's almost ridiculous.

Until level cap, I will probably stick with Grimoire of Supremacy (least amount of micromanagement) as well as more passive talents, which I know is probably not optimal for endgame raiding also.

If that is the case, would Glyph of Fel Regneration be more beneficial? I've also been using Glyph of Life Tap for the most part, but I will probably remove that glyph except maybe for certain fights/situations.

[Jessicka]

Yes, you're doing it wrong - you should be swapping into meta more often. If played right, demonology doesn't have to life tap at all while doing single target damage.

If by 'played right' you mean not using any ability other than Demonic Slash while in Meta, then sure you can go a while without using Life Tap.

It doesn't change the fact that Soul Fires are costing almost half the returns of a Life Tap, at which point you will be casting it every 3rd spell in your execute.

[Hellfury]

I wouldnt mind to see Lifetap go for all specs, I think its a outdated mechanic and it has scalling issues like the OP of that thread pointed out.n If they decided for it to stay it should be not so frequent 2lifetaps eveyr 2mins is reasonable, 3lifetaps every 30sec like it is atm isnt.

Lets be frank, lifetap adds nothing. Class flavor? Yes, but pressing that button adds nothing, other classes have mana returns via procs mostly or CDs.

Lifetap always had been a problem but so far been masked by our selfhealing and SL passive mitigation, things that are just options via talents.

fact is <insert caster here> doing 40k, Aff/Demo Warlock doing 40k. But the aff/demo warlock has to spend mana to do DPS requiring more out of raid healing, If none of the warlock utility is needed and the RL has to make a unbiased choise, its easy to see what choise would be. Lifetap glyph helps a little becuase it will help prevent 1shots but in the end will just absorb that healing that could had went to someone else.

The scalling atm its bad bad bad. In sum the more HP you have the more expensive your lifetap will be but manawise it will be returning the exact same mana because the manapool is fixed but the HP isn't. Its a bad system

[Taros]

I actually like Life Tap as a mechanic, especially the Cataclysm version. I don't know why they need to change it at all.

[Inactivity]

I actually like Life Tap as a mechanic, especially the Cataclysm version. I don't know why they need to change it at all.

That's the problem - they are changing it by making it more punitive. And even if it looks fine in the current version at 85, keep in mind with scaling we'll just be eating more and more health, for less and less mana return.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

I'll admit I haven't devoted a ton of time into Beta rotations and mainly have been whacking a dummy without too much attention to detail (since half the time, it bugs/lags out for me anyway) - and I've only been hitting the 85 dummy since ostensibly the raid dummies are level 93 now (too many misses). Mana definitely hasn't been a concern to me while leveling, but that's since leveling carries so much downtime at this point it's almost ridiculous.

There is your problem, you're trying to make a judgement on warlocks without even fully learning the rotation. I haven't logged into beta for a while so I have no clue as to how mana management runs on demo right now. One more thing, bosses are always calculated as bosses in combat tables meaning it doesn't matter what level you are, it is always calculated as 3 levels above you.

[Inactivity]

There is your problem, you're trying to make a judgement on warlocks without even fully learning the rotation. I haven't logged into beta for a while so I have no clue as to how mana management runs on demo right now.

I'm making a judgement knowing the class and almost all of the rotation... I'm definitely not dumb and while I haven't done enough theorycrafting to create the sim, I know what I am talking about and am not dumb with using abilities totally wrong - as Jessicka put, it is possible to run out of mana.

By "not too much attention to detail" I do not mean I am spamming one ability, I just mean that unlike Live I am not using tons of add-ons/proc trackers as well as absolute attention to every proc/cooldown possible. In short, I'm still doing a very good rotation in Beta, just not as precisely as I would be in Live.

To be honest, if doing my current Beta rotation equals going OOM, then this class will be far harder (and worse) for casuals than it is in Live... since in Live I wouldn't be absolutely crippled and unable to do anything (as I am in Beta) with the small precision errors I'm making atm in Beta.

One more thing, bosses are always calculated as bosses in combat tables meaning it doesn't matter what level you are, it is always calculated as 3 levels above you.

I don't think this is always true, I'm 99% sure that there is a minimum of level 88 on the current dummies. But this is an easy check, I'll go hit one on a lowbie (say, my 80 priest) and see if I'm hitting it for what BlizzUI tells me I should be hitting 83 mobs for.

[edit]

9% spell hit 80 priest (92% chance to hit 83 mob) + 50 smites = 19 (38%) smites hitting. This, however, fits with the hit chance I would have against an 88 mob (37%). So yeah, wrong.

[Kathranis]

I like Lifetap. It's iconic for warlocks. My friend and I always used to describe warlocks to friends by saying you basically cast from your health bar. You life tap, you cast spells, you drain life. Rinse and repeat.

GC says that Affliction spells are costing too much mana currently, perhaps even way too much, and it's forcing players to life tap more than they would like.

And both Demonology and Destruction work completely differently from how they work on live.

Complaining like this about something that's still deep in development is just immature. Go post on the beta forums with some constructive feedback. Don't run around whining, it serves no purpose.

[Shiekyerbooty]

UH wtf....really ? why ?

sooooooooooo....instead of screwing our lifetap over, why don't they reduce the mana cost of the spells, .........duh

[Deleted]

Yes, you're doing it wrong - you should be swapping into meta more often. If played right, demonology doesn't have to life tap at all while doing single target damage.

And which way is the "right way"? I guess not the rotation Simcraft does atm, because that way you are running oom. I´m wondering if this "right way" is also the way to get the highest damage output.

[Protoman]

Life Tap is iconic true. As long as the lock has an easy way to get HP back they can balance the two. I was looking at how Destro can convert a burning ember into 15% HP with Ember Tap, making the two spells work off each other. Don't forget that T1 for locks gives you HP back thru your regular spells or a stronger, aoe version of drain life.

I will admit that it seems like alot more work then other classes who can usually just get mana back thru regular spells without much effort, plus some cd's. Like Elem gets mana thru their filler Lightning bolt, plus thunderstorm. Balance gets 15% back everytime they get a lunar/solar eclipse. Mages get mana thru spells, cds like mana gem and evo, and their T6 is all mana related.

So locks regen might be a little more complex, but you could call it a signature and "fun". I do understand the issue w/ Life Tap and how the HP cost will go up as gear gets better but if they made the HP cost static (like using base HP for example) then Life Tap would have less penalty as gear got better and easier to spam. Being a % of total HP might make the amount of HP consumed go up but it will still be a predictable % of your HP bar and your HP gained thru spells/abilities/cds will also be based on %HP.


@GC

He has a really bad habit of dodging the actual questions and replying to some minor detail instead of the actual issue. If he is going to respond he should take the time to actually give real feedback, I don't think anyone cares about mana cost since that's something you can easily adjust w/ the balance tweaks at the end of Beta. Something like what I posted would have made alot more sense lol.

[Deleted]

I actually like Life Tap as a mechanic, especially the Cataclysm version. I don't know why they need to change it at all.

This. With warlocks I agree demo and destro could use a look over, but GC said himself pre-MOP that he thought Afflicton was one of the most solid specs in the game, they seem to be changing far too much just for the sake of change.

They should have left lifetap as it was, along with quite a few other things imo.

[Inactivity]

Complaining like this about something that's still deep in development is just immature. Go post on the beta forums with some constructive feedback. Don't run around whining, it serves no purpose.

Go "constructively" read the damn post I linked before making a bitchy statement like that.

You'll see the OP made an excellent, 2-post-length, constructive post about why life tap is bad. And not just because affliction is bugged, but because

1) Scaling issues means life tap will cost more and more
2) Having to tap as much as we are, even outside of Affliction, means we will just be a burden to our healers
3) Drain Life doesn't even return the cost of Life Tap at higher gear scaling

And that's not all... chance are, before a "burn phase" you will want to top off, this can be a huge chunk of health. In Live I would spend about 60% of mana to top off... 75% is extreme.

A big fourth point too:

4) You can think that gear will go up making a higher absolute health cost "justifiable" for the same amount of mana, since healers are "supposed" to heal you more. But this means that if you go with a group with lower-geared healers (either a pug or a lesser-geared group), then the lock becomes nothing but a burden that would be better off replaced.

Also, think of this: Now that we are a burden to undergeared healers (and not much more), and since the more gear we have the more of a burden we become, from a raid-leading perspective, why the fuck should the lock deserve a single piece of gear before the healers are fully geared up? In fact, why do they belong on the roster at all then?

Now, instead of addressing these concerns, the only GC post we get?

"We think the mana costs for Demonology feel pretty good" and "We think Life Tap as a way of restoring mana works"

Ha!

[Jessicka]

UH wtf....really ? why ?

sooooooooooo....instead of screwing our lifetap over, why don't they reduce the mana cost of the spells, .........duh

The problem isn't Life Tap, for Demo it's Soul Fire. It costs 7.5% of Mana, whereas Life tap returns 20% of Mana. 2 Soul Fires, and there isn't enough mana from your last Life Tap to cast another. Saving up MC procs for Meta just means you'll loose Meta uptime, and thus the regen from using Fury instead.

I actually don't see much wrong in terms of scaling from a DPS perspective, as it means we'll still be using LT later in the content - that's absolutely fine, the mechanic in and off itself is fine. There could however be problems later in the tier from a healing perspective when running with lower geared healers having to heal more to offset the greater health cost.

[Hellfury]

For those that remenber Dark Pact late ICC when was more viable I actualy was a fan of that.

[Deleted]

I see little problem in the posted comment from the mentioned Blizzard community representative

[Hellfury]

I see little problem in the posted comment from the mentioned Blizzard community representative

Because even tho he answered the aff mana problem, he didnt addressed the bad scaling of lifetap present in beta atm