Life tap nerfs?

[gherkin]

Lets pretend for a moment that you had zero spirit and 100000 spell power.

Life tap would read: Life Tap - Now converts [ 1.5 x 0 + 1490 ] health into [1490 + 100000 * 0.5 ] mana.

Expanding this: Life Tap - Now converts 1490 health into 51490 mana.

And we're bitching... why?

[Screwtape]

Lets pretend for a moment that you had zero spirit and 100000 spell power.

Life tap would read: Life Tap - Now converts [ 1.5 x 0 + 1490 ] health into [1490 + 100000 * 0.5 ] mana.

Expanding this: Life Tap - Now converts 1490 health into 51490 mana.

And we're bitching... why?

Because we can.

[Deleted]

i wouldnt call this a nerf

Because we can.

We warlocks can be evil for no reason...

[gherkin]

Because we can.

Touche!

[ComputerNerd]

We warlocks can be evil for no reason...

We are warlocks, it is what we do.

Though I will admit that it did not quite register what the result of that change was until this thread I do find it unusual to be hitting us this hard for having to still take up gear with a substantial amount of spirit on it.
I have several, though I can assume that now would be the time to start getting rid of them should that be an option and changing the purified dreadstones to runed cardinal rubies or maybe even sp/stamina for the purposes of the meta.

[Nalyd]

1) This is just dumb. The only time LT has been a ever been a serious liability is on HM Anub. Also if the hp cost didn't scale from spirit, I'm going to go out on a limb & say it would scale with SP as well, which means you would probably lose even more health than the current PTR version.
2) wut?
3) You do realize that, that is actually pretty decent for a secondary stat. And it's huge for demo.

New patch notes on Warlock's Life tap [http://www.mmo-champion.com/]

# Life Tap - Now converts [ 150% of Spirit + 1490 ] health into [1490 + Spell Power * 0.5 ] mana. (Old - [300% of Spirit + 1490] health into [1490 + Spirit * 3 Mana]

[Rayse]

Lets pretend for a moment that you had zero spirit and 100000 spell power.

Life tap would read: Life Tap - Now converts [ 1.5 x 0 + 1490 ] health into [1490 + 100000 * 0.5 ] mana.

Expanding this: Life Tap - Now converts 1490 health into 51490 mana.

And we're bitching... why?

Because Demo is still forced to stack Spirit. Afflic and Destro are going to see their HP->Mana conversion ratio get better and better the closer to BiS they are (less health lost, more mana gained). Demo is at best going to see about the same (worse than the rest) ratio throughout as their gear scales up, because we keep stacking health losses from more Spirit at about the same rate we stack on mana gains from SP gains (counting FA, GoLT and the usual Spi:SP ratios on gear).

[gherkin]

Because Demo is still forced to stack Spirit. Afflic and Destro are going to see their HP->Mana conversion ratio get better and better the closer to BiS they are (less health lost, more mana gained). Demo is at best going to see about the same (worse than the rest) ratio throughout as their gear scales up, because we keep stacking health losses from more Spirit at about the same rate we stack on mana gains from SP gains (counting FA, GoLT and the usual Spi:SP ratios on gear).

If you have 1000 Spirit, thats a 3000 health loss. About the same as what you have now with 500 spirit, so this is net gain for Demonology warlocks - you take less health to get the same amount of mana.

But mana has also been buffed. Fully tricked out a Demo lock could have 4500+ spell power sustained, which is 4k mana returned - 30% more than you get now. Double net gain.

[Mystearica]

New patch notes on Warlock's Life tap [http://www.mmo-champion.com/]

# Life Tap - Now converts [ 150% of Spirit + 1490 ] health into [1490 + Spell Power * 0.5 ] mana. (Old - [300% of Spirit + 1490] health into [1490 + Spirit * 3 Mana]

Your point being? They're buffing LT & you want to say that spirit is some how magically useless all of a sudden.

[Nalyd]

Well I've never played or even looked into demo, so I don't know what spirit can do for you, but I know with glyph of spirit tap and imp. fel armor you can convert about 56% of your spirit in spell power, correct? But what other benefits does spirit provide? Wouldn't it instead be better to have 1000 spell power than 1000 spirit, seeing how spirit would only give you 560 spell power? This is why I am confused why you would ever want spirit, especially now that spirit doesn't affect how much mana you get from LT, and instead damages you more. That's like a ret pally wanting to get AP instead of strength.

[gherkin]

Well I've never played or even looked into demo, so I don't know what spirit can do for you, but I know with glyph of spirit tap and imp. fel armor you can convert about 56% of your spirit in spell power, correct? But what other benefits does spirit provide? Wouldn't it instead be better to have 1000 spell power than 1000 spirit, seeing how spirit would only give you 560 spell power? This is why I am confused why you would ever want spirit, especially now that spirit doesn't affect how much mana you get from LT, and instead damages you more. That's like a ret pally wanting to get AP instead of strength.

The choice is not Spirit vs SP. The choice is Spirit vs Haste vs Crit. Given how Demonic Pact works, you always want Spirit.

Spell Power is still what you gem/enchant for of course.

[rabbimojo]

...
Must I go on? Blizz, please stop giving warlock's spirit, it's not working.

Request granted. Check your mailbox between now and Cata release. ?_?

In any case, it's still scaling from a stat and buffs that you could instead just not scale at all from.
If you don't want to take advantage of it, then don't.

This slightly reduces spirit's scaling (worth keeping in mind spirit => sp => a bit of LT scaling anyways), and slightly increases SP's scaling. That seems reasonable. Will be a nice little buff for demo too.

[Mystearica]

Well I've never played or even looked into demo, so I don't know what spirit can do for you, but I know with glyph of spirit tap and imp. fel armor you can convert about 56% of your spirit in spell power, correct? But what other benefits does spirit provide? Wouldn't it instead be better to have 1000 spell power than 1000 spirit, seeing how spirit would only give you 560 spell power? This is why I am confused why you would ever want spirit, especially now that spirit doesn't affect how much mana you get from LT, and instead damages you more. That's like a ret pally wanting to get AP instead of strength.

As gherkin said, it's not Spirit vs SP, its Spirit vs Crit & Haste.

I still use spirit even as affliction using Dark Pact, which scales off SP not spirit.
Crit & Haste are indeed better than spirit, but spirit is still decent by how much of it is turned it to SP for us.
I'd much rather have haste/spirit gear be a viable option than be pigeon holed into only being able to use haste/crit gear, especially when you look at reality & realize that the bis gear still has a RNG drop rate plus the competition of every caster & healer in your raid.

[Nalyd]

The choice is not Spirit vs SP. The choice is Spirit vs Haste vs Crit. Given how Demonic Pact works, you always want Spirit.

Spell Power is still what you gem/enchant for of course.

Okay this makes a lot more sense now. I've always looked at it as SP vs Spirit vs Haste vs Crit. That's why I've never liked spirit because I just felt like it was a bad substitute for SP.

[gherkin]

Okay this makes a lot more sense now. I've always looked at it as SP vs Spirit vs Haste vs Crit. That's why I've never liked spirit because I just felt like it was a bad substitute for SP.

Blizzard controls your character - they control approximately how much spell power you could possibly have at any given point. More is gained by simply getting a higher iLVL.

So when comparing gear, gems, and enchants, you should always factor in Spell Power. But when comparing raw stats alone you should never factor in Spell Power because it will always be there. Haste, Hit, Crit, or Spirit/Mastery may not.

[Urgganzish]

This tested as destruction specc'd into Souleech - 0/13/58

One tap gives me 4200 mana back this is good, i tested on target dummy for a period of 15 minutes of total DPS, and made it a point to tap at or around 9k mana, with immolate Dot critting constantly and the less frequent lifetapping, Sustained DPS went up remarkably, i was able to sustain 7.9k dps on Target dummy for a total damage of 4.3million, same test before the life tap change during taps i would drop 400-500 dps.

So far really liking the change.

Edit: looks like Lifetap is dipping into spirit as well, new numbers would be 3200 mana per tap instead of 4200, this is a 900 mana increase overlive which is still pretty decent.

[scandore8472]

Because Demo is still forced to stack Spirit.

No we aren't, pDPS demo gear has almost no spirit on it. And unless you're in a serious hard core raiding guild, I wouldn't bother with rDPS gear because half of it will become healer gear.

[Gerian]

No we aren't, pDPS demo gear has almost no spirit on it. And unless you're in a serious hard core raiding guild, I wouldn't bother with rDPS gear because half of it will become healer gear.

If you're demo for pDPS you're already doing it wrong.

[evan_s]

I would be very surprised if life tap goes live as is. Having the amount of health consumed scale based on one stat and the amount of mana returned based on another just doesn't make any sense at all.

[harky]

No we aren't, pDPS demo gear has almost no spirit on it. And unless you're in a serious hard core raiding guild, I wouldn't bother with rDPS gear because half of it will become healer gear.

So, you're going to nerf yourself now because you want better stats months and months from now? Nice. pDPS Demo continues to be full of fail. You gain 50-100 DPS and lose 20-30 SP off DP in exchange. It's only worthwhile if all you do is 10s.