Popularity of Life Tap and Mana Tap

[Anonymous1038853]

So, Deviance over on the official forums made a couple of strawpolls to inquire about the overall popularity (or perhaps more likely, the blatant lack thereof) of these mechanics. She evidently doesn't have an account here, and has requested that someone post them up here. So I'm just passing it along, to help reach a broader sample. You can find her thread here. As well, here is another notable thread on the subject matter. If you want to comment on these specific mechanics in this thread, please feel free to do so.

http://strawpoll.me/7058419
http://strawpoll.me/7058422

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[Baconeggcheese]

The thoughts nice, don't see the strawpolls getting any tangible amount of people for blizzard to care though. And even if they did its still a sample from only the people who post on forums and not representative of the player base at large.

I ***hate*** mana tap and have made some huge ass posts in the alpha forums, but the OP's post in that thread is hard to read. There's so much unnecessary inflammatory comments that make it hard to take it as serious constructive feedback. I don't feel like reading the whole damn thing when half the post is just unnecessary attacks.

I know if I were a developer designing a spec the last persons opinion I'd give a shit about is the one calling me whatever childish names they could come up with.

[Anonymous1038853]

I'm inclined to agree, and try to maintain a similar disposition in providing feedback. There are some mechanics, though...

[Gohzerlock]

If people macro it together with life tap it'll be like that life tap buff we had to keep up back in the day... that was.... awesome *sarcasm*

Voted hate it for mana tap but blizz unfortunately won't care, they'll still say x many people hate it and y people love it even if it's like 1 person that enjoys it.

Then tout it as successful when they make it op and many people take it because it does 1 more dps than the other two options.

[Bridius]

How would you like to get mana back? Evocation? Life tap is so much better.

[Anonymous1038853]

How would you like to get mana back? Evocation? Life tap is so much better.

Evocation is way better than life tap now, yes. Like, way better.

I mean, let's see: 6 second channel once every minute and a half. Does 33% of your mana pool as damage. Vs. 40% of your health, no damage, and 6 seconds of GCDs to yield the same gain. Not to mention the fact that warlock spells tend to cost double or more that of mages (including arcane which now has a bigger mana pool and therefore a much higher return on evocation) for no notable gain, causing us to need to do this far more often throughout the course of a fight. Did I mention the fact that life tap also scales worse the more stamina you have?

Yeah, evocation is better. By a landslide.

[Netherspark]

How would you like to get mana back? Evocation? Life tap is so much better.

Chaotic Energy.

[Baconeggcheese]

How would you like to get mana back? Evocation? Life tap is so much better.

Chaotic energy.

[Gaidax]

It's shit and Mana Tap is even worse. I could live with Life Tap only, it's passable and can be gamed with by movement, but Mana Tap as well on top of that which cause you to Life Tap more... Seriously, Blizzard, get off my back.

And yes, Chaotic Energy FFS. Destruction had excellent resource play in MoP and WoD, why go ahead and break it?

[Xanatas]

i hate life tap for destruction, i hate mana tap in general.

Chaotic energy is great, why break it?

[Duckz0rs]

How would you like to get mana back? Evocation? Life tap is so much better.

Chaotic Energy.

Where pretty much all DPS classes have to manage one, maybe two resources we have to manage three: health, mana and shards. Destruction was at least an exception, but now it's back for all specs. All because of some nonsense nostalgia attached to Life Tap.

[Jessicka]

I never, ever had any issue with Life Tap, it was always just an instant to cast on the move; it's always been balanced against the fact we receive extra health and healing received which overall meant more tangible survivability compared to other classes, so I don't think we were short changed.

I've not tried Mana Tap so I can't comment much beyond that there have been worse maintenance buffs in the game; I think the problem probably lies with what it's a choice between, with the alternatives being too tightly niched while Mana Tap is self evidently a strong all-round ability making it the 'go-to' option.

[Gum]

Lets be real, i think many of us accept lifetap as an idea, obviously totally negating the dps arguement as we will be balanced around having whatever, it comes down to class fantasy and enjoyment (quality of life). Does Mana tap add anything? To me personally, i dont really mind having to keep up a buff, whatever its not something that is generally totally foreign, but the fact that its tied to something silly like our mana, seems very iffy at best.

Had it been tired to shards? Maybe, at-least it would be inside the class fantasy (since we love SB:haunt a lot and so) and it wouldnt be too farfetched from current mechanics. But the entire balancing our mana to optimize mana spend on Manatap vs GCDs spend on Life tap is just not something i ever see anyone enjoy.
Are warlocks the new arcane mages, where we never want to get above 50% mana due to wasted GCDs on lifetap then? Good class fantasy, maybe, but fun is something it will never be. Lets hope they atleast redesign it, spending 2 GCDs as often as this on doing nothing seems like overall bad design.

[Immitis]

mana tap was a great racial

[Fearsom1992]

i hate it i feel like an arcane mage worrying about mana lol

[Kadria]

Wondering if glyph of life pact could come into use? With the amount of self healing from now using drain life (more healing it sounds like if you take drain soul talent)...wonder if it's worth it? Or perhaps they will change how it works to benefit is better come legion to help out with mana tapping.

[Restors]

I have mixed feelings about mana tap. It reminds me of WotLK era, where I used to use Life tap rank 1 , just to get the spell power buff from it. But at the same time, warlock class will be balanced around mana tap, that forces you to have almost 100% uptime on it in PVE enviroment or the dmg done will suffer.

I dont have access to Legion alpha / beta, but time will tell if warlock community can learn to like / work with it or not.

[Kadria]

Gotta think if folks are using mana tap, the other option is the corruption talent where its permanent on the target. Not only are mana tap users going to have to use gcd for corruptions, but also life taps and mana taps. That's 3x or more gcds added to priority/rotations just by taking mana tap talent. Will be interesting to see how that plays out versus single target or multi target fights.

[Gaidax]

The other options go down the drain the moment you move, because in such a case you will have all the windows for taps you ever need.

Much of the issues are with a fact that it adds another pretty redundant button out of nowhere and that alternatives are not really alternatives.

I'd say for starters if Mana Tap would instead make Life Tap return half the mana it does by default and give this damage bonus then it would be quite a deal better.

Then make it have actual viable alternatives too would not hurt.

[KrazyK923]

Destro player for over 6 years here (And Warlock player for 10 years:

Hate both.

Also the new mastery is fucking idiotic.

I honestly didn't think they could make Destruction any worse. I'm so sad to learn that I was wrong.