No Life Tap

[Deleted]

Having to lifetap stole GCD from us.

If you can't find the 5ish GCDs you needed to spend on Life Tap over the course of a 8 minute long fight then you've got to tell me where you've dug up patchwerk, I'd love to see some fights with that little movement.

[Biomega]

If you can't find the 5ish GCDs you needed to spend on Life Tap over the course of a 8 minute long fight then you've got to tell me where you've dug up patchwerk, I'd love to see some fights with that little movement.

You didn't always have the luxury of simply timing LT with movement, for various reasons - because you could use that movement GCD to do more damage by refreshing your DoTs, say, or because you simply didn't get full value out of the mana because you weren't that low at the time (but were at another time, when you didn't need to move), and so on.

But more importantly - IT WAS POINTLESS TO HAVE THAT MECHANIC IN THE FIRST PLACE. There was no reason for it other than lore. No other caster had to do it, and they all operated on "blue energy" (with the exception of Arcane Mage, for obvious reasons).

This is basically like saying "yeah you have to pay $10 cash each week in order to keep your job, but at least you can pay it while you're running to the bank anyway" - except nobody else has to pay ANY money for their job, just you.

[Bridius]

But more importantly - IT WAS POINTLESS TO HAVE THAT MECHANIC IN THE FIRST PLACE. There was no reason for it other than lore. No other caster had to do it, and they all operated on "blue energy" (with the exception of Arcane Mage, for obvious reasons).

Well then why did they have to remove Life Tap? They already removed the need to use it in PvE because only utility spells require mana. Fine so be it.

So why not let us keep the spell? Look at Gul'dan in hearthstone and heroes of the storm. Both iterations have Life Tap as their core ability. Why? Because when you think of a Warlock you think of LIFE TAP.

They could have easily left the spell in the game. Not only would it be useful in PvP, but it's literally a core part of what defines our class. Think of all the times you've used Life Tap not just for generating mana in the middle of a fight, but all the utility (even minor or inconsequential like dying quicker or swapping specs), or the fun/stupid things you've done with it. No reason to remove it.

[Deleted]

You didn't always have the luxury of simply timing LT with movement, for various reasons - because you could use that movement GCD to do more damage by refreshing your DoTs, say, or because you simply didn't get full value out of the mana because you weren't that low at the time (but were at another time, when you didn't need to move), and so on.

I'm not accepting this, sorry. I can't think of (m)any fights where you can't find a way to fit a few lifeftaps in over the course of the fight without causing any issue, even in the worst case scenario when it's patchwerk then you're missing a smattering of GCDs and doing perfectly competetive damage. I'm sorry that once a minute you have to press a button that doesn't deal damage, but it's really not that bad and has plenty of merits I can wheel off if you want me to make more of an essay out of it.

There's not a single fight in Antorus that is so static you can't fit a lifetap in while moving. They all have plenty of movement. If you're needing to lifetap while stood still I can only imagine you've been sloppy on optimizing lifetaps earlier in the fight.

But more importantly - IT WAS POINTLESS TO HAVE THAT MECHANIC IN THE FIRST PLACE. There was no reason for it other than lore. No other caster had to do it, and they all operated on "blue energy" (with the exception of Arcane Mage, for obvious reasons).

It has it's uses in pvp, it helped give you something to press during movement and it caused zero problems / loss other than for people who didn't like spending 1GCD or less per minute on a non-damage spell.
It also kept design space open for things that interacted with lifetap. I don't think they've made stellar use of it in recent expansions, but I'd rather have that space than not have it by operating on "blue energy".

This is basically like saying "yeah you have to pay $10 cash each week in order to keep your job, but at least you can pay it while you're running to the bank anyway" - except nobody else has to pay ANY money for their job, just you.

I'm not getting bogged down in dumb analogies on principal, if you want to represent the argument then say what it is, we don't need to make retarded parallels.

It's basicly like saying "yeah, you need to life tap every now and then but there's more than enough movement in a fight that you can fit it in and, at worst, you might have to not cast filler for a GCD" - except nobody else has to do it, but they also don't do more damage than you as a result.

[Gaidax]

Great, now all of a sudden we have a Life Tap militant.

This shitty spell is dead, I am glad it is and hope it stays this way forever.

[Liarparadox]

Great, now all of a sudden we have a Life Tap militant.

This shitty spell is dead, I am glad it is and hope it stays this way forever.

Of all the things for people to want back...geez.

[ThePhantombox]

I agree wtf is this shit? You couldn't find a single person NOT saying "Lifetap is outdated and should be removed" before BFA, and now people want it back?!

Is it fuckin' opposite day or something?

Also:

If you can't find the 5ish GCDs you needed to spend on Life Tap over the course of a 8 minute long fight then you've got to tell me where you've dug up patchwerk, I'd love to see some fights with that little movement.

It was a hell of a lot more than 5 lol.

[SpikeySquad]

I agree wtf is this shit? You couldn't find a single person NOT saying "Lifetap is outdated and should be removed" before BFA, and now people want it back?!

Is it fuckin' opposite day or something?

Or perhaps they didn't express their opinion as there was no need.

[Deleted]

I could say i want Life tap back just to solve my huge mana issues in long arenas or bgs where as soon im playing defensively or peeling my team mates with fear or using drain life for myself i go oom really really fast.

[Biomega]

I'm not at all surprised at the responses, because it's the usual contrarian tendencies that crop up after ANY kind of change. And the arguments themselves are, of course, ludicrous. "It wasn't a huge loss" or "you could always find a way to squeeze it in" are both true statements, but they also both completely miss the point, i.e. that making something that is superfluous a little bit less annoying does not change the fact that it's still, you know, superfluous.

If people want to use it in PvP, by all means, clamor for it to be made a PvP talent; though I'd wager that PvP is quite a different animal since GCDs aren't as important as utility and having Warlocks have access to virtually endless CC because they don't run oom (a mechanic they switched to precisely in order to balance the use of CC/utility spells) is simply not something they want to balance around - particularly when the people actually attached to the mechanic tend to be very irrational or simply just RP-driven in their demands.

RP is all well and good, but it has its limits. They're not in the habit of simply adding RP spells with no real practical use, and it's always been a major exception when they have (mostly via glyphs). Their focus is primarily on presenting people with a streamlined, easy to grasp ability system - and putting spells into their spellbook that don't actually do anything can be detrimental to that.

I'm sure people will rally to the defense of Life Tap all the same. That's what people do. They find reasons to complain in everything. As someone once said, they could be handing out gold bars inscribed with the meaning of life and people would complain it isn't platinum, or that it used to be gold discs and it's soooo stupid to go back to bars, or whatever. Change is hard on some people.

[Rysthruun]

If you can't find the 5ish GCDs you needed to spend on Life Tap over the course of a 8 minute long fight then you've got to tell me where you've dug up patchwerk, I'd love to see some fights with that little movement.

It's a lot more then 5 gcds, try 15-30 per fight

Objectively, even if it were 1 gcd, in a timed setting, where you have a set amount of GCDS, wasting even one is bad enough

[Avikur]

Hope it stays in the past where it belongs! Hated it with a passion, glad it was removed.

[lockedout]

I only see myself getting low on mana in long PVP fights but I have yet to go totally OOM. Why even have mana at this point?

[Tarthlock]

I have been playing warlock since vanilla, and I got why lifetap was a thing then, but I never knew why it survived so many pruning passes.
RIP Lifetap, rot in fel

[CuchuCachu]

Not a huge deal, but I'd never though I'd miss the spell.

Or at least a spell cost reduction for Fear and Drain Life would be nice. Signature spell with diminishing returns and breaks on damage anyway... and something that helps us be tanky. Adding a high enough mana cost seems punitive

[Kilistian]

Personally I am sad that life tap is gone. To me the fun part about locks is that we have an ability for each type of situation. We might not use it often like water breathing, but once the situation arise we lock usually can sit there and laugh at other class seeing them struggling
.

To many, life tap is an unnecessary spell and it’s hindering our dps base on current mechanics. But to me and I believe to some extent those that have been playing lock since vanilla treat life tap as an ability to able to recover mana in time of need in any situation when other external posibility of recovering mana is not available. So when somehow in BFA everyone go oom in a raid, I will really miss my life tap.

Actually I alawys suspect that Blizzard team wanted life tap to go so that they have easier time balancing warlock dmg. Else why one earth only in Legion that we need to life tap so much until even supporter like me is sick of it. Blizzard make it such that rate of mana spent over rate of mana regen is so great for warlock in legion that only life tapping furiously can one regain enough mana for continuous dps.