raffy

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We should demand it on all three of our new items.

 

Teza

Material costs changed for some of the new schematics (see new costs below)

* Schematic: Annihilator Holo-gogs (old)
* Schematic: Hard Khorium Goggles (old)
* Schematic: Hyper-Magnified Moon Specs (old)
* Schematic: Justicebringer 3000 Specs (old)
* Schematic: Lightning Etched Specs (old)
* Schematic: Powerheal 9000 Lens (old)
* Schematic: Wonderheal XT68 Shades (old)

 

Flamingcloud

I don't mind life tap taking more health then it returns mana, but a 15% coefficient is way too low. It would need to be 18-20% for most warlocks to break even on mana returned vs current values. If it is meant to hurt badly in pvp than just slap the coefficient at like 25%.

 

Korchak

200hp/sec vs 120 hp/sec isn't all that big a deal for pve when you really think about it.

200 hp/sec (becomes 250hp/sec at 13k hp and 275hp/sec at 14khp) works out to 600 hp/3sec (750hp/3sec and 900 hp/3 sec) which still falls under what 1 HoT can cover over any given duration (less so at higher levels of hp), what bugs me is the extra ~4.5 seconds spent life tapping every minute which as shadow bolts would be worth 6k-12k dmg or potentially more, and that begins to add up over the course of a 5 or 6 or 10 minute fight.

that said, i'd like to see an non bugged and more properly tested/balanced version of this 'new life tap' before i make any serious judgment call over how much this is going to effect my raiding output.

 

PSGarak

Since the actual values of the health and mana aren't the same anymore, there's not any particular reason that the percents should be the same either. Considering the average warlock's health to mana ratio, even in PvE, a 15%hp->20%mp wouldn't change the values much from what they are now. It depends on what the actual reason for the change is though, if they want to change its scaling with gear, or its PvP balance, or make INT useful to warlocks.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Rayeth

I tend to believe this is the case. Giving warlocks a larger stat pool to look at (hit, dmg, haste, crit, sta, int) is going to be beneficial in the long run with the way the itemization formula penalizes large amounts of smaller stats.Warlocks and Mages alike wish they could decrease the number of stats they are dependent on. Hell it wasn't until recently that Mages were able to get rid of the last ability that keyed off spirit (Evocation). If indeed they want to make warlocks more INT reliant this would be a good way to bring the two classes closer together in terms of item desirability.

Now the only thing left is for them to stop creating DPS caster gear with spirit on it....

[edit] I fail at spelling.

 

NanoHaxial

If their only goal was make Int more useful, changing Life Tap in such a way certainly wouldn't be the way to go about it, especially since it effectively punishes you as your Health/Stam increase.

 

◊ Praetorian

My take on the warlock situation:

Life Tap is balanced for PvE, an environment in which mana is much easier to come by. You have pots, you have people with lots of spirit and stacked mp5 on their gear, etc. In arena, none of those other elements are present, yet Life Tap is every bit as effective as it is in a raid. That's the problem.

The trick is to solve that problem without also gimping warlocks in PvE. Part of it also depends on how elegant a solution Blizzard wants. You could say that having resilience also makes Life Tap less effective, such that it restores less mana per hp lost (maybe 25% less mana at cap resil). I don't know if Blizzard wants to be that blatant about things, but that'd be one way of tweaking warlocks for PvP without destroying their PvE efficiency.

 

Gumibear

The easiest way I can think of to make us care about Intellect without punishing us for our health would be to make the mana return of life tap scale as a percentage of max mana, and then exchange health 1 to 1 for the mana. In other words, scale both the cost and reward with max mana instead of scaling the cost with max health.

 

Axanor

Frost/Arcane Mages, Moonkins and Shadow Priests all benefit from Spirit on their gear, even more so after the changes on the PTR. I don't see why everyone keeps complaining.

 

Opioid

It seems like a clumsy nerf to me. If you asked a sampling of people what made a warlock annoying how many would respond "the terrible longevity of their manapool?" Just seems like they're grasping at straws to make a difference and nerf warlocks at PVP somehow but messing up a skill thats always been fine as a result.

Warriors have effectively infinite (albeit metered) power pool and people seem more or less fine with it, and rogues are underpowered in PVP to some extent and they have the best power system in the game. At most I see warlocks eschewing a few DOT casts and continuing to fearbot throughout the match, and maybe having to bind a lower rank Life Tap for emergency use (with a few less Siphon Life builds overall.) I don't see this helping the overall problem in a big way, but definitely adding irritation.

 

PSGarak

If the purpose is to make warlocks like INT more, I don't think it's to even out differences in itemization between warlocks and mages. There's obviously a push to make INT more useful in general. This change is a class-specific change in line with the regen change, if anything making warlocks prefer INT as much as other classes do now so they're not left behind, rather than pulling us ahead.

I do think that the PvP balancing is much more likely. I was just thinking how the hp:mp ratio changes in PvP gear, but praetor is right, mana means a lot more too, which is both the means and the cause of the nerf. As far as punishing a larger health pool... for a while, you're not actually being punished, you're just gaining less benefit from the health. More health is still better than less health, just not as good as more health pre-2.4. For a while. Basically once you've tapped away one whole life bar (7 taps), your extra hitpoints start becoming a net health loss, but before then they're a net health gain, so long as healers aren't obligated to constantly top you off.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

epiphenom

Possibly because fire mages, who can reasonably be expected to be the majority of mages using mage tier gear, do not benefit?

You might argue that an objection based around two specs of one class is narrow, but I don't see what's particularly difficult to understand about it. Granted, Rayeth's quote went a little far afield in saying Blizzard needs to create caster DPS gear without spirit, because they already have - Leggings of Calamity, Amice of the Convoker, and probably other pieces we haven't discovered yet. So at some level Blizzard seems to understand that mages also don't want spirit. The anomaly, which is where this line of discussion started, is that they continue to itemize mage tier sets with large amounts of spirit. In that context, other classes' benefit from spirit doesn't really matter.

 

Brakar

Just because spirit isn't useless for me doesn't mean I actually want it on my gear. I'd still rather have it as dmg or haste. Blizzard's obsession with having every piece in a given slot have the exact same damage value and then forcing the remaining budget into other stats is infuriating. It leads to itemization like [Hood of Absolution] where a huge portion of the item budget is used in stats that are at best dubious (crit, spirit and mp5), and duplicating regen in different ways with both spirit and mp5 on the same piece. I don't really want spirit, mp5 or crit on my gear but I accept we're going to get some just to eat up some portions of the budget. That doesn't mean I'm going to like it though. The new [Sunfire Robe] is a beautiful piece of itemization and I only wish more pieces were as well itemized.

Edit: Additional mana regen also does nothing if you're not able to use it. Arcane mages have such huge mana dumps they can realistically use every bit of mana they get (which still doesn't make it worth getting, but you can at least use the mana.) There are very few fights that I as a shadow priest am hurting for mana. Illidari Council and to a lesser degree Mother Shahraz (from mana burn) do I actually have to pay attention to mana usage. On just about any other fight I rarely if ever need to pot and I have no way to use any excess mana I may have.

 

Ralask

Locks are not a problem now in any bracket but 2's anyway. With armor ignore and double melee in 3's and the return of training the lock in 5's, locks are a subpar pvp class in 3's and 5's. I dont understand giving mages all these buffs and nerfing locks so hard in pvp. Im sure we have not seen the last changes for the PTR maybe it will all make sense in the end.

 

Soul

If the designers want to make Lifetap less time efficient and make INT desirable for 'locks, they could scale lifetap with BASE HP and MAX mana (e.g., cost 25% base HP for 15% max mana). This way, you get large returns if you're in PvE with a 9 or 10k mana pool, but you don't get such large returns if you're PvPing and have a 6k mana pool... health cost remains the same so the healing requirements don't scale so onerously. The design with Lifetap scaling with max HP really makes certain talents like Demonic Embrace questionable.

 

Draele

It's very frustrating as Affliction since we already have to be super picky about avoiding crit and now Spirit is on damn near everything too. All the items are watered down for a spec that already scales poorly even if perfectly itemized for.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

Zephro

This works in theory, but it means every piece of warlock set gear will need to be drastically re-itemised. And you still want stamina for non-mechanical reasons, too - if warlocks end up like mages, with small health pools and comparatively large mana pools, then every life tap will be dicing with death on any boss with environmental damage.

 

Rane

Brutallus disabled on PTR

Helloooo Felmyst.

 

fconde

Lifetap is a badly tought nerf, consider this two situations,

. Actually having a imp in a group is worse than not having if you are concerned about longivity, since the imp will make you lose more health each yime you lifetap, I lost around 200 more health each tap from having a imp with me.
On test server without imp my lifetap costed 940 health, with my own imp it costed 1405 health, the mana returned was obviously the same (1212) in my case.

. A warlock in a tank group to give a imp, will have bloodpact from his own pet and possibly commanding shout, this will result in a way bigger loss of health for no benefict at all in mana returned, if the difference with imp or no imp is already 465 health in my case it will be even higher with commanding shout (dint found a wasrior to gtoup in test), this from what is supposed to be groups buffs.

. I know is not high-end state of the art content but if you go out of mana while tankign leotheras a lifetap will be a huge blow on your life for very littel mana returns, im at around 15k buffed health and 7k buffed mana.

In PvP it will make destruction, already a very bad tree even worse, because is the only warlock spec that cant regen life so it will hurt them even more, on a time where people talk of making all specs at least semi-viable in pvp is a strange move.

 

Chirality

Locks are not yet a subpar PvP class in any bracket--they're just not as dominant as they were before the SL/SL nerfs...and let's be honest, no spec in the history of Burning Crusade was as overpowered as SL/SL was at the beginning of season 2. The change to make Mortal Strike and Wound Poison apply to Drains completely changed the dynamic of that spec (for the better I would add) but it did make locks vulnerable to double melee. So what? Warriors are vulnerable to mages, priests to shaman, etc. This is complete case of "Nerf Paper. Scissors are Fine. Sincerely, Rock".

I will, however, say that the buffs to mages (while perhaps overdue) are coming too fast to be evaluated clearly. As a warrior, in 2s or 3s I fear one class/spec above all others: Frost mages. Yes--this is a Rock/Paper situation again, but I share your unstated fear that warlocks will get pushed out of roles by newly-buffed mages. With the blink mana cost reduction (and gems now) it will become very hard to run a mage out of mana to get them vulnerable to melee (by forcing them to not blink). Warlocks have no escape. You stand there and take it, and watch your felhunter die to sweeping strikes. But this is a critical design issue...Warlocks are simply not meant to have an escape, and 3v3 makes this issue stand out more than it ever has.

Eventually though, double melee will end up with enough counters (likely RMP still) that Warlocks will balance out. Then again, I've been saying Warrior/Druid will get smoothed out at the top end by Druid/Hunter and it hasn't happened.

And Armor Penetration on Season Three gear is a total red herring. I have all the armor pen you can get on pvp gear and that's around 500 total--about the same that your armor would change from season 2 to three. (Edit: I Rescind this comment I was thinking of something else, perhaps)

 

fconde

Not that I am that much of a PvP player but lock s3 set has more 68 armor than season 2 set in total (all 5 pieces combined).

 

Chirality

Hmm. My mistake, perhaps I was thinking the increased armor of the mage gear.

 

Akj

Blizz needs to stop playing this balancing act between PvE & PvP and implement separate rule sets for them (drinking being nerfed in arena only is a good precedent). The number of thoughtless arena based nerfs that hurt PvE is getting ridiculous. I cannot believe they pushed through a lifetap change that makes talents like Demonic Embrace (+15% sta), Fel Stamina (+3% sta) and buffs like fortitude, blood pact detrimental to the warlock and the raid in a sense.

 

shanice

Stats:


Doesn't scale with +dmg anymore




With exactely the same gear w/o any buffs except Fel Armor, I get 1721mana/LifeTap (1618 w/o Fel Armor) on the live server.

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