Sillia

Does it really just seem to be the throughput? With an average 12k life and 10k mana for T6 warlocks, a 15% exchange would be 1800 health for 1500 mana. The way I understand it right now, there are two (mostly) unrelated issues here:

Issue #1: More stamina means you end up paying more health for the mana return. However, this shouldn't be a big deal for healers, since most of them drop a HoT on the warlock anyway, which is mostly just wasted due to the warlock not taking sufficient damage. A proper renew heals for ~1000 health per tick over 12 seconds pretty handily; most of that would be overheal unless you tapped twice during the course of the renew. While I guess you could try to time everything properly not to waste the renew (or lifebloom, rejuvenation, etc. or whatever), that's added overhead right there. Thus, the whole 'stamina has negative returns' doesn't really have that big an effect, unless you're in a raid-wide damage fight.

If that's the case, you've already stacked higher stamina, so you should (mostly) know that it won't make as huge a difference in battle. You've already stacked the stamina to keep yourself up; any HP lost by lifetapping will still end up positively offset by the extra stamina you stacked to raise it to that point. E.g. You stack stam to go from 12k hp to 13k hp. Your lifetap goes from 1800 hp lost to 1950 hp lost. From full health, this would take you from 10200 hp to 11050 hp. You lose more HP, but since you had more stam to begin with, your health total is still higher.

In addition, the two HoT healer classes have had their mana regen significantly boosted in 2.4, meaning that the mana expenditure to throw an extra HoT on you is much less a big deal. And if you get picked up by a shaman chain heal instead... so much the better. Etc. etc.

Issue #2: Lifetap doesn't provide as much mana per tap now as it did. This is the issue that affects DPS specifically; the other one mostly just affects healers. This is probably the biggest issue for warlock DPS right now. It is a DPS nerf, because they need to tap more often than they used to. With a rough estimate of 1500 mana per tap, you're looking at a net loss of about 300 mana per tap or so, right? If they only want to adjust pvp, this is what they need to fix. If they keep the amount of mana returned mostly the same, warlock DPS won't drop. They'll just be a slightly bigger burden on healers. If they intended to nerf warlock DPS (which very well might be the case), they'll keep it this way.

Any way you slice it, it's a nerf to warlocks. However, it's important to note that the first issue (stamina makes life tap worse) isn't really all that big an issue at all. The one I'd be more concerned about is the second one, since it's the one that affects throughput.

Ninja Edit: Wouldn't this also sort-of bring warlocks in to the same stable as other casters? The idea is for them to unify itemization wants among their players. By making this change to life tap, it encourages warlocks to go after the generic caster gear. I suspect that this may also be one of their 'hidden' motives behind the change.

 

Anedris

I shall only comment that as a raid leader I have a hard enough time convincing my raid to stack hit points, and do not welcome any change that encourages the converse. The most elegant solution (proposed above) seems to me to be to make life a tap a percentage of maximum mana and an equal number of hit points - X% of your maximum mana at the cost of an equal number of hit points.

Or if it must be a percentage of health, make it a percentage of health only in PvP.

I guess in summary though this change seems to give the wrong incentives, but if people just keep gearing as they were before it won't alter much. Druids and priests will indeed not have trouble tossing out a couple extra HoTs (and with haste affecting the GCD will even have more time to do so) and if the DPS numbers that have been tossed in are somewhere close to accurate, the DPS loss seems to be about 1%.

It feels clumsy, but as long as warlocks don't actually start trying to minimize stamina, it doesn't look like it will change anything notable. (Marginal survivability nerf to the toughest caster class and an insignificant DPS nerf to a class that easily holds its own in that regard at present.)

 

Tacitus

Now I'm not sure who's on top of the food chain and why in arenas (since I vastly prefer BGs), but what exactly is overpowered about killing yourself slower? I can understand the claim that the LT mechanic in PVP is OP when compared to a mage, but downranking it?

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Akj

Fine remove Rank 1 we can deal with that. All I care is for the stats to not scale backwards.

Some more suggestions to nerf the PvP aspect only.

Fel Armor - Increases healing received by 20% and also increases the effects of mana drain effects by 20%
Arena only: Lifetap returns 75% of the normal mana returned.
Mortal Strike, Wound poison & Aimed shot now reduce the mana returned by lifetap by 25/50%

 

◊ Praetorian

You don't want changes that encourage your raid to convince you to stack hit points?



(Sorry.)

 

Furio

Playered: Warlock Life Tap usage in PvP and PvE is so different that you need to be careful not to confuse the discussions.

In PvE, while there are a few times that a down-ranked Life Tap can be superior (see above posts for examples), the real issue is that the HP loss isn't the concern; the reduced mana return nerfs DPS. Eyeonix responded to the reduced mana concern by claiming that (paraphrased) "smart warlocks can game the new system by stacking intellect." While that works in theory, the reality is that such gear does not currently exist. Moreover, warlock gear itemization (from both a developer and player perspective), since release, has been based around the concept of stacking stamina and ignoring intellect.

In PvP, according to Eyeonix, Life Tapping to convert hp to mana has been to powerful. The Life Tap has been justified as an attempt to further balance PvP. Yet, the nerf has removed all ranks of Life Tap (likely a conscious choice as it would make little sense for a warlock leveling up to have to suffer through 2%, 5%, 10%, etc Life Taps). Lower ranks of Life Tap can be vital in Arena. While being Assist-trained, a 16% health hit just so I can get the 200 mana immediately necessary to cast some spell is no longer an option. Nor are using several GCDs for little Life Taps as needed when I don't have other options to spend a GCD on or a healer immediately available to heal the extra health loss. Additionally, warlocks low on health and mana no longer have any options. Before, they could cast a Rank 1 Life Tap and then Drain Life immediately. Now, they can run around or wand. Perhaps that's intended, but judging by Eyeonix's comments, I think it is more of an oversight. Lastly, while Life Tapping in post-2.4 Arena certainly will cost more health, it also will return significantly less mana to warlocks (a double nerf). Just look at the two new Spell Penetration Arena items (wand and off-hand); both items have high stamina and zero intellect. Clearly, CWS and other such automatic weapon swapping mods will be required for maximum effectiveness.

With so many cumulative side-effects, the Life Tap nerf sure feels heavy handed and clumsy. Here's to hoping it is reevaluated before Live.



As an aside: From a PvE perspective, I expect net DPS post-2.4 to be roughly the same as now solely because the 10-15% increase in Life Taps needed is offset by the 10-15% decrease in the GCD from spell haste.

 

Kasi

Then just work out with your healers times for you to get 2-3 stacking hots. With the new 2.4 changes for priests and druids they are going to have tons of extra mana. Just get them to toss out a regrowth/renew and be smart when you lifetap.

 

Sillia

The point of the change was to make lifetap more of a danger in pvp. By downranking it, a warlock (who was, say, being assist trained) could still recover mana in a mostly safe manner. By making it riskier in pvp, it makes warlocks overall less effective because they have to be smarter about when they tap.

 

Gumibear

How many times do we have to say this? What generic caster gear are you talking about? My set gear only covers 5 slots currently (only using tiered gear in 4) and I'm not picking drastically different items than other casters in the non-set slots.

 

Lodekim

Because pvp is more about burst than sustained dps in almost every case. By downranking you can still go behind a pillar and lifetap to full while taking heals, but there's a significantly smaller risk of having the other team come around and burst you while you're down hp, because you're never down much. At a larger hp conversion, a warlock can still get their mana back, but it's not risk free. When you consider other mana classes can only really regen mana by drinking, or evocating (which is a pretty long cooldown, is easily interrupted, and entirely stops their damage) it's still pretty good I would say.

edit: beaten, and I still agree, that for this change to go live at this % is a nerf in PVE, and there either needs to be int options available to warlocks or the ability to have a higher % for it to not be a direct pve damage nerf (No idea how much of a damage loss though personally)

 

Zaroua

Ok so far the biggest actual number I've seen in this thread was a 100DPS nerf with the Life Tap change. I'll try to list some other changes which occurred since the game came out which gave "big nerfs" to PvE DPS for classes.


Blessing of Might/Battle Shout not affecting RAP nerf
CoS/CoE not reducing resistances in the negatives nerf
SotC not granting extra DPS based on haste nerf
Weapon speed normalization nerf
The Beast Within duration/damage nerf
Coefficient scaling on Fireball/Frostbolt nerf
Shadow Weaving nerf
Consecrate scaling nerf based on rank
Enrage nerf
Flurry nerf
Mangle (Bear) nerf
Enrage not stacking with Deathwish nerf
Scorpid pet's poison nerf
Elemental Focus nerf
Windfury hidden cooldown nerf
Vampiric Touch nerf
Mystical Skyfire Diamond arcane spec nerf


Looks like it's not the first time Blizzard nerfs abilities which brings both a PvE and a PvP nerf to classes.

I certainly can't see how all the crying about "no Int itemization to make my Life Tap better" or "huge PvE DPS nerf" on this thread will help. Blizzard has stated that they want PTR feedback on the PTR forum and in the form of "tell us what the problem is". You guys are complaining about PvP nerfs affecting PvE DPS, slightly. Go argue your case the way Blizzard wants to hear it instead of complaining that you'll lose some DPS over it. Go tell them there's no Int focused gear available for Warlocks to increase the potency of their Life Taps and say that you're unhappy at the drop in PvE DPS this nerf brings to your class.

It's not the first time a class gets small PvE nerfs since WoW came out and while I'm not a gambler, I'd be willing to bet it won't be the last.



Edit: Typo.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

• Playered

Just going by their logic, taking a one off hit for 3k in PvP is far more of a risk than taking 6x 500 hits whenever you feel like it.

I (hate to) agree with Sillia but he is correct, the issue is primarily the loss of mana per cast which is the main hit for PvE, being less efficient and costing more life (in a reasonable way) is a non-issue for PvE.


The one thing it seems they are trying to do in 2.4, is make Int a much more 'useful' stat than it is currently, something I thought they needed to do for a very long time. Now they just need to make it more useful for Shamans and especially Paladins and its pretty good (aka nerf the ## per 1% crit).

 

Cohren

This is part of the problem, yet another change intended to affect PvP in a great way that is devastating to PvE. No where has it been posted that "Life Tap is too powerful in the raiding environment and it needed to be adjusted."

 

Sillia

By tuning away the set-specific stuff, in the future they can actually just itemize one set that has multiple set bonuses (+x% to fireball, frostbolt, shadowbolt and incinerate) for everyone. This way you can steer away from the class-specific token drops.

Currently, the biggest differences I can think of would be shadow priests and affliction warlocks. I suspect they may make some changes in the future to adjust what stats are beneficial to those classes to bring them in line with others. It was just an idle thought.

 

spiderella

Am I doing anything wrong here?

Current live life tap = x(1)
Current PTR life tap = x(2)

change in time spent tapping for equivalent mana, in seconds = (( x(1)/x(2) ) * 1.5) - 1.5 = d(x)

So d(x) * # of lifetaps = lost shadowbolting time in seconds, from here you can maybe twiddle with spreadsheet results or WWS results.

Of course sometimes very logical and well-thought-out theorycraft differs from how things actually happen in-game. I ran the numbers a few different ways and seemed to get 50-80 DPS for warlocks w/o much regen support (BoW, mana pots only) while the numbers were almost inconsequential for a full suite (adding VT, mana spring/tide, JoW). Less impact than I expected although personally, I guess I'm just thinking - how do I stack a raid for Brutallicus, and do I ask mages to spec out of icy veins and into clearcasting, which will lower overall DPS but make them more independant of one of our (likely 2 in raid) shadowpriests? Given that I'm really bad at swapping spriests around in the middle of a fight. It's a pretty specific example but it just goes to show that the life tap nerf is going to affect all mana users.

 

Tacitus

I see. If they still want to continue with this asinine change, I hope they at least tinker the % to a higher point. This way they manage to nerf PVP even more while not nerfing warlock's PVE tapping time (although this brings the question what about solo or small scale PVE?).

I seriously hope they don't do that. Or at least manage to make different art, since I'd HATE HATE HATE do dress like a mage. Poor sods look like they came out of a hardware shop or fab five, depending on the set.

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Lithose

They stated in the water change that they don't like things feeling different.

I tend to agree with Blizzard's philosophy on this particular issue. You really want your character to "feel" the same in all aspects of the game. Now, I said feel, not play..by feel I mean it shouldn't feel like you have to relearn your spells just because your in a different environment. That kind of "only works here" play detracts from a lot of the feel of games, it also increases the muddled nature of abilities. Blizzard started this game with the intention of giving the players as much knowledge about "how things worked" as possible, without throwing out formula's.

You all have to remember, Blizzard was spawned in an era that gamers didn't know anything about how things operated. In EQ, for example, armor was broken for a while against certain targets, but damned if people knew because no one actually had specifics on what armor did, everything was guesses based on parsing.

Yet, even with blizzard's candid attitude toward mechanics, many people still struggle with figuring out "how things work", figuring out "whats best" doesn't even cross most players minds who don't read this board. In the end, would you advocate a system that increases that complication of game play mechanics, when, in reality, the average WoW gamer probably doesn't even know why certain items have more stamina, or how much damage haste really is, or even what the coefficients are on their spells?

The game may seem simple to the people who read this board, and a dual rule set may seem perfectly plausible. But Blizzard's big on the game feeling "Organic" to everyone..When the average player doesn't even know how the combat table works, adding another rule set probably isn't the best way to achieve that goal.

Hell, if they were worried about water feeling different, I can only imagine what they think about spells working completely different.

 

Kasi

Like Playered said Sillia is right. What is the issue now is the mana you gain. Blizzard just needs to fix the numbers so that the mana gained is the same. As long as the increase in health drained is reasonable (10-20%) than it really doesn't matter given the gains hot classes are making in 2.4.

 

Sillia

Just because they did not mention the need to change something does not mean they did not intend to change it. Blizzard (or any game dev, for that matter) has never been completely transparent about the changes they plan on introducing.

 

Tacitus

I can see your (or their) point, but wouldn't it be much simpler to balance if you had different rules for PVE and PVP? I think Diablo had something like -50% damage which was needed since you could do stupid amounts of damage (teleporting necros with Bone Spirit... good times). Yes, this would detach the players a bit from the game world, but I believe that it's worth it and Blizzard needs to swallow their pride, even if it's their last time doing it.

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

heel

I cast a spell that hits me for 20-30% of my HP every twelve seconds, and my raid-buffed hp is barely 10000. This change isn't the apocalypse. Warlocks aren't suddenly going to have survivability problems. Warlocks aren't suddenly going to start coming in last on the damage meters. Destruction Warlock damage is going down by something along the lines of 1%. Warlocks will dip lower after casting Life Tap, but even after tapping, our worst-geared Warlock will still have more health than I do when I'm topped off.

For raiding, this change is a very marginal thing, and completely unworthy of the last several pages of complaints.

 

Furio

This "logic" ignores the fact that you use additional GCDs to lessen risk. Frankly, Arena play requires more skill when players must make non-trivial decisions to balance GCD usage, hp consumption (risk), and mana regen. Regardless of how this changes affects class balance and warlock viability in top-end Arena, the removal of a player's decision making simply reduces the gap between mediocre and elite warlocks. While opinions vary about how complex classes and mechanics should be, I sincerely hope Blizzard did not intend to "dumb-down" warlock PvP.

 

Tucker

As a mage, it's a bit amusing to see the fur fly on this lifetap issue. Warlocks are consistently at or near the top of the damage charts in raids... what made you think that you wouldn't get a whack from the nerf bat at some point?

 

bortson

If the goal of the lifetap change is to make it riskier in PvP, it seems like the most logical thing to do would be apply a lifetap debuff that only realistically affects PvP survivability -- how about "lifetapping reduces your resiliance by x% for y seconds"?

 

Kasi

I could see them changing talents and abilities to work differently in pve/pvp and they have done this to an extent with the way CC works. However the big thing that has always come up in the past is gear and making it pve or pvp only with big bonuses working only in their respective spheres. That will imo never happen.

Hasn't Tigole said that imp life tap is supposed to take that 15% to 18%? With the 18% value how does that compare to current max ranks of lifetap on live?