Pyros

Well while it probably won't get tanks killed, considering the amount of healing done, I really fail to see the point of nerfing it. I'm never outhealing everyone, stacking lifebloom is nice but it doesn't keep tanks alive by itself, it also eats an insane amount of cooldowns and so on. I'm not going to explain to you how LB works, you probably know.

I was just saying, this was an unneeded nerf in PvE. Sure my spirit gets buffed and I'll be able to spam more totally inneficient regrowth with that spare mana. But so do priests. Did priests get nerfed? Did CoH get nerfed even tho with GCD changes and spirit changes, it's gonna be even more powerful than it is currently? No because not a single PvPer has CoH. I was making a relation with the nature of the nerf- PvP nerf affecting PvE.

And honestly, I still can't believe the spirit change will go live as it is now. I mean, it's such a buff, to 2 already very mana efficient healing class, and a total waste of time for everyone else or close to. It feels so weird to change it like that. That'd be like changing something so hunters and rogue dps is buffed, but wouldn't affect any other melee user(like an agi>armor penetration conversion or something).

Anyway I'll stop whinning about lifebloom since it probably won't change back, I'm still hoping for 4T6 bonus change, or HT changes and making it ToL castable(0.5 off base cast time, with values nerfed to scale, for example). Having more mana and no spell to use it on sounds so stupid.

 

Douglas

This'd also be a PvE nerf -- lots of 'locks lifetap in situations where they're moving, and this would prevent that.

What about the idea of lifetap not giving back mana immediately, but starting up a (purgeable?) DOT/mana-HOT effect instead? So you'd have to do it preemptively to avoid an OOM situation, and spamming a downranked version wouldn't be at all helpful. And if you weren't careful with it and took damage after casting it, then it could kill you. Crazy?

 

Kasi

That would be horrible for pvp, as your mana regains would just be immediately purged off every time. Seriously this change could be done very easily by removing some of the lower ranks and just upping the health cost on life tap by whatever value they feel is necessary to achieve their balancing. 10%, 20%, whatever works.

 

Tacitus

Simply removing lower ranks is going to hurt levelers and hard. As much as we'd like to, this game doesn't revolve entirely around max level content.

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Villeraz

An interesting quick calculation/simulation done using Excel.

Assume 3 identical warlocks, except that they differ only in health. 8000, 10000, and 12000 hp, respectively for Warlocks A, B, and C.

All 3 lifetap every 30 seconds, in order to sustain whatever their mana usage is (assumed to be identical for all 3). I assumed a coefficient of 16% of their health.

Note: Net inflow of damage is total inflow of damage, minus total inflow of healing, ignoring health lost to lifetap.

At a net inflow of damage at a rate of 500 damage every 30 seconds, all 3 locks are dead after 150 seconds.
At a net inflow of damage at a rate of 320 damage every 30 seconds, Lock A has died, B and C survive (for a moment).
The locks with more health are fortunate, they have an opportunity to be healed up and the situation may change such that they survive, where A did not.

At a net inflow of damage at a rate of -137 damage every 30 seconds (that is, a net healing rate of 137 health every 30 seconds), all 3 locks are dead after 210 seconds.
At a net inflow of damage at a rate of -138 damage every 30 seconds, Locks B and C are dead, Lock A has survived.
At a net inflow of damage at a rate of -500 damage every 30 seconds, Lock C has died, A and B survive (for a moment).
The locks with less health have survived!

While the simulation isn't exactly representative of a raid situation, it does illustrate a point: Having more stamina can be a disadvantage with the new implementation of Lifetap on the PTR. Over the course of a fight where a lock has lifetapped several times, depending on the amount of incoming heals and damage, they may provide greater benefit to the raid (by surviving and providing DPS) if they have less health, keeping all other factors constant. And this backward relationship is increased the greater the net flow of healing that is provided to them!

At a net inflow of damage at a rate of -1300 damage every 30 seconds, Lock A will sustain maximum hp (with overhealing). Lock B will be at 4000 health after 10 minutes. Lock C will be dead.

Only at a net inflow of damage at a rate of -1920 damage every 30 seconds will all 3 locks survive.

 

Flamingcloud

I think I would settle for 18%..

 

Kasi

That simulation is completely wrong and silly. That simulation assumes there is no such thing as burst and that mana from healers is completely finite and restricted to the point where they can't heal a lifetapping lock.

What kills people on Council (with dp/envenom, or combo of blizzard/flamestrike), or on Gurtogg (fel rage, geyser), or on Rage (icey thing), or on RoS (spite plus dmg tick from dot), or whatever. Oh yeah, short term burst dps that overall will hit you for more than 10k damage. Thus your 8k life warlock is a liability on pretty much every fight in the game and is useless. Who the hell cares about steady inflow of damage. That is not raids these days. Who cares about damage at a rate of -137 or -500 every 30 seconds. Your healers who will have far more mana in 2.4 can just throw you a hot.

So no, you're wrong. Having 4k less health will never be a bonus. The very slight efficiency gained on lifetap by having 4k less health is far outstretched by the fact you are exponentially more likely to die if you take any of the random attacks that happen to RSTS targets in nearly every fight in the current end game.

 

crimsonsentinel

Healing the extra health in lifetap is not the issue here. Only in the most AOE heavy type encounters will it even affect the healers all that much.

What is the issue is that for raiding, warlock mana-regen scaling is now completely ass-backwards. Fort and kings now are debuffs for warlocks, stamina is something to be avoided, and dps now is directly decreased by adding stamina. I really don't think the devs thought this change through before they implemented it, and I'd be very surprised if it didn't undergo major modifications before 2.4 is released.

 

dr_AllCOM3

I thought this is a 2.4 and not a Lifetap thread.

Blizzard just patched the PTR, but it's not up yet.

 

Kasi

No, stamina is not to be avoided. Like many people have posted here, dps is not affected by the stamina. It is affected by the fact that currently on PTR lifetap is giving less mana back. I severely doubt any lock here is having to bandage much in raids due to lack of mana on healers to toss you a hot.

Warlocks still want stamina just like everyone else does, to be able to survive the RSTS effects that happen in so many raid encounters today. All this means is that healers will have to toss you a stronger heal or an extra heal every so often. Most likely the healers doing this will be druids and priests because they have hots. In 2.4 both of these classes are getting massive mana regen gains and they will easily be able to toss you a hot.

But sure if you want, have fun clicking off fort and not taking the 15% stamina talent and so on and then explaining to your raid leader that every time you life tap it takes you to 7k health and you get instagibbed every time on council because you cared much about 500 health difference on a lifetap that can be easily covered by healing. Like Gurg said, the issue right now is lifetap returns less mana on ptr than it does on live. Fix that and the 2.4 changes cover everything else.

 

Rouncer

Why? A percentage is a percentage and it scales perfectly with whatever stats the lock possesses.

The only PvE nerf is to current raiding since this will require more lifetaps for the same quantity of mana and unless it is intended as a mechanism to reduce the classes dps then it should be addressed either through itemization or through tweaking the mechanic.

I've seen math on the wow forums showing that the dps lost through the increased need to lifetap has been returned through the changes to destro-fire.

WoW Forums -> Analysis of Life Tap Changes: Real Math

Which seems to imply that the only real nerf associated with Lifetap will be to the PvP side of the class.

 

Denogran

I think you're missing the point though. Look past the Illidari council example that everyone is having so much fun throwing out there. It's not about whether stamina is good or not - everyone agrees it's still good. The concern is that as your stamina increases, the net raid's mana efficiency decreases. There aren't any other stats out there like this. Regardless of any other change in the raid, if you take a warlock with 15,000 hp he's going to require more healing to keep alive than one with 10,000. Sure, he'll survive more "O Shit!" peaks with 15k hp, but outside of those situations his stamina is actually a net negative to the raid. Not one other stat does this across the board (and in fact, supremus and melee is the only specific situation I can think of).

 

Gumibear

This is a bit short-sighted. Look what would happen to shadow priest DPS if every warlock switched to Incinerate. I'm frequently grouped with a shadow priest and I'm sure other warlocks are as well. My net mana loss over time is pretty much the same accounting for what the change from Shadowbolt to Incinerate does to shadow priest DPS.

 

• Suggestive

That math was running on assumptions that can't be duplicated in the game.

 

Kasi

Who cares when the difference in mana efficiency is about that of a drop in a bucket? Let us go with the rotation gone over in the post that Rounced linked. 9 shadowbolts and then 1 lifetap. That is 1.5 seconds out of every 24. Let us say 25 given latency. Which means every 25 seconds you need 500 more healing. Over a 10 minute fight a warlock now needs 24x500 more healing which works out to 12000 more healing. A druid in my guild has an average rejuvenation tick for 1057 in a mix of T5/6 gear. Rejuvenation costs about 335 mana in tree form (if my calculations are right given 415 base plus 20% reduction from tree)

Thus you need 3 rejuvenations over 10 minutes to cover up the difference. That works out to 1k mana for 1 druid over 10 minutes. 1k mana over 600 seconds is a whopping 1.7 mps, or 8.3mp5 (messed up my initial calculations here by forgetting to convert to mp5). Even counting in the fact that not casting those 3 spells could give you more OOC ticks it is not going to bump the value that much. The 2.4 changes more than covers this, as a druid will be getting significant mp5 gains. Basically the difference in healing now and in 2.4 is not worth talking about, because the difference is so minor.

There are other stats that scale like this, you just forgot to mention them. Tanks have constantly griped at the fact that as their gear increases, their threat decreases which can hurt their raid. Many classes also have itemization that is supposed to promote their longevity but hurts their own dps such as crit for ele shamans, which is inferior to haste or damage point for point. It is just that the difference in this case needs to be taken by healers, not by yourself. And as I showed, in the end the mana costs are insignificant.

 

Pyros

That's half true only though. When I lifebloom a lock, most of it is wasted because the lock will resume dps after one or two lifetap, when my lifeblooms heals around 5k(for 150mana or whatever ridiculous cost it is). If the lock loses more, he'll just have to wait longer between 2taps assuming I'm the only one hotting him, but in the end he'll still get his health back without being a liability on raid's mana.

There's a few situations where I see the whole losing more health being detrimental(not talking about mana/s returns here, just the loss of health). First would be a very raid intensive healing fight, such as sparing GCDs would be hard. With Haste affecting GCD, we should be able to spare one GCD every now and then. The other is the "oh fuck" factor. If you see a lock losing like 3k at once, it will tingle the oh shit factor of a few healers. If you lifetap twice, even in a relatively safe environnement, the oh shit siren is going to ring really hard for most healers. It will act as a magnet for heals, resulting in more overhealing, and possibly random death depending on how you do your assignements.

We'll probably have to work around that by assigning specific people only to warlock healing(such as druids, lifebloom is really good for that, since it's by far the most efficient single target heal in the game, or at least I believe it is). But once that's done it shouldn't be an issue really. I don't have the real numbers here, but with 2200healing, I think my lifeblooms currently tick for 300ish on locks, and bloom for 3k. With next patch nerf to coef but buff to final bloom value(due to talents), you're looking at roughly the same value, if not a bit more.

 

marloz

I'm somewhat surprised, or well, to a certain degree - that a 15-20dps (this will of course depend on the length of the fight, but I'm quoting someone a few pages back) nerf on warlocks manages to rattle the cage this much. Yeah yeah, Eyonix and co. justifies it with saying it can be "gamed for an improvement". I'm not backing him up on that, but for wild comparison: Did anyone mention or notice that mages can't Icy Veins under Herosim anymore? That's right. And as far as I've seen, we haven't made any big scene out of it, while it's _still_ ~1% dps loss for our class - although from a PVP perspective, it's simply justified.

Just bear in mind that this game isn't about PVE anymore.

 

Akj

The new lifetap places a tax on a lock's stamina that has to paid by the healers. Its easy (& shortsighted even) to say that throwing a hot on a lifetapping lock is easy while farming Illidan for the umpteenth time. If Shahraz were a new & hard healing intensive encounter how many guilds would take locks in SR gear with a 2:1 hp to mp ratio?

To all those who are blinded by bias and are justifying the stamina tax just remember that this will not be the last nerf for the sake of turning WoW into an esport.

 

Kasi

Yeah I messed up the math for my calculations. 3 rejuvs would work out to about 8.3 mp5. However Pyros is correct that if lifebloom instead is used the mana costs to a druid would be much less due to its strong efficiency. If this discussion is to continue, we should really focus on the main issue here for warlocks. That is that lifetap is giving less mana back and they will be forced to lifetap more often. That is what needs to be asked to Blizzard about the changes. Are they trying to steer people away from SB spam towards incinerate spam with its higher efficiency?

 

terjekv

As a side note to the Life Tap change, it *might* be time for Soul Leech to give mana back instead? Destros mana consumption is, well, hilarious. With Life Tap being less appealing, maybe tweaking the talent trees to reflect the lesser bias on Stamina is a good idea?

I'm also curious what they'll do to Dark Pact, if anything. :-/

 

Beta

As a healer point of view, please stop saying that having more stamina hurts your raid performance, cause its completely wrong. We healers dont care does your lifetap take 1k or 4k HP, healing wise in PVE its totally meaningless.

Old content, there always have been situations when you take high burst dmg. Even then lifetapping in wrong time could be fatal. In new content, there still are those situations combined with even more heavy AOE dmg. I can tell you that no healer ever notice that you are life tapping, but still if you kill yourself cause it, its your own faulth. So please stick on that mana loss and dont use pressure for healers as excuse.

 

• Endahl

Build 7962 changes PI again:
This kind of cooldown would have some interesting PvE uses, but it's still an annoyingly tight fit in a PvE healing build.

 

Galred

What gets me about the whole "esport" thing is that in order for WoW Arena to become an esport, Blizzard would have to disallow PvE raiding items from being used in Arenas. Otherwise there's a gear differential, and I don't believe that a gear differential will fly with the esport crowd. Losing a match because That Other Guy is a raider and has a higher-DPS weapon which you cannot use yourself? Uh-uh.

So, extending this a bit: if gear is going to be normalized to make an esport version of the Arena, why not simply do that now and quit screwing up the PvE side of things? Just make your gear relate to your team and/or personal rating and be done with it. While they're at it, ditch the weird drinking nerf in Arena and just make it so that if you're inside the Arena, you're in combat.

 

marloz

IIRC any serious WoW esport-event use premade characters, so this won't be any issue except maybe qualification. (Correct me if I'm wrong though!)

 

Raiste

I understand warlocks are all furious about PvE implications of lifetap change but as a RL I honestly don't see a huge deal here PvE wise. Extra hp cost as mentioned already by several people is trivial healing wise in PvE. In 99% of the cases all it means is less overhealing. There is the dps nerf of what seems to be 20-50 dps due to increase life tap GCDs spent, but honestly destro locks are a bit more powerful than they should be atm dps wise anyways.

on a separate note: can someone clarify the very peculiar wording on the mana burn patch note?: