http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...=1#post1192124

Tseric just made this post on the Warlock forums. Quite a boost to lifetap efficiency.

Heres a change in 1.12 that was made after the release of PTRs. Perhaps this will give new angles to the 'Does Lifetap cause threat?' debates I've been seeing as of late. ;)


Life Tap: This spell now benefits from effects which increase your spell damage. At rank 3 and above, the base amount of health lost and mana gained will increase by 80% of your bonus spell damage effects. Talents and items can further modify those values. Rank 1 and 2 receive reduced effect.

Thoughts?

Woohoo!

Should significantly aid in reducing warlock downtime, I'd think. That's a great change for locks.

It won't really change patchwerk a whole lot, considering the health costs are going to go up as well. The only boost would come from the Improved Lifetap talent boosting the bonus from damage gear or not.

On the plus side I can give our healers more heart attacks now, well more than normal anyway.

Sweet fanny adams. This should be a significant help.

Well it would mean spending less time tapping, which means more time doing damage. Sure you still have to heal, but instead of being bandaging + lifetap being the downtime its more like bandaging + lifetap/2 being downtime. Which means more time shadowbolting.

I wonder if shadow mastery will also increase the amount tapped (meaning you get 90% of spell dmg with shadow mastery)? Either way, improved lifetap just got interesting.

Obviously a good PvE change, but it'll make warlocks with heavy +damage gear think twice about tapping in PvP.

This will probably also mean breaking out mulitple ranks of LT rather than always using the highest rank.

Without heals at patchwerk the bottleneck will still be consumable cooldowns.

How crippling is it for one or two of your 3rd OT healers toss a renew / rejuv on a couple warlocks? Not like you're stacking the raid with warlocks, anyway.

He did say in his post that talents will further modify it. Which definately suggests that shadow power and imp life tap will both apply to this.

This is of course assuming they don't pull a stupid and put the % increases from Tier3 and talents before the spell damage. o_O

Its not too impossible to spare the odd renew for warlocks on patchwerk and its a great change for all other fights (apart from Loatheb -.-).

So will it actually be more efficient to lifetap during PI, ToEP, ZHC instead of shadowbolting now?

Overdue, great change.

I have done some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, and this change will add about 40 dps in a sustained fight to a lock with +600 after-talent shadow damage. Anybody agree?

The real question is how one should spec now. Improved lifetap and shadow mastery received a huge efficiency boost. SM/DS has another point in its favor because it adds sustained dps. However, I suspect SM/ruin is the new optimal raid spec, unless it turns out warlocks became so efficient aggro becomes their main problem, so they have to go back to MD/ruin.

Thoughts?

P.S. ToEP/ZHC lifetap = emocation

Healing aggro for the lose.

According to my quick math, at least for the ToEP it will be, as funny as that is. I haven't considered the other trinkets/buffs.

First off, this assumes the worst case scenario, where Imp LT gets you (420*1.2) + .8*dmg, rather than (420+.8*dmg)*1.2. If the 20% is taken into account after the +dmg bonus, it becomes even more worth it to use the ToEP.

The math:

ToEP gives 175*.8 extra mana per LT
Or an extra 140 mana from LT
Or an extra .37 SBs (140/380 = .37) per LT

Assume you're at +600 damage so you take 420 + 480 = 900 damage upon tapping. Tapping 5 times for 4500 damage seems like a reasonable number, and makes my calculations work out easier. The same calculation could be done with 6 Taps if you want messy fractions.

Life Tapping 5 times takes 7.5 seconds of your ToEP, earning you an extra 5*.37 = 1.85 shadow bolts. In those 7.5 seconds you could SB three times, getting (3/3.5)*175*3 = 450 extra damage, or maybe half a shadow bolt? Tapping seems to be the much more efficient choice, unless my math is wrong.

That's funny =) Congratulations to Warlocks on that change, though.

To give you my opinion of this change:

I am typing this post one-handed.

Quick question--is Lifetap 1:1? I don't actually know offhand. Since the life cost and mana gain both increase by the same amount, your efficiency would be going down if it were currently greater than 1.

Pre-talents, lifetap is 1:1.