Bandoer

Stam is a detrimental stat after you have enough to survive. Currently extra stam is merely useless or superfluous.

 

Wednesday

It doesn't matter how many times you lifetap. Say you lifetap three times, it takes away 45% of your health. 55% of 12k hp is more than 55% of 10k hp. Yes, you lose more hp to lifetap as you gain stamina, but it's not like you're in a worse position with 55% of 12k hp vs. 55% of 10k.

 

Fizwidget

The key is 7 or more times (which is pretty low for a 7-10 min fight) After 7 times, you've tapped your entire health pool once. At that point you no longer have a net positive effect from stamina.

I'm having trouble trying to illustrate the effect.

The amount of health lost goes up for every point in stamina. Your total health pool will be tapped away several times in a fight, if you've tapped your entire health bar, your maximum health is moot. Much like your maximum mana was almost moot because you could lifetap it back at a fixed rate. So any stamina at all above the minimum requirements for a particular fight is bad. Warlock gear stacks absurdly high amounts of stam where spirit may have lived in another class' set. This is an extremely frustrating change.

Dauntless: "Incapable of being intimidated or discouraged; fearless"

 

Morwen

You can always be hit by more randomly targeted damage than you anticipated, so I don't buy the argument that anything over the minimum is superfluous in a real fight. Stamina will still be important for reasons other than life tap.

 

Wednesday

Yes, the major problem with this change is the way current lock gear is itemized. Hopefully this will be addressed should the change go live.

 

Quizart

While I'm certainly part of the QQ parade on the WoW forums for other reasons on this change, honestly it barely affects pve raiding. I can't remember the last time I wasn't over-healed for a lifetap, healers probably won't notice the difference.

It's in pvp and especially solo/5-man pve that this is really rediculous. But this is a PVE Raiding compendium, can save it for another topic.

I'm more off-set pieces than tier 4, and my hp/mana are almost exactly equal raid-buffed, so I won't personally notice much of a difference anyway.

Quizart

 

Tacitus

You know what they say... great minds think alike :p

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Trickykid

There wasn't a DPS-increase from stam before. If the change goes in there won't be a DPS-decrease from stam. I don't see much of a change there. Given that, I'd rather have more HPs to survive raid damage. The important part is what %of mana they finally settle on, since that determines if it will be nerfing our mana gained per life tap.

 

Spoonman

This mostly sums up my sentiments - having it cost more health is not a huge issue. The way that LT no longer scales with spell damage is incredibly irritating though, dropping from 2k return as affliction to 1.6k and 1.6k to 1.3k as destro means I'll have to tap much more, decreasing my dps and drawing a greater frequency of heals, as well as requiring more healing per tap. I'm chaining mana pots on most encounters as it is and still end tapping in order to be able to cast, this change will just make it worse. :<

Edit; it will also make farming as destro a lot less fun - currently I sac my voidwalker and run around, using LT to regen mana and the void buff + death coil + soul leech to regen that health deficit.

 

Quizart

It's a bit of a nerf yeah, most warlocks will be getting less mana back then they were before for more health cost - but it isn't a huge nerf for pve raiding, one that I can deal with, shouldn't have to tap that much more often. Although I'll probably be increasing my Super Rejuv Pot chugging ratio.

Now if self-only ISB goes through on the other hand...

Quizart

 

Tacitus

This is offtopic, but Quizart, will you please stop signing your posts, it's annoying, not needed since we can see your name on the left side and as a bonus

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

Madlax

Well, look at some numbers:
chardev.org - A World of Warcraft character planner v.2.beta (doesn´t have all SW gear yet)
10205 mana with 518 int
+40 arcane intellect
+18 imp motw
+10% bok

[top]> 1734 extra mana

11939 mana *1.03 from Fel Intellect

> 12297 total mana

12297*0.15 = 1844 LT

With the old values:
1200 => 1540
1300 => 1620
1400 => 1700
1500 => 1780
1600 => 1860
1700 => 1940

Honestly, that might be a slight "mid-game-PvE-nerf" but it doesn´t matter at all in "end-game-PvE".

 

Flamingcloud

Shhh if we get it turned into 20% we can have a dps buff =p

 

Idk

This is too funny coming from a person with an abnormally large and offtopic signature. Fortunately we can at least turn those off..

 

• frmorrison

Don't forget as a Gnome with Sunwell gear you will have another 600 mana, so another 90 mana in your Taps with top gear.

The nerf still is bad, because until you get the stamina weaker Sunwell gear, your Life Taps aren't going to be as good.


Another change with this is you don't want 150 HP to chest anymore, more like 6mp5 or 6 to all stats.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Devourment

Honestly I hadn't seen this as anything short of a buff to warlock raiding in general. As it stands currently, I lifetap for ~1670 mana. Full raid buffed, as described above I sit at approximately 12000. 26% of maximum mana (as the notes say lifetap will now restore) of 12000 is over 3000, so I cannot for the life of me see this as an end-game pve nerf. Basically it is a double lifetap. This is a pvp nerf, as all other nerfs/buffs have been in recent and upcoming patches...except this one seems to positively affect pve raiding, for once.

 

LockApologist

26% is a typo. It's 15/18% without/with talents. so, it's more than likely a nerf for the majority of locks. But, if you really do have 12000 mp (which doesn't look likely, as you have 8700 in armory. 12k hp, sure. mp, no), it will probably be a buff.

 

Devourment

How could they have a typo that terribad? Hahaha wow. And yeah I guess I never really paid attention to my mana in raids (for the reason explained by a previous post) which is most likely closer to 10.5k. Basically my mana returned will be about the same as it is now, and this makes intellect a much more appealing stat.

 

Turbo Moses

For all intents and purposes though, from a raiding perspective, it's cool to have int as a more desirable stat. That said, it'd be cooler if our talents and gear reflected that. The crit and extra mana and mana regen from int makes it quite a bit more desirable...but it's in a shitty state in it's current form. Blah.

Also, 1 is close to 2, and 5 is close to 6, so I guess I could see someone pulling a 26 instead of 15.

 

Nerull

I have calculated for myself if I would gain mana or lose with the new lifetap.
It came down to a difference of maybe 50 mana in favor of the new life tap - fully raidbuffed.
When playing solo then the new lifetap is a bit worse than the current one I have.

For reference, my gear currently consists of mostly tier 6 level gear and some items from ZA / S3 dagger ( Curse archimonde.... ) .

What im wondering is if people are considering changing gear / enchants to work around this in pve.

Examples :

Ring of captured storms , Translucent Spellthread Necklace are becoming nono's ? ( Loop of Cursed Bones as neck alternative, mana attuned band as ring alternative ? ) . Basicly : Are you considering changing out statless items for alternatives with slightly less damage ( if any ) , but more stats to buff your tapping ?

+6 all stats seems to be the best investment as chest enchant now as I can see it, +100 mana doesnt seem to be worth 10 mana for 90 hp, 6 mana per 5 gives less mana ( at least for me ) :

1760 mana per lifetap
Lifetap needed once per : 1760 / 399 * 2,4 = 10,6 seconds to sustain mana consumption assuming SB spam only.
Mana gained per lifetap from +6 all stats enchant : 90 * 1,03 * 1,10 * 0,15 = 15,3 mana
In a complete cycle of 12 seconds ( 10,6 + 1,44 from lifetap ) gain from +6 stats = 15,3
From 6 mana per 5 you gain 14,4 mana per 12 seconds

The difference is fairly small, but +6 all stats also gives stamina, plus if you use a pet , it scales with it.

 

SchLing

The Lifetap change seems to be very good from a raid point of view, and it's pretty clear that Blizzard want int to mean something for warlocks. Even though most of the raiding warlocks out there are currently not really geared for the change I don't think it will take long before most people are geared for the change. Taking a look at the new Tier 6 pieces you can allready see that they have more int than stamina, and I belive that we will see more of that in the future. With this change you could potensially gain more mana back than life sacrificed without any talents. I ran the numbers though Warlock DPS Spreadsheet and from that is was pretty clear that int would now acutally give you quite a lot of DPS increase, and more substained DPS. (From just upping my unbuffed mana pool from 9k to 10k I acutally gained 30DPS on the spreadsheet.)

The Health Talents like Demonic Embrace will still be usefull because you will not have to stack up on Health gear, but you become free to get more int on it instead. In addition 16% of 1000HP is 840, while 16% of 2000HP is 1680. So even if feel that getting more stamina will not make each Lifetap as effective it will still leave you with a bigger HP pool, making you more likely to survive random damage.

 

TheSorcerer

However, I still think the OP should at least mention that a way to increase your dps is to chain chug manapotions, I believe that is a non obvious fact to a beginning warlock raider. If you search the OP for "potion" the only references you fin are, that you should bring potions to your raid (a clearly non-obvious fact) and should use health potions if you're low on hp (I believe a lot more warlocks would die if this wasn't mentioned). I hope you realize I am beeing a little bit sarcastic. I do not want to discredit the OP, but I really believe that it should mention chain chugging manapotions is a way to increase your dps and you can verify it by increasing your mp5 by 100 on the spreadsheet.

I was asking not to improve my own dps, but was looking for some numbers to convince my warlocks to do so. Currently if I ask them "Are you chain chuggin manapotions?" their answer is "Why should I, I have lifetap!". And we currently are in Tier 6 content with only Illidan left for completition. Obviously not only entry level warlocks do not recognize the dps gain from chain chugging manapotions. I still believe this should be mentioned in the OP.

Thank you.

 

◊ Kyth

Damage-based curse. CoE isn't a fire curse, it's a utility curse -- my explicit example was "like CoD/CoA" to be clear.

It was a philosophical point :p, I know how to play my class.

What I said is I don't feel like fire is set up to be a 'warlock' element despite what the talent points say because all but two of our spells are school-based in shadow.


Call it the misguided dreams of an affliction warlock trapped in a destruction body, I dunno.

Officer of <Fusion>
http://www.stratfu.com/ - StratFu: Strategies, Guides, Movies, and Tips for Wrath Raiding

 

dakalro

Hmm, don't think anyone serious about their dps on encounters where it matters would simply rely on lifetap, 100 mp5 is alot no matter how you put it. Nobody mentions it because it's common sense for a class going on -800mp5 usage (yes, Cataclysm is a very good talent ).

As for destro pots vs mana pots, same thing, clear winner in mana simply because we go through mana like candy and we don't dps while LTing. And while movement sometimes allows us to Life Tap it's not always safe/sane to do so because most of the time you move out of death's way and moving just to LT is kind of moot point.
If there's no death around just a safer place to go, yes, you might want to move while LT gcd is on because you'll have to move anyway at some point. So majority of times I move during LT not LT during movement.

I have 10500 mana fully buffed, losing 300 mana with the change, fully raid buffed. You will get 1680 mana fully raid buffed from new LT, you're still losing mana, about 150-200 I'd say. Only ones that won't lose mana from LT with this are gnomes in t6 gear that don't use statless items, kinda specific don't you think? It's 15% not 16% at this point.

And again, the fact that LT won't scale anymore until WotLK is the bad part, not the small nerf. Anyone that played a warlock pre-TBC will still remember the fun that was 500 mana/LT that always stayed constant.
And if TBC is any indication int scaling between first tier and last tier is small, a lot smaller than +dmg scaling.
So we'll yet again start powerfull and while most will upgrade, our LT will stay almost constant providing an ever increasing dps barrier that will keep our dps from scaling enough, that's my nightmare that while I haven't lived to see in Naxx (Pwerk 1st kill was with 5 locks chaining Major Rejuv Pots) I've heard horror stories about.

While increasing % would fix it for now it's not enough if they'll keep the same itemization in next expansion or even the same int scaling. I'd pretty much be in favor of 2 ranks, one 15-16% or w/e they want and one (Rank 2, at 60 or so) with exact same formula for mana gain as now just scaled up health cost according to how much hp/mana you have, as in allow low levels to still LT, prevent PvPers from downscaling under 15% hp or so, let PvE-ers keep their scaling.

Or, for another option,
mana_return= %of_base_mana_(to equal 570 atm) + 0.8 * max(damage_bonuses)
hp_cost = max_hp/max_mana * mana_return
And you only need 1 rank this way and scale it vs +dmg. Of course if they do change itemization of stats to scale the same way as dmg does (about 40-60% or more from T4 to T6?) without impacting other stats then sure, go ahead and change LT if they can provide us with the gear.

 

Nerull

Hmm I stand corrected about the raidbuffed mana tap now vs 2.4, it seems that you will need 13k+ to get anywhere near the current lifetaps. A weird change considering this was suppose to be a nerf for pvp.

to make up for the 200 mana you would need to get 20% haste rating, so thats not really likely to happen.

Drat, everytime I get excited about getting even a minor buff, it turns out to be a nerf anyway for warlocks