Perhaps a mention of how best to use your 2 min potion cooldown does belong in the OP after all. This is a good point. A nice example of a fight where you could lifetap because you're forced to move a lot, but where it's probably wiser not to, would be illidari council. That fight will force you to move relatively frequently, but you're always taking damgae when it forces a move, making lifetap dangerous.

However, fights like Supremus, Lurker, Al'ar, Voidreaver, Illidan, and Kael'thas, provide multiple opportunities to safely life tap, where you wouldn't be able to be DPSing the boss anyway.

When we were learning Illidan I think the only time I used mana pots was in phase 2. In phase 1 I would use a destro pot, then lifetap to full in the transition between phase 1 and phase 2. In phase 3 onward, I would lifetap immediately following the first fire barage while running to a safe distance, and use destro pots in his humanoid phase (or in phase 5 use destro pots when he goes into a trap).

"Mana pot spam is best," works for stand and burn fights, but on more interesting execution fights you need to think about how the fight is going to play out, and pick the potion scheme that fits best with that particular fight. The only T6 fight where I consider mana pot spam mandatory is Kaz'rogal.

This change makes perfect sense to me. Slight annoyance for pve, nerf for pvp, while maintaining scaling and current regen rates.

Kaz'rogal...why? I would be careful here about misleading new warlocks into thinking potting is mandatory and wasting gold. In almost all fights you can lifetap without losing damage. The bonus you gain from mana potting is so small compared to the cost. The only fight I'd consider it on would be Brutallus.

Also, why on Earth would you use pots in Illidan phase 1/2, it's not a dps race at all.

Another thing to ponder is that in the expansion, stamina went up on gear drastically more than int did. I now have 2x the hit points of an old-WoW main tank, buffed, in my survival gear, but I only have 1.4x or so the mana.

So in WotLK, given current gear and trending levels, raiding warlocks will have around 20k hp, and maybe 12k mana, and stam set locks will have 25-28k hp and 10k mana. A lifetap for that latter guy will hit him for 4200 damage and return 1500 mana.

Most players have more gold than they know what to do with, or are capable of acquiring more gold than they know what to do with.

I wouldn't say its mandatory to kill the boss, if that's all you want to do. But if you want to push your max dps you should be chain potting something or another.

With sunwell gear, you'll get over 20% unavoidable haste via best-in-slot gear. Around 22/23% for mages, it depends a bit for you class specific 4T6.

So, you'll get there again, eventually.


[E]: Hm, then 18%, still close to 20%! Realised I was counting tailoring robes, and some items are sidegrades with haste.


[Edit]: The gnome intellect is a multiplier that applies to your intellect. The intellect of a gnome mage with Blessing of Kings and the +15% intellect arcance talent is (base_int + gear_int) * (1.05 gnome) * (1.1 BoK) * (1.15 talent). This has been tested and verified by me and others.

I appologize if I was not sufficiently specific, I said "while learning." I don't use mana pots or destro pots on most farm content unless I'm trying to set a record of some kind. (By the way, exactly when on Kaz'rogal can you supposedly life tap without losing damage?)

That said, Illidan phase 2 is definitely a DPS race. The faster you get out of that phase, the better.

I agree that so far in sunwell Brutallus is definitely a mana potion spam fight. I also used them on Kalecgos, although that's mostly just because I copied 20 injectors to test and probably won't be able to use them all up before they take it down. There's a lot of AoE damage flying around on that fight so using mana pots is pretty reasonable, even though there are repositioning times where you could lifetap.

It's not like mana potions really cost anything, if you're not using your potion timer for something else, you might as well be using them.

My calculation for best in slot stats is currently 1570dmg 31.8%crit max hit 18.5%haste.(That is 4pc bonus using helm)

If there is trinkets/neck/cloak to be had somewhere the stats will most likely increase

So they're going back to the drawing board on the LT changes. Hopefully this was in response to the negative scaling and they will address this with whatever new PvP nerf they are coming up with. Re-itemizing every piece of lock raiding gear and mucking about with several of our talents obviously didn't look attractive.

However, I do remember saying something like "They'll never revamp every other piece of T5 and T6 just to balance FSW" after the Frozen Shadoweave nerf hit the PTR, and was wholeheartedly rejected by the community.

https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/t...ageNo=145#2885

I'd find that surprising, since the human spirit bonus (+10% Spirit) and tauren health bonus (+5% stamina) are both to overall stats, not base stats.

lol I like how we create a 145 page post about a 2-3% dps nerf in a matter of days.. Makes me feel that they could never in a million years sneak in a real warlock nerf.. The imp sb change won't happen if they can't get a pve lifetap nerf through. I have a feeling this is gonna come back at 15% health for 20% mana and will actually end up as a buff.

Put ahead by not enough to offset the loss of shadow priest dps/utility.. I personally don't want to loot a new cape and pay for a sunfire enchant.

Yes I realize the imp sb nerf would almost exclusively affect spriest dps, but there are many a retard out there that won't see it this way and block any attempt to make such a change. Plus if mages ever all switched out of fire(like say.. if their mana regen was good enough to be arcane) both our options would be gimped all of a sudden.

Also why would you want spriests to be nerfed? They don't compete with us on raid spots.. They are a utility class we are a dps class.


My conclusion: PvE Warlocks are unnerfable if we end up with a PvE lifetap buff.

An ISB nerf would just clear up muddy waters as to which is better fire/shadow.
As for LT, I could see a single % coming in, as in "Converts 15% of your total Hp into mana."

That would also be pretty awesome, although I am pretty sure they will still keep the pvp nerf portion in. All I really care about is getting as much or more mana back per-tap then I did before, don't care if it is less efficient. Your way, my way, 18 or 20%.., all upgrades. I mean the only way this will not work out for the better at this point is if they revert to live values and lower the coefficient.(lowered coefficient was the original change in those notes ages ago)

Exactly what I was thinking.

The ISB "nerf" would also make it easier to manage game balance in WOTLK.

I only said it won't matter if shadow priests get a juicy nerf worth the ISB loss, nothing else.
Oh boy was I dead then, really, really meant buff )

That would buff what it currently is for PvP, and they wanted to nerf it for PvP.

You really shouldn't wish for any nerfs to your raid's DPS. Even if you desperately want to be fire.

The fact you go through mana like candy is completely irrelevant for the potion choice. Assuming you actaully can't lifetap for "free", it depends wether 100 mp5 gives you more than having extra damage and crit on a couple spells every 2 minutes. While the answer is still "100 mp5 will give you more" it has nothing to do with the mana consumption, it has to do with the amount of damage lost by spending X duration on lifetaps being a bigger loss than the extra spell dmg/crit from the destruction potion.

Going oom doesn't immidiately mean more mana is better. It might, but the fact you go oom is far from enough to determine the usefullness of extra mana. What you can do with that extra mana VS what you lose to get that mana is what really matters.

I don't know about your Gnome, but mine gets 5% more Int than a non-Gnome Warlock has; it adds up to like 20 int with Tier 6 gear, so that is hardy something to worry about non-Gnomes.


I am interested to see the new Life Tap when it comes.

In WLK they actually redesigned the item formulas to give everyone significantly more survivability, and upped people's base stats as well. There's no reason to think that stamina's item cost is getting cut by half again in the next expansion, especially since arena is nowhere near being World of TwoShotCraft like BGs were pre-TBC. Expect your health and mana ratios to remain relatively constant for the next expansion. The absolute values will probably skyrocket, to keep in line with damage and new talents, but the ratios should stay about where they are.

...of course that very well may not matter next patch. I eagerly await a version of lifetap that does not have negative scaling. I fully expect it to be a heinous nerf for at least PvP, and possibly PvE, and I really can't say I blame them.

As I edited my 1st post above also, I actually meant buff but think i was kinda sleeping back when I wrote that I even had no idea why people kept telling me I shouldn't wish for nerfs