Latest Life Tap change is up on the PTR
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Feb 27th 2008 at 7:20PM
With the PTRs up again, the biggest thing everyone was looking for was to see how Life Tap was adjusted. The reports are in, and it seems like not only was the change adjusted quite a bit, it's almost arguably a buff to the skill. Tipster Fortine linked us this thread, where a handful of Warlocks are reporting a return of 15% of their max mana at a cost of 5% of their max health, without the Improved Life Tap skill. The question, of course, is whether this is intended or not, but with no blue confirmation, it is hard to say at the moment if this was someone misplacing a piece of code, or an actual intended change.
It's definitely an improvement from the last iteration of the skill. However, scaling concerns could come into play. 5% of max HP may make this a buff in PvP, with Warlocks able to give up less health per Life Tap. However, PvE Warlocks will still have to lifetap more often to get the same amount of mana as before, which will mean less DPS for them while they wait on global cooldowns, and more Stamina will still technically be liability for them, even if not as much as before. We'll see if it's tweaked further though, it seems likely that the 5% figure on the HP may be deemed a bit too low, and we doubt Blizzard meant to buff Life Tap in PvP while nerfing it in PvE.
Filed under: Warlock, Realm News, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
matt Feb 27th 2008 7:25PM
"we doubt Blizzard meant to buff Life Tap in PvP while nerfing it in PvE"
Well, they DID say they'd listened to player feedback. As a PvEr, that's exactly what I suggested.
Charlie Feb 27th 2008 7:44PM
say wha? Why would you do that? Anyways...
This is probobly blizzard way of testing the skill, i seriously doubt this will go live. As i said on previous comments, the idea of a percentage is good, but 15%-15% is to high, and 5% to 15% is to low.
Possibly make it % of Life -> X amount of mana? This should make it so it still more adventageous to work on Stam gear and not int gear, as int would make no matter in the outcome.
Other suggestions. Make the amount of mana gained scale with +dmg, but increase the % of Life drained. Make it so it is a slight buff to people in say, BT/Hyjal but a nerf to PvPers, and those in Kara/Gruuls etc.n (I'm going on the assumption that PvErs have naturally more damage than PvPers.)
Idk, just some ideas. I don't play a warlock, but I do agree its a bit IMBA in PvP, but any nerf to PvE is a big setback.
Brandon Feb 27th 2008 7:37PM
It has to be a mistake.
There is no possible way that Blizzard would intentionally buff the Warlock class.
The resulting complaints from 99% of non-warlocks will never allow this PvP buff to go live. The steady stream of nerfs since TBC is evidence of this.
Naughton Feb 27th 2008 8:49PM
A buff.. a buff... a effin buff. @$&@^$!!!!!!!
How do you go from nerfing locks to on par with other classes to buffing them. Blizzard really messed this one up for every non-lock player.
I'd say more cept i'd rather not get banned.
spimmy Feb 27th 2008 9:00PM
wow you really are a dumb mage arent you :)
they orginal nerf to life tap was how should i put it so you understand very class braking
for that nerf every worlock would get hurt every time we get stamina buffs as well as how our gear effects us!
our gear has allways been stamina > int
so with the orginal nerf our entire gear would have had to have been reworked
Buzz Feb 27th 2008 7:47PM
Yeah, that seems like a mistake (I have a kara clearing 70 lock) and that seems like a buff we really don't need for PvE. And it's certainly not what they were trying to do for a PvP nerf since you can't get a 1:3 ratio of health to mana on a life tap on the live realms even *with* talents unless you have like 3,000 spell damage or something.
Retron Feb 27th 2008 7:49PM
"However, PvE Warlocks will still have to lifetap more often to get the same amount of mana as before..."
Maybe I'm missing something...
With the normal system (and 2 points in imp LT), a single life tap gives a lock 696 mana. The PTR version will offer 15% (again with imp LT), which for a 70 lock with a really low mana pool of 5000, that comes out to 750 mana.
Putting aside the percentage of health pool issue, why will PVE locks, or any locks, need to LT more often? My math skills are admittedly poor (not exactly a theory crafter here) so again I ask, what am I missing?
Daniel Whitcomb Feb 27th 2008 7:52PM
With the current live version, Warlocks get more mana per Life Tap from Spell Damage. I do not believe the percentage-based tap on the PTR gives any scaling due to Spell Damage.
jbodar Feb 27th 2008 9:43PM
I don't see why they don't just nerf the coefficient and make it lose 15% of health for that amount back in mana, or even a smaller percentage of THAT amount. Why tie it to INT at all?
Mats Feb 27th 2008 7:53PM
well, it would return less mana per global cooldown then now, but my health mana ratio is not 3:1 so it would scale, if somewhat by accident.
All in all, this change, while not as major as the one that came before, is still not a satisfactory solution for how it should work, if you lose lots of life, you should get lots of mana back, no matter what your mana pool size is, one should not depend on the other. I can accept 15% health loss for the same amount of points of mana back, I can also accept a % of mana back for equal amount of health points lost, but these % have to scale with each other, one being a percentage and one being point based.
Bayard Randel Feb 27th 2008 8:01PM
They could easily resolve the issue by making resilience reduce the amount of mana restored from a tap, or have it consume more health.
This would leave PvE warlocks happy, and provide the desired nerf for Arenas.
matt Feb 27th 2008 8:18PM
So the more resilience you have, the worse your lifetap is? There are only a couple tradeoffs like that in the game, and people mostly hate them. People like "moar == bettar".
themann1086 Feb 27th 2008 8:43PM
Ok. It's still stupid.
Less rage-inducing now, but it still makes me scratch my head. I really don't know why Blizz is mucking about with Lifetap. It's fine as is...
themann1086 Feb 27th 2008 11:15PM
And now it has 3 ranks, all % to %.
What the hell, Blizzard?
Chriasas Feb 27th 2008 9:00PM
I would have been happy for a simple 1 to 1 transfer.
Meyl Feb 27th 2008 9:09PM
This is just bizarre....it accomplishes exactly the opposite of what Eyonix said the intent was: to make Life Tap more expensive (cost more health) in PvP.
This makes Life Tap cheaper in PvP - it's clearly a PvP buff.
Yet this nerfs the mana gain for well-geared PvE players, leading to more frequent Life Taps during raids, reducing DPS. So, it's a PvE nerf in that respect. But it's also a PvE buff, since warlocks will take a lot less damage and place less strain on the raid healers.
Any way you look at it, it just doesn't make sense in light of the supposed reason that Blizz is messing with Life Tap to begin with. I'm guessing this is an error.
Blizz needs to pick *one* stat to tie Life Tap to - either health, or mana, or spell damage. Tying it to both mana and health just doesn't make sense - it will cause negative scaling for players as their gear improves. I don't know what the developers are thinking.
Djinn Feb 27th 2008 9:49PM
Personally I think they should just leave it alone.
I think they are treading on dangerous ground here because lifetap and stamina are such huge parts of the basic class design and unless they want to just flat break the class and have nobody playing one they need to leave such an integral part of the class as it is.
Theserene Feb 28th 2008 1:07PM
Totally agree. It is a fundamental part of the class, all our gear is based upon its use, so they really should leave it alone.
Bayard Randel Feb 27th 2008 10:42PM
Lifetap now returning 20% Max Mana for 20% Max Health. This still scaled negatively - Blizzard are utterly clueless.
Azureblood Feb 27th 2008 10:45PM
lol i play a lock.. and even i think this is OP lawl
IMBA ftw