When should you Life Tap?
by Zach Yonzon 
Feb 13th 2009 at 9:00AM
Elleiras in her blog Fel Fire posted a humorous yet insightful entry about when Warlocks should Life Tap. She apologizes to all the Priests, Druids, and Shamans (sorry, Paladins, you're out of this equation) for not Life Tapping when there's an HoT on her. This is actually an excellent question for many Warlocks, who either don't Life Tap enough or on time, or Life Tap too much.When to use Life Tap during a fight is actually kind of tricky. Life Tap eats the GCD, which eats into rotations, which then cuts down DPS. This is why it's almost never a good idea to Life Tap in succession -- even with the 4-piece bonus of the Plagueheart set. A few Warlocks argue that the first Life Tap will benefit the second one, which is true, but that also translates to a 3 second downtime. The only good time to Life Tap is just before you run out of mana so that your next cast won't result in an Out of Mana error message and when you move during a fight and no instant cast DoTs need to be refreshed.
Otherwise, casting Life Tap needs to be at a minimum, except when you have the 4-piece bonus. In that scenario, trying to keep a 100% uptime on the +Spirit buff is ideal, but probably won't happen. In a case where all instant cast DoTs are ticking, however, it's a good spot to insert a Life Tap just before casting a Shadow Bolt. Just don't do it so often that you find yourself Life Tapping when you have more mana than you need. The ideal is ending a boss fight at exactly 0 mana. Of course, Elleiras makes an excellent point, as well, so don't waste those sweet HoTs. When you see a swirly green thing around you (the good kind), Life Tap with gusto.
Filed under: Warlock, Analysis / Opinion, Tips
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Tradyk Feb 13th 2009 9:44AM
Not half a second before Gluth's decimate, so the lag causes it to kill yourself.
Especially not when your guild is at zero deaths for the first 11 bosses in Naxx, and well on their way to immortal, with only thad, saph and KT to go.
*sigh*
Punjab Feb 13th 2009 11:01AM
Ouch.
Hansbo Feb 13th 2009 12:07PM
If I was a lock doing Immortal, I wouldn't life tap at all.
After all, what is the loss of some dps in comparison to risk dying and never be allowed to come to a similar raid again?
Malvolius Feb 13th 2009 9:11AM
As an afflock, it's all about maintaining rotations. When there's 1.5 seconds left before I need to recast an instant spell, or 3 seconds left before I need to cast something with a 1.5s cast time (subtract time for Haste, of course), then I squeeze in a life tap. There isn't enough time for a shadow bolt (barring Nightfall procs of course), and there aren't any other good spells I can use to fill the time.
Raid buffed, LT restores about 20% of my mana. I never have to life tap twice in a row, and my mana pool almost never goes below 50%. I could pretty much function without external heals, too, thanks to SL and Haunt. The only fight where I have to pay even a bit of attention to my mana and hp is Loatheb, so maybe I'll LT two or three times in a row before the aura goes away and eat a healthstone. That's really the only time I bother worrying about mana - Lord knows I have enough else to worry about with juggling dots on the boss.
steve Feb 13th 2009 9:25AM
With a raiding affliction spec, you are going to switch to drain life at 25% health on the mob anyway (massive damage bonus kicks in), so to me that always seems like a good time to work a lifetap into the rotation, especially if it is on trash and there are more mobs to down.
My main is a healer, but everyone seems to assume that when I log into my lock I've become a raving idiot, get lots of tells and comments in party chat about life tapping. I fully expect most of the posts to talk about locks killing themselves with lifetap, etc. On behalf of locks everywhere: we get it, lifetapping on fights that have unavoidable AOE damage is bad.
Malvolius Feb 13th 2009 9:47AM
Actually, it's Drain Soul, not Life, that gets the 4x execute bonus, so I'm just timing DS ticks along with everything else.
rosencratz Feb 13th 2009 10:48AM
@Steve - Quite frankly below 25% i find rotating lifetaps into the equation is even harder. Using Drain Soul is one thing but using it well. It's not possible to get a full cast of it before you have to reapply another dot, thus you have to break it which requires the decision to wait for the next tick or not and once you do you want to leap back into Draining life, it's ticks are so infrequent.
So i'd say, in my experience, life tapping becomes trickiest of all at the point when you have the most dots to rotate(one of which being a channeled one)
I've never had a /w from a healer though. The loss of health from one life tap is tiny to a healer and quickly patched up with haunts, fel armor and siphons mostly. I can't imagine any healer would notice unless you were tapping 2-3 times in a row.
Riz Feb 13th 2009 10:56AM
The only way a 'lock would come close to being anywhere in the top DPS is if the healer decides to heal the 'lock.
If you don't heal them, they'll end up killing themselves - making them the emo poster kids of WoW.
It's way more efficient to keep the non-retarded DPSers alive, the ones who actually do decent damage and need the occasional heal - instead of the life tap spamming 'lock.
Let the 'lock die
Scott Feb 13th 2009 11:00AM
It's Drain Soul you're think ing of, not Drain Life.
rosencratz Feb 13th 2009 11:00AM
@ Riz- L2P mate!
Riz Feb 13th 2009 11:47AM
@rosencratz:
in a language that's befitting of your intellectual level - QQ moar
Falcrist Feb 13th 2009 12:45PM
I know you're not supposed to feed the trolls, but I couldn't resist. XD
Riz said:
"The only way a 'lock would come close to being anywhere in the top DPS is if the healer decides to heal the 'lock."
Clearly you are confused. As an affliction warlock (widely recognised as the top build right now), not only can I top DPS meters in many of the groups I'm in, I can do it without any support from the healers (besides getting healed through raid damage). I regenerate hitpoints faster than I lifetap them away. In fact, any mildly-competent affliction warlock should be able to stand in front of the target dummy and just DPS indefinitely.
I agree with the rest of that post (bad locks should be low healing priorities). Now for your other post:
Riz wrote: "I'm in one of the biggest guilds on Tich ... yes, some 'locks hit 4k+, but hunters and ret pallys do better AND without the constant mollycoddling.
face it, without a healer playing nanny to you, you'd be at the bottom of any dps meter - dead"
Again, there seems to be some serious confusion here. A mildly competent affliction lock should be able to maintain dps, lifetap when needed, and never go below 75% HP (without something hitting him). I don't need or want healers paying any attention to me on Patchwork. Any time they spend on me is time they should have spent healing one of the tanks (since there's absolutely no raid damage). I've even told the healers this, and most choose to throw an instant heal or hot on me anyway if I'm more than 1000hp away from full.
And for the record, I have passed 5200dps on patch, and I'm not even NEAR the top lock in the guild most of the time.
Riz Feb 13th 2009 9:11AM
There's always some 'tard 'lock who spam life tap and then scream "OMG HEALZ PL0X !!!"
The only thing 'locks are good for now are the soulstones & summons.
freakin' idiots
sss Feb 13th 2009 9:19AM
Warlocks are usually topping the DPS meters if they know what they are doing , so STFU...
Riz Feb 13th 2009 9:22AM
'locks orly???
lol
get serious now =) they're just wannabe mages in dresses
sephirah Feb 13th 2009 9:26AM
But at least we don't have a total boring work like watching others players healthbars!
Oh wait, you're probably one of the bad healers that never heal a dpser, so you're only looking at the tank health...
Avan Feb 13th 2009 9:58AM
"But at least we don't have a total boring work like watching others players healthbars!
Oh wait, you're probably one of the bad healers that never heal a dpser, so you're only looking at the tank health..."
I almost never heal warlocks in combat if they're life tapping. Most often than not, they're tapping when they're almost oom. Meaning that they're going to be very low on health and ready to die should they get any damage. I'm not going to waste 3 seconds putting a heal on them because they can't manage their mana better. Start tapping at 40%, not 4%.
Honestly, what good is a dps that goes oom on trash pulls?
Pip Feb 13th 2009 10:09AM
o rly lol !!!!
5 gold manbabies kekekeke ^_^ goatse lolcats roflcopter!!
zomg HGS!
If the lock isn't at the top of the damage charts then he isn't geared well enough or is asleep at the wheel.
rosencratz Feb 13th 2009 10:54AM
@ Avan - Why don't you start running with Locks who know how to play?
No Decent lock waits to life tap when they're out of mana especially not to the point that they're almost out of health.
If these locks are fellow raid members someone seriously needs to have a word.
Scott Feb 13th 2009 11:08AM
Riz,
You must be playing in a poorly constructed guild with low-performing players. Well-geared Afflic locks tend to stay high on the dps meters and will always balance their health:mana ratios. Hell, I play an Afflic lock and tend to avg 4,100-4.200 dps on nearly every boss. To the majority, that's pretty damn good.