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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWhen 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 4 of 4)
Malkia Feb 13th 2009 11:34AM
The time to NOT Life tap: We're just went out of combat from a majorly taxing battle and the the beautiful and powerful druid healer throws up the HoTs sits down to take a drink. If you life tap yourself down to nothing and then ask me for heals I won't heal you. I'll tell you to eat.
Valper Feb 13th 2009 11:40AM
I never expect a healer to replenish my health after a LT, but they tend to anyway, and it's fine. If you know what the hell you're doing, you can usually end a fight with 100% mana and 100% health. But thank you to all the healers who cast that HoT anyway. We appreciate it and will try to keep those friggin bugs off you in AN.
Suzaku Feb 15th 2009 12:57AM
This. I get healed a lot when I absolutely do not need (or even want) to be healed.
I life tap to balance my health and mana after a fight, sometimes healers heal me after doing it. Don't need it. Fel Armor and Siphon Life is enough handle it. I don't need to go into a fight with full health, don't worry.
I usually life tap immediately after refreshing Haunt, healers often heal me after that. Don't need it. Haunt is about to heal me.
People gotta understand, warlocks basically cast from their health bar, not their mana bar. If they know what they're doing, they can keep themselves at relatively high mana and health on their own. They shouldn't need the healer unless they're taking damage from enemies (and even then, sometimes not). If the warlock is at *full* health, his healing effects are going to waste, so don't worry about him so much.
Hunahpu Feb 13th 2009 12:16PM
When I heal as a druid, I'm more than happy to throw a HoT to a lifetapping lock anytime in combat, and I usually will HoT them when I notice they're below 50% mana. That way they can lifetap (or not) at their convenience and I can chose when to put that rejuv into my rotation as well. After combat I'm also happy to top off a lifetapping lock, particularly if no one else needs to eat/drink.
The only time lifetapping irks me is when 1) I'm below 25% mana 2) they lifetap while the raid is taking AoE damage or 3) they lifetap themselves below 35% health. In those situations I feel that the lock is putting the rest of the raid in danger and I'm not going to blow my mana to save them.
Cygon Feb 13th 2009 11:51AM
You have to include Tapping into a 3-cycle rotation. 3-cycle being finishing up first round of dots->filler->second round->filler->third round. That brings us close enough to our original cast times IIRC.
I weave tap into it so that it at least leaves me to get my haunt back to me and to give me that spirit buff for my filler casts (aka SBOLT) Practice this and your dps rises higher than if you just randomly tap down.
Azizrael Feb 13th 2009 1:36PM
If I'm lifetapping, I almost always don't want healing.
I realise it can be incredibly hard to tell the difference, but I have Fel Armor returning 2% health every five seconds or so, I have drain life, siphon life, and Haunt - I have Life Tap worked into the rotation to keep mana and health fairly steady. After the fight, if I'm low on health and you have spare mana? Great, thanks, saves me eating. Usually though, I'll just lifetap down and eat, saves carrying drinks.
Fung Feb 13th 2009 1:38PM
why are the mage articles here all "we've done our own statistics and we estimate move x was nerfed 10% unnannounced" and the warlock section here's all "when to use shadowbolt? duhrrr"
SDevil Feb 13th 2009 2:10PM
Yeah I've watched locks life tap themselves to death in the Loatheb fight or while sitting in poison or other life draining effects. By the same token, I've played a lock, so while healing, I've been known to give a heads up on fights like loatheb that I intend to get them fully topped so go ahead and lifetap up cause it will be awhile before I get back to them.
DavidC Feb 13th 2009 4:08PM
"In that scenario, trying to keep a 100% uptime on the +Spirit buff is ideal" ...
OP is FAIL. You lose way more DPS on the GDC then you gain from the SPI buff.
The optimal use of LT with the 4pcT6 bonus is too buff your LT. Secondary use is to buff casts.
ie: Mana gets close to zero: LT1, cast, cast, cast, LT2 (with spi buff still on), cast, cast, cast, LT3 (with spi buff still on) ... done (or one more set).
The less LT's you do over the course of the fight, the higher your DPS will be overall.
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cynmoon Feb 13th 2009 4:27PM
Is it bizarro day on WoWInsider? Are the commenters in on it?
Life tap early, life tap often. If you're an affliction lock, it should be part of your rotation. Do it early in a fight when all the healers are still up, not when the chips are low, healers are down, and the tank is getting wailed on. That's when you should be blowing your mana like candles on a birthday cake. Even then, as an affliction lock you shouldn't even be worrying about mana or health. :-/
If you're doing it right, a healer shouldn't have to pay attention to you at all. Your mana shouldn't ever be below 50% (well, until the end of a fight when you're giving it all anyway) and as an affliction lock you should be healing yourself (haunt, siphon life, fel armor) Why take a healers attention by taking all of your health away when you're mana bar is that low? It doesn't make sense. And all that time spent life tapping then is time spent away from your rotation.
This is just... I feel like April 1st has come early. I'm so confused.
gammapoweredsuperape Feb 13th 2009 4:37PM
Thanks for all the great posts afflocks, but I have just one minor suggestion.
At the very beginning of the fight, strike up a little dialogue with your healer. You'd be amazed how far a little polite communication goes.
"Hi Priest! Do you have any preference on Life Tapping?"
This always gets me a positive reply, and avoids the usual confusion.
Slightly off- topic, while you are at it, you may want to ask the tank if he cares if you spam Seed of Corruption. O.0
Draim Feb 13th 2009 7:52PM
as a healer, if you DONT have a hot or something on you its a great time to say something over vent of even have a macro to say things I try to train mine to either say something or to do it when I say lifetap because I've noticed a lack of mana and am ready. There is nothing scarier then looking at grid to see that the silly lock is now at 3/4 health cause he just assumed you'd get the message.
Quartza Feb 16th 2009 1:14PM
I use life tap every 10 sec (in raids) (for the 130-150 spell power buff), and if you have fel armor on (which, of course, you should) thats around 1100-1200 heals in those ten seconds, effectively reducing the damage done by lifetap, about a third or so. So, really, a simple lowbie heal or HOT will suffice in healing a lock (if you're demon like me, or destro like others; I belive aff has more "healing" options, so maybe they're even less necessary to pop heals onto)
As a demon lock, as far as meters go, I'm usually toppin the charts, but really, its the PLAYER not the class, we should all know that by now. In the end, as DPS goes, you mainly want whatever will put out the most damage in the END, not so much on particular spell, or one particular rotation...meaning, for locks, just like hunters, our pets are very viable for our accumulated DPS. Now mind you, that's for raids, PvP there's usually some different rules. (but even in PvP demon locks are very strong *immolate aura anyone?*)
Aff locks are a "snowball" spec (it takes them a sec to get goin but once they do they shine), Destro locks are your pew pew spec that can just dish out the dps like a hot iron to the face, and then there is my spec, Demon locks. Demon locks shine with their pet (a magical beastmaster if you will); the stronger, more buffed your pet is, the stronger the lock. My imp does around 2k with his firebolt every 1.5 seconds or so, and with specing around 19 points into destro (for the double crit damage and 10% fire boost) Demon locks become a very interesting, almost hybrid spec. AOE, demon and destro locks are king (as far as locks go) plus with metamorph, that 20% increased dps is quite delicious, no matter where you are. I can regularly do 11k-12k Incinerates that way (I know that doesn't seem like a lot to others, but mind you there's my imp and DoTs each doin 2k to 1000-1500k a tick, respectively, which adds up to doing 15-17k per rotation, or per 3 sec)
So the whole QQ about locks being weak, or ineffective, or outdated is just silly. NO CLASS is like that. Again, it's up to the PLAYER to find out what they are comfy with and how they can generate the most dps. Any class can DPS correctly, IMO.
P.S. For you aff and demon locks, I highly recommend the nightfall glyph (free shadowbolt?! count me in :D) and remember, as far as healing goes, all locks have the death coil for a quick 2-4k heal, effectively making it a pot.
Quartza, Typhus, Kul Tiras
ravenelle Feb 17th 2009 1:59PM
You people are just about retarded. Most good locks are raiding affliction, their goal is to not waste gcd's by lifetapping when they don't need to. Siphon life and haunt are going to keep my health bar full regardless of whether you heal me or not unless I take undue raid damage. I gauge my mana and know when I need to life tap then I dps for 9 seconds and life tap one more time to get an extra spirit bonus to the second lifetap making it even larger. During this 9 seconds siphon life has returned a huge amount of health and so has the incoming haunt most likely. In addition to all of this my fel armor heals me for 2 percent of my health every few seconds. If patchwork goes down and I'm out of mana I have done my job. I have put as much dps as I could in while I could and haven't wasted my global cooldowns. I hit 5800 this week on patch and intend to break 6k this one.
If you think healing an affliction warlock is a waste then you're not remembering less mana efficient demo sac/sb spam warlocks in bc but then they had fel armor that did increase any healing effect on the target. My healers are my friends, they knew a renew would just about fill me up from half and I was smart enough then to know when I had to life tap and not put myself in danger. It's not like I don't have a healthstone at all times, I make them for all of you so you healers don't have to panic if lots of people take damage at once and you can't get to each one of them, they have a back up outside of a potion on any encounter.
No one needs to heal me after a boss fight, I will tap to half, bring mana to half and eat a biscuit if I can work it between doing master looting for my 25 man and seeing to it that everyone has what they need to continue and be able to do their job. If I can't, my health bar is going to be at full very shortly because my fel armor is going to keep healing me whether you do or not.
Mana regen is being changed but at the current state it's in now, most of you have mana to burn. There is something to be said for mana using dps'er that is never going to go out of mana ever. If it comes down to it I can deathcoil and lifedrain and keep myself up while tanking lady blameaux and sir zelliek. Let's see a mage do that. I can keep myself up on sapphiron with no frost resist. Go look at your wws report and see who's top healing in the raid after the healers, it's the warlock and the ret pally's seal. All that warlock healing is going to me. If you don't uderstand the dps mechanics of the people in your raid, you don't deserve to be raiding.