As a warlock, I fully support your choice here. Unless the healer is terrible (and I am being terrible for not having managed my mana properly) I will never ask for a heal. And I'm not one of those people who thinks most healers are terrible. I have had two bad healers out of well over 100 random PuGs.

You must have never played a Warlock. My main was a warlock but is now a Resto Sham so I have seen it from both sides. Many healers will feel put off that a warlock will just tap after a pull instead of drinking and in response just not heal them until they take mob damage. I agree that this can be annoying but the fact is that it takes two seconds to top them back off and throw a hot or shield on the tank then start drinking yourself. By the time the tank has pulled the next mob and is taking dmg you will be back to full mana and can come back and heal the group back to full which will DRAMATICALLY increase the pace in an instance.

I don't know. The more I read this article, the angrier I get. There are other people in the raid that I need to pay attention to over your pet. I'm sorry if it gets missed on heals and buffs. And no...I do not put pet's heath bar on my unit frames. I have enough things to worry about in the raid. Your pet is your responsibility. Learn how to manage it. And for the love of all things, please learn how to read a threat meter. If you see yourself going up high, back off of the DPS. Take some responsibility of your survivability on yourself. Don't rely so much on the healers doing all the work for you.

Amen for healers. The warlock who poasted this is a jerk. As a healer, who has to drink between fights: if I'm sitting and drinking, to get mana, and you life tap you will get no heals. If I'm spending my time and vitrual gold to get mana back, you can sit your cheap, lazy ass down and do the same. Healers are not your personal mana battery. If you actually have to sit and drink between fights, too bad. All the other caster classes have to drink mana, too. Groups are NOT solo. You are now acting as a cooperative, not a single person who is pulling mutiple mobs as fast as you can to level. It is NOT ok do go into fights with half health, cause your pet will tank the mobs. Healers want to take every advantage they can get going into fights, and that menas full health for everyone. Your life tap annoys the living crap out of us. Just sit and drink. Or even better, tap once, and sit and eat and drink, so you get health and mana regen at the same time.
That being said, in raids where you run low on mana, sure, you can get health back. But be sure you are close enough to someone taking damage to get healing splash. Healers notice who takes damage, and who takes damage often. Those are the first to be ignored for heals in a tight situation. In the long run, they are not worth spending mana on to keep up. Constant use of life tap will put you on that list very fast. You become as bad as the loser that always stands in the fire. If you life tap at the wrong time, we let you die first.
Keep in mind, healers cannot kill you. But if you are stupid and take unnecessary damage, we can let the Darwinian process finish its work.

As someone that plays a healer and a warlock, I agree.

Wow some of you healers ARE diva's.

Come over to my group, I got you, your mana, and your pets backs.

;)

re: Yomamma's comment on pets.

I agree.

I do actually have a special bar for pets in my window, but it is strategically placed several inches below my main healing bar. It works out well for me, because if I'm spamming heals, I'll only see the players, because they are my first responsibility. When I get a chance to breath, I can take a broad look at all of the bars and will be able to toss heals towards the pets, too.

And with respect to Jay Estrela's response, I would argue that if the tank is pulling while the healer is OOM, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the run to begin with. I have been in many situations where I have to race after a tank and pray that I'll get him shielded before he dies and finally get within range when he/she is at 25% health. The faster things go do, then faster he moves, the harder it is for the healer to catch up. And having a healer who is out of range and/or out of LOS of the tank is just as bad as having one who is OOM.

I used to have a macro that cast regrowth and whispered to the lock, "Welcome to Kah's rehabilitation for locks who have been yelled at by healers. Regrowth is on you and will continue healing for 27 seconds. If you Life Tap in that time, it will be healed with no extra effort on the healers' part."

Of course, that was unwieldy and annoying after a time or two, so I reduced it to one line and try to keep track of locks who want the reminder and those who don't.

When I play my lock, I try to keep an eye on the healer. If they go out of mana faster, I Life Tap less and try to do so when a Haunt is coming back to me quickly.

I actually play a Resto Shaman...so your pets are indirectly being healed by my glyphed healing totem, and from chain heal. I just don't see a need to keep an eye on a pets health. I also play a hunter, and know that when my pet gets low on health it's time to pull him back. Why can't locks learn to do that as well?

And for throwing a HOT to a warlock lifetapping. I have no problem doing that either. My HOT's are kind of limited so you're not getting my first riptide at the start of the pull. That goes to the tank.

My beef really is with those who say HEAL ME in vent or in chat. It seemed like the Author is one of those bads.

@Urkwow
That kind of attitude is precisely what the point of that part of the article was about. Warlocks have small mana pools compared to every other caster class, we have much greater mana costs per casts than every other caster class. You think you have to burn your gold drinking, well it would cost us four times as much to keep ourselves topped up in that way.

Sure if the group has stopped for a mana break, and a Warlock is standing around at 5% health waiting for you to finish and not eating then he/she is taking the piss, but our class is designed around the understanding that we make good use of life-tap. Also, as ISL destro, or Afflic we generate pretty awesome amounts of self-healing, so it's not like we're not helping you out at all.

@Yomamma

Noone's expecting you to manage our pets for us, but there are limits to what we can do. I don't expect you to prioritise my pet over any member of the raid, just to be aware that he is part of the raid dps and he is giving you free spirit and intellect, unless I'm dreadful, he's not going to be asking for much. If you struggle that much with healing in that encounter, let him die first, if not you're doing yourself no favours by ignoring him.

We appreciate healers more than most, because we know that we depend on you for dps, even if we're taking no damage. We hand out healthstones, and you're always the ones to get our soulstones, just understand we need a little more love than mages :)

Wow you healers are seriously on Diva status. I play both a resto druid and a warlock and I fully understand how easy it is to heal a lock when they lifetap. The only time lifetap has been a problem is when a silly lock taps in the middle of a boss fight when they are seriously low on HP. Most of the time a couple of quick hots that regen faster for me since my gear has a butt ton of Mp5 will top off the lock without me even feeling it. I pretty much just make it standard practice to throw a hot on the lock both right before a pull, and right after we down mobs so they can lifetap.

It's important to keep in mind that if the lock you are healing dies it takes longer to run the instance anyway. The whole point is to get through as quickly as possible and deaths/drinking just slows the whole process down.

Thanks for addressing the interaction between my Renew button and your Life Tap! I

As a healer, my opinion is that you locks can just life tap away as you see fit, as long as you don't do it during combat just when the boss is about to do his big AoE attack. I am drowning in regen, I can spare the heals.

I will also buff your pet, even if you summon it after I've buffed everybody else. And I'll also heal it, no problem, as long as you understand the priority list in a typical 5-man is: tank, me, DPS, pets.

Just watch your threat. That's really the only problem I ever have with locks, as soon as they get some nice gear they become aggro monkeys. Just remember that you're still a clothie...

I play a tree with about 400 MP5 in (unbuffed). In heroics, as you'd expect, I generally have plenty of mana. I usually tell any warlocks "If you've got a HoT on you, feel free to lifetap". It's usually greeted with "Yay!" or similar :-). I'll then try to keep a Regrowth on the 'lock at essentially all times. Most 'locks then tap as often as they need to keep the mana bar reasonably well topped off. It keeps the group running smoothly, and everyone's happy.

Lifetapping to top off mana helps in other ways too. If I have to drop everything and keep the tank alive, I may have no GCDs (or *very* occasionally mana) to keep a spare HoT on a warlock. At that point, most 'locks have a plenty large enough mana pool to keep on nuking until the crisis is over one way or the other.

I use Dark Pact instead of Life Tap since 3.3 because it raises much more mana in less time and doesn't require healing. Obviously this only works for affliction, but that is the best spec anyway :D

What does annoy me about other healers (I have a priest too) is that they will rarely put a lock, mage or shadow priest above another dps on healing priority. Surely it stands to reason that a squishy with 18k health is more likely to die from unavoidable damage than a ret paladin with 24k? On my disc priest bubble priority goes Tank>Me>Clothies>Leather>Mail>Plate. It is not so hard!

One thing that Warlocks never realize and that annoys me as a healer (who has an 80 lock that I once raided with, so I'm not just talking out of my ass here) is that you DON'T need to be at full mana for trash. With Replenishment aplenty, you don't even need to be at HALF mana for trash.

Also...for those of you who have the Glyph for LT, put Life Tap Rank One on your bar and do THAT at the beginning of a pull.

I guess I take a proactive approach to Lifetapping 'locks since I play a Priest as a main and alt a Warlock. When I'm on my Priest, I tell the Warlock they can LT as needed and I'll heal them up. I recommend they use Rank 1 Life Tap if they're just using it as part of their rotation. I'll usually just keep Renew running on the warlock at all times, and that's enough to keep their health up. If they LT more than my Renew can handle, that's on them. With pets, I have pet frames on my VuhDo grid, and will heal and buff them as needed - I understand they're an important part of DPS and hey, more DPS helps make my job easier too.

When I play my 'lock, I do get annoyed if a healer doesn't bother tossing me a HoT or a quick heal now and then. I don't LT excessively with her, and I use Rank 1 LT in my DPS rotation. I usually keep my 'lock at about 75% mana. If it's after a hard fight and I get below that, then yeah I eat/drink - it's not a big deal. But having played both sides, and knowing how many times a Warlock should need to LT, as well as knowing how much a simple HoT can heal for, there's no reason that a healer shouldn't be able to toss a Warlock one to top them off, nor is there any reason for a Warlock to LT down to dangerous levels.

As a warlock in a guild with an excellent healer who is always on and always ready for a random dungeon, I often thank her for "healz" when she tops me up after I LT, and I remind her her "if I LT too much let me know."

Her response is usually just, "kk np," but once she said "don't LT before a boss pull." She didn't know about the GoLT. But then I didn't have a rank 1 LT hotkeyed, either. Now I do.

I never complain about late heals, nor do I even ask for heals. If I don't get a heal it's because the tank or the mage needs it more; I bandage. Or I use my HS or a potion. That's what they're for.

And I NEVER expect her to spend mana healing my pet. I get far, far more effective pet healing out of Health Funnel... and if it dies, then resummoning it costs only a shard.

In return, I make sure she always has a healthstone and a soulstone, and I'll even throw a scroll or a bandage on her if I think it's needed. (And if she goes down, I'm the first to bandage the tank, though it doesn't usually make much of a difference.)

I'm the only 80 warlock in the guild, so i certainly don't want to give the impression that warlocks are greedy for heals, or that LT is a pain for the healer. I want the warlock to be essential.

My Affliction lock will always be my mine but I've also been gearing up a Holy Paladin and I'm with you all the way.

I've never encountered anything but Destro locks running random heroics and it's about a 50-50 split between people who know when to tap and how much, and the guy who taps five or six times to get his mana back to full and his health down to 2k right as the tank pulls the first pack on the ramp after Krick & Ick in POS HC. Please don't be that guy - if the tank is taking hits from four mobs at once and the rogue is standing in the AOE, they're going to get heals before you.

That doesn't mean "the lock won't get healed because he annoys me", it just means priorities that need juggling by a single target healer (well, double with Beacon) and you should at least be very careful to not take aggro on anything while two or more players are taking damage.

Sadly those life taps often lead to a rain of fire before the Prot Warrior has a chance to build up enough aggro, and the ensuing mess is the healer's fault.

Most players who understand class mechanics understand that warlocks need to life tap to gain mana from health. You don't always need a full mana bar on every fight - better to tap once every 10-20 seconds than keep your mana topped up at the expense of your health and the healer's sanity.