Lifetap nerf and what it really means.
So I've been told that there will be a lifetap nerf in the next wow patch, and a lot of people are up in arms about it. There's really not that much to get up in arms about; it's an extremely silly thing to lose sleep over.

It's actually pretty damn simple, and I can break it down into 4 succinct categories of effects it will have.



Here we go.

Issue #1: It will make life tap more dangerous in pvp

By tapping for more HP, warlocks will have to be more careful about when and where they life tap in ArenaVP. This is an intended change.

Issue #2: It will make life tap a little less efficient when it comes to HP to mana ratio, putting some more strain on healers in group play.

Healers will have to heal warlocks for tapping than they used to. This is considered a bad thing. However, the thing that most warlocks-who-are-swearing-up-and-down-that-this-is-the-end-of-everything don't understand is that this has a negligible effect on most geared healers. At any level of gear where the warlock and the healer are at parity (about the same level of gear), a warlock will not be able to out-lifetap the healer's efficiency with Heal over Time spells without purposely trying to do so. A Rejuvenation or Renew spell will currently provide sufficient mana for a warlock to continue damage dealing for its entire duration, and then some.

Let's take an example destruction warlock with +1300 spell damage is spamming Shadow Bolt (420 mana, talented for 2.5 sec cast) for the duration of a Rejuvenation (12 sec, 4 ticks of ~800 hp healed per tick) from a healer with ~1800 +heal.

For those 12 seconds, you will get 4.8 shadow bolts off (2016 mana spent). If you perfectly tapped for free every single time (with no GCD whatsoever), you'd be healed for approximately 3200 hp in that amount of time, which is about 58% overheal (wasted healing).

With the new change, let's put the warlock at ~10500 HP and 9500 mana with buffs. With a life tap of 20% to 20%, you would spend 2100 health for 1900 mana, or ~1.1 health to mana ratio. Shooting those same 4.8 shadow bolts (still 2016 mana spent) would mean you'd need total healing of 2016 * 1.1 = 2217.6 health regained. You're still healed for 3200 hp over time by the same rejuvenation, which means that the overheal has only been reduced to 44%.

There are only two brands of warlock who fall outside of this model: ArenaVP warlocks, and tanking warlocks (in selected raid fights). The difference here is that ArenaVP warlocks have been covered already (issue #1), and tanking warlocks shouldn't care because most of the heals on them are overheals anyway.

Issue #3: It will make some warlocks have to tap more

So the healing required issue is mostly worthless at this point. Now you look at the other stat that affects group play: total mana regained per unit time.

Currently, our example warlock will have +1300 damage, which translates into a maximum rank life tap of 580 + (0.8 * damageTotal) = 1620. Thus, each lifetap will recover 1620 mana per 1.5 seconds (global cooldown, or GCD), or is roughly the equivalent of 5400 mana per 5 seconds. Given our sample grouped warlock statistics (10500 hp, 9500 mana), a 20% tap would mean 1900 mana per tap on GCD. This means the mana recovery goes up to 6333 mana per 5 seconds.

This is actually a buff to warlocks who don't care about the healing efficiency (which should be most of them), because it produces more mana per tap, which means they spend less time tapping and more time shooting.

The only time this would not be a buff is if warlocks somehow managed to stack their +damage gear massively independently of their other stats. A warlock with +1300 damage would require a mana pool of 8100 or less to get less mana per tap than they currently do. This sort of thing comes from stacking green items of Shadow Wrath, and would easily be solved by just getting better gear.

Issue #4: Effect on Soloing Warlocks

The final issue is that this will have an adverse effect on life tapping solo (leveling) warlocks. However, this isn't really as big an issue about this as it seems to be. Firstly, affliction warlocks won't be affected as much because they will still be using drain life primarily to tank their mobs and they will still be using Dark Pact to restore their mana instead of life tap. Demonology spec warlocks will likewise be less affected, because they mostly depend on the power of their pet while leveling. The only really negatively affected warlocks will be Destruction, but destruction was never a solo spec to begin with. All in all, you have the two solo specs mostly unaffected, and the third spec getting a bit more downtime when it was already bad to solo with from the start.

Honestly, after the entire analysis of the effects of the Great Life Tap Nerf of 08, it boggles my mind that people make such a big deal about it.

--Rawr