How NOT to Life Tap

[artifact23]

It is damn near a universal truth that it is NEVER a good idea to Life Tap to full mana while raiding. When you Life Tap to full mana, not only are you pulling your health down further than it would be if you were to Life Tap to 70-90 percent mana, you are also wasting the spirit which would otherwise have continued to replenish your mana anyway. As a result your healer will need to use their resources to heal the resulting discrepancy in health which would not have been a factor had you not used Life Tap to completely replenish your mana. This is a waste of the groups resources.

Instead, use Life Tap until you have either 80% mana or 30% health, whichever occurs first. But when using Life Tap, keep an eye on the tanks health and the healers mana. Because if the tank is low on health, he will always take priority. If the healer is low on mana, the tank will always take priority.

Also consider that once your spirit has replenished your mana to 100% and you still have less than full health, you have essentially wasted your mana regen AND the difference in health.

I'm not playing Warlock but I used to and I see far too many warlocks do this, much to the detriment of their own effectiveness.

SUMMARY:

Don't waste your mana regen by Life Tapping to full mana when it's almost never necessary. Life Tap to 80% mana instead, then again when you're low on mana if necessary.

[Bioness]

Here's a macro you might find useful if you can't / don't want to / don't feel like peeking at your health bar every now and then to check if it's safe to tap. I would recommend that you keep your regular Life Tap spell on your bar, just in case you need that extra bit of mana and can't get healed back up over 50% OR the fight allows you downtime in which you can tap to full.

/run h=0 if UnitHealth("player")/UnitHealthMax("player") > 0.5 then if UnitMana("player")/UnitManaMax("player") < 0.5 then CastSpellByName("Life Tap") end; end;

[diogenes]

if you were to Life Tap to 70-90 percent mana, you are also wasting the spirit which would otherwise have continued to replenish your mana anyway.

What are you talking about? Warlocks don't have any mana regen while casting, so you're just going to stand there while your spirit regens the rest of your mana? I genuinely have no clue what you're talking about here, are you talking about the two possible ticks of regen until the next shadowbolt is casted? I'm extremely confused.

But really, these aren't the real reasons why you don't lifetap in the way you're describing. The real reason is you should only LT as much as necessary. SB is a relatively expensive cast, but really, you should just cast until you're oom and then continue lifetapping as necessary to continue casting. That way you will always have a chance to gain mana from things like mana spring, blessing of wisdom, judgment of wisdom, mana tide, ect. Further, if you end a fight with mana, then that mana you lifetapped is essentially wasted gcd's that could have been spent dealing damage.

Its just pointless to lifetap more than once in a row during a fight unless you're gathring mana for a dps critical time (something like patchwerk enrage), or there's downtime for one reason or another (waiting to get in range for one of Domo's adds or something). Otherwise, its just not an effective way to dps. Who gives a shit about the healers and their priorities, inefficient use of lifetap leads to inefficient dps.

[Klanlock]

"qq warlocks stop using life tap, I'd rather you use amazing wand dps instead of having 100% uptime. besides, who doesn't like the interesting conversation that the group has while waiting for locks to drink for mana after every fight? *gasps* oh, and don't forget the precious bit of mana that one out of the 5+ healers in a 40 man raid group has to use on you! It can cause SEVERAL WIPES!"

*rolls on floor in laughter from his own sarcasm*

[Bioness]

if you were to Life Tap to 70-90 percent mana, you are also wasting the spirit which would otherwise have continued to replenish your mana anyway.

What are you talking about? Warlocks don't have any mana regen while casting, so you're just going to stand there while your spirit regens the rest of your mana? I genuinely have no clue what you're talking about here, are you talking about the two possible ticks of regen until the next shadowbolt is casted? I'm extremely confused.

But really, these aren't the real reasons why you don't lifetap in the way you're describing. The real reason is you should only LT as much as necessary. SB is a relatively expensive cast, but really, you should just cast until you're oom and then continue lifetapping as necessary to continue casting. That way you will always have a chance to gain mana from things like mana spring, blessing of wisdom, judgment of wisdom, mana tide, ect. Further, if you end a fight with mana, then that mana you lifetapped is essentially wasted gcd's that could have been spent dealing damage.

Its just pointless to lifetap more than once in a row during a fight unless you're gathring mana for a dps critical time (something like patchwerk enrage), or there's downtime for one reason or another (waiting to get in range for one of Domo's adds or something). Otherwise, its just not an effective way to dps. Who gives a shit about the healers and their priorities, inefficient use of lifetap leads to inefficient dps.

This should answer your post.

I'm not playing Warlock

[artifact23]

My bad.

The point is that if you Life Tap to full mana and in order to do that it brings you down to 40% health, the pull is finished, you're wasting resources. You could have Life Tapped to 85% or 90% mana and 50% health, with the time it takes for the next pull allowing you to regen the difference to full mana. Even if the next pull is quick and you didnt get full mana, so what? Use Life Tap again later if need be. But dont Life Tap to full mana and then expect that your healer will make up for your inefficiency.

Really, any time you Life Tap to 100% mana, you're doing it wrong. There is never a reason that you actually NEED 100% mana. If you are not in combat you should make your health and mana about even with Life Tap. If you are in combat, just dont use it to 100% and dont drop your health dangerously low.

<-- Not a warlock on this server but warlock back in the day cerca 2005-2007

[Cwasm]

I usually just tap one or two times when I go OOM and go from there. One heal or a healthstone is enough to fix it and you aren't tapping your health into any unneeded mana if the fight ends before you go OOM again.