#47 - May 22, 2012, 4:37 p.m.
I think all of this is the same issue that I addressed (or attempted to) the other day. Is it possible to have a situation where warlocks are so constantly hovering near death's door that they are a liability? Yes, it's possible. Do we want that? Of course not. On live today, groups don't generally hesitate to bring warlocks for fear of draining healer mana, unless the locks are really bad and tend to Life Tap just before the dragon breathes or whatever.
Affliction mana costs are about twice as high as they need to be on beta right now, which causes warlocks to have to Life Tap too frequently and worry too much how to offset that health loss through talents and other self-healing. Once Life Tap gets down towards more moderate uses, I think a lot of these concerns will go away.
We know some players are also worried that Life Tap won't scale well at higher gear levels when mana use per time is higher, but we've already made a change to Life Tap to convert 15% of health into mana (instead of consuming 15% health to grant 20% max mana). This will probably mean that you Life Tap a little less at high gear levels, which is what happens on live. But it's fine and often a little fun for high levels of gear to convey such perks, and we only need to worry about it until the final tier of gear in Mists, at which point if history is any indication, everything resets and all bets on scaling are off.
