Glyph of Lifetap Stealth Nerf

#1 - May 9, 2012, 6:34 p.m.

NIIIIICE one devs. So in the last build when you used lifetap you put a neucrotic strike on yourself for 30 sec equal to the value of the lifetap.

Now when you lifetap with the glyph you stack it. So 25K'ish per lifetap (at 85) goes to 75K/100K/etc super quick. In leveling you NEVER outpace your neucrotic strike. To boot if you lifetap again within the 30 sec window it resets the CD on the first lifetap stack.

IE:
1. lifetap once have 25K healing absorb on you
2. wait 29 seconds and lifetap again...now you have a 50K absorb on you with a new 30 sec timer.
3. rinse/repeat...

Previously:
1. lifetap once and have 25K healing absorb on you for 30 sec
2. lifetap again within 30 sec and have a 25K absorb on you but with a fresh 30 sec timer.

So affliction still isn't mana neutral, we can now stack up a neucrotic strike on ourselves into the hundreds of thousands, and our self healing keeps getting gutted? The passive healing on the spec was so watered down it can't keep up with single target. Now we can't even use CD's and non dps abilities to get back to good. At least capping the absorb on us meant a healer could get us up in a hurry if they needed to. Now we run around perpetually like the victims of spine of deathwing's plasma attack.

Just how much of a pain do you want to make locks to play? Are we supposed to take as much healing as the tank just to dps? What raid leader in their right mind is going to bring a warlock (esp afflock) vs a shadowpriest who actually helps the healers not taxes them.

Yet another idiotic design move....

#11 - May 9, 2012, 9:25 p.m.

"Stealth nerf" typically refers to changes we deploy on live without telling anyone. To be honest, we don't really do these any longer because players quickly figure them out anyway. Since we barely document any of the thousands of changes going into each beta build, I'm not sure the term applies here.

Regardless, the intent of the glyph was never to let you opt out of the cost of Life Tap. It was intended to let you stay at full health and defer the cost. If you used 4 Life Taps without the glyph, it would cost 4x the health cost. It stands to reason that if you used 4 Life Taps with the glyph that paying 1x the health cost would make the glyph very good. It was just a bug fix to do what the glyph always claimed it did.