About the only way you could expect to see another UA nerf would be for life tapping to give a shard. If we could just always have enough shards to keep 5 up at all times it would be broken.
“Just wait for Vanilla”
Yea, sure, I can’t wait for the worst version of that damned spell. Sacrificing 20-25% of your health for barely 10% of your mana pool until you’re geared/leveled enough to bump the ratio up is buttcheeks.
The spell only served to give us something to do while moving in WoD/Legion, thank goodness it is gone.
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Of all the spells that were pruned, I still do not understand why some warlocks are dying to get lifetap back lmao.
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Life tap was terrible.
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That is exactly how it was in early bfa beta. It had a CD as not to abuse it. Then it was just scrapped.
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in this current iteration of locks, especially afflic, drain life and fear will OOM you faster than a jack rabbit on a hot greasy griddle in the mide of august. It was never a drain on healers because we can drain life or mortal coil it back.
Aside from that, its part of the class fantasy. The same way mages make mana buns… but its not needed in todays game right? lets remove that too!
Warlocks used to receive increased healing and had decent self-healing to deal with the damage from life tap. It was an interesting mechanic, pruned to make the game simpler and less interesting
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I don’t know man, I’d say affliction not being based on dots is a bigger blow to warlock fantasy.
But yeah, I miss lifetap.
If you think Life Tap was garbage, you’re not a warlock. The only reason I’m fine with it not being in the game today is because mana is not a resource that is used by warlocks, we never go oom.
But back in the day, when mana was important, it was key to the warlock theme. Warlock’s sacrifice what others would never dream to obtain dark magic, and so Life Tap was always the ultimate representation of that. Sacrificing health for mana.
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I feel you, I was so mad it was taken away. But honestly, since we don’t need mana anymore, we don’t really miss it. Still, I would like to have it in the game just as a “fun” spell. Blizz is going to be adding lots of “fun” spells back into the game for 9.0, which are spells that they removed in WoD or after due to them not being in the main rotation. They just feel they pruned too much.
The reason we’re not missing it is because they destroyed the ability that made it required in the first place. Even if drain souls damage wasn’t meme tier you couldn’t play around it anymore without going oom pretty quickly. With no life tap they made double sure legion afflock was gone for good.
Talking about life tap in vanilla made me think of something. Didn’t we have a drain mana spell then too? I vaguely remember that.
Yes, drain life, drain mana, and drain soul were all there.
I was glad life tap was gone. It felt like extra work.
But now that I have my Azshara staff… It would be nice to control its out put with well timed life taps
Actually, Life Tap would still have a niche role in today’s WoW - barring its role for going OOM due to Drain Life/Fear.
Switch specs? You’ve burnt 100% of your mana. I’d love to be able to swap specs, hit tap, then jump back into the swing of things. Doesn’t feel right having to drink/wait for mana after spec swapping.
Even if that was its literal only use, I’d rather it be there and be flavorful than not at all.
I’d honestly want it with the legion talents back (where you got a damage and healing boost) there could be many ways to use it if you had talents for it. Think of it in a theory crafting way… Well I love to experiment with classes that way so
For those who don’t think it is impossible to run yourself out of mana, you are wrong. Even with the nerf to non-CC mana usage, on the PTR with 50%-60% haste (easily attainable with procs and high haste gear) you can definitely run out of mana. I have run out of mana a couple times in Eternal Palace raids and I immediately missed Lifetap.
Ha, I ran out of mana during our Za’qul kill. I don’t do any pvp outside of random BGs every once in a while so I don’t even have it on my UI, and the boss hit like 2% and I tried to cast my juicy 50 stack Drain Life and bam, cancels after a tick and I just stand there running in circles for 15 seconds.
Don’t miss Life Tap though. Managing Soul Shards is infinitely more compelling than managing mana ever was, outside of maybe MoP Destro which was compelling because it didn’t have Life Tap.
Yeah, it was Za’qul in the delirium realm where I went OOM. Also ran out on another boss where I had to drain life 3x to stay alive. I don’t necessarily miss Life Tap, but I do miss some way to get that mana back. Guess I will be stocking up on mana pots. Perhaps they did away with Life Tap to make alchemy more profitable? 
Yeah, I mean I think it’s something that’s only possible if you totally ignore mana (like I did by removing it from my ui). I think that having 3 resources to manage is too much, especially given one of them is proc based, but it’s kind of funny.