The Life Tap/Drain Life Combo...Follow

I've been trying this out after browsing the forums and seeing it brought up in some topics regarding the spell rotation of an affliction warlock.

How many times after your initial DOTs (Immolate, Corruption, and Curse of Agony) do you use Life Tap before following it up with Drain Life? I'm trying to find some kind of happy medium to make it as efficient as possible, but I am clueless right now.

I'm not the best or most experienced lock here (Mine's only 45) but for me it depends on the situation.

If I'm fully drain tanking stuff that hits pretty hard I'll use Dark Pact instead. If I'm not getting hit, am drain hunting, or doing the fear yo-yo I'll usually DOT up: Siphon Life, CoA, Corruption then life tap a time or two then drain life.

For some reason I don't find myself using Immolate that often since I got siphon... that's probably bad. I dunno.

Yes I see what you're saying here.

Do not Drain Life on a solo grind unless you are down HP, there are more efficient ways to spend your mana! Drain life is a very mana-efficient Damage + Heal, but for just damage's sake it has relatively bad damage-per-mana, and is often mistakenly used to overkill the target.

If you are down on Mana, lifetap what can be regained in 1 Drain Life, and if you're down on health try to get that back up into the 90% range. If neither apply you can try using a different spell or just waiting for your DoTs to finish up the monsters. Hell, even wand.

What you'll find as you reach into certain level ranges (and are fighting certain types of monsters) is that your DoTs alone will kill the enemies, therefor making Drain Life completely useless other than a quick way to regain life. The only time for this to make sense is if you're down some HP.

You have many options here.

Drain Tanking means you'll be taking damage, and with Fel Concentration you can usually squeeze some good efficiency out of your Drain Life. One thing to make sure you're not doing though is killing the monster way before your DoTs are done. If this is the case you're overkilling the monster and spending extra mana on Dots. Either cut back on the number of DoTs or stop Draining.

Dotting and Fearing monsters that will die when purely DoTed is an exceptionally mana-efficient strategy. You do the most efficient damage in the game while not taking any yourself - perfect. While this method has its flaws (unfearable monsters, social agro, pathing errors) using this can help maximize efficiency and kills per second.

Mixing the two will result in the more hardcore of Affliction Experiences, and is the only real way to compete (and surpass) a Felguard-based leveling spec. Doing Fear Juggling (keeping multiple monsters engaged, DoTed to the bare minimum, and Draining to boost Health and therefor Mana) will result in a phenominal killrate.

In UnGoro my Lock was engaged with often 5-6, sometimes 8, monsters at a time all with life ticking away either running away or running back towards me. Improved Howl of Terror helps handle any sticky situations, which you can make for yourself often since the cooldown is so slow.

Now on 70 Grinds depending on what level I'm against, I keep engaged on 3-6 monsters simulaniously for enormous strings, the higher numbers actually on higher mobs (68s generally) since the lower ones die too fast! Depending on the situation either a Lifetap Bandage or Eat/Drink is required every so often but the style is alarmingly effective at grinding.

When I play my lock, I draintank, but I only kill one mob at a time. I usually send my Succy in, do Corr + UA, tap, and start draining. Drain Soul the last second, end every fight with full mana and full health. If you pull two mobs, Immo + Corr + UA + Siphon, keep that one feared. From what I remember, I would usually chainpull mobs with about 15 seconds per mob.

I know it's your opinion and all that, but certainly in my case this simply is not true. I've played my 'lock since release and think I know it pretty well. If it's not an elite, and I only need to kill one, I'll drain tank it to avoid fearing it into other mobs. I won't use VW as I don't find it it so efficient to allow him to build up agro when I could have the mob dead already simply by drain tanking it.

My personal favourite way of grinding though is simply to dot everything that moves, AoE fear and continue dotting. That's the single most efficient way to kill every mob outside Black Temple, and the best way to ensure you will never be short on gold too :)

I understand agro perfectly well, but if I'm not multiple mob dotting, I will drain tank as that is my preference. VW is too slow for me, especially as I could have the mob dead before the blueberry has built up the agro he needs.

That's the beauty of Warlocks though, several different ways to achieve the same end. None of them are wrong, just different.

=)

I wish I still had FRAPs... I'd show you why I drain tank. I Drain Hunted up till 25ish. Agro wasn't the issue. VW = Pathetic Killrate until SoC is an option. I'd much prefer a Felguard, although that's simply not my style of play.

I feel like I'm doing something wrong if I end every fight with theoretically >100% hp >100% mp. With 100/90 and an Imp at 100/100 you practically are overflowing - I figured out back at 25 it's possible to spread your damage out and have since learned whats possible and what's not. I passed Drain Hunters and Felguard Hunters in Kills Per Hour and therefor Experience Per Hour by leaps and bounds (I'm talking nearly double the speed.) Small downtimes including Bandaging and Eating/Drinking simulaniously hardly detracted from the ridiculous 'uptime' I had.

I have a hunter and even with Him I'll often engage multiple targets (not a common thing) and use what little AE I have before FD. But, being honest, a hunter might as well focusfire over and over again. For me, if a class can handle more I'll put it on him.

That's just how I do =)

BTW I still use VW if I think a Rogue is around, if I plan on doing specialized groups (including healers/instance socials/ect) so I can seed as opposed to slowburn which could get healed off or dispelled, or if I really feel like relaxing. Usually, I dont~

I send my VW against 4 at a time. He's a bit tougher than the succy and able to hold aggro better.

hmmmm


/headscratch

So which of these do you fall under exactly?



Bolded to stress attention

Edited, Apr 25th 2008 12:18am by Serevixx

And, once again, the joke is lost.