Life tap is an old warlock ability that used to sacrifice health and grant mana.
This is one of the coolest abilities warlock ever had, but with the removal of the need for mana, this spell has been removed because there’s no need for mana anymore.
Blizzard has shown interest in bringing it back in the initial dragonflight talent trees, having it eat up our soul leech shield and granting a soul shard, but that was really awkward due to inconsistancy and didn’t really see much use.
I was wondering if someone has any idea on what form should this iconic ability return as
Please note that blizzard might not bring it back if it could grant soul shards and be spammed for obvious reasons, we shouldn’t have infinite soul shards.
My idea is maybe it can have a cooldown, give us a proc of tormented crescendo for affliction, instant cast Hand of Gul’dan for demo, or ritual of ruin for destro.
What are your thoughts and ideas?
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In all honesty of all the highly iconic abilities of the class that have been inexplicably eliminated over time, Life Tap is the one that I personally would really do without. We are talking about a game where they managed to practically eliminate Drain Life while maintaining a ritual of doom nerfed by 90%.
I’m picturing an arena where I have to use him while I’m up against warrior and dk unholy. With the current pace of play, a spell like this just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Casters are now continuous machine guns that don’t need to have ways to get mana
Regarding the recovery of shards, which is a huge problem in Affliction, it would be enough to introduce something rather logical: drain soul has a chance to give a soul shard every time it deals damage. Every tic you don’t get the soul shard, the next tic increases the odds. One thing if I’m not mistaken that they also included some time ago in SOC
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As iconic as Life Tap is, it has no place in current gameplay and state of the class.
Affliction just need a shard management rework.
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Agree,we need some kind of control over shard gen like demo/destro.
If you notice, no warlock spell makes sense that “creates” a soul shard. The only spell that should do it, Drain Soul, doesn’t do it
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In mop/wod we had demonic fury(demo) , embers (destro),soulshard(affly).
Tbh it fit the class fantasy,dare to say playstyle of specs itself felt more modern compared to live.
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You know what is more important that than?
We had an actual class designer who cared.
I couldn’t care less about life tap but soul shatter? That’s a different story. We are one of the few ranged DPS that can’t drop aggro on demand, getting it back would be nice.
I barely see it being usable in PvE but in PvP it might be great.
Yes it does, you get a shard if the target dies
yes clearly I didn’t specify it, but I meant to say that during a fight that isn’t a mythic+ it always happens that once you’ve spammed 5 malefics and consumed all the soul shards, then for the rest of the fight you have to wait for the agony proc to have a shard. For me it’s a really bad and off-topic mechanism
p.s. i’m Xanatas but in the forum i can’t change character and i can only use this old classic pg
Unfortunately they made absolutely outdated gameplay decisions to bring back something from the past. I completely understand the fact that soul shards are extremely iconic for the warlock, but the system expected them to be used for some utility spells such as healthstone, summon players, summon demons, conjure spellstone and firestone and to be used for some spells such as shadowburn and soulfire.
Thematically soul shards are perfect for the affliction theme, but burning embers for destruction and demonic fury for demonology was fantastic. It makes absolutely no sense that by casting incinerate against a target you recover soul shard fragments so to speak. I had to use a weakauras to change the aesthetics of the shards and use burning embers for destruction. Currently the class design is much older than pre MOP
It would be enough for them to read the feedback from the community, I’m not saying to redo the class exactly as we intend 100% but at least to understand that if they want to reproduce skills from the past perhaps it would be better if they reintroduced KJC or fel flame and not ritual of doom
That’s the thing, judging by their actions they think that they know better what is best for the class. Instead of mentioned Fel flame of KJC they implemented a flavor spell that is not usable outside of the raid environment.