Mana Efficiency

[LovinTheLock]

Hi,
I Consistently find when im battling that I will run out of mana quicker than I expected. I'm a 47 undead lock, and i did an instance with a blood elf lock few levels lower than me and it seemed like she was never low on mana. My gear is leaning heavily towards stamina, but based on the averages I've seen in the walkthroughs, I'm close to where I should be in mana for my level. Any suggestions on how to conserve or be more efficient with my mana?

Thanks

[RiiZ]

life tap?

[Absalom]

Life tap, yes... but it also might have something to do with your spell rotation. What spells do you normally cast?

[Demonbruen]

Really, as was mentioned above, life tap is what it's all about. We aren't the most efficient class in terms of mana usage, but we have (hands down) the best mana recovery tool in the game.

Aside from that, you can do things like making sure not to overwrite your DoTs (they all do a damage tick at the very end), use mana pots, or become really good friends with a shadow priest. Also, stacking more spell damage will also make you more efficient of course.

[Onebadasp]

Dot>>Dot>>Dot>>LifeTap>>Drain Life

Aside from a Spriest... make good friends with a Palli/Druid healer. Palli flash heals are ace. Druid HoTs are on point too. With the the heals coming in, you can Life Tap till your topped off

I have a friend i run with thats a Palli healer...usually her and me can take the average group quests down with me as the tank
Gawd bless Backlash.....

[LovinTheLock]

K, so when I was running the instance I mentioned above, they got mad at me and told me not to life tap b/c my life would always be low due to the tapping... What response am I to have?

[Theleb]

Originally Posted by LovinTheLock

K, so when I was running the instance I mentioned above, they got mad at me and told me not to life tap b/c my life would always be low due to the tapping... What response am I to have?

Any competant healer can deal with a Warlock lifetapping in moderation. Just don't do 4 or 5 in a row and you should be fine.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by LovinTheLock

K, so when I was running the instance I mentioned above, they got mad at me and told me not to life tap b/c my life would always be low due to the tapping... What response am I to have?

Heh. Ask them if they have a clue as to what a warlock is all about. We dot, we lifetap, we drain life, and we nuke things.

Seriously, though: try explaining that a warlock uses lifetap to replenish mana and drain life to replenish life after a life tap. You should also be using soul syphon if you are affliction. If they don't listen find another group.

Edit: like Theleb and Pervlock said, make sure to not overload your healers either. If you continue to spam lifetap, don't expect the healers to keep you alive. Use it in the right situations and you will be fine.

[Pervlock]

hmm, a decent response might be :
LMAO, roll a lock and see how that goes :P

Big part of lock's bread and butter is using your lifetaps appropiately.
If you have a good healer, and he is able to toss over extra heals to you, you lifetap, if healers are busey keeping the tanks alive on bossfights, reconsider, that may not be smart to lifetap on.

However, make shure you keep enough health. ( if you lifetap only a lill, and are stil above 85% of yer life, or 95 even better, you can drain life and regain some, so you wont stress your healers )
if you lifetap to much, then you will scare the healers, beceause, if they dont know locks that well, they will have a hard time seeing why you need heals, and even IF you need heals ( a lill life doesnt need healing, and a lifetapping lock only needs extra heals, since yer not attacked ya wont die anyways, so only toss a heal when healers have the time )

but since you NEED mana, they should allow you to use lifetap, but scarecely.
When you have plenty of mana, you can be one of the most damaging party members, and lifetap just adds to the mana.
Just learn how to use it ptoperly and work WITH the healers. ( or make a healer alt just to run some group runs and see how terribly stressing a lock that overtaps can be or healing in general, it is quite a daunting and hard task, healing.)

*** Information added 1 Minutes and 34 Seconds later... ***

hmmm, theleb and romagoth where just before me.
Theleb had the short answer, roma is a bit crude, dont overload yer healers. Be smart about it. And yeah, d explain that if you only lost a LILL life, they dont need to heal.
( but draining life severely lowers yer damage output )

[bbartlog]

Healers shouldn't complain about warlocks life tapping. I have run with a lock who had a macro so that he would spout some text message every time he life tapped (to let the healer know he was doing it), but it shouldn't be necessary. Depending on the player, I'd either try to set them straight (tell them that you need to lifetap, explain why, whatever) or just tell them that if it was too confusing they should just not heal me at all. Realistically, though, a competent healer will recognize that one of his most mana-efficient ways to do damage is to heal you. For example, suppose you are both level 30, and a priest has a choice of either casting Holy Fire on a mob, or Renew on you. Assume you have Improved Lifetap and the priest has a little bit of +healing or a point or two in Improved Renew.
If he casts Holy Fire for 125 mana, he does 205 damage, or 1.64dpm.
If he casts Renew on you, you get 260 life (enough to tap twice), which you turn into 312 mana - just about enough to cast two shadowbolts. Ignoring any +spell damage you have, this is 296 damage (I'm treating it as 1.95 shadowbolts), which is nearly 50% more than he does by doing damage himself (2.12dpm). And this is in the worst case, where you have no +spell damage, he has little +healing, and you are burning the mana in a fairly inefficient way because you've already cast DoTs and the like.
There are obviously some caveats to this; for example if the healer is worried about pulling aggro he's not going to be healing you just to give you more mana. But he should be casting Renew or something similar on you between fights.

The other thing you could look at (if you are life tapping and still running low) is maximizing your health regeneration. Getting a Vitality enchant on your boots and/or using a troll's blood potion can actually help quite a bit; in combination with your Demonic Armor you can get quite a lot of health/5 regeneration.