Mana Efficiency

[Lylie]

In all seriousness run with alts of 70s lol. I have 2 healing 70's besides my lock and I make sure to let every lock I run with know it's cool to tap. A lot of people have apprehensions about it cause of the said situation you ran into.

If they have an issue with you tapping tell them don't worry about heals and you just LD as was a suggested above. Then again I would be tempted to say no HS or SS as well, but I'm kind vicious in that manner at least when making a point that it's part of the class.

[Vendi]

In all honesty I think you guys might have missed something: Dark pact (or Demonic Sacrifice)
If the other lock was using either of these (DP with the imp as a mana battery, or DS on felhunter) they are not gonna have mana problems. This is why you're being yelled at for life tapping but they arent?
Just a thought

[Devicus]

It's probably a different build issue if they have a problem and you don't.

The lifetap/drain life rotation is by and large, sub optimal, as it lowers your DPS, but if the healer if overloaded, you have to.

Find a healer who doesn't suck, then when you're sitting below 70% mana, do one lifetap and see if it gets healed. You want to vary your taps with your HP pool and heal size, but basically, I try to stick to one or two lifetaps at a time so if my healer can't do a heal RIGHT NOW then I'm not in grave danger. If a healer cannot cope they're under geared, inexperienced, or it's just for a few moments or the hardest bit of a fight. On some fights, they will need to group heal and throwing a heal every 20-30 seconds after the first minute shouldn't break them.

Also, know the boss, if they're worried, time your mana useage. If the boss has an enrage at 20%, life tap more earlier so you're at full mana when 20% hits. If it aoes, lifetap sparingly, be ready to drain life, so on.

[Ampam]

It really depends on the healer / group. Most decent healers will have learned to not freak out when a lock taps low because we can mitigate the health loss through a drain or two. Also, if you're an affliction lock and NOT using Dark Pact over Life Tap then you definitely need to do some updating to your macros / playing style - I'd rather drain a pet's mana than die and help instigate a wipe. :P

[villi]

haha yes, you have to see some rotation depending on gear and spec. but as you see the stats for lock is stamina as much as spelldmg, crit (destro) hit rating, we dont need spirit but we need stamina - to life tap. So if you aff is easy 1 get from imp 2 taps then from you 1-2 taps drain life dont forget that draining life depends on how much dot you put on target so... gl