2.4 Warlock Nerf

Warlocks are finally getting some attention, of the negative variety, in the 2.4 patch. Life Tap, a great lock skill that converts life to mana, is now doing this conversion as a percentage of your total instead of a point-for-point conversion as it is today. On the surface that doesn't seem so bad. That's probably how it should've always worked. Warlocks are casters after all. So why the change? Well, I haven't been following this closely, but I suspect it's because we see many (and with PVP epics flowing so freely I really do mean many) warlocks running around in 12k-13k life. I saw one buffed in AV a couple of weekens ago around 15k life. Yes, that's a cloth wearer sporting that much stamina. And this isn't tons of +stamina greeny gear. This is an epic'd out lock with over 1200 spell damage.

So why the nerf? Have you seen a warlock drain tank Van in AV? I have. On three separate occassions. One in particular was really scary. The guy just dotted him up, including siphon, and spammed drain life. You'd expect him to run out of mana, but his mana pool was around 9k with his 14k+ life. That's insane. But, even that has it's limits. But with Life Tap the way it is now and massive life pools like some of these locks have, they can literally go forever. They don't have massive burst damage in most cases, but their survivability is over the top. I have a 61 lock, and I have fought 4-6 mobs at one time without using fear. That seems too strong.

The problem I have with the nerf is that many of these locks have busted their butt to get this massive life pool to allow this. With the change they are making, currently Rank 3 does a 20% life to 20% mana conversion. That amazing warlock I saw drain tanking Van would convert 2800 life into 1800 mana. That's not bad, but it's not nearly as good of an exchange as it is today. So this makes it feel like a pretty harsh punishment to locks that have worked hard on their gear as they would be much better off focusing on much larger mana pools than life pools.