Lifetaps, Bloodlust, and Tanking...

[Zorthaz]

I am hoping all the beastlords out there have a set of weapons with 3 or 4 lifetaps.  I was camping Fractureshell in Combine Dredge (TDS) over the weekend.  I started out boxing my bard, but eventually friends showed up to help out.  We ended up with two groups of three toons and three mercs.  Both groups had a 105 Paladin tanking.  The other group pulled Fractureshell and began tanking and DPSing the mob.  The paladin in my group was DPSing with a 2HS weapon.  At about 80% Fractureshell got a lucky round on the first paladin on killed him.  Fractureshell immediately surprised the paladin in my group swinging the 2HS sword and took him out. I was suddenly tanking and quickly hit Protective Spirit, swapped in my lifetap weapons. Bloodlust was already running.  When Protective Spirit faded I hit Monkey Spirit, Diplomatic papers, Protection of the Warder, and Blood Drinkers Coating.  I managed to tank Fractureclaw until he was dead.  He did drop the 8dmg aug with Vampiric Strike VIII so I could upgrade my lifetap weapon set.

Toon     Dmg to PC     NPC DPS
Pal 1     252,182           8,406
Pal 2     183,224         22,903
-Z-       725,495          15,436

Checking total healing shows
Player healed     Amount
   -Z-                  260,090   

Short snippet because GamParse refuses to export the data:

Time    Healer    Amount
42       -Z-         5015
42       -Z-         1106
42       -Z-         8666
43       -Z-         1351
43       -Z-         2213
43       -Z-         4333
43       -Z-         1351
43       -Z-         1106
43       -Z-         2397
44       -Z-         1351
44       -Z-         7847
44       -Z-         4333
44       -Z-         2397

While Bloodlust was running it was basically offsetting Fractureshell's DPS.  The above numbers were generated with only 3 lifetap procs across my two weapons.  I will soon be testing quad lifetap procs.

-Z-

[Zorthaz]

I did some quick parsing with 4 lifetaps versus 3 lifetaps and the results are telling.  I ran two, 120 sec parses with bloodlust running and then counted the number of procs over the 120 seconds.

With 3 lifetaps: 438 procs
With 4 lifetaps: 604 procs

Lets check the numbers...
438/3 = 146
604/4 = 151

If 3 LT procs was producing 15K/sec worth of healing, then we could estimate that with 4 LT procs you should be producing 20K/sec worth of self healing.

Combining Bloodlust with lifetap proc weapons makes for our best defensive/tanking setup.  Adding Vampiric Aura from Blood Drinker's Coating would push the numbers even higher.  Only testing will tell....

-Z-

[stormeye]

I have always favored life taps over all other procs. Even back before the days of Bloodlust or even aug procs.  I have seen many advocate using a shield but, with the tools we have to work with I have always viewed it as counterproductive to use one. Allow me to explain my view.

Survivability = Mob DPS + length of fight

Now length of fight is directly tied to your DPS. So the more damage you dish the less you take due to a dead Mob can't hurt you.

Now a Shield reduces Mob DPS but, also reduces your DPS so it increases the length of the fight.

This is were taps come in. Taps have a duel effect of a damage portion that increases DPS, there by reducing the length of a fight. They also have a heal component that in effect reduces Mob DPS. While not a direct reduction in a per hit fashion it is more of a post hit mitigation that is applied.   

Now Bloodlust increases this effect by a large margin. But, before you can start to quote pure numbers you must take into account that the amount healed varies wildly per swing. Using my taps and AAs as an example. I can heal between 800 to 8k HP on a single swing and this is not taking into account our twin proc AA. If you wanted to take that into account then it is possible (while not likely ) for me to heal 16k and change in a single swing.


Now the reason I brought up the large gap between min and max is because 120 sec is not a large enough sample size to pull hard numbers from because it can shift so dramatically one way or the other with that small of a sample size. And, it also must be noted that these numbers will change depending one how powerful the base tap is and what delay you have on your weapons.

This leads me into a tool we have that should not be overlooked when trying to max healing from Bloodlust and taps. This tool is Frenzy of Spirit.

Frenzy = More hits
More hits = more healing
More healing = More "Dude don't fight me for agro just let me tank it " :)