Revamping Paladins by Upgrading Abilities

In a previous post I mentioned how much I like having 3 offensive abilities with 6-10s cooldowns, like the current WotLK Retribution and Protection trees have. I've been thinking about it, and my fondness for that structure and pacing has only increased. I think it would be really nice if the baseline paladin played like that.

We are a long way from the days of 15s Judgements, but still, levelling a paladin is much less interactive than any other class. I do like how paladins have a more moderate pace than rogues and warriors, but only using Judgements until level 40 is a bit too boring.

However, one of the problems with giving the baseline paladin new abilities is that when the paladin gets new abilities in the talent trees, she gets new buttons to press during combat. This leads past the sweet spot of 3 abilities, and into more warrior/rogue button-mashing territory.

Then the solution hit me. Instead of giving the paladin entirely new abilities in the talent trees, the new abilities should be upgrades and replace the baseline abilities in the paladin's rotation.

WoW doesn't use a lot of upgraded abilities. New abilities and spells are usually additive, meaning you often use them in addition to your current abilities, as opposed to instead of your current abilities. There are some replacement abilities, however. Devastate replaces Sunder Armor, Mangle replaces Claw. And there are a few when levelling. Cleanse replaces Purify.

So what I was thinking for the paladin class is that the baseline paladin gets three active combat abilities before level 12 or so:

1. Judgement. Has a 10s cooldown and is like the WotLK version.
2. A weak Strike (Holy Strike?) with a 6s cooldown.
3. A weak Cleave/melee-AoE style ability with a 10s cooldown.

This base paladin would play very similarly to the WotLK Retribution or Protection paladins, at least in terms of buttons pushed during combat.

Then as you go down the trees, you get new abilities that replace the second two baseline abilities. These abilities are tailored to the specific talent tree. Each ability would share their cooldown with the baseline ability, ensuring that the paladin would switch to the upgraded ability without changing the pacing of the class.

For example, in Retribution, the paladin would upgrade Holy Strike to Crusader Strike at level 40. At level 50, Divine Storm replaces the baseline Cleave. In some ways, each ability performs the same function as the previous ability, only tailored to the spec.

In Protection, Holy Shield replaces the Cleave, and Hammer of the Righteous would replace the Holy Strike.

In Holy, Holy Shock would replace the Strike. It's a 6s ranged strike, with a healing component. We'd need a new ability to replace the Cleave, but it would be something that hit multiple enemies and yet had a healing or ranged component to it.

The basic idea is that all the Strikes share a cooldown, and all the Cleaves share a cooldown. This way the pacing of paladin combat is maintained, the baseline gameplay isn't so boring, but each spec gets upgrades and a unique playstyle, and ends up in more or less the same position as current design.

Ask Coriel: Defeating a Warlock

Paul writes in:

During PvP, what do I do when encountering a Warlock face to face? Fight or flee. My past experiences have taught me that they whoop my ass. How can we best them?

I'm not really that good at PvP, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Warlocks are kind of paladin kryptonite. It's pretty hard to beat a good warlock, especially if they have a felhunter out. Try to kill or fear the pet first. Remember you can use Turn Evil and Exorcism on warlock pets.

Other than that, you just have to wear them down. Heal early and often, with Flash of Light to save mana. Save your divine shield for when you are loaded down with DoTs, as it will remove all of them. If the warlock doesn't have Shadow Embrace or Unstable Affliction, Cleanse off the DoTs, otherwise just heal through the damage. Get the PvP trinket so you can break a Fear. Remember that you can Cleanse Drain Life and Drain Mana.

All in all, it's a pretty hard fight, especially if the warlock is good.

Any other tips for Paul, especially from people who PvP regularly?

WotLK Beta - Seal of Vengeance trick

In Wrath, special attacks like Crusader Strike will proc Seals. If the attack hits multiple people, the Seal will proc for each person (or have a chance to proc for those Seals which aren't a guaranteed proc).

This is pretty amusing with Seal of Vengeance and Hammer of the Righteous. HotR hits 3 targets every 6 seconds. If you are running SoV, you can actually build full SoV stacks on all three targets, refreshing them every 6 seconds.

WotLK Beta - Soloing with Holy

Holy doesn't look like a solo-friendly spec. My Holy gear is roughly one Tier higher than my Ret or Prot gear, but Holy seemed a lot slower than the other two.

Part of it is that there is a limited number of abilities to use while soloing.

Holy (2): Judgement, Holy Shock
Protection (3): Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield
Retribution (3): Judgement, Crusader Strike, Diving Storm

While the 6s cooldown on Holy Shock is a lot better than the current cooldown, combat as Holy is still pretty boring. Judge, Shock, wait 6s seconds, Shock again. I suppose I could have worked in Consecration, but it seemed like a waste.

At 75, paladins get a new ability, Shield of Righteousness (slams the target for 200% of Block Value as holy damage). I suppose that can help out Holy, though it will hit for much less as Holy has no Strength or Block Value.

In my opinion, I really like the way the paladin plays when she has 3 decent offensive abilities with 6-10s cooldowns, as with the current WotLK Retribution and Protection. It's not as frantic as a rogue or warrior. It's measured, but it's not boring. You're always planning your next move, but you're not waiting for long cooldowns.

It's sort of sad that you have to wait for level 40 (Holy, Prot) or 50 (Ret) before you get your second low-cooldown offensive ability, and level 60 (Prot,Ret) before you can get your third.

Again, though, this is just soloing. I haven't tried Holy in groups yet.

WotLK Beta - Soloing with Protection

Protection is a lot of fun for solo questing. It's not as fast as Ret, but it's pretty good. I used Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous and Holy Shield, and easily went through 1-3 mobs at a time. I didn't feel it was worth using Consecrate for so few mobs. Prot is a little mana-hungry, but I went JoL + SoW, and still killed fairly fast while keeping my health and mana pretty high.

The caveat to this is that I did not use Prot gear. I used my Ret gear + a green 1H hammer from one of the first WotLK quests (~84 dps) + an Illidari Runeshield. When I tried with my epic Prot tanking gear, it just felt terrible. I think you really need a decent amount of strength to make the new Protection work. I'd probably get the new Cobalt blacksmithing gear as soon as possible, and replace all my precious epics.

I think I'm probably going to level as Protection in WotLK. It's solid for soloing, and I can tank instances on the way up.

WotLK Beta - Random Notes

Quick bullet points:

• As predicted, Art of War was changed. Overall, Ret is still awesome, but no more 20K crits.



• Seal of Righteousness is really strong at the moment. It's scaling a bit too well with AP. In full Ret gear, with a Ret spec, SoR is looking like my highest DPS seal. Unfortunately, it's our levelling seal for 1-60, where we don't have any SP, so Blizzard will have to be very careful with it. The only solution I can think of is to have a breakpoint in the AP scaling. I.e. the first 1000 AP gets 10% scaling, but all AP after that only gets 5%.



• Divine Storm's graphic is awesome! It's pretty much the single best spell effect in the game. It's like a storm of hammers swirls around you.



• Seals now last for 2 minutes. However, Judgments now invoke a global cooldown, as they should.



• Pets and mounts are sort of spells now. At least, right-clicking the pet or mount causes you to "learn" the pet/mount and puts it in a pane on your character sheet. This is pretty neat, and frees up a ton of bag space. Plus, it's really easy to review your collection. The pane has a display so you can see what each pet looks like.



• There's a built-in calendar now. You can schedule raids, and do sign-ups. It's somewhat bare-bones, but it covers all the basics. In my view, this is a huge step forward for new guilds. In many ways, this simple change has the potential to be the best change for endgame that Blizzard has introduced.



• Potions grant a debuff now that prevents you from drinking another potion until the end of combat. This puts an end to chain-potting, and returns potions to an emergency-use item.
  
  One interesting thing about this change I found is that a lot of casual commenters are predicting that the hardcore would be unhappy with this change, as it makes the endgame more accessible to casuals (no more farming for pots). Meanwhile, at EJ, pretty much everyone is cheering the change. The point is that a lot of the things that the casuals don't like about endgame, the hardcore also do not like. However, the difference is that the hardcore is willing to put up with these negatives, to do whatever they deem necessary to be successful.
  
  On the one hand, that's good, as they're willing to work hard for a goal. If killing a boss requires chain-potting, they will chain-pot. On the other hand, they do lack a sense of proportion about things, and things end up balanced around the extremes, rather than closer to the center. Raid encounters end up balanced assuming that everyone is chaining potions.



• Back to paladins, apparently Consecration and Exorcism now scale with AP as well as SP. The biggest problem with current prot gear is that there is very little strength on it, and that makes it hard to judge how good the the Protection tree is. I'm strongly considering junking all my Prot epics and trying the new Cobalt blacksmithing armor (+Str, +Sta, +def). I also need to find a good DPS 1H weapon. Maybe I'll try Ret Gear + 1H/Shield, and see how that works for general soloing.

WotLK Beta - Retribution

I feel sorry for Retribution paladins. Every beta, Blizzard overpowers Retribution, and ends up scaling it back for live, thus disappointing all the paladins who are watching eagerly.

WotLK appears to be continuing that trend. Retribution is sick right now. I'm testing on Quel'Danas, and level 70 mobs die instantly. Judgement, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, dead mob. I'm not even in that amazing gear. I'm in T4 with a Gorehowl. I'd hate to see what the T6/Sunwell people are capable of.

So far, Ret is extremely good for soloing. Judgements of the Wise returns a fair bit of mana to the paladin. Basically, right now there is close to zero downtime with Retribution.

The biggest Retribution news out of beta are the massive 15K - 20K Judgement of Command crits Retribution is capable of. This is not an exaggeration. My best crit so far was 12.5K, and that was without trying. In better gear, pop Avenging Wrath and trinkets, and I can easily see coming close to 20K.

What's really weird about these crits is that they are somewhat controllable. The Art of War is procced off a Crusader Strike. So you wait for Art of War to proc, then stun and Judge Seal of Command. And since Fanaticism gives you +25% crit chance, that puts the chance for Command to crit at over 50%. Between the Art of War proc and Fanaticism, this burst is oddly reliable.

All in all, I think Retribution is headed for a nerf. And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Paladin forums.

The First Thing You Should Do In WotLK

The very first thing you should do in WotLK is roll a Death Knight and do the Death Knight starting questline.

The DK starting questline is like a prologue or introduction to the expansion. It sets up a couple of very interesting storylines to be revealed in the expansion. After you finish the questline, you can switch back to your main character or continue with the Deathknight as you please.

I'm not really impressed with the Deathknight class itself (I'll probably expand on this in a later post), but I strongly suggest you do the DK quests first before heading to Northrend.

Crafting, Gold, and Balance

Right now, there's a trend--especially at the high end of raiding and PvP--of characters taking two crafting professions. They do this in order to get the "perks" from each profession slot, maximizing their character's potential.

This has some interesting economic ramifications. There are now fewer gatherers, and more crafters, so the raw materials have become scarcer, and prices have increased significantly. To combat this, Blizzard is introducing perks for the gathering professions in WotLK. For example, Mining gets a +Stamina bonus.

However, some people aren't happy with this, because levelling crafting professions is an expense, while levelling gathering professions gains you money. They feel that because they put in the greater expense, they should get a greater reward.

The problem with this is that money or gold is really irrelevant when it comes to character balance. If Leatherworking gives more of a boost to your characters stats than Mining, Mining will be dropped by the serious players, regardless of how much money it brings in.

It's like there are two mutually exclusive choices. A crafting profession can either be useful to your character (I.e. it has benefits that cannot be provided by another crafter), or it can be profitable. If it is useful, everyone will take it, increasing the supply, increasing the costs, and reducing the profits. If it is not useful, then fewer people will take it, increasing scarcity and making it more likely you can make money with it.

For example, if Blizzard really wanted players to be able to sell crafted goods for profit, they should increase the perks for the gathering professions until they are noticeably better than the perks from crafting. This means that most serious players will drop crafting professions and go double gatherer. This means that there will be plentiful supply of raw materials. Then Blizzard should have crafted BoE recipes of good quality available. Plenty of raw materials + fewer crafters = lots of income.

But would you take that trade? More gold in exchange for lower character prowess? I think that most people won't. That it will just lead to complaining by everyone. So Blizzard will try and balance perks between the crafting and gathering professions.

Unless the cost is extremely exorbitant, gold costs never hold players back. Respec costs haven't, costs to level professions haven't, repair costs haven't, alchemy costs back in WoW 1.0 didn't. You cannot count on gold costs to balance character prowess. All significant gold costs really do is cause players to spend more time farming, complaining, and cause players to drop out of the game when they can't keep up.

Edit: This post is really the confluence of two somewhat-related ideas: gold costs do not affect game balance; and crafting can be useful or profitable, but not both. I probably should have tried to separate them out a bit better.

WotLK Beta - Protection

I got fed up with trying to figure out Judgement of Command, so I specced Protection to try out some new talents. Some thoughts in no particular order:

• Wow, there are a lot of talents in the Prot tree. I spent all 61 points, and I still wanted to spend 10 more. Prot really needs a couple of talents in the high end collapsed, and maybe a couple PvP-dedicated talents in their place.



• I'm running out of space to put all my icons. 3 Judgements, Hammer of the Righteous, Seal of the Martyr, and at 75 we get Shield of Righteousness. It's all putting a squeeze on the available bar space I have.



• Hammer of the Righteous is broken at the moment. Admittedly, I'm using a caster weapon, but my character sheet says 116-213 damage, and I'm seeing white hits of 76-132. I run up to a mob, smack HotR, and it does a whopping 35 damage!
  
  HotR does anywhere from 35-120 damage, so I think it's bugged at the moment. As well, I haven't yet seen it crit. Admittedly, I have a pretty low crit rate in Prot gear, but I did test it a fair bit.



• The new cast time on Avenger's Shield is very nice. The dazed duration has increased to 10s, which is nice because it slows down the pull in a group. On the other hand, it takes forever for the mob to actually get to you.



• Protection plays pretty much like always does. Gather mobs, Consecrate, Holy Shield, and lots of numbers appear on your screen. For solo play, I think it might be a bit mana-hungry.



• The really interesting question will be Spell Power versus Attack Power gear. To a large extent this depends on how HotR works. Touched by the Light gives a fair bit of spell power to keep your SP-based spells from falling behind.

So that was my quick look at Protection. Some interesting things going on with it, but so far it seems very similar to TBC Protection.

WotLK Beta - Judgements II

Here's a quick way to sum up the new Judgement system:

Debuff comes from the Judgement; Damage comes from the Seal.

I actually really like the new system. It's really intuitive once you start playing with it. It makes Seals and Judgements more central to the paladin experience.

You get the benefit of JoL/W without having to sacrifice extra damage. You get an initial burst of Holy damage at the start of the fight. You can switch the debuff you have on the target quite easily.

Pretty much everything scales with both Attack Power and Spell Power. (I think Seal of Blood is the only thing that does not--it is AP-only.) It's great to see your Judgement debuffs become more powerful as your gear improves.

Heh, the only problem is that I keep forgetting to cast a new Seal after 30s. I'm so used to casting immediately after the Judgement, or macro'ing the Seal to the Judgement.

I've been doing a bit of work determining the new coefficients for the Seals and Judgements. They're buried in the thread on EJ, if anyone is interested. I just have to figure out how Command and Blood work, and I'll post a summary.

WotLK Beta - Judgements

WotLK is revamping the Seal and Judgement system. Here's an overview of Judgements.

There are three Judgement spells: Judgement of Light, Judgement of Wisdom and Judgment of Justice.

Casting a Judgement
- costs 5% of base mana (your mana without any gear)
- does not invoke a Global Cooldown
- requires an active Seal
- does not consume the active Seal!

Casting a Judgement has 2 effects:

1. Puts a debuff on the target. The exact debuff depends on which Judgement you cast. Casting Judgement of Light puts the Light debuff, JoW puts the Wisdom debuff, and JoJ puts the Justice debuff. Judgements last for 20s, but can be refreshed with your melee hits, or any Paladin's Crusader Strike.

2. Unleashes the active Seal for some Holy damage. The amount of damage depends on the active Seal. All Seals, including Seal of Light/Wisdom/Justice, do damage when unleashed. This effect does double damage on a critical strike for all active Seals. This effect does not consume the active Seal!

The Judgement of Justice debuff prevents NPCs from fleeing and prevents the target from increasing her speed beyond 100%.

The Judgement of Light and Wisdom debuffs have a chance to return health and mana, respectively, when an attacker strikes the target. The amount of health or mana returned depends on the paladin's Attack Power and Spell Power.

JoL: Health gained per proc = 18% * AP + 18% * SP

JoW: Mana gained per proc = 9% * AP + 9% * SP

In a group, the amount of health or mana gained depends on the stats of the Paladin who cast the Judgement.

Still to be determined:
- How refreshing debuffs with Crusader Strike interacts with health/mana values from JoL/JoW
- How changing stats in the middle of a fight (from temporary buffs or debuffs) affects JoL/JoW

WotLK Beta - Requests?

Thanks to a friend, I'm now have a WotLK Beta Key!

I'm currently near the SSO, with zero talent points, trying to nail down how the new Seals and Judgements work. (Seal and Judgment of Justice are bugged like crazy, which isn't helping.)

Anyways, if you guys have any requests about what I should look at or report on, feel free to ask in this thread. I only have my paladin transferred over at the moment, though.

Also, I haven't gone to Northrend or seen any of the new content yet. I'd like to play with some of the talent and mechanic changes first.

WotLK Beta - Burst Damage

Sometimes I really don't understand Blizzard. Back in March, they said they were worried about Paladin burst damage. Fast forward to the WotLK Beta, and we see the following two talents:

Righteous Vengeance (5/5)
Requires 45 Points in Retribution
Increases critical damage bonus of all attacks by 15%.

The Art of War (3/3)
Requires 40 Points in Retribution
Your damaging Crusader Strikes have a 15% chance to cause your next Judgement spell to cause double damage.

Let's say you have a 30% critical strike chance. Your attack possibilities (ignoring misses, parries, etc.) are:

59.5% - Normal damage
10.5% - 2x damage
25.5% - 2.15x damage
4.5% - 4.3x damage

Yes, that's correct. In the current Beta, Retribution paladins have better than Quad Damage!

I think The Art of War is going to be nerfed, and nerfed hard.

WotLK Beta - Holy Builds

Here's some thoughts on likely LK builds for Holy paladins. Again, it's still in beta, so things may change drastically.

48/0/23 - Sheathbot

This looks to be the best single-target healing build you can make. It has the most spell power, the most crit, and a massive 2.4x crit multiplier. (For reference, a normal paladin has a 1.5x multiplier.)You also provide Imp Might and 3% crit for the raid.

I think this will be the standard 25-man raiding build, at least for the first Holy paladin in the raid. You are giving up any chance of an AoE heal, but the druids, priests and shamans can cover that while you concentrate on keeping the main tank up.

51/0/15+5 - Beacon of Light + Ret

This build trades-off the extra spellpower and crit multiplier from the previous build in exchange for an AoE heal in Beacon of Light. Basically you trade raw single-target healing in exchange for flexibility. You also provide Imp Might and 3% crit for the raid.

I think this build will be very popular for 5 and 10-man instances. Since you have fewer other healers (or none) to cover your weaknesses, flexibility becomes more important.

51/20/0 - Beacon of Light + Prot

Trade the goodies in Retribution for Blessing of Kings, Imp Devo Aura, and Divine Guardian. Also get Beacon of Light for some AoE healing.

Essentially, this is the "We don't have a Prot Paladin and people are whining for Kings" build. It should be pretty good for the second Holy paladin in a 25-man raid.

Edit: On EJ, Cathela posted an interesting way of looking at 25-man raid composition for paladins. Positing two default slots per class (fair, considering there are now 10 classes), Cathela proposes that it will break down as follows:

Slot 1: Sheathbot or DPS Ret Paladin
Slot 2: Beacon of Light + Prot or Tank Prot Paladin

Two Pressing Beta Questions

1. What is going on with Judgments? It looks like there are new Judgement spells which automatically Judge Light/Wisdom/Justice in addition to your running damage Seal. But Seal of Light/Wisdom/Justice still exists, as does the regular Judgment spell. This seems very cluttered and inelegant.

2. Take a look at the new 51-pt Holy talent:

Beacon of Light
1.5 sec cast, 780 Mana, 40 yd range
The target becomes a Beacon of Light, healing all party or raid members within 10 yards for 990 over 15 sec.

Pretty neat, and a very welcome addition to the paladin healing arsenal. But the real question is: does this spell have a graphical effect causing the target to shine with light? Because if it does, all we need is a feral druid tank, and we end up with a giant, glowing bear!

Salvation's End

Beta patch notes are out, including a whole whack of changes for paladins.

The stand-out change:

Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.

At long last, Blessing of Salvation is gone. This one spell has warped our class so much, and I am *thrilled* to see it tossed out.

There's a bunch of other changes, and I'm especially pleased to see that Blizzard has decided to prune away a lot of the deadwood. Notable spells that have been removed are Blessing of Salvation, Blessing of Light, Seal of the Crusader, and Sanctity Aura. A lot of the worst excesses of the 1.9 change--pushing the good Holy talents deeper into the tree--have been reversed. Holy Wrath is on steroids now for some reason.

It's amusing to see how many changes from this old 2006 post of mine have been implemented.

It still appears that Blizzard is sticking with the specialist paladin, rather than the hybrid ideal. But other than that, the changes are actually quite good so far. There's still a lot of work to be done, but this is a great clean-up pass.

Just one note to Blizzard: Seal of Corruption is a terrible name for a paladin ability. Corruption is a warlock word. Please don't try to be "edgy" with the whole "Arthas falling from grace" thing. Just play it straight and give us an ability with a proper paladin name.

Libram Swapping Nerf

Yesterday's patch nerfed the practice of libram-swapping. Basically, you could macro a command to switch librams to the command to cast a spell, and get the full benefit of the libram. So you would bind a Holy Light libram to Holy Light, and a Flash of Light libram to Flash of Light, and you would get the full benefit of your libram slot for whichever spell you cast.

My response to the nerf is: Good! Libram-swapping was a lame hack.

Librams are designed to be powerful but specific. You get a bigger bonus than normal, but only for a portion of the total time. This makes gameplay interesting, as you try and shift your gameplay to maximize the use of your Libram. Rely more on HL if you have a HL libram. Tank heal if you have the BoL libram.

If you wish Librams to be more general, they're going to be weaker overall. That's just the way balance works. Swapping Librams with spellcasts allowed paladins to get all the bonuses of a libram with none of the drawbacks. This was not intended, and would have just led Blizzard to make weak, general Librams.

To see what I mean, compare [Libram of Souls Redeemed] to [Blue Diamond Witchwand]. They both drop from the Opera event in Karazhan.

The wand gives:

+13 Int
+11 Spi
+29 Healing

The libram gives a Holy paladin:

+125-150 Healing but only on targets with Blessing of Light

The libram healing bonus is significantly higher than the wand healing bonus. The drawback is that it really only works when healing the tanks. Given that the tanks are the ones taking the big hits, I would much rather have the specific libram than the general stats wand.

Specific librams are more *interesting* than general librams. They give us something to discuss, to theorycraft about, to make decisions about. Making decisions is what makes games interesting. Going from a +10 healing libram to a +20 healing libram is not an interesting decision. It's an obvious one.

Most of the other equipment slots are general, boring, and obvious. (Trinkets are a notable exception.) One slot dedicated to a new model of itemization is not too much to ask.

The Initial Hand in Card Games

How a game unfolds in a card game is very dependant on the initial hand. Essentially, the initial draw gives you a random subset of your total abilities to work with. That means your game plan changes with your draw. A lot of the work in deck construction for CCGs goes towards making that initial hand has good options for playing.

The big advantage of this is that each game is slightly different. Sometimes you'll have lots of small effects to harass your opponent. Other times you'll have to stall until you can play a big effect.

Contrast this to WoW. In WoW, you always have access to the full set of your abilities. That means that most non-raid boss fights tend to progress in the same manner. First you play ability A, then you play ability B, and so on. There's some reaction abilities like Kick or stuns, but by and large, once you have worked out a rotation, you stick with it.

(I suppose this doesn't apply to healing in a 5-man, as that is very reactive, and thus different each time.)

Imagine what gameplay would be like if a random 2/3rds of your abilities were locked out when the fight started. I think it might be pretty neat. Every fight would be slightly different. No Fireball this fight, use Frostbolt!

However, it's pretty hard to come up with a reason to justify only having access to a random subset of your abilities in non-card games. In a card game, it's just obviously the way a deck of cards works. Once you accept the metaphor that your powers are cards in the deck, you don't bat an eye at not having access to all powers at all times.

I can't really think of a way to justify not having all your abilities available for a non-card game. Why shouldn't a Warrior be able to use Mortal Strike when he has enough rage? Yet, the initial draw is a very interesting mechanic that goes a long way towards countering the repetitiveness of individual fights.

Life Tap and Scaling

Why does Life Tap scale with spell damage?

The simple answer is that spell damage improves your spells, Life Tap is a spell, and thus spell damage should improve Life Tap. However, I think that this logic is flawed, and a scaling Life Tap actually causes some issues with warlocks.

Power Stats like spell damage and attack power work in a linear fashion for individual spells. They follow the general equation Total Damage = Base Damage + Coefficient * Power Stat. Pretty much all classes use this model to determine how the Power Stat affects the damage done by spells or abilities. Even warlock spells use this equation.

However, unique to warlocks, spell damage also changes the ratio of spells being cast. Consider a warlock who just casts Shadow Bolts and Life Taps. At zero spell damage, the warlock can cast 1.3 Shadow Bolts for every Life Tap. For about every 500 extra spell damage, the warlock can cast another Shadow Bolt before needing to Life Tap. 500 spell damage = 2.3 Shadow Bolts. 1000 spell damage = 3.3 Shadow Bolts. 1500 spell damage = 4.3 Shadow Bolts.

What this means that as a warlock accumulates spell damage, the percentage of time she spends on DPS increases. This is in addition to the fact that the individual spell's damage increases as well. So spell damage essentially has a double effect--a non-linear effect--on a warlock's DPS. It increases the damage of Shadow Bolt and, through Life Tap, increases the percentage of time Shadow Bolt is cast.

This shows that warlocks scale in a different manner than the spells of most other classes, and this probably makes them hard to balance accurately for all tiers of endgame.[1]

On the other hand, if Life Tap didn't scale, you can replicate much of the same effect by downranking Shadow Bolt. A downranked Shadow Bolt has a lower cost, meaning it can be cast for a greater percentage of the time, and potentially doing more total damage than the higher ranked spell at some point.

So now I'm not really sure what we can conclude from this exercise, other than once again we show that being able to downrank spells causes problems in WoW. In many ways, costs are most important part of game balance. Being able to change costs without repercussion has caused a lot of balance problems in WoW. One of these days, I hope Blizzard takes this to heart, and removes the ability to cast downranked spells.

[1]DPS warriors also have some of the same double effect, in that AP allows them to hit harder, therefore they generate more rage, which allows them to use specials more often. However, DPS warriors tend to hit the point where they have always have enough rage for their ability cycles relatively early in their progression, so it ends up not mattering as much.