Hello there.
Have played blizzard games for roughly 20 years now, wow for 14 years and Monk and mistweaver for close to 6 years now. Played mostly mistweaver for the last years. Love the specc, its animation and its thematics. Here is my thoughts and feedback on the shadowlands mistweaver.
New baseline abilties:
Healingspheres:
Last time I played where it existed was in WoD, it had couple of flaws. Its was mostly only good when players knew of its mechanic and moved to them. Them exploding when expired helped it alot but still quite lacklust but mostly because it was tide to the mastery and proc rate depening on what spell that was used. Currently on alpha healing spheres arent yet introduced. I hope when it is, its done correct and as well a way to move the spheres arround.
Expel Harm:
Selfheal and deals damage to close an enemy depending on the healing and with rank2 also healing soothing mist target. First of this spell is very expensive in mana and doesnt procc Gust of Mist. Costing more than a Vivify and healing for less. This spell would the ideal spell to move arround healing spheres as well spawn them. In its currently state it needs help
Touch of Death:
In WoD this was a real utility able to just help execute bosses and other mobs. According to the Class update its suppost to give healing spheres but currently isnt connected to it. Waiting for the updates
Specc specific baseline:
Yu’lon, the jade Serpent
Crackbird becomes crackdragon. It has the same problem as old Chi-ji low healing, fire and forget. I think this spell needs some love. Example to make it stronger would tide it to renewing mist a bit more it could for:
example 1: also heal people with REM, mimicing vivify.
example 2: Makes every active REM splits into 2. kinda like Dance of Mist artifact trait did.
Just a few few thought to make it more thoughtful use.
Baseline gameplay
Problems:
Scaling issues: Haste, it affects few spells and only cooldown it affects pretty much is Rising Sun Kick. Combined with bad mastery scaling on the kit, we get major scaling issues when most scaling comes mostly from critical strike and versatility. One of the reasons Revival feel so weak when pressing it, as it only scaling of 2 stats unlike many others raid cooldowns that scales of 3-4 secondary stats.
Mastery Gust of Mist: still affects very limited amount of spells and offers no offensive power while not offering healing strenght greater than other stats. Damage is becoming more and more important for healers and with Invoke Chi-ji talent we get healing from damage but mastery has no effect on it. Mastery should probly somehow someway affecting more healing spells and maybe even some offensive attacks like rsk and spinning crane kick. But best start would making healing spells first. Talents, Essence Font, Invoke Yu’lun and Revival are probly the biggest offender of not scaling with Mastery.
Essence Font: Spell is somewhat schizofrenic, It has a couple of problems, community does want adressed. Its our aoe spell you want to cast before damage so we can start casting our single target spells, for the double gust of mists, but its our best reactive spell but effect wants to be proactive. An other problem is that Essence font is by far our most powerful spell, used often and has a long channel times. Upwelling exacerbate the problem further by upto doubling the channel time. Wich means mistweavers spend alot of time just channeling. Possible Solution:
Example1: Remove the double mastery proc and make it it instead increase the hot based on mastery
Example2: Allowing other spells to be casting while channeling similar to soothing Mist.
Skillfloor and skillceilling
Essence font is in such a large % of the total healing, that it really diminishing the diffrence between players thats close to the floor and someone that is close to the ceiling. Not much you can do to work for it to be such a large % of the total healing. When mistweaver started to use RM to its fullest in 8.3 they really had to work and be top of their game to work for their Enveloping mist or Vivify to be at such power as they did. The baseline does have limted effects to work to get a better results. Vivify and REM are the closest to it but its far from rewarding. Possible solutions:
Example1: A spell that allows to cast multiple Renewing mist, kinda like disc priest Rupture.
Example2: Allow the spell you use your Thunder focus tea to augment your next Essence font with increased effects or unique ones.
Example3: Increase amount of base REM charges that can be stored.
Example4: Allow rem to be casted with a chance of not going to cooldown like it was in warlord of draenor, % could be tide to the mastery.
Mana management
Mistweavers has quite large manacosts on their healing spells. Wich means mana management is super important but sadly reward for manage the mana doesnt automaticly mean you get good results. Spells arent stronger compared to others healers spells. Probly yet an other reason mistweaver falls off in expansion like it has done in both legion and in bfa. Unless some busted borrowed power carries the mistweavers. Possible solution:
Example1: Reverse the mana cost of vivify and REM. Rather than make the enable cheap and the payoff expensive reverse it so the enabler is expensive but the payoff is cheap. This also means you dont always want to cast renewing mist on cooldown but rather you have to think of it.
Talents
Our talents are stuck in the mist of pandaria mentality. 3 things of the something means we always pick hte best thing. In legion we barely changed talents at all, for a whole expansion. BFA was slightly better but still alot of the talent rows hasnt been moving arround. There is couple of manditory or very close to manditory talents that would be much better being baseline or alright being removed.
Talents that should become baseline are:
Summon Jade serpent statue, spell we used to have for a longe time, we want it back.
Mana Tea: this talent is close to as manditory as a talent become. Ring of Peace A very easy set and forget, can easily become something that is baseline.
Mistweaver is the only specc in the game without an active level 100 talent. Mistweaver had quite interesting level 100 talents in warlords of draenor with Serpent breath and Chi Explosion. Spells with cool animations that I personally would like to see again. Would also like to see Chi Torpedo back from mop and wod with healing and damage. Mistweaver has so many legendary, azeritetraits, setbonus, class trinkets that could replace some of the less useful talents.
There is alot of talents that could easily be removed, example are Mistwrap, Celerity, Lifecycles, Spirit of the Crane, Tiger Tail Sweep, Healing Elixir.
Talents that needs to be revisited are:
Rising Mist: This talent will either be too good or too bad. Extending healing of time is too uncapped strenght. While fistweaving is something monks wants to be viable, there must be a better way that can be be close to equal to mistweaving with its own pros and cons.
Focused Thunder: For being a 100 talent this might be one of the most borring one, moving it to an other tier would be way more interesting.
Chi Wave: This spell was reintroduced after Mistwalk was removed for balanced reason but this spell hasnt had a porpuse sense reintroduced as its to weak and doesnt add anything to it. One could think Chi wave should be the single target talent while Chi burst is the multitarget talent.
Upwelling: See Essence Font, having to channel for 6 seconds isnt that exciting even if its a 100 talent
Global Cooldown
We have a couple of spells that could be without the global cooldown or having extra effects when you press it.
Mana Tea: This spell has a very much a feelsbad with global cooldown. Healing tends to be more reactive and be reactive with a gcd that doesnt increase power makes it awkward to use. Its also a spell that is chained with Way of the crane now Invoke the Chi-Ji, the red Crane to save a ton of mana. Activate mana tea > activate Chi-ji rsk etc
Invoke Yulon: This spell could use an effect when you press it. Like aoe heal.
Invoke Chi-Ji: Could in additional do an attack and triggers its healing. Kinda like the Blade Flurry update.
Covenant abilty feedback
Weapons of Order: This spells is a very strong healing cooldown. Mastery being single target while effect is area effect. Any problem with it would be fixed with mastery affecting more mw spells. Solid cooldown for a steroid cooldown.
Fallen Order: Question is if it even work as it should, they dont seem to cast the spells they are suppost to do. At 3 minute cooldown, all the monks we get are random. As a healer I want my monks to heal when I cast it. Risk of geting no healing monks when you needs to be addressed. I think it would be good if all the monks spawned when you press the spell.
Bonedust Brew: The spell it works now is very weak and a feelsbad gcd. 15% chance to get a 25% extra effect as shadow. First of monks shouldnt do shadow damage or healing, nature fine but not shadow. Its like doing shadow damage on a holypaladin. Shadowdamage means it doesnt work with Invoke Chi-Ji. 15% chance is low enough there is a chance of not geting a trigger. Traveltime + gcd makes this spell have problems. Mistweaver only effect is effectivly 11 points of mastery. I would like to see it deal damage and heal on impact. Increased procrate and increased portion of the damage and healing. Change the mw only effect.
Faeline Stomp: Skill effect is by far the best looking covenant ability. Damage could use a slight increase. Spell should probly have a baseline heal as well.
Covenants overall feedback
After playing wow for so long I have seen wow’s successful and failed features. I know all of it hasnt been released yet for all the covenants but this feature is too big and too important to fail. In the past we have had similar effects like this, already in classic with the priest specific abilties, thoes was a failure in term of balancing. Alliance had to be dwarf to be good, dwarf priests got invited before any other race. In the burning crusade we had the Seal of blood vs seal of vengeance. For retribution seal of blood paladins did roughly 10% more damage than the alliance counterparts.
Over the time we had problems with racials, thoes are also rpg vs power choices. But their powers are now so reduced that they pretty much dont matter anymore.
The more I think of the covenant abilties the more I think each class should learn all 4 through a quest in each zone. We are the mawwalker afterall. Forgeting the recipe for Bonedust Brew when you leave necrolords makes little sense to me. Jokes aside Im very much looking forward to the expansion but hte whole power connected to the covenants makes me worries, more worried than I was for the systems in both legion and in bfa.
Thanks for reading.