Swap the talents clouded focus and tear of morning so the two choice nodes look like:
Ancient Teachings/Tear of Morning
Rising Mist/Clouded Focus
This would get rid of the obnoxious hybrid build that dominates raiding and is (most likely) disliked by both melee and range favoritizers. It would be a nerf to the caster build since they’d be forced to pick Tear instead of Rising mist so you’d have to buff Mistweaver’s overall healing done to compensate.
This would bring the two playstyles closer in terms of performance while keeping their builds more separate and MW’s overall healing done the same relatively to other classes.
You’re having fun because you can afford to pick a suboptimal build you enjoy since you’re not playing on a level where it matters. The change I’m suggesting would give the rest of us the choice you have.
And for the record, MW isn’t doing fine. It’s been the least played healer for several expansions and our dev has been neglecting player experience in favor of balancing.
Designing a spec is like making a video game. There’s no formula for success but there is one for measuring failure, such as losing all your players.
You have your opinion, that’s fine. That does not make everyone else wrong (and really, you don’t know me, and you don’t know my other three monks, so spare me the “you’re not playing on a level where it matters.” spiel).
Mistweaver monks have been the least played healers for a long time, not because they are bad, but because it is an ‘established truth’ that they lack some of the utility of other healers. People hear that and chose another healer class instead.
What we do have is a tree with two different playstyles that are viable, which is more than most healers can say. Is it the best? No, but it is fun and a lot more flexible than most.
Mistweaver is fine as it is, it doesn’t need to be flavour of the month to be good.
And I disagree. Most people don’t crunch the numbers or read reviews before trying out a class, and anyway, 99% of the time when someone asks “how’s mistweaver” on reddit or this forum the answer is “it’s fine”.
The idea that it’s been this unpopular because of some stigma or lack of utility that only matters in +27s sounds like a conspiracy theory compared to the obvious explanation that they looked at it or tried it and didn’t like how it feels.
I don’t want it to be OP and I disagree with those who think the solution is to overbuff it or even give it some unique awesome utility to make it more appealing. I do want blizz to realize that this isn’t a simple tuning issue.
If they want two playstyles in one spec (actually more like 5 if you count the raid/M+/PvP variant of both melee and caster) they need to do a lot more for isolating them so the local optimum of each build isn’t some abomination.
Even consider the possibility of a 4th spec.