Hello all of you!
First of: I’m playing Mistweaver since MoP. Rarely played anything else, because I like the Spec’s class fantasy in general a lot, the toolkit has been fine for MoP and WoD (and maybe some of BfA). I can “identify” myself with the class as a whole, which is, why I like to play it.
Going into Shadowlands I was super hyped for the upcoming changes - especially the Fistweaving Legendary (Ancient Teachings of the Monastery). I’ve always played this style of gameplay, always like it. That’s why Paladin was my main alt in BfA.
I’ve never gotten CE, so far - my Guild aims to get it this Tier, let’s see how that plays out. I’ve never played much PvP either, so I’m going to leave that Feedback to the guys that know what they’re talking about.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get into some Feedback on the class and what I think, could be optimized/reworked/redone/changed.
- Soothing Mist
as many already mentioned, they don’t feel the spell to have much impact on our general gameplay: it “costs” a global you could really well spent otherwise, you need to stand still for a couple of seconds to get value out of it with Vivify and Enveloping Mist being instant cast. It basically costs no Mana, which is fine, but that’s about it.
Suggestion: Either take it of the GCD, make it castable while moving, just like Essence Font, or buff its healing value. And by buffing the raw healing of it, I don’t think a mastery proc on every tick would be a wise decision - I’m getting to why later in the Chi-Ji Section.
The Spell doesn’t feel good to play. It’s more punishing than rewarding to channel it for a longer period of time.
- Renewing Mist
in my opinion, that’s one of the few spells, that really works out. Spreading it, to get maximum value out of Vivify is okay and in my honest opinion, the mana cost tweak wasn’t necessary. Looking at logs and doing the math, it doesn’t benefit us much.
Suggestion: If there really was a change to happen, I’d not go with the cost. I would probably ask for a tweak to the spread mechanic so RM is able to spread to injured Melee targets from a full health Ranged. Increase the range to 40 yards maybe.
- Vivify
Vivify is only ever “cost efficient” when there are 4-6 RM out, which basically forces you to play the Rising Mist talent, because it’s not possible to spread out so many RMs onto 4-6 targets constantly. The mana cost reduction that’s teased in 9.0.5 is definitely welcomed, but doesn’t equate to much when I’m doing the math looking at my and other people’s logs.
Suggestion:
I think, I’d leave the mana costs as they are. Maybe tweak them just like what Blizz had in mind for 9.0.5. (0.3%). But please buff the raw healing values a little:
It’s currently sitting at 141% SP ratio and 104% for the RM Cleaveheal. I’d imagine buffing it by 7-10% would not put us at a spot where MWs would be topping the meters immediately but rather get us a little closer to the upper places in terms of throughput.
Quick Throw-In here: We lack utility. That is okay, IF you can bring the necessary throughput to the raid which would compensate for that, but we sadly lack that as well. I don’t want the best of both worlds. Either give us one or the other. That’s what’s balanced and that’s what choosing a healing spec should be about.
- Essence Font
Feels fine as is. I wouldn’t touch it with a 5-foot-pole to be honest. That spell feels like the most balanced one we have in our toolkit right now. Good mana efficiency, good throughput.
- Expel Harm
Expel Harm is one of those spells where you ask yourself, why exactly this is in your spellbook. The spell itself does rather low healing for its mana cost (inefficient) and the damage aspect is negligible as it costs a GCD to use it which could be used otherwise.
- Enveloping Mist
In my opinion it’s a relatively good single target heal, considering the healing buff it offers on your other healing spells. The mana costs are way too high in my opinion. 6% of base mana (currently 3.000) is way too much when you basically have to spam heal the target afterwards to make EM mana efficient, because in terms of raw Healing it’s not really ideal. Either lower the cost to something around the 4,5% - 5% mark or increase the throughput. The 10% amp on it should stay the same in my opinion, you’re running towards the danger of making fistweaving with Chi-Ji too strong otherwise.
Let’s get to the talent section, where I believe to have some rather weird suggestions.
- Mist Wrap
Was pretty solid during BfA because we were able to spam heal due to the Obsidian Claw and Memory of Lucid Dreams giving us much more Mana than we could spend. This isn’t the case in Shadowlands. Mana not only feels like a resource anymore, it’s damn hard to use it efficiently because of high mana costs all across the spellbook.
I think it’s not really needed to buff this talent at all, if a proper cost reduction or healing increase is being applied to EM.
- Chi Wave
Not sure, if it’s finding any use in PvP but in PvE it’s not useful at all. The healing is too unreliable and the damage aspect is negligible (=same as Expel Harm)
- Chi Burst
In its current form the best talent in the entire row. ‘Nuff said.
Skipping 25 Talents because they’re not important the MW’s core problem.
- Lifecycles
In itself a rather good talent which is badly done. The scenario where you could make use of the cost decrease is pretty rare, since you’re either spam healing Vivify or applying a single EM to heal a heavily injured person. You don’t alternate between those to that much.
My suggestion would be to apply a buff for 3-5 seconds, which reduces the mana cost of the other spell by 25%. In that case, there’s a much higher chance you’d actually get something out of it.
- Spirit of the Crane
That’s a cool talent idea in combination with the new Legendary (Ancient Teachings of the Monastery). I think buffing it to 0,8% would show it some love and grant it some play in fights where there’s a lot of downtime to damage the boss.
- Mana Tea
Pretty straightforward, nothing much to say to that. I’d keep it a talent.
- Tiger Tail Sweep
Not many applications inside a raid to be honest. But with the suggestions I’m going to make for Ring of Peace it only seems fair to make the same here:
Take the 35 talents to another level and overhaul them. Tiger Tail Sweep could reduce the physical damage that stunned targets deal by 5% for 3 seconds after the stun ends. If the target is not stunnable, reduce the damage by 7,5% for 3 seconds instead.
- Song of Chi-Ji
Same as above, but with magic damage. Conjure a 10-yard cloud of protective Mist around the Mistweaver, reducing the magic damage you and your allies suffer by 10-15% and protecting them from movement impairing and loss of control effects for 3 seconds (to fit the buff, that Chi-Ji grants you when summoning him)
- Ring of Piece
Make it a Priest Bubble. 10% DR while in it, knocking out or putting to sleep enemies that enter the ring. Simple as that.
Skipping Level 40 Talents because I think they’re pretty solid all around.
- Summon Jade Serpent Statue
I don’t think that this talent is viable in its current form. The healing is too low to really matter, there’s no other benefits to it and it ends in overhealing most of the time.
What I think would greatly benefit this talent is a mirroring effect. The Jade Serpent Statue mirrors your healing effects on the target for 15-20% as long as both channel Soothing Mist on the same target.
- Refreshing Jade Wind
This talent is in a pretty good spot I’d say. A slight reduce to the mana costs would be nice. 0,2% to 0,4% would be totally sufficient, I think.
- Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane
In a pretty good spot as well and the go to talent at the moment (at least for Fistweavers and fights with high boss uptime). The only thing that really bugs me here is, that Chi-Ji’s heals scale with your mastery score which isn’t pretty ideal, because it basically forces you to go Kyrian due to the Covenant Ability. Can’t we just have a 70-85% SP scaling on that? Mastery isn’t our stongest stat by far and making Feastweaving work requires a decent amount of haste. If I want to get something out of Chi-Ji (other than the free EMs of course), I’d have to go Haste until 10-15% -> Mastery.
We’re early in the expansion and secondaries don’t have the same value as in BfA. Intellect is still strong (and should remain that way!). So why not give it a SP ratio instead of Mastery.
- Focused Thunder
This feels quite underwhelming. The effects we get from Thunder Focus Tea aren’t that powerful on all the spells. Some feel good and actually are, but some don’t. Why not bring the Azerite Power from BfA in a smaller form back on Focused Thunder? And give TFT 2 Charges.
- Upwelling
This talent simply isn’t playable at the moment because our mana costs are too high to spam heal Vivify after getting a full Essence Font cast of. Since secondary stats are much weaker right now than at the end of BfA, Essence Font doesn’t heal as much (Don’t get me wrong: it’s still decent!).
Maybe giving it the 3 extra bolts per wave for every 6 seconds it’s been on off cooldown could fix it’s standing.
- Rising Mist
The go-to talent for Mistweavers at the moment. Doesn’t need changes in my opinion. It’s strong as it is.
Legendaries:
I mainly played ATotM, so I’m going to give feedback on that. I sadly didn’t receive a Beta Key during the SL Beta, would’ve loved to give the same feedback there.
I think the Essence Font trigger is weird and counterproductive. If I ask myself, what I’d like to do after casting EF it’s most likely going to be healing the persons with the HoTs on them, because they benefit from double the amount of mastery. Why would I fistweave in that time and let the buff run out unused?
Wouldn’t a damage trigger be much more fitting? Something along the way of “Dealing damage with 3 different spells in the last 5 seconds invokes the Ancient Teachings of the Monastery, healing your most injured ally within 40 yards for 250% of your physical damage.”
I think the 40 yards are mandatory to really make use of the “fight to heal” aspect.
Please feel free to give some feedback and start a discussion. Thanks for reading!
. They would have to introduce a couple more spells/abilities/dots like all range healers (shaman, druid, priest both holy/disco) have. Only CJL is not enough and i doubt they would just double its dmg beause just spamming 1 button for dps is boring.