12.1 Mistweaver Monk Feedback

In Development Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek Public Test Realm
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Starting off this thread of feedback for 12.1 in regards to Mistweaver Monk, here’s my initial feedback on the tier sets (cross-posting from the tier set thread):

I think both of these are pretty solid numerically for us in both Raid and M+, considering our well established talent builds in both forms of content use Rushing Wind Kick and Rising Sun Kick respectively, but there’s constant toil between the two talents (Jadefire Teachings and Rushing Wind Kick), which is slightly exacerbated here. I’ll get to that in the last point here.

Firstly, I’d like to point out that adding a charge to Rising Sun Kick works really well here when you get a reset (currently doesn’t seem to be working with Rushing Wind Kick). I like that as opposed to a buff, but it brings in a unique situation with Focused Thunder (a talent we are pretty much always taking) that doesn’t quite work. If you receive a charge from the 4set proc as you consume your first charge of Thunder Focus Tea (out of two charges), both the charge and the TFT stack get consumed, meaning you don’t get an additional RSK/RWK and you’re getting the 9s reduction on the 2nd charge that doesn’t exist anymore, so one of them is effectively “wasted”. This is fine on any other charges, since your second stack of TFT consumed just gives you +1 charge and then you have two to use.

Maybe a priority could be set here that won’t consume a TFT stack if you’re at 2 charges of RSK? Or when you have 2 charges of RSK, a TFT consumption still acts like RSK has a 2nd charge and can cool down as one? Not entirely sure, but it’s a bit convoluted nonetheless, since Mistweavers will end up hoping to not proc the reset on the first charge of RSK, making gameplay have a “feelsbad” moment attached to it. This is mostly related to M+ gameplay, as we want to always consume the first stack of TFT with Renewing Mist in Raid, while M+ has been using RSK as its choice of empower.

Secondly, this reset system is a bit antithetical to the way Rising Mist works, given that Rising Mist has a hard locked 1s internal cooldown. Since we can pretty consistently be below the 1s GCD, especially going into a season with more secondary stats given to us on haste, this ICD should likely be removed (or just set to 750ms for the GCD cap?) so the tier set can be used to its fullest effect and not nullify an extension simply because I used my tier set charge. It’ll be pretty awkward gameplay to tell Mistweavers not to use their second charge immediately while under high haste % to make full use of Rising Mist’s extension.

Third, I’d like to touch on the methods of procs. I do wish there was a way, barring Thunder Focus Tea since we have a lot tied to it already, including Morning Breeze, to proc it 100%, at least some times. Maybe this can be added as a method to celestial invocation? 2 charges with Jade Bond, 1 charge with Gift of the Celestials? Also a bit convoluted, but a guaranteed method of proc especially as a healer would be -really- nice.

Lastly, we have a clear differential in healing between the two abilities. With the tier set, Rising Sun Kick is 1467% SP damage converted into Ancient Teachings, which turns it into a 5061% SP heal (with JFT). HOWEVER, considering we have a bugged version of Ancient Teachings where armor is factored into the conversion (silently added at some point in Undermine, then silently reverted at some point from Undermine to the end of TWW), it actually only does a ~3542% SP heal. As opposed to Rushing Wind Kick’s 4524% SP heal + ~352% SP Ancient Teachings conversion (from the base 1411% SP damage, not accounting for the 6% increase in ST), totaling ~4876% SP heal, RWK (at 5 friendly targets hit) is already healing 1.38x what RSK does. Considering the incredibly low damage contribution from Blackout Kick and Tiger Palm (roughly 20% of the combined total of RSK, TP, and BoK on Live, and much less of a share with the tier set on PTR), the gap between the two becomes quite large. Without Morning Breeze (33% increase on RSK/RWK damage at baseline Mastery), the gap is even higher at 2569% RSK vs. 4804% RWK, RWK healing 1.87x as much. Ranking them with Spiritfont points 2 and 3 even, the difference is 3191% RSK vs. 4860% RWK, a 1.52x multiplier.

I do think that these can be worked on slightly, without nerfing either forms of content. Their damage is fairly far apart, so maybe: giving RSK even more damage on the tier set is an ok addition, considering they’re already set apart by the RSK’s physical armor reduction. At current values, looks like RWK is 1.37x more than RSK dmg. Or, upping the dmg of TP and BoK instead to get a better spread of damage contributions. Buuut, we really don’t want MW doing even higher damage, so maybe not the best of choices. Adding more to JFT transfer could be the solution, which also forces Spinning Crane Kick at higher target counts (which is a very good thing, given the season we just had!!!) Frankly, I’m not too sure what to do here, but I do think this gap needs to be set closer, where you’d still choose RWK in raid for the mana save + no need to be stuck in melee and you’d choose JFT in keys because of the 8% stam and the fact that you use TP and BoK infinitely more than raid, to make up for it in maintenance healing, even when both have equal value when directly comparing RSK and RWK.

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Great point. If we’re moving further toward Ancient Teachings as the core playstyle, I’d much rather see that baked into the baseline kit than locked behind Jadefire Teachings.

Please keep Rushing Wind Kick / MoH builds competitive—Mistweaver is at its best when multiple playstyles are viable, not when everyone is pushed into an RSK-centric build.

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old suggestion

The jadefire/RWK node is a pain point for any SooM/CJL build as well since Blizzard seems to have made RWK the ranged alternative to take advantage of the numerous RSK interactions in the talent tree, but CJL has very little value unless you spec into jadefire.

I think all monk playstyles would benefit from removing both talents entirely and then:

  1. make jadefire % baseline for ancient teachings

  2. move the RWK heal proc into way of the serpent (which I think makes a lot of sense against the things you get in way of the crane) and say this procs from either RSK or RWK

  3. transform RSK and RWK into a single merged ability that does RSK when in melee range of your target and RWK automatically when you’re not (which is something that also fits into other Midnight style simplifications we’ve seen for other classes)

This would:

  1. let casters use/take advantage of both RWK and CJL

  2. let melee/crane players continue to benefit from RSK procs/mechanics when they’re forced out of melee to do mechanics as well as decide if they want to do higher single target damage or use RWK as a cleave by adjusting their positioning

  3. allow raid RWK specs to get more value out of melee filler

I think the 3 different playstyles that currently exist in the tree would all co-exist better with those changes. It would also allow at least some value to all 3 playstyles from the S2 set bonus.

edit: I simplified this suggestion to just be:

  1. get rid of the talents
  2. move jadefire % into way of the crane and the RWK heal into serpent
  3. convert RSK into RWK baseline (which lets you use it at any range without being complicated)

and also probably add a mana tea buff into serpent since caster mana sucks and maybe let you cast RWK during SooM so it’s less annoying to use rotationally

This would make it simpler and make crane all about damage to healing and serpent more defensive/healing focused.

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A few things not addressed in Patch

1.Gap between Master of Harmony and Celestial Conduit
2.Mastery is horrible.
3.Raid Buff is horrible.

Why Celestial Conduit is favored

1.Heart of the Jade Serpent (Cooldown Reduction)
2.Flowing Wisdom (More Haste More Fun)
3.Strength of the Black Ox (Faster Enveloping Mist, Shield's alright too.)
4.Celestial Conduit - Versatile Cooldown(Heals/Damage, Movement, Damage Reduction)

How can we improve Master of Harmony?

1.The ability to track Vitality Pools as a bar would go a long way. It's difficult to min max what you can't effectively see. (Jade Walk can be tracked with CDM...)

2. Better Master of Harmony Talents.
(Conduit has more frequent uses of abilities, Master of Harmony could have stronger less frequent abilities.)  Example. New Talent - Life Cocoon also has % Damage Reduction. 

1.Manifestation, isn't good enough.
2.Overwhelming Force, isn't good enough.
3.Clarity of Purpose, isn't good enough.
4.Balanced Stratagem, Can't be tracked in CDM
5.Roar from the Heavens, nearly there, add the snare removal.

Mastery needs a rework

Mastery > Crit > Vers = Weaker Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, Revival, Ancient Teachings, Way of the Crane/SCK, Soothing Mist, Vivify, Sheilun's Gift, and all the little things like Chi Wave etc.

Raid Buff Rework Ideas.

1.Haste Buff
2.Add more Phys Classes/Specs.
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I think the merge should be the opposite.
Rushing wind should be stronger single target
and rising sun should be AOE.

I say this because that would pair well with spinning crane kick being used melee aoe.

or (and I dont like this option) make both single target since both melee and ranged can use spinning or Crackling jade

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Looking at SooM numbers on PTR at 322ish ilvl SooM with the new talent goes from 6.4k per tick to 25.6k. Assuming this applies to Spiritfont, this still leaves Spiritfont in a lackluster place against other talents since it’s only one SooM split on multiple targets. I think Spiritfont needs to be 5 full strength SooMs but ditch the merge mechanic entirely so we keep those beams up and hopefully benefit from Elusive Mists and Peaceful Mending if you spec into them.

If 125k HPS was too powerful they could maybe adjust the percent so it was higher than 20 but less than 100. I’m not sure that would be OP though given how much HP we’ll have. I have 835k HP at 322 ilvl so I don’t think 25k HPS per person on 5 people would actually be OP at that health level. Even at full strength it would take 33 seconds to top someone off from near death with just SF healing.

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Doing a bit of M+, I can’t tell if the apex talents are working or not. Soothing mist was like…2% of my overall healing in the dungeon. Either it’s bugged or it’s just not doing anything compared to the non-apex build.

I see what they are trying to do, and it’ss a great idea, but they’ll have to really buff it so it’ll be close to competitive with Crane Kick, even with the nerfs they made to it. That’s my limited opinion though, I only do M+ on my mistweaver.

I guess the boosts to Rising sun kick and Enveloping mist is nice, but I’m not sure the trade-off is worth it. I guess it gives a decent on demand aoe heal situation. I dunno.

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Nice, really glad to see some of these items directly fixed and feedback taken in regarding the tier set! Thanks for lookin’ out. :slight_smile:

This now works with Rushing Wind Kick!

These have been made to work independently, consuming TFT stacks first.

This has been made into a 500ms ICD.

Hoping to see more numerical touches to these, to address the differential between the choice node.

Also, a note that changing the proc from procs flag onto the 4set now introduced a slightly new bug with Morning Breeze - when holding 2 charges ready to go of Rising Sun Kick (from the 4pc), activating Thunder Focus Tea will put a charge of Rising Sun Kick on cooldown instead of doing nothing (since it resets the CD of RSK when activating TFT). Not -really- an issue, since the TFT consumption on the 2nd charge will make the CD 3 seconds (and with HotJS, effectively makes it just a global), but still something to watch out for.

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Initial thoughts after some testing:

Enveloping Mist healing seems really low, doing around 30k healing over its 7 seconds duration which is 4% of a healer/dps hp. Rushing Wind Kick now does more healing to up to 5 allies with less than half of the mana cost.

Tear of Morning is even more useless now thanks to the synergy that our tier set has with Rising Mist and the already mentioned weakness of env.

Overflowing Mist is also so extremely undertuned that I don’t think it will even see play in pvp. 3/4k healing is just way too low.

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Caster MW in pvp remains crippled by the nerf to mana tea. Doubling the cost of soothing mist for triple the healing is not an option. Enveloping mists 9k mana costs is horrible as it barely does any healing. Overall HoT healing is low and most healing is derived from fistweaving and shielun’s gift. Enveloping is a glorified healing modifier.

Like all you’re expected to do is rushing wind kick, spinning crane kick, and shielun’s gift. Anything else is CDs or weak filler to support those.

Compared to the previous expansions where enveloping mist spam was viable this is quite the change, imo for the worse. Mastery has been a broken, avoided stat for all of season 1 and then gets slapped with a +50% in season 2. MW was beyond broken first couple months of midnight but I’m not a fan of what they did to bring it in line.

I’ll keep playing it but it requires a big shift in how you play and stressful mana management.

I feel the pvp mana tea nerf needs to be reverted or the cost of spells like enveloping mist needs reduced a lot in pvp.

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Disgusting
Can you fire your game designers? thx

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Env mist needs a buff hps wise ( even if it is through buffing the apex talent’s effect on Env Mist another 20%-30% ). TFT-ing env mist’s should probably buff the healing over time it does too for some time. That or increase the healing modifier to where it was previously, or make it work with mistline where Env Mist now heals the most injured target for somewhat more?

Vital Expenditure should buff JSS. I think it works with the apex talent which is cool. I really didnt want to sit there setting up a UI again for 20+ mins to fully test it though so if someone can confirm that would be cool.

Un nerf shieluns clouds please. You tried to nerf raid builds that werent as HPS heavy as the meta builds and failed in that attempt. While also hurting caster builds that relied on sheilun’s gift more in m+. Please revert that last nerf to the clouds. Consider re adding the removed clouds healing back on to the tear of morning’s talent even.

2 set is okay, more flippy kicks is cool as a hybrid/caster imo and I like the ability. I wish we could get away from all the “has a chance to reduce cooldown of” rng-ness though so things are less annoying to track. Part of the point of the pruning/consolidating you mentioned was to do this.

Buffing mastery is cool on paper I guess but when you consider that youve pushed the spec so away from mastery the last few expansions it kinda feels like we are going backwards. Probably not a large enough buff to dissuade wanting large amts of crit/haste though.

Shifting power out of one button SCK spam is good, but doubt these will be enough changes to make using the whole toolkit or alternative ( caster/hybrid ) playstyles fun, and I see you already re buffed SCK spin to win already recently on ptr - so I imagine it is likely you will keep doing that during s2 until it is back where it started. You NEED to split the hero trees and make one heavier on the dmg to healing, and one more hps/utility caster/hybrid focused. Until you do that the whole spec is going to keep falling back to SCK spam and degen/unfun playstyles neither side wants after you bandaid nerf/buff things a bunch mid season.

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All HoTs in the game that can be cast on multiple targets currently have very low per-person tick values. I assume it’s because of raid balance and the potential for it to be on 10+ people at once. Even EM during celestials can potentially be on several targets at once. RM is the only multi-target HoT in the game that they’ve added a mechanic like mistline too so that it has meaningful single target tick value on at least one person.

I think enveloping mist was more interesting as an ability when MW still had combo points. A 3 combo point enveloping mist was a massive single target HoT justified by the 3 combo points. Maybe we could get a similar version of it via a choice talent somewhere that added a cooldown since combo points no longer exist. Perhaps make misty peaks a single point talent and make it a choice talent against a talent that gives a massive buff to EM, but adds a 6 second CD (so you can’t combine both things). It could also be cheap so it had another purpose as a large single target HoT rather than being redundant with another large single target cast like Sheis.

I also still think the best way to make the new set actually function for a caster build (that actually uses SooM/CJL) would be to make RWK baseline, move the RWK healing proc component into way of the serpent and allow RWK to be cast while channeling SooM without interrupting it (probably adding a different animation if flip kicking during SooM looked funny).

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Mistweaver needs more work than there’s likely time for now. Mastery/raid buff rework, multiple talent changes and splitting melee and caster healing sounds like pre expansion polish. For now it might be easier to just have wotc give sck a small cd so we dont just keep figuring out the new pack size to spin to win.

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The mastery can hit pretty high numbers now but it feels too RNGtastic to want to actually go all-in on.

At 333 ilvl I have 923k hp. With mastery jewelry on and specing into mastery talents a gust can range from ~25k to ~114k or on a renewing mist ~52k to ~240k. Hitting the highest numbers requires a crit + resplendent mist proc at the same time.

Maybe if resplendent mist proc chance scaled much higher based on how low the targets HP was mastery would become a more reliable healing option since you’d actually get those big gusts more when you needed them. The talent tree is also pretty tight as it is.

The mastery is free healing which would probably be nicer for a caster spec since they have a harder time mana-wise than a melee spec. Crane specs probably scale best with mastery while not really needing the extra mana efficiency from the additional free healing. Maybe if you added some gust procs into SooM/CJL it would be valuable there? Maybe gust procs from casts should also just be smart-targeted like from melee attacks instead of focusing the target you cast on (which may not always be where the gust would have the most value).

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Are there plans for Mastery to effect Revival, Ancient Teachings, Renewing Mist ticks, Enveloping Mist ticks, Soothing Mist ticks, Chi Wave, Vivify, Sheilun’s Gift, Way of the Crane, Mana Tea stacks? Until there are plans for this, I don’t see why anyone would trade Crit or Vers.

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and CJL for what its worth

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While we’re nearing the patch date, there’s a few underlying issues and feedback that I’d like to mention.

Tier Set

Post-testing, we now have data on the tier set and it’s just… looking grim. The 4pc, even at a 20% proc rate, is seemingly underproccing on every single player’s logs that I’ve viewed. The buff of the charge (spell id 1296687) is consistently below the proc rate, with cpms even as high as 17 (by using ReM + RWK with Focused Thunder) on some of these Mythic bosses, we are sitting below the average. Unfortunately, I have not seen any high-roll logs, as all have been under the required limit. Once again, we are the only healer without a method of 100% proccing our tier set, leaving it entirely up to chance.

Alongside this, the 12.1 4pc is sitting somewhere around 2 - 2.5% HPS, including the Rapid Diffusion ReM healing, the Invigorating Mists/Zen Pulse healing from those RD ReMs, and Misty Peaks procs from Rapid Diffusion. This is abysmal for a 4pc, especially when we look at 12.0’s 4pc that was anywhere from 10 - 15% HPS gain (due to the way the Renewing Mist from the 4pc didn’t follow traditional rules of ReMs: no interactions with pandemic durations which causes BLP on Misty Peaks, ReM cannibalizations diminished, etc.). We’re pretty thankful that you can modify the stats on tier items in the new patch, otherwise we’d likely just be running better-statted pieces and not taking this 4 set as a result.

The

claim has not been met with this tier set, unfortunately. I really think this needs to be buffed or modified in some way to make it more appealing, more interactive, and just less boring.

Mythic+

Glad to see that Temple Training has been fixed since it’s been an issue since the introduction of the hero talents in TWW however I don’t really think we needed to buff Spinning Crane Kick alongside it’s bugfix. Our gameplay continues to divulge into spamming that one button at high target counts (every single pull in every dungeon at any normal key level ever), and we really need for more power to go into our toolkit that is M+ specific. It’s a hard line to cross, considering how much of each part of our kit is tied together between M+ and Raid, but the spec feels its’ best when we can truly include our entire kit of both pressing melee buttons and casted spells together which was the initial design of Mistweaver that we need to get back to.

Enveloping Mist needs some modification in Mythic+ to make it generally more useful and impactful, especially if we’re continuing down the road of utilizing Conduit of the Celestials as our preferred hero talent, since our gameplay doesn’t -really- want us casting Strength of the Black Ox procs unless there’s nothing going on. It’s not a button that we cast when we need to heal, and is more pre-emptive than anything.

Overall, gameplay is fine in Mythic+ and doesn’t need a whole lot of changes, but small tweaks are welcomed to reintroduce more fun.

Raid

Following on Strength of the Black Ox train from Mythic+, this talent just sucks for us in Raid. Our decision-making is never “see proc, send proc”, its: “am I above 8 Renewing Mists while I need to heal? If yes, ignore any SotBO procs and continue your priority list”. With normal gameplay, your average Renewing Mist count is 14. With phenomenal gameplay, your average is 17! This is pretty subpar and just causes so much healing to, effectively, go to waste. Keep in mind, this is factoring in that Stampede of the Ancients works. It does not, most of the time! We have a bug that causes the main target of the Enveloping Mist not to even possibly get the shield from SotBO. Since the shielding just goes on 5 random (injured?) targets, the person you casted Enveloping Mist on is the only one that can receive the 400% amp to it, yet they do not.

This kind of continues with Zen Pulse, where our timing of the buff isn’t really required anymore. The ability has not scaled, the loss of a timed Secret Infusion (where now its permanent) makes it less valuable as Haste does not scale it at all and just sits being casually used. There isn’t a necessary time that holding onto the proc would be beneficial and it requires an incredibly small % of overheal where we likely just swap off of it anyways for Chrysalis and Mists of Life to get more healing out of it. Unimpactful and not particularly fun.

I love the high APM aspect of the Raid gameplay, but I suspect it will be a big issue as we continue past this season or during this season’s farm period where responding to all of your different abilities coming off cooldown quickly will be largely hard to follow. Not a large problem now, but one that will come forward sooner or later.

Melee-identity

This one is a bit far-fetched considering its directly tied to our tier set, but I’d like to see the reintroduction of Rising Sun Kick again instead of utilizing Rushing Wind Kick. Our once rewarding gameplay loop of hot extension of a Rising Sun Kick timed properly right before a large amount of Vivify healing on the raid (think: Abberus-level gameplay, what I’d do to bring that back with the current iteration of Soothing Mist, holy moly!) on the boss was so so so cool and felt great. Now, we simply cast Rushing Wind Kick on cooldown just to get it on cooldown, no matter where we are on the battlefield or what we’re doing. The ability doesn’t even need to hit anything in order for EVERY SINGLE effect to activate. Not Rising Mist, not Rapid Diffusion, not Crane Style, not it’s own healing. Nothing is required to have 100% throughput no matter what. The only one is Ancient Teachings as a baseline, which is 1-2% total healing of a Mistweaver’s toolkit in raid and does not add a drop into the bucket of healing.

I have mentioned this over and over again (I wrote an editorial over at Wowhead about this here https://www.wowhead.com/news/spinning-to-win-mistweavers-melee-healer-identity-in-crisis-380728), and I understand that the time it was introduced was an incredibly melee-unfriendly raid where we were pushed back out of melee simply losing healing but that was part of the expression on gameplay. If you could not get back into melee as a melee spec, your throughput diminished. Plain and simple. That should be the standard for a melee spec, not randomly being able to be wherever you want in the fight while also being targeted by melee mechanics.

Rushing Wind Kick has run its course, and we should be given our melee roots back. Homogenizing gameplay between both Mythic+ and Raid in order to make them less polarizing between each other should be the standard and a goal to reach for the upcoming patches.

Apex Talent (Spiritfont)

This is a pretty odd state where we have seen 0 changes to our apex directly even though the expansion feature, apex talents, have been sat unused by 100% of Mistweavers in Mythic+ for talents that broaden our healing profiles to more methods, even if the healing of the apex talent is ok. This is completely exacerbated by the fact that it has 7 outstanding bugs with it, affecting Raid, too, but disproportionately affecting M+:

  • Does not re-expand the Soothing Mists after collapsing, causing most M+ encounters to usually only get the tank being healed by Spiritfont fairly quickly.
  • Chi Cocoons from multiple stacks used back to back get refreshed if they land on the same target instead of adding the strengths of both (only 5 targets in M+, constantly refreshed), effectively nullifying the first stack.
  • Soothing Mists from multiple stacks used back to back get removed simultaneously, then reapplied again, effectively nullifying the first stack. It should just be additive, not subtractive.
  • Rank 1 of the Apex does not proc via Sheilun’s Gift or Vivify consistently
  • Rank 2 of the Apex does not increase the healing of Thunder Focus Tea’s Enveloping Mist, since the effect isn’t using the correct spellid of the instant heal.
    • Considering that many of the arrays of spellids are already in use in order to simply reuse them different effects (I assume, not entirely sure of the architecture of effect-creation), we should just add the spellid of the TFT EnvM into the Enveloping Mist array, so that it can be used everywhere. There are several places where it does not work, including Temple Training.
  • Does not heal NPCs
  • Buff tooltip says 30% effectiveness when it should be 20% effectiveness (trivial change as it heals for 20% effectiveness, yet still an outstanding bug)

Even though we got Vital Expenditure (which currently does not work with Jade Serpent Statue’s Soothing Mists) as the “solution” to the apex talent issue, our talent tree is already starved for taking this. You are -definitely- not choosing it over Dancing Mists in Raid, and taking it instead of something like Uplifted Spirits/Crane Style in M+ could be the play but ultimately does not make the Apex desirable considering the options that we lose by taking all four points into it.

It should either be completely redesigned or the points that we take instead (Emperor’s Elixir, Morning Breeze, Focused Thunder, Dance of Chi-Ji) need to move elsewhere in the tree, replacing useless talents that should just be baselined: Legacy of Wisdom, Chrysalis, Mists of Life, etc.)

4 Likes
19

This.

Mistweaver mythic + playstyle is unique among healers and fun. Why would this not be the same playstyle for raids?

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Mistweaver has never been a pure melee class in any incarnation but I think now that we have Way of the Crane/Serpent having Serpent as the ranged playstyle and Crane as melee makes sense. Some people think they should just be two separate specs, but that’s unlikely to happen and I think you can have significantly different playstyles live in the same tree just like VW/atonement vs. absorb disc (which unfortunately in Midnight are also balanced so one is good in 5 mans and one in raids).

The problem is that Way of the Serpent quickly shifted into just a boring generic buff for the raid spec rather than really leaning into the SooM/CJL aspects like it should have to define a different playstyle the way crane does. The current raid build is like an uplift nostalgia spec that just doesn’t have to be in melee and feels more like a ranged crane spec than what a serpent spec should have been. I think it would have made more sense for that playstyle to be a crane style spec with rising mist.

The talent trees full of RSK mechanics is really one of the things holding back a complete serpent style build. If they get rid of RWK entirely, Serpent builds still need something else to replace it to activate all of these different talents unless they’re going to actually support a build that doesn’t need to press that button (and maybe that also would make sense as an option and give them something to do with one of the two hero trees instead of making both melee trees where one is just worse and never taken). An old suggestion I had before giving up on fighting their obsession with RSK/RWK was to transform RSK into rushing jade wind for Serpent specs and have it cast on your SooM target instead of you.

Maybe they need to add some additional changes throughout the tree when you pick Way of the Serpent/Crane to further define the differences without having to put too much into one talent. IE: change Crane Style into Serpent Style and dance of Chi-ji into Dance of Yu’lon rather than just having dead talents that are bad combinations. Maybe even get rid of celestials as a choice talent and just have the celestial change based on which way you pick.

Whatever they do I doubt they’ll do anything transformative before 12.1 so I’d guess we’ll just have the same basic specs in 12.1 that we had in 12.0 except that the new set bonus completely ignores the existence of any build that doesn’t want to press RSK/RWK constantly.

When you look at how other healers are balanced it seems to be that there’s just one playstyle option for each type of content that’s significantly ahead of the other “options,” so any desire to have actual playstyle options in all content types may just not be something Blizzard wants to deal with balancing. Other players would like their preferred styles to be better in the content they play as well, but everyone is stuck with the same limited options. You’re just lucky if your style happens to be the good one in the type of content you play and you’re out of luck if you play both.

Wanting to delete other playstyles so yours is all that remains and therefor becomes the best in all content types for that class doesn’t seem like the right approach to me. Convincing Blizzard to have better balance between the options these giant talent trees were supposed to give us is what would benefit more players. That’s what disc priests want as well. Everyone wants the options we were given to be actual options beyond a superficial level of difficulty.

3 Likes