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.)