A Brief History of Mistweavers Performance Issues in Mythic+

Classes Monk
1

I’ve been playing Mistweaver in keys in the .1% range since BFA so I am coming at this from the long-term perspective of high keys as Mistweaver, through the good and the bad. These issues do not only affect myself and the other Mistweaver players in this category but everyone participating in Mythic+. Relevant or not for your level of content, metas do end up affecting all players to varying extent, especially recently.

The shortcomings that Mistweaver has are far from new, I’ve made posts and videos about many of our issues before. The same issues crop up every couple of seasons, oftentimes multiple in a row. Addressing these issues may not be meta-defining changes, but it would make it easier for players who want to play Mistweaver Mythic+ regardless of what is actually played in rank 1 or world first keys. Some of these issues are better or worse depending on the performance of tanks/dps as well as the dungeon pool and the damage patterns they present. Regardless, my goal with the proposed changes is not to make Mistweaver explicitly meta, overpowered, or oppressive like some recent healer metas we’ve seen, but more to provide Mistweaver with vital tools that other specs have access to in one degree or another that would help future proof us and prevent that performance falloff that we’ve seen so many times now.

If you want to read more about how Mistweaver has done throughout the last few expansions then read below, otherwise the TLDR is that the best Mythic+ seasons Mistweaver has had are Dragonflight Season 1, 3, and the Fated season. And the worst being Shadowlands Seasons 1-4, Dragonflight Season 2, and The War Within Season 2

Mistweaver's Mythic+ History

The “Good” Seasons:

Dragonflight Season 1

I do consider this a good season for us despite the incredibly underwhelming amount of people playing Mistweaver at the time, it was not that we were incapable of the content, just a very small sample size. The point at which Mistweaver began to run into problems in this season was around the 26-28 mark where certain dungeons presented 1-shot checks that Mistweaver personally could not live but this was still around a world 50 rank for all healers.

It is worth mentioning that prior to 10.0.7 when Sheilun’s Gift (and Legacy of Wisdom) was reintroduced, Mistweaver was once again reliant on a trinket to fill the lack of AOE healing in our kit. On specific encounters as well we greatly benefitted (sometimes required) having group healing from DPS (Nature’s Vigil, Ancestral Guidance, Vampric Embrace) to get through encounters with higher heal checks, but this wasn’t necessarily unique to Mistweaver, we just relied on these a little heavier than some others. Despite this, we handled the heal checks for these dungeons fairly well, especially post 10.0.7, and the level that Mistweaver capped out at was much higher relative to the r1 keys than usual. This season was a lust healer season which made pugging very hard.

Mistweavers Best M+ Seasons Ever - Dragonflight Season 3/Fated

I bundle these together since it was Season 3 into Fated. This season was following many changes made to Mistweavers personal survivability as well as the buff of Chi Cocoons for group survivability. Mistweaver also had Generous Pour which was % Avoidance group-wide. This seasons dungeons favored Mistweaver’s 1min CD on Chi Cocoons and they were strong enough to actually prevent 1-shots in most cases.

And of course, DF S3 was following the season in which Augmentation Evoker was introduced which provided insane group survivability. Shadow Priest was performing well and they could provide Power Word: Fortitude.

Life Cocoon still did not do a lot for tanks this season but there was a cheat death trinket for tanks that helped alleviate some of this issue but it still was a pain point at times. In addition to the cheat death trinket, there was also a large personal shield trinket for any role as well as a smaller shield trinket usable on a target that typically healers and Aug Evokers used.

All of these things came together to create the perfect storm for Mistweaver. The gaps in our kit were covered by trinkets or other specs which created the best performing season that Mistweaver has ever had. While Mistweaver had the highest % of title keys done, Resto Druid still had the highest keys overall, so while it’s tempting to call this a Mistweaver meta, I would disagree.

Some may be surprised to see no mention of BfA Season 4. Mistweaver made a very strong showing in the Season 4 MDI as we would kite around the seasonal affix mobs to avoid needing to kill them which was a large time save, in addition to handling mass pulls very well through Way of the Crane. However, outside of a tournament setting, Mistweaver was being absolutely dumpstered by Resto Druid and a few Holy Paladins. Most players of course will never play in a tournament so I went off of the live showing for this season.

The Bad Seasons, basically everything else was a bad season but the worst of them were:

Shadowlands Season 1-4

Lack of damage in an expansion that had virtually no heal checks outside of a few fights. This was probably the most important healer damage has ever been. Lack of group tools or otherwise important ability like Lust, PI, or covenant abilities. In Shadowlands Mythic+ we also struggled with mana quite a bit on fights that did have heal checks.

Dragonflight Season 2

To be fair, this was a miserable season for anyone that wasn’t in the newly-coined Exodia comp which was Bear Druid, Holy Paladin, Shadow Priest, Fire Mage, and Augmentation Evoker. This meta was extremely oppressive and in the case of Mistweaver competing in this environment against Holy Paladin we struggled with personal survivability and, at this point, we had no tools for group survivability outside of Generous Pour and pre-buff Chi Cocoons, which was not cutting it. Even using a tank trinket as a personal, Mistweaver struggled pretty badly this season before our survivability changes we got in Season 3.

The Current Season - The War Within Season 2

This season is of course the season of Oracle Discipline Priest. This healer is impossible to compete against as Mistweaver due to the size and frequency of their absorb shields in which you’re effectively doubling the groups health pool. Effective HP is impossible to compete against with HPS and, when you’re a healer like Mistweaver, there is nothing you can do to provide even a quarter of the survivability that Disc provides. Between frequent PW:Shields larger than your Life Cocoon (1.3min CD btw) and your lack of HP buff (PW: Fortitude), lack of tank external (2 stacks of 50% Pain Suppression), and the embarrassingly small Chi Cocoons (also tied to your main healing CD), the level of effort required to play Mistweaver vs. Disc is potentially as divided as it ever has been.

All of this to say of course there are times when even Elusive Mists 6% DR isn’t enough or it’s during a time in which you can’t even use it (dispel causing the 1 shot damage to go off like on KU-JO) or that it’s simply not enough of a DR to keep someone alive. Players die through Chi Cocoons regularly because of 1 shot mechanics, and while Life Cocoon can be good in some situations, you’re still not able to use it on a tank for any real value and even certain mechanics on DPS eat the shield in 1-2 ticks of damage.

Even outside of Disc Priest, Mistweaver cannot compete with other classes like Shaman or Paladin even though they are not providing large absorb shields to the group, they do still provide EHP through either straight HP buffs or smaller absorbs working with various forms of DR.

The Problems

Even having played all of these seasons, seeing it all written out makes me realize how lucky Mistweaver was in Dragonflight to have seasons where it was competitive enough to have a high population of .1% keys but even still it was due to external sources like other specs being good for raid buffs or items/trinkets filling in for what we lack design wise. There’s quite a few different conclusions you could draw from Mistweaver’s history with Mythic+ but the two issues I have found to be most frequent/most impactful are:
1. Lack of a proper tank external
2. Lack of group survivability tools
Of course these are not the only things that keep Mistweaver from performing well but these are very regularly issues we come across and have no answers for.

The Solutions

Mistweaver never having a true tank button has caused issues more times than I can count. Life Cocoon is an embarrassing button to give to a tank as it breaks almost instantly in most situations, especially where there’s a gap in the tanks defensives or a particularly hard-hitting tank buster. Being the only healer without a tool to help the tank is always going to be a problem where content is infinitely scaling. In addition to the changes below, Chrysalis should be baked in to provide a CD appropriate for the power of the ability.

To fix Life Cocoon, this ability should either:

  • provide a DR by default in addition to the shield and scale off of TARGET HP as opposed to the casters HP. This way it will be usable on tanks without being too large on DPS players or healers.
  • There is also a world where a choice node is introduced to allow the Monk to pick between a large absorb shield (still should scale off of target HP) or a small absorb shield and a considerable %DR.

In the current state of the game, not having a legitimate external is unaccaptable.

To fix group survivability issues:

  • Chi Cocoons could easily provide shields 2-3x larger than they are currently (12% Monk HP+Vers scaling). These are still tied to our main healing CD and they were originally implemented to fix the “dead global” issue when activating our Celestial. With the current scaling they are basically a dead global as the cocoons are so miniscule they provide nothing. Chi Cocoons being strong raised the level of flexibility and skill expression for Celestial which is always a good thing and should be promoted.
  • Generous Pour was our group % Avoidance aura that could be reintroduced.
  • Jadefire Teachings provides the Monk with +5% Stamina while the buff is active, this could provide group-wide Stamina. (Party only as to not impact raid)
  • Thunder Focus Tea + Expel Harm could provide group-wide Chi Cocoons instead of self only.

Obviously not all of these things can be added at once, it would be a bit excessive assuming Oracle Disc is not the new standard for healers, but this would help grant a few key levels to Mistweavers at the highest end and make life easier to people who want to play the spec in any key level.

Conclusion

Mistweaver rarely performs well in Mythic+ and even when it does have a good season, it’s not necessarily because the spec is in a good state but rather you can get away with playing Mistweaver depending on the external power available through trinkets, other specs, and items. I didn’t talk much about things like Power Infusion or healer damage because while they are impactful in Mythic+, those issues are a bit more nuanced than simply not having a proper external or our tools not being tuned appropriately.

It would be impossible to address every issue Mistweaver has ever faced/still faces in Mythic+ but fixing Life Cocoon and our group tools would be a great step in the right direction and set us up for success in the future.

15 Likes
2

Everything is good except this. Any important buffs should not be tied only to JF/AT.

1 Like
3

It’s more than fine tying it to proving you have hands.

4

This is very comprehensive. Nice work

3 Likes
5

Im all for adding it, only thing I would add is a Brez, which I know she was spoke on endlessly.

1 Like
6

No. While I understand the sentiment it doesn’t fix any of the underlying problems. It’s a band-aid at best.

Shields are OP only because hps/dps outscales HP bars. Either blizz scales HP with hps/dps, or everyone spams shields/DRs. The problems with MW aren’t lack of shields or external DR. They are far more fundamental.

Ortemis did a wonderful job of the problem with amps. The interaction between our various spells, talents, procs, etc… makes no sense and is clearly an accident. Tracking multiple buffs just to do basic triage healing. A disaster of a MW tree. Useless or outright broken capstones. Bugs galore. Crappy dps.

Then there’s the whole identity problem. The devs have zero vision and just randomly change things hoping something will stick. Are we supposed to FW? No one knows. Blizz won’t even say, just changes random talents. Is Conduit supposed to be a raid build or Harmony? Or neither? And if not what are they supposed to do?

There’s no class identity, there’s no hero tree identity. There’s no goals in their design to work towards because they literally have no idea what to do with MW.

The biggest fundamental problem with MW is that we have no class vision or identity. We can never hit a target because one doesn’t exist.

7

Fully agree, nuke the dps portion of the toolkit and shift that into actual healing, absorbs and dr. MW is supposed to heal, not dps.

1 Like
8

Completely disagree. DPS should be a part of all healer toolkits.

2 Likes
9

imo, damage is an important part of the Monk’s characteristics. This was supposed to differentiate them from other healers, but Blizzard listens more to other healers about the Monk than to Monk players themselves.

3 Likes
10

i’m a big fan of changing things to affect how the current meta of gameplay, well, plays! if we can’t change it as a whole, there must be some adaptation to fit in the current iteration of modern wow.

we often talk about the shortcomings of mistweaver and how its gameplay has changed over the years, but the one reoccurring theme has definitely been the damage reduction / absorption problem and its only exacerbated by the metas within m+. while i do think that the m+ meta must change overall, we’re getting further into these damage intake scenarios that are larger than we can cover and our measly absorbs can’t assist our group unlike other healers can with different absorbs and drs on shorter cooldowns (dare i even mention oracle discipline priest?) or some even passive with lenience, devotion aura, earth shield, etc.

i don’t think we’ve ever had a season since the inception of m+ where damage reducing effects were not helpful and mistweaver really comes with a lack of them, so i’d really love to see some changes done to help our group out more than just cc (and a raid buff that barely affects any specs at all!).

really great writeup regarding the cause and effects of these m+ seasons and how mistweaver fit into them. glad to know we have a true mistweaver looking to make the spec better for everyone.

2 Likes
11

It is already.

Unfortunately yes. They only listen to the .01% of elitists. The most toixic players you can imagine putting on a nice face for their streams.

Make no mistake them asking for a rip off of Oracle’s uniqueness and absorbs and DR isn’t for anyone but themselves. None of the suggested bonuses matter for anyone but them because 99.9% of the playerbase couldnt care less about anything past 12’s and mythic raiding.

Deff lick those boots. She loves when people do that.

12

it’s funny you mention this, considering her and i have been fighting for things to change in the m+ sphere for all forms of players, regardless of their activity or skill level, for years.

while you may think these problems don’t affect those in sub-12 key levels, i constantly speak to and coach mistweavers who would do significantly better given the tools to succeed - like i mentioned - in the current state of m+ metas with damage intake. they themselves mention how helpful it would be to provide solid assistance to your group in times of need compared to other healers.

if you’re unable to procure or share the same experience on the shortcomings of mistweaver, then i think this post wasn’t meant for you and that’s okay! i’m hopeful that these types of changes can waterfall down to however you plan on playing mistweaver in the future.

1 Like
13

Jadefire Teachings is already an important buff with high uptime so it’d be easy to just change it to group-wide as opposed to personal.

A band-aid? For a problem that has existed for 9 years at this point?

This is feedback we’ve been giving for months at this point and it is being addressed. Even so it’s a relatively new problem compared to not having a tank external.

This also isn’t something that necessarily holds us back the way lack of EHP tools do. It creates an annoying gameplay loop and very little room for error so it’s great that it’s being addressed but I don’t really find it to be in the same category as straight up lacking an important tool that other healers have access to.

Useless for who? Between raid, mythic+, and PVP, all of the capstone talents get used by someone. Just because it isn’t useful for your content doesn’t mean it should be scrapped entirely. There’s a lot of different ways to play WoW and the trees need to account for that, even if it’s a small population.

The design seems very clear to me. The tree accounts for the standard raid build (RWK/Yu’lon/ID) and for the standard M+ build (JFS/Chi-Ji/JT), and of course there’s ways to run something in the middle as we’ve seen in past tiers. I don’t PVP much but I’ve talked with PVPers about the spec and they have quite a few different builds that work thanks to the diversity in the tree.

It’s not perfect by any means but it certainly supports many playstyles in all content.

what an interesting response to something that would benefit anyone playing Mistweaver at any level of key

3 Likes
14

Far more than 9 years. It became a problem not long into vanilla. Adding more shields and DR doesn’t fix the problem, it just makes it worse.

It’s not being addressed at all. Flat nerfs to Chi Harmony without compensation is just a flat nerf. If their goal is to never see a MW in M+ again they are doing a wonderful job of it though.

I did point that in previous posts, pointing out how out S1 tier set bonuses at least helped a little and the S2 set bonuses were crap… Amp windows are FAR too tight, I agree, but more shields/DR doesn’t fix that either.

Oh I sure hope no one’s picking Tea of Serenity/Tea of Plenty, they are notoriously buggy.

15

Mythic+ has only been out for 9 years which is where MW’s lack of tank external is most prevalent, which was my point.

They buffed Vivify’s main target healing by 80% and Sheilun’s Gift by 20%. If that isn’t enough it’s easier to buff it again now that Chi Harmony is weaker which is part of why we were advocating for amp nerfs in the first place.

I’d argue that being the only one without a DR is more of a problem than everyone having access to some kind of EHP tool or DR.

The caster-style PvPers use Tea of Serenity

2 Likes
16

Which is why they are flat nerfing our healing by 5% yet again? To ‘compensate’? Vivify buffs will help raiders, chi harmony nerfs will screw M+. We didn’t come out ahead in this exchange.

No, because then it just becomes a game of who’s shield/DR is better. You need multiple ways to stress healers if you want more than 1 meta. There needs to be burst AND hps checks, CC and movement checks. If everything is gated behind shields/external DR, we’ll still lose to disc every time.

I understand you don’t care, since you have a guaranteed spot no matter how bad MW gets, but the rest of us don’t have that luxury. I barely played this season and gave up, not because I couldn’t heal the content, but because I couldn’t get groups. Even hosting my own key…

It’s a buggy mess.

17

Raid nerf, we are ahead by quite a bit, but tuning takes time and lots of changes happen at the beginning of new seasons. No reason to doom and gloom.

What an ignorant thing to say. If I didn’t care I wouldn’t bother leaving feedback and advocating for tools that help the spec compete. Even if it isn’t meta it’d still be better than it is now.

I don’t understand how you don’t see the problem with Mistweaver being the only healer lacking tools like this. Of course they’re hard to balance and you’ll always “lose” to the better version of it, so you’d rather Mistweaver just not have it at all?

This is the entire point, of course we won’t be meta but you don’t need to be meta to play, but having these things would make it a lot less painful playing off meta since it closes the gap quite a bit.

Serenity is fine, Plenty is bugged. Of course bugs should be fixed but Plenty is not a big deal at all.

2 Likes
18

I think that would be healthier in the long run, yes… but that comes with the caveat that they actually fix the underlying problem. Adding DR to every healer spec is just a band-aid to a bigger problem.

YOU don’t need to be meta to play. The rest of us need to be at least A tier. Trying spending hours in the LFG queue getting declined for months and you’ll be just as jaded…

We need MANY more things than 20% DR on cocoon. It would change nothing.

They aren’t remotely fine. One is outright bugged, the other is a net hps loss in many situations. They’re just better than nothing, but only by a small margin. MW has some of the worst cap-stones of any class I’ve played. JE is what a cap-stone talent should look like…

19

Alright so just to make sure we’re on the same page here:

We’ve identified that Mistweaver clearly has a problem with M+ performance. My solution is to give it a tool that all other healers have so that even if we aren’t meta we are still more likely to be compatible with a variety of groups/comps despite not being the best overall.

Your solution is to NOT give Mistweaver a tool that all other healers have because you don’t like shields and DRs despite them existing in many ways, but also still be upset about sitting in LFG because we cannot prevent deaths in the same ways as all of the other healers?

I’ve been there and done that, it sucked, which is part of why I started providing feedback for the spec in the first place so that we get positive changes that help us stay competitive so that we don’t have to sit in LFG for hours.

Me being off meta is affecting the rest of my groups ability to push this season due to one-shots I cannot prevent, if it prevents deaths in my keys it would prevent deaths in other MW keys as well which is the entire point. Obviously we need more than a DR on Life Cocoon but we don’t get everything overnight all at once without giving continuous feedback.

This defeatist attitude is exhausting and unproductive.

2 Likes
20

You’re not going to get very far with a strawman.

MY solution is to bump HP up so that shields/DR don’t rule every meta from now till the end of WoW.

I don’t care if they give MW a DR. It won’t hurt anything, because it won’t change anything.

Other MW don’t get keys. But that’s tangential to the OP.

The devs don’t read these forums, everyone should know that by now. They’re for entertainment only.