I understand everyone has their spells they like and dislike but the complete removal of Essence Font feels like a hard hit for the beloved monk healer i have come to know and love.
Essence Font really felt like it set itself apart from other casters AOE heals for being a non-spam type aoe spell ( CD based) and being able to spread it’s healing very well be it in small or large groups.
It’s removal feels like another attempt to “push” healing monks into the Vivify spam rut that, i get it people like it and it works for them, but just feels like the one trick pony if you mistweave and if you fistweave you stop and spam that here and there as well when you need the extra heals and can’t punch to heal for what you need.
Many of the new or adjusted talents even specify or focus around improving or expanding vivify. Why must this be the one central focus of the spellkit?
Where we should have options and choice we instead lose a choice and that just feels wrong. If the argument for avoiding cookie cutter specs is more choices than removing spells and pushing us towards vivify goes completely against another cookie cutter build.
keeping a spell that the mass majority of players didn’t use, but was powerful enough that it needed to be balanced around; would be a mistake.
there was a point where mistweaver in pvp was running full mastery, with bonedust brew, resplendent mists, and even under those conditions players still wouldn’t use EF.
losing things always feels bad to some but i think most people won’t reminisce and many will only feel the positive impacts of not having to balance around it anymore (thanos was right).
A high mastery stat build + double gusts proc felt so good.
Sorry all you meta slaves and FotM rerollers only follow what some stupid guide tells you to play. I spent the last 10 years playing with all the spells available, through all the ups/downs, and changes. This is close to the best MW has ever felt and now they are slowly stripping away the things that made it fun.
I don’t think EF as it was designed was doing the spec any good, but there’s no doubt that the “fistweaver” side of MW is hurting thematically. Not a lot of great visuals or satisfying spell presses.
I think they should consolidate Essence Font and Sheilun’s Gift into a single spell using the best parts of both.
Change the appearance of Sheilun’s accumulated mists so they look more like a floating orb and less like a misty loot spot (more like the orb that you draw in)
Make the mist accumulation based off a % chance per Gust of Mist or ReM healing tick instead of a fixed timer (better scaling, better integration with MW kit)
Turn Sheilun’s Gift into a mobile channel that both sucks in and distributes up to 5 accumulated healing orbs every 1 sec channeled for a beefy heal with the extended ranged of EF (they both use the same visual)
And most people would agree, Essence Font was pretty much useless.
Says you.
So salty lol, and they didn’t even say anything offensive. Lots of people choose to follow the most optimal builds because they actually find it fun, imagine that. Actively avoiding the meta builds at all cost makes you the same kind of (non)meta slave as the people you hate so much.
Look, I can’t speak directly for others but me for i’m not looking or arguing for or against “meta” builds specifically.
I’m arguing for choice meaning: even if something according to metrics is “best”, “worst,” “inferior”, or just “mediocre” having the option available means for some of us we can choose play-style and preference over MIN/MAX, cookie cutter, or forced builds.
Something that amazes me in all these years is we still have players thinking if it is not the best HPS/DPS it is “wrong” and thus you are a bad player for using or wanting it. Not all of us are looking for end-level PVP or Raids. So for us we don’t need the “best” build. For some of us we want the “FUN” build, the one we enjoy using and playing.
if u look deep back into mistweaver forums you’ll see that i was one of the only player advocating for the use of EF and its power. regardless, the spec’s development/balance suffered due to its existence.
none of these things are opinions. i didn’t say how it felt to play or what was optimal i’m just saying the spell overall had a negative impact on what mistweaver could be.
something tells me that the addition of mastery will more than makeup for the loss of EF in raids.
as much as i liked the math of EF, especially when we had it with BDB and shadowlands chiji; i understand that it was bad for the spec and i’m glad its gone.
Not to get into the weeds in the fistweaver vs mistweaver debate but this is one contention where people can agree they should just split the spec in two and be done with it and not juggle balance in one tree. To your point however its true that as they try to cater to one “style” of healing like fistweaving they often gut parts to the other like mistweaving and vice versa.
All that being said I still used EF for both MW and FW. MW was just a great aoe tool for what it did that i liked regardless of amount healed ( i would still take it at half the healing for it playstyle/function). And i like in FW it was something i could use when i needed to move and could not be up on the boss punching to heal.
Again this for me is options and choice. We should be expanding choice not limiting them. If the argument is something is OP, to strong, to “good” of a heal to balance i am ALL for whacking it with the nerf bat because it what the spell offers in function and fun that i find important and not straight up HPS/DPS
Not having Essence Font alone lowers the value of that Mastery, and that small chance of mastery proccing will be nowhere near enough to make up for losing Essence Font.
I have no idea what they’re planning, but based on their wording, they seem to have an idea generally of what they want to do to make Fistweaving in Raids possible without Essence Font, but we will have to see.
I used it, and macro’d with the tea that made it a super fast cast.
It was handy in Mythic+ in those moments where the tank is moving forward, but there’s still dps trailing behind, or taking heat from adds that have yet to reach the point the group will bunker down to wipe out the collected group.
It had it’s purpose, and while I could go for dungeons without ever pressing it, it also wouldn’t be hard to believe that in the following dungeon I ended up using it a dozen times.
As long as we have the ability to cast a heal, on more than one target while WE are moving, and I don’t have to F around with a Soothing Mist first, then I’ll be happy.
Monk is one of the few classes that are still a bit bloated. While I’m more on the side of those who prefer more buttons rather than fewer, I’m also someone who likes every button to be more that just situationnally useful or good.
I personnally am sad to see this staple ability go, but at the same time, I’m not.
While I find myself pressing it when moving or for the occasionnal AT proc when in a whoopsy moment as fist. I don’t particularily find the ability useful in most m+ or pvp content. For raid, I find upwelling to be a very unfun talent, and while it can be made to be satisfying to press, I’m finding myself be more sad about leaving the little bolts animation than really the gameplay it brings.
I also feel that celestial conduit might replace the fun parts very well. For movement, it’s not like we lack options, and it’s not like essence font was really a strong option that meant life or death either ways (at least not currently)
This spell and what comes with it is part of the issue why our mastery isn’t very desirable in all types of content and/or with all builds. It’s not a coincidence that they reworked our mastery as soon as essence font is removed…
My only worry is that we do not have a replacement to trigger AT in a bind. But even then, maybe we don’t really need a half baked AT
From what I recall, mistweavers received Essence Font when Uplift was removed alongside their chi resource.
But it seems like Essence Font has finally been pushed out as mistweavers transitioned more into fistweaving being completely viable the past few expansions and our talents revolving around fistweaving more than ever.
Now we have Celestial Conduit, which seems to be Essence Font’s replacement, and for those who still want that playstyle.
I would agree except when you start breaking down the difference they are FAR greater than one might think.
.
Essence Font on it’s own has a CD of 12 sec.
Celestial Conduit has a CD of 1min 30 sec ( 90 sec).
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Essence font launches (roughly) 3 “waves” of essence bolts, each wave hitting up to 5 targets.
Celestial Conduit heals 5 targets over 4 sec (have not heard if this will be strictly 5 targets or if it will be healing every 1 sec and “then” heals 5 targets each tick). The amount of which is unspecified so does this become a mini-cd for us then?
,
Lets just consider the time/cd component for now: having something we can use every 12 sec vs every 90 sec is a BIG difference.
The comparison to this would be if we took other healers that have ability in the 10 sec ballpark range like Circle of Healing, Wild Growth, Healing Rain, etc and said, " you’ll still have an ability like that when we remove it, but it’s going to be (possible) stronger and with a 90 sec cd".
How many other healers out there would stand up against taking a beloved spell that might be part their healing style they they enjoy in because it’s fun for them and sets itself up as being different from the rest of their toolkit?
.
Now if they want to bring the CD down to 10-15 sec of Celestial Conduit (balancing power of course) it might** be something, but here is my worry: they give essence font in this new form for an expansion only later to scrap it all together because it was an “expansion only power”.
i think i forgot to mention i’m a pvp’er. was the context i wrote that in.
that’s the point. does that make sense? by virtue of the button existing the spec has to be balanced in a way to insure that, when the buff is up, mw isn’t overpowered; therefore the entire balance of the class has to be toned down to account for it…
i also think “small chance” is really downplaying how much value we’re going to be able to get out of mastery with rsk/bok/sck. resplendent mists on top of something like prolif and/or EvM and/or chi harmony…
new mw looks way more promising than anything EF would’ve ever been allowed to do.
The thing is that I’m worried about it being gone making Fistweaving weaker. The buff itself for Mastery at the moment doesn’t matter as much since the main value would be from Chi’Ji’s Gusts of Mists. That’s more for Casters getting major value, which is understandable going into TWW. The upfront healing + HoT is where most of the value comes from, which, at this time, doesn’t seem to be made up for in TWW with the changes so far.
From what I’ve seen, I don’t believe so. It doesn’t seem to be enough value as opposed to a strong, adjustable cooldown AoE heal + HoT that adds tiny value to Chi’Ji for Fistweaving.
Depending on any upcoming changes they make, I would be inclined to agree. Right now, I’m ever-so-slightly feeling negative on it, but not just because of Essence Font being gone. There are a couple other issues I have.
Now, if you’re just speaking from the perspective of a PvP player, then aye, things look pretty good rn. But losing current Zen Pulse is a pretty big loss for burst healing allies through TFT EM → ZP or for yourself against a Demo Lock, BM Hunter or in BGs generally.
Also, Conduit will never be a tree I choose for Fistweaving because it’ll get kicked frame 1 every time lmao. Fortunately the other tree looks really good too.
I’m not sure conduit is meant to be a replacement, the usage is completely different.
Blizzard’s intent is likely to improve vivify spread to compensate. The major thing is, until we actually see what the talent changes are we can’t really say how much of a loss it would be.
As for me, I have never liked Essence Font, so I’m quite happy at the chance of having that power budget moved into the rest of the kit.
