Just wanna make sure it’s clear from the PvE’rs side:
Horrible in M+ and a snoozefest in raid. I think actually just about everyone hates this ability.
Basically training wheels for people learning to raid heal; they need to get everyone healed but can’t prioritize or manage frames. Upwelling might do well to actually just BE essence font and have power in the spec redistributed and boosted accordingly.
Some classes get 5 man niche abilities, some get CC niches, monks get a niche ability for PvE raid tutorial scenarios.
Essence Font is not that different from Wild Growth. Neither of them are very powerful heals by themselves (for each individual healed player). It’s not like you can sit there and spam them and expect to be an effective raid healer.
As a play style preference, I do like having a choice between clicking player frames, smart AOE heals, ranged AOE heals, big CD’s, etc…
Certainly, essence font is very mana inefficient and near useless in arena. But every healer has AOE healing abilities that are only mana efficient in raids.
Not disagreeing that there are definitely abilities that find far more use in arena and abilities that find far more use in PvE, but:
-Wild growth is pretty strong in M+ too.
-Essence font costs 30% more mana than wild growth
-Essence font adds interaction to a stat that MW hates in PvE (I think mastery is decent in arena? The one place you aren’t casting EF)
-Wild growth gets cast, gives you another HoT on targets and lets you build up and play around the druid style of stacking HoTs. EF outside of raid wants you to make it even more mana inefficient by cutting the cast after the buff is applied to your in-danger target becuase they are in danger and you don’t have time to sit around and channel the spell. And if you do want to full channel in raid, you’re probably doing AoE healing: the type of healing that the double-mastery buff you’re paying so much mana for doesn’t help.
Not trying to hijack this thread, and I certainly don’t have the experience to join in a conversation about serious pvp, but I’m just trying to say that I think cutting EF, making it talent only, or redesigning it to be a lesser part of the kit would be a positive impact for PvP mistweavers AND PvE mistweavers alike. Anytime you can get both groups, it’s a fix that should really be looked at.
Actually, yes. Yes you can be with EF. That’s the problem. It sits on top of upwelling logs by a wide margin. Sure you cast other spells, but the bulk of your performance comes from pressing EF and going afk for 5-6 seconds.
I guess your experience has been different from mine. I’m not going to try to invalidate it. However, a baseline AOE heal seems like a standard part of any healer’s toolkit. Maybe it needs to be tuned down or remove the channel from it, but removing it or making it require a talent seems unfair.
Baseline AoE is certainly fair—my hate towards EF is purely for the experience it has created for MW on live. I think tuned down is right; to a point where the mana cost can be something sane and allow it to be used for its mastery buff in situations outside of raid.
Well said. I really enjoyed chi in WoD and completely agree with removing EF and making our first talent row more impactful would be nice rip the days of chi explosion. I’d love to see them tweak our CC a bit and maybe make crane more useful. Going from very good cc and frequent go’s and being able to play a little more aggressive to very long cooldown on all cd’s felt very bad. I do think Mistweaver over time has felt more and more dull begging me to ask myself if I should bump it down to an alt next xpac or not. Hopefully more changes or looks at the spec. Thanks for writing the post out and giving feedback. Also, gl getting r1 this season!!