MW prepatch feels very dull without EF
Its more boring now and also less effective at AOE healing, especially on the move in M+
Really bad change
We are just a vivify spam bot whenvever we are not just spamming our Kick macro
8 Likes
Just Blizz yeeting the fun out of the traditional soothing mist build. Losing a powerful aoe heal which could be used while moving… and giving vivify enveloping mist spam is just terrible. At the very least a soothing mist build should be able to spec into having Essence Font. But no… I hope they reconsider what they’re doing… but usually it’s just a sign of a train wreck barreling on through with a bad decision.
Pressing essence font was… fun? Not having the button anymore sucks the life out of the game? That’s a new one.
4 Likes
Yeah it was, aoe healing while your character was in motion was a cool benefit of the class… or if you were out in the open world it would also be nice to hit people not in your party without targeting them directly. Losing essence font severely weakens the “soothing mist” build in the aoe healing dept and I don’t want to be pushed into fistweaving because the option I’ve played for years now sucks. My monk was my main healer, but I’d much rather play my priest now due to a plethora of aoe healing options.
3 Likes
I’ve said this in other healing posts but yea EF is one of the most fun spells for MW.
It provides a much needed change of kind from just spamming kicks and clicking vivify every 10s when it’s instant.
It allows you to have a few seconds to analyze the battlefield and reposition yourself while still healing.
If you have enveloping breath + chi harmony + EvM rolling, then channeling the EF into all of those boosted targets is a skill shot channel that was actually very valuable.
it feels really good to channel a fat aoe healing spell… upwelling was great for this it felt so good. I never did the TFT → EF for the faster channel but I know people like that too
Plus EF buff and using Rising mist to increment it makes you feel like you are actively contributing with each Rising Sun Kick since the visual feedback of the HoT buffs is more visible than vivify cleave healing which is not very easy to see
That is a weird take to me, the EF hot + Rising Mist never felt like a strong interaction due to EF being a very weak hot and Rising Mist being also a very weak healing effect.
I suppose it also helps that I have an active tracker for ReM count and duration, so cleave just feels normal and effective to me.
1 Like
We’ll be fine woth conduit of the celestial. We get an actual fun channel to press. Prepatch does feel weird without ef. But weird doesn"t mean that it feels weak 
Or instead of forcing conduit channel on us, why not just make conduit modify EF so that people can still use EF with the other hero talents?
There was a lot of room to expand EF into a better spell.
Most significantly would be to have a talent that allows Thunder Focus Tea to cause EF to deal damage instead of healing — as a choice between the HoT and healing or the damage. Much needed for soom damage.
Alternatively, they could make a talent that replaces the channel of EF with a 1s cast time and it only fires 5 big bolts for bigger healing and then if they crit, an additional bolt will fire.
There was a lot that could have been done instead of just removing it.
The big outlier in EF healing in dragonflight was purely due to Jadefire Stomp and not Essence Font itself… they just needed to remove the EF bolt interaction on Jadefire stomp and it would have been balanced. The problem was that in DF mana freedom allowed for pressing JFS on cooldown, so combined with Rising Mist + upwelling + JFS bolts was too many HoTs with too much uptime, but they over corrected
The issue was You could do upwelling EF → JFS → Chi Burst → JFS → TFT → RSK and have 30 instances of the HoT active, with crit/vers they actually do a lot of passive healing and this doesn’t include resets on JFS that you give you another 5 applications each
Then chi harmony / enveloping mist or mending proliferation / enveloping breath would further boost that healing so it was quite significant
It was balanced. It was fine. it was intended to work this way since the beginning of Dragonflight.
There was an entire Ebb and Flow for Fistweaving in Raid.
Resetting FLS for EF bolts, which in turn lowered the cooldown for TFT → EF was incredibly important, which was used for high damage cycles, which then applied EF ofc for Gusts stacking and a REALLY GOOD HoT that could be extended with Rising Mists + the tiny heal from RSK after triggering it, back to resetting FLS to use on cooldown to your entire party to use the EF bolts to lower the cooldown of TFT → EF and the cycle continues.
^ I posted this elsewhere, but it fits.
Proper synergy and uses. It was very well designed.
First off, it’s still “Mana Freedom”. Nothing changed there.
Second off, there wasn’t too much uptime. Too much would be 100%, which isn’t possible, unless you used Essence Font off cooldown, without Upwelling and Thunder Focus Tea together, which was griefing if you did.
You never, EVER burn Chi Burst for an FLS reset unless it was for realligning the Faeline, unless you know for a fact you’ll get a reset before the boss moves. If he moves and you have no Chi Burst or reset, you’re screwed until you get a lucky reset or until it comes back off cooldown.
Also, you don’t have a guarantee that your FLS will hit people without EF active on them. Doesn’t make it bad tho, since EF and FLS EF stacked, which was intentional by the way.
Tier wasn’t the greatest for Fistweavers in Raid, since you almost never used Renewing Mist. That button wasn’t worth the GCD.
Chi harmony value was ok because of Rapid Diffusion.
You didn’t take Mending Proliferation as a Fistweaver in Raid. Now, though, because of Strength of the Black Ox, it might have some good value.
All in all, Essence Font was integral for Fistweaver’s performance. I’m still not sure how well it’ll do in Raid now without it.
I wasn’t able to Raid test on Beta due to work obligations, so I’ll have to wait for post-launch.
1 Like
So glad to see I am not alone in this.
Essence Font was a joy.
I used it whenever I was in a crowd, whenever I came across other players in the world.
It was also something that made MW a very unique spec and style.
Losing EF has sent me searching through my other healers for a replacement. Just another “lets break that thing that’s fixed” move by the devs.
4 Likes
EF personally was very unfun to use and play around if I am being honest. In addition, the spec will get a “channel = fun” button back in TWW. you simply don’t have your hero tree ability yet. conduit of the celestials has a much juicier 1.5min CD version of EF. be patient.
It’s nowhere near as good or useful as Essence Font outside of PvP, and in PvP you’re forced to take a talent to make it usable.
Cooldown is too long and has no real synergy or interaction with your kit outside the Hero tree.
Essence Font needs to come back.
2 Likes
What if you’re using the other hero talent tree? Then you don’t have any channel spells.
It would just have made more sense to keep EF and then we have a powerful channel cooldown there’s nothing wrong with that.
Just because you don’t like EF that’s fine — BUILD DIVERSITY is what wow desperately needs and MW was great that it had a FW build with no EF, a FW build with EF, a SooM build with EF, SooM without EF…
It was a good thing to have variety.
EF was by no means forced on people but was A great fun spell for those who wanted to make it work
2 Likes
When the crap goes down this is very important. I think of a fight like Dathea too, she’s sitting there pulling everyone towards her and the ability to heal and move during that was invaluable.
I’m one of those people. It was really nice to pace it out, sometimes you wanted it to be a quick fast shot others times you wanted it to bounce around and linger for a few seconds.
I don’t think so the cool down on that is rough. You’re going to get to cast that once maybe twice during a bigger fight and for me it doesn’t compare at all to what essence font could do. It’s about on par with a trinket ability as opposed to an integral part of the rotation.
Completely agree with everything you pointed out.
My highest ilvl character (a 517 monk) isn’t in my “warband” and will most likely be benched as I go back to holy priest.