State of Mistweaver PVP - Shadowlands (Week 1)

IMPORTANT: Mistweavers are complete unviable in PVP in the current meta. I’ve created a chart from PVPleaderboards.com which captures player data at 1700 CR or better (data as of this post) to illustrate this massive rating and representation gap. Mistweavers are by far the least represented and has the lowest max CR in every bracket on both NA and EU . And it’s not even close.

EU 3v3 # of Players Max Rating - EU 2v2 # of Players Max Rating
Disc Priest 584 2408 - Disc Priest 793 2407
Resto Shaman 334 2387 - Resto Shaman 311 2287
Holy Paladin 317 2443 - Holy Paladin 406 2447
Resto Druid 85 2403 - Resto Druid 121 2247
Mistweaver :rage: 57 2191 - Mistweaver :rage: 29 2106
NA 3v3 # of Players Max Rating - NA 2v2 # of Players Max Rating
Disc Priest 551 2604 - Disc Priest 567 2422
Resto Shaman 336 2487 - Resto Shaman 284 2412
Holy Paladin 307 2443 - Holy Paladin 780 2336
Resto Druid 94 2491 - Resto Druid 107 2271
Mistweaver :rage: 65 2366 - Mistweaver :rage: 44 2265

ISSUES:
I’m not going to write a wall of text complaining about how imbalanced PVP at the moment. I’m simply going to provide a list of issues which are contributing to why Mistweavers are doing so poorly.

  • Low throughput. As a Mistweaver, I can be spamming enveloping into vivifies on a kill target and not actually keep up with the damage while not being CC’d.
  • Extremely poor mana/heal ratios. Other healers are much more efficient and will regularly have >50% mana by the time a MW ooms.
  • Terrible team utility. Life cocoon is not even a noticeable defensive in this meta. It gets ripped off within 2 seconds.
  • Nerfs to baseline survivability. Fortifying Brew lost 5% damage reduction and 5% max health baseline, and cancel roll macros no longer work. Don’t underestimate how important cancel roll is to high level pvp.**
  • Loss of survivability tools from BFA. Burst of Life (20s off cocoon), Exit Strategy (5s off roll CD if hit), Secret Infusion (Mastery/Versa bonuses for healing or tankiness)

I don’t have recommendations of how to rebalance/redesign this miserable class. That’s not my job. I just hope someone from Blizzard notices this to pass on this feedback.

About Me: I was a top 100 rated MW (2764) in 2s in BFA Season 4 and peaked in the top 500 in 3s (2961). Despite the rating inflation, it’s still a fairly high level of PVP that is in the 99th percentile, if credibility matters at all to you.

Note to other Mistweavers: Don’t be passive. If you don’t provide feedback, the class will stay this way.

71 Likes

It’s rough being MW right now if anyone happens to notice you.

16 Likes

I played MW all last expansion and it was a fun class with good healing in PvP. So far in SL they’re complete dogshiz. Literally as I paused typing this to play a “Packed House” match, a sub rogue kills me in a stun. Does blizzard even have a clue anymore? It’s seriously pathetic.

13 Likes

You will die in any stun basically thats longer than 2 seconds

14 Likes

Thank you for providing this data. PvP balance is a disgrace right now. Against sub rogues, if you don’t trinket the opener then you or your teammate dies. The fact Blizzard was tuning PvP vendors up until the week prior to release gives you some idea about their priorities.

Let’s assume the rogue (and feral and warrior and hunter and priest) problem(s) get fixed. MW are still in a rough spot. Each expansion is an arms race and we got nothing of note. Our new abilities, Expel Harm and Invoke Yu’lon, are trash. Our legendaries suck for PvP. If I was a mythic+ player I would be salivating at Ancient Teachings of the Monastery which is a playstyle-defining legendary with huge throughput potential. Compare this to options that PvPers get. Sephuz’s is boring AF. Clouded Focus and Escape from Reality are niche. Some monks are arguing that Tear of Morning (which was clearly designed for raiding) is BiS for PvP. All I have to say to that is you better hope that opposing priests and shamans unbound their purge button.

10 Likes

Yes our legendaries and conduits suck. People think a conduit that gives 28% shield on our 3 min defensive cooldown at max rank is good. That’s how bad they are.

5 Likes

Why would anyone new to the game play this class? Why would anyone who has played the game change to this class? They don’t.

2v2 - 218 games played
3v3 - 129 games played

I’m just going to bump this every single day until we get a buff, a rework, or both. This class is bad. It isn’t competitive. There is a reason that hard core guilds don’t take it. It doesn’t have worthwhile raid cool downs to offer. It doesn’t have worthwhile healing throughput to make up for it. It is backseat in development to all other specs and classes. It is the least represented as a result. It was ignored all through beta despite pages of bugs documented on an excel spreadsheet and suggestions with little-to-no response.

Anecdotally, I made it to 2100 this week in 3s because I play turbo and my enhance shaman and warrior can kill most things before I have to worry about the other teams second go. Once RMPs learned that I die no matter what after the first kidney (even when I line the mage and priest perfectly) to the rogue alone, I plateaued. I personally continue to play monk because it offers all 3 roles, and I don’t find druid or paladin fun.

Whoever develops this class is silent. I wouldn’t sign my name on this product either because it’s been gutted and disemboweled into this horrible healer that does nothing. I can’t do damage in PVP like a paladin, disc priest, or shaman because I will instantly pay for it for being too close… which is why it’s so strange and nonsensical that you gave MW Touch of Death. It’s like a cruel joke man. We sit at max range constantly running and forcing distance to not eat cc. That is all I’m able to do all game. This class is horrible and in pvp it’s been relegated to this 1 dimensional playstyle.

In before “we hear you” “here’s a token gesture 5% buff to all mw healing” because you refuse to untrash this spec and perpetually kick the can with bandaids.

16 Likes

Yea. I am OOM, pretty much straight out the gate. I still like the playstyle, but I wish they brought back that no interrupt soothing mist. That would help a bit I think.

3 Likes

I just don’t understand in the projected hotfixes and tuning tomorrow, monk doesn’t make the list. It never makes the list unless it’s a % buff to something, or a nerf on cocoon. Delete this pet project of a class already.

4 Likes

Yep, its pretty crap right now. Even in PVE its hard to find groups, they all want literally any other healer class.

I just raged out of a BG because they said OMGwe only have 1 healer (Of course I was being camped while the enemy healer was freecasting). I said so does the horde, they said yea but you are a monk… I was healing as much as the enemy.

This whole thing is causing a stigma for monk healers that we are bad to play with. This will haunt us all xpac.

Guilds are not recruiting monk healers right now, people are re-rolling. And don’t get me started on my Night Fae ability, I chose the covenant I liked (call me dumb), not what was the best… pointless in arena, hard to use in m+ or raid.

3 Likes

I just came back to the game.

I just want to RBG once I get to 180 ilevel.

Not gonna lie, hearing all of this makes me sad. Healing in normal BGs, I felt like I was playing Starcraft, hitting all the buttons. I’ve been having a lot of fun. Normal BGs is lol. I have felt a bit of the pain against organized groups that make a beeline for me, but I chalked that up to organized groups.

But now that I think about it…I don’t see many of my class around besides myself…

I dunno. I’m having fun, but I haven’t tried getting RBG groups yet. How bad are RBGs for MWer monks atm?

1 Like

heres a bump for more visibility . I would love to see any MW changes, ANY. I was disgusted with the spec when I tried healing mythic +0, and theres absolutely no way il play mw in arena when i kill them in 1 second.

7 Likes

Bump in the hopes that Blizz somehow sees this data.

5 Likes

The DH of healers :frowning:

1 Like

Normally don’t make forum posts, but I agree that since the MW pvp population is already small as it is… it’s important to be vocal on this one.

I peaked at 2675 last season and genuinely enjoyed playing MW, but the current changes + meta make the spec just not fun to play as of now.

  1. I can’t understand why cancel roll macros were taken away… the class is fundamentally based on having high mobility and now you can be punished either by having to wait out the full duration of the roll or just by not being able to utilize chi torpedo how we used to (around pillars, stop early to stun people, etc)
  2. Every defensive seems underwhelming rn. Long CD on Yulon when it doesn’t feel worth it + GCD. Even when pre-walling with fortifying brew it doesn’t feel like much. Cocoon CD doesn’t feel worth it.

Not saying everything needs to be buffed, but MW has been highly overlooked in regards to competitive PvP.

5 Likes

Well all HOT classes are super weak right now, when Rets, Rogues, MM, Wars, Ele…are all hitting for 20%-50% hp per gcd…

2 Likes

Daily bump for visibility.

6 Likes

Also curious - used to rbg back in legion but quit during BFA.

I’ve heard MW is still good in RBG right now, and see a decent number still on the top rbg leaderboard.

1 Like

Smashing this bump for visibility

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MW is unfortunately terrible for RBG. The amount of high end rbgers who I know that have switched from MW this expac is pretty sad. Also I have heard a bunch of people call Mistweaver bad the past couple of days in 2400 mmr rbgs which is unfortunate. It was somewhat like this at the start of BFA so I am holding out hope the best that I can.

1 Like