WoD's proposed Mistweaver changes

[Lovestar]

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OP last updated:
June 04, 2014 (pre Alpha invites)

Discussion thread still healthy / alive, but OP is now increasingly out-of-date / out-of-sync with current state of Alpha/Beta.

Known changes coming in WoD
(updated with new patch notes)

New abilities in WoD

"Draenor Perks"

• Gained automatically, one per level, while leveling 90-100.
• Renewing Mist duration increased by 2 sec.
• Surging Mist healing increased by 20%.
• Soothing Mist healing increased by 20%.
• Expel Harm damaged and healing increased by 20%.
• Life Cocoon cooldown reduced by 20 sec.
• Roll now travels the same distance in 25% less time.
• Transcendence cooldown lowered by 35 sec. Transcendence: Transfer now instant cast.
• Blackout Kick damage increased by 20%.
• Tiger Palm damage increased by 20%.

Level 100 Talent Choices

• Breath of the Serpent: Your Jade Serpent Statue breathes healing mists toward you, healing allies in a cone within 20 yards for XXXX every 1 sec, split evenly between them. Lasts 10 sec. Instant, 1.5 min cooldown
• Chi Explosion: Replaces Blackout Kick. Consumes up to 4 Chi to cause the target to explode with Chi energy, causing additional effects based on Chi consumed. 1 Chi, 40 yd range, 1.5 second cast. (Instant cast in Crane Stance)
  
  • Does different things in Crane (see below).
  • 1+ Chi: Heals an ally for XXXX plus XXXX per Chi consumed.
  • 2+ Chi: Healed allies also receive an additional 50% healing over 6 sec.
  • 3+ Chi: The single-target healing also splits evenly between all allies within 8 yards of the target.
  • 4 Chi: Also summons 8 Healing Spheres in an 8 yard radius ring around the target that last 15 sec.
  Crane version:
  
  • Still 40 yard range.
  • 1+ Chi: Deals Nature damage to an enemy equal to XXXX + XXXX per Chi consumed.
  • 2+ Chi: Heals yourself for XXXX + XXXX per Chi consume.
  • 3+ Chi: All allies within ??? yards of you are healed for the same amount.
  • 4 Chi: Also summons 8 Healing Spheres in an 0 yard radius ring around you that last 15 sec.
• Path of Mists : While in combat, you leave a trail of healing spheres behind you as you move, spaced 3 yards apart. These healing spheres last 15 sec.

Detonate Chi

• New baseline ability for MW.
• Detonate Chi: Instantly detonate all of your Healing Spheres, causing each of them to heal a nearby ally within 12 yards of the sphere. 10 sec cooldown.

Readinesss has been removed.
New stat replaces it: Versatility. Simply increases Damage, Healing, Absorbs by 1%, and reduces your damage taken by 0.5%, per XXXX rating.

Fistweaving changes

Stances

• Wise Serpent Stance can no longer cause Eminence healing. It is for traditional, ranged casting of heals.
• New stance, Spirited Crane, allows Eminence.
• Crane Stance has much lower healing output than Serpent Stance. Intended to be "in the middle" between a healer's HPS and a damage spec's DPS.
• You can change stance any time during combat, but it costs 1 GCD and you lose all of your current Chi.
• You no longer convert Spellpower to Attack Power in Serpent Stance, meaning any abilities that scale from AP will do very poor damage outside Crane.
• Crane Stance grants you Attack Power equal to Spellpower.
• Both stances are categorized as "Melee" for the purpose of raid fight mechanics, ability targeting, etc.

Fistweaving Ability changes

• Xuen always triggers healing with his attacks, no matter what Stance you're in.
• SCK now only heals allies while in Serpent Stance. SCK does not damage enemies while in Serpent Stance.
• Enveloping Mist, Renewing Mist, Soothing Mist, and Uplift can only be cast in Serpent Stance.
• Mistweavers can now use Rising Sun Kick. RSK does not cause Mortal Strike debuff.
• Crackling Jade Lightning is now a 4-second channel (down from 6 seconds) in Serpent Stance, and a 1.5 second channel (down from 4 seconds) in Crane Stance.
• Blackout Kick, Jab, RSK, and Tiger Palm can only be cast in Crane Stance.
• Tiger Strikes now causes a Multistrike buff to trigger from your autoattacks. Tiger Strikes does not trigger in Serpent Stance.

Rotation (these effects only apply in Crane Stance!)

• Eminence now heals for 35% of your damage done. Your Serpent Statue also heals a target within 20 yards for 35% of your damage done. (total 70% of damage done)
• Serpent's Zeal removed. Your autoattacks always trigger Eminence healing while in Crane stance.
• Vital Mists: Every 1 Chi you spend grants a stack of Vital Mist. Still reduces cast time and Mana cost of next Surging Mist by 20% per stack. Surging Mist is better now.™
• Blackout Kick: Blackout Kick always damages only one target. The Eminence caused by BOK splits and heals up to 4 targets for 15% of the ST damage BOK caused. (So 60% of your BOK's damage distributed across 4 targets, or 120% / 4 = 30% of BOK's damage per target if Statue is within range)
• Crane's Zeal: Blackout Kick grants you Crane's Zeal, increasing your critical strike chance by 20% for 10 sec. Buff removed if you enter Serpent Stance.
• Crackling Jade Lightning: Channels 150% faster, generates 1 Chi each time it deals damage. Not rotational for Crane — intended as the "Flash Heal" of Fistweaving: high Chi gen, but unsustainable Mana cost.
• ROTATION SUMMARY: Keep Tiger Power, Crane Zeal, and RSK debuff (on enemy) up. Spend Chi on BOK (AoE healing) or Tiger Palm (ST). RSK on CD. Stay in melee range (autoattacking) at all times. Keep your Statue within 20 yards of injured people.

Other changes

Haste

• The Mistweaver GCD is now 1.5 seconds.
• Stance of the Wise Serpent no longer increases Haste from items by 50%.
• Haste now reduces the global cooldown of Mistweaver abilities.

Cast times

• Uplift and Chi Explosion (level 100 talent) have a 1.5s cast time.
• Chi Explosion is instant in Crane Stance.

Mana Regen

• MW mana regen will be nerfed, redesigned, and controlled.
• MW is intended to care about Spirit and Mana in WoD.
• Baseline mana regen for all healers will be buffed heavily and scaling from Spirit/gear reduced. Healers in newbie gear will not feel as punished as they have in past expansions (ie, no repeats of the Cataclysm OOM nightmares while gearing up).
• However, you are still intended to gain more spell selection freedom with more Spirit (eg, @Celestalon has stated you're intended to use Surging Mist more frequently as you get better gear), so gear with Spirit will still 'matter'.

Mana Abilities

• Mana Tea still exists, is stilled channeled, and still builds stacks when you spend Chi.
• Glyph of Mana Tea still exists, as an alternative to channeling (but a GCD burden).
• Crackling Jade Lightning now generates 1 stack of Mana Tea in Serpent Stance, if you finish channeling it in Serpent Stance (4 second channel). YO SERP, WE HEARD YOU LIEK CHANKIPZ SO WE PUT CHANNELING IN YOUR CHANNEL SO YOU CAN CHANNEL WHILE YOU CHANNEL
• CJL no longer costs Mana in Serpent.

Spell costs

• Soothing Mist and Renewing Mist are planned as examples of low-mana-cost spells that take a longer time to work (Soothing because it's slow, Renewing because it's a heal-over-time).
• Surging Mist will be the "fast-casting, expensive" alternative to Soothing, like Heal vs. Flash Heal for a priest.
• SCK will be be an expensive, high-throughput AoE healing tool.
• Resuscitate (Monk out-of-combat rez) now costs only 4% Base Mana (ie, very cheap).

Chi

• Crackling Jade Lightning no longer generates Chi in Serpent Stance.
• Soothing Mist no longer generates Chi.
• Surging Mist, Renewing Mist, Expel Harm, Spinning Crane Kick (3+ targets), and Jab (Crane Stance only) are now MW's only Chi sources.
• The talented CD Chi Brew still generates Chi for MW.
• You are intended to gain more Chi generation as you gear up, by gaining more Mana Regen (via Spirit), allowing you to cast Surging Mist more. Surging is now your only no-CD source of Chi.

Healing Spheres

• The ability "Healing Sphere", that targeted the ground and created a sphere, has been removed.
• Other abilities and Mastery still generate spheres.
• Spheres that expire now heal an ally within 12yd (up from 6yds) for 100% of the healing the sphere would have done when if it had been picked up (up from 50%).
• It is no longer possible for anyone to use up excessive spheres by touching them at high health. Only enough spheres to heal you (without overhealing) will be consumed.

Single-Target healing

Soothing Mist

• Now our primary ST healing spell; heals significantly more per tick.
  
• Soothing no longer generates Chi.
• No longer heals immediately on cast (you must channel for at least 1 second — spamming it will do no healing).
• Soothing does not consume Mana until the first tick.
• Soothing now has a 0.5 second baseline GCD, but also has a 1.0 second cooldown. This means you can very quickly follow Soothing with another spell (eg, Surging for a Flash Heal analogue).

Serpent Statue

• Summon Jade Serpent Statue still duplicates your Soothing Mist on someone within 20 yards of the statue, if in Serpent Stance.
• Also still causes your Eminence to be duplicated within 20 yards of the statue (Crane Stance only).
• Statue CD is now 10s (down from 30s).

Surging Mist

• Now our 'Flash Heal' equivalent and intended to actually be used.
• Also now MW's primary Chi generator (outside ReM & Expel cooldowns).
• Weaker than MoP, but also much cheaper.
• The intent is essentially that every Surging should be cast during a Soothing Mist channel (so the 'actual' size of our Flash Heal is Surging + 1 Soothing tick).
• For multiple targets that need Flashing: Soothe → 0.5s GCD → Surge (instant under Soothe) → wait out Surge GCD (1.5s, lowered by Haste) → Soothe next target.
• Total time to Flash one target: 0.5s (duration of Soothe GCD).
• Total time between Flashing different targets: 2.0s (zero Haste, 1.5s Surge GCD) to 1.5s (50% Haste, 1.0s Surge GCD).
• This makes Surge the fastest Flash Heal for sudden/unexpected healing spikes, and the slowest Flash Heal for chaining between multiple targets in succession.

Other ST tools

• Renewing Mist (still jumps at random, still 8s CD)
• Enveloping Mist (still 3 Chi, healing buffed significantly from its already large amount in MoP)
• Life Cocoon (still functions same way, absorb effect buffed significantly)

AoE/Multi-Target healing and "Smart Heals"

• Spinning Crane Kick (primary tool for stacked AoE) or Rushing Jade Wind (mana cost significantly increased)
• Uplift (works same way it does in MoP / 5.4)
• Revival
• "Smart" heals have been nerfed, and no longer deliberately try to heal the lowest-health players. The devs want to put more emphasis on the player actually choosing their healing targets.
• Instead, 'smart' heals will just randomly heal any damaged player.
• Smart heals include SCK, T30 Chi talents, Eminence, Sphere detonations, etc.

Thunder Focus Tea

• Thunder Focus Tea now causes the next Renewing Mist to jump up to 4 times (used to cause the next Uplift to refresh the duration of Renewing Mists on all targets).
• TFT can still be used on Surging Mist instead (still doubles the healing).
• TFT is still a 45s CD.
• TFT no longer costs 1 Chi (ie, it's free).

Gear

• All Leather armor is now shared. It will grant Agility for Brewmaster/Windwalker and Intellect for Mistweaver.
• Accessories (Cloak, Neck, Rings, Trinkets) will have role-specific stats. This means you will need different accessories for each spec (MW will want Spirit accessories).

Miscellaneous changes

• Grapple Weapon has been removed (for all Monks).
• Disable has been removed (for Mistweavers).
• Ring of Peace no longer Silences or Disarms enemies. It now incapacitates targets in the area for 3 seconds, or until the target takes damage.
• Spear Hand Strike no longer Silences the target if they’re facing the Monk.
• Fierce Tiger Stance has been removed. Windwalkers-only now. No one cares, since we never used it anyway.

[Totaltotemic]

Healing Sphere change is practically nil as it's not used outside of PvP anyways and all healers will be going through a huge removal of instant cast heals on that front.

MW mana was fine until they introduced that stupid meta gem, made crit give even more mana tea, and then to put the icing on the cake made Chi Brew give stacks. At some point they just gave up trying to balance MW mana and decided to nerf healing because nerfs to mana costs weren't going to work anymore. Simply better balancing of costs to stacks will fix that problem.



The reason Fistweaving needs to be separated is because the ability to do ~40% of the DPS of an actual DPS any time you don't need to be spamming Uplift is purely overpowered if you can do the same healing as other healers the instant you decide it's time to stop doing damage. This has been temporarily balanced somewhat by the fact that MW can't actually do the same healing as other healers, but that's not sustainable for the long term. The design goal is to give MW the option to say "I don't need to heal right now, so I'd rather do some damage instead" but have the definition of "right now" be at least 5-10 seconds instead of the 2 seconds it takes to Jab --> TP currently. This will allow MW to have decent healing and have the option of doing damage if you play wisely rather than the current model where MW has below average healing but an automatic 70-80k DPS.

For example, Siegecrafter has many windows between Shredder overloads where no healing really needs to be done in which a skilled MW can easily do 1-3% of the boss's health in damage over the course of the fight without hurting healing when it matters, but in the new model (even if it's only 1 GCD to switch stances) those windows are a bit too short to commit to DPSing in, so you wouldn't actually be able to. A fight like Garrosh though with its 30+ straight seconds of no healing would see you sitting in Crane stance for a while because you simply don't need the healing (although we can all pray that a fight is never that lax on healing in the future). This not only tones down when it is that MW can actually do damage but also heightens the skill required to do so and still maintain decent healing. This change would allow MW to be balanced on the healing front without automatically being OP because of the damage. Atonement is set to receive heavy nerfs, so that's not okay either.


What this comes down to is that MW will likely receive better single target healing tools because Healing Sphere won't exist. It will also probably have a more mana intensive structure so that "spam SCK/RJW" isn't even doable, let alone always the the answer like it is right now. On the Fistweaving front, MW will likely get a mid-tier mana cost heal to use to fill the void left by Jab/TP when you do get those small gaps in healing.

[Deleted]

There's two ways I see stuff going down:

-They use the stance as a method of allowing us in melee all the time with the accompanying gameplay, without the risks totemic went over regarding damage and healing combinations. [aka the best option]

-They use the stances to make the justification you shouldn't be in melee while in JSS. [aka fuck original mistweaver gameplay you'll take what we give you]

On one hand stances make no sense with option 2, on the other they said they're reducing the instants a healer could use. Though there is technology that could allow for us to have a melee cast time spell, imagine something along the lines of a glyph for Soothing Mist that turns it into a 7 yard range Chi Burst that grants 1 chi and is castable while moving.

[Deleted]

Healing Spheres removal was known to be removed like since blizzcon (affinitii mentioned it on stream).
In a way it's a good thing, it destroys mediocre monks in pvp, which I'm pretty happy about. lol.
For PvE it won't matter that much unless there's big gimp mechanics like say immerseus blob healing.

Mana tea won't get bit nerfs, they could just remove the critical effect part and it will fix itself.
The problem is then though that other healers mana regens scale better over time and monks don't.
They can't really nerf it that much, because they'll make monks even weaker then they are already.

[Inay]

Would love to have some blog about MW in WoD by Blizzard. It seems that it is the one spec that is going to be under heavy changes, you could even talk about reworking the spec. There have been a lot of blue bits of information about whats going away but almost nothing about the solutions.
I just hope they will keep MW's mobility in PvP. Currently it seems pretty bad if you look things from the PvP side of things but they haven't revealed what they are going to replace with most of the skills that are going away.

[Super Kami Dende]

And thus they ruin the one healing spec I enjoy in WoW.

[Nakiri]

About Healing Spheres... are usefull just for pvp... Never used in PvE except for a couple of times in Challenge Modes!!
For the Mana Tea and Fistweaving... I'd like too see something interesting and not simply breaking stuff here and there... Gonna wait the Beta and test directly the changes.
In the end they are simply remaking the MW spec and I hope they gonna align the Atonement behaviour to the Fistweaving New Style.

[Darkener]

Tiger Stance should have been the purely DPS stance that gives up all healing other than a couple of simple self and target heals (like Shadow Priests today). Instead it is total crap and useless.

Serpent stance should provide the most healing output.

Crane stance should do competitive healing and perhaps exceed Serpent Stance on a couple of damage increase or multiple add bosses. Otherwise it should be 30% of a DPS with slightly less healing than Serpent Stance.

If Crane stance is not competitive healing at least in some situations, and not enough damage to be meaningful during healing downtime, then it is a waste of time to even create the stance.

Edit: From a PvE raiding perspective.

[Lovestar]

Thank you @Totaltotemic for the comprehensive reply, that answered a lot of my questions. I understand the reasoning much better now.

My primary concern is that MW will lose its very appealing fluidity — right now it just drifts from impulse to impulse at will rather than following the more proscribed formulas other healers do. I really like that; it's refreshing, and it gives the spec a lot of nuance.

I don't think the spec would feel the same if you have to go "Okay, in JSS. Can't melee, must stand here and shoot fog cannons at people." and then "Okay, in RCS, must punch things, can't shoot fog at people". Although it sounds like that was the original intention of the design back in MoP development, and it only accidentally became what it is now.

That ability to just choose spontaneously based on moment-to-moment conditions whether to punch something or fog something feels smooth and really good. Adding in a paragraph-break of Fogging > STANCE CHANGE > Punch doesn't sound pleasant. >.<

But I think that's the point, from what you're saying — to deliberately break the fluidity and compartmentalize between one action and the other. That makes me sad. I wish they could find a different solution that left the playfeel intact, but still addressed the concerns you brought up.

[Squidwerd]

Incoming monk chakras....=)

[Spotnick]

Every single patch Blizzard came with new ways to make sure monks were not fistweaving too much, and it's obvious they are going into that direction with MOP. I was expecting changes all the xpac just like they did with Death Knights, but changing the nature of the class that they sold us as a melee healer is just wrong.

So I'm very curious of what they will do in beta. Remember, the next expansion is where they gave up on DKs and decided blood was going to be a tanking spec, well, we're there, they will decide which type of healers Mistweavers will be.

I actually enjoyed mistweavers in T14, Jab-Jab-Uplift was fun for me, I was not interested at all with the new dps system they introduced in T15 which muscle memory and all that crap, hence why I completely stopped doing damage when that happened, and I even stopped playing the class for months until 3 weeks prior to SoO. It's probably one of the reason I stopped dpsing, that system is total crap to me as it's not at all helping your healing, it's purely dps.. with a very low output from eminence.

Now they seems to push the class even further with the crane stance and saying it will never be optimal to heal with melee attacks, it's a tradeoff solution where you suck as a dps and suck as a healer at the same time and the only optimal way to heal is to mistweave.

They really need to keep the spirit of the class, because mistweaving makes the class too similar to other classes, there is absolutely no point in standing in melee if you don't hit the boss, beside Spinning Crane Kick, there won't be any reason, that we know so far, to stay in melee.

So.. very curious to see what's next, after all, mistweavers are the least played healer, it's very hard to recruit them right now, they will obviously throw us a bone and the free 90s will probably give incentive to level monks to a lot of people (because starting from level 1 was a pain and many gave up)

[Affiniti]

Chi Explosion (the level 100 talent @ Blizzcon that allows us to detonate our mastery on a CD) I believe will be baseline. Would be strange for it to not be baseline, and Celestalon has hinted at one of the talents with the word "chi" in it becoming baseline for monks. Safe to assume it will be the controlled mastery explosion, which adds quite a bit of viability to our mastery. Will be interesting to see how that goes.

I'm not totally sure that the mana nerf is directed towards Mana Tea in particular. The issue lies more in the fact that the vast majority of spells are "free" or have very minimal cost -- being the vast majority of our healing lies in Uplift (no real mana cost), and RM (very minimal). They'd need to do a fairly large overhaul to our spells, rotation, etc to fix mana as well as decrease how RNG our healing currently is. Our mana utilization is almost entirely based around generating Chi, and then spending Chi on healing, and getting mana back in the form of Mana Tea. I'd expect the general concept to exist, but mana be offset a bit differently to make things more balanced.


I'm sure a big focus is on fixing our mana "issue" as well as providing us with a better toolset to do controlled, targetted healing. The meta gem and the crit change only inflate the issue that is our mana management. They needed a way to make crit more "valuable", in their effort to make non haste stats worthwhile for us, but it did add to the issue of how our mana is handled.

Every single patch Blizzard came with new ways to make sure monks were not fistweaving too much, and it's obvious they are going into that direction with MOP. I was expecting changes all the xpac just like they did with Death Knights, but changing the nature of the class that they sold us as a melee healer is just wrong.

Fistweaving and attonement, by design, hurt other classes. They are wanting to minimize the viability of these playstyles to fix a potential concern for raiding. A boss enrage is very tight, you bring in a few healers that are capable of healing and doing a little bit of DPS as well. One disc and a monk or two disc and a monk could potentially be the difference between meeting a DPS check vs not meeting a dps check. This puts their viability higher than other healers because they act as a partial DPS in the process. Fistweaving should EXIST, but it shouldn't be something that can be heavily relied on from a DPS-check standpoint. Changing fistweaving in that manner helps "resolve" this issue by making it more inconvenient, but doesn't totally reduce the issue of a healer being brought in because they do more than JUST heal the raid.

Another thing to consider, mistweaver at present is the ONLY healer class that literally gets to ignore boss mechanics because they are ranged oriented. Typical bosses (minus a few such as the range checker on Garrosh which was distance-based rather than "you're a melee") operate under a "your class is flagged as melee, this boss mechanic CAN NOT target you". Slapping the fistweaving portion into it's own stance potentially offers the ability for Blizzard to make "mistweaving" a range check (as far as boss mechanics go), and crane stance as a "melee check". Only way to resolve that on LIVE, without a different stance, is to have every mechanic a distance-based check prior to picking it's target.

If they go the route of melee/ranged checks, I think that'd be a good thing. Seigecrafter Blackfuse heroic is literally a different fight on my druid than it is my monk. I can sit off wherever I want, and not directly have to worry about ranged mechanics (other than it launching a sawblade at a ranged that is standing on top of you for example). This also allows them to introduce other things such as a holy paladin "melee" stance that allows them to crusader strike in melee without the fear of being picked as a ranged. Tons of potential there in a sense.

I actually enjoyed mistweavers in T14, Jab-Jab-Uplift was fun for me, I was not interested at all with the new dps system they introduced in T15 which muscle memory and all that crap, hence why I completely stopped doing damage when that happened, and I even stopped playing the class for months until 3 weeks prior to SoO. It's probably one of the reason I stopped dpsing, that system is total crap to me as it's not at all helping your healing, it's purely dps.. with a very low output from eminence.

Breaking jab-jab uplift was a bad decision IMO. They didn't like the fact that we had instant chi on a cheap 1 second GCD, so they wanted us to channel Soothing Mists. Unfortunately this decision was flawed, as it took a rotation of "jab tiger palm jab jab blackout kick. Jab jab uplift jab jab uplift. Jab tiger palm" etc and turned it into "SOOTHING MISTS SOOTHING MISTS UPLIFT SOOTHING MISTS SOOTHING MISTS SOOTHING MISTS SOOTHING MISTS UPLIFT UPLIFT". "jab jab uplift" was far more than just jab jab uplift, and our replacement rotation was basically a mash 1 button on gcd, get stuck with your chi generator being RNG based instead of guaranteed like jab, and stand around looking pretty when you'd otherwise be doing something else.

The decision to break it was the RIGHT decision from a "healers doing dps is a bad thing" standpoint, but their solution to it was half-baked (mostly because it was middle of an expac, and a full class redo wasn't feasible); however I wish they simply left it be and fixed it in the expac beta. Jab jab uplift was a far more interesting and involved rotation than what we have today.

[Lovestar]

I'd rather they just give every healer the ability to off-DPS effectively so you just design raids around the assumption the heals will be DPSing during healing lulls. Then it just comes down to style.

But of course then we'll see the swarms of angry people who JUST WANT TO HEAL, like the Atonement-is-valuable changes brought the MoP Beta forums. (those posts were a lot of fun to wade through... although ironically, their SKY IS FALLING attitude turned out to be 100% true despite GC's dismissive placations)

This annoys me; there were plenty of people who JUST WANT TO HOLD THREAT AND BE IMMORTAL, but active mitigation went in anyway. There were plenty of people who JUST WANT TO SPAM HEALS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, but the Cataclysm mana and system changes went in anyway.

I wish Blizzard would just rip the band-aid off and say: "Pure Healing is over, you weave DPS in during healing to be effective in the current game". Then the 2 Heal styles that do that already — and have fun doing it — can stop bearing the brunt of design changes that consider it unfair and being — as @Totaltotemic claims — deliberately held back balance-wise to compensate for the DPS-check potential.

(Of course, I'm sure people who hate mixing activities are making their own posts wishing the DPS/Healing styles would get deleted, so they can go back to peacefully enjoying healing and only healing. Everything's a manner of perspective... )

[Isheria]

There is nothing wrong doing dps as a healer but there are plenty of wrongs doing dps and healing at the same time, granted mistweavers aren't exactly big outliers on this department but disc priests are.

[Lovestar]

There is nothing wrong doing dps as a healer but there are plenty of wrongs doing dps and healing at the same time, granted mistweavers aren't exactly big outliers on this department but disc priests are.

Yes, but — this is non-rhetorical — isn't it only 'wrong' because it's parceled off to specific specs?

No one seems very upset about Tanks tuned for doing a proposed 70% of a 'real' DPS' damage in WoD. That's because every tank you bring can be relied on to do that, while still being an effective Tank, right? So it's okay for that design to exist because it's not just say, Brewmasters and Paladins doing 70% DPS, and DKs/Warriors stuck doing 15% DPS but equal threat, and nobody likes Bears anyway ().

So if every healer had legit tools to do Heal-DPS during low-damage and then cut it for high-HPS during 'real' phases, it would no longer be an issue, but a part of the role.

The only thing preventing that is the opposition from people that have no desire to target enemies or juggle heal casts/GCDs and damage casts/GCDs while healing, right?

[cautiongg]

really wouldn't mind them getting rid of statue, just compensating for the lack of heals by buffing soothing mist.

i REALLY hate playing my mistweaver 90% of the time just because of the range gimmick that the totem ties you to. Sure its cool and iconic for the spec, but honestly having to put it down every 50 yards i move gets old.

[Darkener]

Chi Explosion (the level 100 talent @ Blizzcon that allows us to detonate our mastery on a CD) I believe will be baseline.

I agree except the talent is actually called "Detonate Chi" which is different from "Chi Explosion", the talent that has different effects depending on the number of Chi you have when cast.

Fistweaving and attonement, by design, hurt other classes. They are wanting to minimize the viability of these playstyles to fix a potential concern for raiding. A boss enrage is very tight, you bring in a few healers that are capable of healing and doing a little bit of DPS as well. One disc and a monk or two disc and a monk could potentially be the difference between meeting a DPS check vs not meeting a dps check. This puts their viability higher than other healers because they act as a partial DPS in the process. Fistweaving should EXIST, but it shouldn't be something that can be heavily relied on from a DPS-check standpoint. Changing fistweaving in that manner helps "resolve" this issue by making it more inconvenient, but doesn't totally reduce the issue of a healer being brought in because they do more than JUST heal the raid.

I disagree. In most cases in DPS check fights the tendency is to drop a healer for another top charting DPS (not bring healers to DPS). In that case you can't afford a mediocre healer that can do some DPS, you want a true DPS and the 2 (or 4) healers must be kick-ass highest possible throughput healers, not a lousy healer that does some DPS (current state of Fistweaving).

That's why Fistweaving doesn't work, and Atonement does. Disc Priests are taken not because they add DPS but because they are the highest possible healer and can mitigate mechanics better when running fewer healers. The DPS they add is not part of the equation. If things get to the wire and it is coming down to the berserk timer Raid Leaders will say "DPS this mutha, even healers!". But regardless of getting a kill that obviously required the help of Smiting or Jabing, healers are not taken for their DPS. Heck, the amount of DPS a Fistweaver or Atonement Priest could do paled in comparison to the OP DPS of a Brewmaster Tank in MoP prior to 5.4. But why weren't all tanks in MoP Brewmasters then, if it was all about DPS?

This is the time to broaden DPS from healers, not limit it. In a new WoD where everything but Mystic is "flex" you can't have rigid numbers in a raid. If adding another healer means having to add 2 or 3 more DPS because the boss health goes up then it makes more sense to allow healers to either do 100% healing, or 70% healing and 30% DPS. That way adding healers in odd numbers doesn't completely throw the balance off, and you can still bring that healer and work with that size.

Mystic will still be rigid requirements, and I guarantee you that before a raid leader says "lets stack this raid with more DPS-able healers" they will say "Eff it, we are 2 healing this bitch and I will only take the OP spec healer of WoD." It's Blizzard's job to ensure that they stop fucking up healers by allowing a single spec to mitigate mechanics, out heal everything, and do DPS. Every healing spec must be viable.

[Totaltotemic]

You realize Affinity is in Blood Legion right? I think he's the most qualified person on this forum to say what top raids do considering comp.

[iDrunkenheal]

snip..

Why drop healers and increase the risk of people dying when you can just bring healers that can dps and heal at the same time. That's what affinity is saying.

[Lovestar]

Why drop healers and increase the risk of people dying when you can just bring healers that can dps and heal at the same time. That's what affinity is saying.

You're saying this, right, if we use two imaginary approaches to a raid comp:

2 HEALERS, +3 DPS

• Lots of DPS
• Always less healing during every phase, including dangerous ones that are taxing/impossible for the reduced 2 healers

5 DPS-CAPABLE HEALERS

• Constant healing during low phases while adding extra DPS which in total is close to the 2 heal / 3 DPS option
• Suddenly 5 full-power healers during high phases where healing is needed much more than DPS for X seconds

Bear with me because I don't live at the progression / top-edge world some of you do: Is this what actually happens right now? Do guilds take only Disc & MW, and ignore the other 3 specs because those specs have to choose between doing heals or doing DPS at any given moment?