WoD's proposed Mistweaver changes

[Deleted]

Couldn't agree more. Numbers are useless because they can be easily tweaked. What needs to be addressed is the spec itself, particularly in the form of balancing talents for the sake of diversity, dealing with this silly problem that mastery is (pure rng healing even with detonate ability, especially in non-raiding scenarios), and fixing aoe healing requirements.

You'd think the time until 6.0 is more than enough to solve this issue, but then you remember how much easier it is to "fix the numbers" than the mechanics themselves. And then you remember how Blizzard likes to change classes between expansions and not between patches....and then you understand why so many of us are concerned :P

When I compare both the current state of my monks and rdruids and their beta views....Rdruids are in a great spot even if you nerf their healing by 10-20%, not so much because it's a question of output (well, for most raiders here I guess it can be), but it's the gameplay is actually well-designed: I change talents back and forth between different scenarios, I have multiple tools for a single task (eg: aoe = efforescence, WG, reju spam), abilities that address spec issues (genesis due to necessity of burst healing, something rdruids can fall behind at), and there's a high degree of control that makes me feel like I'm playing my class the way I want to.

This doesn't happen so well with monk: it's not whether my hps is high or not, but the fact that my degree of control is restrained by things like mastery/ReM/chi generation (with surging mists). If this happened to a new class, my first thought would be "talents", but in case of mw monk, our talents don't address these issues: how can they even add statue talent when they know our opinion on mastery orbs is beyond me lol.

I think that this post is as spot on as can be. All monk healers that I speak with complain about the amount of absolute RNG involved with the mistweaver. Hell, some priests already complain about PoM randomness, compare that to MW's. The main problem with MW is not the amount of healing done, but the (core) mechanics that are flawed. The amount of RNG involved (ReM, chi generation, tea's, our Mastery, etc.), and the dependance on spells that stand or fall based on RNG (uplift, chi explosion).
Currently a MW can be absolutely awesome on one fight and do nearly no healing on the other, simply becase the RNG-gods chose to smite the MW that particular fight. That is not what the average healer wants, and its not something that massive throughput can mediate.

[Geodew]

Started that post tonight. I've written 6 pages in Word just about the first two topics. Trying to finish it over the holiday weekend; expecting to work on it all day tomorrow. I hope I can because otherwise, between work and raids, I might not finish it until the end of the week. :-/

[Deleted]

Started that post tonight. I've written 6 pages in Word just about the first two topics. Trying to finish it over the holiday weekend; expecting to work on it all day tomorrow. I hope I can because otherwise, between work and raids, I might not finish it until the end of the week. :-/

Looking forward to the read. Great work in advance!

[Ilir]

It feels like "detonate chi" is a spell they've given us to match the "shroom explosion" of the druids (forgot the name). But yeah... it'd be better if the spell just made the orbs instantly heal the lowest % health players in the raid... (oh it's basically what everyone's asking them to do with uplfit but still rng so weaker than uplfit not being tied to REM and healing the 6 most injured).

[Deleted]

Started that post tonight. I've written 6 pages in Word just about the first two topics. Trying to finish it over the holiday weekend; expecting to work on it all day tomorrow. I hope I can because otherwise, between work and raids, I might not finish it until the end of the week. :-/

Why would you even bother, the immediately contactable developers of this game care nothing for anything that can't be shown with purely objective numbers. That's pretty clear when you understand that every single Mistweaver at a respectable level of play has made it clear the mechanics fucking suck. Imho they know it as well, short of saying "uh yeah sorry guys, we screwed up BIG - sorry about that" they can't really do anything lol.

[lycrates]

I wonder if Chi Explosion would be worthwhile as a mana spender spell instead of a Chi spender. Most people agree CE does not make sense as a Chi Spender as it will always compete with either Uplift for AoE healing or with Enveloping Mist for single target. It will always be either too inferior to cast or so OP that it will replace either Uplift or Enveloping.

Chi Explosion was obviously created for WW and Brewmasters as a replacement for Blackout Kick. It is also obvious that in its current state it has not place in the MW kid (Blizzard just got lazy in my opinion and didn't think things through).

I don't know if someone mentioned it before, but in my opinion the only way to save the Talent is to make it cost mana instead of Chi, add a Cooldown and EITHER make it focus more on healing small groups in a distance (for example if you want to heal the melee and you are too far away to cast RJW/SCK, then you could use CE without competing for Chi with Uplift), OR even better, make it a spread out AoE spell (for example, CE could create a Healing Sphere at the feet of 6 injured group members within 30 yrds of the target (basically be like a Circle of Healing). Then, CE would make sense for MWs and would fill much needed holes in the MW kit. Right now as a Chi Spender, CE makes 0 sense.

[Nakanai]

Why would you even bother, the immediately contactable developers of this game care nothing for anything that can't be shown with purely objective numbers. That's pretty clear when you understand that every single Mistweaver at a respectable level of play has made it clear the mechanics fucking suck. Imho they know it as well, short of saying "uh yeah sorry guys, we screwed up BIG - sorry about that" they can't really do anything lol.

As much as I loathe the direction (or non-direction) the devs have taken with attempting to fix MWers during this beta, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that we the community share some of the blame. The devs certainly have a vision for the spec that no amount of feedback from us will do anything to change (ReM/Uplift interaction, for example,) but it seems there are some issues they're willing to listen to us on, and I can name two examples where we've been not-helped by bad feedback.

First, and most majorly, Gift of the Serpent. There are two issues here: there are people who have put forth the opinion "GotS is such a large % of my healing! It must not be that bad!" and "Lol, Lightwell 2.0." The problem with the first kind of feedback is that it doesn't get the problem fixed, and the problem with the second is that, while it points out a flaw in the mastery, it doesn't get to the core issue of why it's a bad stat. The problem with our mastery, mathematically, is that there does not exist a linear relationship between points put into mastery and healing done by mastery while amount a spell heals for remains constant, nor is there said relationship between healing done by mastery and amount a spell heals for while points put into mastery remains constant. Now, one could make the argument that the mechanic of leaving orbs on the ground that the raid has to run through is the true cause of this problem and the scalar issue is only the proximate, but by oversimplifying the issue into "Lightwell 2.0," we put the devs in a position where they give us Detonate Chi, say "Now you don't have to wait for your raid to run over your orbs!" and call it a day.

Second, and more minor, is the issue of Fistweaving. Now, we all know that after 5.1, the devs desperately wanted to kill using Jab for Chi to fuel Uplift (although I would argue that a lot of its strength in 5.1 was due to fight design and that even just the ReM change in 5.2 would have severely reduced its power), but they did it in the least-foresighted manner possible, given the existence of the legendary meta. So when it came time to test 6.0, locking FWing away in a separate stance was an easy fix (from a programming standpoint) to what they viewed as a problem. What does feedback have to do with this? There are a lot of MWers out there who say things like, "I don't want to be in melee all the time" or "I'm a healer, I don't want to have to dps." While we can ask why they rolled this class in the first place, the fact remains that sentiments like that give the devs cover for their anti-FWing position.

TL;DR: while the devs have a vision of what they want the class to be, we the community share some of the blame for what MWers are looking like going into 6.0. A lack of unified, informed feedback has hurt our ability to get some of our goals met.

[Totaltotemic]

The problem with our mastery, mathematically, is that there does not exist a linear relationship between points put into mastery and healing done by mastery while amount a spell heals for remains constant, nor is there said relationship between healing done by mastery and amount a spell heals for while points put into mastery remains constant.

Completely false. There is most certainly a linear relationship between amount of mastery and healing done by Gift of the Serpent, it's just that the relationship is different for each and every spell. The most simple problem with Gift of the Serpent has always been a mathematical one, there exists a combination of GotS SP coefficient and proc chance scalar that would lead to 1% mastery being a 1% healing increase, they just refuse to do it.

There is no "community" fault here, there are bad designs and they are bad, period. No one is saying that putting fistweaving in its own stance is bad, but continuing with a 20 yard range restriction is certainly bad design and there is no argument against that. It doesn't matter if a bunch of people randomly show up and start saying 2+2=5, their arguments can be discarded on the basis of just being false.


Now would it be nice if MWs could scream bloody murder like Warriors and Warlocks do whenever things don't go there way? Sure. A few people being stupid and mixing up the message does hurt the ability to convey meaningful feedback, but things like Gift of the Serpent are simple, mathematical errors that a 10 year old with a calculator could fix. There is no community consensus or unified message when you're talking about math, there are only logical conclusions. To blame it on the "community" (which is such a ridiculously vague statement anyways, certainly no one here was arguing those things) is a cop out, ignoring math is just stupidity, not that the "message" hasn't gotten across.

[Deleted]

Started that post tonight. I've written 6 pages in Word just about the first two topics. Trying to finish it over the holiday weekend; expecting to work on it all day tomorrow. I hope I can because otherwise, between work and raids, I might not finish it until the end of the week. :-/

Unless i'm wrong i recall reading you was going to do some maths to try and make devs see the light?
I applaud your efforts, but i was wondering how you plan on using numbers that's not yet finalized?
Gogo!

[Deleted]

I don't know if someone mentioned it before, but in my opinion the only way to save the Talent is to make it cost mana instead of Chi, add a Cooldown and EITHER make it focus more on healing small groups in a distance (for example if you want to heal the melee and you are too far away to cast RJW/SCK, then you could use CE without competing for Chi with Uplift), OR even better, make it a spread out AoE spell (for example, CE could create a Healing Sphere at the feet of 6 injured group members within 30 yrds of the target (basically be like a Circle of Healing). Then, CE would make sense for MWs and would fill much needed holes in the MW kit. Right now as a Chi Spender, CE makes 0 sense.

you are kinda getting close to what chi burst is, or at least what it should be about. I actually like the idea of one aoe chi spender for stacking and one for spreading.

Anyway, even though I don't think I'll play monk in WoD on a mythic raiding lvl, I often find myself searching for a solution for this ReM/Uplift misery that solely defines MW healing. They will obviously never give up the synergy for reasons (?!) but maybe it's healing could scale up based on how many ReMs are active in the grp so it shouldn't be too powerful/weak when you try to make it work both in raids and dungeons. It would need to cap at 6 targets but the healing would be different if you actually healing 6 targets (so 6 ReM) or 18 (18 ReM). Maybe it's stupid but I don't think they can find a sweet spot for uplift where it's not too OP for 5men and worthwhile for 20 as well. Having said this, ReM needs to go on everybody. The problem of it being OP only depends on the numbers, but you won't ever be able to heal with this synergy effectively if it's randomly hitting ppl. I suppose you still need to pay some king of attention to it not falling off but that's all you can do anyway. As of raid cd and talents, I think they should just put CE to Xuen's place and make lvl 100 tier invoke celestials. Yulon/Chiji for some utility healing, Xuen for some dmg, Niuzao for some kind of aoe stagger raid cd. This is my 2 cents. I don't know why I have to summon Xuen for some mediocre eminence healing cd and it should be worthy next to torpedo and RJW. such a bad design, honestly.
Sorry for not being constructive here but everything is so absurdly clunky, seriously.

[Brilynn]

while the devs have a vision of what they want the class to be, we the community share some of the blame for what MWers are looking like going into 6.0. A lack of unified, informed feedback has hurt our ability to get some of our goals met.

We, as a community, have pointed out time and time again everything that is wrong with the MW toolkit. I personally am not a numbers kind of person, so I'll leave that up to my MW mates who know how to math. But as far as mechanics go, the way that the class feels and works as a whole, they've gotten 168 pages of community posts listing the things that are wrong with MW. They've gotten a million ideas of what's wrong and how to fix them appropriately. And yet, all they do is assure us that MW will be fine because, "tuning" and "we know it's hard to see, but we have a very specific idea of what we want MW to be."

Don't say the community is partially to blame when we've done nothing but tell them exactly what's wrong, why, and how to fix it.

[Mefistophelis]

Well, as we draw closer and closer to the release, it seems like they are either plannin on doing some stuff in one of the last patches... or don't have a clue on how to fix MW. Let's hope things will happen soon.

[Brilynn]

Well, as we draw closer and closer to the release, it seems like they are either plannin on doing some stuff in one of the last patches... or don't have a clue on how to fix MW. Let's hope things will happen soon.

Haha, they'll either find a way to fix this class or they'll have an influx of new Resto Druids.

[Nakanai]

Completely false. There is most certainly a linear relationship between amount of mastery and healing done by Gift of the Serpent, it's just that the relationship is different for each and every spell. The most simple problem with Gift of the Serpent has always been a mathematical one, there exists a combination of GotS SP coefficient and proc chance scalar that would lead to 1% mastery being a 1% healing increase, they just refuse to do it.

Since you didn't seem to understand what I said, let me explain further. Let y = raw healing done by mastery, x = raw healing done by any given spell, and m = % mastery the character has. As it currently stands, both on Live and in Beta, for every spec but MWer, y = mx or y = cmx, where c is the constant modifier for direct healing spells for disc or target's health % for shaman. For MWers, y = some piecewise defined function based on the spell being cast, whether that spell is overheal or does actual healing, and whether the orb in question is picked up, heals via explosion, or expires out of range of anyone. There are just a lot more variables in the MWer function and you wind up dealing with probabilities, averages and assumptions if you wanted to write it all down. I totally agree with you that the problem with GotS is a purely mathematical one, and that it is possible to put a scalar on everything such that 1% mastery = 1% healing done, but that is neither the case on Live nor on the Beta, and furthermore, you, Reglitch, and I are the only people arguing for it.

All other feedback regarding GotS has been either the completely false "it's fine - look at how much healing it does" or the misleading "people have to run over my orbs to make it work, which is bad." We have had variations on the latter, including "what if my orbs moved to a target/my statue/me when I cast RJW," "what if GotS were a passive and we got a new mastery," and so on. Well, the devs heard our feedback regarding GotS requiring people to run over them to work, and gave us Detonate Chi, which utterly failed to address the underlying, mathematical issues.

[Totaltotemic]

Well, if it makes you feel any better I completely write off anyone that even somewhat suggests that the MW mastery is fine as an idiot and completely disregard any and all past, present, and future opinions they hold. The only thing you ever need to figure out that it's broken mathematically is a log or even something like Skada or Recount to show your healing breakdown and that your 12% mastery often translates into 6% of your healing, which doesn't make sense for the amount of stats that costs.

GotS has a lot of mechanical issues such as your spell choice and whether people pick up the orbs and when, but until its scalars and SP coefficient match a 1% theoretical increase per 1% (in an ideal world where all orbs are immediately picked up by someone) it is quite impossible to have a discussion about what else really needs to change rather than just what would be convenient. The mechanical issues have literally never been the reason why mastery isn't a good stat, it's not a good stat because even under 100% ideal conditions it's still the lowest throughput increase of any other stat in the game. It's poorly designed, sure, but we can live with bad design. The stat cannot function without at least theoretical parity with other stats, and that has to come before any mechanical changes.

I don't know if you've seen it, but I posted all of the theoretical findings about it in the theorycrafting results thread almost two weeks ago. What anyone else says anywhere else is totally irrelevant to the fact that this is far from the first attempt to show them the mathematical problem with GotS even at an ideal level. The math is right there staring them in the face, if it doesn't get fixed then it is quite literally no one's fault but theirs.

Finally, to make sure we're all on the same page here, the reason why GotS needs to be comparable to other stats is because it heavily ties into healer balance. Everyone has a baseline of 16.25% mastery (base 10% + raid buff), if MW's is less than half as effective as other healer masteries, this means that MW must do at least 8% more healing from base spells than anyone else. This makes balance a nightmare to achieve because constantly keeping track of the fact that MW needs higher SP coefficients or a higher spec-wide healing modifier would get very tedious after a while.

[Mefistophelis]

Haha, they'll either find a way to fix this class or they'll have an influx of new Resto Druids.

I'll surprise you and say I'll probably be rerolling an Enhancement Shaman. I've been enjoying the playstyle and now with the changes it looks solid melee .

[Lovestar]

Guys, the Paladin forum figured it out.

The devs plan to boost MW representation by continuing to deny Holy Paladins an Atonement mechanic, thereby making people play Monks.

(lol)

[Mefistophelis]

Guys, the Paladin forum figured it out.

The devs plan to boost MW representation by continuing to deny Holy Paladins an Atonement mechanic, thereby making people play Monks.

(lol)

WAT! That makes 0 sense... why would you reroll a monk and get yourself probably benched on every mythic boss ?

[Brilynn]

Guys, the Paladin forum figured it out.

The devs plan to boost MW representation by continuing to deny Holy Paladins an Atonement mechanic, thereby making people play Monks.

(lol)

LOL I'll just sit and hold my breath for the day a Paladin is sat in progression in favor of a Fistweaver

[Geodew]

Why would you even bother, the immediately contactable developers of this game care nothing for anything that can't be shown with purely objective numbers. That's pretty clear when you understand that every single Mistweaver at a respectable level of play has made it clear the mechanics fucking suck. Imho they know it as well, short of saying "uh yeah sorry guys, we screwed up BIG - sorry about that" they can't really do anything lol.

Why? Because I don't really like Wildstar and none of my friends are playing it. :P

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...4589?page=5#93

X-post:

(Note: There is not much new in here theorycrafting-wise, just some new suggestions I thought of while I was writing it to toss ideas around for Blizz.)

Introduction
I’m writing this post to summarize the 150+ page thread on MMO-Champion regarding the Mistweaver changes for Beta WoD. (I can only imagine how long it would be if Mistweavers had a larger spec representation compared to other healers.) Our hope was that developers were reading that thread and keeping up with it, but lately, we have been concerned that this is not the case. The fact is that essentially all knowledgable Mistweaver discussion, theorycraft, and feedback is on MMOC. The community, in general, is extremely unsatisfied with the direction Blizzard has taken Mistweavers for 6.0. It was actually our understanding that Blizzard agreed with the community about most or all of the problems that Mistweaver had throughout MoP, and that the excuse for not changing the spec was that such drastic changes were normally reserved for an expansion, and that we would see changes that we wanted in 6.0. However, this seems to have not been true, which has caught us off guard and put many into a state of panic.

...These are the kinds of problems that you expect to see answers to when they start talking about class design for the next expansion. None of these were addressed. That is the reason for the doom and gloom, not some kind of pessimism or defeatist attitude, but that the time comes once every two years for major spec changes to happen, and that time has come and gone and none of these issues were even discussed, let alone fixed.

I am writing a post to summarize why the community is so unsatisfied with rigorous mathematical and/or logical arguments. That is, the healer tuning phase is starting, indicating that Blizzard is mostly happy with the mechanics of the healer specs, yet most of the feedback on this thread is indicating that the players are extremely dissatisfied with the MECHANICS of the spec. A few of them have tweeted Celestalon about this, but unfortunately, it seems he misunderstood this as a dissatisfaction with the POWER of the class, saying that tuning was still to come, which is not the argument we were trying to make. This will be mainly an argument against many of the MECHANICS of the class currently on Beta, though I will suggest some tuning changes along the way.

I apologize in advance for any usage of the words “our,” “we,” etc., as I know developers encourage players to speak for themselves, not for others, but as I’m summarizing a long thread that I’ve personally read, understood thoroughly, and heavily engaged in from start to finish, I feel like the word is pretty darn appropriate. I will be absolutely sure to clearly mark any arguments or suggestions that are my own, as opposed to a community consensus.

I would also like to stress the importance of this feedback. I naturally cannot attest to what players will actually do, but of what I personally consider our best and most knowledgeable theorycrafters along with MWers who are known to be in World Top ~20 guilds, approximately 2 of the 7 claim they are pretty sure they are staying with Mistweaver in 6.0. One has already unsubscribed for Wildstar (lol). One is saying with extreme certainty that he will switch to Druid in the absence of major changes. A poll suggests that 50-65% of MWers are considering re-rolling for WoD. There is a large concern about holding the raid back, REGARDLESS of the tuning to come (perhaps unless spells are tuned to obviously ridiculous levels, which we’re not advocating), based solely on the MECHANICS of the spec. Despite apparently being a bit late for mechanics changes, I urge developers to strongly consider an exception for Mistweaver.

I will begin with the two most important problems: Many of the theorycrafters, world-first-level guild players, and otherwise hardcore Mythic players believe that two main things will hold Mistweaver back from decent viability in 6.0, regardless of how fun it is mechanically or how spells are tuned (again in the absence of inanity). That’s not to say it won’t be viable in easier content, but rather that there would be very little reason to bring a Mistweaver to Mythic progression in hardcore raiding guilds, which naturally means that it would also be suboptimal in Normal and Heroic raiding, though perhaps still playable.

1) Utility and Revival
The first problem is that people feel that the spec is lacking in utility. The main advantage we had over a Resto Druid in 5.4 (which I’m addressing and the community compares us to because it’s a similar spec – HoTs and high throughput rather than absorbs) was the damage we brought, which has now been moved to a stance by itself (a big topic for later), leaving us with no significant advantages, only disadvantages. Allow me to explain.

First, Thunder Focus Tea (TFT) has been greatly nerfed in 6.0. In 5.4, it can increase our active Renewing Mists (ReMs) from 6 to a whopping 14 with the correct timing, though 14 targets lasts only for about 3 seconds. This is a +133% buff to ReM and Uplift healing for that brief moment, which is obviously massive. The average over its ~20 second duration was about +60%, still very high. Considering how much of our AoE healing came from those two spells, this was a powerful, meaningful burst tool. Now it allows ReM to jump 2 additional times, which does not even increase Uplift’s raw healing due to the hard cap of 6 players. (Some players were even just suggesting it be removed at that point due to incentive to just cast it on cooldown, like Priest’s Inner Focus, by the way.)

Second, Revival has always been problematic for utility, especially after the nerf. In 5.4, Revival was nerfed by 30% because it is instant-cast. From what we understand, the meaning is NOT that “it is instant cast, so you can keep healing before and after, which increases its relative power.” If it were, we would kindly point to Healing Tide Totem, which heals for roughly twice as much, depending on raid health. It’s not even “it is instant cast, so you can use it while the raid is moving and needs a cooldown.” If it were, we would again point to HTT, and also point to Symbiosis Spiritwalker’s Grace Tranquility (or Aspect of the Fox Tranq in 6.0). No, as we understand it, the problem lies in the fact that so much healing up front has life-saving power that can save someone from 5% to 40% (or 5% to 75% on a crit, which are very often in 5.4), roughly. The problem is that this alone doesn’t justify its spot as a “raid healing cooldown,” like HTT, Tranq, Divine Hymn, or PW:B. Allow me to elaborate.

(Note: Source for 5.4 raid cooldowns: http://healiocentric.wordpress.com/2...owns-overview/ )

Revival’s instant-cast nature has always been both a gift and a curse. The problem with all the healing being up-front means there is a huge potential for lots of overheal, effectively making it even weaker. It is frequent that we see 50%+ overheal Revivals in 5.4, but that’s partially due to absorbs and fight mechanics. That aside, the larger problem is that Revival’s instant healing makes it very difficult to use for most burst healing phases.

I’d say there are two core types of burst aoe healing: (a) strong aoe ticking damage that significantly out-paces comfortable healing levels intended to kill the raid if healers don’t keep up with cooldowns (examples: Wind Lord’s Rain of Blades, Megaera’s Rampage, Iron Qon’s Fist Smash, Paragons’ Firey Edge, Garrosh’s Whirling Corruption), and (b) sudden large aoe hits of damage followed and/or preceded by much lighter aoe damage intended to kill people who aren’t healed up fast enough or weren’t close enough to topped off when it began (examples: Garalon’s Crush, Horridon’s Dire Call, Tortos’ Quake Stomp, Dark Shaman’s Falling Ash, Nazgrim’s War Song). Both of these create short-duration situations where healers will potentially lose players in the absence of cooldowns. As I was saying about Revival, it’s great for type (b) mechanics. You can use Revival before or after the burst, depending on how injured people are immediately before and the mechanic in question, and they’re much more likely to live through the damage, especially for no damage->burst->light damage with Revival after the burst. However, Revival is poop for type (a) mechanics. Often, the healers do not allow the raid to get low enough that Revival’s full healing can be made use of (why would they, when that’s inherently more dangerous?), and it just ends up as mostly overheal. In fact, if the MW waits for people to get low before using Revival, assuming the mechanic hits hard enough that this even happens, sometimes people who are lower on health die before the Revival gets off, which is a timing problem that other cooldowns don’t concern themselves with. More importantly, the other major cooldowns I mentioned are good at healing both types of mechanics. They’re obviously fine for type (a) because they help keep the raid topped off or move the raid towards being topped off. As for type (b), using a Tranq or HTT just before or after the burst (depending on if there is damage prior to it) works almost as well as Revival at keeping people alive. Boss encounter developers would never design a burst mechanic where Revival was absolutely required; therefore, such is the natural result.

Even raid leaders who don’t play a Mistweaver or even a healer can see this. In Mythic raid guilds, Revival is almost always relegated to “just use it if we mess up and start dying” because it doesn’t really help very much when used during a burst mechanic. This trivial raid utility gain does not justify a Mistweaver’s raid spot, especially when another cooldown could do the same thing almost as well, OR be used for a type (a) OR type (b) mechanic to keep the raid alive.

It’s not just our raid AoE cooldown that’s the worst of all the healers’, either. Life Cocoon is also the worst tank cooldown, in the general opinion of the community. One of these facts would be less horrid if they weren’t both true simultaneously. A large part of the problem is that the bonus to HoT healing only lasts so long as the absorb shield lasts. In MoP 25-Heroic progression, this has typically been 1-1.5 boss swings, so the shield lasts about 1.5-3 seconds. We believe that this is probably unintentionally short in practice, which makes Life Cocoon too weak.

[If MW no longer provides damage, and if] MWs and Druids/Shamans provide equal throughput over time, but Druids can use Incarnation and Shamans can use Ascendance to spike healing when needed, and also Tranquility and Healing Tide Totem are both better than Revival, and Ironbark/Spirit Link Totem are both much better than Life Cocoon, what makes MW good?

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Remove TFT or buff it slightly. Remember to reconsider it if ReM is buffed immensely (on the order of +100%), since its power depends on ReM’s power.
(II) Increase MW’s utility through a combination of any of the following. (NOT suggesting ALL of these changes be made simultaneously, of course!)

-Make a glyph that makes Revival a HoT for more total healing, like HTT in HoT form. This is the most popular idea.

-Don’t want to make Fistweaving mandatory, right? Try a massive buff to Crackling Jade Lightning (CJL) in Serpent Stance, then we bring DPS again. NOTE: This is my own idea, and I have not run it by the community. This alone is unlikely to address the utility problem entirely, since the damage would obviously have to be less than that of a DPS spec, which means there would need to be a large amount of downtime for the DPS gain of a MW to be significant.

-Increase Revival’s healing to a more reasonable level; “it is instant” does not justify Tranq/DH/HTT being 80-100% stronger. Stronger, yes, we admit that immediately ourselves, but not by that much. Note that, even in the 6.0 environment where players have more max HP, there was no strong dissent regarding the fact that this alone is unlikely to address the utility problem entirely due to overheal occurring due to the instant nature. In other words, the problem can’t be fixed with just “make it heal more” because by the time you make it heal a comparable amount to Tranq/HTT (say 70-85%) we’re potentially overhealing by the truckload.

-Add a strong HoT to Revival in addition to its instant healing lasting on the order of 4-10 seconds, possibly nerf instant component in return.

-Increase the usefulness of Life Cocoon in a 20-Mythic raid: make the +50% HoT healing buff last the full duration or a set duration like 6 seconds (recommended), damage reduction buff, and/or more absorption.

2) RNG healing and Uplift hard cap
The second of the two most important problems is the uncontrollability of our healing, in which RNG plays a large, but not exclusive, role. It’s clear from Malkorok logs (which are essentially a raw healing measurement if you pad meters) that MW’s raw healing can be insane (in particular when we burn all our mana on Rushing Jade Wind (RJW)), yet we’re at the bottom of meters on every other fight (and yes, I’ll be the first to tell you that meters are far from the whole story for healing, but bear with me, here). Why is that, you might ask? It’s not just that we don’t spam RJW on other fights. In fact, we pretty much do on Heroic Thok. The main problem is the uncontrollability of our healing. We do huge amounts of overhealing, with the main culprit being ReM on the wrong players (i.e. 6 injured players and only 3 with ReM on them).

This is a particularly pesky problem in 25-man, but don’t get me wrong; 10-man MWs complain, as well. RJW is strong enough that this has become less of a problem for stack fights (though we’re still at the bottom for those fights, as I said), but this is especially awful for spread fights. I still remember that Affiniti <Blood Legion> said a long time ago that Klaxxi was the only fight that he swapped to his Druid alt for because MW was just a liability if ReM was on the wrong players for a Firey Edge (that and MW’s damage wasn’t really helping matters, unlike the other fights he has this problem on). In other words, the bottom line is that other healers have heals which heal their target (rejuv) or players who are injured at the time of cast (Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, Circle of Healing, Chain Heal, Atonement). Uplift is neither, and as a result, can do literally zero effective healing at times. In fact, the only important spell that doesn’t behave that way in both 5.4 and 6.0 is Prayer of Healing, which I’d like to talk about for a moment.

I mained a Priest in Cataclysm before switching to my Monk for MoP. I never minded having to swap to single-target heals when only 2 people or so were injured in a raid group. The first reason for that was that I healed 10-man back then. The second reason, though, was that both Priest specs had powerful single-target and aoe tools for when PoH was inviable, especially Disc – PW:S blankets, Penance, Holy Fire, and Inner Focus Greater Heals; even Smite was decent because it granted Evangelism. Holy Priest could at least Renew and CoH. Both had Prayer of Mending. Neither had situations where PoH was making up an enormous chunk of their healing (unlike some fights where we could see ReM & Uplift being 50-60% of our healing before 5.4). I didn’t mind it because I had decent options even when the dice didn’t favor me.

I’ve never felt that way about Mistweaver. Enveloping Mist is strong compared to 5.4 SooM, but it has always been lots of overheal in MoP, and gimps your AoE since you just spent most or all of your chi, and on a less-powerful spell compared to a 6-person Uplift. Usually, it hardly did anything, too. In fact, you may as well Uplift because for how much overhealing Enveloping Mist will do, Uplift will do the same healing for only 2 chi (talking about MoP still). Priests in Cata, on the other hand, could swap right back to PoH the moment it becomes optimal without losing anything. In fact, they may have even gained Evangelism stacks, which served as a consolation prize for not being able to use PoH.

Disclaimer: Some of my info about Cata Priest might be off; I didn’t do theorycraft back then. The point was how the playstyle felt, though!

Ultimately, the main problem with the ReM-Uplift interaction is that the difference between your minimum healing, average healing, and maximum healing are all way too large. In other words, we’re too RNG. So what, you might say? Well, first, healers count on being RELIABLE, not good on average. Second, that makes it difficult to balance. Very difficult. That means that our average healing needs to be decent without our maximum healing being godly. And coming back to the meters on Malkorok versus any other 5.4 boss, it’s clear that our maximum healing is godly with our average healing being quite underpowered, simultaneously, which suggests that the class mechanics need to change dramatically. After all, we’re the only healer who can do literally zero healing with our bread-and-butter AoE spells during something like Firey Edge. If our minimum healing is sometimes literally zero, then of course our average healing will be driven very low compared to our maximum healing. This extreme RNG unreliability is part of what hurts MW’s Mythic viability so badly. (Note: this is why MW used to do so well in the constant light AoE fights, before absorbs ate it all in 5.4 (very little ReM/Uplift overheal because the damage was raid-wide greatly increasing the chance for ReM targets to be injured): Garalon, Tsulong, Heroic Tortos (though meters inflated), Norushen. Unfortunately, these fights are a small minority. Yes, I’m saying that fight design is partly at fault for this.)

For an example, suppose half the players in a 20-man raid are injured and that ReM is on 6 players (worst case scenario for multistrike procs and no TFT).
Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, Chain Heal, Wild Growth, Rejuv, Circle of Healing:
-100% chance to do 100% healing.
Prayer of Healing (select any group with largest number of injured players):
-6.5% chance to hit 5 injured targets for 100% healing
-100% chance to hit at least 3 injured targets for 60%+ healing
=> High minimum healing, PoH is efficient and decent even in most unlucky scenario
Uplift:
-0.5% chance to hit 6 injured targets for 100% healing
-7.0% chance to hit 5-6 injured targets (6.5% chance for 5)
-31.4% chance to hit 4-6 injured targets (24.4% chance for 4)
-68.5% chance to hit 3-6 injured targets (37.2% chance for 3)
-93.0% chance to hit 2-6 injured targets (24.4% chance for 2)
-99.5% chance to hit 1-6 injured targets (6.5% chance for 1)
-0.5% chance to hit 0 injured targets for 0% healing
=> Low minimum healing, Uplift is very often extremely weak and inefficient
=> 70% chance that Uplift is less chi-efficient than EM (raw healing only (which favors Uplift!), using recent EM nerf/Uplift buff numbers)
=> Only 7% chance that Uplift is significantly more chi-efficient than EM (raw healing only (which favors Uplift!), using recent EM nerf/Uplift buff numbers)
=> Keep in mind that EM overheals a lot in raids in 5.4, and the new model will only hurt that more since, although max health has been increased, the target we EM is still receiving random heals*. Thus, we have no good spells to use for spread aoe healing, and for stack healing, we have no good way to spend the chi generated from SCK/RJW. This puts our minimum throughput due to RNG and luck at an extreme low.
* “Proof:” Mythic healing composition, EM main chi spender, 44% overheal (Note that during this build, Breath of the Serpent was not splitting as intended, and the Uplift buff/EM nerf had not gone through, so EM is the go-to chi spender for AoE): http://i.imgur.com/5wU76tb.png

One of the recent changes on beta is the 6-person cap to Uplift. The way it was phrased, it sounded like the change was just intended as a common-sense change to make Uplift function more like other AoE heals. However, that’s a bit confusing since Uplift is already capped by the number of ReMs we have out, though the maximum has obviously changed with the Multistrike ReM thing, so it is probably warranted. In any case, it has the (perhaps intended?) side-effect of capping our maximum healing that I was talking about, even with multistrike ReMs and TFT. However, it’s not like we’re starting the first tier with multistrike on the order of 70-100%. We can still only get out 6 ReMs most of the time. This means that our minimum healing scenarios will still be low because we will frequently have only 6 ReMs which will frequently be on uninjured targets. This means that our minimum, average, and maximum healing will still be too far apart, making us unreliable as a healer and difficult to balance.

Another RNG healing problem complaint comes from the ReM multistrike procs themselves. This seemed to be an unpopular change, especially prior to the 6-person Uplift cap. It makes our healing even more RNG than it already is, and was thus very unwelcome. If its intent along with the 6-person Uplift cap was to make it easier to get ReM on 6 injured players, such a mechanic should be baked in directly, not based on RNG, and/or made less drastic of a difference based on single dice rolls.

On a tuning note, currently ReM does too much overheal and not enough raw healing for the MS proc to be a strong spellcast. In 5.4, casting ReM was crucial because each ReM target meant another Uplift target for ~20 seconds. Now, with the cap, all you need are six. If you have six injured targets with ReM already, you may not even feel ReM is worth casting except to pre-HoT, even if you proc the extra MS ReM cast, because ReM isn’t really worth casting on its own merit without increasing Uplift healing. If saving chi for Chi Explosion were better than Uplift for every situation (not saying it is, but this is a future topic and has previously been true on Beta), then ReM might not be worth casting at all.

As an aside, some MWs were concerned that Uplift’s healing splitting among all uninjured ReM targets may have the unintended side effect of sometimes punishing additional ReM casts from multistrike procs (though almost surely not enough that we would hold ReM casts just because of this, but still). For example, if there is a player at 95% health with ReM on them who only has ReM on them due to a Multistrike ReM proc earlier, and all our other ReM targets are much lower on HP, say 30%, then Uplift splits some healing to the player at 95%. Since it’s splitting, each player is healed for less. Suppose the 95% player is healed for 4% to 99%. Then, a shaman’s Chain Heal randomly heals the same player for 6%, up to 100% with 5% overheal. Essentially, that 4% Uplift healing is wasted, since the Shaman would have healed the player to 100% anyway, where it would not have been wasted if we had not used the multistrike ReM proc. They suggested that Uplift not split for this reason. An alternative to cap our maximum healing will be listed below.

Pool of Mists was also received poorly. We deserve BASELINE control over our healing that we shouldn’t have to talent into, just like other healers. Not to mention that it lowers the skill cap of the spec. Seeing 98% ReM usage is something you can pride yourself on in 5.4. I was personally unhappy to see a talent make a move towards removing that.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Lessen the effect of ReM Multistrike procs (e.g. ReM jumps 1 extra time instead of giving another full cast) or remove them completely
(II) Buff ReM enough to make it worth casting on its own merits, not those of Uplift, either by increasing its healing or lowering its mana cost
(III) Make changes to decrease the large deltas between our minimum, mean, and maximum AoE healing, then nerf our overall healing to bring it in line with other healers if necessary (these are obvious large buffs to average healing if not maximum). It seems Blizzard likes the spec identity of the ReM-Uplift interaction. Thus, these ideas arose:
-Make Uplift heal 6 random injured raid members, preferring those with ReM on them.
-Make Uplift heal 6 random injured raid members, healing x% more to any with ReM on them.
-Decrease the Uplift cap from 6 to 3 or 4 and increase its healing proportionally so we need fewer injured ReM targets to do maximum healing (maybe cap splitting to healing 6 targets as well? Fewer combat log entries; eliminates issue in final paragraph above). This is my personal idea that I have not run by the community.
-Make ReM jump 2 more times so that it’s much more likely that 6 Uplift targets are available. This is my personal idea that I have not run by the community.
-Give MW a new spell that reshuffles ReMs onto injured raid members for a GCD and moderate mana cost. This is a popular idea.
-Or honestly just make it heal 6 random injured raid members like a normal AoE. No one seems to give a crap about the spec identity; we just want to be useful!


The above two points (labeled 1 and 2) should be Blizzard’s top two priorities for fixing Mistweaver. However, there are a lot of other mechanical problems which limit Mistweaver’s usefulness to a lesser extent (but enough to warrant discussion), or simply make the spec less fun to play. (Fun can be a bit subjective, but again, summarizing the opinions of the people posting to MMOC.)

3) 1.5sec GCD and the value of Haste
The 1.5s GCD affected by Haste was intended to make us value Haste more, albeit at the expense of some of the fun, fast-paced MW gameplay that we’re used to with the 1s GCD. However, at the same time, the 50% Haste bonus to Serpent Stance was removed, which affected SCK, RJW, ReM, and EM. It seems Blizzard just assumed that everything would be fine, since we worked like other healers, now. However, in the interest of decreasing stat deltas, which was one of Blizzard’s stated goals for Warlords, I’d like to point out that it’s looking like Haste is actually even less valuable than before. In other words, this change which made the spec less fun did not even address the problem it was meant to fix!

X% Haste translates to X% additional GCDs. However, Haste obviously does not give us more mana with which to cast additional spells in those additional GCDs. Therefore, the only thing we could really do with those GCDs would be to cast more Soothing Mist (SooM) instead of Surging Mists elsewhere. Considering that SooM is a low-throughput spell compared to essentially everything else except ReM and Expel, it becomes clear that 1% additional GCDs of SooM are not going to be even close to +1% additional healing from Crit or Multistrike to all spells, not to mention the other benefits of those two stats. We expect the difference to be large enough that the lesser rating required for 1% Haste will not make up for it at all. Previously, due to the 50% stance buff, it required much, much less rating to get a 1% Haste bonus to SCK, RJW, ReM, and EM compared to 1% crit for all healing, such that Haste was almost as good as Crit in 5.4. SCK, RJW, ReM, and EM were also stronger than SooM is on Beta, obviously.

The math for this is not as rigorous as I would like to present, but we’re running short on time and mythic beta raid logs for this post to be that thorough. Regardless, I think I’ve illustrated the problem clearly enough.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Restore 50% stance buff and revert 1.5s GCD change
(II) OR Give a lesser stance buff, perhaps 20-30% (less popular option)

4) Gift of the Serpent, Detonate, and the value of Mastery
GotS was the one mechanic that we were confident would be removed in 6.0. Imagine our surprise when Celestalon posted new GotS scalars. The vast majority of players strongly dislike this class mechanic, calling it “Lightwell 2.0.” By that, it is meant that players must go out of their way to heal themselves with something that cannot be assigned to a keybind. Not only that, but this heal has a physical place in the world that must be located to receive the heal. Not only that and that, but GotS requires you to physically move for a DPS/HPS loss in order to get the heal (even melee have to move out of melee range). The only class that this excepts in 6.0 is some Hunter specs. In fact, Mistweavers recommend to their allies to ignore the spheres because grabbing them is a huge DPS loss relative to the HPS gain. Furthermore, this effect serves to increase Mistweaver’s healing uncontrollability (see point #2). The effect being tied to Mastery Rating is also unhelpful because there is no situation where we would want so much of our healing to be uncontrollable that we would start stacking lots of Mastery unless the tuning was inane (which would also not be fun for our main purpose to be a GotS generator).

Not only do we hate the mechanic, but it has a strong history of being very weak. Theorycrafting log analysis tools showed that our pickup rate in ToT was only about 35%, with about 0.3% of Mastery healing coming from detonated spheres. Unfortunately, this tool was never updated for 5.4, but we expect the results are similar.

As for the proc scalars, we can barely even make sense of their design, and seem to just be tuned towards generating a steady stream of spheres, rather than them scaling with output. One can see from this chart (credit: TotalTotemic) that the combination of GotS’s spellpower coefficient and the proc coefficients do not lead GotS to being powerful, even with a 100% pickup rate:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...0r8/edit#gid=0

Detonate Chi and a range of 12 yards was apparently intended to fix Mastery, but that was far from accomplishing the job. Detonate Chi is a poorly designed spell, regardless of the fact that its mana cost was nerfed, because the Mistweaver has no practical way to know how much healing the spheres will do. It is essentially unanimous that hitting the button is a wild guess at best. There is no interesting or compelling decision to make here.

Furthermore, beta test logs show that, while the detonate range buff has increased the number of detonate heals, Blizzard did a buff-nerf just as they did with Haste, removing the Glyph of Enduring Healing Sphere, thus causing more GotS spheres to detonate to no effect. As a result, Mastery healing is still very low. Below is a link to the only Mythic healing composition we have. Note that Mastery is at 10% with 0 rating, yet, Talimonk still only had <6% of total healing from absorbs, likely with around 13% Mastery. Adjusting for the fact that it takes less Mastery per % than Crit, it’s still measuring up to be about Mastery is 55% as strong as Crit, and that’s not even including the bonus Mana Tea stacks. This excludes the incoming 25% spellpower buff to GotS. Ackowledging that some of that buff would go into overheal, yet assuming mathematically that it won’t, that bumps it to still only 70% of Crit’s raw healing value.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Detach Mastery from GotS, give us new Mastery, make GotS passive ~5-10% or remove it
(II) At the very least buff Mastery to be competitive, preferably without increasing the amount of our total healing coming from uncontrollable sources (This sounds impossible without changing Mastery entirely, though, but maybe Blizzard will have some clever ideas)
(III) If you’re dead set on the Mastery, give us ways to control it until we actually want the stat – either increase Detonate range (even if only with the spell?) to 30 or 40 yards, or maybe scrap it and give us a spell that moves the orbs towards us, towards our statue, or towards the nearest injured player. (Really, as far as gameplay reasons go, why is the detonate range even short at all in the first place??)

5) Crane Stance useless or nearly useless in Mythic
Blizzard has said repeatedly that they don’t want players to have to be in melee to be optimal as a Mistweaver. However, the spec was sold as a melee healer. By definition, if we don’t need to be in melee to be optimal, then Crane Stance is intended to be useless in Mythic, and we are not a melee healer. Blizzard needs to decide what role they envision for Mistweaver and stick with it instead of upsetting players who rolled that spec to play with that mechanic. There are many players who rolled Mistweaver because Fistweaving was an important part of the spec, and they will not be content with Crane Stance being a toy for farm content, LFR, and dungeons.

It is not unanimous, but a majority of Mistweavers would prefer that Crane Stance be sometimes optimal in Mythic raiding. Currently, it is not seeing any use at all. Even with the recent healing buff, it just does not compete with Serpent Stance for healing (obviously). Whenever the healing is low enough that a Mistweaver might consider swapping to Crane Stance and the damage is simultaneously tight, so long as it’s a 50-50 heal-damage stance, there’s little reason that the raid will not just, in practice, replace that Mistweaver with a DPS that has more utility, which comes back to Problem #1, and ask their healers and fire-standers to step it up a bit. That is what we’re seeing in Mythic testing and world-first-material guilds.

This is a good time to mention that the MW mechanics of 5.0-5.1 are almost all players’ favorite incarnation of Mistweaver (for those who were around to play it), by FAR. The maintenance buffs, hitting cooldowns ASAP, and staying intelligently close to melee was what made the spec fun for a lot of players (no, not the fact that it was OP). It’s very unfortunate for these players that such an incarnation must die simply because someone wants to roll a melee healer and then not melee. Some feel “it’s like rolling Disc and saying ‘but I don’t want to use absorbs, can I still play optimally?’” That’s just not how Disc is designed, and many feel MW should go back to its 5.0/5.1 roots as a melee healer. It’s not that we want to do tons of damage, either. The damage could be trivial; the point is just the maintenance of Tiger Power and Serpent’s Zeal and melee-range instant-casts, as opposed to what many are calling a “channel bot” due to excessive time spent channeling SCK and especially SooM with nothing else to do. I personally don’t mind the channeling, but no one seems to agree with me there :P

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Fix #1, and it will help this a fair bit
(II) Consider changing Mistweaver core philosophy and design, and make Crane Stance useful for Mythic progression
(III) Consider returning to a 5.0/5.1 rotation. It may have been an accident, but it ended up being way more fun than the intended rotation anyway.

6) Constantly break and re-start SooM on beta
Interestingly, though some label the spec as a “channel bot,” there are also simultaneous complaints from the same players that the spec feels very awkward because we’re constantly breaking and re-starting Soothing Mist. This is probably due to the 1.5s GCD change making SooM a lower percentage of our GCDs, so we’re barely channeling it before we need to break it again. This has been an increasing complaint since the ReM Multistrike proc was added.

Currently, TFT does not break SooM, which makes sense, since you can use it to power a Surging Mist. Many feel that, similarly, Chi Brew should not break SooM since you can use it to power an Enveloping Mist.

Some were also suggesting that ReM and EH not break SooM channels. We would have a better idea of whether or not this was really necessary after a tier or so. There was some hesitation in the community about this one, though it seemed to be a minority.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Make Chi Brew not break SooM channel
(II) Consider perhaps making ReM and/or EH not breaking SooM channel (I’m personally not so sure about this one; I think it may be a bit rash, but again, channeling never bothered me personally that much)

7) Mana Tea “crits” make it scale nonlinearly throughout the expansion
In short, the problem is a feedback loop in the spec mechanics:
(a) More Spirit -> Mana -> More Chi generators -> More Chi spenders -> More Mana Tea -> More Crit Mana Tea -> Even more Mana -> etc.
(b) More Crit -> More Crit Mana Tea -> More Mana -> More Chi generators -> More Chi spenders -> More Mana Tea -> More Crit Mana Tea -> etc.

A mathematically rigorous proof of the problem can be found here, by yours truly, in reply to a suggestion that Mana Tea scale with Spirit instead of Crit, showing that it should probably scale with NEITHER: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post27411635

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Remove Crit scaling with Mana Tea and do not replace it with any other stat. Obviously, this will make MS strictly better than Crit. If this accompanies the suggested MS ReM nerf, then MS should not get too far ahead of Crit as a result. Otherwise, MS may need to be brought down somehow.


The rest of the post is mostly about talents and their relative tunings on their tier.

8) Xuen is weak for large raids
For 20-30man raids, Chi Torpedo and Rushing Jade Wind become very strong because we can reliably get near-full healing from them. Noting that, for single-target Xuen, Xuen is barely more HPS than just using RJW while he’s alive, yet only has 25% uptime.

Xuen actually becomes very strong and competitive in 10-man because one cannot reliably get full healing from CT/RJW, and the damage that Xuen puts out makes a bigger dent in kill times.

However, we feel that the game should be tuned around 20M whenever there is such a conflict. Provided that Blizzard agrees and wants Xuen to be useful in 20M, see the below suggestion.

Unrelatedly, melee is only about 10% of Xuen’s single-target damage, making Xuen scale ridiculously for add packs or dungeon trash. Consider moving some of his damage from his AoE radiation to his melee attacks. This will make the ability easier to balance because he won’t scale so fast.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Buff Xuen for single-target.
(II) Nerf Xuen for very large target counts. (My personal take.)

9) Chi Burst > Chi Wave > Zen Sphere for 20M (and Zen Sphere nearly useless for all raid sizes)
I almost want to say that Chi Burst is too strong for being free (10% of our healing from a 30s cd), but it’s currently a fun, compelling 30-second cooldown. It’s strong, but I don’t think it’s THAT strong. With a 30-second cd, it SHOULD be somewhat strong. I don’t think that nerfing it would be a good idea. Instead, CW and ZS should be brought up to the level of CB.

The only real subtlety of this problem #9 is that (a) large raids make it easier to get full healing from Chi Burst, thus 10H raiders usually use CW in 5.4, and (b) neither makes hardly any use of Zen Sphere because it does too much overheal; too much of its budget is in the explosion which frequently doesn’t hit enough players, and the HoT is stuck on one player which does a fair amount of overheal, too. In the entire expansion, Thok was the only fight ZS saw any use on, AFAIK. Even then, it was about 50/50 for CB vs ZS as to players’ preferences.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Redesign Zen Sphere to not do so much overheal, then bring it in line with CB
(II) Buff CW to be competitive with CB in 20M

10) Chi Brew still mandatory even with mana tea nerf
Chi Brew is king because it gives highly controlled burst, essentially a small cooldown, while also providing almost as much total chi as other options in the tier. You could remove both stacks of Tea and it would still be king, just as it was before you added them.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Make Chi Brew no longer give any stacks of Mana Tea
(II) Buff Power Strikes and Ascension slightly (Yes, again. They were far behind.)

11) Celerity mandatory with Chi Torpedo
This has always been the case. It reduces the cooldown of Roll, which now provides healing when you take CT.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Consider increasing CT’s healing by 25% when talented into Momentum or Tiger’s Lust. Note that CT should provide less total healing with those two options, since it takes fewer GCDs to put out that healing (hence why I didn’t suggest 33%).
(II) A more intuitive option might be to decrease its healing by 20% when talented into Celerity.

12) Breath of the Serpent is redundant (PBAOE) and extremely weak
People are complaining about BotS. Two things: (a) we already have lots of PBAoE heals – why is Blizzard giving us another, and (b) if we’re going to have a sustained cooldown, we’d rather just have it baked into Revival (all comes back to those first two points, doesn’t it?). Further, (c) Xuen is already supposed to be our talented long-cooldown. Do we really need another?

Even if Blizzard decides to keep it, you should at least not make it useless. I know you haven’t really gotten to all the tuning, but for the record, it’s tuned extremely low right now. Now that it is correctly splitting, as developers have said it is intended to do, it does the total healing of one ReM cast over 10 seconds, yet on a 90 second cooldown. It’s pathetic.

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
(I) Replace BotS with a new talent; people only like it because it’s pretty
(II) If you must keep it, at least don’t make it worthless. Needs tuning badly.
(III) We don’t recommend you make it split, either. It then becomes very difficult to tune – the tuning areas of “turn your tank into a god for 10 seconds (too high)” and “heals a stacked 20-man raid for a pittance (too low)” overlap thoroughly.

13) Chi Explosion is bad design because it competes with EM and Uplift
CE competes with EM and Uplift and is thus either worthless or nearly completely replaces one, the other, or both, depending on relative tuning. I’ll explain.

At low Chi (1-2), depending on tuning:
Case 1: CE is about as chi efficient as EM or more
>CE replaces EM entirely at low Chi because 67% of the healing is instant, thus less overheal. EM is only used for single-target at 3-4 chi, and only because we have to.

Case 2: CE is less chi efficient than EM
>CE is useless for single-target, better to surging into EM.

At high Chi (3-4), depending on tuning:
Case 1: CE is about as chi efficient as Uplift on 4-5 targets or more efficient
>CE replaces Uplift almost entirely; situations where they do overhealing are the same situations (uneven raid damage)

Case 2: CE is less efficient than Uplift on 4-5 targets
>CE is nearly useless for AoE, better to use Uplift or even EM or pool Chi almost all the time; situations where they do overhealing are the same situations (uneven raid damage)

In other words, it is again a mechanics issue, not a tuning issue. The core problem here is that, unlike Crane Stance, WW, and BrM, Chi Explosion for Serpent Stance is NOT meant to replace a certain ability and be strictly better than it. If this is really the route Blizzard wants to take this ability, it needs to do something that EM and Uplift cannot do, and vice versa.

Furthermore, the chi efficiency varies wildly by chi count. Using this ability with 1 or 3 chi is nonsensical because 2 and 4 are significantly stronger than the level previous, and do the same type of healing. Players are calling it a “noob trap.” If we shouldn’t be ever using the ability with that much chi, why is it even castable at that chi level?

As a result of the above, we suggest the following changes:
Well, there are really lots of ways Blizzard could take the ability.
I personally suggest the following (this is my own idea that I have not previously run by the community):
1-2 chi: Places a HoT on the target that heals for <Enveloping Mist Tick Power> every 1s for <2s per chi spent>. This makes it a shorter duration EM that we can use to do less overheal. Should be exactly as chi efficient as EM itself. Be sure to make GotS procs equal.
3-4 chi: (a) If you decide to not make changes to Uplift controllability (plz no), make CE into something that functions more like a normal AoE, but for less raw healing: Heals 5 random injured players for <Uplift Healing/2 * chi spent>. This puts a floor on our minimum AoE healing, but Uplift is still more powerful for zero overheal situations. Thus, both spells get used.
3-4 chi: (b) If you decide to make changes to fix Uplift controllability, make CE do a different type of AoE healing that is likely to have clearly different and easy to see overheal amounts, using (a) as an example. An AoE HoT or Earth Shield mechanic might not be a bad idea. It might at least give us something to do at 4 chi with a topped raid and chi generators ready.

Conclusion
Thanks for reading this long post. I put a lot of effort into it, so I hope it helps show where the community is coming from and why so many are in a “sky-is-falling” panic; there are so many problems with our spec. Some of them are quite major, and some of them have been around since 5.0, which is frankly inexcusable (sorry). Please consider these points carefully, and note that I HAVE LEFT OUT some parts of the arguments for brevity (lol). Please do not dismiss any point in entirety just because you raise a counter-point. I may just have not addressed the counter-point, so that I can continue to call this a “summary.” Thanks again.

P.S. I realize I forgot to include one brief topic: SCK/RJW seems a bit ridiculously strong for stack fights, doing like 25-30% of our total healing. Seems a bit backwards for our chi generators to do more healing than our chi spenders, don't you think? Might want to look into that.