[GUIDE] Mistweavers of Draenor: PvE Healing in [6.2]

[Supliftz]

idk maybe i just think healer dps can be relevant because I did 10 man for so long.

the biggest step to making it relevant is removing crane though :P

[Deleted]

idk maybe i just think healer dps can be relevant because I did 10 man for so long.

the biggest step to making it relevant is removing crane though :P

I hated this back in the day, just because your contribution is a proportionally smaller amount doesn't mean it's any less important. The easy way to ask yourself if it's worth it is to ask if a DPS would opt for that damage increase given the chance. If the answer is yes and you can do it without risking lives, you should do it.

[Geodew]

I hated this back in the day, just because your contribution is a proportionally smaller amount doesn't mean it's any less important. The easy way to ask yourself if it's worth it is to ask if a DPS would opt for that damage increase given the chance. If the answer is yes and you can do it without risking lives, you should do it.

When is it not a risk to go Crane? If you have the mana to support Serpent, Serpent is almost always safer by some amount, even if it's a small amount, so you have to weigh the pros and cons, and unlike for dps specs, there's a drawback to dealing more damage, but the pro is just "the fight is 5 seconds shorter". Why risk lives for that? IMHO 30k dps is underpowered when dps are doing 100-120k, and it's been like that the whole expansion, like when I FW'd for 12k on Butcher with everyone else doing 30-40k. It's not just legendary rings.

[Totaltotemic]

When is it not a risk to go Crane? If you have the mana to support Serpent, Serpent is almost always safer by some amount, even if it's a small amount, so you have to weigh the pros and cons, and unlike for dps specs, there's a drawback to dealing more damage, but the pro is just "the fight is 5 seconds shorter". Why risk lives for that? IMHO 30k dps is underpowered when dps are doing 100-120k, and it's been like that the whole expansion, like when I FW'd for 12k on Butcher with everyone else doing 30-40k. It's not just legendary rings.

There are just some points in some fights where if you actually need all of your healers healing, either your raid is terrible or your healers are terrible. Fel Lord is analogous to Butcher in that for the first 70% (in armed phases) there's virtually no raid damage unless someone does something dumb and blows up a Befouled in the wrong spot or Wakes don't get taken care of properly. I typically Crane there because there's no point to healing at all when that part could be 1 or 2 healed. It's not really doing much, but in some 60ish progression pulls and every farm pull/kill afterward no one ever died due to lack of healing in those parts. I don't mean that as an exaggeration, I mean literally no one died from something that healing could have counteracted and wasn't just being one-shot by Befouled or screwing up some other mechanic that will just kill everyone later on.

It's all of the fights that you'd really just 2 or 3 heal if it wasn't for a small portion of the fight that has a ton of raid damage. Saying that it's always safer is like saying you should always 7 heal fights that don't have tight enrage timers because you can. Sometimes it just isn't safer because people have to play like they would assuming they are going to not drastically screw up the fight and quite often finishing a fight 5 seconds faster cuts out even a single chance to wipe the raid while adding more healing in case someone does do something (and banking on it being recoverable) might never save the raid.

However, the situations where the fight gets cut down by 5 seconds are not when Crane specifically is useful. That's just when any healer doing any kind of damage would be useful and they don't because healers are weird sometimes and take personal offense to the idea that if you stand there staring at your screen instead of mashing Denounce when you have nothing better to do that you're probably doing something wrong. Crane itself is only "useful" (as opposed to the largely meaningless choice between ending a fight 5 seconds faster and doing a bunch of pointless overhealing) when you have small windows where DPS is very important.

Take Tyrant for example. If you only Crane in P1, looking at your contribution over the entire fight is incorrect because you were not DPSing over the entire fight. What your DPS contributes is pushing out of P1 with the Enforcer as low or possible or dead which can ultimately translate into getting out of P2 one aura tick sooner and thus giving the entire raid a lot more health to play with in P3. On Xhul'horac, overall DPS is not nearly as important as killing off the Imps and blocking orbs/interrupting/stunning is because you can live in the fight for a very long time without any problems, but the adds all need to die very quickly or things can go very wrong. HFA is another decent example where overall DPS is kind of meaningless (because you're not going to be DPSing the middle part around 3:00) but maybe finishing your side's vehicle 2 seconds sooner because you bothered to DPS translates into a Grand Corrupter dying before another cast of that thing that puts the huge healing absorb up.

Crane (and all damage in general) is really only useful beyond making fights shorter when you get to remove abilities that would otherwise have been used. A ton of DPS on Iron Reaver only really makes the air phase easier until you get to the point where there is no air phase and then it's monumentally easier. If there are DPS breakpoints where important things are missed because something happened 2-3 seconds earlier, Crane can be the difference between a wipe and a kill and it happens quite a bit more often than someone dying that could have been saved by healing because unfortunately we're at this point again where people typically either get one shot or take trivial damage and extra healing rarely does anything meaningful (see the number of fights any really ever 5 heals compared to the ones that get 3 healed and the fact that nobody ever 6 healed anything in HFC).

[Spotnick]

idk maybe i just think healer dps can be relevant because I did 10 man for so long.

the biggest step to making it relevant is removing crane though :P

And giving it cooldowns so you can actually do great dps at least once a fight (like Heart of the Wild)

We'll see how much they will change the class at Blizzcon I guess.

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I typically Crane there because there's no point to healing at all when that part could be 1 or 2 healed. It's not really doing much, but in some 60ish progression pulls and every farm pull/kill afterward no one ever died due to lack of healing in those parts.

You can always get the reverse argument, that your dps is not noticable enough to justify wiping if somebody dies because you were dpsing.

But Xhul'horac.. good lord there is nothing to do on this fight. If you dare to fistweave, you can be sure it's going to be *the* try somebody does bad explosions around and you need to heal lol. At least I was the leg sweep master.

And also, Velhari even if I fistweaved on many attempts, reminded me why I don't want to be a melee dps anymore.. good lord is staying in range much easier lol.

[Totaltotemic]

You can always get the reverse argument, that your dps is not noticable enough to justify wiping if somebody dies because you were dpsing.

Ah but I gain something by being in Crane that whole time, 20 Mana Tea stacks that I otherwise would not have had when I'm sitting around not doing anything. I don't end up using them ever because again no one hardly ever takes damage, but if something crazy happened like a healer died I'd be more equipped to handle it than if I sat around doing nothing. If it didn't generate Tea then it would be a truly pointless distinction, but the fact that there is some long term potential healing benefit for correctly realizing that current healing is utterly meaningless I think always tips things in Crane's favor when I hit these situations where it really doesn't matter which stance I'm in because Serpent will do nothing later on for overhealing now while even Crane's "pointless" DPS is still generating a giant mana battery should the need arise to spam Surging or RJW.

And personally I tried going Crane on Tyrant for P1 once and discovered that there was no way I could pop back into Serpent as needed if I was in melee because I'd just die if I tried to Uplift from melee in P1 and I didn't really want to commit to having to be in Crane the whole time. I can see why someone would though, and I can see that it might be the most optimal thing to do, but I just didn't do it because I wasn't confident I could get away with that.

[Supliftz]

When is it not a risk to go Crane? If you have the mana to support Serpent, Serpent is almost always safer by some amount, even if it's a small amount, so you have to weigh the pros and cons, and unlike for dps specs, there's a drawback to dealing more damage, but the pro is just "the fight is 5 seconds shorter". Why risk lives for that? IMHO 30k dps is underpowered when dps are doing 100-120k, and it's been like that the whole expansion, like when I FW'd for 12k on Butcher with everyone else doing 30-40k. It's not just legendary rings.

Because the times you go into crane this tier, holy paladins and disc priests can 2 heal everything. There's basically no risk during p1/p3 mythic archimonde to add some dps on sources/doomfire spirits. Mannoroth is the same thing.

Highmaul isn't a good example btw because crane was nerfed by 10%, and we didn't have op set bonuses to boost crane damage. In BRF (post chi ex nerfs), crane's dps was quite relevant on fights like Thogar/H&F/Flamebender/Gruul.

EDIT: Looking back on 2nd week tectus prog (when pushing the p1 dps check was difficult), crane wasn't 12k-30k like you're suggesting. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e-done&phase=1.

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And giving it cooldowns so you can actually do great dps at least once a fight (like Heart of the Wild)

You know honestly crane doesn't really need a cd. It just needs CJL to be relevant for bursting.

[Geodew]

EDIT: Looking back on 2nd week tectus prog (when pushing the p1 dps check was difficult), crane wasn't 12k-30k like you're suggesting. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e-done&phase=1.

But Xuen was 30% of your DPS due to cleave. ChiEx Crane DPS on Butcher in particular was awful, and with PoM+Xuen I recall still only hitting about 15.5k, and Xuen only added about 2k dps IIRC. Even in BRF you had to really push to match 50% of normal DPS because everyone got powerful DPS set bonuses (more powerful than ours; the 4pc didn't add much for Crane), though HPS is more than the 50%, yet combining HPS and DPS you barely add up to a full player, if you do at all. This healing is also completely unfocused, so you lose the ability to spot-heal players who make errors. I mean, yes, you have instant free surgings every once in awhile, but surging without SooM does half the HPS.

But that's besides my point. I don't think we're all in disagreement, here. My point is that the DPS doesn't come for free, which is what Reglitch was suggesting. It's not quite free, though it's certainly a great idea in many circumstances. If you had 15 healers your raid would never die to anything other than people getting basically one-shot. You can't quite say that for 4 healers for most 4-heal fights, and definitely not for 3.5 healers. In particular, I'm talking about if people *mess up*, they could very well die and cause a wipe, even if the damage isn't a one-shot (it would just have to get them most of the way there from full HP if they're not being topped off as quickly). If someone misses a cooldown, or hits their cooldown late, you could wipe. In that sense, being in Serpent provides stability in case something goes wrong. So it's not quite fair to say that the DPS is free then conclude you should just go for it if your co-healers can keep up with damage most attempts. It is almost always a trade-off of some kind.

P.S. I wouldn't know anything about Archi/Mannoroth because we're wrapping up Xhul progression first. I know what you're getting at, but I think you think I'm saying something I'm not saying.

[Floopa]

you'd be surprised but on archimonde mythic you can dps like 80% of the fight as a MW while contributing significant healing because EL is OP during doomfire healing

[Geodew]

you'd be surprised but on archimonde mythic you can dps like 80% of the fight as a MW while contributing significant healing because EL is OP during doomfire healing

Extend Life in Crane? I think I need to research the fight before I can understand what the hell you're talking about here. :P

[Floopa]

Extend Life in Crane? I think I need to research the fight before I can understand what the hell you're talking about here. :P

nah sorry i explained it badly.

you dps throughout p1 and p2 and p3 and only switch to serpent when you need to heal doomfires and when the second infernal group of 4 drop on the raid. other than that it's actually just so legit to stay in crane the entire fight:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

not the best example as i fucked up and pussied out of craning it up in p2 due to all the previous wipes we had

[Deleted]

Made it top 40 on proraiders, do I have bragging rights now?

No archi kill yet, but we're progressing. Thank God for rotating healers on that fight... Mannoroth was fun, but archi is just mehhhh...

[Deleted]

you'd be surprised but on archimonde mythic you can dps like 80% of the fight as a MW while contributing significant healing because EL is OP during doomfire healing

just to echo this: if you look at Archimonde specifically, you'll see Crane Stance uptimes upwards of 65%, even on first kills for that specific group

Another thing: overall DPS has only ever been relevant on the super-tight dps checks(which this expansion only really had Butcher), what is really important is DPS on the right target at the right time. Crane DPS, if you pool Chi correctly, can beat out some DPS specs on Doomfire damage and that alone makes it so incredibly powerful that you wouldn't ever want to give it up.

And lastly: Even if your DPS is not very high, staying in Serpent stance will not enable your DPS and tanks to suddenly squeeze out 40k DPS more just because they feel more safe.

Crane DPS is very relevant and helpful for the enrage/phasing checks later into the instance and by far the strongest healer DPS in the game while still providing healing. If you compare Crane DPS to Heart of the Wild burst, you're looking at the wrong things. HotW might be better for some specific phasing patterns, but you have to keep in mind that the druid doesn't heal at all if he uses HotW for the DPS and loses maybe his most powerful throughput CD(depending on the damage pattern of the fight). If a Monk fistweaves for 45s without thinking about healing, there's still quite a bit of smartheals going out.

[Spotnick]

Made it top 40 on proraiders, do I have bragging rights now?.

This usually means you should check wtf your disc and holy paladins are doing

[Geodew]

If a Monk fistweaves for 45s without thinking about healing, there's still quite a bit of smartheals going out.

Eminence isn't smart healing. That's part of my point.

I've also not seen good add dps from MWs but maybe I'm not looking (outside of Blast Furnace on pull with prepot, full chi ready, 4pc ready, CJL usage and double trinket procs haste&ms bursting down the furnace operator, which I think I broke 40 or 50k with)

I mean feel free to say why you think that because if MW is good at target swaps and thus add damage that's very useful information I haven't heard before

[Buildapanda]

chi torpedo is pretty good at adds. It just depends what kind of adds they are. Something like iron reaver you suck, kormrok you are amazing if you cast rsk as soon as hands spawn and have buffs up and chi burst. hfa you can do good dps

[Geodew]

Yeah chi burst is <3 for kormrok dragging hands for sure. One of the few times you can use it to hit 20 dps targets and 6 hps targets

and hfa is, well, hfa. Once we got 4pcs for healers it was easy anyway, and before then we needed all the hps we could get, so I'd only Craned that fight one week when we were forced to 5heal it. Of course nowadays I go on the Disc Priest side and Crane. Eminence just cleans up what he can't get.

And CT will make you sad for not having RJW. Not usually a good idea for progression to drop RJW except full fistweaving like total did on socrethar

[Nokcihc]

And CT will make you sad for not having RJW. Not usually a good idea for progression to drop RJW except full fistweaving like total did on socrethar

CT has it's uses when fistweaving, but HFC doesn't offer any situation where it's really useful. I used it for fistweaving on Mythic Thogar in BRF because there was so much movement and it did massive damage to the adds when they were stacked. Other than that we do have almost no add damage though. I've actually tried really hard to beat DPS on add damage on some fights and I even have trouble beating Feral druids on multiple cleave adds

[Totaltotemic]

And CT will make you sad for not having RJW. Not usually a good idea for progression to drop RJW except full fistweaving like total did on socrethar

Even then if you're just going full damage you might as well go Xuen. I've been trying to use CT on Xhul'horac and it's just not good even when you can burst it on 6 targets at a time compared to the cleave of Xuen. It feels like it's balanced around the assumption that you'll be in Crane and RSK's debuff will be up when there just aren't frequent groups of adds that spawn that live long enough to set up RSK plus CT twice in HFC anywhere.

Honestly Crane is pretty terrible if you're expecting any real healing out of it so there's no point to take a half-measure like CT that is neither good for healing or damage just because you want a bit of both. Eminence isn't what makes Crane more useful than a regular DPS if that's what you're doing for most of a fight (outside of damage buffs like Feast); it's the ability to press Revival and go into Serpent to actually heal when healing is needed. If you're in Crane at all (again aside from damage buffs) the assumption is that healing is simply not needed at that point in the fight.

and before then we needed all the hps we could get, so I'd only Craned that fight one week when we were forced to 5heal it. Of course nowadays

And this was largely what I did on HFA even from week 1, but only because I was running crates on our side and we didn't have the DPS to cleanly kill everything unless I was wailing on things. It's one of the exceedingly rare fights where an add dying literally 1 second faster can mean the difference between a kill and a wipe (usually due to a cascading effect that allows better focus on terrors/berserkers) AND more DPS directly means less healing necessary. It's also the only fight where I've successfully used RJW in Crane mostly because I could queue it up before getting into range to hit something on my way back from dropping off a crate so it effectively didn't cost a GCD. Of course once rings came around it was utterly pointless what anyone did on the fight, but for a little while it was fun at least.

[Deleted]

Even then if you're just going full damage you might as well go Xuen. I've been trying to use CT on Xhul'horac and it's just not good even when you can burst it on 6 targets at a time compared to the cleave of Xuen. It feels like it's balanced around the assumption that you'll be in Crane and RSK's debuff will be up when there just aren't frequent groups of adds that spawn that live long enough to set up RSK plus CT twice in HFC anywhere.

Well you and others need to understand the difference between RJW and CT. On Xhul'Horac you will most definitely not use CT since there are 3+ stable targets throughout the MOST of the fight ( you won't crane in last phase anyway ). Having ability to constantly produce Chi, deal solid damage to the boss and have infinity mana sounds good.

On bosses like Mannaroth on the other hand, you'll most definitely use CT. Adds need to be nuked fast and are usually gripped so you can precast RSK + CB and follow it up with 3xCT.

Also, Crane is used to push boss / phase / add. It isn't used to just dps boss because why not. The idea behind Crane isn't 'look, an extra dps'. It's used to get MT stacks and to help where it's needed. So far, I haven't found a boss where you HAD TO fistweave and at the same time do massive healing ( please don't say Gorefiend if you're 4 man healing it cause i'm going to laugh hard ). MWs can do solid 40k burst when needed on ST. For example, I used to fistweave Manna to push him below 35% before next doomlord. That's where fistweaving is really really good. I can do 1.5M+ damage inbetween 2 doomlords.

@Geo
MWs are perfect for switching on adds. For example, socrethar and dominators. Prebuff yourself with crit and TP and have 4chi. 2xRSK - CJL - 2xRSK - ToD. You'll most likely be on top 5 dps on the add. That's especially important for the dominator where you don't use BL to push it. Or lets say Mannaroth. I've seen guilds killing doomlord before the first marks. If your guild has such sick dps to be able to pull it off, you might as well help them, or just pushing the boss before the next doomlord. Iskar, you can nuke the clone add pretty good with the same rotation mentioned above and you won't get the chains. MWs burst options are extreamly good compared to other healers and require 0 sacrifice ( in terms of mana or major cds like AW / HoTW ), you just need to figure out the timing your guild needs it the most, it's not universal.