WoD's proposed Mistweaver changes

[Darkener]

I'm just saying what is typically the practice in raiding, and I know exactly who Affinity is. When a raid hits a dps wall they drop a healer to see if they can get through it. They don't typically start dropping 2 or 3 normal healers for 2 or 3 dps healers. And I do agree with Affinity to a point. They will never allow a healer to do competitive dps, and dps healers introduced another "utility" healer just as absorbs introduced a huge utility. The problem with Disc is that they have way too much utility not just because they can heal at full output and do dps, but that they have raid mechanic mitigation through absorbs, and they dps with little loss to heal output.

DPS can be added to other healers without breaking raiding, it just can't be done the way it was for Disc by giving them too much utility with no downside.

[Deleted]

Lol stop being so obtuse. When you overgear the shit out of an encounter or it's undertuned for damage then obviously the answer is going to be drop the healer. Sometimes you don't have that luxury, all of a sudden you've got a healer who's mandatory and also provides damage towards the enrage timer.

- - - Updated - - -

Like off the top of my head, this tier only Garrosh, Thok, Paragons, Norushen, and Dark Shaman all had similar opportunities. You couldn't drop a healer for progress on those fights yet our DPS added quite a lot to it. If you extend past that then there's fights where fistweaving was undeveloped like Gara'jal that were hilariously tough DPS checks with healing requirements Eminence could have dealt with. (<3 miss doing like 50k DPS and being proud of it)

[Affiniti]

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.

My bad. I knew it was one of those things.

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).

Right, the goal is obviously to drop a healer first before considering that, but what gave my monk a slight edge over my druid for progress was the fact I could DPS as needed and help contribute a bit to the enrage concern during progress. Was it make or break? Probably not, but every bit helps and could be the difference between a 1% wipe and a boss kill.

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!".

The issue with atonement, and the devs concern with atonement, is the fact that it's a smart heal that bubbles people. The DPS is an extra bonus that can definitely help for sure, but yeah it's the smart heal + absorb. Rigg yells "DPS, even healers DPS" which is always rather redundant as most of our healers are dpsing anyways, and when he says that during progress it doesn't typically change what our healers had been doing at the time anyways.

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.

Honestly, I don't think it SHOULD be that way. We should have to care about who we heal, when we heal them, and why we heal them. Smart healing needs to not exist in the capacity it does, and healers should be healers. Personally I feel DPS should lose raid utility CD's, and healers should be the only ones with raid utility and healing capabilities. They are two distinct roles in the raid, if you want healers to DPS every single healer class would have to be balanced accordingly and given the proper ability to do competitive dps to the other healers that can do dps.

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.

In no real circumstance (save Garajal pre-nerf) would you ever look at a healer and ask if there was a healer-dps you could bring in instead of a standard healer. In most cases losing utility of a shaman or a paladin (for example) outweighs the gain in dps. When it comes down to the wire, when you compare the capabilities of a druid vs a monk during progress, the monk comes out ahead slightly because of the DPS. Will it be a huge difference? Probably not. Is it worth considering in this case? Yes.

There are other factors and outlyers that specifically control what you end up taking to a raid though. You don't stack 5 disc priests because they are OP and do twice the healing of everyone else do you? You don't stack 5 shaman because Mana Tide means nobody would ever have mana issues and their utility is good do you? You won't stack 5 paladins (outside of lolCouncil breaking mechanics gg) because their tank healing, raid healing, absorbs, and utility are pretty good do you? You'd want a balance of healers that makes sense. In a scenario where you compare the validity of a druid vs a monk in a raid spot, if both utility and throughput are similar, you'd want the monk for the little bit of damage they add. Is it a huge, gamebreaking decision? Not likely. Is it a consideration? It sure should be.

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?

Monk doesn't have shit all for utility, so you'd never consider it. Anything beyond 2 disc is a little silly to consider. It's impossible to ever really look at a fight from that standpoint, you need to basically compare Druid vs Monk in a raid spot to get something accurate of what that holds. Monk have very little control over who we heal, our raid cd (lolrevival) is absolutely fucking trash (my druid can do 1 tranq that can do more healing than 3 revivals over the course of a boss fight. Thanks GC you suck "ooh it's instant") and we bring no utility to the raid. Shaman, Disc, Paladin all bring utility to a raid that is very viable. Druid and monk are much lower on that totem pole, so things like fistweaving vs not can make the difference between which is slightly ahead (this is a decision I make at the start of the tier during ptr boss testing, but ultimately the difference likely wouldn't have that large of an impact on what healer comp we use).

In a world where healer balance is closer (which is the goal here, they are testing on 20man instead of 10man and scaling up. The existing internal model has HUGE flaws for healer class balance) and an enrage is hypothetically tighter, having 1 or 2 healers that can do a bit of DPS could literally be the difference between killing a boss vs not killing a boss. In practice this hasn't been as large of a concern because scaling from 10 to 25 has always been iffy, and we have more flexibility in dropping healers (going from 6 to 5, or 5 to 4) where in 10man you basically have to 2 heal (sometimes 3 heal) every boss encounter.

Removing the whole scaling scenario also means our healing won't have a huge gap from internal testing to what we actually see in a 20man raid (we're ignoring scaling in the normal/heroic difficulties, because that doesn't really matter at the moment). At present, in 10man there's only 10 people taking damage. In 25 there's 25, so there's more to heal, some spells scale on raid size (RM is a great example here), and there's simply more STUFF to heal, especially when 4 healing a fight. Assuming they do things properly, healer balance should theoretically be better balanced. A healer could suck in 10s but be great in 25s, or vice versa. That shouldn't happen anymore (when talking Mythic).

If they don't totally drop the ball on healing for Mythic raids, I'd not expect you to have nearly the same flexibility in dropping healers like you do in today's 25 Heroic environment. You should almost need the same amount of healers (+/- 1) for every boss encounter. That dramatically changes the value of a healer that can dps vs a healer that only does comparable throughput (ignoring utility in this case).


TLDR: One raid size, one internal test team. No 2.5x scaling of boss HP, boss damage, boss mechanics, or healer spells. Should result in better balance for healers, dps, and gameplay in general. Assuming things go how I'd expect.

Edit: I guess I should have included a disclaimer that my posts are more directed at the potential behind Mythic balance vs what is today's "testing". One raid size makes it much easier to balance boss HP values, as well as Healer balance due to scaling not really being a factor. 25 Heroics aren't really a factor at this point in my thought process, we're looking at Mythic from the outside.

[Totaltotemic]

I don't think switching healers out mid-raid is something anyone would do, but I can definitely see a raid considering damage potential when recruiting or looking for a comp to go into a fight with. If Shamans didn't have the OP as hell Ancestral Vigor and if MW actually had some healing cooldowns, 2 Disc 2 MW would be OP as hell for Garrosh simply because you'd have the effective DPS of 2.5 healing instead of 4 healing. Of course in a pie in the sky world where fights aren't as terribly designed as Garrosh with 30 seconds of not requiring healing each minute that wouldn't matter so much, but the sheer fact that they just forgot to put in a raid damage mechanic that isn't Whirling Corruption doesn't give me much faith for Mythic balance.

[Lovestar]

OK, I do understand this is just speculation on your part based on your experience doing this at the highest-end tuning of the game, so I'm not holding you to this as gospel. But I will assume we can trust your opinions to be a fair reflection of what Blizzard is also thinking internally when they decide what to nerf or modify.

What I'm getting from this, is that you're saying that right now, the DPS a MW can do while benefiting from Eminence and still doing all its 'normal' healing isn't really breaking anything, especially because the class isn't performing (at the high, high end) on a level that makes it more attractive than the special things Shaman, Pally, etc. can do and also, it's not that big a deal to just swap out a healer if you think you need more DPS (yet).

And as for Disc, what you could hypothetically do with Atonement means nothing in practice, because no one stacks Disc since the redundancy of stacking an absorb spec outweighs the benefit of getting 'free' DPS from Atonements. Instead Disc is brought to do what it's good at, with the Atonement as a perk.

So right now the situation (in the highest end) isn't favoring DPS-healers, not because the concept of what they could bring over 'normal' healers is inaccurate, but instead because of other factors specifically discouraging those specs from being stacked in large numbers, or used at all.

However, once the competitive / high end of PvE is stabilized to a fixed size, the ripple effect this has on tuning/balancing and design choices will mean that the number of healers you bring is probably more significant and more standardized (especially while content is new/dangerous).

In that situation, given a rigid number of healers, the ones that can spontaneously double as a ghetto DPS will seem significantly more appealing because the option of swapping out for a real DPS is much less plausible.

In that case, any healer that's not selling itself for some other major reason will seem less appealing than the DPS-healers. For example instead of being a close call, Druid might be squarely kicked out in favor of Mistweaver #2.

The devs are anticipating that future and making a decision between making heal-by-DPSing a core part of healing (like giving all tanks AM), or simply stripping the perk from the 2 specs that can currently exploit it. They favor stripping.

Then, this has the side-benefit of helping to tone down 'smart heals' and refocus healing on paying attention to who gets healed, when, because it's inherently very, very difficult to make a DPS-oriented healing effect that doesn't pick its target automatically without giving WoW something convoluted like the EQ2 "Heal Target" / "Harm Target" system.

Am I getting the right idea about what's going on here?

[Ryuda]

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.

They've already stated we'll still have our "ranged-only mechanic immunity" in both Crane and Serpent stance, since they didn't want fistweavers to be punished for switching stances. (i.e. switching stances leading to a weapon in melee on Garrosh, or a seismic slam in melee on Malk.)

Other than that, I think Totemic covered everything I was going to add, I'd gladly sacrifice fistweaving on a whim, absolutely insane mana regen (Which, I think will automatically devalue itself for the most part with the removal of the Leg. Meta gem, and the re-balancing of secondary stats to make crit shine less in comparison to others), and Healing spheres (at best, a gimmick heal for a handful of fights like H Council in ToT) for the sake of being able to do the healing of a real healer again.

My biggest wish would be making our current mastery a baseline passive (like they did with ret's Divine Purpose in Cata), and give us a mastery that actually scales well with the amount that can be obtained on gear. (Or at the very least, tweak the co-efficients on our spells.)

All that said, Given Blizzards current "Prepare for the bad news, wait a bit for the good news" stance, we probably haven't seen some of the beneficial changes yet. (They have said already that we'll be given something to fill the niche that healing sphere did (targeted, quick direct heal), as well as possibly giving fistweaving some tools of its own, now that they wouldn't have to worry about the t14 jab->jab->uplift-esque cherry picking.)

Overall, at least at this point, I'm not too worried about it, will wait and see when we have Beta notes for a bigger picture of changes.

[Affiniti]

OK, I do understand this is just speculation on your part based on your experience doing this at the highest-end tuning of the game, so I'm not holding you to this as gospel. But I will assume we can trust your opinions to be a fair reflection of what Blizzard is also thinking internally when they decide what to nerf or modify.

My post is purely my own opinion, if Blizzard shares a similar mindset then great but I am purely operating off of assumptions and what I feel. I think it's a safe bet to assume that could potentially be the case, hence them stripping it down, but there's no way to know unless someone such as Celestalon comes out and says that. At any rate, my post is part connect-the-dots and part (75%) wishful thinking.

They hit two birds with one stone though, yes. Smart heals are a concern (fistweaving and atonement are smart heals, albeit a much smaller portion of the overall issue [atonement double dips on the issue of smart healing and absorb potency]) so you can fix it by reducing/removing that gameplay from most situations being a viable option, and it reduces the need to try and balance some healers around the fact that they can do dps during luls in damage that could impact the success or failure of a boss enrage check.

Ultimately monk has a lot that needs re-worked, fistweaving being one of them. The larger concern (at least to my general understanding from tweets and the likes) at present is balancing our mana, making mastery suck less (they want all stats to be somewhat equal for all classes/specs), and reducing our reliance on RNG-based smart heals we have no control over (Smart heals in general are being looked at and re-evaluated). Fistweaving, unfortunately (or fortunately, depends on how you look at it), is at the bottom of the totem pole as far as importance to balancing. I'd rather them strip fistweaving and fix our mana/healing concerns rather than focus heavily on fistweaving and not fixing the other issues. They've also indicated their desire to reduce instant cast heals, which basically 99% of Monk healing in a raid setting is two instant-cast buttons. I don't see how they could fix all of the other issues AND make us cast more, but it's a possibility that they look at that as well.

(Which, I think will automatically devalue itself for the most part with the removal of the Leg. Meta gem, and the re-balancing of secondary stats to make crit shine less in comparison to others)

The meta gem purely inflated an already existing issue. They increased our mana costs on a bunch of stuff in 5.1 to slow down the rapid rate at which we dropped spirit, but we still didn't want more than maybe 12k spirit on our gear pre-meta in 5.1. The meta just added to the issue that was regen for us. It won't be nearly the same issue with meta vs without it, but the issue still exists.

My biggest wish? A real raid utility CD. Tranquility by itself isn't as valueable as a mitigating CD such as barrier, Devo Aura, banner, Smoke bomb, etc -- and we just have an overly gimped version of Tranquility. I'd be fine if Revival was dropped and Zen Meditation was turned back into a raid cd like it was potentially going to be early beta (not super OP, but something still useful), or even giving us both ala shaman style (multiple cd's), but the value of a Monk in a 4 or 5 healer team is significantly less than a class that brings a proper raid mitigation CD or other form of utility. Only way a monk will be viable in a 4 or 5 heal comp in Mythic raiding will be if we do tons more healing than other healers (ala 5.0 healing). We need real utility.

[Lovestar]

My post is purely my own opinion, if Blizzard shares a similar mindset then great but I am purely operating off of assumptions and what I feel. I think it's a safe bet to assume that could potentially be the case, hence them stripping it down, but there's no way to know unless someone such as Celestalon comes out and says that. At any rate, my post is part connect-the-dots and part (75%) wishful thinking.

I understand, but I still appreciate your insight and you are probably being too modest — your logic based on real experience likely gives you a lot of ground on what Blizzard is reasoning internally IMO.

For me as a player that takes my class(es) seriously and tries hard, but just doesn't have the head/patience for "progression" and really cut-edge stuff, it can seem absolutely puzzling why certain balance changes are made — something that seems totally fine to me getting brutalized in 6.0 is a "WHAT? WHYYYYY NO " moment.

You (and others commenting here) have helped me come to a much better understanding of the issues going on here and why what's fun in 5mans, Xrealm and Flex isn't the whole story about what's going on at the heart of the game's design.

It makes me rethink a lot of my assumptions; what amuses me may not always be what's really best for the game's overall health. It's hard to admit that what I find fun may not be the best thing for the class or the role or the game, but it helps to have a detailed outline of what's going on instead of just mysterious patch notes and ambiguous Tweets.

[Totaltotemic]

One thing is for sure though, regardless of the actual Fistweaving changes that go through we can be like 99% sure that the way Renewing Mist and Uplift work today won't be the way it works in WoD, especially not with how silly TFT will be in 20 mans. Either Uplift usage will be drastically slowed, ReM will cost so much or not generate a chi that it won't be a good idea to always use on cooldown, or they'll change the mechanic entirely.

[Affiniti]

One thing is for sure though, regardless of the actual Fistweaving changes that go through we can be like 99% sure that the way Renewing Mist and Uplift work today won't be the way it works in WoD, especially not with how silly TFT will be in 20 mans. Either Uplift usage will be drastically slowed, ReM will cost so much or not generate a chi that it won't be a good idea to always use on cooldown, or they'll change the mechanic entirely.

Reason they sort-of-tried in a patch then realized it would require an expac rework. We need other spells to fill the void, not just changing how our two spells work. If they simply change how Uplift and ReM work we'll be twiddling our thumbs for 75% of a boss fight.


I'm super excited for Beta just to see what they are doing with Monk. Would love to stay monk going into next expac, so I hope they don't drop the ball.

[kamuimac]

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.

hes also person who on one of podcasts stated that if his priest was higher geared then his monk it would be priest doin progress in SoO not monk -_-

[Kuruption]

hes also person who on one of podcasts stated that if his priest was higher geared then his monk it would be priest doin progress in SoO not monk -_-

And what's your point?

[Darkener]

I'm super excited for Beta just to see what they are doing with Monk. Would love to stay monk going into next expac, so I hope they don't drop the ball.

For now just looking forward to the Healer blog to see if they are going to focus on making healers work together better versus creating healing specs that trivialize everything. Hopefully they don't short-change us and post a long blog about how smart heals are becoming less smart (shocker)! I really want to hear something new.

And your opinions about Monks and healing in general are appreciated.

[Cyriaa]

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.

That doesn't mean that you should take everything he says word for word as the gospel. I actually agree with what Darkener had to say and I thought that he gave very good points. I feel like Affinity gave a very good counter point as well.

I don't think switching healers out mid-raid is something anyone would do, but I can definitely see a raid considering damage potential when recruiting or looking for a comp to go into a fight with.

My guild actually swapped a lot of healers out during progression based off of raid utility and comp. Sadly, because MW don't bring anything for raid utility and our damage isn't very good, I was swapped out a bit more than others.

While I'm not going to deny the very clear and present problems that we have, I do want to mention something that it seems a lot of people are looking over right now, is that the boss encounters in our current tier simply aren't designed for our class to shine in. Couple that with the state of smart heals and absorbs sniping all of our potential healing targets and the lack of utility we bring it makes us look like we're not all that great, but we still are a solid class in terms of throughput.

Taking a look at the level 100 talents that they've put out (which will probably get reworked a few times in beta) I'm actually pretty happy to see what they're going with (though I'd like to see Detonate Chi and Chi Explosion in separate tiers, but that's just me). I'll be honest, the scariest bit for me is the fact that blizzard hasn't really said anything (as far as blue posts, I don't follow twitter as much as I probably should) on mistweavers since ToT. In fact, I can't recall a single post since SoO launched. :/ I'm very scared to see how they handle mistweavers going into WoD, I can't say that I have faith in blizz like I used to. I definitely want to continue playing the class that I fell in love with, but I don't want to feel as big of a liability that I felt in this past tier.

[Totaltotemic]

Affinity was talking about raid comp. Just because you can probably kill a boss without healers doing damage doesn't mean standing around picking your nose is a good idea. Also bringing in arguments from other threads that were over on top of PMing me gloating about something you don't understand is very toxic to the forum.

[Cyriaa]

I didn't bring anything into this thread that isn't relevant to the topic. I PMd you to keep it out of this thread so it wouldn't be derailed because THAT topic is completely irrelevant to this topic and what I said wasn't said as gloating or to be toxic towards you. I would recommend taking a chill pill, the world isn't out to get you.
My response was also about raid comp:
My guild didn't see the value of bringing in a MW over an Rdruid. They felt that the better CDs and more controlled healing/smart heals that an Rdruid is more valuable than the small amount of dps gain a MW would bring, and that's totally ok. Affinity found that bringing the additional damage was more beneficial to his group, but as he mentioned it's nothing that made or broke the dps check. It's just preference.

[Lovestar]

They've also indicated their desire to reduce instant cast heals, which basically 99% of Monk healing in a raid setting is two instant-cast buttons. I don't see how they could fix all of the other issues AND make us cast more, but it's a possibility that they look at that as well.

Well from what I understand they want to cut down on the ability of casters to maintain very high movement while still performing well, since that's supposed to be the melee perk.

CT also indicated that they want to refocus MW more firmly on the intended play of channeling a lot. So I assume that means much more Soothing usage intended and probably breaking the benefit of spamming the button.

And GC vaguely proposed killing Expel Harm months and months ago, especially for MW. So that's more instant Chi (hypothetically) down.

If MW has to rely more heavily on Soothing for Chi, then ReM/Uplift remaining instant would probably be less of an issue, right? Since it would be a lot harder to maintain that nonstop instant output while moving around a lot.

Unless holding 4 Chi and spamming Uplift 4 times in a row using Chi Brew is still too much movement while healing (maybe? I have no idea).

[iDrunkenheal]

Soothing mist is such a horrible spell for a healer. It does close to no healing. It's main benefit (a chi generator) is random. They really need to completely redo the entire spec. Right now there is almost no redeeming qualities to the spec that I see going forward. ReM being random and having the ability to scale past the normal 6 target aoe heal is hurtful to the spec. Uplift being tied to ReM is just as hurtful. Soothing being random and doing next to no healing is bad. They are destroying fist weaving.

I hope they remove ReM and seriously redo the entire spec.

Hopefully we see great things come in beta. I agree with affinichi with the 1 raid size should help healer balance tremendously.

[Spotnick]

Soothing mist is such a horrible spell for a healer. .

But it's so pretty!! It's all that should matter!

Just imagine with the new talent (if it makes it) where it duplicates it, mist beams everywhere!

Wouldn't be so bad if you could cast it on the move though.

[Keiyra]

Soothing mist is such a horrible spell for a healer. It does close to no healing. It's main benefit (a chi generator) is random.

True, but maybe they'll realize this and fix it.
For example, the first tick and every other tick grant a chi - no more randomness and you get 4 chi if you fully channel it once. (perhaps have it track actual chi ticks regardless of cast so recasting the first tick over and over doesn't grant back to back chi or something to balance it)

Also prolly need to double its strength. (statue version could be nerfed to a lower percent if needed). That right there would be a start. Lets see what beta brings.