Ohhhh Boy! We were lost, and now we have been found. Yes, Blizzard has found Mistweaver Monks and provided us with some substantial changes. So let’s go through what those changes are, explain why they have potentially been made, and how does all of this impact the overall spec in 9.1.
First up the changes, in rapid fire:
Blizzard increase our damage across the board, with buffs to the following spells:
- 해오름차기, 후려차기, and 범의 장풍 all had their damage increased by about 10%, individually.
- 회전 학다리차기 had it’s damage increased by about 20%
We also received changes to the mana cost of
포용의 안개, reducing it by about 7%.
Finally, the most surprising change,
재활 has it’s spell power reduced by 10%, however, it will now trigger
특화: 안개 돌풍 on all targets hit. We get another spell added to our Mastery triggers.
So now that we got the changes out of the way, what do these mean? The
재활 change is a clear targeted buff to our classic raid cooldown. Rather than give it just a straight spell power buff, they added another mastery interaction to the spec. This looks to be aimed at just both making mastery better in terms of a desirable stat and also give us additional interactions with our Mastery.
HoT’s,
질서의 무기, and even
골분주 now will all increase the healing of
재활 just through their interaction with
특화: 안개 돌풍. This will turn
재활 into essentially a full raid heal under certain circumstances. Overall a great change to our traditional raid cooldown.
The mana cost reduction on
포용의 안개 is just a nice addition. We are already casting
포용의 안개 much more often than we have in previous expansions so it is great to be able to use it even more often. While not a large change in how we will use the spell, it does make casting it during
옥룡 위론의 원령 to trigger
천신의 조화 a bit easier to handle. You will still want to utilize a mana cooldown like
마나 차 during
옥룡 위론의 원령, but you will save more mana over the course of a fight now.
Next up we have the damage increases to
범의 장풍,
후려차기,
해오름차기, and
회전 학다리차기. These are, in a word, great changes. In the current game, where healer DPS is a meaningful metric, pushing our damage higher is always a good thing. We were, in our first iteration of a spec, a melee healer that utilized our damaging abilities to do damage and heal. Buffing these spells reinforces that play style again. At a 10% increase to our 3 single target abilities, this will directly translate to 10% more healing if you are utilizing
고대 수도원의 가르침.
So what does this mean for Mistweavers moving forward? Are we now the meta healer? In short, no. I do not think the above will greatly shake up the meta at the highest levels, at this time. What I do think it shows is an indication Blizzard may be moving to reinforce our melee play style more. The damage buffs are also a direct buff to
고대 수도원의 가르침. This lets us put out even more efficient healing through that legendary. It also has the side effect of just making
고대 수도원의 가르침 even stronger. This means none of the new covenant specific legendaries will be played at this point.
Also, with the
특화: 안개 돌풍 trigger added to
재활, we see another interaction for our mastery, which to be fair, has been absolute trash since its inception in Legion. Again, this doesn’t make Mastery our most desirable stat, but it does make us think a bit before just throwing out
재활. We may now want to pre-cast
or get a huge
골분주 cast off on a clump of raid members for additional healing on our
재활. It again, seems like Blizzard is working to incorporate more things into our kit, and more spells that play off of each other.
All in all, these are really good changes that reinforce our melee style of healing, and offer more chances for our mastery to interact with our kit. They are not crazy enough to push Mistweavers to the top of the healing rankings, but these are really good buffs that only make us more powerful going into 9.1.