Zen Pulse for Mistweavers
The rework for Zen Pulse is a phenomenal idea, turning an ability that required there to be multiple enemies for it to be worthwhile, into an ability that helps to supplement our group healing in the wake of Essence Font’s removal. Because this ability doesn’t have any square-root scaling on it like Invigorating Mists does, it’s fantastic when it’s available, and being able to guarantee charges of it through Deep Clarity is great deterministic design for healers that rely on that sort of consistency.
But with the way the ability is described, one would think that having more Renewing Mists out and ticking on a raid group would lead to more of the naturally-occuring procs of this ability to happen. In testing though, it seems this ability only allows for one proc per minute, making any playstyle that tries to build to high Renewing Mist counts have no real payoff. Staying in combat with only one Renewing Mist active still nets you the same amount of buffs of Zen Pulse as having 10 or more Renewing Mists out does. This feels bad and unrewarding.
All the functionality that a similar effect from our past, Uplifting Trance, had has been fixed in this iteration of Zen Pulse! There’s an effect that lets you decide when you get one more charge of it so that you’re not relying solely on randomness to heal your group effectively. It’s able to stack twice, getting rid of the old issue of new instances of the buff overwriting itself before you can even react to it! It can heal more than 3 people at a time!
Spreading Renewing Mists across your entire raid group should be one of the most rewarding things about this specialization, as it can be accomplished through both an expression of one’s skill and minimal reliance on randomness, but Invigorating Mists feels as though it barely affects health bars at high Renewing Mist counts thanks to its reduced healing per target, and Zen Pulse feels like it should be a way to reward players with more healing when they get to those higher Renewing Mist counts.
Mistweaver’s playstyle in the beta feels absolutely incredible to cast and maintain high amounts of Renewing Mists, but after that there’s just…nothing to capitalize them with. Getting a high number of Renewing Mist buffs on your group feels like a whole lot of set up with no actual payoff. At times, it somehow manages to feel punishing with weak per-target healing. Now, it feels as though you’re forced into talenting into Deep Clarity just to effectively heal your group, rather than a meaningful talent point that adds to the spec’s depth.