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:
- 旭日东升踢, 幻灭踢, and 猛虎掌 all had their damage increased by about 10%, individually.
- 神鹤引项踢 had it’s damage increased by about 20%
We also received changes to the mana cost of
氤氲之雾, reducing it by about 7%.
Finally, the most surprising change,
还魂术 has it’s spell power reduced by 10%, however, it will now trigger
精通:迷雾之风 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
还魂术 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,
精序兵戈, and even
骨尘酒 now will all increase the healing of
还魂术 just through their interaction with
精通:迷雾之风. This will turn
还魂术 into essentially a full raid heal under certain circumstances. Overall a great change to our traditional raid cooldown.
The mana cost reduction on
氤氲之雾 is just a nice addition. We are already casting
氤氲之雾 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
青龙下凡 to trigger
天神融合 a bit easier to handle. You will still want to utilize a mana cooldown like
法力茶 during
青龙下凡, but you will save more mana over the course of a fight now.
Next up we have the damage increases to
猛虎掌,
幻灭踢,
旭日东升踢, and
神鹤引项踢. 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
禅院古训.
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
禅院古训. This lets us put out even more efficient healing through that legendary. It also has the side effect of just making
禅院古训 even stronger. This means none of the new covenant specific legendaries will be played at this point.
Also, with the
精通:迷雾之风 trigger added to
还魂术, 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
还魂术. We may now want to pre-cast
or get a huge
骨尘酒 cast off on a clump of raid members for additional healing on our
还魂术. 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.