Kulldam

UPDATE: As of May 10th and build 15677, some of these have been addressed. Click for details.

This is a direct copy of a post made as feedback for the current state of Mistweaver Monk healing in the MoP beta, but I'm re-posting it here for posterity. ><

Note: Unless specified otherwise, all the following tests and derived values were done using characters with 7500 Spell Power, an easy to obtain value for pre-made characters.

Topic: Burst AE Healing (Uplift/Renewing Mists)

Thesis: Mistweavers have a severe lack of strong or on-demand AE healing spells and at present, must rely solely on providing AE healing through Renewing Mist+Uplift, which is incredibly inadequate in time-constrained scenarios. A new moderate-to-high Chi cost spell that serves as a moderately strong on-demand AE heal is required for Mistweavers to be adequately capable for high-end content.

Analysis: With Renewing Mist no longer doing AE healing, there is a huge gap in the capability for a Mistweaver to output strong AE healing, especially on demand. During a typical high-end healing scenario such as two-healing Heroic Madness or Ultraxion, at current a Mistweaver will have an exceptionally difficult time providing burst AE healing.

Renewing Mist
A cool spell but suffers from a few issues, namely that it is used primarily in conjunction with our only source of AE healing, Uplift.

Renewing Mist jumps every 2.3 seconds (technically the buff “jumps” every 2, but there’s an extra delay presumably for the server to find an appropriate target):

Code:

[11:18:26.984] Deepheal-Mekkatorque(EU) gains Renewing Mist from Kulldin
[11:18:28.995] Kulldin's Renewing Mist fades from Deepheal-Mekkatorque(EU)
[11:18:29.397] Adzaan-Mekkatorque(EU) gains Renewing Mist from Kulldin
[11:18:31.404] Kulldin's Renewing Mist fades from Adzaan-Mekkatorque(EU)
[11:18:31.804] Licensetokil gains Renewing Mist from Kulldin
[11:18:33.794] Kulldin's Renewing Mist fades from Licensetokil

This means, with the 8 second cooldown of Renewing Mist, it effectively takes about 20 seconds to get Renewing Mist on all 10 players in a 10-man raid AE setting (assuming no jumps to pets or similar). Each fresh cast of Renewing Mist will jump every 2 seconds to a new target, eventually covering 4 total targets, thus you need to cast 3 unique Mists, for a total cooldown time of 16 seconds (+1 for GCD), and another 2 seconds for the final jump from the 9th to the 10th player. (The full timing can be seen here if needed:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Hc&output=html)

Once Renewing Mist is applied to all targets, you can begin to maximize Uplift healing:

Uplift
9400 healing per Renewing Mist target
HPS Sustained:
(UPLIFT_HEAL + RENEWING_MIST_HEAL_PER_TICK * EXTRA_TICKS) * PLAYER_COUNT / EXTRA_DURATION_SECONDS = HPS
HPS Sustained:
(9400 heal + 7500 heal * 2 ticks) * 10 players / 6 sec = 40667 HPS sustained

That is extremely strong effective healing to be sure, but the problem is the ramp-up time required -- Mistweavers have essentially no burst AE healing options at present. In order to AE heal (heal multiple targets simultaneously with one cast), we must utilize Uplift, which of course only heals or impacts currently buffed players via Renewing Mist.

This has two major issues:

1. In heavy incoming AE damage situations, Renewing Mist inherently will be active on targets that require less healing since it will tick shortly after application/jumping, leaving non-Renewing Misted targets lower health.
2. Since Uplift is healing only those targets with Renewing Mist active, this further exacerbates the issue of overhealing targets that need it least, without providing any means of healing the targets that need it most.

Compare that to truly smart heal solutions to AE healing such as Wild Growth, Swiftmend and Light of Dawn, or truly target-neutral solutions such as Holy Radiance, and the problem really shines. I realize numerics are still being tweaked, and I also realize it is bad form to compare different classes when trying to argue for mechanics of a single class or spec, but I bring these up to illustrate the numbers behind what AE healing output has been required in recent heroic raiding as compared to what Mistweavers are currently designed for and capable of.

For a Druid healer (with the usual 2005 haste plateau and about 20% Harmony bonus, but again using 7500 spell power for comparison) there are two primary AE heals:

Wild Growth
17673.6 total per target
~106,042 total healing (6 targets w/ glyph)
HPS Burst: 106042 heal / 7 sec duration = 15149 HPS
HPS Sustained: 106042 heal / 10 sec CD = 10604 HPS sustained

Swiftmend
TOTAL_HEALING = SWIFTMEND_HEAL + SWIFTMEND_HEAL * EFFLO_PERCENT * TICK_COUNT * TARGET_COUNT
27189 + 27189 * 0.12 * 9 * 3 = 115281.36 Total Healing
HPS Burst: 115281.36 heal / 7 sec duration = 16469 HPS
HPS Sustained: 115281.36 heal / 15 sec CD= 7685 HPS sustained

Total HPS Burst: 27665 HPS
Total HPS Sustained: 18289 HPS

Now obviously 18,289 sustained HPS is no where near that of the 40,000 illustrated above from the Mistweaver, but the difference and issue here is the ramp-up and the GCD usage. It is very unlikely a good Druid healer would not have a Rejuvenation active on a valid target in a high-end AE healing situation, so therefore the actual GCD usage for sustained AE healing using spells is simply 2 GCDs for 2 casts. This averages to one cast every 6 seconds.

And of course the real topic here is not the sustained healing (which accounts for lost HPS while waiting for cooldowns to refresh), but in fact the burst healing, which basically shows a much stronger picture of 31618 HPS burst for the first 7 seconds of using our two AE spells.

Things are even stronger for a Paladin healer in AE healing scenarios. A typical AE healing rotation for a Paladin is:

Holy Radiance: ~31500 total healing (6+ targets)
Holy Shock: ~26000 healing (split among targets due to Daybreak)
Holy Radiance: ~31500 total healing (6+ targets)
Light of Dawn: ~79700 total healing (6+ targets)

Thus our sustained healing model looks like this:

HPS Sustained:
(HOLY_RADIANCE_HEAL * 2 + HOLY_SHOCK_HEAL + LIGHT_OF_DAWN_HEAL) / (HOLY_RADIANCE_CAST_TIME * 2 + HOLY_SHOCK_CAST_TIME + LIGHT_OF_DAWN_CAST_TIME)
HPS Sustained:
(31500 * 2 + 26000 + 79700) / (2.5 * 2 + 1.5 + 1.5) = 21087.5 HPS sustained

Total HPS Burst/Sustained: 21087.5 HPS

Again we can see that while the 21087 sustained HPS for Paladin AE healing doesn’t match the 40k for the prior Mistweaver example, but the point is that the ramp-up requires at least 20 seconds to reach that point of being able to AE heal everyone effectively as a Mistweaver, whereas as seen above, other healers have simple solutions to provide the necessary AE burst output they need.

Consider: Within the 8 seconds time of burst AE healing for a Druid, a Mistweaver could get out exactly 3 Renewing Mist buffs active on the raid and cast two Uplifts, which equates to a total of 93900 healing, or 11737 HPS. To make matters worse, this is of course affecting only 3 players in total, leaving the other 7 without any healing from the Monk whatsoever. Compare that to Wild Growth that will heal twice as many players smartly, Swiftmend that heals the 3 most injured players every tick, or Holy Radiance/Light of Dawn which heal all players and 6 players respectively, and the issue really starts to shine.

Summary: Uplift is woefully inadequate in maintaining consistent, on-demand AE healing to injured targets who need healing the most, and Mistweavers lack a true burst AE heal solution in the current design and model.

Possible Solution

One solution is to create another spell that serves two purposes: Providing some on-demand burst AE healing that the class desperately requires and to provide a much needed Chi spender for Mistweavers:

Mending/Exhilarating/Freshening/Bracing/Lifting Mist
2/3 Chi
No cooldown
2.5 sec/Instant Cast
Self/40 yard range
Heals the X most injured players within 15/30 yards of the player/target for Y/Y*1.3.

This ability has two similar functions, depending on whether the Mistweaver casts this during a Soothing Mist or not. Like Surging Mist, this spell should be off the GCD when cast during Soothing Mist, allowing the player to cast this spell at the same time as Soothing Mist.

If cast without Soothing Mist active, it uses the first of the optional arguments above and acts as a 15 yard AE heal centered on the Monk, costs 2 Chi, has a 2.5 second cast, and heals X people for Y.

If cast during Soothing Mist, it costs 3 Chi, but becomes instant, the AE healing is centered on the Soothing Mist target, and therefore the range is increased to 30 yards and the healing is increased ~30% to make up for the increased cost of an extra Chi and the forced Soothing Mist cast/cost.

The Chi cost alteration from 2 or 3 depending on Soothing Mist also creates an interesting dynamic for Mistweavers without the Ascension talent, who can opt to use the full 4 Chi to cast two cast-time, weaker AE heals in a row, or one instant cast but bigger range and bigger healing value AE. Similarly an Ascension user could hold 5 Chi to do a cast-time AE and also an instant if desired as a dump.

A good base valuation for the player targets and heal might be 6 players & 15000 healing (again relative to our 7500 spell power tests):

Heals the 6 most injured players within 15/30 yards of the player/target for 15000/18000.

Again this is assuming 7500 spell power of previous calculations to keep things even, but these are appropriate values because 6 is a common divisor for smart-heal target selections or player caps, and 15000 is an appropriate heal value because of the sustained HPS it leads to with Mistweaver Chi income.

For example, at present a Mistweaver can maximize Chi input at a rate of about 6 Chi every 8 seconds using the following rotation:

Expel Harm > Surging Mist > Renewing Mist > Surging Mist > Surging Mist > Repeat

If trying to use the cast-time version of our AE spell that costs 2 Chi, that exact rotation won’t be used, so we can safely assume about 5 seconds total to rotate building up 2 Chi via Surging Mist + an instant Expel/Renewing Mist, then our 2.5 sec cast time of our AE. Thus we get the following sustained HPS for cast-time 2 Chi:

HPS sustained:
TARGET_COUNT * BASE_HEAL / TOTAL_CAST_TIME
HPS sustained:
6 targets * 15000 heal / 5 sec = 18000 HPS sustained

This of course assumes sole focus on AE healing which will sometimes require inefficient use of other heals in order to build Chi as fast as possible, but that matches the Holy Paladin style by sacrificing other healing to focus on AE when necessary.

To utilize the 3 Chi, instant cast+Soothing Mist version, it requires another 1.5 seconds to build up the extra Chi and 1 second GCD to start Soothing Mists+cast the instant spell, but we also drop the 2.5 second AE spell cast time, so effectively it’s the same 5 second sustained time, but trading more Chi build-up requirement and expenditure for the benefit of a slightly stronger effective heal and radius:

HPS sustained:
TARGET_COUNT * BASE_HEAL / TOTAL_CAST_TIME
HPS sustained:
6 targets * 17000 heal / 5 sec = 21600 HPS sustained

Rather than increase the effective heal when using the higher Chi cost version, it might instead be more interesting to increase the affected target count by 1 to the 7 most injured targets, upping the HPS to 21000 but still keeping that Chi > effectiveness tradeoff.

Topic: Mastery Gift of the Serpent

Thesis: The current design of the Mistweaver Mastery Gift of the Serpent (You have X% chance when you heal to summon a Healing Sphere nearby an injured ally.) is simply not as strong as it should be and lacks the throughput boost that some healer masteries provide. Moreover, the mechanical design of spawning spheres nearby injured targets is incredibly flawed and the numerical output this produces is terribly undertuned.

Analysis: Once again, I realize that comparing different classes and mechanics is usually not sound argumentation, but I contend that the mathematics very simply illustrate the weakness of Gift of the Serpent (herein GotS):

First let’s quickly review the Mastery scaling for Mistweavers right now: GotS has a base value of 9.6% and further Mastery scales at a rate of 1% for 149.42 rating (at level 85). This is similar but slightly worse conversion than Restoration Druid Mastery scaling, which is 1% for 143.42 rating, with a base Mastery of 10%.

Given those values, we can easily calculate the expected returns when giving both a Monk and a Druid an identical Mastery rating. For these comparisons again I use Druid because that is my current class of expertise and because Resto Druid Mastery provides a tangible, simple Mastery benefit in the form of % healing increase if the Harmony buff is active, which 95% of good Druids will keep at or near 100% uptime and it’s easy to do so.

Given a Mastery rating of 1435, our Druid has exactly 20% Mastery Harmony and our Mistweaver Monk has 19.2% Mastery GotS. Given that Druid Mastery provides a straight healing increase to basically all Druid healing output and the actual heal value for a GotS Healing Sphere proc, we can calculate the total amount of healing the Mistweaver can output in order to match the same effectiveness as the Druid Harmony:

HEALING_SPHERE_HEAL / HARMONY_BONUS_PERCENT = MAXIMUM_HEALING_OUTPUT_ALLOWED

Again, using ~7500 Spell Power to test, Healing Sphere is currently healing ~20,466, to give the following:

20466 / 0.2 = 102330 healing, the total healing a Mistweaver can do, on average, to trigger each GotS proc in order to match the Harmony effectiveness

Given we know the GotS proc chance, we can calculate the average number of heals required to cause a proc:

1 / GIFT_OF_THE_SERPENT_CHANCE = AVERAGE_HEAL_COUNT_PER_PROC
1 / 0.192 = 5.208 heals per GotS proc

Now comes the interesting albeit confusing part. Now that we know how much total healing we can do to match the effectiveness of our comparison Mastery (Harmony), and we know how many heals we must land on average to cause a GotS proc to occur, we can calculate on a per-heal basis how each Mistweaver heal will perform via GotS when compared to Harmony.

ALLOWED_HEAL_COUNT = MAXIMUM_HEALING_OUTPUT_(AS_SEEN_ABOVE) / ACTUAL_HEAL_VALUE

Thus, for our test Mistweaver, we get the following result for Surging Mist:

102330 allowed healing / 37000 healing per Spell = 2.765 allowed heals

Compared our allowed heal count for Surging Mist to the actual average heals we need to proc GotS, and we find that casting Surging Mist for GotS procs requires that the Healing Sphere heal value from GotS must be increased about 88% to match the effectiveness of Harmony.

However, though I won’t show all the math since it’s the same model as above, if we look at something like Renewing Mists (average tick ~7500), we see an opposite result, where Renewing Mist procs for GotS are about 62% more effective than Harmony. Similarly, using only Soothing Mist for GotS is ~45% more effective than Harmony, and ironically casting Healing Sphere itself is ~4% less effective.

This creates a very confusing scenario since the GotS proc chance is not based on number of casts, but times healed and only works on some heals, doesn’t proc off Eminence heals, etc. However, let us assume for the moment that heal spell selections and ratios do allow GotS to be adequately balanced.

The real issue is not entirely the weird proc mechanics based on spell selection, but the core problem with Gift of the Serpent is the randomness in Healing Sphere placement relative to the injured target it selects.

At present, GotS procs will place a Healing Sphere in a random location somewhere near a random injured player, but this location can seemingly be anywhere within about 8 yards around the target. Therefore, while the GotS procs can and sometimes do spawn directly on top of the target player and thus heal instantly, much more often than not, the Healing Sphere procs a few yards away, providing no effective healing whatsoever!

I spent about an hour of straight combat being attacked by a high-level target using a G19 cast sequence macro, testing this very scenario and the results are astoundingly poor. For this test I used 4 primary heals of Renewing Mist, Soothing Mist, Surging Mist, and Uplift and had a constant effective GotS chance of 13.3%:

The Numbers
1884 effective heals -- heals that were not 100% overheal, and thus would consider me a valid GotS proc target
19 Gift of the Serpent procs directly on target -- procs that landed on top of me, rather than ineffectively landed nearby

Note: At present at least, the combat log does not have indications for the spawning of a Healing Sphere via GotS that doesn’t immediately trigger on a player. Thus, viewing the log shows the appearance of only a total of 19 GotS procs/spawns total, when actually many more spawned, but only those that land directly on-target appear in the log.

Here are the logs as proof of these results:
Effective heals (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f...ealingDone%3E0)
Mastery GotS procs (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f...the+Serpent%22)

Results
Obviously the sample size is very small to draw any sweeping accuracies about the proc chances, however we can get a rough estimation of target selection chances.

Average Total GotS procs:
1884 effective casts * 0.133 proc chance = ~251 GotS procs
GotS on-target chance (chance of a Sphere landing directly on top of the intended target):
19 total on-target procs / 251 total procs = ~7.57% on-target chance

Now this is in a solo-scenario, and in a 5-man or raid setting, just by sheer luck it is somewhat likely that a Sphere that doesn’t land on-target on an individual will instead hit a different, unintended target. However, there are two main problems there:

1. The intention of GotS is to heal the most injured player. If a Sphere misses the intended target and hits someone else, it is just as likely that other player does not need a heal and thus the Sphere is 100% overhealing and wasted.

2. In stack-up situations, the tighter the group is clumped, the more likely a Sphere that spawns off to the side of the intended target will hit no one due to radius of player spread around the target individual.

Now, suddenly when a huge portion of GotS procs aren’t even landing on targets and are thus wasted, our above calculations compared to other Masteries such as Mastery Harmony tell a much darker story.

I won’t assume only 7.57% effectiveness on GotS even though that was the result above, since some procs are bound to hit other targets that do need heals and all that, but even if we bump it up over 300% to 25% effectiveness, the results are still extremely poor. Using the above calculations for our 20% Harmony and 19.2% GotS Druid and Monk, with only one out of four Spheres actually providing effective healing, we get the following comparisons for our Mistweaver heal spells:

Surging Mist
Allowed Casts to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 0.69
Healing Sphere Heal Increase Required to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 653.37%

Renewing Mist
Allowed Ticks to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 3.41
Healing Sphere Heal Increase Required to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 52.71%

Soothing Mist
Allowed Ticks to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 2.37
Healing Sphere Heal Increase Required to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 119.94%

Healing Sphere
Allowed Casts to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 1.25
Healing Sphere Heal Increase Required to Match Harmony Effectiveness: 316.68%

Unfortunately, the obvious solution to the above issue to increase the average effectiveness of each GotS proc by increasing the Healing Sphere heal value is also severely flawed, in that while it might boost the average necessary when accounting for missed or wasted Spheres due to placement, in situations where most if not all Spheres are utilized, the effectiveness of Mastery GotS would then be far too powerful and unbalanced.

Lastly, the aspect of uncontrollable healing must be addressed as well. Forcing another player to actively pursue their incoming healing that is out of the control of the actual healer class is very poor design and not fun for either player. As a Mistweaver it makes me feel powerless and more often than not I would be compelled to cast a direct heal on that Sphere target anyway to ensure the heal lands in time, and as the non-healer, it is very unlikely a DPS trying to maximize his or her damage on the latest Heroic raid boss is going to stop casting to move a few feet and hit a Sphere that does minor healing, then move back, losing 1-2 casts at best.

Summary: Mastery Gift of the Serpent is at best an unfun, unrewarding mechanic for a healer Mastery and at worst, dramatically under-performs due to low per-proc healing values, wildly varying efficiency based on the spell selection used to proc GotS, and most importantly, exceptionally poor placement mechanics that more often than not miss their intended target and will lead to a great portion of missed or partially overhealing Spheres.

Possible Solution

If the notion of Healing Sphere procs is here to stay due to class flavor and all that, then the only solution is to create a new spell with the same healing output properties as Healing Sphere, but cause Mastery Gift of the Serpent procs to automatically cast that spell on the selected injured player directly, and completely do away with the notion of causing a Sphere to spawn in physical space. This is required because otherwise, Spheres behave as they do now and even if they are dropped directly on top of a player 100% of the time, since they trigger onto a target within a short distance, it seems just as likely another, unintended target will trigger a Sphere when players are stacked up even remotely close together. And beyond that, if a Sphere is being physically created on the player’s location, it will presumably trigger instantly anyway, and thus the purpose for it to appear on the ground seems futile and wasted at best.

Another more interesting and flavorful option might be to create a Healing Sphere directly at a target player’s location, but this Sphere might be called Rejuvenating Mist or similar and instead of healing only one target, once it spawns and procs (again, directly on top of the intended player so it almost always procs immediately), it will split the healing it does with up to X most injured players within 8 yards of that location. The number of players it splits to is likely best at a small value, perhaps 3, but this sort of proc would have two major benefits over the current GotS.

First, it solves the random placement issue two fold by not only always proccing directly on top of a player, all but guaranteeing a heal that always triggers, but by splitting healing to injured targets in a very short radius, it has the potential to heal a bit more effectively if the intended target suddenly becomes full health before the proc occurs.

Secondly, the minor AE has the added benefit of assisting with the biggest flaw in the Mistweaver arsenal, namely AE healing abilities.

Topic: Thunder Focus Tea

Thesis: Thunder Focus Tea (1 chi, 45 sec CD: Doubles the effect of the next Surging Mist or Uplift) is too high of a cost and too lengthy a cooldown for the benefit it provides to Uplift.

Analysis: The 1 Chi cost is half that of another Uplift, for doubling the burst healing portion, but unless the burst healing is direly needed right at that moment, it is more healing to instead use 1 more Chi and cast a second Uplift:

Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift, Healing Per Chi:
(BASE_UPLIFT_HEAL * MODIFIER + RENEWING_MIST_TICK_HEAL * EXTRA_TICKS) / CHI_COST
Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift, Healing Per Chi:
(9500 heal * 2 + 7500 heal * 2 ticks) / 3 chi = 11333 Healing Per Chi

Uplift, Healing Per Chi:
(BASE_UPLIFT_HEAL + RENEWING_MIST_TICK_HEAL * EXTRA_TICKS) / CHI_COST
Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift, Healing Per Chi:
(9500 heal + 7500 heal * 2 ticks) / 2 chi = 12250 Healing Per Chi

Thus, base Uplift is worth about 8% more effective healing per Chi than using Uplift with Thunder Focus Tea. I realize the intent here is to encourage the notion of losing effective healing in order to gain a bit more right now burst healing, but given the time difference is only 6 seconds, it is hard to imagine a scenario where that would come into play. In fact, if you break it down further, the first extra tick of Renewing Mist that Uplift provides is worth almost as much as the extra Uplift healing that was gained from Thunder Focus Tea (7500 vs 9500), so the chance for that much healing being worth the effective loss in a 3 second timespan is very unlikely.

Summary: Thunder Focus Tea has too high of a Chi cost relative to the benefit it provides to the Uplift spell, which would be better spent on direct heals such as another baseline Uplift cast.

Possible Solution

Two possibilities that jump out:

A) Keep the Chi cost and cooldown of Thunder Focus Tea the same, but now in addition to doubling the heal of Uplift, it also extends Renewing Mist buffs by an extra 3 seconds. This would bump the effective healing of Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift up about 22%, which is certainly a good chunk, but will provide a good decision point for Mistweavers on whether they want to use 2 Chi now for an immediate Uplift, or wait for that 45 second cooldown to finish and spend an extra Chi for the more efficient heal.

B) Remove the Chi cost and use the cooldown as the sole limiter. The overall problem with the above example and numbers now is that Thunder Focus Tea costs the same resource in Chi that is being used as the spender with Uplift, which creates the conflict in the first place. Thunder Focus Tea + Surging Mist work great together, on the other hand, because they utilize opposite resources which harmonize well. Thus, a possible solution is to remove the Chi cost and use the cooldown only. Thus it’s always worth using, but when and on what spell (Surging Mist vs Uplift) also becomes an interesting decision point.

Topic: Revival

Thesis: The effective healing of the Revival ability will be far too weak for 10-man raid sizes and/or far too strong for 25-man raids, due to the nature of healing and dispelling all visible targets, seemingly without a target cap or ramp. Furthermore, the built-in dispel will occasionally prevent Mistweavers from utilizing this, their primary raid cooldown, for fear of dispelling buffs that should remain active on the raid.

Analysis: The main issue with the Revival spell (Instantly heals all party and raid targets within vision for X, and clears them of any harmful Magical, Poison and Disease effects.) is it is trying to perform two tasks and therefore does both of them either far too inadequately or far too effectively.

Firstly, the healing portion is reasonably tuned at present for 10-man or smaller raid sizes, doing about 30k healing per player for a total of 300k. That is about equivalent, assuming no overheal, to the healing output of a similarly geared Druid utilizing Tranquility in a high-damage scenario. However, Tranquility is a smart heal on a tick-by-tick basis, whereas it is quite likely even with an instant cast, that a few players in the raid when Revival is used will not need the heal and thus will be further reducing the effectiveness.

Conversely, without a target cap or split, in a 25-man setting, the healing output jumps to 30,000 * 25 or 750,000, which is an incredibly overpowered healing value especially as an instant cast.

It also cannot be ignored that scenarios will occur, given past mechanics, where a Mistweaver is unable to utilize their Revival cooldown even in the most dire situations because dispelling all targets would prove more harm than good. Fights like Sinestra and Heroic Spine of Deathwing are the most obvious culprits where a mass dispel when trying to cooldown the raid would be a terribly poor choice.

Summary: At present, Revival may prove far too effective at healing 25-man raids and/or far too ineffective at healing 10-man raids. Moreover, the requirement of a massive dispel while trying to provide cooldown AE healing could prove troublesome in some encounters if developers are not made exceptionally aware of the existence of this spell.

Possible Solution

The simplest solution to address the healing portion is one of two options:

A) Retain the notion of healing all players within vision for X amount, but add a player soft-cap of 10 players, such that the total healing is evenly reduced and distributed among all players beyond the soft cap. Thus if total healing should be 300k, that total is split among all valid targets beyond 10.

B) Alternatively, the healing portion could be a smart heal on a smaller portion of the raid (again split evenly to balance between raid sizes), such that 80% of the most injured targets are selected and healed. If the dispel is kept, the dispel would still have to hit all targets in vision so as to be a reliable form of dispel in the first place.

Finally, if the dispel aspect of Revival is well-liked and must remain as flavor, then the obvious solution to always allow usage as a Mistweaver cooldown on most fights where dispel mechanics might be harmful at certain periods is a Minor Glyph that will temporarily remove the dispel aspect of the ability while keeping the normal heal.

UPDATE #1: May 10th/Build 15677

Topic: Burst AE Healing (Uplift/Renewing Mists)

Addendum: There have been three major improvements to address this issue of AE healing, specifically burst AE healing:

1. The base heal of Uplift has been increased approximately 68% from 9400 to 15800 per Renewing Mist target. This directly improves a Mistweaver's burst healing (8-second scenario) ~41% from 11737 HPS to 16537 HPS, a very marked and drastic improvement.

2. The second improvement was the optional Glyph of Uplift, allowing a Mistweaver to improve Uplift healing by 50% at the loss of no extension to the Renewing Mist duration. In burst AE heal scenarios, this Glyph combined with the aforementioned change would improve burst healing ~91%, from 11737 HPS to 22462 HPS. This is precisely the levels of burst healing my post illustrates as necessary to remain level with other healers and falls between the Paladin ~21k HPS and Druid ~27.6k HPS.

3. Finally and most drastically, Mistweavers now inherently heal targets in a small radius around them when channeling Spinning Crane Kick, which is a fantastic source of short-range, burst AE healing similar to Swiftmend/Effloresence or Holy Radiance. Unfortunately, at present the HPS output is incredibly overtuned compared to other similar healing capabilities. Spinning Crane Kick is causing an average of 3750 HPS to all friendly players within 8 yards and seems to lack any player cap or even target soft cap ala Holy Radiance. It also incredibly cheap coming in at 4k mana on use, which is insanely inexpensive for a spell used only every 3 seconds that will heal upwards of 37000 HPS in a 10-man raid!

Ideally Mistweavers' Spinning Crane Kick should have a target soft-cap, such as 5-7 people, after which healing is reduced for each additional target to keep the HPS down. If not, then the actual HPS per target should be dramatically reduced a good ~47% to around 2000 HPS per friendly target to sustain a typical HPS output similar to other burst healing (~20k) but then allow slightly stronger healing if other spells are weaved between channeled casts of Spinning Crane Kick.

Topic: Mastery Gift of the Serpent

Addendum: The issue of Mastery has been partially addressed, in that Healing Sphere base heal values were boosted dramatically to be more in line with the necessary values illustrated in the previous calculations. Healing Spheres now heal ~69% more, from ~20466 to ~34500, which improves the Mastery efficiency relative to Harmony drastically and closely matches the previous required numbers for 3 out of 5 primary heals:

Healing Sphere Heal Increase Required to Match Harmony Effectiveness

Surging Mist: 346.9%
Renewing: -9.41%
Soothing Mist: 30.47%
Healing Sphere: 316.68%
Uplift: -1.77%

This is almost precisely the correct values (0% is ideal) and as compared to the pre-change values seen in the original post, are much better for Renewing, Soothing, and Uplift.

Unfortunately, nothing has been done to address the random spawn location issue as Spheres still appear in a random location around the target player.

Finally, a recent change to the manual-cast version of Healing Sphere now prevents full-health targets from absorbing Spheres they run into, preventing most overhealing. While this has not been implemented into the Gift of the Serpent proc version of Healing Sphere, which still trigger on full-health targets, it may be a sign that only a technical hurdle remains from altering the behavior of the Mastery version as well, which would be the final fix to solve virtually all issues with Mistweaver Mastery.

Topic: Thunder Focus Tea

Addendum: The weakness of Thunder Focus Tea when used with Uplift in terms of Chi cost has been directly addressed and exactly as outlined in the original post, now appropriately heals for more using the 1 Chi on Thunder Focus Tea than it does saving the Chi for an extra Uplift.

Previous Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift, Healing Per Chi: 11333 Healing Per Chi
Current Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift, Healing Per Chi: 15533 Healing Per Chi

Previous Uplift, Healing Per Chi: 12250 Healing Per Chi
Current Uplift, Healing Per Chi: 15400 Healing Per Chi

Thunder Focus Tea is now a proper short cooldown and offers a unique choice of whether to boost immediate burst healing via Uplift or Surging Mist, which is precisely what was needed!

Topic: Revival

Addendum: The issue of scaling between 10- & 25-man was partially addressed since my original post: The base healing for Revival was reduced ~33% from ~30,000 healing per target to ~20000 healing per target. This leaves the HPS in 10-man slightly below that of a well-placed Druid Tranquility, but within useful levels when considering the utility of the dispel component.

However, this change fails to address the upscaling to 25-man scenarios where a 500k instant heal is still extremely powerful. There is also no word on how to avoid dispel mechanics when mass dispel would be problematic to the raid for specific encounters.

Closing Thoughts

Overall I'm very pleased with the changes that have been implemented so far to address some of these issues and hope the rest of the kinks will be worked out. Another issue I didn't touch on because I assumed it would be changed anyway (and it was) was the Jade Serpent Statue, which previously had an on-click, charge-limited heal attached to it. This has since been changed to a passive effect that duplicates Soothing Mist to a single injured ally within range of the statue, which is a far superior solution that places the control back into the hands of the Monk healer rather than the burden on a random DPS who is busy doing their own thing.