Kaivax
•
Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger is not scaling with AP converted from SP. We’re in the process of fixing this. His damage will increase significantly when completed.
• We agree that
Rushing Jade Wind isn’t that much of a competitive choice for Mistweaver’s in that tier. We’re adding a new effect which will increase the healing done by the Monk’s
Spinning Crane Kick (via Teachings of the Monastery) after cast.
•
Revival is intended to be the
Tranquility/
Divine Hymn for Monks. We agree it may not be as competitive as the other healer's timers, so it’s likely we’ll do some tuning there.
• We’re going to be removing the cap of
Renewing Mist (from 10 targets), mainly because the cooldown should be the limiter of # of active targets, not an arbitrary cap.
• Regarding
Vivify not filling the slot of AOE healing,
Spinning Crane Kick’s heal is intended to fill that gap. The healing done by SCK in the live beta build is bugged and not scaling from spellpower. We've got this fixed in a future beta patch.
• Regarding the melee healing monk, we'd appreciate more detail about what exactly is hampering the subspec from being viable.
• We agree that monks have mana issues right now, but in our tests, Mistweavers are still doing quite well. Expect healing number reductions if we do reduce mana costs and/or buff
.
Lastly, we welcome any videos + combat log parses of raid tests with Mistweavers (in both ranged healing and melee healing subspecs), if you guys have them.
We agree the rotation feels slightly slower paced in entry level gear than intended.
In an upcoming build we intend to increase the base Energy regeneration to 10/second, up from 8/second (and yes, this will also affect Brewmasters). We may have to follow this with some damage reductions, as monks are already performing at an optimal state in our damage tests. That said, in entry level expansion items, Energy regeneration rates are always going to feel slower than they should, because we have to tune things with future gear in mind.
Regarding “cleaving” damage balance, monks in our tests are competitive on 3+ targets via
Spinning Crane Kick rather than Jab in a slightly different rotation.
As always, challenging us with specific numbers when outlining your case is very welcome.
To provide an update on tanking mechanics, I want to comment on Mastery for Guardians and Brewmasters. This is somewhat of an over-generalization, but tanks typically care about 4 things when gearing in decreasing order of importance:
1. Survive the maximum burst damage of the encounter (aka Effective Health)
2. Minimize healing needed (aka Damage Reduction + Self Healing)
3. Hold aggro on whatever you’re needed to hold aggro on (aka TPS)
4. Maximize damage dealt (aka DPS)
#4 is generally much less important than #1-3, and overlaps with #3 heavily when considering gear. And #3 is relatively easy these days anyway. So, usually it just comes down to #1 and #2.
Stamina primarily helps with #1. Dodge primarily helps with #2. Most other stats help with resource generation, which typically translate into #2. Mastery for Guardians and Brewmasters is in the somewhat unusual place of helping with both #1 and #2 significantly.
If you compare Mastery to Dodge for a Brewmaster, as a few theorycrafters here have done, you can see that, purely in terms of how much they reduce your damage taken, Dodge wins by a considerable margin. We balanced it that way, because we give value to how much it helps with #1 as well. Obviously, helping with #1 has some value, because you care about Stamina. We see Mastery for Guardians and Brewmasters as sort of a hybrid between Stamina and Avoidance, in terms of how it helps improve your character.
It’s easy to objectively compare the value of two stats in terms of how much they help with #1, or how much they help with #2. But comparing some amount of help with #1 to some amount of help with #2 is much more complex and subjective. It’s an interesting choice that tanks have to make all the time, and one of the most successful choices in gearing that the game provides (Stamina vs. Avoidance being the primary way that choice is expressed). So, that means balancing a stat that provides a mix of both can be complex and subjective as well. After much deliberation, we’re going to try valuing the effective health benefits of Mastery for Brewmasters and Guardians significantly lower than the damage reduction benefits, and adjusting the Mastery conversion rates to reflect that.
Hopefully this provides a bit of background and perspective about the complexities underlying even the simplest of changes: In the next build, you’ll find Mastery for Guardians providing 1.25% Armor per Mastery (up from 0.65%), and for Brewmasters providing 0.5% Stagger per Mastery (up from 0.3%).
