Monday, November 26, 2012

Mistweaver vs Resto druid

I'd want to update this a tiny bit with patch 5.1. In 5.1 monks got a huge nerf and ever since I would say for the moment, I cannot switch to mistweaver, since my druid gear is just so much better. In fact, if you want to only compare healing output, I heard that monks aren't that much greater than druids anymore, so what I said about never picking druid over mistweaver is no longer valid.

So I got to playing mistweaver in lfr a few weeks now. My gear is still pretty bad, greens with blues and 2 heroic pieces (1 of which is a dps neck... but I was ilvl padding to get into lfr), but I can now finally get top 1 or 2 healer consistently every boss. Anyway, all in all, if I was to compare the two class, I would say resto druid is gimper numbers wise. I can consistently put out equal hps fistweaving on mistweaver (as long as I don't oom, which I do since I only have 5k spirit atm) and on top of that I can put out 20k dps without breaking too much of a sweat (and on fights like Garalon or Stone Guards, the dps and hps is even more impressive). Yea yea, lfr has less mechanics to dodge, but there's not that much to dodge for melees anyway this patch. So basically, only looking at numbers and given a choice, I would never bring a restore druid in place of a mistweaver. Though they are gimping renewing mist/uplift next patch, so we'll see how that goes.
On the other hand, fistweaving for me creates an issue where I have trouble single targeting heals. So if a single person was to take a huge drop, switching target to spam surging mists on them is a little difficult for me. I would blame my key/mouse binds for that and mana management, since usually 1/2 through the fight I'd be drinking mana teas just to keep renewing mists up, so obviously will not have mana to pour out surging mists.
Druids are much more controlled, brings raid utility like extra tranq/deterrence/ice block, and raid healing numbers aren't that bad, but I would say it's by far the weakest healer this expansion. Monks do have the option of just doing ranged healing, but then I feel like monk becomes lesser druids, since it's less mana efficient and without fistweaving, chi generation becomes a bit more problematic, no chi = no uplift (unless gylphed) and less mana tea, etc.
I don't thinking playing either class is harder or easier, in fact, being counted as melee and staying in melee range is actually advantageous on most fights, except Will of Emperor, since dodging devastating combos = not outputting dps to fistweave, but you do get an extra big attack on the boss afterwards. But since Blizzard did give the option not to fistweave, it's not that bad for monks.

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