The Queue: I’m pretty sure I sleep-wrote this Queue

Is sleep-writing even a thing? I don’t know, but I’m a little vague on when (or if) I completed this, so I just assume that’s what happened.

I find the world first race really fun to watch, but honestly don’t root for anyone. I enjoy the strategizing, the crazy level of precision required to complete encounters, and I particularly enjoy watching really good Mistweavers playing. I’m an okay Mistweaver, but it’s a whole different think to watch a world-first level Mistweaver playing.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any Mistweavers in this race, which has put me a bit off. It’s still interesting to watch, but it’s not really as directly relatable. I play Mistweaver pretty much all the time, and I’m just not very familiar with other classes and specs (I can only keep so much in my head at the same time). I think the last time I saw any Mistweavers in World First play was early Dazar’alor — I very clearly remember Potter switching to Shaman on Stormwall Blockade, and I don’t think he’s gone back to his Monk since. This tier seems to be mainly Holy Paladins and Discipline Priests, classes that I know a bit about, but nowhere near as well as my own.

It’s still interesting to watch, just not as interesting because I don’t understand it as well.

Which is to say that if I were rooting for anyone (which I’m not), I would probably be rooting for the guild running a Mistweaver (which there isn’t).

Whew. What a question.

I’ve been doing Mistweaver to the exclusion of all other classes and specs this expansion, which is something I haven’t done since dual specs were added to the game. And even then, I’ve always had alts. But lately I’ve been using my play time to be good at one thing instead of trying to play a dozen things.

And Mistweavers are really, really good at one thing: single-target healing. We’re probably better than any other class in the game at keeping a single target up. Channel Soothing Mist with Jade Serpent Statue up, cast Renewing Mist and Enveloping Mist before their buffs run out, use Vivify as needed (or chain-cast in heavy damage), and Life Cocoon to avert huge damage bursts. I can weave in Essence Font (when I have time to break away from everything else) for bonus group healing and an extra boost of Mastery healing on my target. With a Soothing Mist channel going, I can instant cast Vivify on my target, and when it’s buffed with Enveloping Mist on top of the two Soothing Mist channels… that’s not too shabby. (Though it will run you out of mana if you have to keep it up for long.)

There’s only one problem with this. I’ve yet to find a single fight in Battle for Azeroth where my awesome ability to single-target heal is remotely useful.

I’m hardly a Mythic raider, but I do raid Normal and Heroic, and I’ve gotten Ahead of the Curve for Uldir, Dazar’alor, and Crucible of Storms. But most fights are more about group healing than tank healing, and when a fight does have single-target healing requirements, a Paladin with Beacon of Light is a lot more flexible because they can do tons of healing across the group while still pushing heals to their Beacon target. When a Mistweaver is single-target healing, they’re single-target healing. Sure, Vivify heals will splash to anyone with my HoTs and Essence Font is a very strong AOE, but both require me to take my focus off the tank to cast. Y

While tank healing is certainly important, it’s not so important that anyone can completely focus on it. That means Mistweaver single-target healing, for all its potential to pump out HPS, just isn’t that great.

So instead of focusing on the role that my abilities and talents seem to stress, I play a jack of all trades. Mistweavers are rather versatile: I have HoTs, I have group heals, I have single-target heals, I have a bubble, I have a fair raid healing cooldown. I can do a little of everything, there’s just not much I’m really good at.

Like our raid role, our talents seem to be confused about what we’re supposed to do. There’s Mistwrap and Lifecycles, which are both designed to buff the single-target healing we never have to do. There’s Refreshing Jade Wind, short-range AOE heal centered around you that can push out great numbers… but only on the fights where you’re stacked, and because it isn’t an ability that takes advantage of our Mastery bonus healing, sometimes even using it well means loosing overall HPS because it doesn’t trigger Mastery. Then there are two talents that support a damage-to-healing build, giving everyone with our HoTs a small heal and extending the HoTs, but the healing isn’t strong enough to sustain a group, and you have to sacrifice stronger healing talents to be able to do any damage-to-healing.

I’d like Mistweavers to have meaningful talent choices that let them take their jack-of-all-trades nature and specialize to fit our chosen playstyle (or current raid role). I enjoy being versatile, but I’m frustrated by the ways our talents try to shoehorn us into roles where we can’t shine rather than highlighting the various roles the class can play. In my mind, that means:

1. Strengthening our single-target healing talents. I know, I said our single-target healing is the best in the game, but our need to focus on a single target to do that healing doesn’t work with raid design that requires constant group healing. That means to be effective we need to be able to either do single-target healing while doing group healing or we need to do our single-target healing fast.
2. Make our damage-to-healing talents good enough to use (at least situationally). There aren’t any situations where it’s a viable playstyle (though when I know I can stay in melee range, I’ll spec Spirit of the Crane to get mana back when I kick things).
3. Make more abilities proc our Mastery. Our Mastery is tiny bonus heal on proc, but it only procs on certain core abilities — which means talents that give us new abilities (like Refreshing Jade Wind) don’t always make sense to work into our rotation, because they ignore our Mastery.

I like playing a Mistweaver, but dang, sometimes the spec feels weak. (And I’m really bummed to not see any Mistweavers in the World First race). I’m curious to see where Blizzard goes from here, but I have no clue what they have in mind for the class.

It feels like a class change is essentially the same as a level boost. Sure, you don’t have the exact same character, but you could make a character that looks exactly the same and is suddenly a well-geared level 110.

Going back to the world first race, this sort of thing would let raiders switch classes as necessary without maintaining multiple classes with the best possible gear, but that’s where you hit those technical problems you mentioned, because not all gear is created equal. What do you do when you’re switching from cloth to plate? What about Azerite Traits and Essences and enchants? What a mess.

For my part, I wouldn’t do this. For all that leveling is tedious, I don’t like jumping to max level because I never really learn how to play — and switching classes would probably be much the same. I know there are plenty of players who can jump back and forth better than I can, but for my part… nope, this isn’t for me.

This would change so many things that it almost feels like only thinking about it through the lens of alts seems like focusing on a single grain of sand on a beach. This would upend so much that I don’t think I would even care about my alts if it did.

Sure, maybe I wouldn’t have a Blood Elf Paladin and a Lightforged Paladin. I’d probably have a few fewer alts, but that seems like the least interesting part of the question.

Blizzard seems to love loose ends, and with the way the story is shaping up, I have trouble seeing either of these characters making a major return at the end of the expansion. They’ve faded into the background while the story has hurtled towards an inevitable confrontation with Azshara and N’zoth, with Sylvanas being a looming but unknown threat. Right now we’re focused on the culmination of something N’zoth has planned for a very long time, and it’s possible that Sylvanas has been part of it, unknowingly or not.

Calia has reasons to go against Sylvanas, but the story seems to be hurtling to something larger than Calia fighting to reclaim Lordaeron. And Taelia seems to have even less reason to become involved, aside from the fact that she’s a hero who would want to help push back the Horde and/or Azshara and/or N’zoth. But we haven’t seen either of them lately, and there’s no compelling reason to bring either of them back right now.

I think Calia might reappear when/if Sylvanas is defeated, perhaps as a leader to Forsaken defectors. In Before the Storm, Blizzard introduced the possibility of her reclaiming her throne, but she’s been out of the picture all expansion now. Maybe they planned a nice c

Taelia, for as much as I like her, doesn’t seem to have any emotional ties to the current story arc. I think, long-term, there’s a confrontation with the Lich King coming. (Frankly, after Legion’s Death Knight campaign, I expected a confrontation with him to come immediately, but so far nothing.) Whenever we do that, I expect Taelia will be there. But I don’t think that story is happening this expansion.

My bet is that we won’t see either again this expansion, at least not in more than a background way. We might see Calia, but I think Taelia is really unlikely.

Hopefully, though, they’ll just be threads Blizzard can pick up in a future expansion, and not things for Blizzard to forget about.

And that is all for now, my friends. What even is time? When even is this? Who knows! But probably Mitch will be here tomorrow, which would mean tomorrow is Thursday because that is how time works.

I think. Probably.

Anyway, have a great day, people, and I’ll see you next week.