Nerfbat and Hopelessness...

I finally got my first raid night post the 30% mana cost increase hotfix.  Deep down, I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't realize how bad.  I wrote a post earlier about why the great 5.1 nerf to mistweavers was not so bad, and that we were still viable.  Now, my opinion has changed.

The current healing model involves a 3 heal system: a cheap long cast heal (mana nuetral), a fast short cast heal (Very expensive), and a powerful long cast heal (expensive).  The idea was that you use the mana neutral heal in low damage situations and save the other two when damage is crazy.  The idea was you could spam your cheap heal forever and never go OOM, and that as long as you didn't spam your expensive heals too much, you could even use those without going OOM.

With the recent mana increase for mistweavers, we are in a bad place.  Jabbing for chi will make you go OOM very quickly.  Soothing Mist (our mana neutral spell) for chi will make you go OOM very quickly.  Using surging mist is a death trap to your mana, and even enveloping mists, which uses chi, is too expensive because the mana you spend to generate that chi is insane.  AOE much, well renewing mists and uplift is marginal at best in 25 man now, and very expensive, and if you try to spinning crane kick, you will OOM faster than you can finish the cast.  I am exaggerating a bit, but tonight was the first time I have felt helpless as a healer since my pally in ICC after the cata talent changes hit, and back then, everybody agreed we were broken but Blizzard was ok with it, because they were balanced around level 85 abilities and stats.

I feel broken right now.  All the synergy in the spells is gone.  I find myself looking for gimmicks to get healing without spending mana, because if I do, I go OOM 25% into the fight.  One fight I had only 50% uptime on healing (maybe a slight exaggeration), because if I didn't I had no mana for the heal intense execute phase.

The only hope is mana tea crit bonuses, and yet with 11,000+ mana and everything else reforged to crit, I still went OOM way to soon, USING THE CHEAP HEALS.  And the mana tea bonus is so random due to crit, that even when the crit gods blessed me with mana, it was so unpredictable that I couldn't depend on it from one pull to another.

I had to think on my feet and adjust the whole time, something I don't mind doing sometimes, but when you do it all the time, it wears you out, and causes you to be more prone to mistakes, which is not a good thing on Garalon.

I really wish Blizzard would at least give us mistweavers a blue post to help us understand their mindset and where we are headed, because right now I feel broken and pointless.  I don't want my raid leader to replace me, but if it were me, I would.  Help me understand why, and then maybe I can start healing.  Until that time, I am stuck in the corner, quivering with fear, worried that if I try to save my friends, I will have no mana to save myself.