Mistweaver Ability Spotlight – Renewing Mist

Welcome to the Mistweaver Ability Spotlight, a series where we go in-depth and talk about using specific abilities that are very unique to Mistweavers. Today’s topic will be Renewing Mist and we’ll be covering how best to use the two charges and jump mechanics.

Renewing Mist Targeting and Jumping

Before we get into when to use Renewing Mist (ReM), let’s talk a little about how it works. As the tooltip says, when ReM overheals (even just a little bit), it will attempt to travel to another random eligible target. An eligible target means that the target is within 20 yards of the player who has ReM, does not already have ReM, and is injured (not at full health). Let’s look at an example.

Here we have a dungeon situation with 3 injured players. If we cast Renewing Mist on the Warrior, the situation then becomes like this:

But now Renewing Mist will overheal. There are 2 injured players who do not have Renewing Mist, but the Shaman here is more than 20 yards away so it will travel to the Rogue instead. We already know this is going to happen, so let’s cast Renewing Mist on the Shaman.

From here, Renewing Mist will no longer jump to anyone after they are healed to full. In the Shaman’s case, nobody is in range. In the Rogue’s case, the two other players in range are at full health. So far, what we have described was standard procedure in Legion and will continue in Battle for Azeroth. Let’s say the Warrior gets hit by some mobs.

New to Battle for Azeroth is a feature that if you cast Renewing Mist on a target that already has one of your previous Renewing Mists active, it will look to push that older ReM to an eligible target, otherwise it’ll overwrite on that target.. If we cast it on the Rogue, the existing buff will jump to the Warrior because the Warrior is an eligible target. The Shaman, however, has no eligible targets in range, so casting Renewing Mist on them will just cause an overwrite. Note that before the Warrior got injured, the Rogue also had no eligible targets in range (because both targets in range were not injured), so casting on the Rogue would have caused an overwrite as well.

We can take from this that we should always try to cast Renewing Mist on someone who is injured for the Gust of Mists heal, but keep note of specific situations where Renewing Mist would still not jump even with the new feature. Try to be aware of where each party member is and to keep an eye on everyone’s health so that you know when Renewing Mist can safely be cast on an injured person anyway for the mastery heal, and when you have to sacrifice that mastery heal to actually get a full duration buff by casting on a full health target.

When to Use Renewing Mist

There are a number of other changes in Battle for Azeroth that completely change when and how ReM should be used. We’ll give a brief change list:

• Renewing Mist now has 2 charges, like Roll.
• Thunder Focus Tea (TFT) now makes ReM last 10 more seconds rather than not triggering the cooldown.
• Vivify now heals every target affected by Renewing Mist.
• Renewing Mist how has a 9 second recharge time (NEW July 14 2018)

Instead of just a smart Heal over Time spell, ReM now acts as the driver for most of Vivify’s healing. Between having two charges, TFT, and the Focused Thunder talent giving two uses of TFT, there are a lot of different ways to use Renewing Mist to give different amounts of Vivify healing at different points. We’ve mapped out some of the common patterns of ReM use.

Click here for Renewing Mist count visualization sheet!

There’s a lot going on here so let’s break it down. There are 6 tabs (change at the bottom), illustrating 2 different ways of playing each with the 3 ways of using TFT with ReM. You can either not use TFT on ReM at all, use regular TFT on it, or have the Focused Thunder talent and use TFT on it. Within each of these setups, you can either just press ReM on cooldown and average a steady number of ReMs, or you can hold them at specific times (noted by purple squares where a charge has returned but you sit on it to make it last longer) to get the strongest Vivifies possible at specific times.

Let’s go through each one and talk about them.

Baseline ReM Mashing

This shows a pretty standard pattern when you just press ReM and don’t care for timing or TFT at all. You can see a high of 4 ReMs, but only at the same time that another ReM has to be cast. Similarly, later on the only 3s are on the same GCD as ReM casts, so we settle down to only 2 ReM Vivifies eventually.

Baseline ReM Peak

In this pattern, hold ReM to reset the cycle to essentially what it is at the beginning. Remember that the purple segment notes when you have a ReM charge, but are delaying it so that you get a better peak later. The pattern desynchronizes slightly because ReM 5 casts just before ReM 6 comes off cooldown to not double up on charges like the beginning so that no time is lost. By resetting the cycle, we can get a window of 3 ReM Vivifies for about 10 seconds.

ReM Mashing with TFT

Same as the first, but now a ReM every 30ish seconds lasts another 10 seconds. That’s 10 seconds of stronger Vivifies, and actually does quite well even without any planning. After the initial load with 2 charges though, all we get is essentially the same thing as the original pattern that had no TFT at all but was planning for that string of 3 ReM Vivifies. There is no period of dropping to 1 ReM, but the later peak is not any greater than just using proper planning and using TFT on something else.

ReM with TFT Peak

Here, we hold the Renewing Mist after each TFT so that it pairs up with the extended duration of the first ReM later down the line. By holding this ReM, we create a 20 second long period of 3+ ReM Vivifies even on later cycles and also have about 8 seconds of 4 ReM Vivifies. If you know when a certain damage ability is happening that would hit a lot of people, planning the cycle to hit those moments when you have 4 ReMs will lead to very powerful Vivifies to help you get through it.

Focused Thunder ReM Mashing

The elusive 5 ReM Vivify becomes possible with Focused Thunder, but sadly it only happens on the same GCD as casting a Renewing Mist anyway and goes back to 4 by the time we are able to get a Vivify off. By taking the Focused Thunder talent and hitting ReM on cooldown, we get the same high window as planning with regular TFT. The only real benefit here is that we never drop back down to 1 ReM between cycles. However, TFT will not begin its cooldown until both effects are used, and failing to hold ReM for TFT just results in a longer mashing cycle and the high peak window falls away if we don’t hold ReM ever.

Focused Thunder ReM Peak

Finally, we have planning for a peak with Focused Thunder and using both parts of TFT on ReM. The 3rd ReM can be held to delay when it falls off a little bit. Previously in beta while ReM still had an 8 second recharge this lead to a much higher peak with a few GCDs worth of 5 ReM Vivifies to be had. However, now that ReM has a 9 second recharge, we are limited to only 3 seconds of 5 ReMs and in there a ReM has to be recast, leaving only one possible Vivify to be cast at 5 ReMs. After the big peak, we hold ReM, reset the cycle, and do it all again.

Planning is Better

Looking through the available patterns, it becomes clear that as long as you know when the damage will happen, whether from a boss ability, a rough trash pull, or a specific time in a raid encounter, planning your ReMs to get good Vivifies always ends up better than just hitting ReM on cooldown. Higher peaks combat damage bursts as well as being more mana efficient overall because we can only cast a certain number of Vivifies with out available mana and we want those to heal as much as possible.

What to do with TFT?

We established that planning for a peak works better, but TFT can be used for things besides ReM and Focused Thunder costs a talent that could be something else instead. Let’s look at how good the peaks for each setup are:

Seconds 9-28 of Baseline ReM Peak ReM Counts

This is the best burst we can do without involving TFT, and sadly it’s pretty weak. 3 ReM Vivifies are somewhat strong, but we don’t get them for long and drop back down to 2 fairly quickly. If something particularly strong happens in Mythic+, this probably won’t take care of your group.

Seconds 9-28 of ReM with TFT Peak ReM Counts

With regular TFT, we have some real burst. Several 3 ReM Vivifies followed by several 4 ReM Vivifies produces some of the best group healing Mistweavers are capable of over these 20 seconds. Since no other use of TFT really helps group healing in Mythic+, it seems like a good idea to use TFT on ReM with proper planning most of the time.

Seconds 12-31 of Focused Thunder ReM Peak ReM Counts

Taking Focused Thunder, the actual peak is a little better. We have the 5th ReM stack here, but as discussed earlier that comes from casting ReM at that time so only means one 5 ReM Vivify. Besides that, there is another Vivify at the beginning and end of the 4 ReM window that is still 4 ReMs before dropping to 3. This pattern also causes the cycle to not reset until second 43, whereas regularly using TFT will have a cycle reset at second 34, so it can be used a little more often. The peak here could be necessary for specific bosses on Tyrannical or specific trash packs, but consider the dungeon and whether whether this is necessary before taking Focused Thunder, or consider using one of the charges of TFT on something besides Renewing Mist.

I hope you enjoyed this look into Renewing Mist in Battle for Azeroth. It can be a lot to process and might take a while of playing around with it in-game to really understand everything going on here. Hopefully this is a good start and can cut some of the learning curve short. See you next time!

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