Legion Prepatch Hotfixes and Secondary Stat Scaling

A few hotfixes have been deployed this week, leading up to Legion. Details and sweet, sweet math are below.


So, the first hotfix this week brought a small mana tweak to Renewing Mist, and a buff to our Mastery:

• Renewing Mist mana cost increased to 3.0% base mana (was 2.8%).
• Mastery: Gust of Mist now heals for 10% per Spell Point (was 8.5%).

The ReM mana tweak isn't really something to look into too much, as it affects both Mistweaving and Fistweaving equally.

But the main kicker is the Mastery buff. Early on in Alpha, it was already at 10% Spellpower per Spell Point (350 Mastery Rating at level 110), but was brought down to 8.5% per Spell Point, which it's remained at until now.

Before this change, Mastery had only been the best stat for one spell: Effuse. And Effuse is rarely cast, if only for the Soothing Mist channel.

With the buff to Mastery, it is now the best stat for each of  the spells it affects (except for just the healing of the bolts of Essence Font, but the double healing proc of spells on targets with the HoT make up for it).

The following picture is updated to reflect how each of spells scales with the four different secondary stats. Each column is one specific stat with 5000 rating. The numbers in the left columns of a stat are the average %SP coefficient of each spell, while the numbers in the right columns show how much the stat scales with the respective secondary. The last columns are color-coded to show which stat scales best with each spell, as well as which spell scales the least (if at all) with the spell. If the cell is white, then two (or more) stats are tied for the lowest.

The really interesting change is Mastery is now the best stat for the Mists of Life Artifact Trait, when Vers had a head start with affecting the absorb of Life Cocoon, as well as all of the healing.

Another hotfix that rolled out this week toned down two of our Legion legendaries:

• Petrichor Lagniappe causes each Renewing Mist cast to reduce the remaining cooldown of Revival by 2 seconds (down from 3).
• Leggings of the Black Flame causes each Thunder Focus Tea to provide an additional augment for 1 spell, at random (down from 2 random spells).

UPDATE: A third legendary has been found to be hotfixed.

• Ei'thas, Lunar Glides of Eramas now causes an enemy hit by your Rising Sun Kick to cause their next auto attack to add 2 seconds to each of our HoTs on the target the enemy hits (down from each auto attack within 6 seconds).

I'm going to be honest; Leggings of the Black Flame needed a nerf. It was way too overpowered in its former state with Rising Thunder. With just accounting for the extra Renewing Mist and mana conserved from Vivify, it was looking to be a 20% healing gain. I'm happy with the direction they went with the nerf, instead of taking the route they did with Celestial Breath, where it has a 30 second cooldown in place whenever we are talented into Rising Thunder.

Leggings of the Black Flame are still a very strong legendary, though. They're just no longer grossly overpowered.

The Petrichor Lagniappe nerf is a little interesting, though.

If you had been using Renewing Mist on cooldown from the moment you used Revival, Revival's cooldown could be lowered to 2:11. Changing it from 3 seconds to 2 seconds bumps that up to 2:24 cooldown, putting it more in line with other healers' legendary items that affect their raid cooldowns.

Pretty typical stuff, considering the Blizz is watching Healer Legendary balance like a hawk.

The Ei'thas nerf flew under the radar, as the other two had their tooltips changed (thanks to Anochi on the Peak of Serenity discord for finding this change).

This nerf feels a bit heavy handed, limiting it to just one auto attack, but brings it in line with other healers' legendaries, as the mana sustain and healing from this gets absurd with fast swing timers (like Ursoc during Blood Frenzy).

Chi Burst discussion can be found here.