wow Castle Nathria 9.0.5 Tank and Healer Log Rankings and Analysis: Week 1

[Starym 3,779]

 

Now that the patch has settled down a little we thought we'd take a look at the tanks and healers in Mythic Castle Nathria, with a look at the logs and some analysis from out class guide writers! But first, let's take a look at the logs themselves. Since the 95th and all percentile charts have the same rankings, we'll only be looking at all percentiles.

We'll start with the tank DPS, which isn't necessarily a great metric for tanking performance overall, but it's the only one we've got! Prot Palas are still massively dominating the damage side of things with Druids also standing out quite a bit and then the rest being pretty close together:

All percentiles Mythic data by Warcraft Logs.

While Paladins didn't really get affected by the patch, Brewmasters acutally did quite a lot, albeit indirectly, but we'll let our experts explain.

Protection Paladin by Panthea:

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Protection Paladin did not receive any changes in patch 9.0.5 that would impact how it plays in the raid environment. However, some adjustments to the bosses that we have seen so far have made it so that pieces of those encounters that may have previously been challenging for Protection Paladins are now more forgiving.

Brewmaster Monk by Sinzhu:

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Brewmasters are one of the specializations that stayed largely untouched in Patch 9.0.5. None of their abilities were directly altered, and the buffs that were given to the legendaries of Shaohao's Might and Celestial Infusion (aka Mighty Pour) were still insignificant enough to not result in a major shift in choice for the vast majority of content players see. While there was a buff to the damage output of Fallen Order, it has only served to bring up an outlier for a specialization where all Covenant choices were already at least viable. The changes to Fleshcraft, in particular, could result in an upswing of Necrolord Brewmasters rather than the current Kyrian majority in some content - a few Brewmasters at the very highest end of Mythic+ have already begun experimenting with both it and Celestial Infusion.

Ironically, what may be more meta-shifting for Brewmasters are the consequences of the bugfixes and subsequent shuffle in damage experienced by Windwalkers this patch. Although they are still capable of acceptable output, the harm dealt to the community's perception of the specialization's potential could result in fewer Windwalkers being brought into progression raiding once again. Consequently, this would all but mandate the presence of a Brewmaster to supply Mystic Touch and guarantee seeing them brought by most guilds regardless of their current weakness to damage-over-time debuffs.

Then we're on to healers, where the stats are much more relevant with HPS values, and we see a almost shockingly balanced affair, aside from Holy, with Druids on top:

All percentiles Mythic data by Warcraft Logs.

Restoration Druid by Torty:

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With the buffs to Rejuvenation and Wild Growth, Restoration Druids received around a 6-7% buff to their overall throughput in raids. Not only did it put Druids on top of HPS on higher damage taken encounters, but it also specifically improved their already incredible burst window. The Verdant Infusion legendary buff will also allow Druids to swap to a lot heavier tank healing on certain encounters if there is a need. At the cost of a small hit to raid healing they are able to absolutely dominate healing on one of the tanks, surpassing both Paladins and Monks in that niche.

Mistweaver Monk by Dhaubbs:

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Not much has changed with respect to Mistweaver for the 9.0.5 patch, with the two major changes being mana cost reduction of Renewing Mist and Vivify. Over the course of an average raid encounter, the mana you will save will net you roughly the amount it would take to cast extra 2-3 Essence Fonts. This is a somewhat small, though very welcome change to our class.

The other implication of this mana cost reduction, is how efficient Vivify is compared to Essence Font at certain numbers of active Renewing Mists. Prior to these changes, it required 5 Renewing Mists to be active in order for Vivify to be as efficient as Essence Font, while now at 5 buffs out, not only is it more efficient than an Essence Font, but if you have the Tear of Morning legendary equipped, it's more efficient even at 4 Renewing Mists.

Restoration Shaman by Seksi:

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Shaman continues to be the most represented class in Mythic Nathria by a large margin, as it is brings strong healing and utility, which are the most important things for guilds progressing through Mythic right now, as gear levels are high and so is damage output: as long as you can keep people alive, you are virtually guaranteed to kill any bosses you still have remaining.

There were no nerfs of note to the class, and instead its area of effect damage was significantly buffed, but due to the very low baseline and requirement to stop healing in order to do any meaningful damage, it is still one of the weakest healers in the damage output department. Some less used legendaries and most Covenant abilities were buffed, including Fleshcraft from the already popular Necrolord Covenant, which makes balance between legendaries and abilities better, but also does not create a "new king". So anyone comfortable with their current playstyle can safely continue as before, but expect to see more off-meta Covenant and legendary choices going forward, as well.

And finally, let's take a quick look at Heroic for comparison, which hasn't quite caught up with some of the patch changes and is looking a little different than Mythic:

Tanks:

Healers:

 

You can also check out this week's DPS log rankings here, and as always, for more details on the classes and specs themselves, check out our guides!