Which of the two would you prefer?
For those who don’t know, Warlord’s of Draenor (WoD) had two separate stances for Mistweavers:
- Red Crane Stance (fistweaving)
- Jade Serpent Stance (mistweaving)
Most melee abilities were only usable while in Red Crane Stance, and all of your damage automatically generated healing (similar to how Mistweavers originally were in MoP). By comparison, most of your healing abilities were only usable in Jade Serpent Stance.
A lot of Mistweavers were attempting to pick just one stance and stick with it throughout the duration of a boss fight. The best Mistweavers would swap between each stance as needed. Mana tea worked really differently too, but that’s another discussion altogether. Going into Legion, Blizzard decided to drop Red Crane Stance altogether with an explanation that it “wasn’t viable” for healing.
Personally, I’d love to see the stances come back. I’d also love to see the base GCD reduced to 1 second if Red Crane Stance is active. I’d enjoy using that more than the current iteration of AotM.
I didn’t play during WoD but I like the idea of stances in the tree if they replaced Faeline Stomp and Bonedust Brew in functionality. I assume switching between the two involved only a GCD like warr stances?
It seems like a majority of fistweaver’s healing potential is tied up in Rising Mists + Rapid Diffusion (plus a few other talents) spreading ReM like crazy and then chaining instant Vivify. This means any healing-through-damage effect like AtotM, Way of the Crane, stances etc will need to be either very limited in nature or preclude/limit the use of your healing spells.
I’m not sure people would like the constant GCD stance swapping needed for such an implementation. I do really like the idea of 1s GCD while fistweaving. I’d trade Faeline Stomp for a short duration / low CD effect like Way of the Crane which shaved 0.5s off the GCD and increased physical damage dealt and reduced the duration of all CC effects by 25-50% while active, can’t use healing spells but transfers damage dealt to healing on nearby allies. Something like 1m CD / 15s duration or 30s CD / 8s duration.
I’d like something similar for mistweavers. 1-2m CD with a proportionally longer duration effect using the Weapons of Order graphic in a green hue that increased mastery and enhanced the effects of both Soothing Mist and Essence font through connected talents. Prevents physical attacks for the duration and maybe throw in Chi Explosion as a damage spell castable while channeling SooM while active. This could be in place of BDB which feels completely out of place on MW
I feel like these would really cement their respective identities. In addition, instead of tying up so much AoE potential in Faeline stomp buffing BCK (and its AtotM healing) I think Teachings of the Monastery should also give SCK a % chance (eg 8%) each time it deals damage to generate one stack. Then add a talent branching off from Faeline Stomp (or similar CD) that makes RSK cause your next BCK to strike 1/2 additional targets (2 pt node). This would fix the janky rotation in AOE and make it more dynamic while preventing runaway scaling on BCK.
Stance switching kills the ReM playstyle so I am completely against the idea.
I don’t fistweave to just be a dps player that happens to heal.