Due to the nerfs to Fistweaver, Castweaver has been hurt in PvP, and could use some improvements. Here’s a collection of ideas, just a handful of which would likely make the class much better. I think that most/all of these should be tied to Castweaver talents so as to not rebuff Fistweaver:
Give us a 5 minute CD ability that increases mana regen by some percentage for a set time to help deal with OOM issues. Proper management of Mana Tea and Thunder Focus Tea really does help a lot (2 free Vivifies after TFT is great), but I still think we need something else. Another idea would be to just boost the amount of mana returned from Mana Tea per stack
Rebuff our defensives, but attach their original state to talents that only Castweavers would take. Right now, we often have to use both Fortifying Brew and Dampen Harm at the same time to survive more than 2-3 hits in a stun
Make Renewing Mist castable during Soothing Mist
Make it so that Clouded Focus stacks are not lost on target changes done with Peer Into Peace
Make Zen Pulse a base ability and replace it with something worth a point. It’s not completely awful, but it’s definitely not powerful enough to deserve a talent point. Maybe put Eminence here
Give us a DoT so we can actually do something at range. Jade Lightning is cool, but being channeled means we cannot even use it unless our team is taking no damage and we’re completely stationary
Take Zen Spheres off the GCD
Make Zen Focus Tea a base ability, or a at least a regular talent
Make TFT affect Sheilun’s Gift. For 2 charges of TFT, SG becomes instant
Change Thunderous Focus Tea to give a passive chance to refund a roll/torpedo
Un-nerf Healing Spheres or just replace them with something worth taking. They used to be good against DoT classes, but now that they trigger side effects, they are potentially dangerous
Make it possible to get both Veil of Pride and Shahao’s Lessons, even with the latter at reduced effectiveness
Change Dematerialize so that it allows all defensives to be usable while stunned
Move Invoker’s Delight somewhere far from the apex of the tree and reduce the haste percentage if you must
Replace Tea of Serenity/Plenty with a talent that just grants an extra charge of TFT. The randomness of these talents makes them much less helpful
Swap Eye of the Tiger and Windwalking in the talent tree. The latter benefits all specs, while the former only helps the melee specs
Replace Yulon’s Whisper with something worth getting, or just eliminate it
Fix the tooltips for Chi abilities to make clear they apply Mystic Touch. They get more compelling when that’s understood
Take Soothing Mist off the GCD. We would still have to stand still to heal much of the time, but at least we’d be able to bob and weave for getting out of LoS to avoid CC and damage without risking a damage spike killing a teammate during the GCD. This would help us more than almost any other change in PvP without impacting PvE much, if at all
Finally, consider separating the Castweaver and Fistweaver trees so that they can be tuned independently.
Thanks for reading
Edit: changed top/bottom wording to avoid confusion
Soothing Mist needs to be castable while moving. See Mercy, Lt. Morales, Io, Medic, it’s such a common healing mechanic in many games - only WoW makes you stand still. Zen Pulse needs to heal without damaging an enemy. Using Zen Pulse on a ranged ally truly is worthless (0 healing). Soothing Mist needs to give some sort of damage buff or a large immolation aura type of effect to the recipient that is attributed to the monk.
I have read people complaining about this idea, as this would be a macro for an uninterruptible Vivify/EnvM with no drawbacks. So maybe the GCD could be reduced to a 0.5 one with haste scaling?
I could understand that complaint, but considering the overall state of the Castweaver, I don’t think that’d wind up overpowered. If we really wanted to compensate, we could get rid of the regular 10s instant Vivify.
I do like your idea as an alternative, though. Even 0.5 would be much better than now
The situation with our defensives, particularly in Solo Shuffle, is bad. Even with both of them up, we can still die fairly quickly. Fort Brew, with its 6 minute cooldown, should be far more protective than it is. As it stands, I feel much safer on my Holy Priest with Void Shift, Divine Ascension, and Serenity. The mobility of Castweaver does not make up for its fragility.
I hope this will be rethought in TWW. As it stands, we are very vulnerable to healer focus, especially on smaller maps where we have little room to run away.
As someone else has already mentioned, removing soothing mist from gcd would be huge. Every other healer in the game has a way of supporting their teammates with damage. Mistweaver, that’s not the case, so it would only be fair to give mistweavers a damage buff of some sort. Also, make crackling jade lightning not interruptible. Reduce the cd of incap. Make it 15-20 seconds instead of 45sec or however long it is. In terms of pvp, every comp would be much better off with any other healer than a mw such as a preservation evoker. I really don’t get what blizzard has against Mistweaver monks. They have been by far the worst healer spec over the past two expansions with the exception of fistweaver for one season in dragon flight.
I disagree. I think monk survivability is fine. We have port stun, fort brew, dampen harm, restoral, diffuse. It’s all about rotating those defensives. However, Mistweaver lacks a lot of areas when comparison to other healers. Most mistweavers tend to play with a support class too like a ret, spriest or warlock and it makes Mistweaver even harder to kill. The only time I find myself in trouble is vs frostdks when they will stun silence or if you are stuck in a stun without trinket, port, or revival which is pretty rare, but it does happen.
Why anyone want to play casted mistweaver when fistweaving exists is mind boggling to me. My two favorite healers in the game, especially in pvp is disc priest and fistweaving monk, just for the healing by dealing damage is the most fun this game has to offer.
ideas