Dragonflight did add more caster-centric options, I agree with you. Tear of Morning is a must have talent for the caster build, same with Rising Mist for fistweavers. Blizzard knows that MW’s are playing 2 different playstyle that’s why both of them share a talent slot at the end of our tree. Same for yu’lon and crane talent, jade serpent statue is almost a must for the caster build since it works off unison, etc, etc
That’s why I think mistweaver should be separated into 2 different specs
I personally shy away from this because of the sheer amount of work Blizzard would have to put into creating distinct specs. Unlike the situation with the Feral split there is a pretty extreme overlap in the ability usage between melee and caster focused playstyles. They’d pretty much have to create an entirely new basic healing kit for both which could lead to a lot of anger on one side or the other.
At the same time, I can accept that the current split essentially choosing between melee and Soothing Mist is pretty problematic.
i mean they could do us like survival hunter. Just make us melee and say “deal with it”.
No, absolutely not.
/10characters
oh they could
no means no 
ranged weaver for life
I use full ranged 0 melee build and pretty much always outheal fistweavers on boss fights
Shows that you either don’t rember MoP or never played it. I’ve played monk since closed MoP beta and it was described as a healer that could dps to heal. The jab>jab>uplift was so overpowered they nerfed it pretty quick on live. I had a stance dance macro I used for healing what would now be known as Mythic (then it was heroic) Siege of Orgrimmar. On fights like the second boss the damage it could do blew all other healers away and the smart healing carried the playstyle. Spinning crane kick was both damage and heals, something that has finally returned to it in a small extent now.
The spec was one of the few healing specs designed to utilize smart heals that were at the time poorly balanced and more powerful than they should have been, but they carried it. Now this changed alot when they tried to make the spec play like all the other healers when they moved away from smart heals and it went agaist what the original selling point of the spec. Now the spec is returning to its roots moreso than it did in shadowlands.
Now in PvP healing sphere spam was cancer for other classes to equal or to stop, but it was so broken that fistweaving was not needed. That will thankfully not be returning and is a place where the ranged aspect has a chance to shine.
I’m not against people finding ways to make a ranged style work but don’t expect it to play with 100% of the potential the spec has in all cases, and likewise there are times where you need to supplement fistweaving with ranged heals for more targeted burst healing.
Not really. Both do no damage when pushing high HPS and both do decent damage when healing requirements are light. Druid brings Brez, Soothe, Roar, Vortex and 3% Verse for the group. MW brings Sweep, Ring, Revival/Tigers for some dispels and 3% Phys damage debuff for the group. Druid is slightly better overall but it isn’t as huge a gap as you might think.
The top Fistweavers might average 20-25k DPS overall, similar to Druids. I can average 15k or so playing the Caster build and I have significantly better throughput with CD’s up. If I was 415 ilvl and played DPS trinkets like them I might be able to pull similar DPS to the top guys.
If you’re talking about me I could be 2800+ if I had the keys/time to play only one healer and really focus on pushing. I was timing 20’s and 21’s last week on Tyran without even coming close to failing throughput or damage checks which tells me 22’s are doable with my current gear and build. The hardest part of climbing IO as a MW right now is getting invited to pugs or finding groups that want to play with you over an Evoker or Druid.
I love the caster build and even though I’m just getting into +15s I’m doing just fine with throughput. Since I pug I value throughput over higher damage. That’s just me though.
I think it’s great honestly. I have known monk healers to be mistweavers longer than fistweavers. Tbh, the last time I seen this many fistweavers was in MoP. I have a monk healer myself and the caster build is working great 
fun fact, if you dont care about your damage to a certain target and are just interested in the Renewing mist, you can always just bind your RSK to hit the closest target with out targeting it. It basically just becomes a 9second CD for Mistweaving.
I personally just bind it into a macro so i renew renew Rising Sun, renew renew rising sun. It works extremely well. 6second Renewing isnt great but its out there and using that and Enveloping mists is just another source.
If i was going to TFT i would not do this with out a reset macro tho but those can get complicated and you might aswell just bind it to another button at that point.
That would likely be because current fistweaving isn’t the same as any fistweaving besides early MoP. Everywhere besides then it was designed to be the lower power alternative in order to add damage.
Or it was legion where the length of fistweaving was kicking for mana.
MoP was kicking for mana basically. It was more mana efficient after ToT to Spam black out kick healing with eminence and then use Mana Tea to fill your mana bar… 4-5 times a fight.
This was also a time when Mistweaver still had Xuen as a cooldown tho and it worked with Eminence.
I would say the current Fistweaving is equal to a shadowlands/BFA hybrid. Faeline stomp and haste stacking is a Huge thing. before Nyalothia Corrupted armor Haste was wanted but never obtainable. Once that system came out everyone basically cried until they got it, Nathria sucked for fistweaving and was better for Mistweaving outside of Mythic level gear. SoD started to stack haste/vers drops and then it just went from there.
Actually, before Nyalotha it wasn’t even possible. They buffed the RM extension from 2 sec to 4 sec in that patch.
EDIT: I still remember having to figure out how to quickly grab haste gear after two patches of crit+vers superiority.
before Nyalothia was the Rising Dawn bug which worked in Uldir, Your rising sun kick could double activate rising mists.
In patch 8.3 they introduced a few major things that changed Fisting to be a thing. Corruption armor allowing you to obtain 80% haste lowering your Rising sun kick from 9seconds to 6, allowing you to increase your duration and have instead of 10 out, 15, then raising the 2second to 4second increased it another to 20. They later nerfed it to its current state of capped at same duration as Renewing mists initial cast, but the damage was done. People pushed for it to be the meta and then they went nuts.
In Patch 8.0 there was a bug with a windwalker Azerite power allowing Rising Dawn to activate a second rising sun kick randomly , stack it 3 times it was basically always a 2nd kick. This took your 2second duration and turned it into 4. Same problem, different effect.
This was later patched out in 8.1
Can you share me how you do that?
It would be something like this
/cleartarget
/targetenemy [noexists][dead]
/cast Rising Sun kick
/cleartarget
Another important mention, Jade Serpent Statue was the best pre-nerf. I remember the statue being able to channel for a minute straight and now it lasts like what? 8 seconds. Pretty lame.