I must say, the reason I love and have played so much monk is how mobile the class is.
It seems very counter intuitive - to constantly have to rebuff when you reposition and press again and again faeline stomp. I don’t like it on Windwalker, I don’t like it on MW.
If i wanted to upkeep a constant buff I’d play feral or rogue.
Is there any chance there is a different (viable) playstyle to any solid monks out there? Or will there be in 10.2 and beyond?
If you think it’s bad now you should’ve seen its first iterations. The current state is the result of months of begging on the floor and several band-aids. It felt like we’re having a tug of war with the dev and they’re hell bent on denying us fun.
This is why I never liked fey line myself. Being a mobile class confined to a weird line was…weird.
You can still push up to like +23’s without fey line. ( and the raid build doesn’t use fey line atm so you are good there )
Ive been running this mostly: Mistweaver Monk Dragonflight Talent Calculator - 10.1.7 PTR (wowhead.com)
Ive also ran this at the start of S2 but it wasn’t as fun: Mistweaver Monk Dragonflight Talent Calculator - 10.1.7 PTR (wowhead.com)
You can still push 20’s with either. First one is with resplendant mists and tea of plenty, it combined with Focused thunder makes your Thunder Focus Tea very powerful, makes you very mobile, and even if it is a bit rng you can usually get 3-4 env mists in a row, and the longer ren mists help maintain ren mist coverage. Extra teas helps for speeding up essence font too for the double gusts mists.
Feel free to swap tears for Rising Mists if you are having trouble keeping ren mists up in dungeons but Ive found I can still put out enough ren mists on the spot even in m+.
Still want the standard 30% haste, then pump mastery/vers or the standard crit/vers… ( I went to 20% vers, 30% haste, rest mastery (120~) though I might be swapping some mastery to crit since the mana tea change. If you have a high mastery your gusts will do a ton of healing, feels impactful with the essence font HoT out for extra mists esp on the move. Good mobile build imo.
I like the shieluns buffs ( the crit lesson is nice for a huge 30 sec crit buff but they are all nice ) but you can swap to the faster mist generator for more frequent group healing bursts. ST healing is never lacking with Clouded focus. The Lessons can be abused with other stat buffs to do some crazy high spinning crane kick damage if you are bored.
Second build is mostly the same just instead I take invokers and secret infusion, just make sure to abuse the stat buffs from thunder focus tea and from the celestial. Second build makes Yu’Lon really feel bursty. If you find you have trouble executing enveloping mists during your celestial the haste from Invokers’ Delight might help. Maximize those stat buffs.
Make sure you are still in melee punching and kicking, at the very least try to roll in and plop your interrupt on priority targets so you don’t need to heal as much, use your aoe stun, use ring of peace, etcetc. While I don’t take fey line im still usually in melee spin kicking hard. Make sure you use RSK on cooldown if you can as it pops more ren mists.
Some flex points, move whatever you want around. This is just what works for me and I know I can do 20’s easily on them.
Energizing brew gives you lots of time to abuse the mana discounts too, keep track of that, with energizing brew you drink fast and get back into the action or do quick sips here and there.
IMO if you dont like fey line try out some other talents that intrigue you! We have a buncha fun talents and you should still be able to push 20’s no problems!
( note the above might change a bit in 10.2, we are getting a free talent point in the class tree, expel harm wont be so meh, and bounce back was buffed some, so some of my class tree points could be shifted around )
Faeline is absolutely atrocious, a borrowed power system that was borrowed from Shadowlands. It’s the sole reason that made me not play monk as much as my other classes. It also doesn’t thematically fit into monk’s class fantasy at all, it was a night fae ability for monks back in SL and it should have stayed that way. It’s obvious blizzard doesn’t care about monks, they just copy pasted a covenant ability and called it a day.
I really appreciate this - Very detailed information, makes me realize there are a lot of angles.
By chance do you have a build that is totally MW focused and zero fist weaving?
Do you know if there is a WW build that doesnt use faeline?
If you really wanted to avoid melee you could do something like this:
Mistweaver Monk Dragonflight Talent Calculator - 10.1.7 PTR (wowhead.com)
For the class tree move points around as you want really, Escape from reality is neat if you want to teleport more often. Id keep spear hand strike and just roll in and use it and then roll out to interrupt. You can drop it if you REALLY dont want to be in melee and know your group mates have interrupts covered for what content you are doing. Roll in and use your aoe stun when you can too and roll out. ( or use transcendence to port in and out )
Keep paralyze because it can be used as a pseudo interrupt and also for the affix. You can also do some crazy fun stuff with ring of peace, make sure you use it as much as you can to knock back addss, interrupt groups, or keep friends safe.
Spec tree you can swap resplendant mists and tea of plenty for secret infusion and invokers delight, Id play with them both. Try out unison even, it’s nice with JSS and a soothing mist build. If you pick up Resplendant mists youll deff want a decent mastery to get the most out of it. If not you can talent the standard haste30%/crit/vers. Id suggest playing with both in heroics or by the healing dummies to see what feels better for you.
You could drop some of the life cocoon points to grab Zen Pulse and then use it when the tank groups up adds or on melee who got chunked if there are add around them, it’s very strong as a ST heal. You could also pick up Uplifted spirits if you find you need more aoe healing.
Id deff pick up Sheilun’s and the talents, it’s a HUGELY amazing ability. Like a 5 man lay on hands. Try out the faster mist generation talent at first and if you find you dont often need that much aoe healing you can swap to the lessons talent and get some neat buffs.
You’ll want tears of the morning. Between that, dancing mists, and rapid diffusion, and thunder focus tea-ing ren mist, you should have no problems maintaining 4-5 ren mists, especially when you need to burst heal.
If you are ina pinch summoning your celestial with celestial harmony talented will pop some pretty strong shields on your group, you can also use this now pre-emptively just before a big boss hit happens to give your team some more padding. Then go into spreading the breath around. Try to time it as close to the big hit as possible.
Use the heck out of life cocoon, feel free to swap to burst of life if you dont need it as often. Calming Coalescence is really huge for pug tanks that are learning stuff, or if someone takes damage.
:3 Hope this helps!
( I dont WW so I cant comment there! )
( you want to be wary of your auras, you can still kinda position yourself between melee and ranged sometimes and still be safe from melee mechanics but the aura hits your melee friends, just try to get that golden zone with the range, obviously some people are going to be super far but that is on them. It also kinda helps you quickly roll into melee and out, use chi burst to get mystic touch on people but dont shoot it so far it aggros other adds )
I hated all the monk covenant abilities in shadowlands and it pushed me to other classes at the time. I don’t get how none of the covenants had a martial arts move or something it was all just weird cooldowns probably because they all had to fit into tank healer and dps specs. In dragonflight I can tolerate faeline for mw, its outright gross for ww even if its dps value is high, and I still can’t stand bonedust for any spec.
This is why I wanted fallen order but nooo we get a lousy monk version of circle of power instead
Fallen Order is a talent that is simply lame. You press it and it just auto heals the party.
Feeline Stop is a fun talent as it requires some thinking about where to place it. The changes to it now also dont require you to stand in your feeline 100% of the time but more that you dip into it again after some time to refresh the buff. I play keys in a range 24/25 currently and since feeline the build to go I never had an issue with it. The only annoying thing is if you anticipate wrongly where the tank will gather the pull and you place your feeline beforehand. This could be solved with two charges of feeline.
Seconding that Fallen Order was lame. Fire and forget ability with almost no interaction with the rest of your kit. If it’s tuned to be strong then it means Vivify or some other core MW mechanic takes a hit to accommodate the increase in HPS.
From a thematic perspective I hate that Faeline exists at all for monk. It’s a cool spell in its own right, and it would fit great on some kind of arcane melee fighter. But it looks so janky and out of place when used by any of the monk specs. It’s the most dominant visual by far on MW and starkly contrasts with the rest of the green misty animations that are supposed to be this spec’s fantasy.
From a gameplay perspective I do think MW benefits from a non-channeled alternative to EF that procs ancient teachings. In theory it SHOULD have shaken up the unbroken SCK spam that’s defined MW AOE for numerous expansions now. Instead we got unbroken SCK spam with an occasional FS reset and added passive healing. It’s just lame to play in M+ and you can easily see it from videos of MW playing higher level keys. FS SCK SCK SCK SCK SCK FS SCK SCK SCK. How do people think that’s dynamic or engaging gameplay?
To add onto this, Faeline-specced MW lack the ability to deal with spiky party wide damage common in mid-range key PUGs outside of the occasional Sheilun’s. Revival and Chiji are OK, but mastery-dependent which you don’t want in keys.
I’ve said it before but I’d like to see them to delete Yulon’s Whisper (atrocious talent), then spruce up the animation for it and repurpose it as Jadefire Breath in place of Faeline Stomp. Instant cast, damages nearby enemies over 2 seconds, shoots out an EF to 5 allies within 30y. It could either share a CD with Essence Font or retain the longer CD with chance to reset, but in either case it would apply the benefits of Faeline to you as a temporary buff.
Then redesign Ancient Concordance & Awakened Faeline (renamed as necessary) to the following:
Ancient Concordance: Blackout Kick and Rising Sun Kick do 35% of their damage as fire/nature damage to enemies near the primary target, and Tiger Palm strikes twice on every other use while affected by [Jadefire Breath buff]
Awakened Faeline: While affected by [Jadefire Breath buff], Jadefire Breath and Spinning Crane Kick grant you 1 stack of Teachings of the Monastery when they hit at least 1 target
This solves a number of problems with current MW:
Eliminates multi-target BcK allowing Ancient Teachings of the Monastery to be tuned more competitively around single target in PvE
Eliminates “spin to win” gameplay by removing passive healing but allowing you to seamlessly weave kicks into your AOE rotation for on demand, burstier healing
Eliminates ground positional restrictions on an already overly range and positionally restricted spec, particularly in an era of constant tank movement during pulls
Reinforces MW-specific fantasy by adding and repurposing animations that are consistent with the rest of the theme
Eliminates static 1-2-1-2 rotations created by current design of TP striking twice on every hit while also allowing multi-hit TP with less talent investment (potentially good for build variety)
Tbh…I mean I am still leveling my 62 Monk…but when I saw Faeline Stomp talent, I didn’t take it. I don’t really care if it’s technically good or whatever. But no way was I going to manage that sort of thing. If that makes me bad, so be it, but at least I’ll be having fun healing the way I want to.