I want to play my MW monk again as my main healing class, but haven’t touched it in ages.
I’d love any opinions on the state of MW, along with covenant opinions. (PvE, not PvP)
Thank you!
1 Like
Personally I hate what the mistweaver has transitioned to. I didn’t play any BFA on my monk but during the legion expansion, mistweaver felt really really good to play. With them removing how soothing mists works, (previously it was a very very long channel that you could MOVE AROUND with while casting) now its a trash spell almost not worth casting. I find healing as MW really hectic and sometimes I get really nervous when the group is getting slammed by global mechanics because MW just cant heal the entire group very well. In my opinion, mw has always been a mythic plus healer because of the high mobility they have and the CONSTANT and powerful single target healing, but I wouldnt even call them a strong single target healer anymore.
Your mileage will vary based on your ILVL though. I gave up trying to use the MW and settled for tanking/dps this xpac instead of Heal/DPS
It doesn’t help that they refuse to let fistweaving become viable again, im not entirely sure why. Locking any type of playstyle behind a legendary item is just asking for imbalance.
12 Likes
I would suggest leveling the character for future use, hoping for buffs. However, right now MW is terrible in PvP. I consistently get 100-0 in any stun that is longer than 3 seconds. Our output isn’t really up to par with the rest of the healers and they have way more utility than us. We don’t really bring anything special to the table.
That being said, we are really slippery with the Venthyr port and our AoE healing with EF, Revival, and Venthyr is really good. I could see us doing well in Raids and BGs, but that’s about it.
If they want to make fistweaving viable then give us hit combo.
(Stacking Passive) – Adds a stacking buff that increases damage by 1% for every ability that is not a repeat of the previous ability. Stacks up to 6 times.
I just feel like MW isn’t clear, we should either be ranged heals or melee heals. Making us choose takes potential away.
10 Likes
Hello there! Admittedly, I’m fairly new to MW seeing as I picked up MW near the start of 8.3, what with the XP boost and all; however, I am not new to Healers in general and have been healing - almost exclusively - since Cata.
Funny story, but I avoided the Monk class like it was the plague seeing as I was never really a big fan of the Monk fantasy. During 8.3, when the XP boost came out, a buddy of mine wanted to level some toons and, so, we both rolled Monks - I went MW and he went WW. Well, long story short, I fell in love with MW. I love their mobility, and I love their strong ST healing - two things I always felt were somewhat lacking with the other Healers I played. So here I am today, a MW main ever since I tried it in 8.3. I intend to stick with it in SL come hell or high water.
The change over from BFA to SL hit MW’s hard - I’m not gunna lie. Where most classes/specs came into SL with a handful of fun spells, class/spec reworks, and/or buffs MW’s got a handful of (relatively) disappointing spells, no class/spec reworks, and a bunch of nerfs - ontop of the fact that we lost all of our borrowed power from BFA. We play mostly the same as we did in BFA - we’re just less effective at the moment. Fistweaving, in case you’re wondering, is still not really a thing - and the legendary (i.e.: Ancient Teachings of the Monastery [ATotM]) that was going to maybe bring some of that back, ended up being reworked at the last minute. It’s not fistweaving anymore - more like you can throw a few punches to heal every now and then. A lot of people are upset about that, and I can’t say that I really blame them for being upset. A lot of people wanted to have the choice to fistweave or heal-turret. Now it kinda seems like we don’t really have a choice. It doesn’t matter as much to me, seeing as I started playing MW in BFA where fistweaving wasn’t really a thing, but I understand that people wanted to at least have the option to play that way - and I certainly support more options.
In terms of our healing, I’d say MW is great in normal dungeons and Heroics, OK in Mythic 0’s, but I’m concerned with how they’ll be going into Mythic+. Currently, thanks to all the tampering with the cost of our healing spells at the start of SL, we OOM really quickly. Mythic+ is a race. If we’re still just going OOM any time we pull more than like 3 mobs, then MW’s won’t be very desirable as Healers in Mythic+ because we’ll be slowing down the runs. Our healing is there - that isn’t the issue. Our mana efficiency is the issue. Honestly, I feel like Blizzard made a bunch of changes to MW that didn’t really need to be made. With the loss of borrowed power, and the implementation of stat DRs, MW was gunna be effectively nerfed anyways. As per the raid, obviously I can’t speak from experience seeing as it’s not open yet, but what I had seen was MW’s being bottom of the barrell last I checked. This isn’t too difficult to understand, given the fact that MW’s excel at ST healing moreso than raid-wide healing (I mean, we’ve got like 3 raid-wide healing spells/CDs [EF, Revival, and Yu’lon]); of course, that might have changed during the BETA at some point.
In terms of PVP, MW’s went from S-tier in BFA to the bottom of the barrell in SL thanks to the loss of borrowed power, the implementation of stat DRs, and nerfs to pretty much every defensive CD we have. Currently, we are super squishy, and our defensives feel very ineffective - e.g.: Cocoon is blown up in a global, Fort Brew feels like it’s doing almost nothing, etc. In many ways, it’s kinda funny how MW’s went from S-tier to bottom of the barrell. The problem is that MW’s are very difficult to properly balance. A little buff can easily propel MW’s from the bottom of the barrell right back up to S-tier - and, apparently, people don’t like when MW’s are S-tier. They say, and I quote, “When MW’s are OP, they’re too oppressive.” I don’t think that I can agree with that overly dramatic stance, but whatever. As if MW’s, themselves, were responsible for the dampening fest that was BFA PVP - and not all the borrowed power systems that literally everyone was abusing to no end.
I suppose you’re probably wondering, “This all seems like bad news, so why are you still maining a MW?” Good question. I am sticking with my MW because I am almost 100% certain that things will not remain this way forever. At some point, Blizzard is gunna have to address the fact that MW’s have pretty much just dropped off all the charts. They will get buffed at some point. From what I’ve heard from other long-time MW’s, this is a typical thing with MW’s. We start an expac kinda rough, and then we get buffed. I don’t think it’ll be any different this time around. I’m going to stick it out because I enjoy MW - in all content of the game.
On the matter of covenants, honestly, I’ll just say what I always say to people who ask about that: play what you like - and this is esp. important where the convenants are concerned. Blizzard is gunna tamper with them anyways, so you might as well just avoid doing the FotM thing. Remember, it’s punishing to switch in and out of convenants. Pick what you like, and stick with it. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth.
Thanks for your time,
Chän
12 Likes
Been playing monk off and on since it came out. Can’t say I’m a fan of its current iteration, but it’s still the most fun healer to me by a mile.
Dungeons and M+: We’re pretty strong given how bursty our heals have become, it often leaves large gaps of downtime where you can DPS. Our damage is tuned a bit low. There’s two key points mistweaver has trouble with. We do have probably the best kit for keeping a single target alive, however the level of mana intensity for anything lasting longer than 15 seconds is like a hard punch to the gut. Secondly; if there’s incredibly heavy AoE damage, it can be a struggle. RM+Vivify cleave is typically going to have some gaps. EF isn’t strong on its own. Yu’lon/Chi-Ji does a wonderful job of plugging this hole every 3mins.
PVP: As previously stated, we are extremely vulnerable during any form of CC, and typically are deleted before the CC wears off. Whishlist: enable FortBrew to be usable while stunned, enable Disarm to be usable while stunned. If left alone you can typically keep people up for the duration of most matches, however if the match runs longer than 2-3mins you’ll start having mana issues.
Raid: Did some raid testing on beta and am very excited to jump in on live ASAP. The raid is surprisingly very friendly to MW due to the same reasons it’s very friendly to Resto Shaman; there’s A LOT of things to stack for. RJW is going to be able to get its full effects on most fights. I cannot stress the strength of Yu’lons Enveloping Breath enough. You can essentially coat your entire raid with an uber-HoT 2-3 times before the ability expires. Combined with the fact that there’s a fight that revolves around burst healing a single target for short periods of time (our biggest strength).
9 Likes
I’m loving MW. I was originally considering Shaman as my main for SLs, but after leveling this toon, I can say this is the more fun class/spec to play. Granted, that’s just subjectivity. Your idea of fun may be different my mine.
MW does have some struggles. You’ll find that the toolkit of a MW to be very limiting when running with groups that consistently take avoidable damage. MW is pretty bad with heavy AoE damage. So your groups need to understand (which very few will) that utilizing defensives is gonna go a long way for a MW rather than you babysitting health bars.
I find fistweaving to be just fine. I still do it. Perhaps there were good ole days where fistweaving was better, but in the state I see it now I find it’s still viable to do. I find myself doing roughly 1.2k - 1.5k dps on M0 bosses which is always a great help to groups completing encounters quicker. Just keep in mind that fistweaving will require that you also just run with better people. I find that you can’t really juggle fistweaving while acting as a babysitter.
Thunder Focus Tea is an awkward mechanic, not gonna lie. It takes some getting used to. The good MWs will know the use case for their next TFT. Never a good idea to be casting your spells without first empowering them with TFT. Almost feels like the healer equivalent of playing a Cata Warrior via Colossus Smash.
Renewing Mists isn’t just your typical HoT. As a MW, you must understand this. It’ll jump to other targets when appropriate. So managing RMs can be hard at first, but once you get used to it I find it to be a no brainer.
Lastly, is mana. MW is one of the more nonintuitive specs in terms of mana management. Newer MWs will find that they go OOM pretty regularly. So there is a learning curve to be able to play MW effectively. Always be flash drinking between pulls. So make sure you bring a stack or 2 of water.
If you are able to get into fistweaving, you’ll find that your passive mana regen is better. I almost never have to flash drink between pulls if I am actively fistweaving in the corresponding spec.
4 Likes
Same! I love the fantasy of the monk class, I just wish we were more consistent.
We need something that no other class brings to the table to be useful regardless of strong or weak.
Pally has Bubble, Bop, silence aura, 6 second ranged stun, 8 second ranged incap, wings.
Rsham has hex, purge, kick, sheep immune, togglable run speed increase, tons of totems (slow, aoe stun, grounding, life link.)
These utilities will forever make them good in future content, and its what we need.
3 Likes
I’m not in love with MW this expack. It’s mana-hungry and you have to be really diligent at watching it, utilizing mana tea … I miss how this played in MoP, or even WoD or Legion. But BfA and now it’s just … meh.
Honestly, as healers they bring little utility too, the only good thing is they’re great at single target healing bar-none. Revival is also weaker than previous iterations. It’s sad to say but there are better healing classes to play.
As far as covenants, I was Kyrian but I hated their ability - so many say it was the best but I didn’t like the playstyle of it. I went Night Fae and utilize the Faeline Stomp (covenant ability ) actively in my rotation and I love it way more than the Kyrian one.
4 Likes
My advice would be if you can avoid using enveloping mist do it… I basically took enveloping mist out of my toolkit with a few exceptions (Chi-Ji is up, or someone is taking too much damage for my renewing mist and vivify spam to keep up with), and my mana problems got much less egregious. In 5 man’s I will typically keep both charges of RM on CD and hit whoever is taking the most damage as the main target of my vivify with the aoe hitting those that need healing, but not as urgently and even in mythic that is usually enough so long as people aren’t ignoring mechanics too much. MW is tricky to use at times and I am not saying mana isn’t one of our issues, because it is.
1 Like
At this stage of gearing; EnvM is gonna be seeing a lot of use. Yes it gobbles mana but honestly tanks end up taking astronomical amounts of damage in keys simply because we’re all a bit undergeared for this content.
In a few weeks, Ghandia’s advice is 100% solid, when you’re appropriately geared then yes, EnvM is a gigantic waste of mana and should be avoided.
For now; keep people alive as best you can, which in most instances is gonna require EnvM. Communicate that you’ll likely need to stop for mana every few pulls.
Speaking of stopping for mana. The water change feels HORRIBLE. Tanks are still used to you sitting down drinking and they can pull while you drink. But it takes like 10+ seconds to get any considerable amount of mana back.
3 Likes
I’ve been playing MW in CE content for a while, as well I also push high keys. I did a 10 theatre of pain yesterday and timed it, mana is an issue atm however MAna is always an issue for us. It wasn’t noticeable in 8.3 because of alch stone mana pot and the maut trinket. Honestly I’m enjoying MW right now, yulon is a really nice additional cd for keys, and I’m currently a venthyr monk and fallen order is such a nice cd. Overall I’m really enjoying it right now.
1 Like
My main is a priest (disc/shadow) and this is my second main character. I personally love mw. I do find that mw dmg in mythics is extremely low. I don’t know how people above are getting 1.5k dps on a boss? And I try and work in as much dps as possible and unless I get a touch of death I am nowhere near that.
Besides that, our kit is amazing. Ring of peace is a defensive cooldown for you and the group. We also have life cocoon. I’m finding that as long as you’ve set up your ramp before with renewing mists stuff is pretty fine. We are pretty squishy so be cautious of that. Otherwise, I don’t think we are as weak as people think. The biggest issue is mana. It is definitely worse than my priest when you get to oh sh** moments but we can drink during mythics. I’m eager to try this monk out in Castle Nathria to see how different it feels but in general mw are very rewarding.
Chi-Ji is a good talent to take for mana issues as is rising mist. Peronsally I prefer jade wind for dungeons and I think I’ll go jade serpent statue for raid. We have a lot of options to change our playstyle in impactful ways that are all really fun and interesting. I will say that doing dailies as mw sucks and I go ww for quests.
1 Like
Agreed. I loved Mistweavers in Legion in part due to how Soothing Mist worked and I’ve come to learn you just need to give up specializations for literally years when they change them because it may never come back.
2 Likes
How Soothing Mist worked before I wish it was back. I am sad that there is no talent to change soothing mist to be channeled while moving. MW has been bounced around the most out of all the healers IMO just because we had a choice of being the healing turret or fistweave. Now both have been severly neutered or changed to the point that one can maybe see the light of day IF you get Ancient Teachings of the Monastery.
I am still playing MW because the Monk class has had me hooked since MoP. I been there for every single change. This iteration of the MW is subpar compared to other expansions.
3 Likes
Not great, imo. Fistweaving feels clunky and not fun (to me at least), and mana is a big issue. In the raid I have to spam heals just to maintain the same HPS as other healers and then I’ll look and see they all have 25-40% more mana than I do. Given that I have a not great legendary. I know I’m not the greatest at the class, but I have played it since MoP and found amazing success with it in MoP, WoD, Legion, and at the end of BfA (didn’t really play early BfA), just kinda hoping it somehow fixes for me eventually because I’m too attached to let go now. M+ is my go to content, and part of my problem lies in the fact that my group takes too much avoidable damage, so there’s that too. It’s not awful feeling, but this iteration of the spec is my least favorite as far as I can remember. Wish we had Legion MW back as others have stated lol. Kind of demoralizing.
5 Likes
Agreed, I share all your sentiments. I often wonder why Blizzard dislikes options within specs. Soothing mist needs to return to its former version, that would be a major step in the right direction.
2 Likes
MW is simply not doing well right now. Regardless of whether people find the spec to be fun or not, their healing throughput is low and they run out of mana quickly.
Hopefully some tuning will come soon.
7 Likes
Weren’t we able to cast Vivify and Enveloping Mist on any target while you had Soothing Mist cast on someone? I feel like I remember this being a thing back in MoP.
Regardless, Mysticall the streamer seems to be doing pretty good in Arenas as MW. Maybe check out his guides? I’ve been re-watching them daily to enhance my rotations and tactics.
EDIT: This is in regard to PvP
1 Like
The utility we do have is good and unique we just have less…I don’t mind the type of healer they are trying to make MW personally being more of a heal bot (which I like) so that there are different types of healers but right now could do with a few tweaks.
RoP is an amazing PvP ability and very unique, Leg Sweep AoE stun, Paralysis has a long range and relatively short CD, Disarm is great, I assume for PvP most would go Venthyr where you can choose the disorient Door of Shadows. Healing Spheres could also come into prominence and again is very unique.
That toolkit plus the idea of high healing output, especially single target, and the mobility of port and Chi Torpedo is a nice and interesting toolkit and easily the most fun healer to me.
But yeah, issue is damage is so high where you just die in a stun too easily (all classes experiencing this but it has always been MW’s biggest weakness) so MW really need a bit more help there in the current meta…eg reducing the CD of Fortifying Brew back to 1.5min and/or make it usable while stunned, reducing the CD of Life Cocoon back to 1min.
1 Like
@OP
I am loving MW for healing. Before release of SL, I leveled up all of the healer specs to play them because I wanted to main healer for SL. I actually did not have a max level monk character until the day before release when I decided to take a chance with it. The class is very fun for healing, tanking, and dps.
As for healing, there are basically 3 builds to go: Super Aggressive ST healing with Clouded Focus legendary, Super Splash healer with Tear of Morning Legendary, or Fistweaving with Ancient Teachings of the Monastery, meaning that MW will keep you busy for a long time learning totally different playstyles.
As for people complaining about MW throughput, I dont see what they are talking about. I think monks do great healing in PvE… our guild is 3/10H and we have MW, rsham, rdruid, and hpriest, and we all do about the same HPS, except for the shaman, who does the most. We got H Inerva sub 30% and I was pumping top heals and had mana to spare.
As for covenant options, the safest and standard choice for monk for all specs is Kyrian for Weapons of Order. Its best for WW, as well as brewmaster. Its actually pretty fun to play with and it is super strong with the 2 viable level 50 talents: Upwelling and Rising Mist, which allows you to blanket the raid with the essence font HoT.
3 Likes