I **WANT** to main MW so bad!

Classes Monk
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I’ve wanted to main MW so bad but ever since the playstyle was shifted from pure 200% xombat-medic “here is a single talent that interacts with melee”, I haven’t been able to get into it.

Even though the original reason for them moving away from the original MW Monk playstyle was that they didn’t want it to function in game like that. However, they then turned directly around months lasted in the next xpac and pushed Holy Paladin in that exact direction.

This I tried to play Paladin. I mained Holy Pal for BFA and S1 of Shadowlands…but alas, it’s just not a Monk and my heart is not into; even though the combat medic playstyle is pretty close to what Monk used to be(Especially if you take the Holy Avenger talent that makes all of your melee attacks heal for 250% the damage done), it’s just not that same.

If I could change just a few things right now, I would make the Legendary, “Ancient Teachings of the Monastery” become a baseline feature of the class. Perhaps tone down the damage to heal ratio so that it’s not over-bearing or too powerful.

Next I would make Spinning Crane Kick have a chance to proc the Ancient Teachings effect, or perhaps just do a Gust of Must on Crit.

I would then crank up the damage of the class to at least be on par with Paladin.

Finally, I would give back Spear-Hand-Strike.

Mistweavers niche could then be damage and the ability to interrupt.

Edit: Also maybe give Revival the Druid treatments and have it’s healing be x2 when not in a raid.

Anybody less feel like Monk is just missing a few pieces. Would this style of Monk be pleasing for you to play. Do you think the class will ever go back in this direction again. I realize they changed it and had a reason but said reason was just bogus because they turned right around and modeled Holy Paladin around the same combat medic concept.

Thought and prayers? Feel free to discuss.

Also, heck, while I’m thinking about it, if Monk right now, as is would just get it’s damage.buffed to be moderately decent, I could likely live with that until more changes could be made.

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With ATOTM we are a exceptional healing class via raids and mythics. Rising Sun Kick is 12k heal, with thunder focus tea you get 2 back to back with a tiger palm, then you tiger palm 2 times and blackout kick to get a 9k heal. I love playing my ATOTM monk.

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This right here. 1000% agree.

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So you got some points I agree with, and some points I don’t.

I 100% agree that they told us our style of healing was unhealthy for the game long-term and then turned around and handed our old kit to Holy Paladin. It’s disheartening since at the time, we didn’t ask for a rework, and rest of the healing community didn’t find us over the top. They just thought our kit was mistifying cause it was so /drastically/ different than the norm, and it still kinda is.

ATOTM being baked into the spec would be a healthy start. I’d honestly consider their newest addition to our kit a higher priority however, Yu-lon is a very punishing and misleading button, and while the concept was good the ability in practice generally isn’t.

I don’t think our damage needs to be cranked up to paladins current level. Comparitvely our damage isn’t that far off the other healers, it’s just paladin that’s drastically far ahead. Their damage needs to be tuned even further down.

Spear-Hand-Strike, in my opinion, should >never< have been removed. Yes we have a lot of buttons, but that’s poor justification for removing a single target interrupt from one of only 2 healers who have one.

Quick fixes; make Mana Tea baseline, move Chi-ji to that tier (it’s a damn mana conservation talent dressed up like a throughput talent), add something in the now free talent slot that distances Fistweaver from Essence Font (outside ATOTM).

Long term wishlist; reintroduce the chi resource (going back to higher mana cost to compensate >was< healthy), have a fistweaving talent >replace< essence font with an instant cast ability[edit; faeline stomp please god give me that spell in my base kit] that’s beneficial (grants a buff that causes your critical heals to form a small reflective barrier on friendly allies, or something), corrosive dosage in torghast was a very surprising and fun playstyle that I think could be tuned down and worked into one side of the spec or the other, we were told healing orbs would be returning with shadowlands and I’d like to see their return.

Monks still my favourite, it’s the least traditional of all the healers, but it has lost a lot of its identity and the concept they’re aiming towards is vague at the best of times. It’s time for either a new direction, or a return to our roots.

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I too agree with basically everything you point out here. Great minds…

I concede that it would probably be healthier thinking to instead reduce Paladins level of DPS down to meet the norm rather than pushing an “arms race” by increasing MW damage or other healing.

I still feel all healing damage could go up to around a out where tanks are and that tanks should get an increase in damage from where they currently are.

I like your idea of incorporating a Faeline Stomp type of a ability into MW toolkit. I can imagine some really beautiful green Mists particle effects.

I really hope MW is one of the classes that is improved between now and next expansion, I feel like they deserve it.

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The biggest problem with paladin damage is probably their healing spells, 70% of them are straight up instant casts, so paladin has/can have very little downtime from melee swings and melee abilities.

As far as ATotM, I’d say switch it to hit with gust of mists rather then retuning the damage calculation. Gives the stat a good buff to keep it relevant.

My biggest wish would be for Blizzard to baseline the Rising Mist duration increase and make that into the core spec mechanic instead of Essence Font.

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I switched to fistweaving simply to try to add more dps to my dungeon runs. I don’t care for it as much as mistweaving because of the extra hassle that being in melee is, but I do it because I still love MW overall far more than any other healing class.

I’d absolutely LOVE to see Corrosive Dosage given to us as a talent to make mistweaving equally as strong and viable as fistweaving.

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What if we have Chi back and made Enveloping Mist to work like this:

  • It consumes up to 3 Chi. Each chi consumed reduces its mana cost and casting time by 33%.

Blackout Kick and Rising Sun Kick (not Tiger Palm) would generate Chi for us, but they’d be a bit more expensive to use.

Teachings of the Monastery would probably be abusive with this, so it might need to be gone or reworked. Maybe the extra kicks just don’t generate Chi.

Chi’Ji would increase Chi production instead of the current mana cost and casting time reduction, and there would be a talent choice to produce Chi through a caster style (I’m thinking of Vivify granting 1 Chi when cast on a primary target with the Essence Font buff, or Vivify grating Chi when cast through Soothing Mist).

Of course, this idea would need a lot of tweaking, it’s just a base concept.

I’m not really that much of a fun of ATotM being baseline atm, but rather our kicks to have a more meaningful impact to our healing kit, which would still need to be cast by targeting.

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I’d make a few tweaks based on what I remember feeling /good/ way back in the day.
Being able to hold 5 Chi at a time.

Chi Generators:

  • Renewing Mist; 1 Chi
  • Rising Sun Kick; 2 Chi
  • Enveloping Mist cast while Celestial is active; 2 Chi
  • Spinning Crane Kick; Chance to proc 1 Chi per hit
  • Crackling Jade Lightning; Chance to proc 1 Chi per tick

Chi Spenders:

  • Vivify; Consumes 2 Chi if available to remove cast time, and increase healing by 15%
  • Essence Font; Consumes 1 Chi if available to reduce channel time by 25%
  • Life Cocoon; Consumes 3 Chi if available to increase the shield amount by 50%
  • Revival; Consumes 4 Chi if available to cause it to duplicate 25% of its healing as a 6-second HoT on every target hit. (Slightly stronger version of the secondary perk from one of our conduits that’s actually quite nice)

The builders are mostly not spammable, but frequent enough to make resource generation feel controllable. Spenders offer QoL or Power increases to spells, without Chi being Mandatory to use them in a pinch.

On top of this, I still think the original iteration of Mana Tea was better designed and healthier, and would like to see it returned as baseline.

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