Impressions of MW in Midnight Alpha

Classes Monk
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  • I do not like losing diffuse magic

but as long as this isn’t specifically targeted at mw but every class, so that we can get some toned down mechanics, then I guess it’s fine. Fortifying brew is extremely weak though and I hope that I won’t find myself constantly thinking “oh I need a defensive for this unavoidable mechanic that happens every 25 seconds but don’t have one cause no diffuse magic and fortifying brew is a million years away.”

  • There needs to be a way to track when bounce back is going to come off its cool up.

Because now, more than ever, knowing if bounce back will proc and therefore to save fortifying brew, will be very important information.

  • Removal of chi burst just makes sense.

Make chi wave stronger if it’s being retained. It feels like it does nothing already so if it’s staying in, then I hope it will become more powerful.

  • Sheilun’s replacing vivify.

As an almost exclusively conduit player (thank you dawn breaker for forcing me to play moh :roll_eyes: ) I always loved using sheiluns for its cdr. I am concerned though. If viviacious vivify doesn’t apply to sheiluns then replacing an instant cast viv with a hard casted sheiluns feels like it will lead to a lot of problems in keys. And if VV makes sheiluns instant cast, then it’s bis, there’s just not really an alternate choice (which I’m fine with but I don’t think other people will be.) I’ll need to personally play it in keys to have a stronger opinion though.

  • Removal of Jade Fire Stomp & passive version of it/JFT

I like this. I have been saying for so many seasons this should just be something we have and not a talent. While it’s still not a baseline thing and rebranded under a different ability, I still think of it as an improvement. I do wonder how this and the Sheilun’s/Vivify changes will effect August Dynasty if August Dynasty persists to midnight. I still think that having essential talents for barebones functionality deep in the tree is terrible design, especially while leveling, and that Faeline/JFS or its replacement, should probably be something inherent to our tool kit and not worthy of a talent node.

  • Removal of evoker’s delight

This is good, I never like trying to figure out if dropping one capstone for another is worth it for my playstyle, if it isn’t obvious. And with the conduit haste buff, tft haste buff, stacking haste to diminishing returns, etc., I have never taken this talent. :woman_shrugging:

  • Peer into mist integrated into SM

Good now do this with Calming Coalescence. I Feel like every time I make a post here about changes I want, I’m always bringing up JUST MAKE COCOON 80% STRONGER IT’S ALREADY A TERRIBLE EXTERNAL IN HIGH END CONTENT. It’s not worthy of a talent point. This isn’t comparable to giving pain supp 2 charges. Not even close. Just make it baseline stronger. Why would I ever want a weaker version of my most potent single target pro-active or reactive ability? It’s basically required. There’s no choice here.

  • Uplifted spirits

This is good, in s1 when I would try to run this in Siege or Arakara I found that it only took, idk, maybe 20 seconds off the cd over 3 min. Which is way too low for this talent. The new version just being 30 sec off and a better heal is good. I am concerned though that it will make this required in keys but hey I’m open to trying it. That might not be a bad thing for me either, considering MD for priests is a 2min CD.

  • Thunder Focus Tea Changes

Losing expel hard shield feels bad, badder than a lot of things, especially in combination with losing diffuse. Losing diffuse would feel less bad if we weren’t losing this small shield from EH. I am very glad that vivify was taken off and almost sort of want RM taken off since it’s just a fat finger disaster for me but I suppose that’s my fault.

  • Mana tea buffed

Excellent. I don’t know why you guys ever nerfed it to begin with, I always thought it was a massive blunder and didn’t make any sense considering some specs never go oom. Moreover, I don’t personally believe that RSK deserves such a high mana cost for what is basically essential or not optional.

  • Celestial Changes

These don’t really affect how I like to play the game so I don’t have any opinions about them yet.

  • Tea of Plenty Changes

I think i’m the only person in the world that liked playing this for a while in s2 and if proliferation wasn’t so significantly stronger I might not have swapped. I was running this with Thundering Focus to get 4 EM or 4-5 RSKs, felt very fun. It is what I want out of fistweaver play style. I like abilities that play into fist weaving, not fist weaving playing into everything else. Chi-ji is a good example of what I want, you press chiji and it makes fist weaving awesome. Tea of Plenty is similar, you press TFT and then RSK as much as you want (until you run out.) It’s really something I like about the monk tank in fellowship, Meiko. You combo moves together to do cool finishers. Shadowpan would have been so awesome as a mw hero talent choice.

  • Serene vitality

So that part where I said losing EM shield felt bad and that I am not sure how I feel about sheilun’s replacing vivify if VV doesn’t make sheilun’s instant cast? Oh boy does this talent make me feel that worry more than a lot of things. I’d rather just have the WW expel (on TP) over this tbh.

  • Battle meditation

Crit Haste for free, sure yea, I like it.

  • Mist dispersion

I have to agree with most people on this because the second I saw this I just thought “well that just feels like Save Them All,” because 10% amp for like 2-3 gcds is just whatever. That’s not even enough time to factor it into decision making most the time. I’m not even sure if it’s enough heal amp to factor it into decision making compared to spreading mending prolif and other amps that are more valuable to ramp for sheiluns. What is sheiluns even ramping for if not itself, since it replaces vivify? Fist weaving? I mean, ok, I can try but I just don’t think it’ll be noticeable. Has potential, maybe make it last 6 seconds longer for time to position and spend some gcds.

  • Spirit font

YOOOOOO this looks cool. Well, you know what I think would be even cooler though? If the beams between players did damage to ads like holy paladin’s dawnlight beams. Make it do damage. I won’t be upset if you don’t but this has potential for being really cool. Heck make a choice node with this, I will straight up just trade all the healing from this for damage. I do not care about people getting SM as much as I do having Spirit Beams cutting enemies in half.

  • Conduit Changes

Please DO NOT do this

Boooo. Booo. Booo blizzard. This disrupts my gameplay by an incredible degree by forcing chi-ji to use conduit. This is not something me or anyone else in the world would have asked for or expected. I do not think this is good and it might outright kill my ability to play conduit in M+. Please DO NOT do this. I have played conduit near exclusively in all forms of content since s1. I love these hero talents so much that it literally takes game breaking bugs in Dawnbreaker to force me to play MoH and I dislike every second of it.

Please DO NOT do this

Please DO NOT do this

Please DO NOT do this

Please do not do this. Leave conduit activation as it is. I can’t imagine a person in the entire player base that thinks this is a good idea. I can’t imagine anyone new to monk in midnight will find this intuitive or of the opinion that it is good flow of gameplay. You’re basically nerfing conduit horizontally and vertically. It loses its flexibility of use, it loses its versatile play style, it loses its complex but very fun uses (damage reduction, movement speed, cool down reduction, etc.) with this one change. Those same buffs can all be included all the same but they’re HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION BILLION TRILLION times less meaningful or useful with this change. Please DO NOT DO THIS. I am one of the top conduit players in m+ (for whatever that’s worth) and I am telling you this is a terrible, awful, unimaginably unfun change. This is a horrendous idea, do not follow through with it, please.

Conduits activation does not need a condition and it does NOT need changed. Nobody was asking for this, nobody wants this, it’s not good gameplay design for one major cd to be tied to another major cd, and it does not play into conduits strengths at all. It makes almost everything conduit does boarderline meaningless or useless to be forced to send it after chiji. I have never once ever in my entire life used it after a chiji window of time. This is a terrible idea. Throw out all the damage and healing it could do out the window, because now you’re just sending it because you have to even if that use is entirely, utterly, meaningless. None of those conduit hero talents have any purpose in connection with their identifying ability when conduit is used this way. Using conduit should be a conscience decision for the situation it applies to and what you want to get out of it.

What you’re proposing is to just throw all of that away and make this ability basically do nothing but act as a filler button you’re forced to press after chiji. There’s not even any reason to finish channeling it like this, you would just cast it and instantly end it to go back to doing what you actually need to be doing.

  • New Conduit Hero Talents

Yea this is fine.

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I am pretty hyped. Lots of changes to unpack and I cant get into it all here but Ill point out some of the things I like.

Not only did they acknowledge two playstyles exist in the bluepost but they are also adding more choices/talents to better define those playstyles. Lots of the changes are huge from a QoL standpoint alone, like JSS drop on TFT, but I am also very much happy to see soothing mist on the move returning and some other legion playstyle vibes coming back. SG being a focus spell that replaces vivify is interesting too. I guess they want us using SG in dungeons and Viv in larger groups with higher renmist counts. Baking more power into enveloping mist is great, hopefully the upfront heal from TFT-Env feels impactful again. Tea of Plenty and Serenity changes are very welcome too, Removing expel harm from them makes them actually interesting picks. Finally killing off Chi Burst is the cherry on top of it all.

The only thing I dont like is the activation requirement for Conduit. Revert that.

That said we will see what makes it to beta/midnight live but their insight behind the class changes made me a pretty hopeful mistweaver:

  • Developers’ notes: Mistweaver’s Midnight updates are focused on simplifying moment to moment decision making/tracking and streamlining their cooldown moments. We’re also removing Jadefire Stomp’s positional gameplay as we felt this did not match our combat approachability goals. Way of the Crane and Way of the Serpent is a new choice node worth highlighting as well, which is something new we’re trying to highlight different aspects of Mistweaver’s toolkit in particular, based on a player’s preferred playstyle. Our hope is that both options have relevant situations in which they are useful and therefore encourage solid build diversity between content and also a player’s individual preferences.

Not sure how Jadefire/Fistweave people feel about these changes but personally I am super excited to see what makes it to Beta to play around with. The above bluepost quote gives me a TON of hope for mw monk going forward. Midnight Prepatch might be a very good time for new people to get into Mistweaver monk :panda_face:

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As a caster i love the changes and i only have a few of issues:

  • They want us to play Sheilun’s in m+ and Vivify in raid (neat change btw) but they haven’t changed the triggers for Heart of the Jade Serpent making it much weaker in m+ since we are going to cast a lot of low/zero charges gifts and completely useless in raid since we won’t talent gift at all. I was thinking that they would replace the trigger with TFT but apparently that is on a different talent so i have no idea how they could implement it otherwise.
  • Peer into Peace functionality being baseline is great but i would love to retain the extra soom duration, maybe adding it to Way of the Serpent.
  • For the love of god remove Mist fo Life, it’s such a lame, useless talent that only exist to tax faster cocoon.
  • Battle Meditation/Flowing Spirit are really boring.
  • Why is Purified Spirit still a thing? unless they rework/bugfix? aspect of harmony’s hot extracting stored vitality and ramping itself up it is basically impossible to have any unspent vitality if you cast any spell at all, especially with the new apex talent.

Overall i’m really really happy with the direction mw is heading, keep it up blizz :+1:

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Kind of agree here. I wonder if they want us swapping depending on playstyle?

We will most likely just always be using the haste/crit node unless stat weights change drastically, especially during early gearing where that haste will be more valuable/desired to get to a certain %. Plus more crit means more mana teas.

Ill take the free stats forsure but like you said, pretty boring and I doubt we will be swapping the node/stats much.

This is my main point of interest and concern too. Interested to see the balancing. While I am hopeful we will still be able to run SG in smaller raid sizes it will all come down to tuning and numbers I guess. If it’s more beneficial to have viv with 10 ren mists out then we will prob be locked to vivify for raids is my guess.
( I am okay with that but being able to keep SG in smaller raid sizes without losing a ton of HPS could be chill too ) SG might also still be good in split groups where you dont heal as many people ( thinking early phases of Dimens, or platform phases of Saladbar where you are only healing a portion of the raid for some time )

I do like the concept/idea behind it and just the general love being shown to the spec though. Lets see what makes it to beta but I am actually very hopeful and excited.

The only thing I dont like is the activation requirement for Conduit. Being locked into using Conduit only 1 min after Celestial sounds kinda bad, esp if it doesnt line up with anything. The whole point of the hero tree was to give us that extra cooldown imo. Probably also locks us into 1 min celestial too if we stay conduit - otherwise we miss out on 50% of the conduits we can use ( even if it is just for some dmg you are getting 50% less conduits by using the 2 min celetial ). Please rethink the conduit activation requirement. It could even be thunder focus tea if that is what you really want, just please dont tie our cooldowns together like this.

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Honestly I’d say the changes are perfect, all the effects attached to jadefire stomp are now passive so the overall gameplay doesn’t change and you don’t have to play around stomp timings.

As far as the CD, Blizzard is trying to lower the number of CD’s healers have access to across the board so any changes are gonna need to be in that vein.

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That is great to hear!

Lots of these changes sound great for me and my hybrid/non jadefire mentality/playstyle but honestly JFS being a passive might even have me trying different builds/both playstyles in midnight. Im pretty excited to actually play with the MW tree again just swapping talents around to see what works/etc. It’s a good shakeup without it being too much imo.

I think these are good changes to bring in new monk players too honestly.

Im just worried the conduit activation change will lock Conduit users into 1 min celestial or it will be wasted. As a non jadefire mistweaver I never really felt like I needed the 1 min celestial if I ramped properly before mecanics so opted for the 2 min one because the chi cocoons were stronger.

If we talent 2 min celestial we are just straight up losing out on half of the conduit casts we can be casting and dont get a whole lot in return. Sure we get the slightly beefier shields but we lose out on more dps/hps by not getting those 1 min conduits.

I kinda hoped they would make the chi cocoons the same size regardless of which you pick and add some other kind of difference between the 2 talents. Maybe this is the case. I wont be able to even test till beta though ( assuming everything makes it to beta ) so just adding some comments onto the change for them to see. With damage patterns it might not be an issue even but having it activate like that is…weird.

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the real question - is SEF getting removed or replaced ?

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I like that they paid attention to the existence of Soothing Mist finally, though I wish they’d add an interaction to the hero talent trees. Both hero talent trees are still very fistweaver focused in design. Fisties have a cheap proc for Xuen and it’s still just Vivify for casters (and fisties use both abilities that proc it).

SooM should have a chance to proc either Xuen or Crane. Crane currently has the worst options for procing as a caster.

MoH could use a couple choice nodes on things that are entirely melee-centric currently.

The added requirement to use conduit seems odd. It seems like you’ll mostly always have access to it anyway unless they made the proc chances all garbage.

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Ok well this is just a straight up lie by blizzard with the change to conduit.

It’s in my post what I think. JFS should just be something we do, it being a talent for bare functionality so deep in the tree never made sense at all. It being made a passive higher in the tree is a good move but if I was them I would just move it to the base tool kit.

Yea if VV doesn’t make Sheilun’s instant cast this is a bad idea because now you don’t have instant cast vv which is more valuable to snap healing in the window of time you have to do it compared to HARD CASTING SHEILUNS. But like I said in my post, if sheiluns can be made instant cast then why even play vv, sheilun’s is just better.

Removed.

I don’t like using it personally, never feels good to stop MW to spam viv on someone while standing still channeling SM. It’s not what i want to do in an ideal world and it’s not even what I wish I had to do when I’m forced to do it. I’m sure for castweavers it’s preferable but for me it’s not fun gameplay. I wouldn’t doubt it if the existence of SM is why vivify is so weak baseline, in addition to our many amps and ZP.

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I think one issue with the serpent style SooM cast while moving will be that we may need another key to cancel the cast now because it comes with a 40% snare. If it didn’t come with a snare it wouldn’t matter, but we can’t cancel it by moving so we’ll need a way to turn it off, which is clunky.

They should remove the snare component.

I think the AoE cleave was why it was weak baseline. Many FWers don’t even spec into SooM anymore and they removed it as a baseline talent so I doubt they balance around everyone having it.

Surging Mist used to be a very strong single target burst, but when they removed uplift and kind of merged surging mist and uplift into a single ability (vivify), it had to be balanced around two functions at once.

In Midnight, having Sheilun’s replace it lets you customize it more into a strong single target or a cleave. Either Sheilun’s cleave or you can just keep vivify and still play a uplift style where it heals your RM targets.

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We run SM in the monk tree but not in the mw tree. I think some people do in raid and battlegrounds but not in m+

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  • Vivacious Vivification no longer increases the healing of Vivify and now functions with Sheilun’s Gift.

This is in the changes.

Also

  • Sheilun’s Gift has been updated –
    • Overrides Vivify when learned.
    • Healing increased by 25% and mana cost now matches Vivify.
    • Sheilun’s Gift can be cast without any clouds present and can be cast during Soothing Mist.
      *** Functions with all talents that interact with Vivify.**

All talents that work with vivify will work with SG it seems.

Looks like Tears of Morning is going to be a flat buff to vivify, plus conduit gets a flat buff to vivify, plus Way of the Serpent gives another buff to vivify, plus that flat 60% extra healing to base vivify…

Im not worried yet about alpha tuning, plus them removing some of the healing+ power from the toolkit means they have to and will shift that power back into the base spells ( hence the 60%+ healing to vivify note ). If/when it goes live and if it feels bad I will ask for SG/Viv buffs. All of these modifiers though, I am not even worried about vivify/SG feeling weak.

That is fine. Dont use it? There are 2 playstyles. One will most likely not end up using it at all. ( hardcasted soom that is )

  • New Talent: Way of the Serpent – Soothing Mist may be channeled while moving, but movement speed is reduced by 40% while channeling. Vivify healing increased by 15% and Renewing Mist’s healing is increased by 30%. Choice node with Way of the Crane.

Well…no more “standing still” either…
( huge QoL addition that I loved in Legion )

You did read the whole post right?

Midnight Alpha Development Notes - Wowhead News

The notes are here if not.

I do. It is hella good for ramping very quickly to burst between cooldowns if people are stupid, and people usually are in pugs. Even stronger with a Lesson buff and TFT buff thrown in. Very happy PiP is being baked into it too and VERY happy for these changes, plus SG being useable during SooM. After years of vague class design they are finally better developing both playstyles and it’s such a good thing.

Again though I imagine Jadefire fistweave playstyle will still exist in some form or another for both raiding and m+. Actually I am pretty certain it will because blizz acknowledged 2 playstyles in their post. If you dont like SooM playstyle, just dont play it.

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Could always cancel it with a quick renew or RWK ;3

Conduit will still have decent CDR so as you are forced to move you can easily just pop a quick RenMist/RWK/RSK to cancel it, even roll should work. I dont think this will be that much of a problem tbh, at least not in pve. During PiP-Soom ramps/dumps if I need to move I just roll to where I am going already, I dont think the slow will hurt much, but I also dont see the point of it.

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As long as it can become instant cast. I know that the notes say “all viv interactions” but I need to know for sure that means it can be instant cast.

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It’s always kind of funny to link from the official forums to a Wowhead post linking back to the official forums.

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I’m happy with the MW changes and excited to get to play it. Mistweaver is up there with the best looking healing specs so far for Midnight, imo.

Every time I read or hear someone bemoan the removal of AT buff maintenance as if pressing Stomp every 20 seconds was great and complex gameplay, I ignore anything else they say.

So I have yet to see any real complaints and I like having some integral parts of the original MW toolkit get more integration and focus (SooM).

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There are 2 notes. One note generally states that all talents that work with vivify will be useable with SG, and another that literally addresses your concern more specifically ( that IMO removes all doubt that SG will work with VV ) :

" Vivacious Vivification no longer increases the healing of Vivify and now functions with Sheilun’s Gift. "

I quickly googled it so I could post the facts/quotes from the notes incase someone had issues understanding or didnt see it, it’s the same info. WoWhead will always come up first in a google search over the forum stuff. TBH I’m lazy and didnt really want to sift through a buncha blue posts because they have been spamming them and I forgot to bookmark the alpha monk feedback thread.

I agree it’s funny though :3

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