Simple question. Does mistweaver monk HAVE to dps to heal in Dragonflight.
For comparison, holy paladin is dominated by holy power now and has to crusader stike, and hammer of wrath when able, to generate holy power - its like a combo melee class that heals.
Not really. If anything DF will be more range friendly by a mile.
Having said that, I would highly recommend people to use the entire kit.
To be the best MW you can be will require you to utilize your entire kit of abilities. There really is no range MW / fistweaver.
We are just Mistweaver!
I have no problem dpsing here and there, the problem with hpal is it is seriously handicapped when it cannot be in melee for whatever reason (like instant death crap everywhere maybe xD)
In SL, playing outside melee range is something you do only when you can’t survive whatever is happening in there. Optimal play requires that you punch and kick on a regular basis.
But what does the melee do? Passive healing? Buff your heals? I am still levelling.
Most of Mistweaver’s “fistweaving” comes from three things in Shadowlands. A talent we get at level 50 called Rising Mist, that enables us to extend our hots. Chiji, which heals our allies when we use our damage abilities and gives us a stacking cast time/mana cost reduction on enveloping mist, and our preferred legendary, Ancient Teachings of the Monastery, where after casting essence fonts our single target damaging abilities heal an ally in 20 yards for 250% of the damage done.
Rising mist and ancient teachings are passive, and not something that I would count on for sustained, necessary throughput. Chiji is something that shines in dungeons but loses a lot of throughput in raid. If the group or the raid is taking a lot of damage, we aren’t fistweaving. We’re pushing our healing abilities. Fistweaving in Shadowlands really just allows us to maintain passive, low throughput heals to get extra damage out.
In Dragonflight it’s looking like we’ll be keeping rising mists, but our aim is going to be to spread large blankets of renewing mists to ramp for big upcoming damage, and we’ll once again be pushing healing spells when the group needs a lot of healing, and maintaining dps in the spaces between.
TLDR, thanks to our mobility and squishiness in comparison to a holy pally, it’s much easier for MW to drop in and out of melee as an encounter demands and maintain healing throughput, but we sacrifice all of our ability to dps by dropping out of melee, and we are a melee coded spec.
Depending on talent choices, melee with mistweaver does passive healing (Ancient Teachings of the Monastery, Awakened Faeline, Chi-Ji), buffs aoe healing through vivify(Rising Mist, Rapid Diffusion), and regens mana (Spirit of the Crane).
With as many choices as possible you need to maintain as much uptime as is physically possible in melee, while substituting with other options can drastically reduce the effect of melee abilities on your healing.
That sounds good! Thank you 
last time I played casually with mistweaver was BFA and I was mostly range healing.
The main thing is that heals aren’t crippled when outside melee dpsing. Melee complements the spec.
MW can roll out 
when needed and roll back in
pallys can do that too but roll has low CD vs steed (MW have tiger lust too if needed)
I actually feel like I overshot a lot with chi torpedo heh maybe I should just stick to the roll
if you like torpedo but have distance constraints, try jumping and hitting torpedo in the air: with practice you can dash shorter distances very reliably!
It’s kind of the reverse situation for MW. The ranged heals have more throughput, but using them exclusively will drain your mana fairly quickly. Punch healing is mana positive, but you’re being half a dps and half a healer. As long as the group can get away with you punching, you’re better off, because you’re adding dps, and gaining mana. When you can’t be in melee, your healing effectiveness doesn’t go down, but if you played that way exclusively, you don’t have infinite mana, and your group kills things slower. It’s a balance, with a lot of movement friendly buttons.
I understand the balance, but also that its not always in our control which is probably the most annoying, like raid fights with massive damage output.
You don’t have to, you can be a masochist and a degenerate and play that god awful boring soothing mist essence font ranged build.
Nothing is more degenerate than tunnel vision the boss with dps and spitting out more raid healing than people casting spells on allies
Wow, same energy for melee hpals lol what is it about melee that makes people so aggro
hpal melee is fine, it’s the same format as original fistweaver where you melee for resources to use on healing spells that you target. shadowlands fw is just melee and aoe and like 90% of your healing is smart targeted
Better to play a monk class like a monk than a half-arsed priest.
“like a monk” means beating the crap out of someone heals your allies? if anything that’s a blood death knight thing
When’s the last time you saw a mistweaver beat the crap out of anybody? Those aren’t brass knuckles, those are pillow wraps.