Mistweaver DPS (Not Fistweaver)

Classes Monk
1

Recently I’ve had to make the swap to Fistweaving, which I find so terrible, because playing purposely suboptimally (mistweaver) is extremely frustrating when only a few tweaks would make both spec/styles viable. When doing M+ or Raiding I can be doing a minimum of 10k dps on a raid fight, and with Faeline Stomp a considerable amount of AoE dps as fistweaver. However, when casting, I do next to nothing and that’s just a terrible feeling. Dealing 2-3% of the boss’s HP is great if all 3/4 healers are doing that. That’s nearly 10% of the boss HP, which is really great. But currently if you’re a caster-mistweaver, you do 0 dps when damage is coming out.

This post’s purpose is to offer ideas, perspective, and to open the conversation of ways to make the more soothing mist-centric build capable of outputting DPS that’s competitive with fistweaving, because I do not want to play a crappy off brand melee dps when I’m healing.

Currently standing, most healers (Evoker, Rsham, Disc, Holy, Rdruid) are able to set up a few dots (fire breath (heals while dealing damage, op), flame shock, SW:P, moonfire, etc) and do a small amount of DPS passively while continuing their rotation. As a Mistweaver, you actively have to be channeling Crackling Jade Lightning or Spinning Crane Kick to do any DPS, and SCK doesn’t even heal in this spec. It’s just not viable or reasonable in any content that is competitive, and it seems like it’s that way for no reason other than lazy or lack of design implementation.

Solution #1

Considering Expel Harm is a spell in the kit, dealing damage to nearby targets after healing the player, it’s not outrageous to assume that monks are able of doing this in other ways.
While channeling Soothing Mist, there needs to be a passive, or active, way for it to deal damage to nearby targets.

  1. Soothing Mist periodically damages a nearby target with a bolt of negative chi that has been expelled from an ally.
  2. Soothing Mist interacts with Chi Wave to periodically send out chi waves (similar to above)
  3. Soothing Mist builds up stacks that empower your next Crackling Jade Lightning to do 400% dmg.
  4. Soothing Mist marks an ally as a conduit of mists, periodically/has a chance to pulse healing mist to the player and nearby allies. This affect is applied to Unison and Statue targets, potentially creating 3 players as conduits. This effect also deals damage to nearby enemies.
  5. While channeling soothing mist, vivify or a different active button press will disperse a pulse of damage around the target currently being soothed (works with unison, potentially pulsing on 3 targets)

Solution #2

If you think that dealing damage while simultaneously healing is too much to ask for, and you're not upset about Fire Breath hot/dot, or think Rshams don't need Acid Rain, then we're just not on the same page. However, if there is a world where the healer has to shift to dps and for it not be a part of the rotation, like applying flame shock, moonfire, SW:P, etc, then here is Solution #2.
  1. The Jade Serpent Statue will replicate your Crackling Jade Lightning on the target, and taking Unison will allow the statue to also apply the Lightning to 3 nearby targets.
  2. Jade Serpent Statue will replicate your Crackling Jade Lightning, and continue casting CJL even if you stop, for 15-25 seconds (ish). *(This would be the same thing as applying moonfire, SW:P, or flameshock, meaning something you have to reapply every ‘x’ seconds to do dps) and would not cancel interactions with soothing mist. (Imagine a Celestial Statue being able to do 2 things at once! Wow!)
  3. Keep the Accumulating Mist (Zen Pulse’s dmg/healing is increased by 25% each time Soothing Mist heals, up to 6 times. When your soothing mist channel ends, this effect is canceled) but allow Zen Pulse to do more healing/damage if it only hits 1 target. On top of that, apply a Dot to targets.

Summary

First thanks for taking the time to read this. If you think this is a post you want to comment on and add feedback to, remember I’m not claiming to be an expert and I am asking for an open conversation about ways to improve Mistweaver dps. I understand there is a world where Fistweaver is the “DPS” version of the healer, but there isn’t a reason why the caster version shouldn’t also be allowed to deal damage. I think it’s something that needs to be recognized, and gatekeeping dps from the caster mistweaver style is arguably unwarranted.

Take care.

8 Likes
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I like those ideas. I was talking to a friend the other day that there should be a talent that allows chi Burst and/or chi wave to have an interaction with soothing mist. For example while channeling soothing mist pressing chi Burst cause a pulsing burst of aoe damage to travel between the monk and the healing target dealing damage to all enemies within 10-15 yards.

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Or just learn to fistweave. Why play monk heals if your not fistweaving? Go play a generic caster heals

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Or you could let people play the way they want and stop going into every MW thread to harass people.

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We should all learn how to get 7% parses.

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If that’s what you want. I couldnt care less about parses, mine or anyone else’s.

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I know you’re somewhat trolling here, but I play on a 1-day a week raiding guild, parse purples for iL as fistweaving, and think I do just fine. It’s not fun. It’s not enjoyable being a melee dps. This isn’t about FW being difficult at all, it’s actually quite simple, it’s just simply not fun. It’s a subpar melee dps who happens to be a healer, and it’s frustrating.

News flash, the caster healers have to dps as well, and monk was designed off of soothing mist as a caster healer. I enjoy the theme of monk and the gameplay interactions between soothing mist and renewing mist’s bouncing feature. At maximum you’d jab to generate more chi to uplift, but you were not a melee healer.

Your answer of “learn to fistweave” is lazy and lacks any form of depth. Your presence on the forums isn’t to provide meaningful feedback but to troll people with your minimal effort thoughts, at least that’s what you’re doing here, and you’re not serving the MW community at all.

Parsing aside, everyone wants to perform well. I think we can all agree that having half of our class’s spec-tree designed for Caster-Mistweaver is super off putting if it’s not optimal or good. Why would we want half of our tree not to serve the purpose of fistweaving if that is our main way of healing? Well, obviously it’s not, or else the literally half of the tree wouldn’t be designed for caster MW. We just need to get some help here from the devs, because this isn’t working.

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Learn to fistweave

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If they had said something along the lines of " Learn your Talents " it would have been better, but yeah, they are just here to troll and parrot whatever their streamer of choice said is mandatory. If people want to bring up parses it’s a fair game and It looks like they were carried through a bunch of keys by better players who probably didn’t take much dmg to begin with, nor can they manage orange parses/better uptime or apm on any fight.

Id say don’t even interact with them. They don’t ever offer anything of value and clearly have an over bloated ego from being carried.

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Yeah, honestly true. I looked him up and he’s got blue parses and greens, and he made a post about splitting up the specs into 4, so he clearly understands the issue but for some reason today doesn’t feel like contributing.

I respect the fistweave, it’s got it’s place. I just think there is room for both, and if we don’t talk about it, the changes won’t be made.

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Are you comparing the global required to cast flame shock, SW: pain, etc., to the global a monk used to case RSK and SCK?

Since we are comparing non-healing damage abilities between healers.

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Yeah I was saying that the global requirement to apply a DoT could be given to the idea that you’d use a global to Crackling Jade Lightning and then have your statue persist that channel for 15-25 seconds or w/e is balanced to replicate the same playstyle of reapplying a dot like flame shock.

I wasn’t comparing it to Rising Sun Kick, but comparing it to how we could do damage if we used Crackling Jade Lightning as our damage option that would not heal.

    1. Cast Flame Shock
    1. Recast when it falls off
      This being the same as
    1. Cast Crackling Jade Lightning
    1. Recast when your statue is done channeling it
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I made a MW alt, since I had never played a monk before. I really dont think FW is fun at all, either. Its clunky, I’m just spamming a couple attacks, its just not very fun. I definitely feel like a sub-par 2 button melee DPS that does some healing on the side. I’m debating just turning him into a BrM instead.

It just doesnt feel very good to play to me at all.

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“Mistweavers” can still “weave in” damaging abilities between their regular heals, like other healers.

Mistweavers just need to be in melee range to do it, in spite of having long range healing abilities. Same boat as Holy Paladins, really.

Personally, I doubt Mistweaver will ever get “long range damaging abilities” until they receive their 4th “Caster DPS” spec to help incentivize creativity in that direction.

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They can start by stealing the Crackling Jade Lightning talent from WW but changing to healing what increases it

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You can try a “caster” build. That’s what I play and it’s a lot more fun imo. You should still try to be in melee to apply mystic touch and weave in damage when no healing is needed. For me it’s better control and more reliable throughput.

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I don’t mind fist weaving but i do find myself hating Faeline stomp. With the amount of crap thats on the floor from dungeons alone, makes it hard to stuff. Hell even some stuff is barely visible like the 2nd boss in Academy (Shriek and Gust cone). Especially with this week where we got Quaking and then of course Thundering littering blue swirlies all over.

Plus I don’t feel Fist Weaving heals for a lot. Feels like a Nature’s Vigil/Vampire Embrace but weaker since the heals are dumb asf and would go to a 90% person vs a critical one. Sheilun is nice but it only hitting 3 people is crap since it falls under the samething of bitting people with higher health while most clases just hit button and bam! Everyone is back in the green.

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Ranged Mistweaver is totally a viable. Yes they do less damage, but the trade off is you don’t have to be in melee all the time and their selective healing is way better. I exclusively play ranged Mistweaver all season and I’m ranked in the top 1% of all MW (including Fistweavers) on warcraft logs all the while using an “inferior spec”. Don’t let anyone ever tell you your healer DPS is what is holding a group back. That being said though it CAN be bad once you start reaching key levels of 23-24 + and every little bit of damage can make the difference. But chances are the people complaining about your spec aren’t even doing that level of content because they aren’t good enough at their class yet.

1 Like
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I feel mw could have a higher base dmg on the spells that trigger healing when not talented into the fistweaving talents.

TP/rsk/bk would have their dmg reduced to current level when selecting atotm. Could have similar interractions with ancient concorance and awakened fealine. This would help caster style to hop in and deal meaningful dmg. Would be great in pvp as well. Where ranged mw is wonderful but lacks a bit dmg wise.