MW needs updates to stay current with the meta for class design in pvp (11.2 version)

Classes Monk
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Mistweaver is still in dire need of changes. In this expansion, where every class is a swiss army man of utility, we need utility that competes with the utility offered by other classes. To preface this essay, I only play caster weaver. I don’t play rushing wind kick build. I don’t play fistweaver. I’ve played them and I don’t particularly care for them. I am sticking with caster building.

P.S, As a result of the people in solo shuffle being report-happy mongrels and ragers I legitimately am worried that enough tilted idiots will report me for “trolling” because I’m not fistweaving. I would like to voice my concerns RIGHT NOW that the automoderator system you guys employ to handle reports may accidently hit me with account action as a result of these ridiculous reports and I will not have recourse.

Here is where I think Mistweavers fall short:

We are a throughput healer. Sure, all of our heals do a metric boat load of healing and top our teammates. But in this meta where we take SOOOO much damage and spend so much time in crowd control, it just doesn’t matter. I don’t care that we can top our teammates with less than 5 stacks of sheilun’s gift. They are dead less than 2 seconds later so it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if revival got buffed 10000x, because my team is dead 2 seconds later. My team is always in trouble any time I take any form of micro cc. Maybe this will get fixed when everybody is full conquest geared, but I doubt it. I cannot stress enough. Our healing is more powerful than ever but we feel more useless than ever. The start of TWW season 1 and 2 felt better than we do right now and we started terrible those seasons.

We are also so much more susceptible to crowd control than any other class. I’m serious, I have SOOOO many lobbies where I’ve taken almost twice the crowd control of the other healer. It’s not a “me” issue either, it’s commonplace for ALL mistweavers. Every healer has better tools to counter crowd control than misterweavers do, and it’s embarrassing.

Crowd control is also EXTREMELY punishing because we have nothing for it. “b-b-but port!!!” No, port only serves to self-cc when we find ourselves out of line and out of range of our team. “b-b-but chi torpedo! Ring of peace! tiger’s lust!” No, none of that helps. Every class has instant or ranged crowd control that immediately catches us. It’s unavoidable. And our entire team dies while we are stuck. I actually 0-6 against every single hpal and rdruid I see because their toolkit is literally SOOOO much better than ours at controlling enemy healers. I actually believe that in a perfect environment, MW should actually 0-6 EVERY lobby compared to ANY other healer. The only reason we win is because people naturally make mistakes.

As such, mistweavers need a rework to bring them up to par with the current meta so they can stay competitive in pvp. I am proposing a series of changes that I think will do just that:

Buff Enveloping Mists, Renewing Mists, Zen Pulse, and Chi Wave. I’m talking omega buffs. Not as much Enveloping, but definitely the others. One of the ways other classes combat crowd control is their ability to continue to heal while CC’d. This will really help monks heal while crowd controlled. Enveloping mist should literally top teammates every tick at 80% dampening.

Buff Gusts of Mists. It feels seriously lacking and unimportant given how much better haste is

Our set bonuses are garbage. I am watching other healers get their set bonuses and stop sweating because healing gets so easy but not me. All our set bonuses are fistweaver oriented. If you guys are moving mistweaver in the direction of being fistweaver only please tell me so I can stop wasting my time.

Change the number of modifiers Renewing Mists has. Not as important, just a gripe that other mistweavers and myself have. We just have too many modifiers and timers attached to Renewing Mists. If the tooltip can’t display EVERYTHING the ability does in 120 characters or less, and the extended tooltip that people get with addons is the size of a novel, there’s probably an issue with the ability.

Absolute Serenity needs to be standard. It is absolute BS that the absolute BIGGEST HEAL that mistweavers have is just immediately stoppable. every other healer that has an omega big CD that tops all their teammates is unstoppable. Emerald Communion, Ultimate Pentinence, Big tree form, spirit form. I don’t even run Conduit of the Celestials because of how garbage it feels to have Conduit stopped immediately by literally any button that anybody presses on accident

Meditation: replaces eminence, lets mistweavers continue to cast spells while under the effects of physical stuns, incapacitations, disorients and silences, albeit at a slowed rate of around 50%.

Magic Shield should be usable while silenced and stunned. This would allow it to ALSO return magic stuns like Ice Trap and Hand of Justice to their targets. Possibly abilities that silence us like a Shadow Priest’s “Silence” or a Mage’s “Counterspell”

Jade Serpent Statue should heal for more, making it more important, and/or the channeling heal it does should also apply a damage reduction buff. Perhaps a talent could allow for JSS to heal multiple targets at once, albeit with reduced healing. Did you know that there is not a single talent modifying or buffing Jade Serpent Statue? WHAT??? Statue is literally SOOO iconic for mistweavers

Renewing mist talent “Cleansing mist” that gives renewing mists a chance to randomly remove a magic, poison or disease effect every time it ticks, OR all magic, poison and disease effects when it fades or is purged.

A talent “Celestial Monasticism” that makes your chosen celestial a permanent pet, possibly replacing Gift of the Celestials talent as an alt to Jade Bond

We should get both Song of Chi-ji and Ring of Peace. The Song of Chi-ji talent could be associated with your celestial and change depending on whether you have Yu’lon or Chi’ji. Song of Yu’lon could lower defenses of enemy players, slowing them and causing them to take more damage or maybe buff our teammates or something. Idk, the sky is the limit here.

Leg sweep cooldown needs to be 30 seconds.

Paralyse needs to be longer, like 4 seconds instead of 3.

Life Cocoon needs a MASSIVE damage reduction effect in exchange for reduced bubble

Crackling Jade Lightning with the Jade Empowerment talent needs to one-shot people frfr. In season 2 pre-season it was hitting pretty good and people were afraid of it. They need to fear the monks again.

Tiger’s Lust range needs to jump up to 40 yds and you need to be immune to slows and roots for the entire duration

Buff expel harm’s healing because I actually never use it. I forgot it was an ability for 90% of last season, it’s only worth using when you use thunder focus tea and even then…

I have many more gripes about mistweaver’s current state but this is just for now.

ty for listening to my little novel. Plz help me end this “do damage to do healing” meta. The purpose of doing damage as a healer should solely by to assist your team and should not be something you are relied on doing in order to heal properly.

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I am pretty sure this is a joke but I do feel that mw is undertuned. My pres evoker is like 30 ilvls lower and does the same or more damage by basically existing. Hpal sometimes too.

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I’m glad you think this is a joke but I assure you it’s not. Mistweaver is only a little bit undertuned. The only tuning complaints I have are all related to Chi Wave, Zen Pulse, Enveloping and Renewing Mists, and it’s all related to giving us better tools to keep our team alive when stunned. For our class to eat as much CC as we do and get punished as severely as we do by any small amount of CC is criminal. Blizzard gave us all this filler healing and it’s useless, except Enveloping which heals ok but should still get buffed.

That’s why I made all those other suggestions too. Diffuse Magic being able to return CC to their sender. “Celestial Monasticism” to make our celestial a permanent pet replacing “Gift of the Celestials” on the talent tree. “Meditation” replacing “Eminence”. Conduit making us immune to CC by default instead of allowing it to be stopped by literally anything, etc. Just give us SOMETHING in terms of utility to help us keep up with the high CC meta.

And now that somebody else has replied and I can expand on my post:

PLEASE REVERT THE VIVACIOUS VIVIFICATION CHANGES TOO

That talent helped provide fluidity and gap fill where we would otherwise be standing around with out fingers up our you-know-what because we have to manually start channeling soothing mist in order to get our healing going again. Otherwise we are forced to use Sheilun’s Gift at really low stacks and get awful value from it just to get that little gap fill healing in. AND I DON’T WANT TO RUN IN TO KEEP USING RSK TO TRY AND GET FREE VIVS, IT’S NOT HAPPENING. For a caster mistweaver it feels like really bad value to waste a global to get 1 free vivify

Sounds like you are talking about something pve related, which I don’t care about. You are also talking about healers doing damage, which I also don’t care about. I don’t mind if other people enjoy playing healers that have a damage rotation attached to how they heal but I really don’t. I’m tired of it. I hate trying to dps to do healing. It’s so awful feeling. It doesn’t fulfill a class fantasy for me at all.

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I’m sure in pvp that pres is still doing a lot of damage if not more than mw tbh. It’s just actually tuned that insanely.

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Pres DOES do more damage than hybrid or fistweaver, but you’re not hearing me.

I

Do

Not

Care.

I’m tired of the “do damage to do healing” meta. I don’t want to have some dps rotation chore in order to do healing. Other people do, and that’s fine. Not me. I’m stubborn. I’m going to make posts talking about it. I just wanna heal man. I want the deciding factor in the rounds to be based off my ability to keep my team alive and bother the enemy with utility and cc that disrupts them at opportune times.

If blizzard is moving mistweaver in the direction of being fistweaver only and essentially destroying caster mistweaver I would really like it if a dev could come down and tell me about it so I can stop wasting my time and play something else.

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Damage to healing is one of the main appeals of monk. I think what you’re asking for is a more caster centric playstyle which I don’t think they’re gonna do. The current hybrid system tends to upset both fistweavers and cast weavers in one way or another. Like I just want fist waeving to be good with minimal casting, for instance. More punch and kick less mist gcds.

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And I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy that. None of the changes that I have suggested will remove or destroy fistweaver. Some of the changes may even help fistweaver inadvertently. The changes will merely help caster weaver. There are 2 distinct playstyle to mistweaver so I don’t see why there would be a problem with buffing one of them or giving monks a better toolkit to bring caster up to meta.

Additionally I want to make it clear that I played 19,000 rounds of shuffle as mistweaver this expansion and finished last season at 2800. Even if they did add all the changes I understand it wouldn’t rocket me to rank 1 because there are still lots of players that would swap to mistweaver and do it better than me. I’m not just some guy throwing suggestions into the wind to give me a crutch, even though that is kind of what some of the changes I suggested would do. I am trying to fill in where I see flaws to caster mistweaver.

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i play caster soom weaver in ebgs since brawling on the front line as a melee healer is a death sentence. i don’t even spec sheilungs gift either so even the set bonuses are worthless again this season. it’s so annoying they keep nerfing caster mw to try to force everyone into fist weave. meh.

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Here are my ideas for improvement (focused on Arena, as that’s what I play):

  • Take Sheilun’s Gift off the GCD. A small change, but would help in tight healing situations
  • Make Zen Focus Tea built in to Thunder Focus Tea. Everything comes down to the fact that just in general, we have to stand and cast for most of our healing, so giving us something that helps stop interrupts is the least that could be done; we’d still be vulnerable to regular CC just as we are now, but this would help
  • If we’re going to keep the RWK/VV change, increase the range of RWK and reduce/eliminate the mana cost of RWK
  • Make Peer Into Peace a built-in. Forcing us to spend a point for this basic functionality has always been the result of a bad design choice
  • Re-increase the range of Grapple Weapon. Considering the kinds of damage that MM hunters, for example, can do at the start of a round from across the map, it seems a very small ask here
  • Building in Absolute Serenity does seem like a fair ask. It’d be like our own ultra weak 3.4 second version of tree form
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It sounds like you would be much happier playing a healer with stronger ranged DPS spells, like a priest or a shaman. Monks have a lot of their power baked into them being able to use things like Fistweaving and Rushing Wind Kick, so to just dismiss them entirely means you’re cutting your arms off and then complaining when you can’t reach things.

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I disagree. Not that I don’t think I would like priest or rsham, but I’m still enjoying mistweaver. I got my 2400 first 24hours of this season playing caster weaver. I don’t think that a monk’s healing is inherently baked into fistweaving, because there are clear distinctions between caster and fw on the tree. There is simply an overlap because for some reason Blizzard wants to make damage a part of healing rotation.

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#DoMoreDamage

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Unfortunately for you Blizzard has made it possible to do reasonable healing without doing damage as a mistweaver. I’m bottom damage on the dps meters every single round but idc. Metachasers and parsers on unalive watch seeing me play the game but I’m making it work. Vivaciuos Vicivifify is the last piece of the puzzle to make caster weaver feel complete and it wouldn’t even damage fistweaver/hybrid.

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Hey at the beginning of this thread, I said

We are a throughput healer. Sure, all of our heals do a metric boat load of healing and top our teammates. But in this meta where we take SOOOO much damage and spend so much time in crowd control, it just doesn’t matter. I don’t care that we can top our teammates with less than 5 stacks of sheilun’s gift. They are dead less than 2 seconds later so it doesn’t matter.

I was really wrong. Caster weaver sucks. Now that everybody who can is enjoying their 4-set bonuses and everybody else is starting to get properly geared up, mistweaver is SOOOO bad. I’m not even talking about the RWK nerf, because I never played it. Each week, mistweaver has just been feeling worse and worse. We need vivacious vivify to revert or turn into a choice node for the old version of the talent. We need flat buffs to our healing period. I’m spamming vivifys that hit for 2m while my teammates are taking more damage than that. I can’t keep them alive with Env + Renewing + Zen Sphere and all the modifiers they grant, spamming vivify. 35%+ dampening and we just can’t keep up with damage.

If we aren’t going to get utility changes this expansion, we need big bufferinos =\

And a piece of sage advice: The mark of a good healer is if you can undertune their healing but they still stay relevant because of their utility. Hpal and resto druid are good examples of this. It’s not enough to have OP heals if your utility sucks, but right now our utility sucks and we have no healing.

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Agree with this. Vivify alternative would be nice.

Disagree with everything else. You are still 635 ilvl, about 70-80 ilvls behind the current ilvl range, off course your vivify/etc isn’t going to heal for much till you get better gear. The int gain alone is HUGE. I wouldnt knock the healing/hps till you can properly gear up.

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This is just one of my many mistweavers, and I haven’t geared this character or played him this season. I’m talking about my fully geared mistweavers, whose vivifies heal for like 2.5m a piece, even in low dampening.

Part of the issue is that our mastery is pretty bad bad right now. I try to do a vers>haste>mastery stat prio but trying to blend mastery and haste just doesn’t feel like a good value. My monks that have vers, then haste to 25% and rest mastery just don’t feel better than my monks that are pure haste. I also tried a monk that was pure mastery for for SAGs, and that proved to dang near be what it takes to feel mastery. You just get so much better value from versatility and haste that it’s hardly worth it to take mastery. Crit is next on my list to try.

We need a 20% buff to gusts, enveloping and viv on top of the vivacious revert

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Shouldn’t ever really be dry vivifying someone like that tbh. With Chi Harmony + Env mist rolling you can get much higher/stronger vivifies and it’s not hard to keep those rolling on 3-5 people when you know damage is coming or is happening. ( something you should be doing already ) Then you add in the bonus from Mending Proliferation that spreads nicely now for some reason ( even to people with Env Mist ) and the bonus from VV you can get some pretty high vivify value and even better crits reliably. Very easy to pull off 4-5 mil non crit vivifies for me and Ive seen frequent 10+ ish mil crits, esp when someone really needs it and save them all also kicks in. Just gotta make sure you are managing those modifiers, keep ren mists rolling and prep env mist ramps when damage is coming or expected.

Deff swap to crit though. Mastery is in a meh spot right now and they have constantly devalued it the last few expansions unless you run one specific build and even then I think it’s fallen behind, and the removal of gusts hitting every sheilun’s target was also kinda silly imo. ( I ran haste mastery from Legion to DF and it was decent if stacked, with the TWW changes I swapped to pure haste/crit/vers for TWW ) Crit is much better for more mana teas too. Crit will also help any damage you do, mastery is kind of a dead stat rn. You are also get many more mana tea stacks if you dont ignore crit.

If anything they should buff the heal from TFT-Env. In Legion that heal from TFT-ing Env Mist was pretty beefy, now it is meh.

Still dont personally think we need an HPS buff. I personally would like to see other tools like a DR or stronger Chi Cocoons on 1 min celestial before they just throw more HPS at us. Id also like less modifiers in general but it is what it is.

Try crit. It will make a difference.

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A reason with the TFT enveloping heal being low is because we go full haste so the gust from pressing Enveloping is a lot lower

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I was heavy mastery/haste from Legion to DF and while essence font doubled mastery back then and I do agree we got more value out of gusts, it wasn’t just the gust proc that was significant. The TFT-Env heal was also better before. Both aspects ( the gust and the heal ) were stronger but the extra heal from Tft-ing Env mist was much larger before than now a days.

It was a decent emergency heal back then is all I am saying, currently there are better and different ways to deal with unexpected damage, RWK-Viv is usually more than enough to save someone who takes unexpected damage from my experience. The RenMist/Chi Harmony from RWK/RSK nearly always goes on the person who is hurt and then you just viv(+vv) them.

If they straight up buffed enveloping mist’s healing it would be most likely too strong in a raid scenario when combined with misty peaks and mending proliferation. They would most likely hit us somewhere else with a nerf to compensate.

Due to how DR works we don’t really go “full haste” rn tbh. With the large amt of secondary stats and procs available eventually you want other stats. ( anything except mastery really but crit is huge for revival CDR and getting free mana tea stacks if talented ). Suggest simming or checking out QElive to determine when that is for you.

In any case I cant figure out how OP’s vivifies are so small unless they are not using/stacking those healing modifiers at all.

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I should clarify again that these are calls for pvp changes, and tuning is a little different in pvp than pve.

I was 2.8k last season, not quite rank 1 but in the higher percentile of the leaderboard. I appreciate that you want to step in and offer advice but it’s just kind of coming across as patronizing. Of course I’m zen sphering, renewing and enveloping. I don’t need help with basic rotation stuff. These are not dry vivs, and details shows me that they are consistently averaging low-mid 2 millions, with crits up to 4 million. These numbers may be affected by classes that have healing reductions (like sharpen blade and wound poison) as well as dampening. Either way, not particularly fantastic numbers to be looking at in a meta with such high damage.

Furthermore, most monks on the pvp ladders are stacking vers/haste because the extra globals have so much more value than mastery can give you from gusts, or the amount of critical heals you can get from stacking crit. That’s part of why I’m experimenting with stat priorities on my alts.