The healer spec seems to be undergoing an identity crisis
If we look at the other two specs monk offers they are melee. Perhaps have monk fully embrace melee healing and let holy priest and other classes offer the ranged experience if we want that route
I’m all for less conformity. Let monks do their unique thing
It’s interesting because some hybrid healing classes are optimized a certain way, does it mean that they can’t be played another way? No, but it’s not optimal.
MWers who refuse to do any FWing are kind of like Disc priests who refuse to try to heal with atonement, I mean you can do it, but it’ll never be as effective as doing the hybrid style class/spec as intended.
I generally agree that if a MWer wants to heal without doing damage they still can but they have to understand that it’s not optimized to play that way even though it’s still possible to do so. That’s a choice being made.
Mistweaver is a melee healer already.
Do you guys know that in raid we do 0 fistweaving right?
And that it isn’t a quirky off-meta build but the way blizzard wants us to play since they keep buffing talents supporting it and nerfing everything else.
Fistweaving is quite clearly the alternative playstyle, every sigle fw talent (which are required for the playsyle to even work ) is on the last 3 rows of the tree and they are all on choice nodes; it just couldn’t be clearer than that.
The fact that fw is the best build for m+ basically since it’s inception in df doesn’t mean that is the only way mistweaver is supposed to play.
No MW monk is trying to play like holy priest, monk already have their own unique toolkit and Soom has been a part of the toolkit since the beginning. Some of us just want the 2 different playstyles to be fleshed out better via hero trees like it should have been from the beginning so we dont feel forced into an unfun jadefire stomp build for m+. Raid healing is, for the most part, fine for both playstyles. Outside of JAdefire stomp MW has been a blast over the years but if they are going to ram it down our throats every expansion now they should at least allow ONE of the hero trees to be anything else themed.
Anyways. DProbably a troll post with how vague and pointless it all is. Posted on a meme level “alt” monk to boot. Report and move on friend. Not worth the time.
Your post has nothing but you reacting to your own narratives, very detached from reality
I’m not in the business of belittling anyone, i’m confused myself on which direction blizzard is taking us. It seems mistweaver is by nature a midrange healer given how much of their utility excels there
Then you go into a further rant basically having a conversation with yourself
Again i’m not attacking you, but notice when you are reacting to internal conversations the rest of us cannot read
Mistweaver has been a hybrid of sorts since they were introduced in mists. Ancient Teachings has been with us from the start, and so has casted heals. It wasn’t until Legion that Blizzard started to expand on the fistweaver thing with Way of the Crane, and they’ve been expanding on that idea since.
Fistweaver IS the identity crisis that mistweaver is having. Blizzard has been doing a phenomenal job of balancing between the two, and I don’t see why they can’t continue to balance between fw or caster.
It still blows my mind that anyone can pick up monk and not figure out a class with nearly every single damage ability being melee range is a melee character.
The only balance issues they have is because its a melee character. Disc nearly always has the option to hit a boss (for healing reasons) in raid but that cant be with a melee character.
Also true of most healers that raid is different than dungeon content.
It’s hard for me to even understand why anyone would want to play mw and not be in melee. Have you ever imagined a monk irl standing in a corner casting healing spells? In dungeons and dragons? In like literally any form of media outside of wow? Even in naruto they make physical contact with the person they’re transferring chakra to in order to accelerate their healing.
It makes no sense to me. Every other healer in the game is ranged (yes even hpal besides crusader strike. They melee according to targeting mechanics that pick ranged/melee but realistically they’re 95% ranged.) Why would anyone pick the only true healer melee spec if they want to be a pure caster? Some people make it work but I think it’s increasingly evident blizzard doesn’t want that to exist as they’ve slowly pruned caster centric things from the tree.
I kinda wish fistweaving was more of a thing in larger raids. It seems like it primarily flourishes in m+ and low-count raids like 2/2/6 but sees not-insignificant struggle past that due to the points that go into fistweaving nodes instead of the other ones that bolster RM spreading even more plus the lack of a few other key nodes (Invoker’s Delight, Mending Proliferation, etc if you want to go all the way down to Awakened Jadefire on the left side and pick up Jade Empowerment on the Right).
I’m totally fine with casting existing, especially since it’s a good onboarding process though. I even played the whole Peer Into Peace thing for a while, and Rushing Wind Kick not requiring a target is a great way to offer additional options if the player struggles with melee positioning or the boss can’t be hit for whatever reason (though we definitely need a node option for Vivi-Vivi, too).
There’s more work to be done but I don’t see anything wrong with keeping options open for casters. It’s also nice to have options in general, as there’ll always be fights where melee might struggle more (or less…Though it seems Blizz continues to hate melee a lot.
i like to think we’re the first healer spec to have physical for a secondary spell school.
one day faeline stomp will proc yulon mists to shoot out from us like unison making our vivify and enveloping mists instant cast for the duration so our rotation is fistweaving with casted spot heals 
(which is how i imagine they thought the vivify change would feel)
and however they have to get them ingame give mw passive healing spheres back, even if its just a glyph; i miss my ball pit…
i would also like to add 1 positive note for mistweaver as most the forums post are negative: mistweaver animations are peak right now. there has never been a bette iteration imo. pressing tft and seeing aspect of harmony light up from its idle state is glorious, vivify is super cool, the chi cocoons; i hope they find a way to keep these animations in the future without it being some crazy hps/dps loss.
Every day I pray that we finally get glyph customization that lets us customize the colors. The green is lovely but I’d love to be able to summon a red healing noodle, perhaps, or a red jadefire stomp.
Not the point they were making, Raid healing is still a melee healer.
We also need to freaking standardize terms on the forums. ‘Fistweaving’ has been used to describe both Nyalotha melee-into-casting and Shadowlands/Dragonflight Ancient Teachings/Stomp playstyles.
You don’t use AT and Stomp in raids true, but you are still playing melee-into-casting; not ranged like the OP was arguing.
Current Raid mw has no need to ever be in melee outside of wanting to dps or interrupt.
Between Rushing Wind Kick, Pool of Mists and Heart of the Jade Serpent we get more than enough kicks to feed Rising Mist without the need to rely on teaching. With the new tier set and reworked VV we have so many spells to cast that spending time Tiger Palming and Blackout Kicking is a huge hps loss.
I would also like to point out that the dmg done by palms and black kicks is also insignificant so it’s almost never worth doing.
edit
Obviously you should still stay in close/midrange to heal the melee group with conduit, hit the boss with kicks and occasionally chip some palms and kicks, but you can be assigned to a ranged group and not lose any hps.
Here we go again. Split the spec Blizz, so we can be done with these sorts of threads.