The Mistweaver talent trees needs some serious changes

Classes Monk
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Hello, as the title suggests I believe the mistweaver talent tree is in dire need of adjustments. I figure that while Midnight is currently in development, now is the best time to make suggestions of this calibre in hopes they will consider these changes.

The talent system (in general, across all classes) is structured into 3 tiers that unlock as you spent talent points. Each tier that becomes available unlocks increasingly meaningful and important talents that not only give you fun and exciting new abilities, but also give important modifiers and buffs to existing abilities. My perception of this design is that the first row that unlocks with each tier is generally supposed to be important milestone talents that players are excited to earn and play with, while the very bottom row talents are the ultimates that are either big important abilities or modifiers to abilities that make them overpowered and fun to use. I understand it doesn’t always work out this way with every class, but to me it seems like an intentional design language that I am going to partially base my suggestions off of.

What is the problem?

Right now, Mistweaver has two different playstyles. Fistweaver, and Caster (and hybrid I guess). Fistweaver is defined by several key talents: Jadefire Teachings, Jadefire Stomp, Invoke Chi’ji and Cranestyle. There are several talents throughout the tree that grant modifiers to RSK/RWK and spinning crane kick that do healing. Caster is defined by umm… I’m not entirely sure. Maybe Jade Empowerment, Peer into Peace, Invoke Yu’lon and Peaceful Mending? I should know because I play caster. There are also several talents scattered throughout the tree that grant modifiers to Renewing Mists, Enveloping Mists and Vivify. There is a little bit of overlap, most notably with Sheilun’s Gift.

Based on my observations, it would make sense to me that Blizzard is intending for caster to be the status quo playstyle for mistweaver, with a emphasis on modifiers for renewing mists and enveloping mists. Fistweaver is merely a specialized build within the tree that builds off of our passive ability Ancient Teachings that happens to be really strong right now.

The mistweaver tree suffers from two primary issues:

  1. A lack of structure/direction. Of the talents that define fistweaver, they are located in the first tier on the bottom row, and then in the 3rd tier all on the right side. That is the most highly structured part of the talent tree. The most defining talents for CASTER are scattered all throughout the talent tree. Most problematic is that none of these talents seem to be located on the first row for each tier, or the very bottom row of the talent tree. This makes the tree feel scattered, and the tiers that unlock as you level and bottom row of talents as though they are not really milstones.

  2. The tree only further builds on the fistweaver identity, but there is little to build on the identity of mistweavers overall. After the first tier, where you get ALL your big important abilities that define mistweaver, everything else on the tree primarily consists of modifiers.

What is the solution?

I am proposing a talent tree for mistweavers that is more well defined. The crude picture I am going to paint in this forum post is one where the talent tree has a more defined left-to-right fistweaver-to-caster design with some changes to the talent tree that will introduce new talents, or reposition existing talents in spots where they will feel more important. Hopefully, my ideas will clearly communicate an expansion on the mistweaver identity. I am going to first cover some primary changes to the talent tree, then I will provide a crude graphical depiction of how I envision the talent tree using a table. I will wrap up by summarizing some new talent proposals as well as changes to certain talents that will improve mistweaver overall.

Prefaces: I primary play pvp. I may display some biases towards pvp oriented talents and abilities, but will try to keep my suggestions generalized for overall mistweaver.

Primary changes:

  • Move Soothing Mist (and by extension, Elusive Mists) out of the monk tree, and into the Mistweaver tree. It should be our very first talent. I believe that Soothing Mist is a core part of mistweaver identity, and I am unaware if any windwalkers or brewmasters take this talent.
  • Ancient Teachings becomes a talented passive ability instead of a learned passive.
  • Thunder Focus Tea becomes a second tier row 1 talent
  • Increased emphasis on Jade Serpent Statue and Invoke Celestial ability
  • Increase emphasis on Zen Pulse for casters
  • Increase modifiers for Gusts of Mist
  • Less modifiers for Renewing Mists

Crude Table depicting changes:

Row 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
A Soothing Mist
B Enveloping Mist Renewing Mist
C Elusive Mists Mana Tea Invigorating Mists
D Rapid Diffusion Revival OR Restoral Dancing Mists
2A Ancient Teachings Healing Elixir Life Cocoon* Thunder Focus Tea Zen Pulse
2B Crane Style Mist Wrap Calming Coalescence OR Heavy Mists* Focused Thunder* Yu’lon’s Whispers Energizing Brew Deep Clarity*
2C Rising Mist Chrysalis Lotus Infusion Resplendant Mists Statue Buff* Overflowing Mists Zen Mists OR Surging Pulse*
3A Jadefire Stomp Jade Empowerment Song of Chi-Ji Invoke Yu’lon OR Chi-ji Sudden Gust* Peer Into Peace OR Pool of Mists* Sheilun’s Gift
3B Awaken Jadefire Jadefire Teachings Celestial Harmony Peaceful Mending Statue Buff 2* Veil of Pride OR Shaohao’s Lessons
3C Rushing Wind Kick* Jade Bond OR Celestial Monasticism* Invoker’s Delight Unison* Legacy of Wisdom OR Emeror’s Favor

Description of Talents and Changes:

If I do not elaborate on a talent, that means I do not have any particular changes for it.

  • Life Cocoon: Changed to have a baseline damage reduction effect AND bubble effect
  • Calming Coalescence: Life cocoon gets an increased bubble effect
  • Heavy Mists: New talent that would increase the damage reduction effect of Life Cocoon, as a choice node alternative to Calming Coalscence
  • Focused Thunder: Changed to a 2-point talent, each point increases the number of abilities empowered by Thunder Focus Tea by 1
  • Deep Clarity: Simply increases the proc rate of Zen Pulse
  • Statue Buff: No description right now, something that buffs Jade Serpent Statue
  • Zen Mists: Chance for Zen Pulse to trigger on Gusts of Mists Procs
  • Surging Pulse: Chance to trigger when you get a critical heal
  • Sudden Gust: Gusts of Mists critical heals also heal nearby allies
  • Pool Of Mists: Casting Soothing Mist procs Gusts of Mists at 5x effectiveness
  • Statue Buff 2: Intentionally left blank, buff for Jade Serpent Statue
  • Rushing Wind Kick: No longer shares a choice node with Jadefire Teachings
  • Celestial Monasticism: Your chosen celestial (Yu’lon or Chi-ji) becomes a permanent pet, as a choice node alternative to Jade Bond
  • Unison: Either buff the healing output of Soothing Mist’s split beam under Unison, or potentially make Unison nerf soothing mist by omega amounts, but casting Enveloping or Vivify through soothing mist ALSO cast env and viv on the second target at full strength.

As you can see, based on my suggestions, this would be a substantial change to the tree. The structure has a more well defined fistweaver and caster build. The intention would be that you would have enough talent points to reach 3 of the bottom row talents. You could pick talents that help to build up a good fistweaver build with an emphasis on RWK being an omega buff to Rising Sun Kick. Spinning crane and tiger palm and jadefire stomp and all that stuff idk I don’t play fistweaver. Casters could get buffs to Jade Serpent Statue and some AoE healing benefits from both the statue and Unison. Your celestial could be a permanent pet that provides their standard benefits, or they could be an omega CD that is substantially more powerful than their standard version. Gusts of Mists gets more modifiers to make Mastery more important. Zen Pulse gets some more modifiers to make it proc more often and do more healing, turning it into a better heal. Some of the modifiers for your spells start to benefit from more critical strike rating. Renewing Mists has less modifiers so it’s healing can be buffed and turned into a real heal. Mistweavers can get both Ring of Peace AND Song of Chi-ji. Maybe more talents to buff straight healing with soothing mist could be added, idk.

The sky is the limit here. I’m probably missing some talents that are already good ideas that already exist, or some obviously good potential talent ideas. I pretty much slammed down a list of all the mistweaver abilities, listed some potential modifiers next to them that might be useful and/or fun and then attempted to structure it into a tree. Jade Serpent Statue is a good example of this. Statue is such an iconic ability for mistweavers, yet there are no modifiers or buffs to the statue. That seems like a missed opportunity. There’s only 1 talent buffing gusts of mists. This also seems like a missed opportunity. Zen Pulse is weak and should be doing real healing. So I added some ideas for Zen Pulse. Maybe there could be a talent that causes Chi Wave to sometimes proc gusts of mists or reduce the cast time of Chi Burst to be instant cast when Burst is talented instead of Wave.

At this point I am brimming with ideas but am cooked trying to figoure out how to incorporate them into the mistweaver talent tree. None of these are set in stone. My only hope is that I can feel like the bottom row of talents are important, or that the defining abilities for mistweaver are in locations that feel more like milestones.

Also I didn’t make any suggestions about hero talents lol

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Idk why you think this tree is built more with mw in mind when it’s clear they are going in a more fistweaving direction. Additionally soothing mist is super boring and I don’t want that to ever touch the spec tree, it should be optional to use. Idk many people who enjoy channeling as a hyper mobile healer. My honest hope is that they finally decide to bite the bullet with apex talents coming in midnight and either make caster the play or fistweaving. IMO I think with the direction mw has been going since bfa fistweaver will be what they pick solely because the other 5 healers all play at a range.

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I guess I did flesh out a little bit more of the fistweaver side of the tree than what Blizzard currently has, only because I decided to suggest that Ancient teachings be a talent instead of learned. What I meant was that it feels more like there are talents that build on the caster spec more, with additional talents that modify Jade Serpent Statue and Zen Pulse, to add more for the playstyle or make traditionally caster abilities feel like they are getting more love and attention.

Ultimately it’s not really my problem to fix problems for blizzard. This is merely feedback, and I like to elaborate extensively on the feedback I provide so that I’m not just some guy whining on the forums. The crude concept I provided was merely a part of the feedback.

My main hope, as I said before, is that they adjust the tree to make the tier talents and bottom row talents feel more important and everything in between can be modifiers.

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I mean sure but mw is so perfectly balanced right now it’s crazy. And by that I mean you can choose to play a caster if you want or fistweaver. The hero talents both have uses in the content you choose(MOH if you wnna pump dmg, conduit if you wnna be a bit safer and do more healing). Your ideas seem nice and all but like you said, it’s blizzards choice at the end of the day and I genuinely hope they don’t take any of what you say because as you said in your post you don’t fistweave and all you actually care about is castweaver, which is a small subset of the spec.

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I am not suggesting balance changes, Blizzard would need to perform balancing changes for sure. Which is also why I suggested that Blizzard would probably take these changes into consideration for Midnight, since they’re going to be making a lot of changes anyways and doing a bunch of tuning.

First of all, rude lmaoo

Second off, none of my changes would actually ruin fistweaver.

Third off, part of the reason why fistweaver is the larger part of the mistweaver playerbase right now is likely influenced by the fact that fistweaver is a little better than caster. Although, to your credit, I am well aware that there are a number of players who play mistweaver purely because they find fistweaver enjoyable. It’s not my intention to get rid of fistweaver, and I don’t believe any of the changes I suggested would ruin fistweaver

Correct, but I’m not going to stand around and hope that Blizzard makes changes that are favorable for caster or watch them fade caster into oblivion. I’m going to do exactly what feedback is all about. I’m going to stand on my soapbox and support caster. What Blizzard decides to do about caster is up to them, and I sincerely hope that caster will always be a part of mistweaver, but I will not fade quietly into the night.

You can do the same too, you know. You can make forum posts supporting whatever changes you want to see for Mistweaver or any other aspect of the game. Will Blizzard make those changes for you? Maybe, maybe not. That’s the purpose of feedback though, to let Blizzard know what the players want

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I don’t need to make a forum post because ever since I started play mw back in wod I’ve LOVED it. Caster was the more powerful back when I was playing in mythic HFC, and in legion you were kinda a wierd hybrid caster. But I’ve loved all the iterations of mw I’ve played over the years. I stopped playing after I got CE in mythic sepulcher but when I came back in DF I was shocked by the changes and how they had improved even further on this spec. I’ll play mw if it’s a caster but I’m ngl I do enjoy the way they’ve been favoring fistweaver because it’s much more unique and flavorful then caster. We will find out in midnight what they intend to do with apex talents. But looking at how both of our hero talents seem to favor fistweaving I’m liking the chances they are gonna improve even more on the fistweaver design.

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Yeah that’s why I’m making forum posts lol. I don’t even think that fistweaver should go away, I respect that it’s been a part of the spec for a long time. For the record, I’ve been mistweaver since WoD as well and have enjoyed it since. Blizzard has clearly tried to tune mistweaver for both caster and fistweaver since I’m making caster work in pvp despite the fact it’s not meta right now, and I don’t see why they can’t continue to do that, and I think my talent change suggestions would not inhibit their ability to continue to make both flavors of mistweaver viable.

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This isn’t true. To utilize your CC and interrupt you need to be in melee range.

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While true I don’t think it’s a large part of the reason why people choose to play fistweaver. From a pvp perspective I hear people say stuff like “Hybrid is better”, “Why are you still playing crackle build”, “You’re actually trolling” or my favorite, “Heal???”

Jokes aside, I have literally never heard anybody say that fistweaver is better because our cc is melee range. That would be a first for me. I’ve actually never had an issue despite literally playing nothing but caster mistweaver. It’s always because fist/hybrid is just stronger right now or is more fun than caster.

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Also other than CJL all damage comes from melee abilities and until fairly recently CJL was a meme outside of PvP.

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(and hybrid I guess) is probably the funniest additional description of the class’ ‘identities’ I have ever seen. Hybrid is and has been the way to play the class for most content since the end of Battle for Azeroth.

And it’s very clear that Blizzard intends it that way.

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To some extent I agree, but thank god they made mistweaver halfway decent WITHOUT the need to run in and do those stupid little kicks. If they would only revert the changes to vivacious vivify, things would be pretty awesome for caster right now.

After they removed chi from the resources that mistweavers use, the separation between fistweaver and caster has been more clear because you didn’t need to use your abilities as a supplement for gathering chi. Mistweaver was mostly just a caster after that, with way of the crane being pvp specific and the only thing that really allowed for fistweaving. Even then it was more like hybrid is today than the fistweaving of today, since you only really got the buff for 15 seconds every 1 minute. I didn’t play much of anything between Legion and this expansion so I can’t accurately say when fistweaving became a more fleshed out but I’ll take your word at the end of BFA.

The point is, after Way of the Crane’s success in Legion, it seems like they developed fistweaver as a real thing, and it’s a lot different than the way mistweavers used melee abilities to do healing in the past. Which is why I refer to “hybrid” in the way that I did. The fact that you can build a talent spec that varies your dependency on doing damage to do healing and that Blizzard has balanced it pretty well is honestly amazing. But, like I said in my original post, I think that the organization of the tree leaves something to be desired, and fails to expand on some of the spells that define caster, and also maybe fistweaver I guess.

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I feel this way about a lot of mw talents as well. Or at least specifically that some of our stuff should be inherent and not a talent node.

Most of our talents are purely functionality and not empowerments. Why in the world is mana tea a talent node? There’s not even any choice there you have to take it and you wouldn’t really want to play without it anyway.

Why is cocoon a talent? It’s not even an optional one literally you have to take it in order to unlock the next tier in the tree but if you’re being absolutely realistic even if you didn’t have to take it you would.

I complain about calming coalescence every season. This shouldn’t even be a talent that exists. Cocoon should just be stronger baseline. It’s already considered the worst healer external in the game and it’s objectively the worst tank external in the game. I shouldn’t have to spend a talent point to make something go from bad to less bad.

I love tea of plenty, I wish it wasn’t a capstone. It’s an inferior thundering focus, which isn’t a cap stone, but tea of plenty is a capstone.

Save them all, mistwrap, mending proliferation, chi harmony, etc. are just purely better than most talent options. Like mathematically and gameplay wise, so why talent anything else? You can swap them and still play but you can feel the difference. And besides, more amps or more effective amps is not what I think is fun or has been fun about mw gameplay personally.

Since df talents released i’ve always looked for a way to try to talent overflowing mists and most the time I just can’t. why is THAT 2 talents points anyway? For 1.2% max hp heal when taking direct single target damage? Holy smokes. Wait, let me calculate…14 million…1.2%…168k. Whoa! Whoa!!! Whoa guys, slow down there you need TWO talent points for this! Pay up bucko! Pretty sure mist wrap just works as it says unconditionally and is more healing from all your sources on another player but 168k conditionally on taking direct damage…you better calm down there mist player.

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Soothing mist as the first talent in mw tree, no thanks!

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You’re making a mistake in assuming the devs have any ‘intentions’ for the MW tree. They just randomly make changes to push raid #s up or down, because not only do they not play the class, I’m certain they have zero clue how it even works.

S3 is the worst state MW has been in all xpac. At 700 ilvl (I’m not pushing on her… she’s useless now) my MW is doing similar numbers (both hps and dps wise) as she was pushing S1.

I compare my #s in CoE/DB from S1 to S3, and I’ve gained maybe a few hundred k hps and maybe 100k dps… maybe. I went from 640 to 700 ilvl and don’t even notice the difference. On top of that I now run oom all the time due to needed to cast vivfy/EvM so often now, at least in S1 I had nearly infinite mana (outside of SooM/PIP spam).

They could do anything to the MW talent tree, and it’d be better than the mess that they have now.

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Caster vs. Fist has been going on for a while now. Blizzard seems to have fallen into the Fist camp. I don’t think they give any consideration to caster mw these days…but some people can still make it work.

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The damage that m+ only content creators have done to the perception of this spec is insane honestly.

Mistweaver in raid is exclusively played like a ranged caster since they introduced ranged kick; fistweaving was ahead for half of a patch because of a change intended for m+ and blizzard reworked our celestials and nerfed chiji to push rising kick yu’lon back on top.

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Some changes would be nice, to both trees and even the hero trees tbh. Dont mind the MW tree toooo much myself but some changes to better flesh out both playstyles and also cut down on certain useless talent nodes would be nice.

Life Cocoon should be baseline and current calming Coalescence should be baked into it. Then Move CC to where LC is in the talent tree and change/buff CC to provide a 15-20 DR. Put Chrysalis on a choice node with CC for times we dont want/need the DR on LC and want more frequent LC’s. ( possibly in raids for padding /shrug.

Mists of Life could share a node with burst of life at that point. If talented into burst of life it would be cool if also talented in CC that DR splits to allies for a few seconds when LC breaks. ( very short burst group DR for allies, possibly good on rot damage ) If talented into Burst of Life+Mists of Life the aoe burst also gives a portion of the healing as an absorb shield to the allies it heals. ( so more frequent absorb shields )
Slight buff to Mists of life.
Ideally this also prunes down the LC talents, there are too many. Make them impactful and let them shine in certain situations.

Yu’Lons whisper, Overflowing mists, could be entirely deleted to make way for better playstyle defining abilities. I hate RJwind with a passion and I think most of us are happy any tier we dont have to talent into it. Could also bake Mist Wrap into Env Mist.

Tea of Serenity and Tea of Plenty need something. I found them better before in DF when they didnt have expel harm on the rng rotation tbh. They could just delete one, move Focused thunder lower on the tree, then add the not deleted one as a choice node with FT.
Like if I was going to TFT Expel harm it would be intentional and be the main charge from TFT, getting expel harm rng styles with tea of plenty feels extremely bad, especially when you have Expel harm on CD. Just have each one buff 2 spells max. Plenty could be RenMist+RWK and Serenity could be Env+RWK or Env+Viv.

Resplendent mists is just there. Prob better for Chiji stuff. I was heavy Mastery in DF and it was still kind of a mid talent. The RNG nature of it feels bad and if you move away from crit/haste in any way now a days it hurts mana tea and just general rotation flow. I remember I made a whole thing about mastery falling behind in PTR as a secondary when they added the extra mana tea gen from crits and removed gust procs from all sheilun’s targets.

Bake Unison into soothing mist or JSS just has the Unison buff.

Slightly increase env mist healing through Tears of Morning

Make it so that peer into peace lets us use Renewing Mist without cancelling soothing mist.

Re-add soothing mist on the move from Legion and possibly even combine it with a talent that reduces the SOOM GCD in general

Class Tree:
Return old VV as a choice node, but slightly faster turnover to compete with the new VV.

Re-add the buff auras you removed. Seriously. This was so fun/cool. Id even take heavily watered down versions of it. I just want to bring something other than mystic tickle xD

Make Bounding agility baseline. Dumb talent.

Add a talent that gives Spear Hand strike a 5-10 y range

Could bake unison into JSS. Let JSS auto heal people who are injured but it will still follow the healer’s soothing mist when we Soom specific targets. Longer channel time.

Healing Winds should give a Small Absorb

WindWalking is gross, I miss my old avoidance and healing+ auras. Thanks for keeping the most depressing aura and pruning the fun ones.

Lighter than air is like the best thing they have added in forever. So fun.

Let our transcendence give off an aura that gives 2% avoidance or healing+, if we have Linked spirits talented it gives that specific person 4% avoidance or healing+ or 1-2% vers instead.

Fix touch of death clunk. Someone around here had the idea that if ToD worked for x seconds after hitting that threshold it could help it be less clunky - tack that on to any of the ToD talents plz.

Meh. These are just random ideas xD At the end of the day I just hope they keep thinking about both playstyles, and tweak talents going forward to better define those 2 playstyles.

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I REALLY miss that. Would love to have it back.

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Agree with sentiment of the post. Two (three?) completely different playstyles in one talent tree does not work. That’s why we got Guardian for druids.

Caster MW playstyle is vastly different from Fistweaver. Both are different from Mid-range hybrid.

All of these playstyles now feel bad to play.

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