Understanding MW Chi (as a BFA monk noob)

Classes Monk
1

Hello all.

I thought it would be prudent to explain (from my noob understanding) of how Chi actually worked pre-legion. I only picked up monk in BFA, so forgive me if my understanding is not entirely correct. I would actually love more addition to this, and explanations. I have seen on the monk forums and discord a “cry” for chi to come back. However, I have yet to see full laid out reasons. Some might think “its more interesting and non boring gameplay” is enough, but as a non-monk main, this is hard to understand. So, I went and watched about 2-3 hours worth of guides from MoP, and WoD that detailed how it played, as well as watching raid gameplay of it.

That all being said here is my basic understanding of the flow and feel of old mistweaver.

  1. Some healing abilities (surging mist, renewing mist, soothing mist-believe at end of cast MoP version) generated chi.
  2. Then there were the spenders. Uplift(aoe) Chi Wave, and Enveloping mist (ST). Uplift increased duration of renewing mist on people and did a heal on them all, Chi Wave was similar to how it is now, and enveloping mist heals for a large hot, and increased healing target received by soothing.
  3. Jade serpent was baseline
    4.Healing spheres existed for people to run into.
  4. Chi torpedo healed people you went through.
  5. Active mana regeneration through Mana tea, Brewing: Mana Tea. So it looked like Mana->Chi->Mana Tea->Mana. Essentially a way to regain some mana.
  6. There were two stances, Serpent and Crane (atleast in WoD it was crane). Serpent was “pure” healing and then Crane was for melee dps.
  7. Thunder Focus tea existed in WoD–and had some functionality with renewing mist
  8. When in Crane–you didn’t lose chi going from serpent to crane, but crane to serpent you lost chi.

Just some quick notes on where some of the guides mentioned the “feelsbad” stuff.
a. Uplift didn’t always hit targets you wanted as it depending on what Renewing mist was on. The guides says this wasn’t too bad of an issue, since more often than not upwelling would do some healing. Plus it added the complexity of when was the “right” time to cast upwelling. This devolved into discussions around addons that would help show you “when” the right time to cast it was.
b. Similar to upwelling, the goal (atleast in patch 6.2) was to get as many renewing mists out as possible. This was to be able to prep for damage coming out so you could then upwelling and do massive heals on everyone that had renewing mist (up to 9+ targets in patch 6.2).

  1. Crane healing: Rising sun kick, and tiger palm left debuffs on the target for more damage.
    10a. Blackout kick gave you Crane’s zeal, which increased your crit by 20%.
    10b. Vital mist existed: reduced the cast time and mana cost of your next surging mist by 100%
    10c. Eminence: When the monk deals damage, they will heal nearby injured target within 20 yards, equal to 50% of the damage done.

Crane healing and serpent healing were both part of the playstyle. At times the MW monk would be in the “ranged” and spamming renewing mists to prep for big damage to then upwelling. Then, when there was either “downtime” or “less healing needed” they would go into crane healing mode, be able to do damage, throw out some heals as well, AND generate a good amount of mana because of old Mana tea.

This healer was not meant to be a traditional healer, it was meant to have a unique and complex play style. To be a good healer, you HAD to go into melee (atleast according to guides) and master crane healing and serpent.

Phew, that was alot. I am sure I missed something, so if I did, please comment below so I can edit my above post. I complied this list from watching guides on YouTube.

Doing this has honestly made me want to go back to MoP and Wod and play and learn MW. I enjoy my MW now, but I can understand and agree with many calling for the return of chi. It seems to not simply be a return of Chi, but a return to a playstyle that could be preemptive and set up for huge heals, while also having a damaging and somewhat reactive gameplay. Overall I enjoyed this small little project and I hope this helps some other people understand the lifelong MW’s desire for Chi.

Best Wishes!

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I would love chi and old mana tea back. Was so interesting style of play.

The downside is you could really just jab, jab, uplift with renewing mists out on CD and be pretty effective because of smart heals.

I would love to see a niche though where you want a spec that can burst heal and burst damage but be just okay at both without the CDs, so you could help with burn phases or heavy damage phases. Probably a tuning nightmare but I would love to see support specs as a sub type of play through crane monks, disc priests, shockadins, etc.

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I loved my MW monk pre legion. The way worked just clicked for me. I’ve never enjoyed a class as much. I could have a super stressful day and then come home, heal a few dungeons, and it would literally zen me out.

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Yeah. I honestly don’t know/couldn’t find why they removed chi, but I can see a jab jab uplift spam would be very boring in terms of gameplay. However, if they reintroduced it, I would hope they could combat that issue. But again, I didn’t play it in MoP/WoD and it seemed like during those xpacs could rotate between serpent and crane–which stance switching to adjust to the fight sounds super interesting and very unique

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Honestly, that was SUPER boring. Thing is, that only really came into play during raiding or really spread out dungeons, and that didn’t even cover how deep in you could go with the class. It had a high mastery ceiling.
A good MW monk could fluidly switch between serpent and crane stand, dance in and out of combat, generate chi to keep the tank up and generate mana tea ahead of time, could easily CC enemies while doing all that, and could then set up massive raid and group heals, destroying their mana bar in a way that would make every other healer cower, and could then just regen most of it with mana tea.
On paper, it never sounded like much. But it had so many moving pieces and there was always something to do. I don’t know how many times I found myself playing and preplanning all my healing and dps without even actively thinking about it.
On the other hand, you could always tell who wasn’t a good MW. And I think that’s why they changed the spec so much. A good MW would never OOM and was kinda OP on the healing charts. But a “normal” MW was about as good as all the other healers. A bad MW though? They couldn’t really do anything.
At least with other healing classes, you can kinda brute force your way through stuff. Do that on a MW, then you are out of mana, with no mana tea, and no chi to use while you flounder and hope the tank can carry you.

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I truly hope they don’t bring back old MW, was terrible to play in dungeons and while it was fun to stance change, you really only were in serpent stance in higher lvl content. I personally hope they give us JSS back but I enjoy MW more during legion and now then in WOD

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You can bring back old MW without stances and make it good in dungeons.

I just can’t understand anyone advocating for the 7.0 rework. It is just so lifeless and lacks any sort of identity and depth of gameplay.

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How was it terrible to play in dungeons? If played right, you never ran out of mana, could keep the whole party in perma RM, and were one of the best tank healers if you built for a crit > haste > mastery build.

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You like being forced to take a talent to do the same thing as before?

Then: Jab-Jab-Uplift your party with full ReMs
Now: Be forced to go Rising Mist or Focused Thunder to be able to get the same number of ReMs as before, and then spam Vivify your party with full ReMs

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It sounds like with the old build the rotation was ReMs on people, jab jab uplift, repeat yeah?

Which is decently similar to rising mist of putting out ReMs and then fishing for RSK.

I’m more trying to understand why people liked old MW better, was it more fantasy than playstyle, or is it all play style because dps was a part of the healing rotation?

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You had to use TFT in conjunction with Uplift to keep the ReMs going, but that meant losing TFT for Surging Mist, which was our best single target heal. TFT also required 1 Chi to use, meaning it wasn’t just a “fire on cooldown” ability like it is now, it had actual cost that made you work towards it.

Chi gives MW Monk gameplay that isn’t simply “press this heal whenever someone is hurt, press this ability on cd”. Look at what happened to Brewmaster when it had Chi and after it was taken away: it is nothing but a “press these abilities in order as they come off cd” spec now. There’s no teeth, no way to separate a good BrM from a great one (Celestial Brew is a step in the right direction, but they really should get Chi back).

If you didn’t play in MoP and WoD think about what WW is right now and then simply tack on healing or tanking to that exact playstyle and you get MoP/WoD MW and BrM. We are Monks first and Mistweavers/Brewmasters second. Why does a Mistweaver not know Spear Hand Strike (BrM/WW’s interrupt)? When we went to Crane School, did Chi-Ji wipe that entirely from our memory? Why can MW manipulate Chi with Touch of Death, Tiger Palm, and Blackout Kick but not with any of our other abilities?

There is a massive disconnect between Monk the class and Mistweaver the healer. To the point you could port Mistweaver to another game, name it Cleric or Inquisitor or some other generic DnD healer name, and you would never be able to tell it was ever suppose to be a Monk.

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I did not actually know it required Chi, that makes more sense in terms of actually affecting gameplay

I totally agree with you here. They did the same thing to shaman for the longest time, and other classes (rogue posions etc). It totally does not make sense, from a fantasy perspective, as well as a game play perspective (resto shaman has an interrupt, versus other healers that do not).

Again I totally agree with this. I think one of the big “draws” of shadowlands is bringing back class fantasy instead of spec fantasy. Each spec is a further iteration of that. I know monks are getting some stuff back in Shadowlands with expel harm, fort brew, SCK, and ToD, and then the celestials. However, I don’t see why they haven’t added interrupts back to healers. Unless its “game-breaking” but i honestly haven’t seen a good reason.

I think this is a super important point. From what I could glean, people complained that monk was too hard, and thus there was a rework, or simplifying of it for the general masses. However, I do not see why every class has to be easy to pick up or play. There are some community wide notoriously easy specs (BM hunter for example) that anyone can pick up and play. However, they still have a ceiling cap with their pet management macro’s and barbed shot. Not every class should be like this though. MW seemed like a class that was hard to master, but once you did you were an unstoppable beast. I honestly view old MW (and how people feel about it) to how people feel about Feral druids rn. Most people think they are garbage, hard, etc, etc, but those that play it and play it well can do top damage and provide a ton of utility. Just because something is hard, does not mean the skill to play it should be lessened. Overall I think MW (and BrM) got this treatment to bring what seemed to be a very nuanced, unique, challenging and exciting class to, as you said “copy and paste healer”

I mean I am totally on board with Chi for monks, especially after seeing MoP and WoD gameplay. I like MW right now, but if it changed and became more challenging I would not shy away from the challenge, it would probably make me enjoy it even more as it would be adding some complexity into it.

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