My thoughts on Monk healing in WoD

[Krazyito 521]

As of today (September 19, 2014) I have tried monk healing more extensively than i have in the past and am ready to give some input to what I think

 

Note: I'm not a theorycrafter. I don't do all the "this is what is best use this" kind of stuff at the start of an expansion.  I play it, use what I think is best for me and then look at what other people have said is better and why. If I agree with them, I use it and try to make it work (For the longest time I thought the new RJW was garbage for healing, but turns out it was pretty good).

 

I did NOT fistweave for any of this,fistweaving is still something I need to ease into to get use to when to switch and when to go back healing, which will come with knowledge of the fights.

 

Before I started playing, I thought monk was going to be pretty bad, just hard to heal with, uplift cast time is crazy and for the most part, that was all true.  To me, I had to actively heal with much more concentration 

 

In the brief period of LFR that I did with this monk, all three bosses had some sort of "spread out" mechanic were no one was actively stacked for a portion of the fight. I first started using Chi Explosion, but after seeing that we were so spread out, it was not doing well. 

 

Chi generation is a problem I had with the monk mechanics, with Soothing mists not generating chi, I had to think of new ways to keep generating chi. I found that Surging mists was very cheap use of mana, which also gave chi.  I tried using it, but it was not really worth casting when people where at full health and I reverted to only using it as an emergency heal and dumping Enveloping mists into the target if I had to surging him. The majority of my Chi (when using Pool of mists) came from Renewing Mist. With the multistirke mechanic and the way the talent works, i had ample enough chi to keep spamming uplifts when needed. When using Chi Explosion, I would probably be using ReM and RJW/SCK to generate chi.

 

I then changed to Pool of Mists, and saw a much different game play. Pool of mists gives my Renewing Mist 3 charges on an 8 second recharge time. This new gameplay had me think of new ways of pooling my ReM charges and then using them right before there need to be some AoE damage.  IT allowed me to quickly get 13+ rems out on the raid quickly to start using Uplifts.

 

Then the new multistrike mechanic.  Every time you use Renewing Mists you have a chance equal to your multistrike to not go on cooldown.  This mechanic is CRAZY and to me what makes it more fun than normal (yet still difficult). The random times you get a free ReM to just help blanket your raid is just great.  You can't multistrike 2 in a row, but you can for every other Rem you cast.  With this mechanic (and with the new Thunder Focus Tea) I got 21 rems out on the 25m LFR.

 

Now this window only lasted for about 1.5-2s, which is not a very long time, just enough to get an uplift or two if you're precasting excepting more targets.  This small window is what makes this spec really hard for players to do well and have to work really hard.

 

In general, I think mistweavers are going to be ok in the next expansion, though a big problem I will see is the competency of the other healers around the mistweaver might determine how much he/she can actually do.  There are plenty of fights where people are not at 100% HP and you can keep on blanketing the raid and use uplift / chi explosion.

 

Mistweavers are NOT in a bad spot. Just takes some extra care to use them.

[sixteenmiles 0]

The issue that I've seen being discussed mostly is not so much about a Mistweaver's capability to put out raw healing, but that in any competitive raid composition there is no reason to take a Mistweaver over quite literally any other healer, as they generally have more control and more utility and their output is not so convoluted.

 

New button presses have been added but older existing issues with the class like lack of utility (Revival best raid cooldown) are untouched.

[Krazyito 521]

Yep. Totally agree. Something needs to happen to make them more useful to bring over, say a shaman who has healing Tide totem, or a druid with Tranq.

[sixteenmiles 0]

Just to clarify an extra point; in your opinion Mistweaver's have to work harder to get equal results in comparison to other healers?

 

That point on top of what we mentioned above about ranking bottom in comparison to any other healer in terms of raid utility; I'm starting to feel like I should level a different healing class 'just in case'.

[Krazyito 521]

I feel that Mistweaver does have to work harder, but it may just be getting use to the new style of healing.  Soothing Mist not generating Chi really changes a lot for me personally. I also only did LFR, so its not that good of a measurement.

 

Personally, I'm going to have a mistweaver as my back up healer for raids, but I can't think of a time where it would be better than a druid.

 

I still think a single mistweaver in a 20m Mythic raid might be useful for the sole purpose of the constant raid healing throughout the fight.  IF they end up being a bit of a 'glass cannon' like they were at the start of MoP, then thats the raid utility they will bring I guess.

 

We'll have to see more when raids become more readily available, but other than raid utility, Mistweavers will be ok.

[sixteenmiles 0]

I just can't play Druid, man. I can't do it. The choice between Tauren and Troll...

[Brewmonksta 157]

My feel of it is that Mistweavers are going to be very useful with multistrike in a 10 man environment because of the abitlity to raid blanket with ReM alot easier than current.

 

In 10 man progression the potential raw throughput in heavy damage will be useful much like it was in SoO. As the disc priests get gear and again rise to power the MW will be able to fill that 3rd healer role and fistweave and pop revival when needed.

 

Mistweavers will still be able to heal 5 mans and LFR without too  much trouble IMO.

 

This is where my happiness ends for MW. In a 20 man progression group i feel that as previously mentioned the lack of control over the larger player pool is going to hinder the raw output but on enough eligible targets. This then leads to the why bring a MW when you can bring a Holy priest/druid who can target HoTs or have traditional "smart heals".

 

Unless a change is made to either the CD of TFT to increase the uptime over the 20 man raid of ReM or Uplift gets reworked to "heals all players in group + ReM targets for bonus heals" or something with a bit more control over the targeting i feel they are going to get left behind in the progression area and substitiuted for pretty much any other healer.

 

My Monk will also be leveled as my first backup toon so we will have to see i suppose.

[TacticalBacon 0]

This is really a bummer. I LOVE healing on my monk. It's different, it's difficult but when mastered could really clutch. Once my guild started doing 25H it was no question I was either going to roll change or not raid. I had some hopes for the next expansion and with no beta to test I've relied mostly on forums and with Reglitch (who really helped me grasp monk healing) completely leaving was a sign things weren't looking well. Like most I'll be keeping my monk as backup with the dim hopes that a buff will occur for my fat panda monk...

[Suplift 3]

Lack of control isn't a huge deal in a 20 man environment in WoD. Due to PoM w/ jade mists, and the smart heal change to ReM. You can now proactively blanket the ReM's, before raid damage happens. 

 

This then leads to the why bring a MW when you can bring a Holy priest/druid who can target HoTs or have traditional "smart heals".

 

 

The current reason to bring a mistweaver is; a better raid cd (hotfix buffed to be 40% stronger than tranq), higher sustained raid healing (Uplift healing is bonkers atm), Crane stance does an insane amount of dps/hps atm, one of the best if not the best mobility out of all the healers, and the unique utility of being able to ignore all mechanics and solo soak.

 

Mistweavers are in an extremely strong place atm compared to other healers, numbers wise. This on top of the fact druid utility was reduced slightly, allowing mistweavers to shine.