Mistweaver Monk Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Mistweaver Monk. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Mistweaver Monk spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Mistweaver Monk, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Mistweaver Monk has had a variety of changes from core ability updates to the addition and removal of talents.  However rather than being the type of major reworks we received in Dragonflight, these changes are more in the vein of polishing and refining our new emergent gameplay loop.

The standout change is the removal of Essence Font as an ability, as well as all of its supporting talents. The writing has been on the wall for Essence Font for most of Dragonflight; with both top playstyles in Mythic+ and in Raid eschewing the ability entirely. This change was simply a bit of spring cleaning with respect to our toolkit and freed up space in the talent tree to design talents that would more meaningfully impact our gameplay.

Clouded Focus has also been removed as it ended up causing a somewhat problematic pattern of play that actually encouraged overhealing.  To compensate for its removal as well as the other adjustments to our kit, Vivify, and Invigorating Mists received a throughput buff, and our mastery also received a 20% increase in power.

Revival been redesigned to scale more dynamically across a variety of group sizes. It's healing has been increased by 400% but it now does reduced healing beyond 5 targets, similar to how Invigorating Mists works. This is part of a larger set of changes to healer throughput cooldowns aimed at making it such that a cooldown hitting a 30 player group isn't significantly stronger than a cooldown hitting 20 players. It should also be noted that this target cap only takes injured players into account.

In a small but important change, Thunder Focus Tea will now begin its cooldown when the button is pressed, rather than when the buff is consumed. This may not feel like a large change, but the weight of this change will become more apparent when you read more about the Master of Harmony Hero Talents further down the page.

Finally, our set bonus Chi Harmony is being reworked into a talent going by the same name, though it works slightly differently. Instead of Renewing Mist casts providing a buff to their target, now your Renewing Mist itself will provide a +50% healing taken bonus to the target, and will be unable to jump to a different target for 8 seconds.  Functionally, it is nearly identical to the previous version, but this way, there is less "buff clutter" on your raid frames.

• Crane Style: Rising Sun Kick now kicks up a Gust of Mist to heal 2 allies within 40 yards. Spinning Crane Kick and Blackout Kick have a chance to kick up a Gust of Mist to heal 1 ally within 40 yards.
• Zen Pulse: Renewing Mist's heal over time has a chance to cause your next Vivify to also trigger a Zen Pulse on its target and all allies with Renewing Mist, healing them increased by 5% per Renewing Mist active, up to 50%.
• Deep Clarity: After you fully consume Thunder Focus Tea, your next Vivify triggers Zen Pulse.
• Jadefire Stomp: Jadefire Stomp no longer casts Essence Font, its cooldown is reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds), and now casts Gusts of Mist on each ally healed.
• Jade Bond now increases the healing of Yu'lon's Soothing Breath by 300% (was 40%).
• Pool of Mists: Renewing Mist now has 3 charges and reduces the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick by 1 second. Rising Sun Kick now reduces the cooldown of Renewing Mist by 1 second.
• Refreshing Jade Wind: Using Thunder Focus Tea will now cause you to heal up to 5 allies within 10 yards every 0.75 seconds for 6 seconds.
• Yu'lon's Whisper: While channeling Mana Tea, you will heal up to 5 allies, within 15 yards in front of you every 0.5 seconds.

Note - the general Monk talent tree received substantial changes and additions. For the sake of brevity, we will not be making a complete list, however here are some notable additions:

• Lighter Than Air: Roll causes you to become lighter than air allowing you to double jump to dash forward a short distance once within 5 seconds.
• Escape from Reality: After you use Transcendence: Transfer, you can use Transcendence: Transfer again within 10 seconds, ignoring its cooldown (the throughput component was removed).
• Transcendence: Linked Spirits: Transcendence now tethers your spirit onto an ally for 1 hour. Use Transcendence: Transfer to teleport to your ally's location.
• Pressure Points: Paralysis now removes all Enrage effects from its target.
• Improved Roll was made baseline, meaning Roll has 2 charges naturally now.

• Improved Vivify;
• Ferocity of Xuen;
• Hasty Provocation;
• Eye of the Tiger;
• Close to Heart;
• Generous Pour;
• Resonant Fists;
• Dampen Harm;
• Summon Black Ox Statue;
• Essence Font;
• Upwelling;
• Font of Life;
• Clouded Focus.

The flagship systems change being introduced in The War Within is of course the new Hero Talent system.  While this may sound a daunting addition of choice to what is already a dense and robust talent system, it is actually more akin to gaining new perks as you level, giving you access to every new talent by the time you hit max level (with the exception of the "choice node" talents).

Mistweaver Monk gets to choose between the Conduit of the Celestials and Master of Harmony Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

The Conduit of the Celestials Hero Tree Talents are primarily based on calling upon the Celestial Gods: Xuen, Niuzao, Chi-Ji, and Yu'lon to assist you in combat. This happens in the form of passive procs as a result of using our main abilities such as Enveloping Mist, Vivify, and Tiger Palm, as well as a new powerful cooldown called Celestial Conduit.

Gameplay-wise, the additions to your kit will be mostly passive, aside from a few new procs you may want to track such Strength of the Black Ox and August Dynasty. Outside of that, the major augmenting element is obviously our new tree's main ability Celestial Conduit, which is a powerful 90-second cooldown that heals nearby allies and damages nearby enemies. It has a 4-second channel time, but similarly to the recently removed Essence Font, you're able to move while channeling.

Power-wise, Conduit of the Celestials adds another cooldown to our already fairly cooldown-dense kit, meaning that we are even more prepared to meet threatening group damage checks. Couple that with a few passive healing procs, as well as cooldown reduction on our abilities and some movement speed increases and we're looking at a fairly well-rounded kit.

Defensively, Conduit of the Celestials has 1 choice node talent that offers damage mitigation, however given how many baseline defensive options Mistweavers have already, any additional defensive options will be powerful in their own right. We will be able to choose between Niuzao's Protection, a 25% max HP absorb shield when casting Fortifying Brew or Jade Sanctuary, a 10% heal, and 15% damage reduction when using Celestial Conduit that persists for 8 seconds after the channel.

Master of Harmony grants us a "healing battery" in the form of Aspect of Harmony. This stores a resource called "vitality" whenever we heal or deal damage, and using Thunder Focus Tea causes us to spend vitality in order to cause our spells to place a HoT on the target for 25% of the healing we dealt. To be clear, the amount of vitality we have is not proportional to the increased healing that we will provide, it simply acts as the trigger for the HoT our heals place on our targets.

Gameplay-wise, this talent tree revolves around being aware of your Thunder Focus Tea usage in order to trigger Aspect of Harmony when you want to. However, is is made easier to do thanks to Endless Draught granting you and extra charge. Many of the talents in the tree also focus on dealing damage, such as Harmonic Gambit and Overwhelming Force so players who find themselves leaning towards a more DPS-centric playstyle may find themselves leaning towards this talent tree.

Power-wise, Mastery of Harmony seems to be weaker than Conduit of the Celestials in a raid environment as of the time of writing, however additional tuning as well as emergent gameplay could shake up that paradigm.

Defensively, Mastery of Harmony has no mitigation talents, with the only defensive option being the choice node between Mantra of Purity or Mantra of Tenacity. Mantra of Purity increases the healing you do to yourself by 10% and causes self-healing to apply abilities small HoT that scales with your Intellect.  Mantra of Tenacity on the other hand causes Fortifying Brew to grant you a 20% stagger for the duration.  These options are admittedly weaker than those of Conduit of the Celestials, however as stated above, our kit is already fairly laden with defensive abilities.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Mistweaver Monk in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Monk Mistweaver 11.0 Class Set 2pc — Enveloping Mist and Renewing Mist healing increased by 10%. A fairly straightforward and simple set bonus that represents ~1.5-2% throughput increase.
• Monk Mistweaver 11.0 Class Set 4pc — Vivify extends the duration of Renewing Mist and Enveloping Mist on its primary target by 2.0 sec, up to 4.0 sec. It should be noted that this extension is separate from other effects such as Rising Mist, so it is unaffected by the duration cap.

Both these set bonuses are fairly passive, however diligent targeting of Vivify onto targets with your HoTs could increase the effectiveness of the 4pc. Whether that is a worthwhile endeavor will be largely fight dependent however.

As mentioned above, the 2pc bonus is somewhat weak, representing a 1.5-2% throughput bonus. However it is entirely passive and won't require any additional cognitive load while we are adjusting to our new playstyles present with our Hero Talent option.

The 4pc bonus is in a similar if not much weaker position. In many cases it was netting a 0.5% increase to healing. However, this, of course early in testing cycles, so with proper play or more accurate analysis tools, the true value could be in the 2% range.

In total, our set bonus looks to be about a 2-4% throughput increase which may sound scary at first, but as of the time of writing, this seems to be in line with what other healers are receiving as well.

Strengths

• Gained even more movement options making our already mobile spec even that much more agile.
• More cooldown options in the form of Celestial Conduit
• Core gameplay remains similar, but more polished and refined, with a greater emphasis on our core healing abilities, Enveloping Mist, Renewing Mist, and Vivify.

Weaknesses

• Remains mana hungry if Mana Tea is improperly utilized.