Been playing Disc for a while now but I think I want to start playing my monk again too. Icy Veins has MW dead last in their M+ tier list, but is it really that bad? Do you get groups easily as MW?
It’s not only dead last, but they had to invent a whole new category for it.
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Its not that bad. But good luck finding a group the reputation is totally destroyed and prepare to get laughs and wierd reactions when you finally get invited.
And every single mistake that someone does and dies will probably be blamed on the ”bad” choice of healer
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Personal evaluation…
Raiding: B
Raiding outside of really hardcore guilds, I’d honestly say B tier because fun and high HPS. You can go in, fistweave, top the meters by 5-10%, and have some mana at the end. Your AoE coverage is huge, and you don’t spend a lot of time focussing on your raid frames because that’s not really where your heals come from anyway.
You can pump single target healing like nothing else if your raid is innervating you. If they want you to do numbers at Kael’thas, this is on the raid leader to organise, because you can’t just cast-cast-cast without some help. You are limited by your mana bar more often than your HPS, and your mini game is to balance the boss progress against your reserves.
What you don’t do is bring any damage-reduction cooldowns, so if your raid is lacking resto shamans/disc priests, expect them to be considered more valuable.
M+: C
There are some monks in the very high keys, but not many. Mostly this indicates it requires better group cooperation and is harder to shine with.
My personal experience is that I can get a group through 14s and 15s, but I’ve had no luck timing one, yet. Sometimes it’s down to tank deaths and wipes, which may be my fault; but then, when a tank goes in and is immediately down to 50%… or they’re at 30% for 2 seconds then suddenly dead… I’m not convinced that was the healer at fault.
Ring of Peace is very valuable, especially on Necrotic weeks when you can help your tank kite and drop stacks, but also just to bounce stuff off the mage who’s pulled aggro.
What you do feel in M+ is the lack of ability to compensate for other people’s errors. You don’t have an interrupt, and even if you see it’s not been handled by dps, you can’t fix it. You can’t slap down a tremor totem, or bubble someone, or combat res. If the dps mess up, they mess up. If that results in a wipe, then it was never in your power to prevent.
But of course, if you’re in a pug, everything is the healer’s fault so… MW is best enjoyed with friends!
Not that you will be invited to pugs anyway. Monk got trash talked way down from it’s actual tier, to the point where nobody wants them in their group.
Mana has been talked about a lot but… that’s about coordinating with the group. Really, with proper communication and a tank who’s paying attention, you shouldn’t be drinking more than every 3rd pack. You have mobility; use it. Torpedo ahead of the group while they’re running, be sitting and drinking when they arrive. Make them acknowledge that you are drinking and if they pull immediately, they’ll need defensives.
Choose your legendary for the affix. Run Ancient Teachings when you can afford to be in melee. Run Tear of Morning when it’s sanguine, storming, spiteful, and you have any melee dps in the group.
PvP: F
As Ancelyn said above; a whole new tier of bad had to be invented for MW in PvP.
Coming into Shadowlands, our defensive was upped from 90 seconds to 3 minutes, and lowered from 25% to 15%. We were not the only class to have their defensives gutted in SL, but this was our big one, and it really does suck now.
Other things haven’t really changed since BfA: we lost the ability to use a defensive while stunned or interrupt a cast back in Legion.
You’ll be the primary tank in any PvP group, since the other guys will target you. Expect it, live with it, do your best.
We do still have mobility; and we need it. Torpedo is vital. Transcendence Transfer is vital. We have to stay ahead of the enemy and not get ourselves into a position where we can be stunlocked, because that’s when we die. Use line of sight, use terrain, make yourself hard to spot and hard to target, move away pre-emptively when melee are coming at you, use Ring of Peace to buy breathing room.
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Like very wise Alewin told you , its good healer , but preferable on premades with friends , that willl understand your gameplay and can maximize your toolkit making it awsome (ex. CCs/Ring/DMG buff etc) , i rerolled into resto druid like 1 week ago , cause i mainly pug , and on that world there is zero pacience , zero tolerance , and everything is healers fault , and good guys are pumpers/blasters…
Edit: afther almost more than 1 week without playing my monk, my main since mop , came back to it for normal calling dung quests etc , and the feeling is the freedom i have in movement , great mobility
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Good summary. I guess it’s not horrible then, at least in PvE. Definitely missing the huge monk heals a bit when playing disc, too.
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MW is a worse shaman healing wise, with no tools.
Renewing mist: 9 sec CD, heals for ~1500 with high mastery.
Riptide: 6 sec CD, heals for 3500 baseline, can be buffed up to 6000 with Unleash life and Swirling currents, AND it increases even more based on how little HP the target has left thanks to their mastery.
Renewing mist is your only instant cast healing spell, and it’s garbage. That means if you target is getting low and under heavy pressure in arena, and cocoon is already on cooldown, you must wait 1.5 second on GCD because of the Soothing Mist nerf in BFA.
Having to wait 1.5 sec every single time you swap target is a massive weakness in this burst heavy meta.
You also don’t have any passive healing like Earth Shield or healing stream totem, and no cooldown usable while stunned.
I’m still Mistweaving because it was my main throughout WOD and Legion, but the GCD change in BFA killed it in PvP and as long as it’s there, MW will always have to outperform their opponent by a large margin to even compete.
Also comparing Renewing mist to Riptide really hurts.
It really isn’t. The recent mana tweaks have helped; they’re not quite enough imho, but they at least proved Blizz are open to the idea that MW has problems in that area. I hope for another 10%, basically, since we got a 17% cost increase in pre-patch, and a 7% undo in 9.0.5…
Never understood why they took the healer most famous for needing Lucid Dream in 8.2-8.3 and then pumped our mana costs. Very odd choice.
In PvP, yes.
But it is also our cleave mechanic, and shamans cannot do that. In M+ it’s not super hard to keep the whole group ticking with ReMist, and now your Vivifies are cleaving 5 ways and it works.
Soon as you have a group < 5, our mechanics unravel however. Essence Font is something you let tick once per player, then interrupt, and that feels terrible. ReMist over-caps and you end up just refreshing them on people instead of adding a new person to your cleave.
We’re just not optimised for arena groups, and we don’t really have any sub-optimal tools for that either.
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They can with their covenant ability actually.
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I agree that we lack utility in M+, but it really isn’t as tough to get through keys as you describe. I have soon timed every single dungeon on at least +17 only pugging with no huge issues, and with the recent mana tweaks I almost never run OOM any longer. If you’re having this much trouble in M+ you should consider a more effective rotation and/or talent-setup 
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It’s not that bad, just get Tear of Morning for dungeons - I started with Teachings, because I wanted to heal through kicks so much and recently made Tear - it’s a huge difference.
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I also crafted Teachings when I last played my monk. It’s pretty fun, but I guess Tear is kind of better since it doesn’t change the playstyle.
I would also love to play Teachings instead of Tear, but the problem with Teachings is high-intensity fights with a lot of damage. In those circumstances Teachings’ value drops close to zero since in some periods of fights you have to constantly cast heals, and then you can’t utilize it very well! This further increases the value of Tear in high keys
I heal 15+ keys with AtotM all the time… I think its way stronger than any other way to heal as a monk. The only time I find myself having to swap over to vivify spamming is if the Prideful gets to 20 stacks and have over 25% of its health left - which only happens if someone in the group has died.
Plan your CDs for the difficult pulls and you shouldnt have a problem.
Granted I only play with friends and guildies - rarely with randoms.
I was fistweaving in 8.3 so… ATotM is the one that doesn’t change my play style
There are also times when the affixes hate melee and you’ve got double melee dps already. It’s hard packing that many of you around the mobs on quaking week, and you’re better stepping back.
With a coordinated group that isn’t overly stacking melee, this seems likely. But I do suspect you’re relying on the team to not take avoidable damage? As much as the free heals are nice to have, many of my groups would all just die if I was trying to rely on ATotM and not cast a lot of Vivifies.
But that might be on them as much as it’s on me 
MW in M+ is viable, but could see some buffs. PvP is abysmal. Raid is okish.
The biggest game changer for my MW was the KT Trinket from CN. Having another CD for the tank or any member of the group is what is lacking in the MW’s toolkit.
Tuft of smoldering plumage is creating space and more importantly time for setups or healing the group while the tank itself is safe for a few seconds.
I’m not saying MW is among the best and most versatile M+ Healers, but with decent gear, ATotM and ToM you can do KSM without any issues.
Outside of cooldowns MW+Fistweaving+ATotM is stronger than most other healers to heal vs. Pride dmg. Not using any cooldowns on Prides is great.
In 12-13 Keys you can heal neraly exclusively with Fistweaving only. Vivify is only required when people take too much avoidable damage. Using your Brews for cd reduction of Rising Sun Kick and making sure that Renewing Mist is on your party if you have to get some burst healing out with Vivify is required.
In higher keys, especially with nasty affixes (Spiteful is terrible - no fistweaving while chased) I also tend to use ToM since it is providing a more consistent benefit then.
ATotM is great during Quaking weeks, since you just continue to heal all the time without having to stop for a moment when the Quaking cast finishes.
I do see the necessity of some buffs for Mistweaver:
Yu’lon - it is just clunky to use and not intuitive. I like the artwork of the spell, but that’s it. I think it would work better, when you can empower it by healing spells before you actually cast it, instead of empowering it by casting healing spells that are very often incredibly inefficient (mana/overheal) after activating it. It should be a little bit like the Shei’lun artifact mechanic, where you store healing spheres or similar and then decide when to release them. The cooldown could be based on the amount of healing/charges stored. If you activate Yu’lon the when fully empowered it had a 3 minute cooldown, if it has less healing stored (maybe 10 charges) the cooldown would then be decreased by 10 seconds per missing charge. (up to 100 seconds, which meant Yu’lon would then be on a 80 seconds cooldown if used without any healing stored)
The Enveloping Breath mechanic had to be reworked though.
Mana Tea
Baseline. Revision of Tier 30 Talent tier.
Revival
I’d like to see the following changes:
- Tier 30 should be about Revival. It should change the way we can use revival.
Option A: Buffing it’s heal component
Option B: Adding a dmg reduction to it
Option C: Split Healing and Dispel - make it activate Revival and reactivate revival for the dispel - Base mechanic rework
Revival does either heal and/or provide absorb. If targets are at full health they would receive only absorb for 5 seconds, if targets had less hp lost than what could be healed, the difference is then apllied as an absorb. This change would also allow Revival to be a spell that could be used either for prevention of dmg or for reactive healing. It would not change the numbers, but it would offer more options how to use it. The dispel kicks in when applied. (changes when Talent option C is chosen)
Essence Font
The suggestion was mentionend somewhere in this thread. Allow kicks during the channel. Would make fistweaving more fluid and fun and slightly buffing the throughput.
Soothing Mist
Soothing Mist should last 30 seconds by default. When moving the channel ends, but you get a buff that allows one further instant cast to your current target for 3 seconds. This would allow one further cast while moving. Buff would only apply to the last SoM target of course.
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Honestly, I think Soothing Mist should be treated like Lifebloom, i.e, not a channel, limited to 1 target, has effects if it is on the target you are healing.
One of the reasons MW has a hard time in PvP is that it is expect to hardcast all the time and is therefore extremely vulnerable to interrupts. Even if the above was something we could do by activating another ability (similar to shamans having 15 seconds/minute of being able to cast on the move), it would be very healthy for us in PvP while making practically no difference to our PvE performance (which is almost fine).
Aye. spread riptide. Pop covenant. heal hits everyone with riptide.
And also hits the primary target twice which is it’s main use in PVP. Double heal with 50% mastery and unleash life/earth shield is a certain 100% full heal.
Clouded focus legendary in tier 30 talent slot. Replace Clouded focus legendary with Secret Infusion legendary.
not unless you’re aiming for world first mythic kills or clearing +20’s, in pvp thought it is legitimately BAD, i remember reading that there were more prot paladins above 2.1k than mistweavers