I know i only played low keys up to an 8 i think, but having a blast with it. FW are giving so much DPS and and the same time Healing through put is high… So why is it so unpopular? just saw a note on Icy Veins that it is dead last when it comes to healers in M+
I’m playing it 
. Maybe because of sanguine week, since it’s a melee healer, some of us are taking a break this week. Sanguine is so hard to see at points, people take dmg and they can’t even see what’s under them.
Why it’s unpopular? Well, since at every single patch there’s streamers and youtubes sharing the healing ranks, telling people monks are the lowest. I also play resto shaman, and I gotta say, monk heals amazing. We can do melee healing, and we sometimes need to do ranged healing (I’m not going melee on the last group in UR for example).
Take Madskillz e.g., and I like his vids, but every time he makes a video about " what is my main this patch" , you know the meta changed, since he ALWAYS picks the meta.
But mostly, it’s community perspective. I never tried monk, so I started one. I heard they’re not top rank, so then for me that’s a reason to try it out. And I feel in love with the spec. I still love my shaman, but this imo is way more fun and challenging. Many people are simply checking : what is best this patch? Ok, I’ll play that. And that’s fine, it’s just not me. I also play guardian druid and sv hunter, also no S Tier specs.
I mostly have an idea how to divide my CDs, sometimes it doesn’t work, there’s moments where I’m saving revival, but then something happens and I need to do without (frog boss in HoI for example).
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I think most people will never try MW despite how good its gameplay is or how strong it is. Which is sad as I find it to be a very fun experience.
Probable main factors:
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monks are least popular class in general. Probably due to class fantasy being neglected for so long.
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Out of those few people that play the class due to being drawn to class fantasy of beeing a martial artist, most will probably go dps
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out of those who would like to try healing on their monk. Many people will be scared of standing in melee range.
Also the gameplay of mistwever is poorly explained in general. You heal people… by punching enemy in the face
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Agree, also sometimes it is a bit scary when nothing is in melee ranged. Good thing we can always skip to ranged for a moment. It’s just like disc priest, it takes time to master. That said, if others want to play the metas or easier specs, that’s fine with me, I’m not going to not play mw because of that . The fun factor is really high !
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I think we could just do with a tad more (unique) utility, like Druds has CR and Shammy well they have BL, Priest has Mass dispel and PI. We as monks do not have that. I know we have a bunch of other utility like rings which are awesome in sang weeks, but its not a must have, like CR or Bloodlust
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Underdogs are always dismissive towards community perception and metas but usually if something is vastly over/under played on every percentile, there’s a reason for it.
In higher keys utility (we lack) becomes more relevant than differences in throughput as any healer can deal with unavoidable damage but fails and even mechanics will oneshot people without CDs or support spells. Our single target dmg is lower than others and our aoe isn’t much higher, or as relevant as people claim.
“I’ve done 30m and without me the group would have to kill the last boss twice” No…that’s mostly just AOE and other healers do roughly the same but bring utility that can prevent a wipe.
The guy who maintains the MW part of Icy Veins isn’t even playing healer as far as I know, plus these rankings without explanation are worthless in my opinion as they make it sound like entering a +20 with a D rank healer will cause the group to die before putting in the key.
The truth is you can perform perfectly fine with MW but you won’t bring as much safety with you as someone who can CR, mass dispel, hand of prot, soothe etc. and this makes the risky and punishing life of a healer even more so.
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I guess you have a point, and again I’m not advocating for all classes to be a like, but at least all classes should be able to being something unique then. Maybe “just” adding BL to Monks would make a difference? or BOP. Just something…
I think these streamers or youtubers that make these tier lists, also just check what’s been played more and base their “best” status on that. I believe my MW has higher hps numbers than my shaman. Not check much the dmg, since I play in pugs, mostly healing avoidable dmg, and because of that, also sometimes taking some myself . But I don’t expect people to be robots.
Take the raid healer tiers, the arguments they use for not putting mw high will not change in a next tier. We will still lack whatever they give as arguments. I watched Jak’d raid tier video, and I was like, ok, so unless we’ll have a sick raid tier bonus, that will not change in the next raid tier. We still don’t have X, or Y then.
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Keep in mind my experience is based on previous expansion, but as far as I know the issues Mistweaver have are still prevalent to this day.
One of the biggest problems I always had with MW is that, outside of Chi’Ji, your only other cooldown to use is Revival, and outside of it cleansing magic effects it is only a throughput CD. In situations where you require defensives to get through heavy damage phases most other healers (with the exception of Holy priest) have a major cooldown that in some form reduces damage intake. For Mistweaver you can only bump up your HPS to brute-force through mechanics, which means that you are more reliant on your teammates using their own defensive cooldowns. While other healers also do this when their own cooldowns are down this caps their potential when it comes to specific key levels in dungeons, where other healers can simply push the group through because of damage reduction.
Another reason why MW isn’t really considered popular is because your damage require you to be in melee, unless you are playing the caster build. The caster build has little in terms of damage contribution to the team, and while Fistweaving has the potential to do decent amounts of damage, this sharply begin falling the moment you reach a threshold where Fistweaving alone is not enough to outheal the damage output. At that point your damage starts dropping rapidly as you have to rely on hardcasting to match the HPS requirements, and this is not counting the occasions when you are forced out of melee range.
Some other healers to an extent suffer from this as well, but plenty of others also provide damage on the side that does not require active maintenance. Shamans have damage contribution through Healing Rain, while Evokers still contribute a healthy amount of DPS if on big pulls they use their dive attack and their breath attack. As Mistweaver you only have your tiger statue for it on a 2 minute CD.
My personal opinion is that MW’s extra utility is fine (extra healing taken and extra avoidance and extra physical damage increase) and Touch of Death could be a good utility option if you have an earlier time to use it. What we could use is a better cooldown as Revival just feels lackluster overall. We also do not have a strong external cooldown.
That said to my knowledge Mistweaver is fine from a HPS standpoint. The issues they have they usually share with Holy Priests. As long as fights are about HPS instead of mechanic skipping and damage reduction they have a spot in a raid group.
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Honestly, MW has been a challenge in M+ in my experience and it hasn’t been a total mess. It was difficult at first, but it has been generally great learning how to counter many instances. I do feel the huge sting of a lack of utility though, and more cooldowns would be great to shore up the problem.
But it’s not an overtly difficult nor implausible obstacle to tackle. It’s just that… yeah, you’re the healer that doesn’t bring the utility that may be needed that others can easily bring.
Easy solve would be to include Monk to the CR/BL party, for sure.
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Monks are least popular class because blizzard never wanted them to attract more players. I’ve been playing monk since its release and honestly i never remember to be a class that dominated all end game pve for consecutive tiers in order to attract more players. Give me a reason someone would play monk in example over warlock that is top perfoming dps for like 5 tiers.
Not all classes should be alike however the reason i quit playing MW is that i still dont f understand why the least utility healer doesnt do the highest hps and dps. I mean give utility or make MW the strongest hps/dps healer out there. This is not making them alike.
If i dont have a wipe prevention cd, give me at least 20% dmg above the next healer.
People saying about mystic touch or ring of peace or aoe stun, thats all memes.
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Ninja also made a video about this, hope that gets some attention at least.
I’m still playing the spec no matter what, it’s for me the most fun healing spec out there.
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I guess this is a question to the more experienced Monks out there… When does all the above mentioned issues becoming a thing? Still have not played that much but the HPS is really high, does it first become an issue when you are hitting +20 and Mythic rating?
To my understanding there is a really big lag of healers at the moment, and mostly its an instant inv when i am queuing up for m+ - again this is low level m+ in the 11-15ish region
I can only speak for my experience, but a lot of said issues come up when well… avoidable mistakes happen. Normally, unavoidable mistakes are conventionally excused due to the healer/me being able to counter them by preparing when to hit cooldowns. For example, Sheilun in the first boss of Brackenhide when properly timed practically clears Gashtooth’s bleed, or makes it close enough that it’s cleansed.
However, it is when they are stacked by mistakes that are not so easily recovered when other healers have that or better. In the end, we can only trust in the power of Vivify spam. Others have, of course already pointed out great ways of fixing this issue, like adding more utility options or simply another reliable cooldown if we are so intent in making our HPS/Heals the ‘ultimate’ solver.
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i had a hard time clearing that buff on a 15 already just with vivify spam and that is on porkified. Can’t imagine how i can actually clear it on tyrannical.
Guess cocoon and DR and go spam or some crap
if on the Gashtooth front, yeah, it’s pretty cruel. A mindful DPS/target of the debuff will immediately cleanse it with a self-heal or healthstone, or ready to slam a hard def cd in anticipation of it.
But ah, that’s them.
Usually, Sheilun solve all those issues. I stress the term Usually, however.
(At least, when I play my other characters, i’m ready to press something. Exhiliration Hunter for example)
i had it on myself and got targeted by whirlwind, much fun much wow.
also i never ever have seen a dps do anything useful to help out lol
that is a good tip, i will try to use sheilun next time
Monk is not known to be meta. Tank struggled before buffs came. WW is on a bad spot ST wise. And mw monk was really bad before the new talent.
So not many choose mw as a main or switched early. And the game is not designed to reroll your main that quickly
I kinda disagree with the last part, since take tanks, the moment the news came out what was the meta, you said a huge rise in that tank spec. People change super fast !
Yikes, that’s rough bud, gotta persevere 
at that moment.
And yeah, I can’t trust Pugs to help themselves. Somehow, typing the keys that make the sentence: “HEALER!” or “HEAL PLS” is much faster and much more simpler than pressing a defensive?
No idea. Anyway, big reason why I am more comfy healing in guilds and communities: So I can tell them to use their CD’s directly.
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