Monk Mistweaver Feedback

#1 - April 3, 2012, 8:58 a.m.

I've just finished healing Temple of the Jade Serpent on a Monk and wanted to offer some feedback. Gear was ilvl 378 pre-made gear flaskes, enchanted, and gemmed largely for regen (as would be expected for entry-level healing, based on Cata).

Overall, the Monk feels pretty good. Soothing Mists and Surging Mists is a great mechanic and it works well. I definitely felt like I had good single-target burst and could react to situations, but I also felt like I had to be careful with mana. As a replacement for the triplet of small/fast/big heals other classes have, it works great. Top notch; this is a great mechanic and very creative.

Renewing Mists felt pretty good. I think it will feel stronger in a raid, but it was decent at topping people off. The default UI makes it hard to see who has it (or, at least, hard for me to see since I'm not used to it). Uplift worked well with it, and Thunder Focus Tea synergized pretty well. There were times where my AOE heals did feel a little weak (but that could just be Anger and Strife being really over-tuned). Revival is insanely strong for AOE burst but it's so rarely usable that I'm not totally blown away by it.

DPS healing is, well, kind of non-existent right now -- 1.8% from Jade Statues, 9% from Chi Wave, 2% from Expel Harm. On trash, it's okay (particularly Spinning Crane Kick), but on bosses, it doesn't provide much healing and there isn't much downtime (with the exception of Chi Wave which is a nice instant heal). Also the cooldown on placing statues is really painful and overly punishing. Honestly I'd rather just be able to place them anytime; at 1.5s cast for a 45k total heal, it really isn't that over-powered. Since Clobber/Jab/Slice/Tiger Palm don't seem to scale with spell power, it's pretty flat; not sure how well it will scale, but it needs something. Having a 1s GCD on melee like when in Fierce Tiger would be nice.

Healing Spheres may not have even existed. 3.8% of my healing on the first two bosses (sadly, I only logged my second run through) -- less than Eye of Blazing Power, which is generally not regarded as a decent trinket. I just don't see how people are going to make use of the Mastery procs. Perhaps it isn't proc'ing often enough or perhaps they just don't get used. I like the idea of them but at least in 5 mans, as a mastery proc, they really just don't do much yet. Hopefully it's just a bug but right now it feels like a very, very worthless stat.

Mana management is a little tight but workable. It would be nice to have some kind of residual heal besides Renewing Mists to toss out before drinking Cherry Mana Tea. Chi Wave is okay for this except the targettng is rough. Anger and Strife is crazy intense but, again, I think that's the encounter -- other encounters were okay. I felt like I had to manage my mana and not hammer Surging Mists.

Chi Management is interesting. Besides the occasional seemingly random-healing Chi Wave, though, it feels strictly like something used for keeping up Renewing Mists via Uplift. It would be nice to be able to cast Thunder Focus Tea while channeling Soothing Mists. Right now, though, it feels like Chi flows very freely but there really aren't great things to spend it on (perhaps Soothing Mists should do something else rather than award Chi if you have full Chi, some proc or residual or something). Some kind of Chi dump that performed a single target heal or, better yet, had a true single-target HoT would be really nice. Actually a HoT definitely feels like it's missing, and would be helpful for stabilizing when using Cherry Mana Tea.

Overall, there's a lot of promise. I've healed pretty much everything in Cata progression on my priest (as well as non-progression since TBC). I think the raw blocks are there. Monk definitely feels like a new class, and especially the Mists are just top notch mechanics. The interaction of the GCD with Surge/Sooth is very nice and felt very natural. I think there is a lot to adapt to but it feels solid overall. DPS healing is a little rough (scaling in particular worries me; we need something that makes Int turn into C/J/S damage) and statue cooldowns are just painful, but I'm sure that's still in active development.

Bugs: Cherry Mana Tea breaks on damage. Made Anger and Strife a little tough. Jasmine Force Tea seems to cost 12k mana per tick, not 6k. It basically is unusable in a fight because of the mana cost, but really, Soothing Mists generates Chi fast enough anyway. Chi Wave can hit Horde in sanctuaries and damage them (and probably kill them).

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#64 - April 7, 2012, 4:43 a.m.

Mana regeneration and healing throughput is something that is still being tuned, so that will feel a bit off for a while longer.

We had to tone down Mistweaver DPS. In our raid tests, they were contributing too much damage while still being effective healers.

Chi Wave is something we're still tuning. The cooldown is now around 8 seconds, which may be too short. At the moment it accounts for half of the healing in raid situations.

Jab and other DPS abilities scale with your weapon, and also with AP. The damage is normalized in such a way that any weapon choice is equal to the other, so weapons are an aesthetic choice. We'll probably have the DPS abilities scale with SP, as long as they're balanced.

We've changed Mistweavers to also have a 1 second GCD as with the other two specializations.

Can you explain more about the problem with a longer Soothing Mists? The mana per second is the same whether it's a short or long channel. Do you feel compelled to complete the channel? Clipping it should not incur a mana penalty.

Cherry Mana Tea is intended to be "sipped" during break periods. Good Mistweavers will end a fight with as low mana as possible and as low Cherry Mana Tea stacks as possible. There are periods where you can't afford any breaks, but those vary by encounter. It should no longer break on taking damage. Stacks is something we are still iterating upon.

We've changed Jasmine Tea to an upfront mana cost that will generate Chi over time (think "Chi Tap"). We're still iterating a lot on this design though. The intent is that the Mistweaver has an edge on precision healing, while the Windwalker has less control but can gain Chi quickly.

Expel Harm only does damage if you "effectively" healed. If it's all overheal, no damage will happen. We intend for all monks to use the ability. Windwalkers can heal themselves.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#206 - April 14, 2012, 7:03 a.m.

We're thinking that Jab and Expel Harm saw a bit too much increase to mana last patch, and we’re going to reduce them somewhat.

We’ve increased the mana gain from Cherry Mana Tea. This spell will change whenever we tune mana and healing numbers, which has been happening a lot lately.

We've changed the number of serpent statues you can have out at once from 2 to 1. However, while in Stance of the Wise Serpent, you now have Eminence on yourself, causing half of your damage to be healing to nearby targets. This will allow “melee healing” monks to heal through dealing damage without having their statue down. The statue is intended to be more of a “cooldown” you use on tough fights, not similar to a totem you plop down.

We’re going to try having Renewing Mists also generate Chi (along with Surging Mist and Soothing Mists) when you cast it. The bug with Renewing Mists not showing up on raid/party frames should also be fixed in an upcoming build.

We’re getting rid of Jasmine Force Tea because we felt it was confusing to convert Mana to Chi, then Chi back to Mana with Cherry Mana Tea.

We’re going to make Surging Mist require a target rather than being a cast-time smart heal. The reason why it was originally a smart heal without requiring a target was to let you build up a stack of Vital Mists by using Jab, then cast an instant Surging Mist without having to change your target. We think the right place for the original Surging Mist smart heal is via a glyph.

One issue we’re concerned with is Surging Mist and Renewing Mists generating Chi, making it harder for you to burn down your Chi. We’re likely going to add another high Chi ability, and/or adjust talents so you can have some choice.

We like how Chi Wave bounces from friends and enemies, because the whole theme of the monk healer is weaving damage and healing together. If Chi Wave was a pure heal, it would break away from that theme.
With regard to feedback on these subjects, what we're really looking for is playing as a DPS healer (as opposed to the traditional "pure healing" playstyle), or perhaps a mix of the two. We want both the traditional and dps-to-heal to be viable and fun.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#290 - April 17, 2012, 4:06 p.m.

We don't want to need Agility.

We don't want that either. Mistweavers should use Intellect leather. We just have to make sure that any of their damage-dealing abilities don't make Agi attractive.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#502 - May 1, 2012, 9:08 p.m.

We're still planning on adding a Mistweaver "chi dump," hopefully within the next two builds. It will probably cost 3 Chi, and interact with Soothing Mists somehow.
We're going to be diminishing the interaction between Uplift and Renewing Mists. The gameplay at the high-end becomes nothing but keeping all of your Renewing Mists refreshed on as many targets as possible, in spite of everything else. We found ourselves using Surging Mist just to gain Chi for Uplift, to keep Renewing Mists rolling on a 10-man raid, which was overpowered, but definitely wasn't fun if we missed that refresh. Our current plan is to cause Uplift to only extend the duration of your Renewing Mists by a 6 seconds or so, rather than refreshing it completely.
We're probably going to be moving Chi Wave out of the Mistweaver spec, and put it as a talent choice with Zen Sphere and Chi Burst, then balance those as interesting choices for all Monks.
We're going to be adding spirit to expertise conversion to the stance as well.
We may re-design how the statue works, removing the on-click effect as it steps on Lightwell's toes a bit.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#891 - May 21, 2012, 11:06 p.m.

We've dealt with some issues, and we have the AP/SP conversion working internally now. That said, the tooltips will still not work for another build or two (that’s a separate issue).

We’ve changed Eminence from working on auto-attacks, since this would encourage monk healers to auto-attack just for those heal procs.

Regarding our “vision” for the spec (in terms of PvE), it is currently (and this could change, of course):

Melee healing MistweaverYou position your statue near the ranged to heal them, and you are in melee. Your rotation is similar to a Windwalker’s, except you spread Renewing Mists out and Uplift during AOE phases. For AOE, you use Spinning Crane Kick and one of the last tier talents. You almost never cast Soothing Mist, Enveloping Mist or hard cast a Surging Mist unless you absolutely have to. If something doesn’t deal damage, you don’t want to cast it.

Ranged healing MistweaverYou aren’t in melee, you’re at range. You may position your statue near the melee since they're farthest away. You mostly cast Soothing Mist since your statue also casts it with you, and burn through your Chi with Enveloping Mist. While moving you put down Healing Spheres near people you think may become injured (or on top of those who are). If you want to add in some damage, cast Cracking Jade Lightning. Cast Renewing Mist whenever it's up. Roll/Chi Torpedo into injured members and use Spinning Crane Kick to heal them up. Use the Chi you generate through Spinning Crane Kick on Uplift.

Also, depending on the fight, you can switch between both of those modes (using Transcendence to teleport back and forth into melee). There will inevitably be encounters where one is better than the other, and we feel that’s okay. That is going to the life of a Mistweaver Monk.