Mistweaver melee healing

[rayden54]

How do mistweaver healing feel? Does it feel anything like melee dps? If you had to compare it to something what would it be?

[420rogue]

While there are other threads on this, it does not feel like melee dps. You also won't always melee heal (if want to be the best). to give reasons for both

1. Melee dps doesn't have to look at health bars. You can't just kick shit and expect everyone to live (mostly).
2. Also, your melee attacks are very limited and mostly to keep up buffs. I find myself using crackling jade lightning, chi burst, spinning crane kick more than BoK/TP.
3. There are times you can't be in Melee for whatever reason. standing around doing nothing because you aren't in range is being bad.
4. No other class plays like melee mistweaver, at all. You simply can't compare it because it's a little bit of everything + new stuff. It's no more like a priest than a druid.

[ChrisKoe]

I'd like to comment a bit of what you wrote because I disagree here and there.

1. Melee dps doesn't have to look at health bars. You can't just kick shit and expect everyone to live (mostly).

That'll work to heal most AE damage and medium single target damage but whenever there are spikes on a single target, you'll have to single target heal him. Similarily to Atonement-Priests, you'll do pretty nice numbers DPS'ing (I do about 25k DPS and 35k HPS on a boss dummy in 483 PvP gear) but just as said Priests, you can't target your (DPS-)heal.

2. Also, your melee attacks are very limited and mostly to keep up buffs. I find myself using crackling jade lightning, chi burst, spinning crane kick more than BoK/TP.

CJL is far too expensive for my taste. I just keep Serpent's Zeal up and alternate Jab and Tiger Palm for Vital Mists and instant, free Surging Mist. Mana Tea on CD and you're healing/DPS'ing mana neutral. SCK is absolutely awesome for stacked healing, though, that's right.

3. There are times you can't be in Melee for whatever reason. standing around doing nothing because you aren't in range is being bad.

True. Don't think of MW as a pure melee healer. You can heal nicely from range (though AE healing is rather weak atm).

[rayden54]

Is it hard to pick up? At the moment, I play melee dps almost exclusively. I'm hoping I can learn Mistweaver healing.

[ChrisKoe]

Well, though DPS'ing is part of the class' play, it's still a healer.
You still need a good overview of your raid, knowledge of the fight, mana and cooldown management, know when to heal who with what and everything else that makes a good healer. I'd even say MW is maybe the hardest healing spec to learn play well because of the different playstyles it offers.

[Redfern]

I'm not sure if I like the range on the Eminence healing. 20yards from yourself is not a lot to play with when healing the raid through your attacks. However I do like how this will give more of a positioning awareness feel, especially since your statue also gives out Eminence healing within 20 yards of it; this means your statue placement is crucial in determining the best possible healing for the fight.

This is however very limiting since a 3 minute CD on the statue and only 20(40 for soothing)yard range to play with is pretty bad.

[Vongimi]

I did try melee healing recently, but it was only in a heroic. I can see how some people might not be okay with the 20 yard range, and yeah that definitely worries me too. But I think the point is to put your jade serpent statue up in the ranged while you melee.

If I had to compare it to something, I would compare it to atonement priests, but on steroids. It mostly dealt with all the damage that was going out in the heroic I was in. I had a hard time deciding whether to go for tiger palms for instant surging mists or to go for Blackouts for the higher damage (thus higher healing). If any heavy AoE damage would come I would cast jade tornado and than spinning crane kick would heal everyone up pretty nicely (though again, a raid people may be more spread out thus that will be harder). The one issue I came upon was "Crap, tank is taking spike damage, quick heal him!", I wasn't sure what to do. There really isn't any kind of greater heal sorta spell in the mistweaver kit, so normally I would swap to him, start channeling soothing mists and spam surging mists into him until hes topped off, than continue on. But thats highly mana ineffecient. If I had a lot of chi available when the spike hit I would use Enveloping mists and let the powerful HoT heal him up rather than spam surging mists. However, being unsure on how to handle the situation was likely due to me just trying out mistweavers for the first time.

I also wasn't sure what to do with Revitalizing Mists while melee healing... just randomly cast it throughout the group while meleeing?

[420rogue]

I did try melee healing recently, but it was only in a heroic. I can see how some people might not be okay with the 20 yard range, and yeah that definitely worries me too. But I think the point is to put your jade serpent statue up in the ranged while you melee.

If I had to compare it to something, I would compare it to atonement priests, but on steroids. It mostly dealt with all the damage that was going out in the heroic I was in. I had a hard time deciding whether to go for tiger palms for instant surging mists or to go for Blackouts for the higher damage (thus higher healing). If any heavy AoE damage would come I would cast jade tornado and than spinning crane kick would heal everyone up pretty nicely (though again, a raid people may be more spread out thus that will be harder). The one issue I came upon was "Crap, tank is taking spike damage, quick heal him!", I wasn't sure what to do. There really isn't any kind of greater heal sorta spell in the mistweaver kit, so normally I would swap to him, start channeling soothing mists and spam surging mists into him until hes topped off, than continue on. But thats highly mana ineffecient. If I had a lot of chi available when the spike hit I would use Enveloping mists and let the powerful HoT heal him up rather than spam surging mists. However, being unsure on how to handle the situation was likely due to me just trying out mistweavers for the first time.

I also wasn't sure what to do with Revitalizing Mists while melee healing... just randomly cast it throughout the group while meleeing?

This is why i use crackling jade lightning. I use TP/BoK for debuff and CJL as main attack because it allows control of your Chi. I always make sure I have 3 chi (btw i use 5 chi talent) and bonus chi from CJL i spend on BoK or Chi blast if there is AoE. As for revitalizing Mists, I don't use it because SCK is so much better. Sure I could spread RM to up to 10 people but by time I do that, I could have used SCK twice so whats the point.

[Blueeagle]

I'm slowly going to work out some numbers sometime soon (been procrastinating it) for the level 85 premade monk as far as eminence healing is concerned, and ill be sure to post about it. it seems as far as dps is concerned, im getting around 7k on a boss target dummy with no gems/enchants, but ill work on more exact numbers.

[ChrisKoe]

This is why i use crackling jade lightning. I use TP/BoK for debuff and CJL as main attack because it allows control of your Chi. I always make sure I have 3 chi (btw i use 5 chi talent) and bonus chi from CJL i spend on BoK or Chi blast if there is AoE. As for revitalizing Mists, I don't use it because SCK is so much better. Sure I could spread RM to up to 10 people but by time I do that, I could have used SCK twice so whats the point.

Though I like your idea of pooling Chi, I still don't quite see myself using CJL there because I find it both unreliable as a Chi generator and far too expensive, too.
It costs as much as one Jab for the first tick of damage but only for a 15% chance on a Chi instead of 100%. Sure, it does do more damage but I'd rather take one guaranteed Chi I could use more flexibly instead of higher Eminence healing that might or might not heal who it should. Also a free, instant Surging Mist is a nice compensation for the lower Eminence healing. Also note that you won't auto attack while channeling CJL, thus missing out on some free Eminence heal.

I also use Chi Brew for instant 4 Chi instead of Ascension so I can put up both stacks of Serpent's Zeal quickly at the beginning of a fight or should it ever run out.

I'm curious how the theorycrafters will figure out optimal talents/rotations as I believe this discussion shows how many possibilities MW has to react on different situations. Also I do believe SCK will be tuned down again because even without RJW, single crits heal for over 80k wich is just massive for stacked healing.

[Redfern]

The damage Eminence healing from CJL is not more than the healing of normal attacks through Eminence (including Jabs, BoKs & TPs) since Auto Attacks and Tiger Strikes contribute a lot to healing (and damage); this healing may be small, but it comes often enough to heal more than CJL and allows movement throughout. Also keep in mind that Tiger Strikes increases your Auto Attack speed by 50% when it's up adding even more healing and damage.

When channeling CJL you can't move and your auto attacks stop. I don't understand how CJL offers better Chi control either; you could go through a whole CJL and not gain any Chi and then you've wasted a lot of mana, time, movement, healing and damage, in comparison to using Jab and the rest of your abilities.

[Blueeagle]

As far as melee healing goes, I cannot for the life of me get my mastery to proc through eminence.....if anyone else wants to test that out.

[Tatuin]

As far as melee healing goes, I cannot for the life of me get my mastery to proc through eminence.....if anyone else wants to test that out.

You know what? I do think your right there. All the time i have been hitting a dummy for hours i nver seen a mastery proc, same in all the dungeons i been doing and just melee heal. Never a mastery orb :S

[Blueeagle]

Ya, I flew up in the air and almost killed myself to get actual healing done instead of overhealing, and still no orbs from eminence. Regular healing still grants them though, and at 9-17k a heal (rough guess) I'd say it's pretty important to have.

[Tatuin]

Ya, I flew up in the air and almost killed myself to get actual healing done instead of overhealing, and still no orbs from eminence. Regular healing still grants them though, and at 9-17k a heal (rough guess) I'd say it's pretty important to have.

Well you know what? Thye might give melee healers a septet mastery :P that would be awesome, or they are on their way to change it :P but not likely

[Blueeagle]

I don't think a separate mastery could work unless it required melee healers to use a different stance, mostly because I think they still want monks to do a hybrid of the two.

[420rogue]

I was thinking about mastery as well. If it doesn't proc then its useless. Haste increases auto attacks and crit is its usual self. Since melee attacks are instant, I feel like Crit > haste > mastery if they don't fix eminence to proc orbs or there will be a haste breakpoint and then crit will be king.

[Blueeagle]

I'd like to think its a bug, and should be fixed. Eminence is healing, and SHOULD (in my mind at least) proc your mastery, which is "You have a --% chance when you heal to summon a Healing Sphere nearby an injured ally."
I posted about it on the Beta Class forums here -> http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6231593509
If anyone wants to go beat the crap out of things and search for any healing spheres that would be great too, just so I know I am not crazy.

Edit - It also looks like overhealing doesnt spawn the orbs....which is understandable, but it would be nice to have that.