The Power of Fistweaving

[Hottie4Hire]

Someone said they use CJL instead of Jab when fistweaving. Is that really viable?

Also, how do you stay mana neutral/positive? Even making good use of the mana return buff and mana tea I find I run out of mana far too quickly to sustain fistweaving over an entire fight.

EDIT: As well, the cleave for blackout kick...is it innate or do I have to do something to activate it? What ability is causing it?

[Thedave]

I know our Mistweavers Fistweave in raids when they can, but I don't reckon ToT have presented many opportunities to do so

• Heroic Jinrokh in puddle when damage is stagnant
• Heroic Horridon
• Heroic Qon on ice quillen and then the transition to P4 (where all dogs + Qon are out. Cleave ftw)
• Heroic Ji Kun (nest cleave)
• Dark Animus
• Lei Shen

[burmaben]

I sometimes FW to build up stacks of mana tea early in fights, but other than that it's jsut a fun thing to do when I'm not playing seriously. The op obviously doesn't do anything seriously, including attempting to show us any proof of anything he claims. Bang up job there, kid.

[Clevername]

I have great successes in both arena AND rbg's with it.
Up to 1500 rating 1v2 in 2v2. threaded.

Come back when you reach 2200 in 3v3 or 5v5 by purely fistweaving, then I'll listen.

[Fiof]

Someone said they use CJL instead of Jab when fistweaving. Is that really viable?

Also, how do you stay mana neutral/positive? Even making good use of the mana return buff and mana tea I find I run out of mana far too quickly to sustain fistweaving over an entire fight.

I'm curious about this as well. I was mana neutral with jab fist weave pre 5.2. Is CJL the way to fistweave post 5.2?

[Deleted]

• Heroic Jinrokh in puddle when damage is stagnant
• Heroic Horridon
• Heroic Qon on ice quillen and then the transition to P4 (where all dogs + Qon are out. Cleave ftw)
• Heroic Ji Kun (nest cleave)
• Dark Animus
• Lei Shen

Afaik and seen they've only been Fistweaving in 2 of the heroic encounters so far, but then again we've only attempted 5 so far.

[Lithix]

No idea how you people Fistweave...
Wish such high mana costs on your abilites, its not even worth it. Out of mana in 10 seconds.

[Pipostylor]

No idea how you people Fistweave...
Wish such high mana costs on your abilites, its not even worth it. Out of mana in 10 seconds.

I highly doubt that you can go oom from fistweaving other than being massively undergeared. I can pretty much keep up a nonstop fistweaving rotation with full pvp gear (low item level compared to pve and I didn't go for much spirit). So you shouldn't have any problems at all with pve gear, flask etc.

[Astraios]

With the meta you can drop insane amounts of spirit, sustain 50k dps fistweaving, and sustain 130k hps at the same time.

W/o the meta, your mana/chi is better used to burst heal. Different styles of healing. I've outhealed my co-monk (who outgears me these days, and I've had absolutely abhorrent luck with secrets), but even when I do, he's fistweaving and providing 30-50k dps reliably, which I don't outheal him by that much.

Anyway, fistweaving is good, even in heroic raids, but it's not a way of healing, its just extra dps to be weaved into healing.

[Thedave]

Anyway, fistweaving is good, even in heroic raids, but it's not a way of healing, its just extra dps to be weaved into healing.

I'd put this slightly differently: "fistweaving is good, even in heroic raids, but you shouldn't do it at an HPS check in a fight."

I'll use Heroic Iron Qon (10 man) as an example of what I mean. For the entirety of Roshak (P1), you should be full-on mistweaving: soothing spam + Uplift spam + TFT optimization. You'll probably need to surging people too. Don't be surprised if you end P1 with 15% mana (if you don't have the legendary meta or a shaman) - it's a straight up healercheck phase.

During Damren (P3), however, there's barely any damage going out and you want to regen mana. Mistweaving would be overkill. This is your phase to fistweave or even less: keep up SZ/TP, autoattack so you get back up to full mana, and prepare for the utter hell about to hit at the transition.

Then the transition to Qon comes. There are now 4 targets, all of which you need to get down as fast as possible (some targets faster than others), but there's also a boatload of damage. Now you have a judgment call. You can choose to (a) full on mistweave to keep up with the damage, or (b) SCK + BoK spam to get a 100k+ cleave going. This choice will largely depend on your 2 other healers: if they can take care of the focused healing required on this transition, you can cleave with no worries and your raid will be in much better shape for it. If they can't, you'll have to mistweave. In this transition, however, your cleave is so powerful at a critical stage of the fight where dps matters the most that you want to do it if you can.


Thus, Heroic Qon is the perfect example where you'll want to do both at different points. That said, this tier has far more DPS checks than HPS checks, so your raid will overall be stronger if you can recognize where you can get away with fistweaving.

[Totaltotemic]

I'd put this slightly differently: "fistweaving is good, even in heroic raids, but you shouldn't do it at an HPS check in a fight."

I'll use Heroic Iron Qon (10 man) as an example of what I mean. For the entirety of Roshak (P1), you should be full-on mistweaving: soothing spam + Uplift spam + TFT optimization. You'll probably need to surging people too. Don't be surprised if you end P1 with 15% mana (if you don't have the legendary meta or a shaman) - it's a straight up healercheck phase.

During Damren (P3), however, there's barely any damage going out and you want to regen mana. Mistweaving would be overkill. This is your phase to fistweave or even less: keep up SZ/TP, autoattack so you get back up to full mana, and prepare for the utter hell about to hit at the transition.

Then the transition to Qon comes. There are now 4 targets, all of which you need to get down as fast as possible (some targets faster than others), but there's also a boatload of damage. Now you have a judgment call. You can choose to (a) full on mistweave to keep up with the damage, or (b) SCK + BoK spam to get a 100k+ cleave going. This choice will largely depend on your 2 other healers: if they can take care of the focused healing required on this transition, you can cleave with no worries and your raid will be in much better shape for it. If they can't, you'll have to mistweave. In this transition, however, your cleave is so powerful at a critical stage of the fight where dps matters the most that you want to do it if you can.


Thus, Heroic Qon is the perfect example where you'll want to do both at different points. That said, this tier has far more DPS checks than HPS checks, so your raid will overall be stronger if you can recognize where you can get away with fistweaving.

I don't know how long you've been following this forum, but we had a thread about something like this for Council, namely what happens when SCK starts triggering Muscle Memory.

We can all agree pretty well that, while Jab/TP spam is a nice way to get a little bit of damage in, if you didn't do it at all and continued to use other spells instead you wouldn't really see a difference in healing done or mana used, the only thing you'd lack is a little bit of damage. Where things get absolutely nuts is when SCK starts being used. We haven't figured out what to call it yet (aoe fistweaving? kickboxing? kickweaving? I don't know), but SCK into BoK on 3+ targets is an entirely different thing than Jab --> TP. It's a ridiculous amount more of healing (more than even straight spamming SCK), costs less mana than SCK, and does a ridiculous amount of damage (in the neighborhood of 100k DPS while sustaining this). Any situation in which this can be done (Tortos bats, sometimes on Horridon with enough adds, Council if grouped up, Ji-Kun nests, Primordius with good positioning, and Heroic Iron Qon) is a ridiculous HPS, MP5, and DPS boost. I don't think we should talk about it in the same breath as normal fistweaving because it's so radically broken that it really needs its own designation.

[Hottie4Hire]

Someone said they use CJL instead of Jab when fistweaving. Is that really viable?

Also, how do you stay mana neutral/positive? Even making good use of the mana return buff and mana tea I find I run out of mana far too quickly to sustain fistweaving over an entire fight.

EDIT: As well, the cleave for blackout kick...is it innate or do I have to do something to activate it? What ability is causing it?

Anyone able to answer these!?

[Tatuin]

The BoK cleave is always there. Ofc it hit harder if you have MM active from jabbing or hitted 3 enemies wiht SCK

[Hyve]

Honestly, when I first heard of the idea, I liked the thought, but I tried it and honestly hated it. I love the Mistweaving style of Healing, the nice way that we deal with it, our mana regen and our methods. Whenever anyone in our team suggests I Fistweave, I just tell them I hate doing DPS.

[Thedave]

I don't know how long you've been following this forum, but we had a thread about something like this for Council, namely what happens when SCK starts triggering Muscle Memory.

We can all agree pretty well that, while Jab/TP spam is a nice way to get a little bit of damage in, if you didn't do it at all and continued to use other spells instead you wouldn't really see a difference in healing done or mana used, the only thing you'd lack is a little bit of damage. Where things get absolutely nuts is when SCK starts being used. We haven't figured out what to call it yet (aoe fistweaving? kickboxing? kickweaving? I don't know), but SCK into BoK on 3+ targets is an entirely different thing than Jab --> TP. It's a ridiculous amount more of healing (more than even straight spamming SCK), costs less mana than SCK, and does a ridiculous amount of damage (in the neighborhood of 100k DPS while sustaining this). Any situation in which this can be done (Tortos bats, sometimes on Horridon with enough adds, Council if grouped up, Ji-Kun nests, Primordius with good positioning, and Heroic Iron Qon) is a ridiculous HPS, MP5, and DPS boost. I don't think we should talk about it in the same breath as normal fistweaving because it's so radically broken that it really needs its own designation.

It's almost like I picked and discussed a fight that demonstrates where you'd want to do all 3 of the different things: (a) mistweave, (b) fistweave, and (c) cleaveweave [trademark Thedave, 2013]

You can start your replies without snippiness every once in a while.

[Totaltotemic]

It's almost like I picked and discussed a fight that demonstrates where you'd want to do all 3 of the different things: (a) mistweave, (b) fistweave, and (c) cleaveweave [trademark Thedave, 2013]

You can start your replies without snippiness every once in a while.

Well I noticed your post count and the fact that I've never seen you here, so I don't know how familiar you are with various discussions we've had over the past few months. I mentioned those previous discussions because a lot of it already covered what I said in that post and what I'm about to say now.

First of all, those three things are nowhere near mutually exclusive. "Mistweaving" isn't even a thing, it's just regular healing. You're never going to stop using ReM on cooldown and generating chi for Uplifts; actions that include Muscle Memory are just filler between ReM and things to do with that chi you've picked up besides use Uplift.

Secondly, fistweaving is not about mana regeneration: it costs mana. Continuing to use ReM on cooldown is far more mana efficient than using chi on BoK and autoattacking for SZ healing, which does almost nothing since the 5.2 fistweaving rework. The entire section you wrote on single-target fistweaving is mostly wrong, the only incentive to fistweave is damage. It does worse HPM and HPS than any other method of healing, the only reason you would ever do it is for the damage. If you truly want a "regen phase", don't BoK at all, just sit there not casting, there's nothing wrong with that.

Finally, SCK/BoK spam is an entirely different beast than SCK while keeping ReM up and using BoK only when you get 2 Chi following an SCK. In the former situation, you're using abilities purely for damage, healing is merely a side effect. In the latter, you're maximizing HPS and HPM while also doing some damage. To try to categorize any group of actions into "full mistweaving", "pure fistweaving" and "cleaveweaving" is a gross oversimplification, there's far more variation in what's going on than simply doing one or the other.

[Thedave]

First of all, those three things are nowhere near mutually exclusive. "Mistweaving" isn't even a thing, it's just regular healing. You're never going to stop using ReM on cooldown and generating chi for Uplifts; actions that include Muscle Memory are just filler between ReM and things to do with that chi you've picked up besides use Uplift.

They're 3 very different ways of healing, so of course they're "things:" they're descriptive terms used to generally designate what your bread and butter buttons will be. I don't know how you can possibly argue with that. Of course you're going to hit ReM on CD - in every single style of healing. Any active mistweaver will feel dirty if they see that ReM weakaura up for more than a few seconds. After that, however, the styles differ:

(a) "Mistweave" is simply a descriptive term used to describe using traditional heals as your bread and butter buttons, which so often this tier will mean SM+uplift.
(b) "Fistweave" is simply a descriptive term used to describe using Jab+TP (and refreshing BoK) as your bread and butter buttons.
(c) "Cleaveweave" is simply (my) descriptive term used to describe using SCK+BoK as your bread and butter buttons.

Secondly, fistweaving is not about mana regeneration: it costs mana. Continuing to use ReM on cooldown is far more mana efficient than using chi on BoK and autoattacking for SZ healing, which does almost nothing since the 5.2 fistweaving rework. The entire section you wrote on single-target fistweaving is mostly wrong, the only incentive to fistweave is damage. It does worse HPM and HPS than any other method of healing, the only reason you would ever do it is for the damage. If you truly want a "regen phase", don't BoK at all, just sit there not casting, there's nothing wrong with that.

Fistweaving can absolutely be a way to regen mana, and I also used the qualifier "fistweaving (or less)" in my description of Heroic Qon on Damren's phase to convey that I wasn't saying you should be Jab+TP spamming. If you simply keep up SZ and autoattack, you'll (a) regen mana and (b) not be useless by standing there. But because you'll be in that style and using the "fistweave" buttons as your bread and butter buttons, you're "fistweaving." What better descriptive term would you use?

Finally, SCK/BoK spam is an entirely different beast than SCK while keeping ReM up and using BoK only when you get 2 Chi following an SCK. In the former situation, you're using abilities purely for damage, healing is merely a side effect. In the latter, you're maximizing HPS and HPM while also doing some damage. To try to categorize any group of actions into "full mistweaving", "pure fistweaving" and "cleaveweaving" is a gross oversimplification, there's far more variation in what's going on than simply doing one or the other.

This is just silly at this point. I can't believe that you're trying to base an argument on whether you'd use one simple GCD every 8 seconds or not - a GCD that's your most powerful contribution to the raid.

Yes, there is variation, just like there is variation in the healing styles of priests, paladins, druids, and shaman. That variation depends on what's happening. But a disc priest who sees another disc priest spamming smite and penance on a boss wouldn't say "Woah woah woah, you're not Atonement healing because you're ALSO casting PW:S on individual raid members." He'd say "You're Atonement healing." We have our similar descriptive terms.

[-aiko-]

if you're top dps in lfr that doesn't sound fun since you'll mostly be wiping.

You done LFR much? 80k is almost too much to ask of the dps...

[Totaltotemic]

If you simply keep up SZ and autoattack, you'll (a) regen mana and (b) not be useless by standing there.

Keeping SZ up and autoattacking is not fistweaving as the forums here, on EJ, and battle.net define it. Last tier some of us called it "Zealweaving", but as of 5.2 it does so little healing (remember, it was cut in half) that "keeping SZ up" is nowhere near any theorycrafter's mind. The entire 30 seconds of the SZ buff will barely do more healing than the original Blackout Kick itself, that's how small it is now. The fact that you consider this healing at all is a joke, you're just standing there getting mana back. Just because numbers are popping up doesn't mean you're doing any more healing than a Shaman standing there with Healing Stream down. No one refers to AAing with SZ up as Fistweaving anymore, if you'd taken a little bit to observe the forums before jumping in and telling everyone that they were wrong, you'd know that.

[Thedave]

Read the sentence immediately before the sentence you quoted. You don't get to quote 15 words and change their meaning by ignoring the 50 other words around them.