Crane Stance: Frequently Asked Questions

Deleted · 2014-11-09, 09:18 PM

I supect we're gonna have so many questions about Crane stance I thought I'd knock up a FAQ and if someone could just sticky it, might save a lot of repetition.

Crane Stance Essentials

If you read nothing else:

Crane stance CANNOT heal on its own
Crane stance DOES NOT suck
Crane stance IS used to quickly generate stacks of Mana Tea
Switch out of Crane stance 10s before big damage to get ready

What is Crane Stance

Crane stance is how fistweaving has been redesigned for Warlords of Draenor. To split the power of Uplift from the chi-generation of a fistweaving rotation they have locked certain spells to each Stance with the expressed plan of being able to tune them separately. The current tuning of Crane stance is for it to provide approximately 50% of the damage output and 50% of the healing output of a DPS and healer respectively. It follows a Windwalker-lite ability rotation, maintains a trio of buff/debuffs and builds stacks of Vital Mists for use on direct healing spells.

What is Crane Stance For

The most contentious and most challenging thing for people new to spec or not been keeping up with changes through beta is that Crane stance is not a healing rotation. By being designed to provide the half a healer's worth of output it is not capable of healing a group on its own. This means that in 5-man content it is simply not possible to reliably heal purely in Crane, at least not without overgearing the content or some other shenanigans. Yes, it is possible to do Gold Proving Grounds (see Dayani's blog) but succeeding one time out of many is not something viable. What Crane is currently being used for is 1) mana management tool and 2) being able to out DPS other healers:
1) by using at the start of a fight it is posible to build up a large number of stacks whilst healing requirements are low to provide additional raid DPS and store a mana buffer for later in fight., especially under Heroism/equivalent.
2) whenever else in raid the healing needed is low and potential for useful DPS is high (especially with damage buffs etc) Crane stance can provide more DPS than, say, a Disc priest or Resto shaman.

Whether the amount of damage provided is actually useful and whether the niche of being able to straddle the DPS-healer divide is truly something that groups want is theoretically viable but as yet unproven. At present we can both heal well and damage some without a great loss to healing, so if you hate Crane then don't use it but the more you embrace it the more you can provide.

When to use Crane Stance

This is perhaps the biggest area of contention. In short, definitely use it at the beginning of the fight, probably use it whenever Heroism is up and maybe use it at other times if safe to do so. Given that the last point is going to screw us up more often than anything else: if you have 20-30s when either the incoming damage is low or the other healers are well on top of it then feel free to switch stances and get your melee on. Drop out of the stance sooner rather than later and get your ReMs out and play as normal in Serpent stance. If there is an environmental bonus to damage this only makes the potential reward greater. Your priority is healing so if in doubt, stay in Serpent. As we all get more familiar with the set up the opportunities to use Crane will only become more clear.

Eminence Healing

This point seems to be causing some confusion to people, probably because fistweaving has cared about autoattacks, abilities and both at different times. At present all damage done whilst in Crane Stance will generate a smart heal for half of the damage dealt, healing a single target within 20 yards of yourself. Your Jade Serpent Statue will then duplicate this heal to a target within 20 yards of it-self. If a target was in range of both you AND statue
then it is healed twice. This then means that the harder hitting your damage attack the more healing it will do - therefore Rising Sun Kick will give you your highest individual Eminence heal (except Touch of Death, see later). So without a Statue out (or not in range) 50% of all your damage is converted to healing, and with your Statue out (or in range) you do 100% of all your damage as healing. So if on your Recount your Statue Eminence healing is way off your personal healing you need to get better with moving your statue along with you. The overall effect of this is a huge number of small, smart heals which stack up to provide your base healing (~50% of your total healing)

Special mention for Blackout Kick given the tooltip, wowhead description and in-game effect are all different - even the patch notes state two different things. Damage from Blackout Kick heals up to 5 targets for 20% of the initial damage dealt; this is duplicated by your statue doing the same. So using BoK will generate up to 10 heals of 20% each for a total of 200% of dealt damage as Eminence healing. This means in a 5-man group with both Statue and yourself in range of every group member, everyone will be healed by two 20% heals - i.e. up to 5 targets from each source. Blackout Kick is replaced by Chi Explosion and also provides Crane's Zeal at 2 chi and has the same BoK Eminence mechanism for its damage portion.

Crane "Rotation"

Please see Monkioh's excellent guide for how to heal through Mistweaving generally as to be able to use Crane stance at all you need to know where it is placed within the spec on the whole. Whilst in the spec however, do the following:

Single Target (Damage):

keep up Crane's Zeal (=20% crit; via Blackout Kick) and Tiger Power (ignore 30% armor; via Tiger Palm)
use Rising Sun Kick on cooldown and keep debuff up on persistent targets (within 8 yards)
if Pool of Mists taken at 100 then keep RSK from capping at 3 charges to maximise usage overall
use Touch of Death on cooldown
use level 30 talent on cooldown
use Blackout Kick when 2 chi available
use Expel Harm (on cooldown) and Jab to build chi

n.b Crackling Jade Lightning is incredibly expensive for its effect and should be emergency use only, or at the very begining of fight to kickstart getting buffs up, avoid it otherwise.

AoE (Damage):

follow the same rotation as above to keep self-buffs up and RSK-debuff on enemies taking damage
in general you don't want to spam expensive spells (RSK and RJW) but if there are a lot of adds (somewhere around 10-12) RJW actually does more healing in Crane than Serpent
use level 30 talent on cooldown (Chi Burst more potential dps and healing)

Healing (options, NOT a rotation:

at 4 or 5 stacks of Vital Mists cast Surging Mist
you gain on stack per chi spent so use Tiger Palm or Blackout Kick to avoid wastage when at 3 or 4 chi
remember you have Thunder Focus Tea to double up a Surging if you need a bigger flash heal
use Glyphed Expel Harm for a small heal and gain chi
if taken use Chi Explosion at 3 or 4 chi for AoE stacked healing as needed
stick in melee range and DPS as above to generate Eminence smart healing within 20 yards of yourself and duplicated with 20 yards of your Statue
as above if lots of adds SCK or RJW does well (NOT AoE like in Serpent stance)

It is essential for healing that you move your statue so that there are at least 5 targets within range at all times so you don't miss out on the Blackout Kick eminence healing. Ideally keep tank within both you and statue's range. Keep it on a keybind and move it as often as you need to. Don't forget about it!

Mobility:
1) keep within melee range or boss or adds
2) Roll/Chi Torpedo if need be
3) Nible Brew or Tiger's Lust if needed - plenty of options

Cooldowns:
1) Life Coccoon usually best on tank
2) Touch of Death does crazy healing (two 1/2 max HP heals) but limited by 10% target HP (or less HP than you)
3) Revival is currently very strong and when cast from Crane benefits from increased Crit (Zeal) and Multistrike (Tiger Strikes), time it for maximal effect. Useful as a get out jail card to smooth getting back to Serpent.
4) Xuen has been buffed recently but still doesnt seem *as* good as RJW

Macros

One of the difficulties Blizz must have in designing a healing melee stance is target selection as they just can't force everyone to use mouseover macros, despite the massive advantages for healers. As it stands the stance rests on smart healing for ~50% of its output. I consider the mouseovers for the below essential if you want to do any real healing in Crane stance:
1) Surging Mist - you need to have this on mouseover
2) Expel Harm - you benefit some from this on mouseover
3) Life Coccoon - again better on mouseover and if you have it, macro in Gift of the Naaru (bonus 30% your max HP as healing over 5s!)

For example:
#showtooltip Expel Harm
/cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead][] Expel Harm

Talents

In short, pick your talents based on your Serpent stance playstyle and be done with it. Each tier now has at least two viable options which is nice. For what its worth, Chi Burst has the most potential at level 30 and the Chi Brew/Power Strikes argument goes long. In long fights you get loads of chi from Power Strikes and that means less jabs and more BOKs which is fundamentally a Good Thing. Chi Brew gives you more potential for burstiness. Pick what
you like using. RJW beats Xuen and does an amazing amount of healing for a hefty cost. I dislike Chi Torpedo personally, because the extra distance makes it a bit clunky. When I have chance to test the level 100s I'll update my opinions but at present Pool of Mists is looking the safest bet.

Weakauras

You need to have your buffs tracked, your stacks of Vital Mists somewhere obvious and ideally your level 30 talent tracked. Having your stacks of mana tea up is nice and all but at present is missing the point of using Crane to generate them - if near capping then use some mana (RJW is an excellent choice) and burn a stack or two. I use the following (hope it works) where the buffs get more and more visible the closer to falling off they are and then bounce about for added visibility.

Code:

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Current Discussion Topics

For interest:

Does Crane do enough damage compared to the utility of other healers?
Should Crane have been an independent rotation in and of itself? (I can dream!)
Should Crane damage be based on helping others rather than iself to improve scaling with group size? (personal bugbear)
Would it be so bad to have Renewing Mist in Crane?

Conclusion

I hope this was useful and put everything in one place. For anything not mentioned see Monkioh's guide, especially for stats (get crit/ms), talents, gear and everything Serpent stance! Any questions, corrections or suggestions welcome. Props to all the Monk's contributing so much to the Forum - you're all legends.

**MrCool** · 2014-11-09, 10:05 PM

Good FAQ.

It seems to me that sometimes Touch of Death fails to do any Eminence healing, it's quite weird.

For PVPers that might be reading, I want to point out that this FAQ doesn't apply to PVP (Crane stance does suck hard for PVP), as you're unable to stick on your target anyway and you'd be royally screwed by the GCD if you get caught in Crane stance when a team mate is taking sudden burst damage (it's ridiculously much harder to anticipate stance switching in PVP compared to PVE). Your best bet for PVP is to sit in Serpent stance 24/7, unless you clearly outnumber/overgear your opponents.

**Darkener** · 2014-11-10, 11:32 PM

On the topic of Renewing Mist, the solution should be for Renewing Mist to transform into Renewing Harm in Crane Stance: a DoT that ticks for 20s and has 2 charges to jump up to 2 additional targets. TFT would give your next Renewing Harm 4 jumps. Damage done generates Eminence. This would help to fill a lack of AoE damage.

Deleted · 2014-11-11, 07:44 PM

To be honest I was trying to keep my post as close to the stance as it is currently rather than what I'd rather it was. I spend enough time about what humble me thinks would smooth some of the rough edges.

However, I do think that Renewing Harm would be fine to cast as it is just in Crane stance. Ideally i'd like to be able to cast Enveloping with Vital Mist charges too (not removing the chi cost) so that you and 1) keep your ReMs ticking and 2) can trade off more straight-up damage for more healing and hence chance your DPS:heal to 20:80 or further. Whilst we can just drop out of Crane to get ReMs out to get ready for Serpent, I just don't think we should have to… to do some damage as Disc you jut press a different button.

I want to be able to Crane in 5-man! If this meant redistributing healing or reducing Eminence back to 35% I'd be okay with that. The key things is we should be using the stance to heal and doing more damage isn't really all that important - the Eminence healing is mainly so we aren't totally deserting our post. For AoE damage SCK/RJW and Chi Burst work fine.

**paX7** · 2015-03-29, 04:31 PM

Great FAQ!

I just started to play MW after playing WW since WoD release and there's one question regarding fistweaving which popped up:
Is it viable to use an agility weapon like I would when playing WW in Crane Stance? Is there someone who tried that? It would easily be possible to switch weapons when switching stance. Does MW even profit from Agi like WW does?

Greetings!

**Geodew** · 2015-03-29, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by paX7

Great FAQ!

I just started to play MW after playing WW since WoD release and there's one question regarding fistweaving which popped up:
Is it viable to use an agility weapon like I would when playing WW in Crane Stance? Is there someone who tried that? It would easily be possible to switch weapons when switching stance. Does MW even profit from Agi like WW does?

Greetings!

No. Mistweaver does not benefit from agility, but rather your attack power is equal to 2x your spellpower, so the large spellpower chunks on caster weapons is important for increasing your damage. It may be worth switching to an Agility weapon for STRICT fistweaving (doing nothing else) only if the item level difference is enormous, as agility weapons tend to have higher base DPS I think. The math for a precise answer to that, however, doesn't exist currently.

We could easily work out a weapon DPS stat weight and a spellpower stat weight to find out the answer, if only Mistweaver were implemented in Simulation Craft, but we're not worth the effort, apparently :P Not that I blame them; simming healers does not usually generate useful information, but in this case simming Crane Stance would make a lot of sense.

- - - Updated - - -

A couple suggestions for the OP.