This week on MMOC Monk 11/11/14

[Totaltotemic]

Last week

I was at Blizzcon this weekend (as were many people that generally keep the forum moving), so this is going to be much lighter than usual. Also, Warlords comes out on Thursday, so good luck everybody and let's hit the triple digit levels.

Windwalker

Monkioh (who normally plays MW in Midwinter, say that 5 times fast) showed everyone what WW is like in Highmaul during the Blizzcon live raid. Both he and Gondlem showcased just how strong WW single target damage is and how easily SEF can be abused on Twin Ogron to do massive damage. Monkioh also gave some insight into Chi Explosion and Serenity usage, namely that it's not quite as simple as things might seem if you think you have to AoE but find out a fight is so easy that you never actually have to.

In other news, Anmity has been working on a WoD BiS list for WW using a combination of simulations and spreadsheets, complete with two different lists for Single Target and AoE DPS. This goes nicely with Nestar's pre-raid BiS list (http://downloads.nestar.ca/BiS_Gear_Lists/) to help guide WWs towards the best gear. There must be a word of caution though, as tricky warforged, socketed, and tertiary stat gear can throw some of these lists off and land things in a much more murky place.

Mistweaver

Chiichan, the other Midwinter MW god, also somehow topped Disc Priests (multiple!) for every fight he healed in the Highmaul live raid. We're still scratching our heads over that one, but the best anyone can figure is that Revival and Uplift are insanely powerful heals and Floopa speculated that he could have done even more healing with RJW.

On another Chiichan note, he used a tactic that is becoming very common among top tier Mistweavers - cheesing Crane Stance at the start of fights for easy Mana Tea. Because of the base mana regen buff as part of 6.0, there exists an odd period at the start of a fight with Bloodlust running that allows Mistweavers in Crane Stance to Jab to their hearts' content to fit in some damage, but in this time they are also running nearly mana neutral while building up massive amounts of Mana Tea for usage later. Everyone should keep a close eye on this; it's pretty obviously not what designers had in mind for Crane Stance, so we have to see how they react to this (if at all).

Brewmaster

There were no Brewmasters in the live raid, as both guilds opted for a Warrior/Paladin duo. This is because of a continuing perception (that has yet to really be proven by anything since after Warrior/Paladin T17 bonuses were nerfed) that BrM at 100 takes a lot more damage than other tanks. Whether that's actually true or not remains to be seen, but it does seem like it's a foregone conclusion that almost no top 10 world guild will use a Brewmaster because of this perception.

And so, in a quest to find a meaningful tool to actually determine the best way to play Brewmaster, Simulationcraft work continues. This week there was a bug located and fixed that was truncating partial EB stacks instead of counting them for DW and 3.3 speed 2hs, which fixed the huge disparity between the 2h and 1h profiles. However, there is still some rebuilding of the Action list that must be done before it is truly accurate since the Stagger bug was found (which was mislabeling Stagger amounts). It's getting there, improving every week.

[Dysnomio]

Great work as always Total. Will be interesting to try out RJW and ChiEx on cleave-fights since using both simultaneously isn't worthwhile (I think?). Enjoy WOD guys and gals

[Deleted]

Thanks a lot man, good work !

It's great to have some insights on the Windwalker, hope we won't get nerfed too hard on the next patch.

[Volibear]

Especially with the ability (currently, if they leave it as is) to cheese mana tea stacks with Crane at the start of a fight, using all possible spirit enchants (if even necessary), RJW will most certainly be best L90 talent for MW. The sheer amount of mana we can gain with that is enough to blow any idea of using CT out of the water, I think.

[MrCool]

It's funny how we MW players always find a way to abuse the crappy mechanics they force on us

Maybe their next iteration will be to scrap the double stances idea, I can always hope...

[Supliftz]

It's funny how we MW players always find a way to abuse the crappy mechanics they force on us

Maybe their next iteration will be to scrap the double stances idea, I can always hope...

So we can go back to mindlessly CJL spamming?

[Deleted]

The bigger concern is whether Bliz see the cheesing of Crane at start of fight solely for mana a big enough problem to curb… and historically that has meant making Jab exorbitantly costed. This would unfortunately have the side-effect of killing off any interest many might have in ever setting foot in the red stance. On related note, Stance of the Spirited Crane -> way to cheat on spirit .

If they do try to make it less mana neutral and don't improve also the DPS or healing output then we have a problem...

[Supliftz]

Even if you don't use Crane. More spirit is only useful for more RJW's.

[MrCool]

So we can go back to mindlessly CJL spamming?

Gating spells with stances is not the only way to restrict undesired spell combos y'know. You can also restrict spell usage with multiple types of resources. If healing spells cost Chi and Jab/CJL doesn't generate Chi, then you can't abuse those to cast healing spells. Then, Monks can have back their flexibility between punching and healing without spending one full GCD if they have the proper resources ready (this helps PVP immensely, I know you can anticipate in PVE).

It's possible to balance CJL so it can be a decent spell to use without it being so OP as it was in 5.4 with OP trinkets/metagem procs... Atm it's worthless, especially if you're just using Crane to cheese mana tea.

[Volibear]

So you're saying that to Fistweave, you use ReM/EH/SM to generate the chi to BoK? That will then make Jab as redundant as CJL currently is.

[MrCool]

So you're saying that to Fistweave, you use ReM/EH/SM to generate the chi to BoK? That will then make Jab as redundant as CJL currently is.

No, I'm saying that Jab/CJL would generate their own resource (let's call it Black Chi) and that RSK/BoK/TP would require that new resource to be used. Sorry, I was not explicit enough. For extra flexibility, RSK/BoK/TP would still be castable with Chi (justified by the fact that monks don't lose Chi when switching from Serpent to Crane).

Here's my idea of "ideal" MW 6.0:
- Remove Crane stance.
- Eminence is always active.
- SM, EH, ReM generate Chi.
- Jab, CJL generate Black Chi.
- EnvM, Uplift require Chi.
- RSK, BoK, TP require Chi or Black Chi.
- Chi and Black Chi share the same Chi pool. Chi can overwrite Black Chi. Black Chi cannot overwrite Chi.
- Crane's Zeal buff changed to only work with auto-attacks and damaging abilities.
- ChiEx requires Chi when cast on allies. When cast on enemies, it requires Chi or Black Chi.
- CJL changed to generate 2 Black Chi over 4 sec. It's the ranged version of Jab, with decent damage.
- SCK, RJW always generate 1 Chi. It heals allies and deals damage to enemies(*). High mana cost.

Do you see loopholes in this design? Can you break it? (genuine question)

(*): to avoid SCK, RJW being too good when there are tons of allies and enemies stacked, it can be restricted to a maximum number of targets, and healing injured allies is prioritized over damaging enemies.

[Deleted]

That's a pretty complicated solution considering the best way to fix the problem would simply be to dump Mana Tea completely (or turn it into an Archangel-style healing cooldown) and lower the cost of all MW abilities.

[MrCool]

Well, to be fair, my design is about giving back flexibility with monk abilities without forcing stance mechanics on the class (another, less complicated way would be to simply remove GCD cost of stance switching).

Agreed that Mana Tea should be simply removed. Most mana regen abilities no longer exist in 6.0 (they'd have to find a way to increase crit value though).

...Of course Blizzard will take the lazy route, overreact and completely break Crane stance because OMG too much free mana!

[ryklin]

so wait on the list of mw things thatwere apparently overpowered

5.0-
jab
paralyze talent

5.2-
CJL
revival
damage

5.4-
soothing spam
zen med
healing sphere (pvp)
transcendance
moving

6.0
free manatees (massive crane stance costs or reduced tea gen)
rjw (will be turned back into 5.3 RJW by 6.1)

there's a trend here and we'll have to find 6 more things to be removed by 6.2 to please lord ghostcrawler

[Deleted]

Well my first issue is thematic: Mistweavers seem to be based on healing vapours, moxibustion and the "soft" or "internal" martial arts. There's a generally wholesome vibe going on, you known? Black and white, yin and yang, isn't actually particularly prevalent as a theme within the monk class as they eventually implemented - not really in Panderen culture either to be honest. I know they dabbled with it initially but fell by the wayside.

The second is more practical. The only things that now cost chi to heal are Enveloping Mists, Uplift and if taken Chi Explosion. Their issue was with mixing chi generation with uplift spam, then they separated them out and added a cast time to uplift and playing with the healing through beta. You could just as easily change the chi-costing spells to simple mana-costed spells, would lose flavour but simplify things just have chi for hitting people.

I'm not really fussed about dealing damage, I like the idea behind Crane stance and the theme of martial healer is just fun. Combat acupuncture! I'd rather flip the Eminence design on its head and deal damage through healing people as Expelling Harm harm makes more sense than Atonement, to me. Regardless, not really the thread for discussing what we would like it to be.

[Totaltotemic]

Dark chi used to be a thing way back in MoP alpha and it was determined too complex for granny.

[MrCool]

Well my first issue is thematic: Mistweavers seem to be based on healing vapours, moxibustion and the "soft" or "internal" martial arts. There's a generally wholesome vibe going on, you known? Black and white, yin and yang, isn't actually particularly prevalent as a theme within the monk class as they eventually implemented - not really in Panderen culture either to be honest. I know they dabbled with it initially but fell by the wayside.

I think quite a bit of inspiration for Monks was taken from the Force in Star Wars. There are even Star Wars references in the monk daily area. Healing stuff is the good side of the Force and punching can either be good or dark side of the Force. Force Lightning (aka CJL) is dark side of the Force. Then they added martial moves 'coz Asian theme / kung fu Pandas.

Dark chi used to be a thing way back in MoP alpha and it was determined too complex for granny.

Lol damn those grannies!
More seriously, I'm fairly sure the stance solution, with all its restrictions/clunkiness (GCD!!!!) and subtle interactions (like Chi reset when going Crane->Serpent but no reset when going Serpent->Crane) is as complex as double Chi resources and is horribly, horribly badly documented (LOL at incomplete/wrong patch notes). Maybe devs will realize this by 6.2.

there's a trend here and we'll have to find 6 more things to be removed by 6.2 to please lord ghostcrawler

It's been a little while since Ghostcrawler left Blizzard for Rito Games

[Deleted]

Hmmm I can see where you're coming from. The overwhelming feel of MoP was of Far Asian look, martial arts and zen attitudes. Chi/qi/xi fits into that neatly enough without adding another intellectual property .

I'm fine with Stances and don't really find it that complicated - there are subtleties sure, but complexity in class design is more the minimum amount of knowledge needed to perform adequately. Having a stance change on the GCD in itself slow things down but that in itself isn't hard to understand. Having a double chi system would be fine, we'd just end up with green and red chi and look suspiciously like runes except... you'd generate them through your abilities rather than passively. Not convinced I'd prefer Jabbing for RSK and Surging/Renewing Mists for Enveloping and Uplift over the current system. I'd rather the two sides of Mistweaving were synergistic rather than antagonistic.

I remember hearing that at some point in earlyish MoP, and I forget when as before my time, the best Mistweavers used both fistweaving and what is now Serpent healing together to get the best output - and I don't mean JabJabUplift. Brewmasters and Windwalkers are designed so that the better you are, the more you can get out the class. Take Brewmasters for example, a difficult to master tank with lots of plates to spin but once up to speed could do crazy things. This I feel is the real missed opportunity - you just don't need Crane to heal well. If they designed it to deal damage at cost of healing then it can do it. Did they really intend to make a mana efficiency stance at the same time? They've accidentally created Mana Tea/Spirit Conflict Version 2.

[Totaltotemic]

I'd rather the two sides of Mistweaving were synergistic rather than antagonistic.

This is basically what I've been saying ever since they decided fistweaving and healing mingling was an "issue." For some reason it's okay for Discipline to have healing incentives for doing damage yet the class that's built on balance and seeing the good in all things is slapped every time it tries to combined strategies.

They're just not very true to the whole class thematic thing when it comes to Monks.

[Deleted]

I think it says a lot that if the Crane stance disappeared suddenly the biggest change to the class would be less mana for the second half of a fight.