MW opener with low raid damage

[Koooj]

Tonight I tried something new to try and get my mana tea up as fast as possible. Basically just being a dps until you have 10 or so teas stack. Here's what it looked like, let me know you thoughts on it.

Opener)
Spread all ReM charges>expel harm> RSK > BoK >TP > SM > Chi Brew x 2 > RSK > BoK > Jab > TP > SM.

This worked very well for me. The mana tea stacks i gained far outweighed the mana i had expended. While fistweaving I was still doing 7-8k dps and 15-20k hps.

Give me your thoughts and criticism on this. Any room for improvement?

[Geodew]

No one has proved it, but it seems like TP>BOK>RSK or BOK>TP>RSK would be higher DPS.

Other than that, yes, Crane is very mana positive, so if you're not opening the fight in Crane you're not playing 100% optimally.

You don't have to necessarily go to 10 stacks, though. Remember that your other healers are spending additional mana if you're not helping to heal as much as you can, so even if your mana is better off, it's not necessarily what's best for the raid. Having said that, there's always room for a little bit of Fistweaving at the beginning of almost every fight.

[Deleted]

As long as no damage is going out, great!

On fights like Tectus you can really weave in and out of fistweaving because there is just not very much damage going out in that fight at all. I mean, at certain stages if you aren't fistweaving then what are you doing? Standing around? Punch the boss instead. Same thing applies to most bosses. What are you doing on Imperator until the first add spawns because there is really not much damage going out. Punch the boss.

Deets for openers though are kind of a mixed bunch. I tried to get some feedback on my own in the other thread here so maybe that is helpful to you. Although yeah, build chi beforehand by spreading ReM and ignore what I said about CJL.

I am confused about your chi usage in the opener you posted though.

[Chakraz]

According to the post MagicRen made his WA for Fistweaving has a priority of Tiger palm>RSK>BOK>JAB.
I tried to post the link to the post but sadly I can not post links yet.

[Geodew]

According to the post MagicRen made his WA for Fistweaving has a priority of Tiger palm>RSK>BOK>JAB.
I tried to post the link to the post but sadly I can not post links yet.

I find that a bit strange, considering that 20% crit is quite a large buff, which also affects autoattacks, even if you get your RSK started a bit sooner. Maybe it's out of date with the RSK change from 20% to 5%?

[MagicRen]

If you want faster mana tea stack, then you need use CJL in your rotation.
And I'm trying to abandon TP in ChiExp talent. Because physical damange is less than 35% in my total damage. Without TP, malee attacks drops about 15%. But the rotation runs faster and smoother. most of the time I only use Jab, RSK, 4-ChiExp. More mana tea and more HPS. While DPS is similar. The only issue for this rotation is overall mana is dropping because we use more Jab in a specific time range.
This theory has been proved by yesterday's M2 fight.
WCL link's here: (See the buffs I gained)
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e-done&fight=3

I believe dropping TP in ChiExp talent would be the trend after we get 2T17 gears.

- - - Updated - - -

If you enter the battle with 4 chi parepared, then the first 2 gcds' skill would be TP and RSK. It's not for best DPS or math something. Just for easier play style.

[Geodew]

If you enter the battle with 4 chi parepared, then the first 2 gcds' skill would be TP and RSK. It's not for best DPS or math something. Just for easier play style.

If you're running PoM, what's the difference?

[MagicRen]

PoM is Pool of Mist? Then all of the damage are physical. We need to keep TP buff.
Sorry if I misunderstood your question.

[Geodew]

PoM is Pool of Mist? Then all of the damage are physical. We need to keep TP buff.
Sorry if I misunderstood your question.

Yeah, Pool of Mists, but I was referring to the section I quoted. BoK and RSK are interchangeable for "play style," I don't really think one's easier to use than the other :P

[MagicRen]

Actually it's not "priority". With ChiExp, TP and RSK are just for keeping the Buff. It doesn't means RSK has higher priority than ChiExp.
Similar for PoM, TP and BOK for keeping buff.

[Geodew]

Actually it's not "priority". With ChiExp, TP and RSK are just for keeping the Buff. It doesn't means RSK has higher priority than ChiExp.
Similar for PoM, TP and BOK for keeping buff.

That's exactly what priority means :P Keeping your buffs up is higher priority than using the main damage-dealers... but the main damage dealers also give buffs, and ChiEx's buff is especially strong. For ChiEx it's maybe a little unclear of the on-pull priority without doing math or sims, but for PoM it's probably TP>BOK>RSK.

[MagicRen]

Yes. In my WA, if using PoM, the prority is TP>BOK>RSK.

[Geodew]

According to the post MagicRen made his WA for Fistweaving has a priority of Tiger palm>RSK>BOK>JAB.
I tried to post the link to the post but sadly I can not post links yet.

Then is this incorrect? It contradicts what you just said. :P

[Chakraz]

Then is this incorrect? It contradicts what you just said. :P

I probably should have noted that this was with Chi Explosion Talent taken, I was testing it out on a dummy to see what it would give me. I should have put ChiX in place of BoK. Had a brain fart my apologies.

[Spotnick]

So why am I the only idiot going oom every time I try to fistweave? jabbing too much?

Guess one day I'll have to hit the target dummy with that thing, I've never ever seen it being mana positive, which is why I was never a fan of it except while in blood lust.

You can tell it was not a very encouraged playstyle in guilds I were in.

[Totaltotemic]

So why am I the only idiot going oom every time I try to fistweave? jabbing too much?

Guess one day I'll have to hit the target dummy with that thing, I've never ever seen it being mana positive, which is why I was never a fan of it except while in blood lust.

This is a fair point, and one that I'm sure people keep wondering about. Why exactly is going Crane for the first ~30 seconds beneficial for long-term mana?

Now, I still don't play MW so I haven't actually done anything with Crane since beta when I was just testing things, but I was around for all of Suplift's early experimentation and I think the math came out at some point but I'll try to reproduce it here.

The basic idea is that you start a fight at full mana. Your mana regeneration stops when you're at full mana, and in the beginning of most fights spending mana on heals would be totally wasted (especially with PoM when you can just spam ReM when you need it instead of beforehand). So what you're really doing isn't getting mana positive returns out of Crane, you're just taking your natural regen and storing it in a Tea battery when it would otherwise be doing nothing because you're at full mana.

It goes something like this:

Each Jab costs 3.5% mana. Leaving Tiger Palm out of the equation (assuming it's just paid for by Power Strikes or whatever), you're going to have a rhythm of Jab-Jab-2chispender (BoK or RSK), or essentially spending 2 Jabs every 3 GCDs. For the sake of argument let's say that you're under Bloodlust and have a haste raid buff, and who knows maybe you have a Shard of Nothing too. We'll just assume you're at 50% haste so your GCD is 1 second.

At worst, you're burning 7% mana every 3 seconds (ignoring Power Strikes for now because it makes it more complicated than I feel like doing right now). You store 2% mana from Mana Tea, times ~40% crit (5% base + 5% raid buff + 20% BoK buff + 10% gear stats) for 2.8% mana saved every 3 seconds.

Let's say you have 1200 Spirit. Your regen is (0.412207024 * 1200) + 640 = 1135 mana/sec, or 0.71% mana per second, for 2.13% every 3 seconds.

So in this 3 second cycle your mana is changing by -4.87% every 3 seconds, but you get a battery of 2.8% mana. Obviously you will be losing mana, so this isn't a very good trade-off if you're going full bore at 50% haste.

If you want to come out of this mana neutral, the cycle needs to be slowed from 3 seconds down to every 6 seconds. Once you start taking longer than 6 seconds per 2 chi generated/spent (or if you just get more Spirit), you become mana positive (after Mana Tea).

More Spirit means you can Crane faster while still remaining totally mana neutral, which is doubly good because if you cared about mana you would be stacking Spirit anyways.

Up in the realm of 1800 Spirit (possible in BRF gear), we're talking about a passive 1382.5 mana/sec = 0.864% mana/sec, or this cycle becoming mana neutral at 4.86 seconds.

Conclusions

The idea of the Mana Tea battery in Crane must be moderated by slowing down the Crane rotation without spending too much mana, often slower than the GCD.

More Spirit makes the Mana Tea battery charge up more quickly and more efficiently, doubly so after the 6.1 change.

The Mana Tea battery does not get any better with haste, and in fact can cause more waste of mana with more haste if it is not artificially slowed down.

Trying to pump out more damage devalues the Mana Tea battery, possibly to a point of not existing at all.

[Geodew]

So why am I the only idiot going oom every time I try to fistweave? jabbing too much?

Guess one day I'll have to hit the target dummy with that thing, I've never ever seen it being mana positive, which is why I was never a fan of it except while in blood lust.

You can tell it was not a very encouraged playstyle in guilds I were in.

To add to what Total said with the experience of someone currently maining the spec (no offense, Total):
@Total don't forget Vital Mists, Expel Harm, TP buff, etc. slows down the mana consumption significantly. I'm having no problems fistweaving for 2 minutes and coming out with full mana (after drinking some tea) with ~10 tea stacks to spare. Most of that is also NOT in bloodlust though :P 20% Haste though. Damn HM itemization.

Passive regen plus Mana Tea should more than make up for the mana you spend if you don't ever touch CJL. Are you wasting a lot of Chi, maybe? Not keeping TP buff up? Not using Expel Harm for cheaper chi gen? Not using Vital Mists for 0 mana cost chi gen?

[Entropy]

The most major thing to stay mana neutral in crane is the 20% crit buff.

[Totaltotemic]

To add to what Total said with the experience of someone currently maining the spec (no offense, Total):
@Total don't forget Vital Mists, Expel Harm, TP buff, etc. slows down the mana consumption significantly. I'm having no problems fistweaving for 2 minutes and coming out with full mana (after drinking some tea) with ~10 tea stacks to spare. Most of that is also NOT in bloodlust though :P 20% Haste though. Damn HM itemization.

Passive regen plus Mana Tea should more than make up for the mana you spend if you don't ever touch CJL. Are you wasting a lot of Chi, maybe? Not keeping TP buff up? Not using Expel Harm for cheaper chi gen? Not using Vital Mists for 0 mana cost chi gen?

I know I ignored a lot of things (also the opening 20 second Spirit proc for anyone still using Winged Hourglass), but the main points were that going full bore during Bloodlust would probably result in a significant loss of mana and that the whole thing becomes more efficient the more Spirit you have. So it is slightly more complicated than "just do all the fistweaving stuff and you'll have infinite mana" which is what a lot of people have been saying without specifying that if all you're doing is pumping every single GCD into doing damage you're probably going to be losing mana, not gaining mana.

[MagicRen]

Crane weaver's rotation is adjustable via overall mana level(including mana tea).
For high mana level, use RSK & BOK only. Jab/EH to get Chi.
For low mana level, involve some TPs to slow down the mana consumption, until you stack enough mana tea.
For burst healing, use 1-2 CJL(s) + BOK. Ignore vital mists.