Playstyle of MW PvP

[IAMANIKOLAS]

Hey ya guys!

I have been playing my fair share of WW monks during MoP and early WoD, however I do not like the spec any longer, as it just became very dull in PvP for me.

However I have gotten my eyes on MW for PvP which seems very hybrid in the form being being able to dish out damege, control and heal, however I have been looking through various forums and have not been able to find anything regarding the Crane stance for PvP.

Therefor I come to you, in hope for some more answers.

I wonder about the playstyle of Mistweavers in PvP, is there openings to go full on offensive in crane stance, while having hots tick on your allies, or are you required to heal just as much as any healer, at the cost of an offensive playstyle?

Also any tips, tricks or basic stuff that I should know as a mistweaver both for PvE and PvP would be highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot

[Nokcihc]

Keep in mind I don't PvP as a MW.

Fistweaving in PvP is always going to be really iffy. You will not do enough healing with it to keep yourself and your teammates alive effectively and if you're opponents are good they'll burst when they see you swap and you'll have to waste chi and a GCD to swap back. PvP this expansion is also very bursty so losing just a second of healing can be deadly.

That said, you can absolutely use Crane Stance to help burst someone when you have your opponents playing defensive. You can do more burst than most other classes if you swap to Crane with 4 chi and hit some RSK/BoK/ChiEx's.

We have good consistent damage and in a raid environment you can do some good healing by fistweaving, but it's not very practical for anything other than helping to burst down an opponent in PvP.

Also, if you want to learn how to play MW from a PvE perspective, there's a really good MW guide on this forum that was written by Monkioh and reviewed by other top MWs. It's very accurate and a good place to start. If you have any questions from there we can definitely help you out.

[IAMANIKOLAS]

Thank you very much! Will def. read the article
- In regards of the PvP aspect, I of course don't want to full-on Fistweave someone to death, but kinda like the WotLK Dici priests with the assistance in burst through Mana Burn (God I miss it), Holy Fire, Smite, Mind Blast, offensive dispel, which sounds like what Mistweavers can do.

[Nokcihc]

You can definitely do that, you just have to be more careful because it requires a stance swap and getting into melee range.

[Saverem]

Serpent stance will always be better than crane for PvP. Unfortunately, Crane has a lot of problems that makes it bad as the primary PvP stance.

The biggest issue is that you're a melee DPS with NO SNARE/ROOT. You're going to be EASILY kited by pretty much any class in the game. Even DKs which are notorious for having the weakest mobility in the game will easily be able to stick on you or run from you. Only thing you can do is incapacitate them to get in an extra hit or Force Lightning them, which will cost you like 15% of your mana.

Which brings me to the next issue, it's very mana intensive (you'll go OOM and/or will need to stop and sip on your tea in middle of long fights) stance. Jab/Chi Lightning costs an absurd amount of mana.

Finally, something that is personally VERY annoying to me is that they don't benefit from reduced GCDs. As far as I know, Crane stance is the only stance in the game that does not have reduced GCD. Your hits will be very slow. I would very much prefer if they let Fistweavers benefit from GCD haste, but reduce damage done to compensate. This coupled with no snare and high mana costs makes the stance a situational only stance. Use it when you have a Rogue on you and no allies nearby to protect you.

[Frosteye]

2300+ as MW here --

Most of the time at higher rated PVP you will be in serpent stance, otherwise it's hard to keep up with healing in crane stance.

That being said, for 2v2's you can definitely get into crane stance quite a bit, especially when there is a lull in incoming damage. Also keep in mind you can use Touch of death in both Serpent/Crane stance, and Chi Torpedo does a good bit of damage.

When a Target gets low i'll usually chi torpedo him a couple times (jump and torpedo to do it in place), pop chi brew and touch of death them.

As far as healing, you want to use Renewing Mists / Expel Harm to generate CHI and once you have 3, cast soothing mists and immediately pop enveloping mists and then stopcasting. You should be able to do it fast enough to avoid most interrupts. Enveloping mists is your staple heal due to the crit reduction -- for best effect use it pre-emptively when cc or burst is incoming -- if you get stuck in crowd control but you have Enveloping Mists up w/ Zen Sphere/Renewing mists for dispel protection, you can usually just eat the CC. a

[Vanquished]

Keep in mind I don't PvP as a MW.

Keep in mind we don't care what you have to say then.

[Frosteye]

Serpent stance will always be better than crane for PvP. Unfortunately, Crane has a lot of problems that makes it bad as the primary PvP stance.

The biggest issue is that you're a melee DPS with NO SNARE/ROOT. You're going to be EASILY kited by pretty much any class in the game. Even DKs which are notorious for having the weakest mobility in the game will easily be able to stick on you or run from you. Only thing you can do is incapacitate them to get in an extra hit or Force Lightning them, which will cost you like 15% of your mana.

Which brings me to the next issue, it's very mana intensive (you'll go OOM and/or will need to stop and sip on your tea in middle of long fights) stance. Jab/Chi Lightning costs an absurd amount of mana.

Finally, something that is personally VERY annoying to me is that they don't benefit from reduced GCDs. As far as I know, Crane stance is the only stance in the game that does not have reduced GCD. Your hits will be very slow. I would very much prefer if they let Fistweavers benefit from GCD haste, but reduce damage done to compensate. This coupled with no snare and high mana costs makes the stance a situational only stance. Use it when you have a Rogue on you and no allies nearby to protect you.

Yes fistweaving is slow and clunky, but Rising Sun Kick hits pretty hard, if you can afford popping chi brew offensively you can shell out quite a bit of damage and switch back to serpent stance to pick up healing again.

I've been getting RSK's over 50k easy.

Like another poster mentioned though -- you need to be careful with fistweaving, the stance swap is clunky, and if you're fighting a mage team for instance you don't want to sacrifice your good positioning by getting into melee range and end up in a 20 second CC chain.

[B L A D E]

It depends on how the fight turns out to be, sometimes you will just get pressured from the start and there will be absolutely no time for stance swapping, where as other times, there is less pressure or atleast on yourself and slightly more on your partner which can give you some time to dish out damage. It's something that you have to figure out because once you start stance swapping, it can turn horribly wrong very quickly.

You gotta first prepare 4 chi before going into crane stance and there after you need to apply Tiger Palm and from then on spam RSK. It's a lot of 'preparation' that has to be made before it's going to pay out which is usually a bad thing as there can happen anything at any given time during arenas. Also, you have to make sure what you go up against. If you are playing against Hunters, stance swapping is absolutely horrible because you are literally turning yourself into a melee and have to stick onto a target and follow him like a sheep which makes it easy for the hunter to trap or lock you out. Same goes for mages in most situations aswell.

[Frosteye]

It depends on how the fight turns out to be, sometimes you will just get pressured from the start and there will be absolutely no time for stance swapping, where as other times, there is less pressure or atleast on yourself and slightly more on your partner which can give you some time to dish out damage. It's something that you have to figure out because once you start stance swapping, it can turn horribly wrong very quickly.

You gotta first prepare 4 chi before going into crane stance and there after you need to apply Tiger Palm and from then on spam RSK. It's a lot of 'preparation' that has to be made before it's going to pay out which is usually a bad thing as there can happen anything at any given time during arenas. Also, you have to make sure what you go up against. If you are playing against Hunters, stance swapping is absolutely horrible because you are literally turning yourself into a melee and have to stick onto a target and follow him like a sheep which makes it easy for the hunter to trap or lock you out. Same goes for mages in most situations aswell.

In an ideal world you would have Tiger Palm/BOK buffs up, but in arena sometimes you just have to RSK away since you have no time for setup.

And yeah NEVER fistweave vs mages -- unless they're on the defensive hard and you know you can keep control.

[Saverem]

Yes fistweaving is slow and clunky, but Rising Sun Kick hits pretty hard, if you can afford popping chi brew offensively you can shell out quite a bit of damage and switch back to serpent stance to pick up healing again.

I've been getting RSK's over 50k easy.

Like another poster mentioned though -- you need to be careful with fistweaving, the stance swap is clunky, and if you're fighting a mage team for instance you don't want to sacrifice your good positioning by getting into melee range and end up in a 20 second CC chain.

And that's the issue I have with it. It's too clunky. Hopefully they'll sort that out in 7.0, but I'm not holding my breath. As for the RIsing Sun Kick (I get 100k+ crits with them), I'd much prefer if they cut the damage by 30% and give us hasted GCD LIKE EVERY OTHER GOD DAMN SPEC IN THE GAME.

Oh, and another problem I have with Crane is that you have to ramp up your damage. You need to Tiger Palm to get the 30% armor penetration, BOK to get the 20% crit buff, and RSK to get the 20% damage buff on the target. Pretty annoying.

[Deleted]

And that's the issue I have with it. It's too clunky. Hopefully they'll sort that out in 7.0, but I'm not holding my breath. As for the RIsing Sun Kick (I get 100k+ crits with them), I'd much prefer if they cut the damage by 30% and give us hasted GCD LIKE EVERY OTHER GOD DAMN SPEC IN THE GAME.

Oh, and another problem I have with Crane is that you have to ramp up your damage. You need to Tiger Palm to get the 30% armor penetration, BOK to get the 20% crit buff, and RSK to get the 20% damage buff on the target. Pretty annoying.

You stack Vers. Depending on your race, you just might be able to get 30+% of vers with the rest of crit / haste gear. You should use Xuen and Chi Brew if you're playing 2v2. MWs can not deal sustain damage due to the problems you've listed and there's no way of staying in crane longer than 30-40 secs periods ( depending who is the focus ). You can pre-store 4 Chi and start from there. Xuen + Chi Brew will get you 30 secs of insane burst. With decent gear ( read : vers ) you'll be able to do as much damage as your partner dps. Other than that you should stick to serpent and wait for cds to get back. You should be able to get around 10 stacks of MT during the burst which makes you okeyish when it comes to mana. Always stack 2xChi Brew in case someone drops dangerously low ( be it your partner or enemy ) so you can burst really fast. Depending on their setup you might consider taking Chi Wave since it's better for burst.

Getting that extra haste GCD buff won't help us much since you won't be sitting in crane for a long time anyway. Maybe it would improve our burst but apart from that I don't find it mandatory to have haste GCD buff.