[MW] has anybody tryed Ascension yet

[dahawk]

just wondering if anybody has tryed this out yet now that servers are back if so does the mana feel more smooth ie u notice more of a regen when doing healing abilitys

[Sketchie]

I am not sure whether to use Ascension or Power Strikes - but I am leaning towards the latter.

Ascension increases your mana pool, yes, but Power Strikes now also applies to Soothing Mists and Crackling Jade Lightning on top of Jab. The Mana Tea gains has been changed a bit - you now have a chance equal to your crit chance to gain 2 stacks of Mana Tea instead of one when you expand 4 Chi. With Power Strikes you can generate more Chi and expand it faster giving you more chances to get extra Mana Tea stacks.

I am not sure if THAT offsets Ascension's 15% mana buff, however.

[Totaltotemic]

I won't know about the rest until I raid tonight, but the Tier 3 talents have been talked to death since the changes on the PTR.

The difference between Power Strikes and Chi Brew is painfully clear, one gives you Chi over time, and one lets you burst heal, the total resource output is basically the same. You'll typically take Power Strikes if you want to even out tank healing, and take Chi Brew for raid healing because of the burst potential of Uplift in the limited window of TBT.

Ascension is kind of like a mixture of the two. Being able to bank 5 Chi gives it some of the extra burst potential that Chi Brew gives, while the extra mana provides about the same total resources as either Power Strikes or Chi Brew, assuming that 1 Chi = 9k mana (which is the worst case scenario, as you could be getting Chi from Soothing or Expel) from a combination of Mana Tea charges plus the passive regeneration that is based off of maximum mana. Personally, I like it the best because it still gives you the resources with the added utility of the extra Chi slot, but Chi Brew may still be an option for burst raid healing. I would consider Power Strikes to be right out though, because if you wanted steady extra resources, why not take Ascension and have more control over it?

Note: I did math out the exact mana gains from Ascension a few weeks ago, taking into account my average Mana Tea usage/minute on a fight, plus the Crit buff, plus passive regeneration, and it did come out to roughly the same as the other two talents. The post is somewhere on this forum if you go back far enough.

[Deleted]

Can anyone confirm that extra mana from Ascension increases mana gain from Mana Tea? I know it should, in theory, but confirmation would be great.

[TheWindWalker]

Can anyone confirm that extra mana from Ascension increases mana gain from Mana Tea? I know it should, in theory, but confirmation would be great.

One sip with Ascension.

[Deleted]

As a Gnome, Ascension gives more mana than the other talents. Its still a difficult choice. I am kidna used to Chi Brew, but I will test everything in the next raids

[DrBob3002]

It's pretty close. So close in fact that I'd rather get rid of one more button to press (Chi Brew) and just stick with 15% more mana.

[dahawk]

being a melee mistweaver does that mean the +15 will mean more mana in theory

[TheWindWalker]

being a melee mistweaver does that mean the +15 will mean more mana in theory

Just throwing this out there. Jab still costs 9000 (3% base) even with Ascension so it's even easier to manage mana as a melee-heavy MW.

[dahawk]

Just throwing this out there. Jab still costs 9000 (3% base) even with Ascension so it's even easier to manage mana as a melee-heavy MW.

so this means i would jab less if im correct? before the patch i did jab alot to keep my chi bar up

[TheWindWalker]

so this means i would jab less if im correct? before the patch i did jab alot to keep my chi bar up

As far as the advanced theorycrafting goes, I couldn't tell you. Someone else with will have to answer that. What it means from a practical point is that your periodic mana tea drinks will recover just about three jabs' worth. Which makes them far more negligible and the spirit requirement for fistweaving non-stop drops noticibly.

Problem: iirc lots of abilities is based on percent of mana. So is it really useful to increase the pool of mana?

They pull from base mana. Which is the mana before you pick Ascension.

[Astraios]

I value chi brew at 4chi. That means I effectively generated 4 chi, which is normally 36k from jab. And then the mana regened from chi, or 12000*1.25~16000.
Or that means I value chi brew at 52k mana/90s. Which...destroys the benefit from ascension, as well as giving burst healing.

Let alone the fact that my mana rarely drops below 80% at the moment...so ascension is significantly worse than chi brew, as far as I'm concerned.

[Totaltotemic]

I value chi brew at 4chi. That means I effectively generated 4 chi, which is normally 36k from jab. And then the mana regened from chi, or 12000*1.25~16000.
Or that means I value chi brew at 52k mana/90s. Which...destroys the benefit from ascension, as well as giving burst healing.

Let alone the fact that my mana rarely drops below 80% at the moment...so ascension is significantly worse than chi brew, as far as I'm concerned.

You can't add the Mana Tea return to increase the extra value of Chi, because then you end up in a recursive loop of infinitely adding portions of mana and Chi. Resources come at cost, Chi isn't automatically worth more because it comes and Chi and not as mana. Jab effectively costs 6k mana because you get 1 Chi, which gives you mana back, but you can't say that Chi from a free source is worth 12k mana, that just doesn't make sense. The real value of 4 Chi is 48k mana, and that's assuming worst case scenario of buying Chi for no healing.

That said, Ascension is passively worth 16,200 mana every 90 seconds as per the mana regeneration formula (2% max mana per 5, plus Spirit benefit). That makes the difference 31,800 mana, which equates to the benefit of 17.67 Mana Tea charges, which is slightly under 90 seconds worth of Glyphed mana tea if you always use it (which probably isn't true, but isn't for Chi Brew either), and always have stacks (which you WILL with the recent crit buff). Now take into account the utility of 1 extra max Chi and the fact that your Chi Brew calculation is worst-case scenario.... Ascension is most definitely not worse than Chi Brew, and probably better.

[siccora]

Can't see any changes of Ascension in the official patchnotes

[Totaltotemic]

Can't see any changes of Ascension in the official patchnotes

Patch notes for this patch are grossly incomplete, not just for Monk changes but for lots of game changes. It's live on NA realms right now.

[Neave]

Im staying with ascension purely because of the additional mana gained from mana tea

[Temp name]

I'm gonna go ascension as soon as the EU servers come back up. In 3-4 hours.

[carrkevinu]

I like it the best because it still gives you the resources with the added utility of the extra Chi slot

[bkw]

Tried it out on my pvp mw monk and was really cool, my mana last really longer, the extra chi slot is meh, anyways chi brew is insane against bursty comps, having a secured envmist is really good on paper

[Astraios]

You can't add the Mana Tea return to increase the extra value of Chi, because then you end up in a recursive loop of infinitely adding portions of mana and Chi. Resources come at cost, Chi isn't automatically worth more because it comes and Chi and not as mana. Jab effectively costs 6k mana because you get 1 Chi, which gives you mana back, but you can't say that Chi from a free source is worth 12k mana, that just doesn't make sense. The real value of 4 Chi is 48k mana, and that's assuming worst case scenario of buying Chi for no healing.

That said, Ascension is passively worth 16,200 mana every 90 seconds as per the mana regeneration formula (2% max mana per 5, plus Spirit benefit). That makes the difference 31,800 mana, which equates to the benefit of 17.67 Mana Tea charges, which is slightly under 90 seconds worth of Glyphed mana tea if you always use it (which probably isn't true, but isn't for Chi Brew either), and always have stacks (which you WILL with the recent crit buff). Now take into account the utility of 1 extra max Chi and the fact that your Chi Brew calculation is worst-case scenario.... Ascension is most definitely not worse than Chi Brew, and probably better.

I completely disagree. I can add the mana return to it because I can use it as a regen CD because I don't need to generate chi and on average it gives me 15000 mana back with a 25% crit chance AFTER giving me healing spells. And you're right resources come at cost. Chi comes at 9k mana per, and then gives 3750~ mana back per. That means that four chi is worth (because it comes at no cost other than a talent) 36000 mana (I'm generating extra on demand chi, that means otherwise I would've been jabbing or SCK'ing [which would be even more expensive], so 9000 is fair) and then the mana it returns from tea. Which is 15000 on average. Which means....51000 mana per 90s from chi brew. Because thats how much I get. I'm not counting the jabs that mana will buy me, or anything else. I'm counting what I get ON DEMAND. You are right about the chance for this kind of calculation to become an endless loop of chi->mana->chi (which could be solved via integral) but this is not happening in this case, at all. Further, with that value ascension comes to 19.33 charges/90s. This means you're using the glyph...more than on CD. Also means youre generating 2 charges of tea every ten seconds for a constant 90 seconds which means you're literally spamming jabx2/uplift, which is horrible for HPS atm. SCK as a chi generator is quite literally light years ahead of jab for chi at the moment. Meaning with constant spamming the best you would do is sckx2/chi burst and repeat, or throw in an instant and the mana tea glyph use, and you're looking at 4 chi generated every 10s. Meaning to cap out on tea charges via glyph requires nearly 100% crit chance. Not happening anytime soon, so I can safely say that used as a regen CD chi brew is significantly better than ascension in ALL cases. On the other hand, I have the choice to use chi brew for burst healing as well. That means chi brew is better at regen, and better at burst.

Even if we value chi brew as lower regen, the fact that it adds throughput, and adds BURST throughput on raids (IE the ability to line it up for 4x TFT'd uplift, worth as much as 8 normal uplifts, or 4 normal uplifts from TFT) makes it significantly better when used properly.

Finally, let's just make the broad statement that MW mana is a joke at the moment. I don't use ascension and I didn't drop below 80% mana on 4 heroic fights while being second on healing done. (Used to be #1 mostly, but w/e) Why? Because SCK is ridiculously strong as a throughput chi generator, and SoM is ridiculously strong as an efficient chi generator (IE Banking chi before burst). I wasn't even using all my mana tea charges in case my trinkets proc or my rsham's use mana tide. I use 7500 spirit and have relic of chi ji and spirits of the sun normal.

In the end, healing (and playing WoW) is about fun. And if having less burst, less potential mana regen (in cases where it actually matters, because if you dont need the 4 chi you dont need the mana, and chi brew lines up [on most fights this tier] rather nicely with burst), is more fun to you, Or if having more max mana and more mana/tea is more fun, then take ascension. But from a min-max'ing point of view, it's pretty clear that chi brew is a stronger talent especially when you take into consideration monks lack of a strong raid CD (IE burst healing.)