Mistweaver Feedback

Via: MMO-Champion

Valen posted some awesome feedback on the beta forums for mistweavers describing much of the feel and flow of healing as a monk. There were 2 blue posts that came from that and I just wanted to relay what's going on with the mistweaver monk spec.
Seen here (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4363776520) player Valen describes an adventure through the Temple of the Jade Serpent as a healing monk. She says that it feels pretty good except the interaction of the statues and the damage being so low it was kind of disappointing. The other issue brought up is about mana regen which as the blues say below is something they're still tinkering with.

From Ghostcrawler we have:

Mana regeneration and healing throughput is something that is still being tuned, so that will feel a bit off for a while longer.

We had to tone down Mistweaver DPS. In our raid tests, they were contributing too much damage while still being effective healers.

Chi Wave is something we're still tuning. The cooldown is now around 8 seconds, which may be too short. At the moment it accounts for half of the healing in raid situations.

Jab and other DPS abilities scale with your weapon, and also with AP. The damage is normalized in such a way that any weapon choice is equal to the other, so weapons are an aesthetic choice. We'll probably have the DPS abilities scale with SP, as long as they're balanced.

We've changed Mistweavers to also have a 1 second GCD as with the other two specializations.

Can you explain more about the problem with a longer Soothing Mists? The mana per second is the same whether it's a short or long channel. Do you feel compelled to complete the channel? Clipping it should not incur a mana penalty.

Cherry Mana Tea is intended to be "sipped" during break periods. Good Mistweavers will end a fight with as low mana as possible and as low Cherry Mana Tea stacks as possible. There are periods where you can't afford any breaks, but those vary by encounter. It should no longer break on taking damage. Stacks is something we are still iterating upon.

We've changed Jasmine Tea to an upfront mana cost that will generate Chi over time (think "Chi Tap"). We're still iterating a lot on this design though. The intent is that the Mistweaver has an edge on precision healing, while the Windwalker has less control but can gain Chi quickly.

Expel Harm only does damage if you "effectively" healed. If it's all overheal, no damage will happen. We intend for all monks to use the ability. Windwalkers can heal themselves.

And just today Kaivax added more to it:

We're thinking that Jab and Expel Harm saw a bit too much increase to mana last patch, and we’re going to reduce them somewhat.

We’ve increased the mana gain from Cherry Mana Tea. This spell will change whenever we tune mana and healing numbers, which has been happening a lot lately.

We've changed the number of serpent statues you can have out at once from 2 to 1. However, while in Stance of the Wise Serpent, you now have Eminence on yourself, causing half of your damage to be healing to nearby targets. This will allow “melee healing” monks to heal through dealing damage without having their statue down. The statue is intended to be more of a “cooldown” you use on tough fights, not similar to a totem you plop down.

We’re going to try having Renewing Mists also generate Chi (along with Surging Mist and Soothing Mists) when you cast it. The bug with Renewing Mists not showing up on raid/party frames should also be fixed in an upcoming build.

We’re getting rid of Jasmine Force Tea because we felt it was confusing to convert Mana to Chi, then Chi back to Mana with Cherry Mana Tea.

We’re going to make Surging Mist require a target rather than being a cast-time smart heal. The reason why it was originally a smart heal without requiring a target was to let you build up a stack of Vital Mists by using Jab, then cast an instant Surging Mist without having to change your target. We think the right place for the original Surging Mist smart heal is via a glyph.

One issue we’re concerned with is Surging Mist and Renewing Mists generating Chi, making it harder for you to burn down your Chi. We’re likely going to add another high Chi ability, and/or adjust talents so you can have some choice.

We like how Chi Wave bounces from friends and enemies, because the whole theme of the monk healer is weaving damage and healing together. If Chi Wave was a pure heal, it would break away from that theme.
With regard to feedback on these subjects, what we're really looking for is playing as a DPS healer (as opposed to the traditional "pure healing" playstyle), or perhaps a mix of the two. We want both the traditional and dps-to-heal to be viable and fun.

This certainly changes the way the statue will be used, it won't be a requirement anymore. Though with all the additional spells that will generate Chi perhaps it will end up a style choice like Disc with or without atonement. You can be a healing monk that just uses all heals to generate Chi, or you can use Jab to do it too and also get some healing out of the dps and that's what Kaivax's last paragraph touches on. Jasmine Force Tea going away will make a difference as well. Other than through talent there won't be a way to emergency generate Chi. In all regards they're putting a lot of work into making things just right and that really gets me excited to see what happens next.