Weaving the Mists of Vitality

Picture Courtesy TheLifestream.net

I was trying to figure out just what I could use to symbolize the way a monk would be a Mistweaver and instill life in their allies when it struck me like one of those V8 commercials. You know the ones, the person slaps themselves hard in the head and goes "coulda had a V8!". Yeah, "DUH" Sin, Final Fantasy 7's own Lifestream fits so perfectly. Well on to the topic at hand. I wrote this almost 2 months ago in a thread on MMO-Champion and just never got around to bringing it here. It was a sudden epiphany about how monk healing could work and I just wanted to share my thoughts on it after this here break. (That I just figured out how to do >.<)

"I myself do have a feeling it's going to end up much like atonement priests in the amount of dps done. Attacking the enemy to cause heals doesn't mean that it has to do a lot of dps. Every attack could land for 1 damage but cause 10k healing for all we know. It's more the style of healing they're referring to when they say "attack to heal" than any indication that they'll be worth stacking over other healers. It's also not even the beta, the entire "always attack to heal and never target another player" ideal could be dropped entirely along the way.

To go the route of "only attacking enemies to heal" then yes everything would have to be a smart heal, but that wouldn't work exactly for tank healing would it. I just had a thought however that some abilities may turn out to be "heals target of your target for x amount", thus enabling you to heal the tank (I loved this kind of healing in EQ2) specifically for varying amounts (so you can have a heal, flash heal, greater heal setup for these). Then there would be the statues that would heal the lowest person within 20 yards of the statue for x amount, 3 statues = 3 heals per proc of the statue, being similar to a Circle of Healing effect. Just throw in an ability that when you attack you heal the party/raid for x amount, so you would skip that ability when you need single target healing, but can use that attack when you need party/raid healing.

So with gimpy names in here you have:

Heals target of target for small amount slowly
costs small % of mana
cast time 2.5 seconds
Deals x damage and heals target of target for y healing

Heals target of target for medium amount quickly
costs large % of mana
cast time 1.2 seconds
Deals x damage and heals target of target for y healing

Heals target of target for large amount slowly
costs medium % of mana
cast time 2.5 seconds
Deals x damage and heals target of target for y healing

Wildgrowth but direct heal ability
costs medium % of mana
no cast time
Deals x damage and 200% of that damage is healed to 5 lowest health party/raid members within 40 yards of the target.

Then there's the current preview ability of statue of the jade serpent that heals a player that's within 20 yards of it, most likely would need to have an ICD on this effect.

Versions of the target of target healing attacks could also be made that cost the same or a little more mana to heal the person with the lowest health at the time."

~Which I posted here

So nothing ground breaking but just an idea about how a monk could tank heal without having to target the tank. There are also other great ideas in the thread on how it could be done as well. It's just the statement they made about Monks never having to target any player to heal them that makes it such a thought provoking conundrum. Later in the thread someone points out that discussing this could be entirely pointless to which I said "the theorycrafting is half the fun." I love speculating on how things could be achieved with the monk class. Anyone out there have any other thoughts? I'd love to hear them.

Picture by Junior Mclean

In other awesome news I'd like to congratulate Poneria/Meg on getting the Warlock Columnist job with WoWinsider. =D