Mistweaver Monk Guide
Class Changes for Mistweaver Monk
On the Patch 12.1 PTR, there are some Mistweaver Monk changes.
Developers’ notes: We’re making a few adjustments to Mistweaver Monk with the intent of incentivizing Mastery as a more viable secondary stat and shifting some throughput out of Spinning Crane Kick and into Ancient Teachings.
New Talent: Vital Expenditure – Soothing Mist’s healing is increased by 300%, but its mana cost is increased by 200%. Choice node with Dancing Mists.
All healing reduced by 3%.
Mastery: Gust of Mist healing increased by 50%.
Spinning Crane Kick damage decreased by 15%.
Way of the Crane now transfers 280% of damage done (was 340%).
Jadefire Teachings now increases Ancient Teaching’s transfer amount by 320% (was 270%).
Starting the 12.1 PTR cycle strong, we're seeing an incredible entry into the reallocation of damage-to-heal conversions, with Spinning Crane Kick's damage and Way of the Crane's transfer rate both being cut for an effective 30% reduction to healing, while Jadefire Teachings additional transfer rate instead receives an 18.5% buff.
This stems directly from an issue Mistweavers are currently facing, where the target threshold for Spinning Crane Kick healing to overtake pressing Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, and Rising Sun Kick was occurring far too early. This change should bring that threshold up nicely, shifting it from roughly 3 targets to press Spinning Crane Kick on its own to roughly 8, pending any further changes, with the tier set (we'll talk more about this in the next section).
With the introduction of Vital Expenditure, this buff to Soothing Mist healing flows downward into Spiritfont's Soothing Mists, potentially raising the stakes of choosing our Apex talent, coming off a season where our Mythic+ build takes 0 of 4 Apex talents, though competition for points remains quite high. No change for Raid, as Dancing Mists is far too strong a pick at higher target counts like Raid.
The Mastery: Gust of Mists change should see a slight bump in our passive Mastery usage within the spec, namely from its largest contributor: Crane Style. It's a bit too early to tell whether this Mastery buff will be enough to make it a viable contender against Haste, Critical Strike, and Versatility, but the odds aren't looking in Mastery's favor.
Tier Set
The Mistweaver Season 2 Tier set was revealed on the PTR.
2-Set Bonus: Rising Sun Kick deals 30% increased damage and Rushing Wind Kick’s healing is increased by 100%.
4-Set Bonus: Rising Sun Kick and Rushing Wind Kick have a chance to cause their next cast to ignore their cooldown and have their mana cost reduced by 100%.
Mistweaver's tier set bonus for 12.1 is fairly simple, almost akin to the 12.0 tier set, Way of Ra-den's Chosen: 2-set with a basic formula of "damage/healing increased by X," and 4-set with a "cast Y ability more often."
The gameplay won't necessarily change much with this set, aside from forcing your hand to press another Rising Sun Kick/Rushing Wind Kick immediately after one if the 4-set ends up proccing. Thankfully, this is a pretty integral part of our toolkit regardless of content or build played, so it remains a top priority ability to press nonetheless.
An unfortunate side effect of pressing Rising Sun Kicks back to back is Rising Mist's internal cooldown, currently sitting at 1 second (set due to Corruption during Ny'alotha, the Waking City). As Haste secondary stat continues to climb, Mistweaver's global cooldown will more commonly fall under that 1 second threshold, forcing you to "hold" onto the proc for longer in order to avoid clipping the internal cooldown and losing an extension.
Thoughts and Opinions
Though a short list of changes, I'm a fan of most of these coming in.
On one hand, the Spinning Crane Kick change is incredibly welcomed. If you've played Mistweaver in any capacity within Mythic+ this past season, the sheer relevance of spamming that one button for 90% of the dungeon should be reduced pretty significantly. Here's hoping we continue to see more iteration to this gameplay and bring more of our toolkit into the fold.
Regarding the Mastery: Gust of Mists changes, I feel like we're nearing our wits' end with this version of Mastery. It's either dominant or completely useless, and coming into Midnight, it's been pushed further into completely useless territory. The removal of several applicators of Gust of Mists, leaving it to activate only via Renewing Mist and Enveloping Mist (buttons that aren't directly useful to press during active damage, thus overhealing via Gusts), doesn't help even with Amplified Rush as a talent that is, frankly, the actual worst talent in the entire tree. Similarly, talents that only sometimes (an incredibly low sometimes) increase the healing of Gusts (I'm looking at you, Resplendent Mist! Why are you two points, anyways?!) continue to be wasted space on our talent tree; space that could go to more useful, meaningful, and fun choices instead.
The tier set is just okay. I don't hate it, but I don't love it, especially when comparing it against the other healers' tier sets. Numerically, it's weaker than our previous tier set but slightly more interactive due to getting a "reset" on your spells to cast more often. The one worry I do have is the discrepancy between Rising Sun Kick's healing (via Jadefire Teachings) and Rushing Wind Kick's healing, which marks quite a large gap between them and may push Mistweavers to run Rushing Wind Kick in all forms of content simply due to its higher healing. I'd like to see a slight modification to the tier set (or the relevant spells) to account for this gap and make the choice more palatable.
The last part that's truly "missing" from these notes is any emphasis on hero tree diversity. The sheer dominance Conduit of the Celestials holds over Master of Harmony is concerning. The split was nearly down the middle, with the latter favored in Mythic+ and the former in Raid, but that balance is now completely gone, driven by repeated changes on Conduit's side and a lack of them on Master of Harmony's heading into the expansion. I don't want a complete shift into Master of Harmony, but a closer balance between the two for either form of content would be welcomed.
Looking ahead to 12.1, I'm hopeful we'll see continued iteration on all of these fronts, with hero tree balance being the one area not yet addressed at all and Apex talent (Midnight's expansion feature!) decisions taking a beat-around-the-bush maneuver rather than addressing a multitude of bugs and numerical downsides to it directly.
