Chi Wave

In news not related to beta, Pandaria, Pandaren, Monks, healing, or anything else posted on this blog…

My Rogue just got Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.

Chi maybe my favorite alternate resource in the game. I don’t like to call it a secondary resource because it is just as important to Monks as Mana and Energy. Rogues and Paladins have secondary resources because they build them up to use another ability, if we don’t build Chi we can’t do anything else. Plus it’s really fun to say “Chi, CHEEEE”. Unlike Brewmasters and Windwalkers, Mistweaver Monks don’t have to rely only on Jab for consistent Chi generation, we generate Chi through any number of spells.

The way we’ll be generating Chi most often will be through Soothing Mists. Every tick during the channel will generate 1 Chi, but only as long as that heal isn’t over heal. Over healing generates no Chi and it wastes Mana. Soothing Mists encourages us to be efficient healers. I’m not saying that as we progress into raids and Mana regen isn’t as bad as it is now and damage is greater that we won’t let it keep channeling on a tank taking constant damage, just right now it’s not a good way of healing.

The next way we generate Chi is rather quick if done right. Surging Mist will generate 1 Chi when cast and has a base cast time of 1.5s. But I don’t see it being cast alone very often. I rarely every do. I cast Surging Mist while I’m channeling Soothing Mists. It makes the cast time instant (and continues the channel of Soothing) so I get a large boost of healing and a large amount of Chi generated quickly. I’ve said before that this combination is like our Greater Heal, not terribly Mana efficient but puts out a lot of healing. 

Based on recent posts by the Dev Team, we’re trading one Chi generating spell for another. Right now in Beta we have and ability called Jasmine Force Tea, it costs 9% of base mana (at level 87 I have 163k Man a so the cost is 14,400 Mana) and generates 1 Chi every 2 seconds for 6 seconds, so 3 Chi total. But Blizz has said they don’t like this mechanic. We use Mana to build Chi and then use Chi to build stacks of Cherry Mana Tea which we then use to regen Mana, according to them it’s a confusing system so we’re losing Jasmine Force Tea. Oh well, I really only used it when no one was taking damage at all and I wanted to spend Chi to build Cherry Mana Tea stacks (or keep them from falling off). Instead we’ll be getting Chi from Renewing Mist.

“We’re going to try having Renewing Mists also generate Chi (along with Surging Mist and Soothing Mists) when you cast it.” – Kaivax

Unless I’m reading that wrong, we’ll generate Chi on the cast of Renewing Mists, which is still great to hear. Renewing Mist costs 3% of our Mana and I like to keep it up as often as possible (the bug with it right now means I’m casting it regularly because I don’t know who has it).

Those look to be the big ways we generate Chi, we have Jab too but night now it’s Mana cost is too high to be used regularly (even though I really really really want to), but I think that in the next beta patch we’ll be able to try out Jab healing

Confession: I’ve been watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force recently and I couldn’t resist making today’s title an ATHF reference (It’s from the episode Super Recarl, Frylock orders a bag of 200 eyeballs from wegotussomemedicalwaste.com to rebuild Carl’s body after he accidentally destroys it with a toilet) and it seemed to me like an amusing title for today.

So anyway, like all other healing classes we have cool downs, two of them are baseline from choosing Mistweaver and the third is a talent choice.

 Life Cocoon: ” Encases the target in a cocoon of Chi energy, healing them for 5% of their health every 1 sec and causing them to be immune to all harmful damage and effects.  While in the Cocoon, the target moves at 50% reduced speed and is unable to attack or cast spells. 2 minute cooldown”

This is the talent based CD, it’s in the 5th tier so you have to be level 75 to learn it. I’m really not sure how I feel about it, I like that it’s a bubble that lasts for 8 seconds so it’ll heal for 40% of the target’s HP. On beta, mine says it heals for 6% instead of 5% so that’s another 8% healing. But I really don’t like that the target can’t do anything at all for those 8 seconds. It would be useful if someone where standing in the wrong place, I could Life Cocoon them so they could run out, but their movement is reduced by 50%. I do see it being useful for tanks who mess up their taunt switches though. Tank A misses the taunt off Tank B so I Life Cocoon him so he isn’t taking extra damage and Tank A can get threat faster. It does have a really cool graphic though:

 Revival: “Instantly heals all friendly targets within vision for (5,583 + 310.0% of SP), and clears them of any harmful magical, poison and bleed effects. 3 minute cooldown”

We get access to this spell at level 72 and it costs 7% of base Mana. It’s a pretty straightforward spell, hit it and everyone within range gets a nice chunk of healing. On beta mine heals for close to 40k. Pretty much saves a group from a wipe with the push of a button. I like it a lot. There really isn’t much to say about it other than it being awesome.

 Meditation: “Reduces all damage taken by 99% and redirects to you all harmful spells cast against party and raid targets within 30 yards. Lasts 8 sec (channeled). Being the victim of a melee attack will break your meditation, cancelling the effect. 3 minute cooldown”

Learned at 82, Meditation is my favorite of the three cooldowns. It doesn’t have a Mana cost so it can be used no matter how OOM you are or how much Chi you don’t have. Meditation doesn’t heal everyone like Tranquility or Spirit Link, but it will prevent damage to the raid for 8 seconds (unless cancelled from melee damage) so the rest of the healing team can keep everyone else alive. Plus it looks really awesome while you channel it.

I don’t really want to give strategies on when to use these spells, well other than Life Cocoon because I’m still unsure of it, because cool downs are very reactive in nature. I can’t really say “Use Meditation when X happens” because X may not always happen and using Meditation may not be the right time to use it if another healer is using one of their CDs. But that’s really how healing is across the board, knowing what spell to use at the right time.

Overall I think that our cooldowns are in a decent place, I’m sure I’ll get used to Life Cocoon’s mechanics or maybe not use it at all. The same tier that Life Cocoon is on has a “Mystery Talent” that isn’t in game yet so that could be replacement instead of it. The other talent on that tier is called Ring of Peace and it’s another damage reduction ability, all enemies close to you to be pacified. I think Life Cocoon will still be our choice but we’ll see what happens.

I said before that when I first copied my Monk I reforged to Spirit and Mastery. Spirit was an obvious choice because it made sense that Mana regen was going to be low (I was very very right). Mastery seemed like a good fit because having a free heal seemed like it would be fun.

It is.

Mistweaver Mastery is called Gift of the Serpent and on any of our heals we have a chance to summon a Solace Sphere, which heals for roughly 10k. 

Pardon the ridiculousness of the outfit, beta models aren’t in so everything is placeholder. That green floating orb is a Healing Sphere. They spawn in two different ways. The first is from our Mastery, the second is a spell that’s called Healing Sphere, it’s castable and can be placed anywhere. So pretty much our Mastery is a free random placement of one of our spells. I love it.

I can’t really talk about Mastery without talking about the spell Healing Sphere. Like I said before, it’s castable and can be placed anywhere. Common strategy is to place it right on the tank so they can’t miss getting it’s heal. It’s really cheap (1.5% mana) and quickly cast (1.5s). I’ll admit though, right now it’s not my favorite spell. It costs mana and doesn’t give Chi in return, plus I’m not crazy about the mechanics of it. It feels clunky to target the ground for a small spell. The targeting circle is about the size of a player hit box so placing it takes a little more precision, than say Healing Rain. I’d also like if I had a counter of how many were out or an alert on when they got used. I bet an addon would work for that after live comes out.

There’s another problem with healing spheres, not many people know what it is and they kind of sit there unless someone either randomly walks over it or it despawns. Monk healing is too new so people just aren’t aware of what it is. I came up with an easy solution. In the foyer of Temple of the Jade Serpent before the first pull I cast Healing Sphere and tell everyone what it is and what it does. Since I did that they don’t sit around as often because I see people running towards them for a free 10k heal. 

It looks like I’m getting ready to change beta servers. I’ve played on a PvP server for years so that was my first choice when I got into beta, but all my friends apparently chose the other server. I’ll copy my last Monk later and update with the name.

I just, well an hour ago, made a post where I mentioned I wished I had a little better AoE healing in groups. Well, I found it: Spinning Crane Kick. It’s awesome. I can position myself in the middle of the group and DPS and Heal at the same time. Finally I am getting to play how I wanted to as a Monk since I first heard about the class, DPS as Heals.

Spinning Crane kick works very easily, hit it and heal a group over time. Very similar to Healing Rain. The difference is that it’s a channeled spell for three seconds and that the channel is currently uninterruptable. You are able to move while you channel it but the way to cancel it is to click off the buff. I assume that it can be macro’d to be cancelled that way but I’m not sure. If it is possible it’s something I’ll be looking into. Spinning Crane Kick costs 1 Chi, which makes it even more appealing to me. One of the things I feel is missing is some more Chi based heals.

Now I know that Spinning Crane Kick seems like a very obvious thing to have missed, it is right there in the spell book and the heal is listed on Teaching of the Monastery. It’s mentioned twice, how could I not see it? Well, if you haven’t been on beta the spell book is a giant mess. There are three tabs and only one of them has the abilities available to you. ALL the abilities. Spells you can use are listed alphabetically, then the passive ones. Passive abilities include racials, spec based abilities and guild perks. I have 31 abilities listed on 6 pages. I don’t feel as bad about missing them.

…other than Acid Rain being bugged, has got to be Renewing Mists not showing up on the UI. It’s a new enough spell that I’m not comfortable with how long it last and who it is on so it tends to fall off. And I hate that.

Tonight I ran Temple a couple of times and I noticed the same thing each time. I wished I had better AoE heals. Renewing Mists is that heal, it travels around and heals and can instantly be refreshed while healing directly. It’s a great healing tool and I want to use it more efficiently, unfortunately the bug is preventing that. I know that I’m blaming a bug for my healing short comings, but right now Monk healing is under tuned and we need all the help we can get.

But I think that this bug being fixed will help more than a little. Once I, and all the other Monks, can see who we have the HoT on instead of using more Mana to recast Renewing Mists, we’re using Chi to renew it. Our AoE heals increase and so does our Mana usage and regeneration. This very minor appearing bug has a pretty large effect on healing.

The first instance I ran I immediately thought that Mana regen was WAAAAAY too low. I was OOM every pull and that was after having flasked, reforged, gemmed and enchanted for Spirit. My in combat regen sat right at about 2400mp5, for comparison my Resto Shaman in LFR gear is at 4100 mp5. As I said, I evaluated how I was healing and what I could have done better, made some changes and went back in. It was better, but I still felt like I was going OOM more often than I should. I’ve made even more progress is Mana/Chi management since then and am now pretty comfortable with it.

For starters, unless absolutely necessary I don’t let Soothing Mists channel for it’s full duration. It is incredibly powerful and expensive to cast. Soothing Mists will generate 1 Chi every time it heals, since you can only have at max 5 Chi continuing the channel will not be beneficial (unless the target is low on health and needs the heal).

I do not cast Surging Mists every time I’m channeling Soothing Mists, again unless I need to. I like to think of these two combined as being the Greater Heal for Monks. I don’t use it if I don’t need it.

These two things alone save considerable Mana and help to build my Chi.

Like I said before, my Mana regen is considerably lower than my Shaman’s on live, which is fine with me. My Shaman has better gear and Vibmonk has something that Vibram doesn’t: Cherry Mana Tea.

Cherry Mana Tea is one of the coolest Mana Regen abilities I’ve seen. I absolutely love it. I use it every chance I get. Every time you use 3 Chi, either through Uplift, Chi Wave or Thunder Focus Tea, you will gain a stack of Cherry Mana Tea. Every stack currently gives you back 2% of your mana and stacks up to 50 times. Then you channel “drink” it and regain mana, currently it’s one stack a second. Theoretically, you could save all of them and then go from 0% to 100% mana, but you’d be OOM several times before then. With the Mana regen being low, I tend to save as many as I can on trash and then have a stockpile of 15 or so on a boss fight. The best thing about it is you don’t lose stacks if you cancel the channel.

What does concern me is how Mana regen is going to be for freshly leveled Monks. Right now premade characters are fully gemmed and enchanted with ilvl 378 gear, new characters aren’t going to have that. Depending on drops they could have as low as ilvl as 308 – 333 gear, Mana regen will be even worse for them. I know that when I’ve leveled alts there have been times that I had a trinket or ring from a previous expansion’s gear right up to level cap, it was my Priest and I’m not proud of it. What’s going to happen to those characters? I’m really hoping that Mana regen from 85-89 will be balanced around that and then at 90 take a huge hit from diminishing returns.

Overall, I don’t think we’re in as terrible a place as some people are making us out to be. Yes our regen is low, and Blizz has taken notice. Yesterday Kaviax said that they are in the process of changing spell costs and how much Mana Cherry Mist Tea is giving back, and that they’ll be doing it often throughout the beta. It’s a big reason I’m not terribly concerned right now.

Last night I finally got to 15 on Morshan and decided to tackle some instances. I cheated first and DPS’d through Deadmines and then healed Wailing Caverns right after. And I’ll put this as honestly as possible: Monk healing at low levels is INCREDIBLY broken.
But in our favor.
Since we only have Soothing Mists for the first three levels of dungeon finder we are incredibly lucky that it costs next to no Mana and does its full heal on every tick. It was kid of boring. I spent more time watching a movie than I did paying attention to health bars. No one died or even came close to dying.

I hit 18 about the middle of WC and was excited for Chi Wave to pop up on my UI (I was going to screen shot it since its the name of this blog and all…) but it didn’t. It bugged and told me to see my trainer. And since I was the healer I couldn’t hearth to see if that would fix it. When I dinged 19 I checked again and it had fixed itself. Oh well, I got to use it on the last boss encounter of WC.

This morning I logged back into beta to try my premade Monk, his name is actually Vibmonk and not Vibtwo like I’d said earlier. I spent about 30 minutes looking at my spec, stats, gear, reading some threads and talking to people in the guild I’d joined about Monk healing. I decided that for now I wanted to focus on Spirit and Mastery. Spirit because at this gear level I need all the mana regen I can get and Mastery because it adds to my healing without me doing anything. Haste seems like it’ll be better at high gear levels (as usual) because it’ll speed up the time between ticks of Soothing Mists and Renewing Mists, but right now we need regen and this just doesn’t help. It will help with Chi regen, but not mana. Crit doesn’t seem like it’s terribly beneficial for us right now, but time will tell.

After gemming, reforging and enchanting I queued up as a Healer. When the queue popped I buffed everyone and we set off. The first thing I noticed was that mana regen is complete shit. The solution is don’t use mana. I know right? Kind of a crazy concept. Next I noticed reread Soothing Mists. I thought at first that I had to keep the channel going completely to get the Chi from it. How wrong I was. We didn’t wipe but I did run out of Mana very very quickly. And I kept running out of Mana. 3/5 people died on the first boss because I was out of Mana. Not a very good start to a guy trying to write a Monk healing blog, right?

I talked to another Monk for a bit and figured out how to fix it. No one died for the rest of the instance. Here’s what I did, keep Mana using abilities to a minimum when they aren’t needed. Keep Renewing Mists up all the time so you can use Uplift whenever it’s off CD and use Chi Wave whenever it’s CD comes up. Use Soothing Mists to regen Chi and combine it with Surging Mists for a nice burst of heal.

I only had time to run it once completely through and then the game crashed during my second run, we were in the middle of the library boss.

Overall impressions so far: Monk healing is fun. It’s not terribly hard to pick up, but it seems like it’ll take a while to master. The down side right now is that Mana regen is really really low right now. I’m not sure if it’s from gear or just undertuning in general right now. There are some changes coming soon so I’ll wait and see how those play out.

Vibram

I have successfully started my beta experience. My two Monks are Morshan the Alliance Pandaren Monk (she is currently level 9) and my premade Horde Monk Vibtwo. I am on Gilneas US PvP server for both characters if anyone wants to stop and say hi.