Why every
monk wants to spec mistweaver
I´ve always
been a healer. Maybe it is because I am female – as male players always like to
point out – or because I want to make up for not finishing medical school. I
just like the role and nothing is more satisfying to me than getting a group
safely through a hard encounter. I tried tanking but it is just not my thing. I
feel like a kindergarten teacher trying to get a group of toddlers to safely
cross a highway, while there´s always one going astray or pulling stuff he
shouldn´t and expecting me to fix it. Healing is nice and simple. You stand
back, you don´t bother with the boss, you just throw your heals at the tank,
shield the mage, learn not to panic if the warlock´s health drops drastically (seriously, they should warn newbie healers about that).
Healing is
hip
So yes, I
am a healer in heart and soul and I knew from the moment the monk class was
announced that I would spec as Mistweaver. Before I knew how cool monk healing
looked. I feel the need to point this out, because on the beta servers healer
is suddenly the hip thing to be. If somebody asks in chat how to respec (not
possible yet), rest assured that he has just seen a mistweaver at work and has realized
life is not worth living if he can´t become one too.
As a
result, for the first time in history waiting times for healers are longer than
those for dps in the random dungeon finder. At least at pre-85 level. Your
typical group consists of a reluctant tank, a very content healer and three
unhappy dps who were stupid enough to queue as both healer and dps and feel
they can´t really fulfill their destiny being forced to doing damage. As the
healer your every move will be watched closely, and the moment you let the
tanks health drop below 80% the dps happily chirp “I can heal!” and steal your
heals from you.
Let me point
out to all those people that healing is NOT just about looks. It takes
dedication and determination and skill to choose out of your wide range of
spells while painstakingly maintaining your mana pool because you have to make
life-and-death decisions in a split second…. Ok … who am I kidding? My healing
panda has at level 35 exactly two healing spells, that both need such a ridiculously
low amount of mana that I have yet to get lower than 60%, even if I let the
whole group´s hp drop to 20% just for the fun of it.
Soothing
Mists
Let´s take
a closer look at those two very powerfull spells. At level 10 you are rewarded
for you wise choice with the spell Soothing Mists, a channeled spell that
heals your target each tick. It costs a certain amount of mana each tick -
scaling up with your level - but at the moment such a low amount that you could
keep this spell channeled for a whole instance without ever going OOM. You
don´t have to, however, because in three ticks you will have your tank up from
10% to 100%, leaving you plenty of time to hand out some kicks to the mobs. A
nice detail of soothing mists is that you get rewarded for not overhealing. If
your tick completely heals your target, you have a 1 in 4 chance to regain a
chi point, needed for some other abilities.
Chi Wave
The second
spell, that comes at level 18 iirc, is Chi Wave, much like Prayer of Mending.
It jumps five times and does either healing or damage, depending on whether the
target is friendly or hostile. This makes it also extremely useful while
soloing, because it can ping-pong back and forth between you and the mob you
are killing. It has a 6 second cooldown, and requires 2 chi (out of a maximum
of 4).
The servers
are down right now for maintenance and if mistweaver healing hasn´t been nerfed
down after they come up again, it will happen in the very near future. And
that´s for the best. Not only because otherwise all the priests, paladins,
druids and shamans will have to go cry in a corner, but also because – believe it
or not – overpowered healing is kind of boring. Sure, it gives you plenty of
time to admire your Serpent Stance and find the best angle for a screenshot,
but in the end even healers like a challenge and some excitement. Let´s see how long the rush on healing lasts
when it requires you to think again…
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