A Tale of Two Builds; Tankysitting and Kickweaving
Edit: This post is now considered somewhat out of date. Please see the Mistweaver Talent Build post for a better explanation with some more options and nuances.
Welcome to the in-depth explanation of the two existing raid healing builds for Mistweavers going into Battle For Azeroth: Tankysitting and Kickweaving. Today we will be talking solely about raid healing, and generally from a Mythic raiding perspective. While experience is limited, both of these builds have been tried and tested during beta raid testing on all difficulties. We expect these to hold up even going into Uldir once it releases.
Tankysitting – Playstyle
The first build we will be covering is Tankysitting, or a build that largely focuses on healing tanks while sometimes also healing the raid when needed. Before we get into it, keep in mind that Battle For Azeroth is much different than Legion as a whole. Tanks can and will take far more damage and there is a lot less free healing going around. It can be easy to dismiss this build as unnecessary, but Battle For Azeroth raids have proven otherwise.
Tankysitting revolves around Soothing Mist and Essence Font. The general idea consists of Soothing the tanks, using Enveloping Mist and Vivify as needed to keep them alive. Cast Renewing Mist on whoever needs healing so Vivify will splash to them. Also consider Vivifying other people who need extra help as mana and time allow. When the raid takes a decent amount of damage across a lot of people, pop Essence Font to bring them back up.
You might recognize this as being very similar to dungeon or Mythic+ healing, but one key difference will be carefully managing our mana. Make sure to use Essence Font when appropriate, regardless of how long Upwelling has. Also use Enveloping Mist and Vivify sparingly, tracking Lifecycles so you can get good discounts. Don’t be afraid to break the Lifecycles order if necessary though, as sometimes the opportunity doesn’t come up but you still might have to Vivify or Enveloping someone anyway. To get some advanced Soothing Mist tips, see our Ability Spotlight on it
For talents, we take Mist Wrap because we will be using Enveloping Mist a lot anyway and Lifecycles for the same reason. Summon Jade Serpent Statue similarly performs as the best talent in its row when you are already frequently directing Soothing to the proper tank. Upwelling gives tremendous value every second Essence Font goes unused, which will happen when you get busy taking care of tanks.
Kickweaving – Playstyle
The other build, Kickweaving, utilizes the new Rising Mist talent to enhance Essence Font’s healing while it is on cooldown and do tremendous amounts of damage. Rising Mist causes each Rising Sun Kick to heal every person with one of the Mistweaver HoTs (heals over time) and briefly extend them all. It will only heal a person once even if they have more than one of the listed spells, but it will extend all of them. The majority of the healing comes from the direct heal itself, with the HoT extension being a small added bonus. Rising Mist works as a talent because Rising Sun Kick costs very little mana and the talent does a good amount of healing.
Update: There has been some confusion, so I will clarify that this is discussing raids only. Rising Mist healing scales with the number of targets affected by Essence Font, Renewing Mist, or Enveloping Mist and cannot reach competitive levels with only 5 party members. Refer to Tankysitting but sub out Upwelling for Focused Thunder most times for Mythic+ dungeons.
General play will involve using Essence Font whenever the raid takes damage followed immediately by Rising Sun Kick. From there, the build can diverge a little bit. You can either take Refreshing Jade Wind and keep that up if melee are hurt, or you can take Invoke Chi-Ji and use Renewing Mist and Vivify to dump excess mana to heal ranged players. Either way, you will also be spending downtime mashing Tiger Palm for Teachings of the Monastery stacks so that you can Blackout Kick immediately after Rising Sun Kick to try to reset its cooldown, as well as gaining some mana from Spirit of the Crane. Use Thunder Focus Tea for the first Rising Sun Kick for a combo of Rising Sun Kick –> Tiger Palm –> Rising Sun Kick –> Blackout Kick into a potential 3rd Rising Sun Kick for even more healing.
For talents, we take Chi Burst simply as a default talent that is better than Chi Wave and we don’t cast Enveloping Mist much in this build. Spirit of the Crane, as mentioned above, obviously benefits when you already want to fish for Rising Sun Kick resets. Refreshing Jade Wind and Chi-Ji can be changed out depending on the fight or raid needs. Finally, the build literally does not function without Rising Mists so we need that.
When to Choose Each Build
We have a very rare case where neither of these two builds simply performs better. Each has its positives and negatives.
Tankysitting is:
- The best tank healing in the game
- Still provides a lot of raid healing
- Can easily transition to spot healing when needed
- Does not need to be in melee to work
However it is also:
- Somewhat difficult on high movement fights
- Has a hard time working in any DPS at all as Soothing occupies most downtime
On the other hand, we have Kickweaving which is:
- Just as much total healing as Tankysitting
- Shifts most of that healing to the raid if tank healing is either covered or unnecessary
- Extremely mobile and allows sitting in melee all of the time
- Generally the most DPS any single healer can provide a raid without losing healing
But Kickweaving has these weaknesses too:
- Requires being in melee for most of the fight (can be awkward with some mechanics to have an extra melee body)
- Has a hard time transitioning to any other type of healing mid-pull
Ultimately some fights will obviously favor Tankysitting while others will favor Kickweaving. It may also come down to your raid composition or strengths such as other tanks or healers. If you aren’t sure which you should really go, come ask Discord or play what is more fun to you.
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hi
is kickweaving any good in m+?
Nope. Focused Thunder is a better choice than Rising Mist in small groups because the Renewing Mist coverage is huge. The minimal healing that would be done via Kickweaving is outpaced by two ReMs at 50% longer duration. The damage aspect is always present in the Mistweaver kit, so that argument doesn’t hold any ground. Focused Thunder is just always better in M+.
Do we have any idea what WILL be good in M+?
M+ guide is forthcoming but it’s more or less just tankysitting with Focused Thunder instead of Upwelling, and an option to switch to Chi-Ji instead of Statue depending on affixes/dungeon.
No, kickweaving’s healing relies largely Rising Mist’s healing which itself comes from having Essence Font HoTs on a lot more than 5 targets. With a group of only 5, RSK never heals for enough to be worth the talent or the GCD when you actually want to heal. Sorry for the late response.
I dont understand what youre saying here..: ” Essence Font HoTs on a lot more than 5 targets ” . Doesnt essence font only affect up to 6 ppl?
Essence Font heals 6 people per second. It can heal up to 18 people.
With some of the changes, would you also say MW is also a good utility healer, IE keeping renews up and using the aoe healing ability to keep the raid topped off? Or would that be to mana consuming?
Not sure what you mean by “utility healer”. Keeping up Renewing Mists and following either Kickweaving or Tankysitting builds are roughly the same overall healing at the moment, just that either build shifts the healing around to either specific targets or to the overall raid.
i’m just wondering if any1 allready figured out what the best stats are going to be for both tankysitting and or kickweaving?
Garg will have the Battle for Azeroth sheet public after the 8.0 patch, but right now from preliminary work it looks like Crit and Vers are still going to be the best stats for both builds.
Do you feel that mistweaver is gonna be in the lineup for a nerf in throughput?
One has already happened since the last raid test. It was minor, but hasn’t been touched again since so they seem to think it’s okay.
Hey, may I point out that all spells in the article are called “undefined”? Quite mysterious to read 🙂
I believe that is an issue that happens sometimes when it has trouble fetching the tooltips from Wowhead. A refresh should usually fix it.
With the nerf… is chi burst still the go to option in row one?
Yup, still better than Chi Wave and you just don’t really cast Enveloping Mist in the kickweaving build.
Just a quick question, You stated that the rising sun kick heal from rising mist will only heal a target once. I just want to make sure you mean once each time you cast rising sun kick.
Example: Target has Renewing mist and Essence font HOT on them. I use rising sun kick and it will extend both of those HOTS and also heal them for a direct amount.
Lets say I use blackoutkick to reset the cooldown of RSK again. When I RSK again, will that target get another extension of HOTS and a direct heal?
I am sorry if I am not making sense, I just want to make sure.
Yapp 🙂 He meant that if the target has more than 1 HoT so for example 2 (RM and EF) and you use Rising Sun Kick right after EF, he will get only 1 amount of direct heal, not 2 for both HOTs. And yes, if you refresh the CD within the EF window, you will give them 1 more direct heal and +2 sec to the hots.(I hope i know it right and its 2 sec 😀 WoW isnt opened atm) And sry for my english Kappa
Yes. Let’s say a target have a ReM and Essence Font buffs on them. Using RSK with RT talent will heal them only once (despite 2 buffs), but will extend both of them. With another reset it will be the same situation – single heal extending both buffs 🙂
Is it at all viable to go a spec that is more like…a ranged raid healer? I really enjoy these two specs, it’s refreshing new gameplay that gives MW a more defined playstyle in both builds. But.. How bad is it to not go for the kickbuild? Immagine Garothi on his transition. Everyone is at 30-50 yards from the boss and taking a massive hit. Is there no viable way for MW to spec for situations like that?
Refreshing Jade Wind, with Chi Burst and Upwelling is a 3 build of healing IMO (a Raidpartyheal on range). In figths where stuck together its really awesome.
Hey team, do we have any stat weights or stat priority yet for KickWeaving? im reading crit for raids everywhere, but i feel haste could be valuable as well?
Still just the 2 Speccs in BFA no Range Healer option?
What are the stat priorities with fistweaving?
Hi! I like to fist-weave!
RJW(Rushing Jade Wind)
RSK(Rising Sun Kick)
TFT(Thunder Focus Tea)
TotM(Teachings of the Monastery)
I run CritMastery<=Vers. I am currently c22%/h26%/m37%/v3%
The haste is great for RJW, and for essence font(I haven't noticed a haste cap). You can spam Tiger palm-Black out when on RSK/ TFT cool down rather quickly at 25% haste(hope for a free RSK). Crit just works great with haste, imo for the standard Fisting build.
I always build up 3 TotM before any TFT, while making sure all renews are out with essence font. Follow up with TFT-RSK-RenewingMist-RSK-Black Out Kick(hope for a 3 pump to give you a freeebie RSK). Rinse and repeat for heavy but predictable damage phases.
The rest is up to you, Dawg.
I am super proud you made an awesome class, and play-style choice!
Love,
Reikosuave-Bleedinghollow
wow, that butchered my stat priorities.
My stats say it all.