Enter the Monk: Initial Mistweaver Thoughts

Chíyu from the WoW Armory. For some reason, you cannot see her Monk belt. :(

Now that I am Level 65 on my Pandaren Monk, Chíyu, I have realized I have not posted my thoughts on the Monk (or more importantly, healing on the Monk) at all.  Well, except for a short blurb in my post about Effy hitting Level 90:

4. I also made a wee Pandaren Monk – Chíyu.

Yup, so I am pretty sure that is the extent of her introduction on my blog.  For shame.

I usually do not get too in depth talking about my alts, except when I create their stories.  Talking about how they level and my dungeon/questing experiences is not usually something I get into.

But then, I made my Monk.  Even though I am doing dailies, raiding, grouping for dungeons/scenarios, running LFR, and completing other items to prep for raids on Effy… and leveling my DK… I keep finding myself trying to get in at least one dungeon on Chíyu whenever I can.

The Monk just seems to be a different type of healer.  It is similar to when I leveled my Disc Priest.  It was such a fun leveling experience that I have never been able to change her from Disc, and every other Priest I have even dabbled with has only been Disc.  Kind of like all my DKs being Blood.

Leveling on a Monk

Master Cheng dueling Chiyu

To start with, when leveling a Pandaren Monk, you have a lot of things going for you.

1. Pandaren have bonuses to rested XP (it lasts twice as long).
2. Monks have a daily quest that rewards a bonus XP buff.  (It lasts 1 hour and stacks to 2 hours.)
3. Monks receive a quest similar to their daily every ten levels, which provides the same XP buff, and a piece of leveling (and transmog!) gear.
4. I have the full set of leather casting BoAs of varying level caps.  (Shoulders, Chest, Trinkets, Ring, Staff to Level 80 & Head, Legs, Cloak to Level 85.)

They come together to make leveling pretty painless.

Add to that, even spec’d as Mistweaver, she manages quests well.  I have had no issues there so far.  She actually does a fair amount of damage, and even if it takes her a little longer to kill something (which it does not seem to), she also heals while she attacks.  Comparable damage may be due to the combat-nature of the dailies, which consist of a one-on-one match with one of the Monk masters.

In fact, in dungeons, I am finding I do quite a bit of damage when I choose to.  Spinning Crane Kick has a tendency to push me to the top of the meter when there are four or more mobs – and that is while it is healing at the same time.

I may have to try pulling an absurd number of mobs while questing – DK-style – and see if this both kills the mobs quickly and efficiently, and keeps me alive.  That should be interesting.  :)

Healing on a Monk

Soothing Mist

At Level 65, I have a huge number of spells already.  The great part about being in BC content is that I am finally getting to use them too.

For Vanilla content I was getting by with:

• Renewing Mist – Cast on tank, spreads to low party members
• Soothing Mist – Mostly cast on tank, but switch to other low members as needed
• Surging Mist – For when the tank starts to take a lot of damage
• Chi Wave – Works as a minor Chi dump, group heal, and a small bit of added damage

Honestly, this was usually more than I needed (and more to keep me engaged) unless the tank was extra squishy or pulling way too much.  On the rare occasion when I got nervous (even in over-pull situations, I was usually overhealing), I would throw Life Cocoon on the tank.  But honestly, I mostly used it because it looks cool.  :)

Spinning Crane Kick

Now that Chíyu is in BC content, I am finding myself healing with more of my arsenal.  Spinning Crane Kick is becoming my go-to AoE heal when the tank is chain-pulling big packs of trash.  I have to be careful with it, though, as it locks me out of using other spells, and does not heal the ranged.

The “new” skills I am playing with now:

• Enveloping Mist – Uses Chi instead of mana, and will instantly heal my Soothing Mist target (I have actually had this spell for a while now)
• Uplift – Heals everyone with Renewing Mist
• Healing Sphere – These are like one-shot Lightwells, and only require party members to walk through them (apparently, a chance to create these when healing is my Mastery)

Healing on my Monk is really fun, even if she is completely OP.  :)  I watch her lazily keep everyone alive in situations where I would usually be forced to admit defeat in leveling dungeons with PUGs.  The only issues I have run into so far – even while healing the flood of newbie DK tanks who are always present in the BC dungeons – have been two:

1. My go-go DK tank who decided to pull two rooms and then take off out of my LoS with those two rooms of mobs.  Smart.  His response?  “Keep up better.”  <sigh>  He was the only one who died there, though.
2. Getting one-shot by another DK tank who pulled several packs of trash and then got MC’d.  Everyone else survived, of course.  <shrug>  And I imagine I could have saved myself if I had noticed he was MC’d before he stuck a Hellreaver through my head.

I am sure there will be much playstyle change between now and 90, especially between leveling/questing/dungeons and how she functions in a raid.  There was already a slight change between Vanilla and BC.

I am curious and excited to see her continued progression.

Final Thoughts

Zen Pilgrimage

I have not really played with the other two Monk specs at all.  I am having too much fun healing, and too much fun successfully leveling AS a healer.  Hooray!  :)

Leveling as a healer is very exciting to me!

Partly, this is due to the fact that I have noticed a pattern in Mists quests, one that makes me nervous about the state of my other healers.  I noticed the quest rewards are very class/spec specific.

So far, for my DK, it seems everything has been pieces useful to her as a tank, and I am pretty sure Effy’s quests were at least 90% caster specific.  I think towards the end, I had Intellect and Agility options.  I think…

Sifaol, my Priest, can probably get by as Shadow <shudder> as the gear will be the same (Intellect and Spirit), like Effy’s was.

But what about my Pally?  I cannot bear the thought of leveling her in Holy, and even leveling her other spec – Prot – would be long and arduous I am sure.  (Just based on the time it takes for her to kill farming pests.)  I do not want to get all the way to 90 and have zero healing gear.  :(

Same for my Druid.  I mostly play her as Feral now, but I have a long history with her as (fail) Resto/Balance, and I am determined to learn how to play a Resto Druid eventually!  (Something that has eluded me for two expansions now!)  Yes, I admit it.  I can heal on every other WoW class with a healing spec, but I have forever been a fail Resto Druid.  <ashamed>

~ Effy

P.S. = I also found out Pandaren are very buggy in WoW Model Viewer, but perhaps that is because I am running the 32-bit version on a 64-bit system.  Has anyone seen the new version in 64-bit?  I have looked!  :(

Also, Chiyu looks pretty cool as a human.

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