A needed post 5.1 Nerf Glyph

I have been really pondering as of late what the Devs at Blizzard could do to fix the monk class in 5.2, and the more I go over it, the more I feel like many issues could be handled through the addition of a couple healing centered glyphs.  (This would be good too, because currently, the mistweaver monk glyphs are not very interesting or helpful)  So below I am making a list of the glyphs I think should be added to the game in 5.2 to help compensate for the overly harsh nerf.

1. Glyph of Spreading Mists - This would be a glyph that would let our renewing mists again hit three extra targets instead of two, but with the tradeoff of a weaker renweing mist hot, and a weaker uplift.  What percent to decrease renewing mist and uplift would need to be determined by Blizzard, as they have the numbers and I do not.  In essence, this would let you choose to have fewer hots out, that hit harder and can be uplifted for greater output, or you could have more hots, that are weaker and can't be uplifted for greater output.  Thus, the healing output would remain the same, but they way you choose to put out that healing would be a player choice.

2. Glyph of Mana Sphere - this glyph would cause the chance for crit to give extra mana tea stacks, to instead have your mastery bubbles, when used, have a chance to give extra tea stacks.  Obviously Blizzard would have to tune it, but this would then allow for more of a debate between whether to use crit or mastery, and that preference could change from fight to fight, depending on how effective mastery is on the fight.

3. Glyph of Spinning Mana Tea Kick - This glyph would cause you to consume 2 mana tea stacks everytime you cast spinning crane kick (without starting the cd for Mana Tea use), but would only give 2/3 of the normal mana back. (or whatever amount would be needed so that it would tune properly).  This would make use of spinning crane kick a little less painful, because you would get some mana back, and still be able to use mana tea right afterwards since the cd wasn't used.

4. Glyph of Rushing Jade Wind - This glyph would reduce the mana cost of spinning crane kick while Rushing Jade Wind is active, but reduce its healing by x% (whatever would make it tuned properly).  This would allow spinning crane kick to again be a viable stacked aoe healing option, but not make the choice of rushing jade wind mandatory, as Xuen is still a great talent to choose.

5. Glyph of Uplifting Renewal - Every time you cast uplift, it will increase the duration of every renewing mist by two ticks, but cause uplift to heal for 20% less (or whatever number will cause the healing to balance.

I feel each of these glyphs would allow our current healing abilities to have more utility and let us choose the glyph that best fits a fight rather then choosing glyphs that have little or no efftect on how we approach a boss.  Do you have any ideas for good glyphs to help fix the Mistweaver healing class?  Add them in the comments.

The importance of communication

If you read my posts the last two days, you know I am pretty disheartened.  But then last night, while on mmo-champion, I saw a one sentance summary of something ghostcrawler said in an interview.  It said that he felt the monk class needed more work the all the others, and that specifically, the mistweaver was proving to be very hard to balance.

This by no means makes the recent nerf storm better, but it does something that I think is more important.  It helps with the mental approach monks take to healing.  Knowing that Blizzard is having a hard time (and as such likely overreacting in their efforts) allows me to be fairly confident that they are aware of the problem and actively working on it.  I don't mind changes, as long as they are moving towards a better solution.  Monks needed a lot of work, so I think they truly are trying to move to a better solution that is easier to balance then the current model.  Reality is, I prefer changes, even nerfs, if it leads to a better gameplay solution.

So, while I am sure I will be very frustrated again tonight as we take on heroic stone guards, it now goes back to a post I made a couple days back on why I am not stressed about the daily issue.  They are fixing it, and it will take time, but like I said in that post, Blizzard never fixes things overnight, but they almost always fix things within 2-4 months.  So even if I have to wait until 5.2 to get the fix, it is nice to know it is coming.

I can deal with some bad, if I know it will get better, and in this case, I now believe it will get better.  My last post on the nerf, I explained that the worst part was not the nerf, but the lack of communication as to why.  Now that they have (albeit in a one line confession), I find I can go back to monk healing a little less discouraged, and a lot more hopeful.

The importance of Raiding

I was introduced to the world of raiding in World of Warcraft right at the beginning of TOC.  It was so foreign to me, and so different from anything I had done before.  Trying to heal the first boss in TOC with my pally was a complete nightmare, because I had no idea what was killing me as I healed.  Turns out I was standing in bad stuff.  I had not yet discovered recount, and I wondered if anybody ever actually killed bosses, because my experience in Pugs had been nothing but wipes.  I was bad...really bad...and I had no clue how to get better.

While in a heroic dungeon, I had a player blast me for being a bad healer.  He proceeded to spend the whole dungeon explaining every little thing I was doing wrong (his main was a holy pally), and then said I should do some research before trying to heal another dungeon.  I asked him what he meant by research and he told me to go to elitist jerks, a website that would help me get better.

I have always been the curious sort, so I went to elitist jerks and was so confused that I just gave up.  I couldn't find any information on pally healing, let alone anything on pallies.  After a couple more weeks of TOC wiping and so so dungeon runs, I finally decided to try elitist jerks again.  I clicked on every link I could find, and after about 45 minutes of clicking, I finally got to the page on pally healing.  (I am really embaressed to admit that now)

I was in love immediately.  The post on pally healing answered every question I had about the class.  It taught me the best way to go about healing.  It taught me how each stat effected my healing, and in rare cases, even explained "how" to heal certain fights.  So I took my new knowledge and went into a dungeon.  It was ugly at first, but quickly got better.  Then I got into a pug raid and we managed to down the first boss in TOC.  The next week, (around this time I discovered recount) I got into a guild pug run.  They were two heals short, so I jumped in.  Not only did we down the first boss, but we got all but Anu'barak down.  The raid leader was patient, explained everything, and I found that by doing what he said, bosses got down, and I won two pieces that night.  It was one of the coolest feelings I have ever felt.

I realized then I needed to get into a guild, so with a few more weeks of running with that guild when I could, they gave me an invite.  About this time, ICC had dropped.  I was hooked to ICC raiding instantly.  I would pug a 10 man every week, and then raid with the guild for 25's.  It was the most fun I had ever had in a game.  At one point, my wife joined me, and having her raid with me was even better.  That didn't last long, as eventually she got burnt out.  With each week, I got better.  I started using more addons, and started perfecting my class.  My guild got to the Blood Queen before our progression halted.  We just couldn't coordinate enough to get her down.

So I started looking for better 10 man pugs, and after a while I found a dedicated pug that happened at the same time every week, and frequently worked on heroic content.  The heroic content was really hard for me at first, but I got better with each week, and eventually I realized my current guild was holding me back.  I will always be grateful to them, because they took a kid that knew nothing about raiding and helped him develop into a heroic raider, but I wanted to kill the Lich King and knew that would never happen with my current guild.

My bro stumbled upon a new guild forming at the end of ICC.  It actually wasn't a new guild, it was an old guild reforming, and they needed good players.  Eventually they gave me a trial run and I earned a spot.  We quickly worked through all the bosses but LK, and as we worked week by week on LK, we also started doing heroic bosses.  My gear got better and better, until finally one week before the cata talent system patch dropped, we downed the LK.  It was one of the most exciting moments of my life.  What is more, it was only the fourth week of raiding since the guild had reformed.

I lost my job around that time, so I couldn't buy the cata expac right away, and by the time I could, I was way behind in progression for my guild.  I quickly played catch up, but they were already deep in the T11 content, getting close to heroics, competing with the top guild on the server.  I did catch up evetually, but my first raid in, my computer couldn't hack 25 player raiding anymore, so I sat again.

Eventually I switched to disc, and joined a casual 10 man guild, and raided with them through T11 and early T12.  I very quickly became the guild leader as I knew the fights better then anyone in the guild.  It was a great time and a frustrating time all at once. The guild had five really good players, and five pretty bad players.  I use to strategize how to overcome the weaknesses of the others to down content.  My heals were often 40% of the whole group, using 3 healers, but I didn't mind, because it was fun.  I remember on Al'Akir sending the five bad players to the top for the last phase, so that when they dropped the cloud, it didnt matter where they did, because it wouldn't affect the five good players on the bottom.  They all died quick, but we managed to five man the last phase doing it right.  It was a horrible strategy but for our guild, it worked.

Eventually the hunger for progression got too much of me though.  My old heroic guild, which had become the number one guild on the server had a huge fight blowout, just about a month after absorbing the best horde guild on the server. (they convinced the whole guild to faction change)  So they were no longer an option.  I joined a different guild, and switched to my druid.

It was a great time for raiding, we finished all the regular firelands content and got 4/7 on heroic.  Druids were OP back then so I was the number one healer on every fight.  Even when Dragon Soul dropped and druids got nerfed, I still found myself number one on most fights.  We downed Heroic madness in content, the first time I ever killed a heroic end boss in tier.  Ironically, I was more excited about the LK kill on reg.

I had to take a month off at the start of MOP because my wife had a baby, but while I was off, I was leveling my monk.  When I finally got back in, it didn't take me long to re-earn my raid spot, and within a couple weeks, I was topping the charts again, despite having worse gear then many of the other healers.  Which leads me to now, when in a one week span, they took my class from being overpowered to broken.  That quickly...one week.

Raiding has been a part of my life for so long, and I love it.  It helps me get through the week as on raid days, I just keep telling myself, just get through today, and then you can raid.  It is my stress reliever (for anyone who has raided heroics, I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but its true), and it is my break from reality.  For two nights a week, I can be an epic hero killing mighty Dargons (Guild inside joke) instead of a regular guy struggling to get by.  Raiding is my calm in the middle of the storm.

And I can't feel good raiding if I know I am holding th guild back.  I never have any in game gold, because if I have gold and there is a piece that will improve my performance, I buy it, because I don't want to ever feel like the guild is carrying me.  I haven't felt like I have been carried in a raid since those early days in TOC.  Atleast, not until last night.  Last night I felt like my spot on the guild team wasn't justified.  I am seriously considering finishing leveling my pally, because monks are just in that bad a spot now.  Sure, I can put up decent numbers, but I can't sustain it, and in the burst aoe phases, I am worthless, because all my aoe heals will burn my mana out before the phase is over, leaving me with no mana for the rest of the fight.

I really hope Blizzard hotfixes their change back.  Make it 15%, or even revert back to the original 5.1 changes, I don't care.  What I do care about is raiding.  It is very important in my life, and having my value in raiding reduced to nothing in the space of a week is extremely frustrating and not good game balancing.  You wanna nerf my output, go for it.  You want to make my mana a little more expensive, go for it. But when I have 11k+ spirit, and the rest reforged to crit, it is insanely stupid that I can't heal for half a fight for fear of not having the mana to heal at the execute phase.

I know Mistweavers were too OP, but you fixed it in patch 5.1.  The hotfix was not needed and was detrimental to the class, and not a good change.  And the worst part...no explanation why.  A phnatom one line nerf in the hotfix update that broke a class, and nobody even has the guts to try to defend the change to the player base.  I have dealt with many nerfs over the years, but this is the worst I have ever seen and leaves me very frustrated as I worry I might lose something very important to me as a result...raiding.

(This history of my raiding is a brief synopsis.  It doesn't include my time as a kitty druid, a ret paladin, or an elemental shaman, but for purposes of not going too long, I oversimplified some of my explanation)

Nerfbat and Hopelessness...

I finally got my first raid night post the 30% mana cost increase hotfix.  Deep down, I knew it was going to be bad, I just didn't realize how bad.  I wrote a post earlier about why the great 5.1 nerf to mistweavers was not so bad, and that we were still viable.  Now, my opinion has changed.

The current healing model involves a 3 heal system: a cheap long cast heal (mana nuetral), a fast short cast heal (Very expensive), and a powerful long cast heal (expensive).  The idea was that you use the mana neutral heal in low damage situations and save the other two when damage is crazy.  The idea was you could spam your cheap heal forever and never go OOM, and that as long as you didn't spam your expensive heals too much, you could even use those without going OOM.

With the recent mana increase for mistweavers, we are in a bad place.  Jabbing for chi will make you go OOM very quickly.  Soothing Mist (our mana neutral spell) for chi will make you go OOM very quickly.  Using surging mist is a death trap to your mana, and even enveloping mists, which uses chi, is too expensive because the mana you spend to generate that chi is insane.  AOE much, well renewing mists and uplift is marginal at best in 25 man now, and very expensive, and if you try to spinning crane kick, you will OOM faster than you can finish the cast.  I am exaggerating a bit, but tonight was the first time I have felt helpless as a healer since my pally in ICC after the cata talent changes hit, and back then, everybody agreed we were broken but Blizzard was ok with it, because they were balanced around level 85 abilities and stats.

I feel broken right now.  All the synergy in the spells is gone.  I find myself looking for gimmicks to get healing without spending mana, because if I do, I go OOM 25% into the fight.  One fight I had only 50% uptime on healing (maybe a slight exaggeration), because if I didn't I had no mana for the heal intense execute phase.

The only hope is mana tea crit bonuses, and yet with 11,000+ mana and everything else reforged to crit, I still went OOM way to soon, USING THE CHEAP HEALS.  And the mana tea bonus is so random due to crit, that even when the crit gods blessed me with mana, it was so unpredictable that I couldn't depend on it from one pull to another.

I had to think on my feet and adjust the whole time, something I don't mind doing sometimes, but when you do it all the time, it wears you out, and causes you to be more prone to mistakes, which is not a good thing on Garalon.

I really wish Blizzard would at least give us mistweavers a blue post to help us understand their mindset and where we are headed, because right now I feel broken and pointless.  I don't want my raid leader to replace me, but if it were me, I would.  Help me understand why, and then maybe I can start healing.  Until that time, I am stuck in the corner, quivering with fear, worried that if I try to save my friends, I will have no mana to save myself.

Hotfix nerf, and why Blizzard is getting it wrong

If you read my previous posts on the 5.1 nerf, you know I expected it to be really bad and was surprised when it wasn't so bad after all.  I even tried to defend Blizzard's motivations, but with the 30% increased mana cost to spiritweavers that just hit in a hotfix, my feeling are changing.

My problem is not with all the changes as a whole, but instead with two changes.  The first is the increased mana (now at 40% more expensive with latest hotfix).  I understand that monks were able to spam their spells rarely worrying about mana (Last time I worried about mana was when I was raiding in mostly blues when I first came back).  I also understand that a mana cost increase was needed, and if this was all it is, I would be fine, but they did something else as well, and that is what the real problem is.

Because they made mana too expensive, they compensated by making crit have a chance to double the number of mana tea stacks you get.  In my previous post, I said this was a great change, as it made crit the king stat and allowed it to regen and heal, which is good for monks.  The problem is that they obviously made our regen too good with that change (otherwise why the additional 30%), so why not revert that change.  Mastery and crit were very close before if you were in 25 man raiding or intelligent 10 man raiding, but now, they are not because our regen is dependent on more spirit (you can only get so much) and stacking crit in additon to spirit.

Here is my question.  Why couldn't blizzard leave out the crit change and let mastery and crit still be competitive.  Raise the mana cost but by less then 40% so I still have the chance to pick the stats that best suits my style, rather then being forced to pick crit because if I don't I will oom in a fight too early, despite having good regen.  I haven't tested this in a real raid, so maybe my feeling will be different wednesday, but in the lfr's I did, I had to be very careful how I cast or I would oom way too early in the fight.  Here's hoping blizz can get this right somehow.

Patch 5.1 Monk Nerf Follow Up

Last night I went into my second raid night after the patch 5.1 nerfs, and I learned some more that might be worth mentioning in regards to the nerf.  We downed the Bladelord in Heart of Fear, and got a lot of work on Garalon.  On the bladelord, despite fistweaving most pulls (which is good heals but should not be competing with other classes all out healing), the 20% burn phase, and how good it is for spinning crane kick, allowed me to be in the top two or three every pull.  Our last pull, (the one we downed it on) I tank healed as our tank kept dying due to taking too high of stacks.  That pull, I was much more in line with my usual output.

Bladelord is a great fight for Mistweavers, despite the nerf, because there just isn't a lot of aoe damage, and when there is, the raid is almost always stacked, and so spinning crane kick is better.  I still used renewing mist on cd, but it was a lot more overheal then normal, which makes its nerf much less noticeable.  I also used xuen instead of rushing jade wind, because even though rushing jade wind likely would have given more heal numbers (but not by much), xuen gave a big dps boost that helped us get a bit more time to work with at the end before the enrage. (I know that the damage is minimal compared to a all out dps, but even 20k dps while healing is better then nothing)

After we got done with bladelord, we moved on to Garalon, which was the best fight by far on LFR for the mistweaver.  The only one even close was Elegon, and yet with the increased damage involved in garalon, monk heals were insane on that fight.  This is the fight that I think the nerf most hurt us on.  I consistently was in the 70-80k heals per second area on every pull last night, and that was with renewing mist only going to two targets instead of three.  Renewing Mist was about a 1/3 of my healing, with uplift accounting for about 20%.  So that means half that 80k was due to the spells affected by the nerf.  So if 40k was due to nerfed spells and adding another spread hot would result in 33% more healing, then I would likely have gotten 10-12k more healing pre- nerf.  That would have put me at 80-90k.  Our top healer was doing around 90k per pull, and he has about 7 ilvl better then me, so you can see that had the nerf not happened I would have been tying his output with significantly less ilvl.  That would be AWESOME, but also not very fair to him, so as you can see, as much as the nerf sucks, it was needed to bring healing back in line with other healers.

Despite all that though, the rest of our healing team was struggling to keep up 50k heals.  I don't mean to critique them too hard.  That fight with all its spreading is best aoe healed by a monk, a holy priest, or a druid.  We did not have a druid, and the other classes were a pally, two shaman and a disc priest.  So it is understandable they would be lower then me and the holy priest, but if you were one of those classes, struggling to maintain 50k (side note, I do think they could have been higher, just trying to not be too critical and understand the mechanics), and then seeing a poorly geared monk (I am not really poorly geared, just a good 5 to 10 ilvls behind the others...got a late start) killing your heals and competing with the holy priest who is the best healer in the guild, I think I would be annoyed too and complain they need to be nerfed.

So again, while the nerf sucks on fights like elegon and garalon, it was needed.  And the best part is that, on fights like bladelord, it hardly affects us at all.

Just an update for those who care.  We progressively got Garalon lower and lower throughout the night, until we got him down to 9% on our last pull when he enraged, so with a little better pheremone management and little more dps, we will get him, hopefully this sunday (even though I won't be there, have prior commitments).

P.S.  Just a side note, and I need to do more research before I officially announce it.  Xuen was really acting wierd on the garalon fight, not wanting to attack anything, so I switched to chi tornado (I think that is what it is called), so I could heal while moving into position.  Might not be the best way to handle that fight, but I just couldn't seem to get xuen to be his usual epic self.

The great Monk nerf of 5.1

When I saw the first set of patch notes for 5.1 that involved the mistweaver (my new main), I was really discouraged.  I had just reached 90 and was gearing to be able to raid.  I almost just quit gearing, deciding to play my pally as my main instead.  It seemed like everything that made the monk good was getting nerfed hard core.  After hyperventilating for a couple seconds, I decided to take the same approach as I did in Dragon Soul when druid heals were nerfed quite badly.  Don't complain, and just make the best of a bad situation.  (During Dragon Soul, despite being told that druids couldn't beat the other healing classes, I was consistently in the top 2 in heals for my guild)  This change in viewpoint was freeing, and allowed me to not be as discouraged.

With 5.1 finally dropping, the time has come to analyze how bad the nerf was to Mistweaver healing.  So first off, let's look at the complete list of changes as stated on the patch notes:

Monk

• All healing spells which cost mana have had their mana cost increased by 10%.
• The Tiger Power provided by Tiger Palm now reduces target armor by 30% with a single application and no longer stacks.
• The healing provided by Enveloping Mists has been reduced by 32%.
• The healing provided by the Healing Sphere base spell has been increased by 20%.
• The healing provided by Chi Burst and Chi Wave has been reduced by 25%.
• The healing provided when detonating Zen Sphere has been reduced by 25%.
• The chance to generate 1 Chi while channeling Soothing Mist and Crackling Jade Lightning has increased to 35%, up from 25%.
• The Power Strikes talent now grants the Power Strikes effect every 20 seconds, which causes the Monk's next attack to generate 1 additional Chi.
• The Healing Elixirs talent now grants the Healing Elixirs effect every 18 seconds, which causes the next Brew or Tea consumed to heal the Monk for 10% of maximum health.
• Mistweaver
  • Enveloping Mist is now available at level 16, down from level 34.
  • You now have a chance equal to your crit chance to generate double the amount of Mana Tea charges.
  • Renewing Mists now travels to 2 additional targets (was 3 targets).
  • The mana cost of Soothing Mists has been reduced by 33%.
  • Haste for Mistweavers is now 50% more effective through Stance of the Wise Serpent.

That is a lot of information, so to simplify it, I will go through each one individually.

The mana cost increase had me very worried, but after being in a raid, it is not that bad, because half your spells use chi anyways, and the crit bonus makes up for the lost mana.  (more on the crit effect later)

The tiger power change is most beneficial to windwalkers, but if you are a fistweaver (dps healing through eminence), this is also a nice quality of life change for that.  If you range heal with the monk, this change will not affect you.

The Enveloping Mists nerf really made me mad when I first saw it, but when using it in a raid, I realized it was put in to counteract the haste buff, in order to make the amount of healing "feel" the same, which it does. (more on the haste change later)

Healing sphere went from being a lonely, never pushed button on my bar to now very important.  In high aoe damage phases, it is still lackluster, but in low aoe damage phases, for tank healing, or pre-healing, it owns.  With my current gear it does 35k regular and 70k as a crit.  That means in 3 global cooldowns, you can get between 105k and 210k heals.  That is a lot of healing for very little cost.  Finding moments to drop them is well worth it now.  Pre 5.1, there were just too many other options.  Renewing Mists, Uplift, Expel Harm, Soothing Mists, just to name a few.  You still want to do renewing mists on cool down, but healing sphere is now a great filler spell.

The nerf to Chi Burst, Chi Wave and Zen Sphere is disappointing as it reduces our utilty.  These spells are not always worth using on cd anymore.  It used to be that you wanted to use them whenever you could.  Now I only use them as a chi dump in order to keep my mana tea stacks as high as possible. (again to benefit from the crit change)

The change to soothing mist and Crackling Jade Lightning is probably my favorite change, because it makes range healing come more in line with melee healing.  Pre 5.1, jabbing for chi was king and any good mistweaver was doing that.  Post 5.1 jabbing for chi is still the fastest was to generate chi, but the efficiency of that chi development is now closer.  This change makes it much less damaging to use soothing mist or crackling jade lightning as your filler spell.

Power strikes and Healing elixers are only minor changes, and since I didn't use them anyways, have little affect on my healing.  If you are a full time fistweaver though, then the benefit of power strikes is worth considering.  I still prefer the extra chi (5 chi instead of four) and the new 15% additional mana that ascendency gives, but an argument can be made for power strikes in that situation.

The enveloping mist change to level 16 is purely a quality of life change for early questing.  If you leveled a monk pre 5.1, you found that in the early levels, all you could do was soothing mist (which was more then enough healing, but very boring).  Getting enveloping mists earlier gives more buttons to push and makes leveling more fun.

The change to crit and mana tea charges is huge, because it has an affect on our stat distribution.  Pre 5.1, I went with a mastery heavy build because in a 25 man raiding team, spheres rarely get wasted.  I did this against most of the research I did, as most people said crit was slightly better.  This change finally made me switch to a crit heavy build, and I gotta say, I have no intention to chnage back to mastery.  The additional tea stacks, while not gamebreaking, are noticeble, and make your amount of needed spirit go down.  Being able to convert some of the spirit reforging to crit allows a monk to keep the same regen, but also have the same random benefits of crit.  I much prefer regen that can increase healing to regen that doesn't.  Spirit is still the king stat, but with the crit change, you no longer need to stack it as high as you used to.

The renewing mist change is what really hurts us.  On fights like Elegon, with high aoe damage, I could jab for chi, renewing mist on cd, thunder tea on cd, and then uplift in between and put up insane healing numbers.  With a 15 ilvl gap between me and our best healers, I was still beating them consistently on that fight.  This was great for my ego, but also an obvious overpowerment of the mechanic.  In low to mid damage aoe fights, this will not hurt us all that much as some of the other changes will compensate for the loss in heals.  The only place where this will hurt is in high aoe damage fights, and on those fight we will be more akin to other healers instead of being the "Gods" of aoe healing.  I don't like this change, but I understand why they made it, and if you use healing sphere more, and better use of your tank heals, you can make up the lost heals quite easily.  There will be more pressure on yout healing team for aoe heals though.  In a 10 man team, this change has negligible affect, and is not much of a nerf at all.

The soothing mist mana change is very big.  Without a statue, you could soothing mist all day and never run out, but with a statue out (as you always should have), the mana drain from soothing mist made jabbing for chi the better option.  Now, soothing mist is a much more realistic chi generating alternative to jabbing for chi.

The haste change is also pretty big, because it changed our haste tick points.  It used to be that a mistweaver should not stack any haste as they would get enough just from gear to get an extra tick of renewing mist and enveloping mist.  Now, with very little stacking, you can get two extra ticks of each spell.  (3140 is now the objective of haste)  These extra ticks help compensate for the reduction in healing that renewing mists only going to two targets make.

So now the overall judging.  It turns out that the great mistweaver monk nerf of 5.1 was actually not much of a nerf at all.  Instead blizzard has forced monks to use more of their spells in a more triage fashion, which does fit their current model for healing.  The importance of healing sphere has jumped and is worth using when you can fit it in, but don't neglect your normal rotation of spells to fit it in.  A good monk will have plenty of chances to throw it in, so look for those oppurtunities.  Renewing mist should still be cast on cd, but uplift's power has been greatly reduced.  It should still be used in high aoe damage moments the way it was before, but in mid to low aoe damage situations, monks now have other spells worth casting instead.  The new stat priority as I see it is:  Spirit -> Int -> Haste to 3140 -> Crit -> Mastery -> Haste after 3140.  This could change, especially as gear gets better, but currently I think it is your best bet.  If you make the adjustments, there is no reason why a mistweaver monk can't continure to shine in a raid setting and still outheal the other classses.  It is a lot harder then it used to be though, and at least in my opinion, that makes it more fun.

P.S.  This is not related to the patch directly, but is worth mentioning.  Mistweaver monks are incredible tank healers.  I would argue the best class at tank healing, especially if you get the tier bonuses, so with the nerf to renewing mist and the inadvertant nerf to uplift because of it, it might be worth suggesting to your raid leader that he let you tank heal, and throw out some aoe heals while you are doing it.  A mistweaver can put out aoe heal like numbers just tank healing if the tank damage is sufficient (which is the case on pretty much every progression fight).  I plan to do my next post on how to best accomplish tank healing, and why it is a change worth making if your guild leader will allow it.

My new main

I have been playing world of warcraft for about three years now.  I have seen highs and lows in raiding, finally finishing a tier of raiding through heroic while it was current content for the first time in Dragon Soul.  I have had many mains, including a paladin named Moradon (my first main), a druid by the name of behomet, a priest by the name of charam, and now, I add my new main Deroggen, a monk, to the ranks of the classes I have raided with seriously.
I got a late start to this expansion as I took a month break so I could help my wife take care of our new baby boy.  He is our first, and he has changed my life drastically, including my priorities.  I am not as hard core as I once was, but I still pride myself on being the best healer I can, and on never letting things like nerfs be used as an excuse for poor performance (with the exception of the great paladin nerf that was the patch before cataclysm dropped with all the talent changes.  Trying to heal in ICC with the new paladin changes was flat out broken)
I am learning this new class the hard way, by trial and error, as well as by loads of research online.  The data isn't as clear cut on monks right now, but it is getting clearer and I am starting to feel like I know him like I knew my previous mains. 
This blog is about everything wow, with a specific emphasis on my monk, but I may occasionally dabble in posts about other classes.  So I hope you come back, and enjoy it.

P.S. My first official post will be about the "great monk nerf of patch 5.1" and why it is not nearly as big a problem as many thought it would be...myself included.