I find I have a global cooldown when I swap stances, ;erhaps they added this in recently I'm not sure.

I'm also seeing spirit-> hit conversion now, when I first tested it though it was not yet in game.

Some other useful tidbits..

Clobber etc., Blackout Kick, Tiger Palm, and Spinning Crane Kick are scaling with Attack Power, and weapon damage. Mistweavers do gain AP from Agility.

Expel Harm is scaling from Attack Power and Spell Power.

Everything else scales with Spell Power. Except for Touch of Death which scales with Stamina/HP. I highly recommend using Fortifying Brew with Touch of Death.

Some things I've noticed with Mastery so far.. it doesn't appear to be proccing on overheals, and seems to share the same limit as the castable healing orbs, however while casted orbs last 2 minutes now, the mastery orbs still only last 30 seconds.

Overall, my impression thus far is that in this state, Mastery isn't providing much benefit.

These are my concerns of the Mistweaver Monk at the moment.

- No indication of Jade Statue charges
- No indication when a Healing Sphere has been "used"
- Cherry Mana Tea
- Renewing Mists
- Mastery
- AoE healing suffers via ST healing and vice versa

Jade Statues:
While they do have a CD and you can only have 2 up at any one point, it would be nice to know how many charges are left. Primarily due to boss fights, considering the Statues have a CD which is fairly long (you'd be able to use 4 per fight in any "normal" encounter"), it's necessary to know how many charges are left because with the new mana changes mana is a precious resource. Very precious. Wasting mana is just not an option. In order to track the Jade Statue charges, you'll need an external addon unless Blizzard adds something, and that's bad.

Healing Sphere
Healing Spheres, as they are, are in my opinion a waste of mana. The heal is pretty bad (in the 378 premade gear, fully enchanted etc I have 9500~ SP) as it only heals for 11-14k which for the mana cost of the sphere doesnt warrant any generous returns. Surging Mists costs roughly a little bit more but is far more effective of doing the job due to the application of Thunder Focus Tea. Also, forcing people to stop hitting the boss just to run through a Healing Sphere will not work in a raid. In a raid, where enrage timers are tight, DPS will be DPSing. They will not run around needlessly for a heal they can get while standing still (obviously they'll run out of the bad stuff, but that is all). This should be expected too - DPS should be DPSing, not running around playing Mario/Sonic trying to be the first to collect a sphere!

Cherry Mana Tea
The idea behind Cherry Mana Tea is a fun one and I think it'll be interesting to use in raids. There are a couple of problems though: the duration and the way the channel works. While healing the first MoP dungeon I found myself (on all fights but Library) losing my Cherry Mana Tea stacks due to the duration quite a lot. This, too, with the bugged Soothing Mists (which on effective heal has a 100% chance, not 25% chance, to grant 1 Chi) means that when Soothing Mists is eventually fixed it will feel like a luck of the draw whether you generate enough Chi to refresh and add a stack of Cherry Mana Tea. I think the ability would be better if it had absolutely no duration (was fixed), like Muscle Memory, and like Muscle Memory when you leave combat all the stacks deplete and you have to start from 0. The second issue I came across, and this is probably intended, is that Cherry Mana Tea interrupts as soon as you take damage. I don't like this design because while in a raid there will be random raid damage almost constantly, and it'll stop you channeling Cherry Mana Tea continuously. This design also hurts the raid, if you're continuously trying to channel Cherry Mana Tea for the mana return you aren't healing (outside of Renewing Mists, at least!).

Renewing Mists
This spell is great. I think the design is great! It does have 1 slight issue though, and that's how it is refreshed. It's refreshed via Uplift (costs 2 Chi) and as I said above, when Soothing Mists is eventually fixed there will be no "secure" Chi generator outside of spamming Jab. Perhaps this is Blizzard's design? If you want to continuously Uplift Renewing Mists you must Jab the boss in order to generate enough 'secure' Chi to allow it. This design would feel clunky however because:
- For a Shaman to renew ELW on everyone he/she can use Healing Rain which guarantees it.
- For a Holy Priest to renew Echo of Light on everyone he/she can use Holy Word: Sanc which guarantees it.
- For a Holy Paladin to renew Illuminated Healing on everyone he/she can use Holy Radiance which guarantees it.

Mastery
It's .. fairly useless. It's basically the same as a Resto Shaman's Ancestral Awakening spell. Take a look at WoLs (world of logs), I'm a Resto Shaman main and I know this first hand, Ancestral Awakening does a pitiful amount of my overall healing done. It's really only taken because there's "nothing else" to take. In the case of a Mastery though, for monks, they lose out a lot. Looking at the other Healing Masteries: Echo of Light, Illuminated Healing, Shield Discipline, Deep Healing and Harmony you can see they all have the potential to aid AoE healing. All of them can be used in AoE healing to strengthen those AoE heals. Not so for Monks, their Mastery is a single target based Mastery and more than that, the sphere which occurs as a result can land *anywhere* during a fight (obviously near the target). This means it can be near a DPS, but inside a fatal AoE which cannot be entered. This renders the sphere useless in that regard. If at all possible, after 30~ seconds or so the spheres should explode healing all nearby targets if they aren't used within that time. This would make them better.

AOE healing vs Single Target healing
As I previously mentioned, in order to effectively renew Renewing Mists you'll need to use Uplift once every 15 seconds (more so if you want better AoE heals) and in order to do that effectively you'll need to use Jab. Soothing Mists wont be reliable when it's fixed (25% chance, not 100% chance). In order to AoE heal effectively you'll need to use Renewing Mists on CD, Uplift when possible (IMO with Thunder Focus Tea is better) and you'll have to generate the Chi required via Jab. Of course, when Renewing Mists is applied on all targets (5, 10, 25) you can go a little "easier" on the Chi generation but if we have another Dragon Soul raid where everything is AoE healing you'll be Jabbing for the majority of the fight due to the power of Uplift. I consider this a problem because a Shaman can AoE heal via CH, RT, HR and ELW while providing relatively good MT heals. A Paladin can maintain MT healing while spamming Holy Radiance. A Disc Priest can maintain MT healing while PoHing/PWSing via Penance and the like. A Druid can do the same with Efflorescence, Rejuv, Wild Growth and Lifebloom. Bringing this to single target then, at the moment our single target heals would be: Soothing Mists > Surging Mists for bursts and using Chi Wave on the tank whenever necessary, and outside of that using Thunder Focus Tea to empower Surging Mists. I think the ST healing works very well, it's just the AoE healing that feels very random, unless it's Blizzard's intention to make us melee in order to provide the very best AoE heals?

As it stands though, I like the Monk very much. I really like the Single Target healing. It feels a lot more "fun" than purely spamming RT > GHW x 3 repeat, or PW:S > Penance > GH x3 > Penance > GH x3 > PW:S repeat. I also think Soothing Mists idea behind costing x mana and then x mana for every extra second or two channelled is very nifty, it allows us to quickly change to another target without losing too much mana, and I think that's really good. All in all, the Monk seems to have very little overhealing capability and I think this type of healing style, with the new changes to mana and such, is what is going to make the monk very strong.

-----------------

New changes:
Chi Wave now has a 6 sec cooldown, down from 15 secs.
Jasmine Force Tea now costs 3% of base mana and is instant instead of channeled.
Renewing Mists now costs 3% of base mana, up from 2%. Base Healing increased by 70% and now heals every 2 seconds instead of every 3 seconds.
Soothing Mists healing reduced by 43%. Now has a 15% chance to regenerate 1 Chi, down from 25%.

Chi Wave having a 6 second CD fits nicely into an AoE healing rotation. Renewing Mists (RM) > Chi Wave (CW) > Jab > Jab > Jab > CW > Jab > Jab > CW > Jab > Jab > Uplift > Jab > Jab repeat maybe? Soothing Mists is finally fixed, and with this we should see ST healing to be far more difficult - though probably more balanced around the instaneous Surging Mists. Unsure how the new Jasmine Force Tea will take effect - maybe it'll take a roll replacing Jab?

Post patch today, Blackout Kick is running 1 Chi and places a DoT on the target when used below 50%. It also seems to randomly spawn 1-2 "Chi Spheres" when you kill the target with it on/via ticks? that you can run through to restore 1 chi each. Chi Orbs are personal - I was unable to pick up anyone else's in the dungeon I just ran.

Not particularly useful on a tank and spank, but perhaps a way to store up Chi on a fight with adds to manage. The orbs currently persist about 2 minutes and I was able get at least 4 up without any despawning before I ran out of local targets to kill so I could keep them all in sight.

Spirit regen is now working properly. Serpent statues have a new graphic: http://i.imgur.com/mpA5u.jpg

Would you do the job of transferring the thoughts of the European players then Arison? Some of us can't post there.

Given that serpent statues heal for, essentially, 100% of damage dealt, I'm wondering how viable it might be to have a mistweaver wear dps agility gear (with perhaps a spellpower staff or a spellpower mainhand + agility offhand) and simply do a dps rotation in tiger stance with serpent statues out.

Obviously it would do less damage than a windwalker due to lack of mastery and RSK, but they would be returning 100% of damage done as SMART healing.

You could also incorperate stance dancing macros to use chi wave as your main spender then switch back to tiger.

Additionally, should you need to swap to straight healing, your mana pool would be the same as a regular healer (although your heals would be less powerful). You would be at full mana, since tiger stance dps uses energy. Your spirit would be zero, but you would have plenty of tea stacks up from your DPS rotation.

Thoughts?

While Blizzard has already stated they're planning to have damage abilities maybe scale somewhat with Int, you're ignoring quite a few things here for the current build:
Statues don't heal while you're in damage presence so you'd need to do all of that in healer presence anyway (cutting your damage by 20%).
A large part of ability damage is weapon DPS so you'd want to use a DPS weapon as well.
Expel Harm is the only direct heal that does any significant amount of healing in DPS gear since it doesn't only scale with SP like all other heals. Thus you cannot just switch to normal healing - you'd be as efficient as a Restoration Druid wearing Rogue gear and switching your weapon doesn't change a lot there.
Statues also have a 6 minutes cooldown and fairly low range so whenever the encounter calls for movement you cannot heal properly any more at all.

All in all as long as damage abilities don't scale with SP that whole "deal damage to heal" thing simply doesn't work. Compared to a Priest smiting you're too unflexible and deal too low damage right now to make use of that mechanic. The only useful ability I see right now that fits into that scheme is Spinning Crane Kick since it doesn't rely on statues and switching to a DPS weapon alone makes it heal for very significant amounts in AoE situations.

I've not bothered updating the OP for the latest patch since mana is just clearly wrong, to the point of making dps healing completely nonviable. We probably just caught a build in transition with other changes but there really isn't much to talk about besides "yep, mana costs are too high and regen is too low." Once we get another build or more info, I'll update it as appropriate.

When it comes to melee healing, has anyone given any thought to what might be most optimal setup between Caster Staff/2h Mace VS Caster MH/Caster OH VS Caster MH/DPS OH? The main reason the last two are of interest to me is that Caster OH haven't traditionally had a damage component at all so using a DPS OH might make more sense depending on how the game is dealing with that.

You can't use 2h Mace (only Polearms which aren't dedicated Casterweapons).

Monk (Forums)
Monk Mistweaver Feedback
We don't want to need Agility.
We don't want that either. Mistweavers should use Intellect leather. We just have to make sure that any of their damage-dealing abilities don't make Agi attractive. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

I think they will design Way of the Monk in such way, that using Caster 2h or 1h + OH Int are nearly the same and wearing a Agi OH is no viable option.

The three changes I was most interested in: (Source: Mists of Pandaria - Build 15640 - New Items, Abilities, and More - Wowhead News)

- Crackling Jade Lightning: Channels Jade lightning at the target, causing 1674 Nature damage over 6 sec. When dealing damage, you have a 15% chance to generate 1 Chi. If the enemy attacks you within melee range while victim to Crackling Jade Lightning, they are knocked back a short distance. This effect has an 8 sec cooldown.

- Stance of the Wise Serpent: Increases healing done by 20%, and replaces your Energy resource with Mana. Also grants hit rating equal to any Spirit gained from items or effects. Any ability which costs Energy will now cost Mana instead. In addition, you also gain Eminence causing you to heal the lowest health nearby target within 20 yards equal to 50% of the damage you deal.

- Summon Jade Serpent Statue: Summons a Jade Serpent Statue at the target location. Lasts for 15 min. Only one statue can be active at a time. Eminence (Passive) When the Monk deals damage, the summoned Jade Serpent Statues will heal the lowest health nearby target within 20 yards equal to 50% of the damage done. Serpent's Salve (On - Click Effect) Allies can right-click the statue to instantly be healed for 9722 to 11297. 10 Charges.

Does this mean we would convert 100% of our damage into healing? If so, Crackling Jade Lightning looks very favourable, doesn't require melee, and if Blizzard's words are anything to go on they want us to use intellect gear over agility gear for healing. The Chi generation has an 8 second CD which is also something to consider.