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Edit: This post is now considered somewhat out of date.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.

 

Talent build for Tankysitting

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.

Kickweaving talent build.

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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