Brewing: Mana Tea

Brewing: Mana Tea was a passive Mistweaver monk ability, available at level 56. It caused the monk to generate stacks in order to use Mana Tea, which previously restored mana over time.

History
It was a form of active mana regeneration, complementing passive regeneration from Spirit. Mana Tea is generated by the companion passive spell Brewing: Mana Tea. Mana Tea was an essential part of the Mistweaver "resource rotation", which went like this:


 * Mana -> Chi -> Mana Tea -> Mana

Since almost all abilities that generated Chi also costed mana (with the exception of Chi Brew), Mana Tea effectively recycled some of the mana that was spent to generate that Chi in the first place. The cycle, however, is mana-negative: you recycled less mana than you spend.

Because of Mana Tea, the intended playstyle for a Mistweaver &mdash; maximizing mana regeneration &mdash; was to alternate between abilities that use mana and Chi, avoiding both capping Chi and letting it passively expire.

Mana Tea stacks were reset to zero at the beginning of raid boss fights, presumably to prevent monks from effectively increasing their starting mana pool. This restriction applied to all three raid modes (Normal, Heroic and Raid Finder). It did not, however, apply to 5-player dungeon bosses. To reduce downtime lost to channeling the glyph was recommended.

Talents

 * Ascension increased Spirit by 10%, thus increasing the amount of mana restored by each charge of Mana Tea.

Glyphs
This glyph was often considered essential, but this was not a hard and fast rule. The advantage of the glyph was that it reduced downtime spent on channeling Mana Tea, by making it instant cast. The disadvantage was that it still spent a global cooldown, and in a typical boss fight it would likely be used on cooldown, meaning that Mana Tea had to be incorporated into the regular rotation.