Mistweaver monk looking for advice, logs included

[Reddles]

Howdy howdy!

Lookin' for people smarter than me, ta help me have a better showing in our 25 raid.
My mistweaver monk: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ritus/advanced
Prioritizing spirit, haste to 3148 before stance bonus, and mastery--because in 25s, green bubbles are fun! ^_^
Though I don't really feel constrained by my mana right now, so I suppose I could reforge/gem away from spirit...

I'm currently a tryout for a heal position in a guild that has had a roster suddenly explode up towards 40.
There's a lot of benching and rotating going on, but my fear is that I'm showing myself to be a weaker healer than the other tryouts.
Sure enough, a look at heal meters shows me typically behind the others, so there's definitely that "uhoh, what am I doing wrong?" feeling.

On the other hand, I dunno that I've had a real chance to shine. I feel like the group is bringing an excess of healers, and I'm unable to snipe heals away from the other healers--especially the Disc priest and Holy paladin, with their bubbles of awesome.

My fears are that one of two things are happening. Either I'm completely missing out on a core mistweaver healing strategy that's making me show low numbers... or else, I'm worrying too much about my performance on raid encounters where we're bringing too many healers, and I just don't know how to efficiently grab heals before other healers do. ((Gawd, sometimes I wonder why I switched my main from disc priest to monk...))

Anyone who can, would ya mind please taking a look at the logs below. Am I not using certain skills enough?
Is there something I can do on low-damage fights (like when we 6-heal normal MSV) in order to have a better showing?
On high raid-damage fights where there IS plenty to heal, should I be doing something differently than what I am?

My current playstyle is:
-) Use Renewing Mist on cooldown
-) If raid needs healing: generate chi (SCKick if apporpriate, jab/soothing if not) for uplift spam. Otherwise, channel Soothing/Enveloping onto tanks.
-) If able to stay near boss: Maintain Serpent's Zeal + Tiger Power, let eminence give free heals.
-) Cooldowns like Revival are saved for the raid leader to call out.
-) Guild Monk lead insists tier 30 talents are bad for healers. Meanwhile, I know Power Strikes would be higher chi generation, but I really value the convenience of being able to stack my chi to five.

Things I know I need to improve:
-) Using Expel Harm a lot more
-) Better positioning for Chi Torpedo
-) Faster reaction time to pressing Renewing Mist when it's off cooldown
-) More intellegent, advanced use of Thunder Focus Tea
-) Healing Sphere (I've been told in this group not to worry so much about that, since I'm raid healing rather than tank healing)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Logs

First week: MSV 25 with six healers (five on Elegon) + Three bosses in HoF. ;_; Sadly, I died to an early Attenuation on Vizier, so...
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-29...m/healingDone/

For most fights (Stone Guardian, Feng, Spirit Kings, & Will), I felt like there wasn't anything to heal. I'm super nervous about the low monk-green bar in Recount... but at the same time, there just wasn't anything to do. The first question is, should I be concerned about my comparatively low HPS here? Or is this really a case of "lolz, too many healers means not enough heals to go around"?

Looking at the fights with higher raid damage--Elegon, Blade Lord, & Garalon--my numbers shoot up to second or third, and they seem more in line with where I'd like the other MSV fights to be. I really wanted to employ fistweaving on Elegon's burn phase, but the raid damage was just too silly to allow me to do anything but uplift spam.

Second week: HoF first two bosses
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-rz...m/healingDone/

Well, this really tells the story, doesn't it? On Vizier, I'm not sure why I'm even taking up a raid slot. Keep in mind, though, that I wasn't called upon to use any raid cooldowns. Other healers were able to use things like Healing Tide and Tranquility, while my Revival and Life Cocoon sat on the bench. Still, though, I don't think one denied Revival accounts for that difference...

Likewise, I'm sure I could have done something more interesting on our Blade Lord kill. The 20% burn phase was fun, with Thunder Focus Tea + Uplift games. But throughout the first 80% of the fight, my deal was basically: (a) Maintain Renewing Mist on Wind Step victims as well as the tanks, (b) AoE heal after Unseen Strikes--spinning crane kick before the strike, uplift during, and chi torpedo immediately after to top the raid, and (c) mindlessly spam Soothing Mist + Enveloping Mist on tanks (since wind Step victims were topped off too fast) hoping to contribute something.

^_^ What should I change?
I'm real anxious to pull my weight, and show the other healers I'm worth havin' along. Appreciate any help you can give!

[Totaltotemic]

Going to do my usual analysis here consisting of what I can pick on in your armor, logs, and then extra comments.

Armory: Your reforging priority is all kinds of screwed up. Your legs have Crit/Mastery, yet you reforge the Crit to Spirit instead of the Mastery, why? Crit is god right now, it provides almost the same throughput as Mastery and gives extra mana regeneration to boot. Stick with (enough) Spirit > 3148 Haste > Crit > Mastery > Excess Spirit > Excess Haste, no reason for deviating from that unless you're aiming for a higher haste cap. On top of that, you're using the wrong Meta gem (Spirit/Crit effect is the way to go since we're stacking Crit), your weapon doesn't have the gem (if you're trying to save money that's okay, but it will mean 2-3% less healing and you have to be aware of that), and your trinkets are awful. QPS is worse than either VP trinket, LFR SotS, Relic of Chi-Ji, or even Vial of Ichorous Blood (the other blue Int/Spirit trinket) because throughput procs are largely wasted for healers. On top of that, your PoP isn't upgraded which takes oh.. a week's worth of VP-capping heroics to get the JP for. Getting your character sheet in order will result in at least a 20% healing boost.

Logs: On the other hand, you seem to be doing things pretty right in your logs. The only nitpick I have is that you seem to never Fistweave, see my post in this forum about it (hint hint, Elegon has a 50% damage increase combined with 120% or more damage taken increases by the end of the fight). You also never seem to use Jab for Chi, which is our single most efficient Chi generator besides Expel Harm. Again, see my Fistweaving post about that.

Other: On the third hand, your guild is using way too many healers if the other healers have your gear level as well. You 6 healed NORMAL FENG in 485 gear, my guild 5 heals HEROIC FENG. If your healing team isn't being even remotely pushed to its limits, logs won't accurately portray the strength levels of your healers. You also 7 healed normal Garalon, but if you had been using Jab/Jab/Uplift instead of relying on Soothing for Chi, you'd still have topped them even with other healers sniping the heals.

[Deleted]

You're doing normals at relatively high gear levels with two discipline priests and a holy paladin, that neuters us.

Simply put there's not jack shit to heal for you because you over gear/out comp the encounters. Also isn't the haste cap 3146? ((4719/150)*100)

[Cohren]

Mastery is garbage. Aim for around 10-12k unbuffed spirit and then go full crit after haste break point.

The only fight that being in melee range is a bad idea is Will of Emp and Garalon. Every other fight you should be jabbing for chi and maintaining TP and BoK. SCK and Soothing/Surging will kill your mana and should only be casted on Tsulong when in the day phase, an emergency, or your have a free Surging Mist from TP. Cast ReM on CD, use TFT often. Be smart with your CD's. Life Cocoon should be used on CD on the MT and try to pick a good time early in the fight to use Revival so its up again.

Communicate with your guild leaders so that they understand the strengths of a mistweaver. If they are only meter watchers then its probably best to find a new guild anyways.

[Shinchib]

When other healer classes get gear, their bubbles/absorbs become larger; allowing them to cast the same amount of spells, but now they not only heal more, but absorb more. These are proactive classes. Monks on the other hand are like Druids and they are retroactive healers. They heal after damage goes out. It's just simple math that the pally/disc are getting more % in total healing and your share is decreasing, especially if you're still doing normals. 40 person roster and doing normals? Very very strange.

Track your RnM/expel harm CDs via WAs and do the same for TFT.

Your Blade Lord mentality is right. HM Blade Lord is pretty straight forward and youll see some better raid damage that youll have to heal during unseen strikes etc. You can snipe and use revival early in the fight and have it up once again at the beginning of P2.

[Deleted]

A little tool for being able to "snipe" a little better: Get a proper raid-cd-display-addon like hagakure CDs. It has an option to show the currently active raid CD. You may also add abilities/talents for certain classes and players to be tracked. This allows you to track, for example, Spirit Shell being cast by your fellow disc priest. So you can see "a spirit shell will be up for the next rain of blades (since spirit shell needs to be used before the actual damage happens), so I don't need to blow my tft on this one!".

I agree with what's already being said:
-If they only watch meters, look for a new guild.
-You are overhealing the normalmodes BY FAR, monks an rdruids suffer from this the most of all healers.

[Deleted]

I offspec heal on 25 man heroic fights and I hate 6 healing cos it gimps my effective healing, if you are 6 healing normal modes then you are fighting a losing battle if you are going to be judged based on meters alone, the fact that 2 of those are disc priests means you are effectively dead weight because they will always win the snipe battle if they have any clue how to play their class.

The only time you will have the edge is on spread out fights where they can't accurately PoH groups. With 5.2 coming and taking away even more of our flexibility you are going to need to be playing pretty close to max capacity to be able to justify a healer spot and even then you need other people to be playing at about 80%. It can be done and if your guild have a less than optimal setup then monks can still shine but up against 2 disc priests you are really gonna have you work cut out.

[Astraios]

While I agree with the majority of what was said (esp. totaltotemics gear audit on you, and the lack of jab), I have to disagree with some saying we suffer the most from healing with a large number of healers. We suffer GREATLY from disc priests/holy paladin absorbs, this is true. However, our AoE burst healing is unparalleled (except for rsham's using CD's [other throughput CD's are smart which is the huge benefit, but if it came to raw throughput monks win]), and allows for amazing AoE heal sniping (15 target uplift ~ 800K/global for me, pretty strong imo.) I generally heal with 2 holy paladins and 1 disc priest in our farm H HOF clears but I certainly don't get crowded out by them on AoE healing fights. As the weeks go on, the lower throughput fights tend to favor them (like blade lord, wind lord) more and more heavily, this is true, and we could likely drop healers here. But on fights with any amount of consistent AoE, such as vizier, garalon, amber shaper, empress, protectors, tsulong, I generally compete for top healing spots.

TLDR: Uplift being instant cast allows for amazing heal sniping, gogo pad meters.

Edit: Browsing your logs also suggests that short fight length greatly improves other healers ability to pad and meter snipe, as well, normal modes + stacked disc/holy pallies = low healing from you, not putting you in on garalon to see how you shape up against other healers when it matters is a weird decision to be sure.

[Reddles]

Super thanks to everyone who's posted so far!

Gah! I was stacking crit over mastery in 10, but I was still under the impression that mastery was better in 25s despite the recent changes. Switching the reforges and gems to favour crit will be the first thing I do today, and I'll see what that does for me.

However, does anyone have a link to maths for our trinket choices? I'm definitely behind on the trinket theory, but given the high uptime of Qin-Xi's "Arcane Secrets" buff (44.2% on Elegon, 43.6% on Garalon), that seems like it'd be a ton of superpowered Uplifts. But then again, I suppose one would prefer constant intellect and a usually-useful spirit proc, over constant spirit and a sometimes-wasted throughout proc. I've not unlocked the rep yet for the Shado-Pan or Shieldwall trinkets yet, so I guess I know what I'm working on next!

If I've got the gold to spare, is the darkmoon Relic that awesome? How long can we expect it to stay competitive?

~ ~ ~

So I just learned last night that mistweaver monks can safely hang out in melee range, without fear of bringing ranged-targeted death like Feng's Arcane Resonance or Blade Lord's Tempest Slash upon the melee (link). Staying out at range is part of the reason why my fistweaving is a little low. As you can see from Spirit Kings, I try to keep up S.Zeal & T.Power when I can. Now that I know that melee is a safe place to be, you can bet I'll be working a ton more Jab into my rotation.

^_^ I'm already using NeedToKnow to track the cooldowns on Renewing Mist & Expel Harm. I just need to get better about paying attention... or, maybe give my UI a small overhaul and try out Weak Auras.

How do you deal with fights like Garalon? I feel like the legs die super fast, so while the damage buff would be nice for fistweaving, there seems to be a huge amount of cognitive overload going on. Melee just have to kill a leg and move to the next one while staying out of the purple Crush circle. I've got to do the same things WHILE ALSO maintaining healing spells on people. Is this a "buck up and do it" thing, or is there some helpful strategy--some tip to ease the effort?

For something like normal Stone Guardians, should I try to convince the raid leaders that I'm a melee, and I shouldn't have to stand at range to hug a mage during Jasper Chains? Or should I be a good healer and hug the mage, so they don't lose 1984209834290342 DPS?

Total: Thank you SO HARD for answering in your thread whether to spam TP or BoK during fistweaving (heart)

~ ~ ~

Natu: ... I already use DBM's Spell Timers from when I was raid leading 25s, but I hadn't even thought of using them to track the other healer's cooldowns for the purpose of timing my big heals to go between theirs. Oh man, this is good stuff.

To be clear, I don't know that the guild I'm trying out with is paying too much attention to the meters. There's a ton of recruits right now, and the leaders are trying to evaluate 'em all. I'm just scared that even the most intelligent of people can fall victim to quick evaluations which lack context. ^_^; Which is why I wanna be able to perform even on fights where high healing isn't needed.

QUESTION: Level 30 talents? Reading over the other threads--especially the conversation in the outdated mistweaver guide thread--I see a lot of conflicting information on which tends to be more useful in what situations, and whether any of them are worth casting over Jab/Jab/Uplift spam or Fistweaving. And that's not to mention the upcoming 5.2 changes...

[Deleted]

Fully upgraded darkmoon relic is a competitive option and you will not replace it until next patch at least, unless you manage to kill some heroic content. Something that helps me for cooldowns is audio ques, you can set those up in weak auras.

[Reddles]

Something that helps me for cooldowns is audio ques, you can set those up in weak auras.

That's basically where the addon dings at you, saying "ding ding HEY STUPID YOU SHOULD PRESS EXPEL HARM NOW", yeah?
:x hmmmm. This is an idea.

[Totaltotemic]

Relic of Chi-Ji is better than even the 496 trinket in terms of total Spirit (read: mana return) over time by around 250, so despite being 100 Int behind it's better than even that trinket. BiS is actually Heroic SotS + Relic of Chi Ji, so yes it's that good. Don't let the 476 ilvl label fool you, it's not actually itemized like that. As for QPS, uptime isn't everything, it's WHEN that uptime occurs that matters. Say you're healing Elegon and it procs on the 2nd add wave. Cool beans right? Wrong, that means you don't have it for waves 4/5 when you probably could have actually used the healing. In that case, your trinket is essentially just 1,000ish Spirit because you couldn't use the Int when you actually needed it so it might as well not even have the proc if it's not up when you need it. The 100-200 extra stats you get from using a QPS instead of a PoP or Vial of Ichorous Blood isn't worth the possibility that 1,000 of those stats might not be there when you need it.

For Garalon specifically, don't feel like you have to be on the legs. The body has a huge hitbox, so you can actually stand still and Jab effectively without having to chase the melee all over the room. For all fights though, you are a melee. With Jab as the best Chi generator and SCK being a PBAoE (Point Blank AoE, its origin always on yourself), there is no reason to not be in melee. That Mage is chained to you? Fine, he can run to you just like he would have to if it was any other melee he got chained to. It shows its benefits on something like Blade Lord where you are the one healer that is constantly in range of everyone and can heal without having to worry about tornados or Wind Step spreading.

As for level 30 talents (completely ignoring that 5.2 exists, that's a different discussion), Zen Sphere is awful, don't use it. You can take Chi Wave if you're doing 10 man or just really love healing tanks, but otherwise Chi Burst can be a good Chi spender that fulfills the same role that SCK does. You don't want to SCK/SCK/Uplift when you can just SCK/SCK/Chi Burst.

[Reddles]

^_^ Thanks for the advice, crew!

I got taken to Empress in HoF, and Lei Shi & Sha in ToES tonight. Not only did I land the Jin'ya staff off Lei Shi, but meter-wise I came in second on Empress and third on Lei Shi. ^_^

I was able to get a fair amount of Jabs in on Empress, but I feel like I was highly inefficient on Lei Shi. But we also BLAZED through Lei Shi and outside of tanks eating spiky damage, there wasn't much to heal. I also need to get on Expel Harm faster, and tonight was my first time ever touching Chi Burst. Between that, and having just started to use Chi Torpedo two weeks ago, I'm definitely going through trial-and-error when it comes to positioning and skill usage.

Question: Are we one of the classes that prefers Windsong? Ignoring the useless haste buff, I feel like "+1500 mastery for bubbles, +1500 crit for throughput that might go to waste" could be competitive against "+1650 INT throughput that might go to waste, and a conditional spirit buff that will never happen because I don't currently have mana issues"?

[Astraios]

From a distribution standpoint, I would consider SCK/SCK/uplift to be slightly better because it'll smart heal slightly whereas chiburst will just blanket more heals on top of more blanket heals. Depending on how the raids taking damage is where that decision would really come to play though. Most of the discussion in the MW thread, I'm pretty sure, is about 5.2, where chi wave is hands down amazing. On the other hand, at the moment chi burst is a good back up to ReM/uplift if you mess up and dont have the 7-8 uplift target jumping point. (when I use ReM on CD perfectly, my ReM counter often oscillates between 7-8 a few times in the beginning.)

Food for thought: Your chi burst had 52% overheal, your uplift had 28% overheal. With conditions like that, you only need something like 5-6 targets for uplift to be better than chi burst. (Assuming similar conditions when you used both spells. Obviously you know if you just dumped chi burst when you thought your uplift targets wouldnt be healed, and thus decreased your overhealing. Logs can't tell me that, which is why I am just saying food for thought.)