The Serpent’s Accord: A Mistweaver PvE Guide [5.4]

[Luqt]

Before calling the list inconsistent, couldn't you perhaps ask for the reasoning behind the list presented and then suggest improvements if you feel your suggestions would add something better? First of all, it's an absolute BiS gear list, in other words those combinations of items together will allow for the best theoretical performance overall. You mentioned a general rule of thumb, which is perfectly fine but doesn't always apply and this is one of those cases, where the belt Stonebound Cinch in particular allows you to pick up quite a bit more crit from other items.

Indeed, mastery is not such a favorable stat when compared to crit but if we look closely at the differences between using the rings you mentioned then using Seal of the Profane yields 53 intellect and 360 mastery whilst Circuit of the Frail Soul yields 239 crit and 68 spirit. Before mentioning that in general our stat weights indicate that intellect is twice as valuable as crit, the value of mastery should be roughly half the value of crit. Mastery sucks, but crit isn't godlike. The rings are pretty close in value, I'll give you that, but Seal of the Profane is in fact a better ring. :P

Qin-xi's polarizing seal has a 45 sec ICD, it is by far the best throughput trinket available for healers with an average of 1748 intellect. As with other trinket procs, this value doesn't take into account the fact that the average will probably be higher if the encounter ends with the ICD still running, but also the fact that occasionally the proc might prove to be worthless if no healing is needed. Regardless, for a 2x upgraded Relic of Chi-Ji we're looking at an average 1449 spirit (a difference of 137 spirit) and a 502 intellect average difference. Theoretically, Qin-xi's Polarizing seal presents awesome stats and personally I think an optimal ~44% uptime is worth it, even if it happens to proc during a low damage phase where I'm simply caught performing some DPSweaving (it's still useful then).

[Astraios]

Valen's calc in my gear (near BiS, mostly what your gear list says) has mastery at 1/4 the value of crit, and 1 int ~ 2.2 crit.
53 * 2.2 * 4 + 360 vs 239 * 4, the circuit gives more throughput (with mastery being given a weight of 1) than the seal, not to mention 68 more spirit, which can generally be valued as more crit.

As well, your reasoning for the stonebound being an exception because it "allows you to pick up quite a bit more crit from other items." Sure. But...so does the circuit. It's literally the same thing in both cases. Haste can be reforged to crit, thus haste is approximately equal to crit. The only difference is that the "haste might not allow you to reforge perfectly or ideally" doesn't even apply here because the ring gives crit (the stat we want to stack as much of as possible after spirit/haste cap.)

Qin'xi's polarizing seal is proc-throughput. Proc-throughput (even with a 30% stat increase over the passive) is far from ideal. Healer's don't get to maximize throughput based on procs, they have to maximize throughput in narrow windows of time which are presented by fight mechanics. Qin'xi relies on RNG. Some fights it might be amazing for you when it lines up perfectly with TFT (the strongest argument for it). Some fights it will NEVER line up with your TFT. And you would have to go through some hoops and bounds to try and force it to line up with TFT. I say this, because TFT usage is based on fight mechanics, not on whenever you feel like it. You gain a lot more by TFT'ing before crush than you do using it at any other time, because after a crush is when the raid will be lowest. The same goes for most fights. You need throughput at specific times, and it takes timing TFT properly to do that. I want my throughput at those times. As such, passive throughput is more reliable and thus more valuable to me.

On the other hand, spirit procs (assuming I'm not at full mana), will always be useful, no matter when they proc. That's why I use chi'ji. I said it's personal preferences because Qin'xi is RNG and sometimes it'll be amazing and sometimes it'll suck, and as a raid healer I much prefer being reliable. If you want to roll the dice for your healing, then yes qin'xi has the potential to be amazing, but the same potential to suck.

[Servasus]

Valen's calc in my gear (near BiS, mostly what your gear list says) has mastery at 1/4 the value of crit, and 1 int ~ 2.2 crit.
53 * 2.2 * 4 + 360 vs 239 * 4, the circuit gives more throughput (with mastery being given a weight of 1) than the seal, not to mention 68 more spirit, which can generally be valued as more crit.

As well, your reasoning for the stonebound being an exception because it "allows you to pick up quite a bit more crit from other items." Sure. But...so does the circuit. It's literally the same thing in both cases. Haste can be reforged to crit, thus haste is approximately equal to crit. The only difference is that the "haste might not allow you to reforge perfectly or ideally" doesn't even apply here because the ring gives crit (the stat we want to stack as much of as possible after spirit/haste cap.)

Qin'xi's polarizing seal is proc-throughput. Proc-throughput (even with a 30% stat increase over the passive) is far from ideal. Healer's don't get to maximize throughput based on procs, they have to maximize throughput in narrow windows of time which are presented by fight mechanics. Qin'xi relies on RNG. Some fights it might be amazing for you when it lines up perfectly with TFT (the strongest argument for it). Some fights it will NEVER line up with your TFT. And you would have to go through some hoops and bounds to try and force it to line up with TFT. I say this, because TFT usage is based on fight mechanics, not on whenever you feel like it. You gain a lot more by TFT'ing before crush than you do using it at any other time, because after a crush is when the raid will be lowest. The same goes for most fights. You need throughput at specific times, and it takes timing TFT properly to do that. I want my throughput at those times. As such, passive throughput is more reliable and thus more valuable to me.

On the other hand, spirit procs (assuming I'm not at full mana), will always be useful, no matter when they proc. That's why I use chi'ji. I said it's personal preferences because Qin'xi is RNG and sometimes it'll be amazing and sometimes it'll suck, and as a raid healer I much prefer being reliable. If you want to roll the dice for your healing, then yes qin'xi has the potential to be amazing, but the same potential to suck.

Agree with this, especially on what he said about the trinket. Static Intellect with Spirit proccing will always be more beneficial to most fights than Static Spirit with intellect proccing. There are obviously situations where it's the other way around, but those are too few and far between.

Then again, I'm not really progressing heroic content other than the first few in MSV. As it stands, I see a lot of the top world monks using quin-xi heroic and that may be because the static spirit works out to be more mana regen, which might be more beneficial for their progression fights than intellect, which they may already "have enough of."

[Luqt]

Firstly, it's a bit more complex to attribute a static value to each stat relative to others as a healer since each spell scales differently for each given stat point and encounters will vary meaning your healing style will need to adapt to this and the spells you choose to cast as well. I can't imagine where you're getting these stat weights so I personally introduced your character on Valen's calc and to keep the analysis fair I used that log you linked on another thread of your most recent Shek'zeer HC kill. For simplicity's sake I'll just observe some of your predominant heals:

Stat scaling for individual spells (Spell Power | Crit | Mastery | Haste)
Uplift (Healing done: 28.7%) | 8.19 | 4.34 | 2.30 | 0.44
ReM (Healing done: 24.8%) | 8.02 | 5.01 | 6.96 | 0.44
Chi Burst (Healing done: 1.8%) | 13.47 | 5.49 | 1.49 | 0.44

Won't look at Eminence since it depends on all the melee abilities you used but generally Eminence healing scales equally with mastery and crit. Basically it means that on this encounter 55.3% of your healing depended on a relative average stat weight of: 1.53 SP, 0.86 crit, 0.81 mastery and 0.08 haste. It's not the best method for a comparison but it's enough to demonstrate that mastery isn't such a shithole to be 1/4 of the value of crit.

Obviously your discussion on the intellect proc trinket is correct but when we talk about a trinket with roughly a 44% uptime then it's a different story, where the chance you will have a TfT cycle running with the proc up speaks for itself. As I said, it depends on the encounter and some will favor this type of trinket and others won't but generally it is a very good trinket. Also, aren't you being a bit of a hypocrit saying you prefer having reliable throughput as a raid healer when crit is our favorite secondary stat in general? I kid, but this amused me :P

[Chuupag]

maintaining a relatively high value of 13476 spirit + an average 1600 spirit from the 517 Spirit of the Sun trinket.

Not to nit pick...but is that amount of spirit necessary or even smart? Basically if you have mana or mana tea charges at the end of a fight you have too much spirit. I'm still progressing through normals and I run about 6k spirit with 2/2 Chi-ji and 2/2 Dominance trinket macro'd to mana tea and I can pretty much do a full dps rotation and not go oom for about 7 minutes. We do have a resto sham for mana tide and 2 priests for Hymn in my group which I'm sure helps. I understand that I am slowly wanting more spirit as we get into harder damaging bosses but you are talking about more than twice the amount of spirit that I currently have and find myself comfortable with. I know this was discussed in the old thread with gnorrior about the spirit vs throughput stuff but that amount of spirit just seems silly to me unless you are SCKing for all your chi.

[Luqt]

Not to nit pick...but is that amount of spirit necessary or even smart? Basically if you have mana or mana tea charges at the end of a fight you have too much spirit. I'm still progressing through normals and I run about 6k spirit with 2/2 Chi-ji and 2/2 Dominance trinket macro'd to mana tea and I can pretty much do a full dps rotation and not go oom for about 7 minutes. We do have a resto sham for mana tide and 2 priests for Hymn in my group which I'm sure helps. I understand that I am slowly wanting more spirit as we get into harder damaging bosses but you are talking about more than twice the amount of spirit that I currently have and find myself comfortable with. I know this was discussed in the old thread with gnorrior about the spirit vs throughput stuff but that amount of spirit just seems silly to me unless you are SCKing for all your chi.

Thus I mentioned "relatively high value", suggesting that it's a bit too high. You'd be looking into getting some intellect gems by that point. :P

[Chuupag]

On a somewhat related noted, is there a good number for the relative ratios of int to crit in terms stat weights? My other spec is BrM and that is pretty cut and dry that 2 secondary > 1 agility but think that is mainly b/c of vengeance scaling making our AP fairly meaningless. I'm currently gemming crit in everything while taking all socket bonuses but wanted some more input before deciding to regem everything intellect. I understand the point made in the guide about leather specialization and stat buff making intellect most likely superior down the road but I'm more interested in the right now.

[Deleted]

http://www.temerityofwindrunner.com/...aver/calc.html

Here's an example of what you'd need to do;

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...nc&usp=sharing

These are for my character and it's pretty plain and simple. Crit is best for AoE without Chi Burst, haste is king for single target and mastery is pretty meh for everything even assuming 100% healing which is obviously not the case.

[Chuupag]

Yea I kind of figured it wouldn't be so cut and dry with the various playstyles you can do. I'm been mainly dpsweaving b/c our dps is a little lacking and my 25k dps helps. Thanks for the spreadsheets.

[Totaltotemic]

The relationship between Int and Crit is awkward because Crit also provides regen, which you'd think would be able to be equated to Spirit, except that its regen is via Mana Tea procs which vary wildly depending on the fight (I don't get hardly any mana tea on Lei Shi because I don't actually have to heal for half the fight, but I get the maximum amount on Garalon when I do literally nothing but generate Chi and spend it on Uplift). As such, it's very, very difficult to determine static weights for them.

[Chuupag]

I put my numbers into Valen's calc and for the spells I'm looking at as my top usage; BoK, Jab, Melee, Renewing, Tiger Palm, Uplift..2 crit is better than 1 int in just about all circumstance, so think I'm gonna stick with the crit gems.

[Tatuin]

I was just speaking wiht my friend about diffrent stuff and he asked me; Does our melee abilities count as dmg spells? Like BoK, Jab, TP?

And i have no ide. Since if it does we could use dps trinkets on some fights, mabye not optimal choises but mabye in next patch to boost eminance healing on some fights. Heck even on garalon and windlord i could see it work.

Well atm there is no good choise for trinkets but if it was a crit proc it would mabye be good

[Gorsameth]

I was just speaking wiht my friend about diffrent stuff and he asked me; Does our melee abilities count as dmg spells? Like BoK, Jab, TP?

And i have no ide. Since if it does we could use dps trinkets on some fights, mabye not optimal choises but mabye in next patch to boost eminance healing on some fights. Heck even on garalon and windlord i could see it work.

Well atm there is no good choise for trinkets but if it was a crit proc it would mabye be good

Serpent stance removes any sources of AP outside of the intellect conversion. So dps trinkets are pretty much useless.

[Tatuin]

I mean dps trinkets for casters

[Luqt]

I was just speaking wiht my friend about diffrent stuff and he asked me; Does our melee abilities count as dmg spells? Like BoK, Jab, TP?

And i have no ide. Since if it does we could use dps trinkets on some fights, mabye not optimal choises but mabye in next patch to boost eminance healing on some fights. Heck even on garalon and windlord i could see it work.

Well atm there is no good choise for trinkets but if it was a crit proc it would mabye be good

Your melee abilities do physical damage and thus aren't spells. AMIRITE PEOPLE -.-

Besides considering that on average our abilities which contribute to eminence healing benefit roughly the same with haste, crit and mastery (although if PTR notes go live haste will be pretty poor with the nerf to Serpent's Zeal), those DPS trinkets i.e. Light of the Cosmos require periodical damage such as shadow word: pain or "harmful spells", where spell refers to an actual magical damage dealing ability. Sure you have crackling jade lightning, but if you then consider that those trinkets have a 15% chance to proc, gg you'll be lucky if you get 1 proc besides having to remember to channel CJL after the ICD finishes :P

Basically, if you want the full benefit of your trinkets you'll be safer betting on healer trinkets.

[Tatuin]

Of course they're damage dealing spells, why wouldn't they be? :P

Besides considering that on average our abilities which contribute to eminence healing benefit roughly the same with haste, crit and mastery (although if PTR notes go live haste will be pretty poor with the nerf to Serpent's Zeal), those DPS trinkets i.e. Light of the Cosmos require periodical damage such as shadow word: pain or "harmful spells", where spell refers to an actual magical damage dealing ability. Sure you have crackling jade lightning, but if you then consider that those trinkets have a 15% chance to proc, gg you'll be lucky if you get 1 proc besides having to remember to channel CJL after the ICD finishes :P

Basically, if you want the full benefit of your trinkets you'll be safer betting on healer trinkets.

Yea iknow, but who knows what the trinkets in next patch will bring us. And you never know wiht blizz how they make spells work :P

[Dreyo]

Of course they're damage dealing spells, why wouldn't they be? :P

Because they're not spells?

Seriously, you can use most of Fistweaving while silenced.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

I was just speaking wiht my friend about diffrent stuff and he asked me; Does our melee abilities count as dmg spells? Like BoK, Jab, TP?

They scale with Weapon damage and Spelldamage if that's what you're trying to ask. so yes, taking trinkets with more Int will give you more damage.
but your best trinkets have Int+Spirit anyway, so you probably allready have int. (Buy Darkmoon trinket caster version?^^)

[Luqt]

Because they're not spells?

Seriously, you can use most of Fistweaving while silenced.

I meant to say ability, will you ever forgive me for getting that wrong? jeesh

[Dreyo]

I meant to say ability, will you ever forgive me for getting that wrong? jeesh

Not really, because it's not an idle difference. Caster DPS trinkets that trigger off damaging spells won't activate on TP/BK/Jab.