Mistweaving or Fistweaving.

[Ebonheart]

I've just recently started levelling a Monk. I've been told and read that Monks have two unique styles of healing - Fistweaving and Mistweaving.

I've played a Priest and one of the few healers that I've enjoyed. Well I liked the Atonement style even though it wasn't very efficient in progression fights but was passable in heroics and when content was on farm mode. However, Fistweaving from what I've read is comparable to the atonement style but unique where you are also passively healing from auto attacks and such rather from a couple abilties.

However, I kinda find it really hard switching between Fistweaving and actually healing. And to be honest, I am not quite a fan of that style at least for monks. You often tend to fall back on heals and then start playing catch up. I mostly only use Spinning Crane Kick from the Fistweaving tools.

Well so I was wondering which play style is better and which one should I focus on?

[Puri]

There is no "better", they are just different and it depends on the encounter.

But before we start, you said you started leveling: So do we talk about endgame or leveling content?

Because during leveling, all you have to do is spamming Spinning Crane Kick which does ridiculous healing at that level (a single healing crit from it heals more than people have life @60 fully heirloomed) and blackout kick with two chi to boost your dps.

[Deleted]

during leveling, just bash buttons.

Right now in current content. Whenever you can cleave or there is a damage buff involved go Fist weaving. Els you need to heal.
However if you get your macros setup well. Fistweaving can be extremely strong but demanding on your reflexes.

[dryankem]

Mistweaving is more important but being able to fistweave when the time is right is pretty helpful. Much like attonement, you sort of do it when serious healing isn't required.

I don't know if this will help but I found the monk has the most to gain from macros. I'd have to look up the syntax again but a couple of my major ones are

/cast [channel] Surging Mist, [harm] jab, Soothing Mist
/cast [channel] Enveloping Mist, [harm] Tiger Palm, Soothing Mist

Both buttons are soothing mist unless I'm casting soothing mist then they become Surging Mist and Enveloping Mist or if I have a target I can harm they become Jab and Tiger Palm. They aren't perfect as Surging Mist is free if you use Tiger Palm a lot, so you'll need that somewhere you can get to without that macro (I have to click it but it doesn't come up that often so it's not a big deal).

Basically my "2" key is my chi generator (soothing, surging or Jab), 3 and 4 are spenders (3 is my tiger palm, envelop macro and 4 is tiger kick), with uplift on my F2, and SCK on F3. So it's very easy for me to switch back and forth between the play styles.




Another pair of macros I use are cast sequences

/castsequence reset=14 Chi Wave, Expel Harm
/castsequence reset=4 renewing mist, Mana Tea

The first one is perfect and I used that with my WW spec forever and have had no issues. The second one is a little less perfect as if you keep pressing the macro on the Mana Tea and you have no Mana Tea then the macro will never go back to Renewing Mist (extremely bad), however that's why I set the reset so quick. This macro lets me cast mana tea on cooldown (glyphed) quicker, however I do have Mana Tea keybound to a further to reach keybind just in case the 2 cooldowns don't line up properly (usually early in the fight as later in the fight this macro smooths out nicely).

[indero]

Its fun for dungeons/lfr and pulling great dps/hps, but for progression you won't find too many opportunities to utilize it much. Damage is so high you need to pump out the most hps. The only way to do that is mistweaving.

[DirewolfX]

Learn to mistweave before you learn to fistweave. When you're fulfilling a traditional 'healer' role in a group, the former is always a viable choice for a fight. Fistweaving requires you to be familiar with the strengths of your fellow healers and the encounter to use optimally. You can, of course, switch between them mid-fight, but the optimal talent selections for Mistweaving vs. Fistweaving differ.

That said, you can definitely use Fistweaving on progression if your group is prepared for it. Most fights feature periods of high and low damage. Monks are adept at providing non-trivial amounts of additional DPS (which can potentially be better than healing, if you can say, help push a phase transition before a big damage ability) and then switching to provide great burst healing when necessary. I used my fistweaving build for HC Iron Qon progression and on our kill I was still on top of the meters after mostly fistweaving through phase 1-3 and then busting out some serious healing in phase 4 (Xuen+BoK on the dogs is amazing). The extra DPS was very helpful in pushing through phase 1 fast enough for our strategy and pushing through phase 2 before a second wind storm.

[Deleted]

I found that first weaving is comparatively harder than the priest "rotation" - if you're fairly new just mistweave and when you find your rhythm you can give fistweaving a good bash. I glyph surging mist and have it as a keybind for max vital mists stacks (I found that the glyph didn't apply if I was casting soothing and SM would land on target so np there). I fistweave jin'rock, horridon adds (BoK is amazing and so is tiger!), council on sul and so forth... I play with a disc and a pally so regardless which I have stuff'll get sniped so I do a bit of fistweaving while being certain in when I should switch back. Takes some getting used to. The dps is awesome as well but NEVER MISS A MUSCLE MEMORY PROC omg used to kill me at first :P Depends on your healers dude if they fancy picking up the slack in exchange for a bit more dps + having a healer on standby. It really isn't that bad if you manage the cleaves and mana well xD best of luck!

[Totaltotemic]

People like to say that Mistweaving and Fistweaving are two different things, but in reality you should never go an entire fight without Fistweaving at all (especially if you have the meta gem) and should never go an entire fight without using non-fistweaving (I don't really like calling it Mistweaving as that's the name of the entire spec and thus implies including Fistweaving) spells. It's more like shifting gears in a car. If speed was healing needed, lower gears involve a lot of fistweaving because the actual healing needed isn't the much and you get more damage, but higher healing needed means higher gears, so you switch to less efficient but more powerful healing spells like SCK and Uplift. Learning how to use both is the sign of a true Mistweaver, but attempting to use only one or the other will often end up being less effective than any other healer in the game.

[Deleted]

People like to say that Mistweaving and Fistweaving are two different things, but in reality you should never go an entire fight without Fistweaving at all (especially if you have the meta gem) and should never go an entire fight without using non-fistweaving (I don't really like calling it Mistweaving as that's the name of the entire spec and thus implies including Fistweaving) spells. It's more like shifting gears in a car. If speed was healing needed, lower gears involve a lot of fistweaving because the actual healing needed isn't the much and you get more damage, but higher healing needed means higher gears, so you switch to less efficient but more powerful healing spells like SCK and Uplift. Learning how to use both is the sign of a true Mistweaver, but attempting to use only one or the other will often end up being less effective than any other healer in the game.

Do you mean without casting something like Revival or do you mean not casting Renewing Mist? Also the higher gear you are in a vehicle the more efficient it is :P

[Luqt]

People like to say that Mistweaving and Fistweaving are two different things, but in reality you should never go an entire fight without Fistweaving at all (especially if you have the meta gem) and should never go an entire fight without using non-fistweaving (I don't really like calling it Mistweaving as that's the name of the entire spec and thus implies including Fistweaving) spells. It's more like shifting gears in a car. If speed was healing needed, lower gears involve a lot of fistweaving because the actual healing needed isn't the much and you get more damage, but higher healing needed means higher gears, so you switch to less efficient but more powerful healing spells like SCK and Uplift. Learning how to use both is the sign of a true Mistweaver, but attempting to use only one or the other will often end up being less effective than any other healer in the game.

Not gonna lie, I liked this analogy. There are some exceptions but these are only learned through experience and just playing around with the spec. An experienced driver will shift between gears accordingly for the most effective driving. Yeah that didn't work so well lol

[Totaltotemic]

Do you mean without casting something like Revival or do you mean not casting Renewing Mist? Also the higher gear you are in a vehicle the more efficient it is :P

You know what I mean

And yes I mean without casting a single heal that does not do damage such as Renewing Mist, Uplift, etc.

[DirewolfX]

Learning how to use both is the sign of a true Mistweaver, but attempting to use only one or the other will often end up being less effective than any other healer in the game.

How do you judge 'effectiveness'? If you're judging purely based on healing done, then on most fights, fistweaving offers little or no benefit. Only disc priests (and in 5.4 resto druids) can really provide damage and heal at the same time; the other healers can only really be judged by their healing done. Barring some degenerate situations, mistweaving offers stronger healing than fistweaving. I can't see how pure mistweaving can be 'less effective than any other healer in the game.'

[Totaltotemic]

How do you judge 'effectiveness'? If you're judging purely based on healing done, then on most fights, fistweaving offers little or no benefit. Only disc priests (and in 5.4 resto druids) can really provide damage and heal at the same time; the other healers can only really be judged by their healing done. Barring some degenerate situations, mistweaving offers stronger healing than fistweaving. I can't see how pure mistweaving can be 'less effective than any other healer in the game.'

What most people mean when they say "I don't like to fistweave, I only want to "Mistweave", is not being in melee at all. That puts them out of prime range for SCK, Chi Torpedo, and is awful when you have to stand still and channel (ranged have to deal with movement mechanics a lot more than melee). A monk that stands outside of melee range and acts like a caster is a watered down Resto Druid, which wouldn't be very good at all.

[DirewolfX]

What most people mean when they say "I don't like to fistweave, I only want to "Mistweave", is not being in melee at all. That puts them out of prime range for SCK, Chi Torpedo, and is awful when you have to stand still and channel (ranged have to deal with movement mechanics a lot more than melee). A monk that stands outside of melee range and acts like a caster is a watered down Resto Druid, which wouldn't be very good at all.

Oh yeah, for sure. I thought you meant using Jab/Tiger Palm/Blackout Kick, which really isn't necessary to be the most effective healer, although using that can make you more effective for your raid overall.

[Servasus]

How do you judge 'effectiveness'? If you're judging purely based on healing done, then on most fights, fistweaving offers little or no benefit. Only disc priests (and in 5.4 resto druids) can really provide damage and heal at the same time; the other healers can only really be judged by their healing done. Barring some degenerate situations, mistweaving offers stronger healing than fistweaving. I can't see how pure mistweaving can be 'less effective than any other healer in the game.'

MOST of the fights in tier 15 involve some sort of damage buff or potential to cleave. On some heroic fights you may need to go traditional healing, but barely ever in Normal content, unless I am two healing a fight, will I have to pull away and start channeling a Soothing Mist. And I'm always top heals fistweaving by a considerable margin as well as usually beating out a dps or two in damage done. I guess it just depends on the skill of both you and the other players in your raid that determines how "good" fistweaving is.

Theoretically, yes, on paper, traditional healing will outheal fistweaving unless there is a damage buff or potential to cleave. However, it almost never works out this way. On farm content it's much easier to snipe heals while fistweaving than it is while mistweaving.

[DirewolfX]

Your anecdotal evidence just suggests to me that you have too many healers for the content you're doing, which is when Fistweaving is really at its best (both because the extra damage helps and because the additional healing from 'traditional' heals would just be overheal). You said yourself, you only need to traditional heal when you're two healing and not when you're three healing. Farm content really doesn't matter though; I go fistweaving for farm content, too (and as I mentioned prevously, some heroic progression content as well).

In terms of healing potential, mistweaving is significantly higher. Whether or not that additional healing is necessary based on your other healers' output and raid's incoming damage is something you learn with experience.

[Deleted]

Mistweaving is more important but being able to fistweave when the time is right is pretty helpful. Much like attonement, you sort of do it when serious healing isn't required.

Completely agree.
You can also just go pure fistweaving on bosses like Megera as the extra dps really does save alot of healing. I personally can do about 135k dps in 525ilvl gear. Then go into 'Healing Mode' when the rampages come down. Its a different style of healing but really does feel rewarding and makes you feel like a unique sunflower .