Is Zen Meditation considered a raid cooldown?

[Forumchibi]

Title. My raid group keeps inserting Zen Meditation into raid cooldown phases - for example, during Swelling Pride on Sha of Fear. Does it actually do anything?

Description:
Reduces all damage taken by 90% and redirects to you up to 5 harmful spells cast against party and raid members within 30 yards. Lasts 8 sec.

Being the victim of a melee attack will break your meditation, cancelling the effect.

[Totaltotemic]

No, it only works on the same spells that Grounding Totem does, which is virtually nothing of note. It's really just a 90% damage reduction, the redirect part is misleading and is being removed in WoD because it doesn't make sense.

[Azelias]

For redirecting damage, I've only in rare circumstances combined it with Avert Harm as tank. In that way it does work, but on something like Garrosh transitions, if you have a shield, and have lots of self mitigation up, you can prevent some damage to those around you.

But otherwise, no, it's pretty much a self CD (liberal use on things like Juggernaut, Blackfuse explosions, Sha of Pride explosions, Thok if you 'really' need to, or at the end of a kite)

[AgilityTank]

Your raid leader is probably meaning Avert Harm combo'd w/Zen Med and has them confused in his head.

[Jocias]

Your raid leader is probably meaning Avert Harm combo'd w/Zen Med and has them confused in his head.

That's only useful if he's BrM. If he raids 25m and is stacked with a lot of people, he can easily die from the combination of AH + ZM. If you're a tank and they need you to use AH + ZM as a raid CD, then your raid must be out of all other CDs. AH is a great personal CD in that if you aren't stacked with anyone, you can use it to stagger magic damage. ZM is another great personal CD assuming you aren't being melee'ed. That's asking you to use two great personal survival CDs and basically become a human smoke bomb that redirects 20% of all damage within 10 yards to himself. You can't use PB if you're using ZM, and if you end up taking a massive amount of damage, you won't be able to Purify it away before you fall over dead.

If he's WW, he doesn't get Avert Harm. For WW, I think the only time I've used it as a raid CD in the last two tiers of raiding was on Heroic Durumu to soak the parasite. I don't use it as a raid CD for anything this tier on my WW.

[Palemaster]

The only encounter I ever got to use ZM (as MW) as a raid CD was on Durumu heroic.

It might be designed as a PvP group CD, I don't PvP though so can't tell for sure.

[Forumchibi]

First off, thanks all for the responses! I'll be sure to pass this info along.

Your raid leader is probably meaning Avert Harm combo'd w/Zen Med and has them confused in his head.

I don't know if my raid leader even has a monk, so they do mean ZM since they were asking WWs to do it even; I just don't think they or anyone else really understood how it worked, including some of the WWs who were insisting based on the tooltip that it was probably a valid raid cooldown. And I wasn't sure after all that if maybe I just didn't realize how it worked either, so I didn't put up much of a fight about it.



Also, I noticed on the wowhead page for ZM, a couple of comments mentioned that ZM does not apply to the redirected damage from Avert Harm. Is that also correct? (In which case, I definitely was under the wrong impression about that one since I figured it did.)

[Valsh]

For all intents and purposes Zen Meditation is just a Dispersion with longer cooldown and the inability to do other things whilst it's being channeled.

It was one of those ideas they thought was cool(the redirecting) but they never bothered to make it relevant due to balancing constraints. In warlords of draenor the redirect portion of the tooltip has been removed completely. It remains a strong personal cooldown for mechanics that would either instantly kill you from the raw damage(Aim) or damage that ramps up over time.

[Totaltotemic]

For redirecting damage, I've only in rare circumstances combined it with Avert Harm as tank. In that way it does work, but on something like Garrosh transitions, if you have a shield, and have lots of self mitigation up, you can prevent some damage to those around you.

No it doesn't, Zen Meditation does not redirect any spells that take place on the entire Garrosh encounter except those cast by the adds in the Temple of the Jade Serpent heart phase, but on heroic that will kill you instantly if you intercept those anyways.

If Grounding Totem doesn't work, Zen Med doesn't work either. They don't work on anything that even resembles a meaningful raid mechanic because Shamans would be overpowered for their ability to bring that effect on a 15 second cooldown.

[Deleted]

It might be designed as a PvP group CD, I don't PvP though so can't tell for sure.

It's a very useful cooldown for pvp indeed, being it's most common use to eat traps from your healer (if you're WW of course).

[Ltgoose]

Personally, I never use it. I just collects dust on my action bars. I find channeling something while healing that doesn't actually heal counter-intuitive since I can't, you know, heal while using it. That and it really haven't found any good uses of it outside of Proving Grounds.

[BananaHandsB]

ya it's not bad for a 90% reduction on urself, but the redirect is crap. Doesn't hurt to pop it right before a big AoE, you'll save ur healers some healing/mana cause u'll take almost no dmg and they/their smart heals can focus on others, then just cancel it immediately after the AoE and go on with ur business, timed right u'll only miss a single GCD.