[MW] Looking to bounce obscure ideas around

[Thore]

I'm a fairly new MW, but I think I'm doing pretty well since my guild's 1/7M and are 10% off of getting Twins (and I'm not getting carried). As the title says I'm looking to get some feedback on my play specifically for Twins. Feedback is preferably specific (no "Uplift and Revival more gg" please) and if there's math involved I would love to see it. Also, I wasn't sure if this is supposed to be in the "Fix My Monk" thread or not so my apologies if it's in the wrong spot.

It's a wall of text. Deal with it.

I can't post links so sorry about the easy access there.
My character is Trolfu on Malorne-US
My guild's logs are on Warcraftlogs. The guild name is Sounds Complicated. I'll be referencing last night's (1/28/15) logs.

A few things of note before I get to the ideas:
-Yes I know I have the cheap MS enchant on my neck. 35MS alone isn't going to drastically change my healing output (I hope).
-Yes I know I have a blue trinket. Haven't seen anything drop or coined anything.
-The way I've mapped CDs for the fight I'm supposed to use Revival at the end of the second Pulverize and the last one before the enrage as needed, but was way late on one of our attempts (#8 on the logs and I think it was because we didn't need it on the second Pulverize that attempt for some reason). I can try to recreate the list from memory if desired.
-We were trying new positioning so the first ~7 attempts are pretty bad because people (I for one) were still adjusting. Attempts 8, 9, and 14 are the best group attempts IMO. There were some other (shorter) attempts where my performance was better than the longer ones but I'm here to have second opinions.
-I changed from Chi Torpedo to RJW for the last few attempts and saw a bit of improvement. Will continue to use it.
-Our druid is formerly of Modest (US 2nd) gone relatively casual. That combined with this being my first expansion healing is why they wipe the floor with me, though I'm looking to close the gap in terms of skill and mindset (throughput will be a byproduct but it's not the focus).
-Lastly: this is a supposed to be a thread where obscure questions I had get tossed around. Pointing out that people get hit by charge or by fire a lot is irrelevant. I already know they do. Trust me.

If you're still reading thanks for doing so. I should have brought cookies or something. Now to the fun part!

#1: Should I make better use of Crane's Zeal?
After the raid ended last night I thought about possibly switching to Crane stance with 2 chi just to get a BoK off for my Revivals. We now have the entire group stacked with the bosses for Twins with one person baiting the charges so I should always be close enough to make it happen. I could work out my positioning for when I need to use Revival to make that happen on other bosses. It becomes a 4 global sequence to do (stance change, BoK, stance change, Revival). Should I try to do this more often with even Uplift or RJW or is the resulting loss in "healable globals" not worth it?

#2: To what extent should high mana casts be planned?
I should preface this by saying never in getting to Mythic Twins had I been pushed to spend more mana. All the bosses went down without much hassle aside from getting people to not stand in stuff (no fighting enrages or anything). On Twins it felt like we would lose people incidentally to a combination of avoidable/unavoidable damage when we need people alive just to meet the enrage, which is kind of what has me thinking about this.
After going through a couple of enrage length attempts on Twins last night and having a lot of left over mana and mana tea stacks, I switched to RJW from Chi Torpedo and am a little concerned about the potentially huge increase in mana useage. I didn't get a long enough attempt where I was alive to really try it out but it didn't seem that bad on the ~3 minute attempts. I wasn't looking to push it though. Having some time now, I figured out I have roughly 814k mana to play with on a 7 minute fight ignoring the proc from Winged Hourglass (for simplicity) and the ~55k from the channeled mana potion, assuming 30 mana tea stacks and 5500mp5 from spirit (which I can't verify while between classes but I know I'm around the point where Soothing Mist is mana neutral). This means I should have the ability to use ~116k mana per minute. I'm not exactly sure how frequently other monks are using RJW but once per minute is probably doable and twice per minute might to be stretching it, at least to my brain at the moment.

#3: I haven't looked at my chi generation but can I be doing more?
Fairly straight forward and an extension of #2. More chi means more Uplifts/Enveloping Mists meaning more healing and more mana tea. I haven't had the time to look at if I'm not generating as much chi as I could. I know I occasionally waste a chi by using ReM while at 4 chi and it's something I'm working on. I use Chi Brew because I like the on demand chi and the mana tea is a bonus. I know Power Strikes generates more chi overall but the lack of control makes it less attractive than Chi Brew. I'll close this one by saying I probably don't use Chi Brew as often as I could (or Chi Burst but that's a separate issue) and am working on it, so other ideas would be awesome.

#4: Is it worth it to pre-pot for the pull?
I'm meaning using an int potion not a mana potion. Kind of a funny idea but if I'm fistweaving for a bit at the start I might actually get a couple extra stacks of mana tea through the int->crit from the potion. Maybe I'm digging to deep to improve with this.

No TLDR here. Open to any ideas. Thanks for reading!

[Infective]

I didn't read everything but just looking at #1, if you're casting revival in Crane instead of Serpent you're losing the 20% bonus healing from Serpent.

[Thore]

Forgot about that. So the order would be: stance change, BoK, stance change, Revival if I wanted to do that then. The question still stands if it's worth it to do it for RJW and Uplift.

[Volibear]

#1: Should I make better use of Crane's Zeal?
After the raid ended last night I thought about possibly switching to Crane stance with 2 chi just to get a BoK off for my Revivals. We now have the entire group stacked with the bosses for Twins with one person baiting the charges so I should always be close enough to make it happen. I could work out my positioning for when I need to use Revival to make that happen on other bosses. It becomes a 4 global sequence to do (stance change, BoK, stance change, Revival). Should I try to do this more often with even Uplift or RJW or is the resulting loss in "healable globals" not worth it?

#2: To what extent should high mana casts be planned?
I should preface this by saying never in getting to Mythic Twins had I been pushed to spend more mana. All the bosses went down without much hassle aside from getting people to not stand in stuff (no fighting enrages or anything). On Twins it felt like we would lose people incidentally to a combination of avoidable/unavoidable damage when we need people alive just to meet the enrage, which is kind of what has me thinking about this.
After going through a couple of enrage length attempts on Twins last night and having a lot of left over mana and mana tea stacks, I switched to RJW from Chi Torpedo and am a little concerned about the potentially huge increase in mana useage. I didn't get a long enough attempt where I was alive to really try it out but it didn't seem that bad on the ~3 minute attempts. I wasn't looking to push it though. Having some time now, I figured out I have roughly 814k mana to play with on a 7 minute fight ignoring the proc from Winged Hourglass (for simplicity) and the ~55k from the channeled mana potion, assuming 30 mana tea stacks and 5500mp5 from spirit (which I can't verify while between classes but I know I'm around the point where Soothing Mist is mana neutral). This means I should have the ability to use ~116k mana per minute. I'm not exactly sure how frequently other monks are using RJW but once per minute is probably doable and twice per minute might to be stretching it, at least to my brain at the moment.

#3: I haven't looked at my chi generation but can I be doing more?
Fairly straight forward and an extension of #2. More chi means more Uplifts/Enveloping Mists meaning more healing and more mana tea. I haven't had the time to look at if I'm not generating as much chi as I could. I know I occasionally waste a chi by using ReM while at 4 chi and it's something I'm working on. I use Chi Brew because I like the on demand chi and the mana tea is a bonus. I know Power Strikes generates more chi overall but the lack of control makes it less attractive than Chi Brew. I'll close this one by saying I probably don't use Chi Brew as often as I could (or Chi Burst but that's a separate issue) and am working on it, so other ideas would be awesome.

#4: Is it worth it to pre-pot for the pull?
I'm meaning using an int potion not a mana potion. Kind of a funny idea but if I'm fistweaving for a bit at the start I might actually get a couple extra stacks of mana tea through the int->crit from the potion. Maybe I'm digging to deep to improve with this.

No TLDR here. Open to any ideas. Thanks for reading!

First, here are the referenced logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/fpvGFHrXVN12gcLd

#1. As has been mentioned, you get a 20% healing increase from SotWS. The crit buff from BoK falls off as soon as you switch to serpent stance, so don't bother with that.

#2. They don't really need to be planned, but if you need it, use it. If you're opening in Crane, you'll have plenty of mana for that fight. I normally RJW during burst periods on a group of 5+ people, normally the melee after Pulverise/Shout.

#3. Chi generation seems to be okay, but it doesn't seem like you're pooling Chi pre-pull with Expel harm. I'd do that for sure, as it makes the FW opener much smoother, and you get your BoK/TP buffs up quicker.

#4. If you're worried about enrage timer, all dps is good dps, so an int pre-pot wouldn't hurt anyone. On my prog Twins kill, I used Xuen and Fistweaved the opener with an int pot for more opening burst, and fit Xuen in later on as well. It's not as good as RJW/CT for healing, but it does heal and it does damage too.

Another option if you're confident is to use Chi Explosion and Fistweave the fight.

[Deleted]

Another option if you're confident is to use Chi Explosion and Fistweave the fight.

Yea about that - Is that actually a viable option? I did entire HC progression as Fistweaver (and normal for that sake though can hardly call that progression except for Imp) - I only wrestled with Kargath Mythic yet as FW, works fine since there's nothing to do really - CAN we viably FW mythic content? Or only some bosses? I followed Magicren's thread a while back but nothing new has happened lately :/

[Deleted]

It's the superior choice for Butcher and if you're all stacking anyway I'd assume it is for Twins as well.

[Volibear]

Yea about that - Is that actually a viable option? I did entire HC progression as Fistweaver (and normal for that sake though can hardly call that progression except for Imp) - I only wrestled with Kargath Mythic yet as FW, works fine since there's nothing to do really - CAN we viably FW mythic content? Or only some bosses? I followed Magicren's thread a while back but nothing new has happened lately :/

Butcher and Twins are certainly the best for it, Kargath damage is mostly tanks and the bombs from the dudes in the stands. Everything else is avoidable, so damage taken is pretty unpredictable on kargath.

[Thore]

At Volibear (can't quote):

Thanks for taking a look. Definitely some good feedback. Some of it was stuff in the back of my mind but having someone point it out means I should probably pay more attention to it. In particular, I am sad about the loss of Crane's Zeal when switching to Serpent (I hadn't even notice it fall off when switching stances before). I thought I had stumbled onto such a good idea (that apparently was already thought of).

[Deleted]

I'm no expert but looking at the logs and comparing them you're doing less uplifts than I do, while you didn't really want to hear the "more uplifts" answer it's just such as strong spell. I've completely moved to RJW for pretty much all fights now, while it is mana intensive it's so much easier to heal through heavy raid damage.

I pretty much only use Uplift during the fight and never Enveloping Mist unless there is no raid damage and the tanks are taking heavy damage.

For twins I do quite a lot of fistweaving in the start, I can trust my other healers to heal through the initial damage for me to get some damage out as well as increase my mana tea stacks, if you feel that you're having mana issues with heavier RJW usage you can just fistweave for longer, as long as your other healers can handle it.
If you haven't you can look at the WeakAura section for the fistweaving weakaura, it bumped my fisthealing up somewhat and it's nice to have something to remind you when your buffs are going to run out.

Some minor things I saw, you don't have the targeted expulsion glyph, it's pretty nice when you're at max health since you should use it on cooldown anyway, there is nothing to dispell anyway.
While this is not a healing thing, you're not using Diffuse Magic a lot, it's one of the best cooldowns in the game for magic fights so abuse it to the maximum
Healing tonics are better than healthstones so investing in a few of those might save your life.

It's a shame you haven't been able to get the staff of the grand imperator, it's such a nice staff.

You're welcome to look me up on the armory (Falgern - Tarren Mill EU) or my guild on warcraftlogs, "Keep the Balance". Our logs are seemingly getting broken and jumping around on random dates but you'll probably find a mythic kill or two

[burmaben]

While this is not a healing thing, you're not using Diffuse Magic a lot, it's one of the best cooldowns in the game for magic fights so abuse it to the maximum

Dampen harm is the far better talent on Twins. All diffuse does is let you cheese fire, which you should avoid anyway.

Volibear hit the nail on the head for most of it. I fistweave until first quake is over. then each interrupt and quake I'll pop RJW. enfeeble is generally healed through fairly easy. occasionally I'll pop RJW after a pulverize.

[Volibear]

Dampen harm is the far better talent on Twins. All diffuse does is let you cheese fire, which you should avoid anyway.

Volibear hit the nail on the head for most of it. I fistweave until first quake is over. then each interrupt and quake I'll pop RJW. enfeeble is generally healed through fairly easy. occasionally I'll pop RJW after a pulverize.

This. Dampen can be used on every ability on Twins except fire, and if you do get stuck in fire, you can transcendance over it if you think ahead.

[YookdaGook]

I don't want to be another guy that says "uplift more", but its truly the case. I prefer to run Chi Torpedo/Chi Brew/Pool of mists; Imo this is the best chi generation/mana conservation build. If you found that you are ending fights with lots of Mana and tea, but can't find a way to increase your hps, somethings missing. Hopefully you are renewing misting on CD regardless of whether there is damage going out or not (at least 1 per 8 seconds if running PoM). On any fight where there is even remotely consistent AoE dmg (like Twins) uplift should be you #1 heal, unless you get some clutch revival crits/multistrikes. #1 spell being renewing mist is MoP'esque healing. Expel harm should be used almost on CD as well, assuming you can find effective healing for it. It's more for cheap chi generation than healing effectiveness.

In a scenario where Quake is being cast, you should already have 4 chi and renewing mist on at least 6-9 people. Assuming you are running PoM, you should be casting your first uplift as soon as Quake begins, followed by your expel harm, then your 2nd uplift. After that, you should put renewing mist on another target and cast your 3rd uplift x as many renewing mist charges as you have. If Healing CDs are lined up for upcoming dmg then you can weave in your Chi Brews as well. Ideally you want to have renewing mist on as many people as you can, while effectively generating chi at the same time. You dont want to just spam 3 renewing mists at the start of the quake, because after that your chi generation is shot. During 1 quake, at least 4-5 uplifts should be cast. Doing so will generate 2-4 mana tea depending on crit, while spending a grand total of 25k mana tops.

You should also always be looking for opportunities to cast Chi torpedo and Chi Burst. Free effective healing is the best thing for a healer. Personally, I only use 1 chi torpedo for mobility, and for healing, I used at least 2. Using 1 Chi torpedo for healing while sacrificing good positioning is lower uptime on effective healing. For a Twins example i would only use 1 charge of CT for effective healing purposes is when Enfeebling shout is coming up. Otherwise I would be torpedo forward then backward immediately. Assuming there is enough damage that has just gone out, I would cast chi burst right before it.

Now the difference between a good healer and a great healer is finding effective ways to use your mana. There is no sense in running a mana conservative build, if you don't use the mana you save/generate from teas. Now there's no way to tell on first pulls of a fight how to properly spend your mana, but if you find you are nearing the end of a fight and you have excess mana, you need to find ways to spend it. If you run short on renewing mist charges and expel harm is on CD, there's nothing wrong with weaving in some soothed surging mists (instant cast) to generate extra chi for more uplifts. Getting used to a fight and your mana regen allows you to understand when you can and cannot use surging mist. Later into mythic progression, you will find times in fights where you need chi for effective uplifts that are a must (mythic koragh during fire/shadows.

Imo, there are times to use RJW and others not. I find RJW becomes far more effective when fights start getting faster and faster. I have yet to complete a progression boss with this talent because mana becomes too much of an issue. However, I now use RJW on the majority of mythic fights aside from Imp/koragh, because our dps is making the fight more and more trivial with faster kill times. Xuen is never really an option until there is 3 or more targets for they entire duration. Only real application i've found for it is mythic tectus (you have to kill both shards at the same time to spawn all 8 motes and aoe).

Once you understand that Uplift is your most effective chi spender, and renewing mist is your most effective chi generator (aside from expel harm) you just have to understand the fight and your raids strategy to pump out more hps.

My name is Yook of Arthas-US, my guild is Nerd crew and you can take a look of my warcraftlogs of Wed Jan 21 2015 (last time we did mythic HM farm) to correlate numbers. Keep in mind that i use renewing mist on CD and there is always at least 6 people with renewing mist on them, and its no where near my top heal.

[Deleted]

I didn't read everything but just looking at #1, if you're casting revival in Crane instead of Serpent you're losing the 20% bonus healing from Serpent.

Cranes Zeal and Tiger Strikes being up for it makes up for it, and then some.

- - - Updated - - -

Just to clarify on revival in crane for the OP. With Cranes Zeal and Tiger Strikes active revival has a higher raw output in crane stance. Problem I've found though is that revival crits and multis tend to overheal.
On top of that you're praying to RNGebus that tiger strikes procs.

So it isn't really worth swapping stance for no. But if I happened to already be in crane stance and I thought I might need to revival soon I probably wouldnt bother to go serpent for it either, defiantly not if tiger strikes was up. Which it is most the time.

In my opinion revival with Cranes Zeal and tiger strikes is probably gonna be better than the flat 20% increase. But since tiger strikes is RNG its really not worth swapping over too unless you were trying to rank or something. In which case don't forget int pot :P