Mistweaver Healing!

[L-P-R]

Heyo.

So I've been leveling my monk atm, she's 88 Right Now. Leveling, I've been a brewmaster tank, but I'd like to go Mistweaver at 90, as I really prefer healing. Could someone give me a basic Mistweaver Healing Rotation and if Possible show me a picture of what their action bars look like as a Mistweaver. Also some tips about the spec would be awesome

[Deleted]

Im gonna write you up some insttructions now. even the best guides out there dont do monk healing tactics any justice. this could take a while but its something ive wanted to do anyway :P

[Pieterman]

From what I've seen it's keeping renewing mist on CD, serpents zeal active and go melee mode. Spend mana where it's needed.
Some of my more common mistakes are not using mana tea on CD, enveloping mist on a DPS, not using expel harm and letting tiger's palm fall off.
Spec depents on what you're gonna do with your monk. Hcs, dailies, soloing, 10m or 25m raiding. My spec is going to be http://www.wowhead.com/talent#nTX|mks

-Celerity cause I like to roll more, idc about increasing my run speed as I can't run while healing anyways
-Chi Wave cause I like the feel to it, and appears to be best on 5/10m content
-Ascension I took cause I still had to practice with Chi management at lvl 45. Also it's getting a big buff in 5.1 (which is when i'll probably start raiding with my monk)
-Deadly Reach because alot of tanks tend to forget a mob or two. This way I can deal with these
-Dampen harm cause I like standard shieldwalls. May swap to diffuse magic for some fights obv.
-Xuen because he's awesome. But really I like healing cooldowns over sustained healing.

My glyphchoise is based on elimination. I rarely use spinning crane kick and surging mist anyways, and glyph of uplift is really bad in current gearlevels.
Besides, I love filling up the field with spheres.

[Deleted]

This guide is designed to fill in the gaps that other guides miss out. Other guides tell you what moves to use but not when to use them, or tell you to use things at the wrong times. This is ALOT of information to take in but Monk healing is NOT simple.

This is a very quick write up so I may have missed a couple of things, but it should give you alot of insight in how to play the class and not just know what move does what.

1. Stats
2. Playstyle
3. Talents
4. Action Bar



1. Stats

Ok so first lets talk about stats and how they effect your healing rotation.

A monk needs to gear dependant on how much damage the fight is pumping out, and then based on the duration of the fight.

If a fight is pumping out alot of damage and therefore forcing you to use big cost spells (Surging Mist), you want to gem intellect over spirit. If you are only using big cost spells for a bad sitations such as someone in your raid failing, you should lean towards spirit. This is only true for gems however as spirit gems give 2 spirit instead of 1 intellect. Other sources of intellect like flasks should always be taken except maybe special occasions like certain stoneguard heroic tactics with 100% increased spirit. This may be in a small amount disputed as noone is clear on what the best stats are, but from lots and lots and lots of testing on bosses I can tell you what i have said is most likely true.

Next you want to make sure your at your haste breakpoint and have no more haste than that. Haste is extremely bad for monks after this breakpoint. The breakpoint is 1345. Check this though if your close to it. Your Renewing Mist timers should change dramatically just by adding/removing 5 haste.

After that there is some dispute weather to go for crit / mastery for raw throughput. Mathamatically most of the trustworthy guides say that crit pulls slightly ahead. None mathamatically though crit isnt so bad for monks as alot of our healing does several heals at once, and if you have some good synergy with another healer such as a druid, the druid will automatically fill in gaps of your healing. This means that crit should rarely prove to be unlucky, although it can and will happen. Mastery on the other hand is very strong if people need burst healing and remember to walk through your spheres. However you will need a very skilled and coordinated group to actually remember to do this between all the other mechanics. Remember clicking the lightwell? For this reason I prefer crit.



2. Playstyle

A monks playstyle can be very confusing. There is alot of different situations where you need different types of healing.

First I will give an overview what the moves do. Do not try to work everything out until you read when to use the moves however as it will still be very confusing. I will explain when to use everything afterwords

Overview:

Statue:

1. Summon Jade Serpent Statue - Basically summon this thing. It will heal anyone within 40 yards with soothing mists when you cast it yourself. It also heals people within 20 yards of it when you Jab. Possitoning is key with this statue depending on who you want to heal.

Generating Chi moves:

1. Crackled Jade Lightning - Delete this move
2. Jab - Strikes the target in melee range
3. Spinning Crane Kick - AOE heals people next to you and damages enemies
4. Soothing Mist - Heals 1 target and lets you use Suring Mist and Enveloping Mist on that target with an instant cast. Enveloping Mist costs Chi.
5. Surging Mist - Heals your target and if used while channeling Soothing Mist, it becomes instant cast and will allways heal the Soothing Mist target.
6. Renewing Mist - Puts a hot on your target. That target then gains a buff which spreads the heal to 3 other targets. Never use it on the same target twice in a row as the spreading does not stack. Try not to use it on just two targets as there is a slight overlap. Use it on 3 targets.

Chi Spending Moves:

1. Uplift - Heals all of the people with Renewing Mist on them. Use this to AOE heal.
2. Your choice of talents.
3. Enveloping Mists - Puts a HOT on the target and increases the healing recieved through Soothing Mist. If cast while channeling Soothing Mists it becomes instant cast and automatically casts on the Soothing Mists target.

Cooldowns:

Monks have many raid cooldowns.

1. Revival - Your big AOE heal. This is your biggest raid cooldown. It heals everyone and is instant cast. No range as long as there is no wall between you, and removes magic, poisons and desieses off everyone.
2. Rushing Jade Wind (talent) - Fires wind in front of you. Any enemy hit will sustain extra damage from your Spinning Crane Kick. It also increases the healing done by your spinning crane kick without needing to hit anyone.
3. Invoke Xuen (talent) - Because it seems bugged make sure you have physicaly hit a target that is going to stay alive. This will heal through your Jade Serpent Staute and deal damage.
4. Thunder Focus Tea - Makes your next Surging Mist even more uba for single target healing. Also makes your next uplift refresh the duration of all Renewing Mists on everyone.
5. Chi Brew (talent) - Fills your Chi Bar to full.
6. Zen Meditation - Redirects 5 damaging spells to you with 90% reduced damage.
7. Mana Tea - Basically you gain this when you spent Chi. And you regen mana when you use it.

When To Use Moves

Statue:

1. Summon Jade Serpent Statue - Basically summon this thing. It will heal anyone within 40 yards with soothing mists when you cast it yourself. It also heals people within 20 yards of it when you Jab. Possitoning is key with this statue depending on who you want to heal.

Generating Chi moves:

1. Crackled Jade Lightning - You might as well remove this from your action bar.
2. Jab - This is the most cost effective way of generating Chi. However it requires you to be in melee range. Use this if you need to AOE heal A LOT by using spells such as Uplift / Chi costing talents, or if there is an immenant burst damage on your raid and you find yourself low on Chi. DO NOT use this if you need to single target heal as it is not effective in any way concievable. And DO NOT use this when everyone is stacked as you will use Spinning Crane Kick.
3. Spinning Crane Kick - Use this when 3-5+ of you are stacked. I havent quite worked out how many need to be stacked to make this more effective than jab for AOE healing. It also hits enemies.
4. Soothing mist - Use this if the conditions for using Jab and Spinning Crane Kick are not fullfilled.
5. Surging Mist - This is your amg that guy is dying button. Use this while Channeling Soothing Mist to save that guys life and generate Chi at high cost. It is better to jab than to use this to generate Chi if people are not in urgent need of a heal.
6. Renewing Mist - This is allmost allways used on cooldown. The only situation when you would not use this spell on cooldown is if you want to generate Chi, and there is no damage incoming for the next 15 seconds or more, and you are full mana. In this sitation you would only Jab to generate Chi as it is low cost. An example of this is at the start of Will of the Emperor where you have 1 minute to geenrate Chi with jab and then spend it which generates Mana Tea. You can start that fight with 5 mana Tea and still be at 100% mana.

Chi Spending Moves:

You can spend Chi with Uplift, and Enveloping Mists or a Chi spending talent.

1. 2. Uplift will always be your main AOE heal. However sometimes the talents can pull in front, especially if you need extra damage or you can hit lots of people with the talent. Ill let you work out when exactly to use the talents as it is different for each fight. Do the math.

3. Enveloping mist is your tank heal spending spell. Just like with Surging Mist you can cast it while channeling Soothing Mist. Enveloping Mist won't give you as much HPS as the other spells, but it is great when you need to tank heal. Remember unless you really need to save it for incoming burst damage, spending Chi gives you Mana Tea and free heals so use it.

Cooldowns:

Since monks have many cooldowns it is best to use them one by one, or use specific ones together.

1. Revival - Your big AOE heal. This spell should usually be used by itself. However if there is only 1 piece of spike damage every 3 minutes, you might as well throw in other spells too.
2. Rushing Jade Wind (talent) - Fires wind in front of you. Any enemy hit will sustain extra damage from your Spinning Crane Kick. It also increases the healing done by your spinning crane kick without needing to hit anyone. Use this spell when at least 3 people are stacked on top of you and you need to AOE heal. If you use this spell because there is big spike damage incoming, you need to pre-cast it before the damage actually happens so you can regenerate the Chi for using Uplift. Also using this spell will probably be less effective than just using it on an Uplift for very quick life threatening spike damage. So if you didnt pre-cast it and know you need 50k healing right here right now, just use uplift instead.
3. Invoke Xuen (talent) - Because it seems bugged make sure you have physicaly hit a target that is going to stay alive. This will heal through your Jade Serpent Staute and deal damage. Xuen will replace Rushing Jade Wind when you are not going to be using Spinning Crane Kick
4. Thunder Focus Tea - Makes your next Surging Mist even more uba for single target healing. Also makes your next uplift refresh the duration of all Renewing Mists on everyone. Just like Rushing Jade Wind, it is a good idea to precast this talent if you are using it to heal Spike Damage. This will ensure that you can have even more Renewing Mists on everyone when the damage hits, and can Uplift more people. It is a great idea to use Chi Brew after this. You can use Chi Brew every 2nd Thunder Focus Tea.
5. Chi Brew (talent) - Fills your Chi Bar to full. Best used 5-10 seconds after Thunder Focus Tea. This will ensure you can hit the most people with Uplift. However unlike Rushing Jade Wind, if you need the healing right here right now and didnt predict the spike damage, use it anyway as it will still greatly increase your healing.
6. Zen Meditation - Redirects 5 damaging spells to you with 90% reduced damage. I hate this cooldown as it keeps channeling even after youve redirected 5 spells, so its hard to tell when to cancel it. Be careful with this one.
7. Mana Tea - Basically you gain this when you spent Chi. And you regen mana when you use it. Using the Mana Tea glyph is good if you have no spare time to drink it.



3. Talents

Ive never had to pick between Celerity and Momentum. They never really seemed needed in raids. Good for moving faster in dungeons though. Maybe usefull on Stoneguard Heroic for planting tiles. Tiger's Lust again is only useful if you need to break someones immobilizing CC or to make them move faster such as Stoneguard Heroic. I wouldn't worry too much about these unless you are trying to PVP. In which case Momentum wouldn't seem very good as a guess.

Zen Sphere? Chi Wave? Chi Burst? They all have their moments. Chi wave is good for healing and dpsing a small amount of targets. Chi Burst is good if everyone is stacked or spread in front of you. Zen Sphere is good for fights such as Elegon where you need to dps the Sparks because of its splash damage and AOE heal. Look at the fight, decide which to use. Healing from uplift is done when the conditions for your talent are not fullfilled (all the freaking time). Always use uplift after using Thunder Focus Tea in a 10 man raid however. Hitting all 10 targets and not having to worry about where they are standing is awsome.

Power Strikes? Ascension? Chi Brew? Power Strikes is the least useful one. I seem to remember it mathamatically pulling slightly ahead of Chi Brew but in reality it doesn't. Chi Brew is a great cooldown. If you notice it has a 1 minute 30 seconds cooldown. Thunder Focus Tea has a 45 second cooldown. Therefore every 2nd Thunder Focus Tea you can follow it up with Chi Brew. This is a great HPS for them bad sitations. You can even combine it with healing from talents if you want to. Ascension can sometimes be good. Its good for them fights where damage goes up and down quite often. The damage needs to coinside with you generating full Chi. Stick with Chi Brew if you are unsure.

Deadly Reach means your CC is now 20 yards instead of melee range. Charging Ox wave is a stun and useful if every mob is spread out in a nice straight line in front of you, Otherwise use Leg Sweep as the stun duration is higher and effects everyone in your melee range.

Healing Elixir is only useful if there is constant AOE damage that you need to heal such as Galeron in Heart of Fear. This will bump up your hps. Dampen Harm is useful as a physical damage reduction talent. Diffuse Magic is useful as a magical damage reduction talent.

Rushing Jade wind is good for when you are using Spinning Crane kick. Invoke Xuen is useful otherwise. Xuen seems bugged currently so make sure you have physically hit something and it stays alive so Xuen will go attack it. This is actually a healing cooldown as it is effected by your Jade Serpent Statue. Chi Torpedo I have never used but it could be usefull if everyone is stacked / in a straight line.



4. Action Bar

Some moves just need to go next to each other. Such as Thunder Focus Tea + Chi Brew. Dampen Harm OR Diffuse Magic + Fortifying Brew. have your single target heals on 1,2,3,4 and your AOE healing moves on Shift + 1,2,3,4. Once you get the moves that have great synergy together, your mind should fill in the blanks.

[Kaleid]

Well, that guide sure was interesting. Here are my thoughts.

I use CJL sometimes, as it procs Eminence. You didn't mention Tiger Power or Serpent's Zeal which are amazing for Eminence healing.

[Deleted]

[nice guide]

4. Action Bar

Some moves just need to go next to each other. Such as Thunder Focus Tea + Chi Brew. Dampen Harm OR Diffuse Magic + Fortifying Brew. have your single target heals on 1,2,3,4 and your AOE healing moves on Shift + 1,2,3,4. Once you get the moves that have great synergy together, your mind should fill in the blanks.

Nice Guide followed by impossible keybinds :/ With the number of spells and the melee abilities, I would suggest looking at a nice guide on keybinds that bases of an esdf setup. Combine this with a mouse with two thumb buttons and Vuhdo and you are set.

Also make sure that your raid frames clearly show your HoTs and their remaining duration. It will help time Thunder Focus Tea + uplift. You want to uplift as close to the first renewing mists running out as possible, without letting them drop off of course. That will keep your RM running for the longest possible time assuming the aoe damage lasts that long.

If I'm not mistaken doing it early will roll the old HoT into the new one and increase burst healing. So if that is what you are looking for go for it and uplift earlier. (I'm still not sure how these mechanics work and if they work for uplift.

[Deleted]

Here are the keybindings I use, image below.

1 - Soothing Mist
2 - Chi Wave/Burst
3 - Surging Mist
4 - Enveloping Mist
5 - Renewing Mist
6 - Diffuse Magic/Dampen Harm
F - Tiger Palm
Q - Jab
E - Blackout Kick
G - Life Cocoon
T - Uplift
Y - Detox
V - Spinning Crane Kick
Shift+1 - Roll/Chi Torpedo
Shift+2 - Revival
Shift+3 - Fortifying Brew
Shift+4 - Summon Jade Serpent Statue
Shift+Q - Thunder Focus Tea
Shift+E - Mana Tea
Shift+F - Expel Harm
Shift+V - Paralysis
Shift+T - Xuen
Side-mouse-button - Healing Sphere
Unbinded/Clicks - Mana Potions, Trinket, Zen Meditation

Image: cl.ly /KoVw (remove the space, can't post links yet, sorry!)

These have worked really well for me. A standard heroic/10-man fight will mostly be spamming Q for Chi and E, T or F for consuming Chi (Jab x2-3 > Blackout Kick > Uplift > Tiger Palm)

I get keybindings can be very personal, but if you're not happy with what you're using, take the time to overhaul and give it a few days to get used to.

[Astraios]

SCK needs 6people to hit before it starts to split healing. However it scales extremely well with mAstery. So more targets means more healing. Significantly more healing.
Chi burst heals more than uplift until uplift hits 10+ targets.
RJW Is a healing loss comparing to using uplift or chi burst.
Chi torpedo+ celerity provides significantly more sustained healing than Xuen. Take Xuen if you need "burst" healing.

[arisoh]

Cooldowns:

Monks have many raid cooldowns.

1. Revival - Your big AOE heal. This is your biggest raid cooldown. It heals everyone and is instant cast. No range as long as there is no wall between you, and removes magic, poisons and desieses off everyone.
2. Rushing Jade Wind (talent) - Fires wind in front of you. Any enemy hit will sustain extra damage from your Spinning Crane Kick. It also increases the healing done by your spinning crane kick without needing to hit anyone.
3. Invoke Xuen (talent) - Because it seems bugged make sure you have physicaly hit a target that is going to stay alive. This will heal through your Jade Serpent Staute and deal damage.
4. Thunder Focus Tea - Makes your next Surging Mist even more uba for single target healing. Also makes your next uplift refresh the duration of all Renewing Mists on everyone.
5. Chi Brew (talent) - Fills your Chi Bar to full.
6. Zen Meditation - Redirects 5 damaging spells to you with 90% reduced damage.
7. Mana Tea - Basically you gain this when you spent Chi. And you regen mana when you use it.

Only Revival and Zen Meditation fall under 'raid cooldowns'. The rest are just regular cooldowns imo.

[Deleted]

SCK needs 6people to hit before it starts to split healing. However it scales extremely well with mAstery. So more targets means more healing. Significantly more healing.
Chi burst heals more than uplift until uplift hits 10+ targets.
RJW Is a healing loss comparing to using uplift or chi burst.
Chi torpedo+ celerity provides significantly more sustained healing than Xuen. Take Xuen if you need "burst" healing.

Yeah I missed a couple of things. Didnt know that about Chi Torpedo though, I guess ive neglected it =]

Can't edit the post either for some reason. Oh Well.

[Deleted]

What I do when using Chi Torpedo is to toggle off running so I'm "walking". That way the torpedo will nearly stay in place. Couple that with Celerity and you can torpedo three times in a stacked group manafree.

[Frostburn]

Deadly Reach is currently the best tier 4 unless you need to stun ads since Deadly Reach will increase the distance you roll.

[Deleted]

Now i'm hearing that people are more and more combat healing (fighting) then static healing (standing still), now if i'm healing with jab and such ability's combined with that style then im going oom in mere minutes were talking about 3minutes orso, while if i use static healing i can go on when there is no tommorow.

Now i doubt that i have tested this enough to conclude that im better of just staying with static instead of fighting, or know the hps numbers that produce those two styles.
Guessing that you use the fighting style when your more raid geared then heroic geared.

[Deleted]

Now i'm hearing that people are more and more combat healing (fighting) then static healing (standing still), now if i'm healing with jab and such ability's combined with that style then im going oom in mere minutes were talking about 3minutes orso, while if i use static healing i can go on when there is no tommorow.

Now i doubt that i have tested this enough to conclude that im better of just staying with static instead of fighting, or know the hps numbers that produce those two styles.
Guessing that you use the fighting style when your more raid geared then heroic geared.

At around 15000 Mana Regen fistweaving will become much easier, while keeping any spirit trinket on cooldown and optimising your Mana Tea consumption.

If you were to spam heal the group/raid/tank while static healing from a distance, you'd spend a lot more mana than you would if you were fistweaving.

Trying to control your overhealing whilst fistweaving will greatly improve your mana regen as well.

[Tatuin]

One thing you could do is read true the sticky about MWs. alot of good stuff there for new monk healers. And explain everything very good

[Deleted]

CJL is an extremely valuable spell on fights that are movement restricted and gives significant +damage to you. Baseline, CJL is actually quite close to SoM for HPS, so it gets very meaty particularly on Stoneguards HC (with tile stacks) and Elegon after killing sparks. The range benefit means you can still use Chi Burst on the ranged clumb, making it much strong than just melee slapping the boss in between SCK.

[Grubjuice]

Now i'm hearing that people are more and more combat healing (fighting) then static healing (standing still), now if i'm healing with jab and such ability's combined with that style then im going oom in mere minutes were talking about 3minutes orso, while if i use static healing i can go on when there is no tommorow.

Now i doubt that i have tested this enough to conclude that im better of just staying with static instead of fighting, or know the hps numbers that produce those two styles.
Guessing that you use the fighting style when your more raid geared then heroic geared.

Glyph of Mana Tea
You use this glyph it makes consumption of mana tea faster and more efficient and since fistweaving generates stacks of tea faster you will not go OOM as fast as you think.

[Zues]

One thing you could do is read true the sticky about MWs. alot of good stuff there for new monk healers. And explain everything very good

Half of them don't explain shit about fistweaving vs. standard healing mana consumption, or how jade lightning sucks at higher levels. There's good info in the guides, but alot of them are missing pretty key concepts.

[TheWindWalker]

since fistweaving generates stacks of tea faster you will not go OOM as fast as you think.

True but needs a few grains of salt. If you focus on fistweaving above all else, you'll need to reforge and gem into spirit above all else. We're talking way over 10k spirit. Moderate fistweaving when there is raid damage to heal (or just letting 2 SZ stacked auto-attacking happen anytime) is extremely invaluable, of course.

[Deleted]

True but needs a few grains of salt. If you focus on fistweaving above all else, you'll need to reforge and gem into spirit above all else. We're talking way over 10k spirit. Moderate fistweaving when there is raid damage to heal (or just letting 2 SZ stacked auto-attacking happen anytime) is extremely invaluable, of course.

Isn't gemming spirit given for most if not all healing classes already?

Unless you're incredibly lucky with Chi gains while channeling SoM, raid healing without fistweaving will force you to work through quite a bit of mana. When you're confident with your mana regen and see good opportunities to regen some extra, fistweaving is extremely efficient.