1. #1
    Stood in the Fire Teramelle's Avatar
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    Mistweaver healing less than a tank?

    I'm not asking for analysis of logs or anything, here, just asking a simple question, as I've had too little experience with Mistweaver healing capability either personally or second-hand, so I just need some clarification.

    We had a Mistweaver monk ragequit our guild because he was healing less than our tank (who was, admittedly, a blood DK) and doing only a small fraction of the healing other healers were pulling off. This was on a multitude of fights in BRF, with different types of damage occurring to the raid - constant raidwide AoE, heavy tank damage, damage spikes, etc. On every fight, in every situation, he was not performing well on meters. His gear was basically the same as every other healer's, so it couldn't have been that.

    When I asked him why he was healing so little, he told me that it was because he was focusing on only effective healing, to prevent wasting mana on overhealing otherwise he would go OOM very quickly. I checked meters, to see that he was actually overhealing more than the resto druids present, so, out of curiosity, I asked if he could try just healing when it was needed and not focus solely on what would be effective and what would not - I was curious to see his general healing output when focused on just keeping the raid alive and not much else. We wiped pretty quick that try, so mana shouldn't have been an issue - when I checked meters, he was still healing too little, and chalked it up to going OOM when I asked why.

    He also refused to use Revival when it was called for by our raid leader - often citing it as "not needed" because other healers got everyone's health up eventually (at the expense of a good chunk of mana...) so it was, therefore, not effective to use it, even though his refusal caused a few raid deaths occasionally.

    Anyway, I was stumped but maintained patience and politeness while I tried to help him out a bit - with mana issues, if nothing else. Eventually, he got mad at people questioning his healing, and ragequit - yelling at me on vent and leaving quite spectacularly.

    Now, I ask: was I in the wrong? I don't really know how Mistweavers work and I'm aware that meters aren't always the best way to measure skill or effectiveness. Is mana such an issue for monks at the moment that focusing so much on effective healing at the expense of throughput is the way to go? And if one does focus on effective healing as a MW, should they be healing less than a tank, even if said tank is a Blood DK?

    I apologise for my ignorance on this matter, but I really do want to know, so that if I was wrong, I'll know how to better handle the situation in the future.

  2. #2
    Deleted
    I guess to summarise to a non mistweaver. His best mana efficiency and HPS comes when the entire raid takes an even amount of damage, better when stacked but not reliant on stacking. Should have been even easier for him on fights where that damage was on a timer and in 20-30 second intervals (Oreg/Kromo/Blast furnace) He would be mana inefficient when picking out individuals. Say for example 3 random people take a 50% spike hit throughout a fight = not good. For tank healing they are average, spot healing on raid quite poor, raidwide damage very strong.

    As per revival think about it as an oh shit button. You can use it in a set rotation and its "ok" but if you can afford to have it loose and off the rotation it's a wipe saver.

    If you look at heroic BRF @ 95th percentile (so top 5% of parses) monk is the top throughput healer
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...y=4&metric=hps

    Same for mythic:
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=95&metric=hps

    - - - Updated - - -

    At a low skill level it's quite poor
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...s&difficulty=4


    So in the case of the monk you had most likely a l2p issue and couldn't take criticism. Don't know what he's talking about "effective healing" for. Monks burst raid wide damage. That means looking at DBM timers and setting up his chi and renewing mist stacks correctly. And saving mana to spam RJW in those periods. He should effectively be able to go from 30k hps -> 90k then back down again without using cooldowns. Which is why raid wide predictable damage is best
    Last edited by mmoc028a8df6da; 2015-02-16 at 12:21 PM. Reason: typo

  3. #3
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    There's no excuse to be so low, really. My main is a MW Monk and currently am 10/10 Normal and 8/10 Heroic.

    There are a couple of fights in BRF where a monk probably would struggle to reach a high HPS, but should still never fall below a tank. One such fight is Hans'gar and Franzok where, if the raid is good at avoiding the presses and fire, there is not much damage being dished out because we shine at most when there's a lot of aoe damage on the raid. Fights like Kromog, Blast Furnace, Blackhand and Oregorger is where we monks can with a little effort reach big numbers on healing.

    The key to healing as a MW is knowing the fights and acting accordingly. For example, Blackhand and Kromog has big AOE on the raid 10-15 seconds after pull so you wanna start blanketing the raid with Renewing Mists and Thunder Focus Tea (with the Pool of Mists talent, which is a given really) right after the pull so you have 2 Uplifts ready for when the damage comes in and then another 2 Uplifts if needed with Chi Brew (if chosen this talent). If the raid is stacked, before Uplift pop a Rushing Jade Wind and/or Chi Burst and your healing will go through the roof (provided the AOE is big enough to allow this). Doing this kind of preparation for big AOEs is the key to succeeding as a MW Monk, while using Revival when called for or when everyone is in danger of dying, using Soothing Mists on tank (always with the statue out) when there's not much to do, Enveloping Mists for healing people who has taken a few too many stacks of something (like 2-3 stacks of Impale on Blackhand) or to aid the tank and maybe even Fistweave if raid damage is not high.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Mindglow View Post
    Doing this kind of preparation for big AOEs is the key to succeeding as a MW Monk

    My point precisely. To nearly anyone who asks for help about monk healing on this forum. You master this and your output doubles overnight

  5. #5
    Deleted
    To the overhealing: Probably MW monks have generally a higher amount of overhealing, because Uplift heals all targets with ReM on them, and not only damaged targets as other "smart" aoe heals do. But full targets don't count to the cap reducing the heal on low targets.

    To the HPS: It also depends a bit on your composition and the boss. I only healed two bosses in the actual content, Kromog and Thogar. I completely screwed the first one (first time MW healing ever, except for ~5 tries butcher fistweaving), so I sadly can't tell that much about that one. But on Thogar (speaking only about HC), the raid is overhealed for most of the fight - except when the add with the aoe is active. So a MW can just do damage for most parts of the fights, and only heal during this time. This will obviously make him do less overall healing than other healers, but it's better to snipe each other heals and do almost nothing in the other phase. This way, you contribute some damage to the encounter and help shorten it. I don't have that much experience with blood DKs in the current addon, but even with this you should easily get to 25k+ HPS, if you know how to play / have better gear / are not completely overhealed as we were even 35k+ should be possible.

    Another thing possible: You have generally too much heal in your raid. Healer who can just put out 50k+ heals to top someone off, or a disci who can absorb most of the damage incoming, will probably have more HPS than a monk in those cases.
    Last edited by mmoc48c29aaf6e; 2015-02-16 at 01:46 PM.

  6. #6
    Stood in the Fire Teramelle's Avatar
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    Thank you for all these replies - honestly, looking at all this info in regards to the Mistweaver play-style and abilities, I get the distinct feeling that a lack of understanding on the monk's part was the reason he wasn't quite up to scratch. I remember looking at his spells used and, comparing what I remember to the information you've all presented, I feel like he may not have been using the appropriate abilities for the situation. A guildie did mention this was a possibility, as they took a look at the spells the monk cast too and weren't too sure if they were being used correctly - so now I assume it was, as spinandwin said, "a l2p issue."

    Still, all this information has been a huge help - I can't call myself an expert on Mistweavers now, but at least if I ever encounter a similar issue, I'll know a bit more so I can properly handle things, and possibly offer some suggestions for improvement!

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lunaeria View Post
    Thank you for all these replies - honestly, looking at all this info in regards to the Mistweaver play-style and abilities, I get the distinct feeling that a lack of understanding on the monk's part was the reason he wasn't quite up to scratch. I remember looking at his spells used and, comparing what I remember to the information you've all presented, I feel like he may not have been using the appropriate abilities for the situation. A guildie did mention this was a possibility, as they took a look at the spells the monk cast too and weren't too sure if they were being used correctly - so now I assume it was, as spinandwin said, "a l2p issue."

    Still, all this information has been a huge help - I can't call myself an expert on Mistweavers now, but at least if I ever encounter a similar issue, I'll know a bit more so I can properly handle things, and possibly offer some suggestions for improvement!

    As with any spec you can just look at the top 10 ranks for that spec & the general pattern of spell breakdowns. Compare it to the player. If the differences can't be explained by tactics or raid comp it's l2p on their part more than likely. Unless they can come up with a genuine explanation. Don't need to see that guys logs to say his are probably entirely wrong.
    He'll have 1/3rd the chi generated, pressing entirely wrong buttons or be doing single target heals on raid damage.... or something dumb. Guarantee. His fault, sounds like an ignorant guy.

  8. #8
    Having said all this, on some fights our Guardian Druid will outheal all the healers (Tectus for example I think?). How much healing tanks do varies by fight. All I'm saying is compare him to your other healers, not the tanks. Checking percentiles for HPS rankings compared to other healers on the SAME attempt/kill is the best way to analyze relative performance.

    For example: Did all healers rank 30th percentile? Either they're all bad or raid just executed well... Well if you take a look at execution ranking and see 97th percentile, then looks like all the healers are good, actually. Happened to us once on a (2nd week so still relevant) Heroic Koragh kill.

    Another example: Most healers around 65-80%, but one at 30%? The 30% may be underperforming, but if they're a throughput healer and your comp is absorb-heavy, maybe the raid just executed well again? Give it a check.
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  9. #9
    The Patient Solemnity's Avatar
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    It's refreshing to see those outside of the Monk realm trying to get insight on the class. Guilds I've been in either try to assume I heal similarly to a Druid or a Shaman, or just assume I know what I'm doing with little forethought to it. My current guild tends to revolve around the latter, and they're comfortable with this because I'm generally always 2nd in raw healing on all of the fights (677 ilvl, 678 healer average). To be blunt as others have pointed out you probably just got a bad egg. Mistweavers aren't exactly hard, but they require more method to their madness and can easily be played wrong.

    If you ever do get another Mistweaver, which I highly recommend, they have a few oddities that I try to keep my fellow healers informed of.
    • We cast a HoT on cooldown that jumps to 2 other hurt players that we can later spend Chi on to detonate, or Uplift, those players to heal them. On fights with heavy, consistent damage, we will be about to do the highest healing throughput exceeding that of a Druid or Priest. The negative side effect of this is the jumping isn't exactly instantaneous and we cannot pick who this jumps to, creating lots of overhealing and doesn't really allow us to heal isolated groups, (think Butcher). We can snipe heal to a diminished extent, but doing any real single target (tank) healing uses a lot of Chi which will negatively impact raid healing, and we're not better than Pallys or Priests in that department.
    • We are functionally for all intents and purposes a melee specialization and can sit on the boss. Fistweaving isn't uncommon to see at the beginnings of fights or during downtime to generate tea stacks (reserve channeled mana returns). Fistweaving is controversial to say the least in application and use. I will rarely fistweave, but doing so is not wrong as the sub 20k dps it can do is still beneficial. The only time to worry about it is if they're straining your other healers by fistweaving the whole fight.
    • Revival is powerful, and should be used either as a regular healing buffer or an oh-shit button. If you're confident in all of your healers you can use it as a raid cooldown, especially combined with things like Amplifying Magic, but the monk will generally need to wait until the group is at a certain health deficit or it will do nothing but overheal. I've had problems with other healers panicking and going nuts with the raid healing, effectively wasting the Revival slot because they don't like seeing the raid slowly drop.
    • Mistweavers will be happier if the group is stacked up, unless the monk can't get to them (bodily position dependency), but if high spread is required Uplift and Revival lack a line of sight component and have a generally high range (Oregorger), giving us the ability to move wherever we like.

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