So monk has neen on my my absolute favourite classes since itscseption; from good to bad.
I realised that the general conscnese vastly ‘underweights’ the value of ATotM for two reasons:
- One: on know I have to be in melee range
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I agree wholeheartedly.
Funyuns, definitely funyuns.
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I had a stroke.
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I too love to punch my friends back to life.
Is this a question lol
I’m pretty sure someone posted their saved draft accidentally.
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This post is iconic Mistweaver content, I’m dying.
Kihm where are you we need to know the second reason. We love you.
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So, I accidentally posted this just as I’d started composing the actual post.
By the time I realised I’d done this, my account had been suspended because of offensive language (which I think an AI took out of context but fair enough).
Anyway, hi, I love you too. I’ll post what I was originally trying to do in the first place, but it will probably be nowhere near as entertaining for you.
Original:
Hi everyone,
Monk is my hands-down favourite class to play at the moment and healing has always been my favourite role. I’ve seen a lot of “the spec is dead” etc posts on here so I wanted to have this as a less negative space for discussion on builds, specs, and stat priorities
Disclaimer:
This post is brought to you by Kihm, 1010/HC, 2/10M, and 1.6k in 2s
I am by no means perfect, nor am I claiming to be better than any of you. Also, I this post will most certainly contain some flaws. [oh, the irony…]
Generally, I prefer to shy away from cookie-cutter builds and have more fun trying to make a more alt-build work to the best of my ability.
I PvP a bit, so some of the stat weights may seem odd at first glance.
TL:DR:
I’m a full kickweaver: ATotM; 0 mastery, max vers, medium crit & haste.
This build has served me well in my PvP career but I’m looking for new stat weights for PvE. I still want to be full kickweaver, but unfortunately all the guides I’ve seen give 0 credence to the kind of build I’m going for. I’m hoping there’s an expert monk out there that’s willing to help me out; whether that be recommendations for upgrades, or (worst case scenarios) a complete redo 
Super brief background: playing on and off since Vanilla, only missing WoD
Actually-valuable background: I have been playing what I call full-kickweaver (basically, leaning heavily into the Anchient Teachings of the Monastery legendary playstyle as far as stat weightings and rotations go, with a side of Kyrian for Super-Chi-ji)
It basically allows me to spend 75% of my time as a ‘dps’ and the rest of it throwing on HoTs or popping cooldowns.
While I primarily PvE (10/10HC and 2/10M), I do really enjoy PvP too (sadly only Challenger so far, but looking forward to the changes coming in 9.1!)
With that over with, I’d love to hear from some other monk healers and how you’re going about things at the moment! I’d love to hear your build setups, stat distributions, and covenants (and why you personally like that covenant/ability).
Thanks for reading so far and I have one final request:
If you consider yourself to be a damn good healer (even if you do say so yourself) then would love you if you could give me a rundown on how you manage pulls (specifically challenging ones) and what your covenant is.
Some background on my character:
PvE
- iLvL: 222
- Spec: Rising Mist & ATotM
- Vers: 18% (772)
- Crit: 24% (581)
- Haste: 12% (412)
- Mast: 49% (125)
PvP
- iLvL 218
- Spec: Rising Mist & ATotM
- Vers: 29% (1,146)
- Crit: 18% (313)
- Haste: 7% (243)
- Mast: 39% (49)
I’ve read a lot of guides (Icy-veins, WoWhead, Method) but they are all either outdated or don’t even give any consideration to the kinds of stuff I’m interested in.
A recurrence among those guides seems to be:
- “ATotM in melee? Bad! Stupid! Suicidal!”
- Which is a good theory on the face of it… except you so often end up in melee in PvP anyway.
- “It’s not even any good compared to X,Y,Z!”
- People seem to drastically undervalue the strength of being able to continue healing through interrupts. It’s been life-saving for me and my team many a time to be able to continue kicking even when locked out for 6+ seconds.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. All feedback and questions encouraged.
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Despite my enjoyment of a good laugh, this post is equally as entertaining and interesting! (And still provided one good laugh)
I’ve been playing Mistweaver since mid-BFA. I’m not nearly as experienced as you are and I’m by no means a theory crafter, so far I’ve gotten AOTC this tier, working on KSM slowly while I wait for 9.1 and try to find a guild that’ll take me. I don’t do any competitive pvp, the combo of being a basically fresh arena player with no experience and the doomsaying about our spec has kept me hesitant. I do like some random games though.
So take my thoughts with a huge grain of salt!
I’ve leaned into the same build as you, except I’ve been playing Night Fae so far. Reasons being:
Since I don’t pvp seriously, I’ve prioritized haste over every other stat (it’s at about 26% base I think?), although my critical strike is catching up. Dreamweaver combined with the reset mechanic gives pretty high uptime on the 12% haste buff, and since it’s a 5 second duration I rarely have to worry about positioning/moving out of it.
Frankly I just like that NF has an active on-use effect as opposed to all of our other choices, even tho it’s pretty weak overall.
So I’m keeping a close eye on the Kyrian legendary and might switch. The last Mikanikos trait gives a huge on-use damage burst and cooldown reduction for Weapons of Order which will certainly be higher overall dps than basic NF in single target, at least. Plus whatever the legendary might do, although I’d have to be really impressed to move away from ATotM. And Kleia looks really good for some raid situations.
I like haste because it increases the tick rate of our HoTs, and reduces the cooldown on RSK so it makes everything feel faster and more synergistic, even if it’s not the best stat.
I know it’s much more difficult to manage in a mythic setting I’m sure, but I’ve never worried much about being in melee range. I dodge the mechanics, just like any ranged does. As a healer I’m not too worried about maximum uptime if I have to move a little farther out, I use that time to cast Renewing mist or expel harm or anything instant.
I have not been serious enough to develop any sort of opener yet, I basically cast my two renewing mist charges on the tanks on pull, and then essence font (or hold it if I know some group wide damage is coming out right away) then go to town on dps. Spread out my cooldowns appropriately, and I usually do more hps and also dps than most healers I’ve pugged with (obviously not saying much, they usually do zero dps lol).
I’m not sure why healers are so afraid of being in melee. If you play Mistweaver and you want to contribute to dps at all which idk why you wouldn’t, you have to be in melee anyway!
I love healing but Mistweaver especially because it’s so variable and I feel like I always have a tool at hand. If someone’s about to die, life cocoon shield can save them where damage reduction wouldn’t. Mastery double procs for triage healing, soothing mist for pumping single target. Vivify cleave. All on top of dps and fistweaving heals. We probably don’t have any “zero to full” instant casts like some other classes, although with the mastery conduit sometimes it can get there, but overall no other healer is like a Mistweaver. I’m like you and I enjoy playing an alternative style.
I’m not too sure what I’ve contributed here, if anything, lol. You’re more experienced than me so I can’t really give recommendations or guidance. But there are definitely others that lean into this playstyle! I’ve seen quite a few on the forums playing nearly the same exact build as me, and you as well.
If you’ve never checked out Questionably Epic, Voulk over there focuses purely on fistweaving theory crafting and guides.
Ok I thought this post was a massive troll but got a good laugh as I read down.
I agree that the typical vers stacking feels a bit bland, and we finally have a stat we can dump into, for the first time in like 3-4 years, without much downfall.
I primarily PvE, while I’m not big on pushing keys, they do get done. I’m also 10/10 heroic and 7/10 mythic. I run Nightfae simply because the other choices aren’t >as< far ahead as a lot of people seem to think, and I’ll take a roughly 5% weaker ability because, in my opinion, it’s the prettiest spell they’ve ever added. Combined with the overhealing bubble from Dreamweaver, our normally disgusting volume of overhealing from Essence Font finally gets some usage.
That being said, I agree with Mistflower. I still have a few upgrades left to go but I’m sitting just shy of 24% haste and the flow is quite nice. As you get further and further into the tier it can get hectic, and there are specific haste breakpoints both for Renewing Mist and for squeezing as many blankets of Enveloping Mist/Breath over your raid as you can. Unbound Changeling trinket is an amazing haste boost that has a decent amount of uptime.
In regards to the guides you’ve been reading; fist weaving wasn’t looking at all viable in the beta leading up to Shadowlands launch. Even the Peak of Serenity team was skeptical. There is however a recent and very informative guide put out by a monk called Sweggles. He specifically goes over how to play it effectively and explains stats. I’ll include some links below.
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Your style is a great way to incorporate dps into a the spec, and by nipping at the heels of your tanks’ dps while still sustaining your raid, you are doing good things - every raid needs one or two healers just focused on pumping large numbers, regardless of who they land on. However, some situations really just demand our basic casting kit to be used, stat distribution and legendary choices be damned. Your kickweaving has its place in raid, but from a die-hard traditional casting mistweaver, I fear you’ll miss some of the biggest strengths of the class by limiting yourself so hard.
It means the difference between “x died because he screwed up” and “x cost the mistweaver some mana because he screwed up”.
Specifically you asked for weights, but stat weights really don’t exist in pve for mistweaver. Ilvl is king. All of our secondary stats are strong right now, but they’re strong in different ways.
Crit buffs all of our healing, and reduces reliance on rng when we’re trying to spot heal in an emergency
Vers buffs all of our healing, and provides extra tankiness which synergizes extremely well with our amazing mobility kit. A great mistweaver soaks everything that needs soaking.
Haste buffs all our healing from cast speed, and increases heal per mana of our hots. Too much haste will drain some MW mana bars, but if you are focusing more on the Atotm then you shouldnt have to worry about that. A further benefit of haste is GCD reduction. While fistweaving, you are using all your gcds as they come for your rotation, but traditional mistweavers can spend downtime channelling, keeping their gcd free to instantly spot heal. Haste focus will mitigate this, allowing you to react to new developments a bit faster.
Mastery is our rescue stat. Nobody WANTS to use mistweaver mastery, but in the real world, people make mistakes, and youll wish you had it every time you see someone take a hit they shouldn’t have. This is where you place your own input on what kind of healer you are: would you rising sun kick to continue your rotation, or stop to spot heal a ranged dps with a failed mechanic dot? Mastery pulls through where other stats would never do enough.
Leech is extreme throughput. Leech on a major piece (helm, chest, legs) is worth about 4-6 sockets, and about 2-3 sockets on a lesser piece like bracers. Self-only is a non issue since once YOU are healthy, smart heals and aoe heals stop targeting you. The healing shape of fistweaving is “whoever is nearby gets my heals” and leech fully supports this.
For your style specifically I would prioritize:
- Leech
- iLvl (Int)
- Haste
- Crit = Vers = Mastery, unless you would never bother to heal people through mechanics, in which case
- Mastery
If you dedicate to gearing for hard and fast kickweaving, your mana will suffer if you try to swap out for traditional healing situations. To avoid this, drop haste down below crit/vers, and raise mastery to meet it.
I’m glad I kept reading because there’s some really good stuff in the responses to the real questions.
100% agree with the above thoughts on choosing Night Fae (I seriously chose it because Faeline Stomp is beautiful and fun to cast/reset), and I will beat my dead horse here about how often Podtender has saved me and my group/raid.
One thing I will add is that I refuse to use the “cookie cutter” build because I find that it just doesn’t work for my playstyle. It took me a bit to figure out through trial and error, but now that I’ve got what works for me I feel much more comfortable. I will disclaimer here and say that I don’t pvp seriously and that my guild has only gotten to 1/10M. However, I feel confident that I could manage much farther into mythic CN with no real issue (i.e. my guild’s progress doesn’t reflect on my or anyone’s personal performance - it’s a reflection of our casual attitude as a whole).
With that said, I will confess that I use Spirit of the Crane. It’s supposedly the “lazy choice,” but in both raid and m+, I find that it continuously outperforms Mana Tea for my playstyle. In addition, I always use Chi-Ji with one exception, which you already know is Kael’Thas, and I hate that fight so much. Finally, I stick with Mist Wrap for all content because I can’t get over how lame Chi Burst is to cast, and with Faeline Stomp, it feels even more useless. I call my choices “pleb style,” and I’m fine with it, but the point is that I’ve tested how this all works for me and come up with what makes me happy/comfy, which I think will always reap you the most reward from your character.
Edit for stats discussion: I don’t stress over secondary stats. I take Leech where I can, undervalue Mastery, and make sure I’ve got at least 12% Haste (I think I’m currently at 18%, and with Dreamweaver’s buff it’s what? 22% nice!).
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I actually feel similar about ATotM in pvp. My gear is still lacking in SL for my monk, but fistweaving has had a very interesting and dynamic history. With 9.1 bringing more damage and pvp talents that allow us to mitigate/avoid damage during stuns, I think this could actually be viable. I have definitely had fun surviving 2v1 situations in BGs despite being spell interrupted continuously. It’s almost like you could drop Zen Focus Tea for another mitigation talent and prosper…