This is my first time going from zero to KSM as a healer, and it’s been so much fun! I’m starting to get the hang of anticipating big damage, but it can still feel hectic trying to prepare for it. I’m struggling to remember to use my defensives, even when I know the damage is coming—I just focus on keeping everyone else alive and forget about myself!
I just ran my first +8, 2-starred it, and the group liked me enough to invite me to their +10 afterward. I didnt see a difference in healing difficulty. It was super fun!
Ah, just when I was riding the high from earlier, I failed three Stonevault runs in a row. I can’t seem to keep everyone alive during the third boss. The vent-dot-then-explode cycle just happens too often for me to keep up.
Thing I learned from that boss: you should be popping your cooldowns (Yulon/chiji) on the dot coming in rather than the end burst. Unless it’s an absurdly high key, people will survive that as long as they are full health and no more damage comes in other than for the tank for a good few seconds to catch up.
Honestly, Mistweaver should be the meta over disc priest. The only reason they’re not is because of the damage reduction being necessary in higher keys + pain suppression.
Up until about 13-14 a mistweaver is the better choice. After that, its all meta.
Omg thank you so much for this tip! I just timed a +8. I focused on healing the DoT and that fight was a breeze! It could be just better PUG but I’ll go with this tip for the healing!
Yep, as a monk you have to get in the habit of doing mini ramps when you see aoe incoming, because it’ll compliment sheilun’s gift etc. Our reactive healing is limited. Another mini ramp is to make sure you have 4 stacks of bok before your chiji window. Or enveloping into renewing for chi harmony into Conduit.
Edit: don’t forget to use your rsk too to extend hots
Going back and forth between my MW and Hpally and so far I think it’s been easier on my Monk. I can just usually jump into DPS rotation and people get healed where as Paladin it’s a bit different for me.
MW is super fun like forever for me, got more fun in DF and now it’s even better specially after the last few patches. I used to only play hunter for a few years, started healing as a Druid for a while, then Disc, then Monk.
I personally changed from Conduit to Harmony since the first changes to Harmony and I vastly prefer this way, being meta or not. If you know what you’re doing, you can do a crapton of damage and heal.
Got 550k of overall damage and 880k overall healing on Stonevault +10 this week for my vaults:
I barely had time to play this week so I didn’t bother to try an +12 yet. Also started to level my Disc as an alt, which is also fun, but I vastly prefer my monk in general despite being meele.
I really think Monks should bring at least bress, being an “spirit healer” it would make sense. And their class buff suck, but I guess it’s good to not be meta as long as it’s good enough.
I go back and forth on if I should go MOH or stay conduit.
I know MOH is more damage, but I worry risking the healing cooldown that is conduit, and I’m a fan of the Nizuo shield.
For me I haven’t convinced myself an extra ~300k dps (at most) is enough to risk someone dying at a key point, especially when the dps are doing 1.5M dps each.
When people die is mostly their fault anyway, it’s not like harmony heals less or it lacks CDs, and extra 300k of overall damage certainly help with timing keys. MOH also heals as a hot, although it kinda sucks and it’s unpredictable, it does help in fights with constant low AoE damage.
You can ramp with Balanced Stratagem things like Sheilun’s Gift and Vivacious Vivification, that aligns very good with the overall timing between Rising Sun Kicks and Blackout Kicks witch Teachings of the Monastery.
And I guess what is even better, you have two charges of Thunder Focus Tea, which means double the amount of Jade Empowerment stacks, Secret Infusion and Deep Clarity, which translates in a lot of extra heal, specially in packs with 3+ adds.
But I do think MOH is harder to play, you need to track your vitality to play it properly, Celestial on the other hand is very straightforward, extra procs and an extra AoE heal button.
There are two monks currently sitting on the top 25 from Warcraft Logs, one plays MOH (top 7) and the other Conduit (top 16). So both works at top level, which is excellent!
It’s all about taste, there are still monks who prefer to go 100% caster in dungeons, specially now we have Rushing Wind Kick, although I think it’s a waste. But it does work (maybe not at the top level).
When I view keys I tend to focus on the healing pinch points where I’m concerned the highest likelihood of someone dying will happen (that as a healer I can realistically help prevent, not talking about dps eating avoidables).
And these tend to be boss phases, way more than trash. And single target CJL isn’t the healing monster it is during trash.
Some specific examples are things like the aoe phase during coagulation, the last boss of CoT splice + root/slam, dark orb into pulse aoe on the second boss of DB, flame vents into the cube explosion on the second SV boss, etc. for some of these Chi-Ji isn’t always up, and I really love that mobile high healing of conduit in those situations.
Maybe this week I’ll play a bit more with MOH, give it a better test.