Hi, I’m a MW monk main, previous BM monk main from BfA.
Currently 7/10 H with my guild.
I’ve always been very weary of trusting sites like Icy Veins, Peak of Serenity, etc with class guides for monk. Because a lot of them are written by Monk tourists, or the guides are made in pre-patch and never updated.
I wanted to have a discussion about Expel Harm. The spell has always been sorta strange, and useless. However, In shadowlands, Expel Harm now has a new passive at level 54 for MW monks:
Expel Harm+
1,500 Mana (at level 60) - Instant cast, 15 second cooldown
May be cast during Soothing Mist, and will additionally heal the Soothing Mist target
I think this change is deceptively really good. At least for single target healing. Its the MW monk’s “Binding Heal”, healing your target and yourself for a heafty amount for a low mana cost, and instant if you’re using Soothing Mists. (Which you’ll already be doing when healing single target)
Every “guide” online says to not even put this on your bars, but I think that’s stupid. Here is a comparison of Vivify & Expel Harm single target: (All numbers based on my character un-buffed at 1366 intellect ilvl200)
Vivify:
2050 Mana
2084 Healing to target
(Also heals all Renewing mist targets for 1537)
Procs gust of mists (1466)
(248 Healing per 100 mana ASSUMING you have Renewing Mists on your target)
(173 healing per 100 mana without RM)
Expel Harm:
1500 Mana
2350 Healing to target
2350 Healing to self
Procs gust of mists (1466)
(411 Healing per 100 mana Assuming it heals you too)
(254 Healing per 100 mana Assuming you dont need heals)
So can someone explain to me by Expel harm is being taken off the bars? Is it for the GCD alone? Because to me it seems like a strictly better spell for single target. And obviously it has a 15 second CD, but if your RM is bouncing around, and you’re tank healing. Why not use it?
MW is a mana hungry class, expel harm will do that healing to yourself and one other target, for 500 mana more you can vivify heal and get 1-2 more targets. With MW being as starved it is for mana, putting a spell like that on our bar when we have something else that does the same thing but better makes no sense. Also don’t forget it requires you to be channeling soothing mist to get that affect on two people, and you shouldn’t ever be channeling soom if you can help it
Soothing mist costs 200 mana a second to channel, but essentially takes your vivify cast time from 1.7~ to 1.0 second (GCD)
Why cant i cast soothing mists? You’re totally right about MW being a mana hungry class, I manage to heal fine using my style of play, which essentially breaks down to keeping RM up, and spot healing with SM+Vifify
EDIT: I dont mean to suggest to use Expel instead of Vivify, only as a supplemental tool. I think removing it from your bars is a mistake
I’m just gonna address expel harm to not go into a rant regarding issues with mw.
I use expel harm. You are right multiple people and sites deter from it. But with how some classes struggle with healing and mana I use every single tool I have. I use expel harm mainly to help myself if I am dipping and someone else is as well. This is assuming I have no charges of RM.
Playing MW is a bit rough outside raid so if you can make use of an ability regardless of what a site says, use it. Expel harm is an instant that does not reduce when healing someone else.
TLDR: I use it to heal the soothing target as well as myself if I am dipping low as well.
So unless the target is taking a lot of dmg, it’s never a good idea to channel soom just to get a vivify out. Soothing mist isn’t efficient even if it’s mana is negligible. It may seem nice because of the lower gcd but it isn’t, I’m bad at explaining the reasons but I think peak has a good explanation on the site. Also the guys who do write that are very smart theory crafters, they aren’t “tourists” it just isn’t efficient to use expel harm atm, maybe one day but right now it should stay off your bars. Ofc you should play as you like and if you enjoy using the ability then I wish you the best.
only problem with this is that makes expel harm aoe as it heals both of you, and if you’re full hp then it’s over healing, and if more than the tank is taking damage, then vivify wins out in efficiency because it’s atleast healing 3 people from its cast [2 cleave, 1 main target]
you are spending time on this, which only slows down your actual rate of healing spells.
for example if you sooth into vivify you spend 2.5 seconds of gcd’s on that combo, but if you just vivify you only spend 1.5 of gcd’s on the cast.
With the difference in time being pretty close to 2 gcd’s for as little a gain as soothing mist gives in that time, it’s not worth using, and this is the case a majority of the time in raiding, and somewhat in dungeons unless the tank is getting trucked for a few gcds, or a dps for the same reason.
The guides are just that, they are guiding you into plays that are safer, and most of the time are the right choice, expel harm in pvp however is really good because having an instant cast at its cost, for the healing it does is actually pretty decent, because it’s uninterruptable, and you can use it whilst kiting
So Vivify has the same cast time as the gcd (1.5 second modified by haste) meaning unless you’re rocking negative haste your not at 1.7 seconds. This also means that when vivify is done casting you can instantly use your next spell without any delay. When it comes to soothing mist it has a 1 second gcd (which is abnormal) and makes your vivify instant cast BUT not off the gcd. This means if you Soom → vivify you have to still wait 1.5 second till your next spell can even be started.
If we look at a rotation of casting 5 vivifies with 0 % haste (this all scales linearly till 34% haste where it starts getting weird due to soom being at min gcd)
1.5 second cast
Vivify hits
1.5 second cast
Vivify hits
1.5 second cast
Vivify hits
1.5 second cast
Vivify hits
1.5 second cast
Vivify hits
This takes a total of 7.5 second
if we do the same thing with soothing mist we get
soothing mist
1 second gcd
vivify hits
1.5 second gcd
soothing mist
1 second gcd
vivify hits
1.5 second gcd
soothing mist
1 second gcd
vivify hits
1.5 second gcd
soothing mist
1 second gcd
vivify hits
1.5 second gcd
soothing mist
1 second gcd
vivify hits
1.5 second gcd
This takes a total of 12.5 second.
If we are going to do it all on the same target then its just 1 soom cast which still makes it slower but if you’re putting 5 vivifies into 1 target then the extra healing from soothing mist makes it worth doing.
BUT The major thing to take away is SOOTHING MIST makes vivify instant but not off gcd so you’re not saving anytime. All you’re doing is having to buff a cast and then allow for it to hit 1/3 gcds faster (this number gets worse with more haste)
(note before someone argues about 1.5 second gcd being contributed to vivify or not just think if I didn't hit vivify would I have that gcd there? which the answer to that is no you wouldn’t which means vivify caused it meaning that time goes to vivify)
When it comes to why do we take expel harm off our bars its very simple. The ability doesn’t do enough healing to make it worth it in the majority of cases. Anytime you need 2 target cleave on you and anyone else its the move 100% right when it turns away from 2 targets into 1 target or 3+ targets its just not good compared to vivify (or essence font). This also traps you into 2 second* of total gcd time compared to 1.5 second of cast time for Vivify. The only other niche Expel Harm has is where you’re forced to move, don’t have any renewing mist charges, and only need st healing on yourself. Which in PVE situations isn’t all too common.
* = Soothing Mist has a 1 second gcd as stated before but so does expel harm.
I believe IcyVeins website and their info pertains more to PVP/hard core elite then anything. At least this is what I was told by a trustworthy friend.
@magnapinna this makes sense, thanks for explaining it
I said 1.0 GCD because i thought GCD was still 1 second, i know they increased it at some point?
I didnt realize Soothing mists itself triggered a GCD
Thanks for advice friends, I’ll give this a go in my next raid.
Taking something from your kit off your bars? No.
From a PVE standpoint, Vivify should always provide the better throughput (assuming there’s RM x 2 float’n).
However, the spell in it’s current form is still useful in PVP when you’re getting trained. Have this baked into my Healing Elixir KB. It’s costly but proc’s gust on the move w/ RM. At the end of the day, I’m still f’d as a MW, but at least I tried to live through the post-trinket swap.
Regarding expel harm’s gcd:
I’m a WW/BrM that has barely touched MW
However on each on those 2 specs I find the gcd of EH to be faster than 1s and is more like half a second.
Not that this would seem to change its effectiveness much but you might want to see if its gcd feels any different for you.
I like and use expel harm quite a bit. However never with soothing mists. I view it as a personal survivability CD and use it to keep my health at acceptable levels.
I use the covenant ability that buffs EP, and I’ve noticed that it really heals for quite a chunk with that.
I only use Expel Harm as a personal survivability cooldown, it detracts from cast flow too much to bother with SooM unless a single target is being decimated.
That being said I run Dreamweaver as my Mistweaving covenant for now (pod life) and the second defensive I run is for Expel Harm, to boost my self heal.
Reason why this thread was made is sort of a sanity check. Why is soothing mist a spell if everyone says to not use it?
Why is Expel Harm a spell at all?
etc. Thanks all
Because the devs don’t know what to do with MW monk.
Who could fault the devs right?? You have 90% of the monk community playing the spec with Tear of Morning crying about their mana problems. You have the other 10% playing the AtotM build who have no mana problems and produce nearly the same HPS. Most MW read stuff like Icy Veins and think they NEED the ToM legendary.
Worse you have a lot of MW’s who don’t realize Soothing Mist is a waste of space for most everything.
OR OR OR you have the Mistweavers that don’t even know to cast Enveloping Mist during Yu’lon. Literally seen logs of monks who don’t have a single heal from Enveloping Breath in their logs. The same people complain that Yu’lon is a bad healing CD.