Hello! I’ve pretty much always been dps and want to try healing. I mainly do pvp.
How is MW for someone who has never healed before? Is it at all beginner friendly, or not so much? I’ve never played a monk of any spec before.
Thanks!
Healing as a Mistweaver is easy to pick up.
Healing optimally like mana usage, dispels, when to cooldown, how to cooldown , takes a bit of getting use to.
Positioning and Transcendence while healing optimally will take a long time to master.
I’d rate it probably a 5/10 on difficulty.
Its definitely harder than holy paladin and resto shaman but many of our mechanics are easier to pull off than they would be on a resto druid or priest.
Felt that way to me anyway.
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I wouldn’t say MW is easy to pick up, there is a lot of nuances to understand.
However, having played all other healing specs, MW handles emergency healing easier than others. Paladin and disc Priest are particularly weak when dealing with unexpected damage. Druid and Shaman are on par, but not quite as strong.
Personally I would highly encourage MW. It is not a meta healer, but there is a fun factor that draws many to the spec and keeps us here.
Caveat: you said you like pvp. MW defenses are straight up garbage right now (but was meta last xpac) Druid would be a safer choice for PVP healing focus in today’s environment.
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It is not difficult to learn. We have lots of ‘smart heals’ and mobility. Talent choices/legendaries matter in that you can fistweave (proc heals off of combat) or mistweave (traditional caster). Like any healer, you will still want to use an addon or mouseover macros to be successful.
Be aware though that MW is currently undertuned compared to the other healers and the least desired for group content (community perception). Despite the recent buffs, you can still have significant mana issues if you’re pugging and the group sucks.
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I’ve found monks the class of “easy to learn, hard to master”
So, entry stuff will be fine, but you will hit a ramp as you try to attempt more difficult content. What I’ve read about mistweaver is that it is counterintuitive to how the game thinks it wants you to play.
The old “soothing mist is a newb trap” thing. (More of a BFA issue) but truly learning the ins and outs is a high skill cap. If you’re ok with complexity and creativity, it’s fun as hell. If you just want a simple rotation and autopilot, monks don’t provide that. The active choices you make actually matter, for better or worse.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk
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Mistweaver healing is the most fun healer, in my humble opinion. As others mention, it’s easy to pick up but very hard to master - especially once you play with legendaries.
Many healers have legendaries that compliment their healing play very well, with only moderate changes to talents depending on fight and legendary. Mistweaver have a dramatic change to playstyle if using, say, AotC and fistweaving starts to happen.
While you are still a reactive healer, mostly, you’re proactive as well. Mistweaver requires the most balance between the reactive healing of a holy priest/paladin with the proactive (preparing for damage before it hits) of a druid. But this challenge is also what allows MW to be incredibly flexible to a person’s unique playstyle.
When starting out, have trust that vivify will heal everyone that has a renewing mist on them. While learning to spread renewing mist to keep it rolling in 5 player content, utilize thunder focus tea to help extend its duration by 10 seconds. This combination (vivify and renewing mist) is a huge part of saving mana and doing the triage healing when everyone stands in fire.
For squishy people, like tanks that don’t use their mitigation skills and take huge spike damage, thunder focus tea and an enveloping mist is really juicy, too!
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I found it very beginner friendly in terms of 1-59. 60 is a completely different story, but hopefully by then you’re ready for the next learning curve. It’s the only healing style I enjoy anymore.
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Thank you so much! I appreciate all the input 
If this matters to you at all, MW’s absolutely dominate random battlegrounds.
Once you get some gear you will top the healing charts basically every game which I enjoy and it’s hella fun due to the mobility on offer…allowing you to be really hard to kill by positioning yourself behind your teammates.
Also quite good in rated battlegrounds though harder to find groups than a Disc Priest or HPal.
One of the lower performing specs in arena due to dying easily in a stun and being susceptible to interrupts as we don’t really have insta heals like a HPals Holy Shock/Word of Glory.
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