Updated for Patch 5.2[Gear list has arrived!]
1.0 Introduction
Monks were introduced in Mists of Pandaria as the 11th class of World of Warcraft. Monks are capable of performing the 3 basic roles: tanking, healing and damage dealing. This guide will focus on the healing specialization, the Mistweaver monk. I’ve made this quick to the point guide to give you the needed information without the hassle!
Please help improve the guide from corrections, additions, or alterations in the replies below.
| Table of Contents |
| 1. Introduction |
| 2. Talents & Glyphs |
| 3. Stats & Reforging |
| 4. Enchants and Gemming |
| 5. Addons |
| 6. Changelog |
| 7. Appendix(Coming Soon) |
Talents and Glyphs
1.1. Talents
Lvl.15 – Mobility
Our choice: Celerity - Allows you to roll more often by reducing the cooldown and increasing the number of charges to 3 will inevitably give you ‘burst movement’. This talent is mandatory when using chi torpedo.
Lvl.30 - Chi-consuming abilities
Our choice: Chi Wave - 2 chi. 40 yd range. Instant. 8 sec cooldown.
For most situations, this is the talent you want to pick. It’s a smart heal and its throughput is reasonable but its cooldown limits its usefulness. Chi Burst is a viable alternative for more AOE healing intense fights.
Lvl.45 – Chi Generation
Our choice: Power Strikes - 20 sec cooldown.
With the recent changes to this talent, it will give you an average of 2250 MP5(roughly 200 above the others). It will always proc on the first tick of SM & CJL so be aware when the proc is up and available.
Lvl.60 – Crowd Control
Our choice: Charging Ox Wave - 30 sec cooldown
This tier really comes down to play-style especially now that Charging Ox Wave now has a shorter cooldown. Pick at your discretion.
Lvl.75 – Defensive Abilities
Our choice: Dampen Harm or Diffuse Magic - 1.5min cooldown
This comes down to what’s required for the fight you are on. Diffuse Magic is amazing for spell based abilities and helps for most encounters. Dampen Harm should only be used if know you are going to receive a large physical hit.
Lvl.90 – Oh.. What to choose out of the 3?
Our choice: Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger - 40 yd range. Instant. 3 min cooldown.
Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger is considered a guardian and as such he benefits from temporary stat increases and general damage increasing mechanics from raid encounters. He does not benefit from Tiger Power.
Although Xuen is considered a DPS cooldown, he interacts with Eminence healing and can be considered a viable healing cooldown over 45 secs. Having increased damage from raid mechanics will also net increased healing from Eminence.
1.2. Glyphs
Glyphs were changed in Mists of Pandaria to having a minor boost in performance but can also alter cosmetics of certain abilities. It truly comes down to the individual player & their preference. Below is what we recommend. Minor Glyphs are not worth mentioning.
[Glyph of Renewing Mist]– It gives your Renewing Mist the ability to spread over greater distances, giving the Mistweaver the ability to blanket heal the raid in general assuming melees and ranged are within at least a 40 yd range. You can remove this if you are wanting to focus ReM to hit certain groups(better for fights where you are spread out among the room.)
[Glyph of Spinning Crane Kick] - Allows some additional mobility whilst channeling SCK. This is great for fights where having a reduce in speed is more harmful then good.
[Glyph of Mana Tea] – This is considered the most important glyph since it ‘forces’ Mana Tea consumption into our priority list but reduces our mana tea consumption downtime by 50% if used with two stacks. Its value rises for encounters with a significant amount of movement or constant healing required.
Stats and Reforging
This is the short and sweet version of it. Use your ilvl and comfortability with regen to judge what stats to go for.
Above ilvl 489: Spirit until satisfactory mana regen. > 6,145 Haste > Intellect > Crit > Mastery > Haste
Enchants and Gemming
3.1. Enchants
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Superior Intellect – Permanently enchants a cloak to increase Intellect by 180.
- Chest: Enchant Chest – Glorious Stats - Permanently enchants chest armor to increase all stats by 80
- (Alternative)Enchant Chest – Mighty Spirit - Permanently enchants chest armor to increase Spirit by 200.
- Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Super Intellect – Permanently enchants bracers to increase Intellect by 170.
- Gloves: Enchant Bracer – Greater Haste - Permanently enchants gloves to increase haste by 170.
- Boots: Enchant Boots – Pandaren’s Step - Permanently enchants a pair of boots to increase movement speed slightly and mastery by 140.
- (Alternative)Enchant Boots – Greater Haste - Permanently enchants a pair of boots to increase haste by 175. Requires a level 372 or higher item.
- Off-hand: Enchant Off-Hand – Major Intellect – Permanently enchants a shield or off-hand item to increase Intellect by 165.
- Main-hand: Enchant Weapon – Jade Spirit – Permanently enchants a melee weapon to sometimes increase your Intellect by 1,650 when healing or dealing damage with spells. If less than 25% of your mana remains when the effect is triggered, your Spirit will also increase by 750.
- Rings (Enchanter Only): Enchant Ring – Greater Intellect – Permanently enchants your ring to increase Intellect by 160.
3.2. Gemming
- Yellow:
Misty Wild Jade,
Potent Vermilion Onyx - Blue:
Sparkling River’s Heart,
Purified Imperial Amethyst - Red:
Brilliant Primordial Ruby - Meta:
Revitalizing Primal Diamond
Patch 5.2 Gear List
The Patch 5.2 gear list has arrived! I’ll make sure to edit this appropriately depending on how Heroic items fair out. This list applies to LFR, Normal and Thunderforged items!
- Helm: Hood of Smoldering Flesh
- Neck: Soul of Prism of Lei-Shen
- Shoulders: Spaulders of Dinomancy
- Cloak: Constantly Accelerating Cloak
- Chest: Robes of Concussive Shocks
- Bracers: Vampire Bat-Hide Bracers
- Gloves: Fire-Charm Handwraps
- Waist: Girdle of Night and Day
- Legs: Fire-Charm Legwraps
- Boots: Deeproot Treads
- Ring: Ring of the Shado-Pan Assault
- Ring (1): Durumu’s Captive Eyeball
- Trinket: Horridon’s Last Gasp
- Trinket (2): Lightning-Imbued Chalice
- Main-Hand: Torall, Rod of the Shattered Throne
- Off-Hand: Orb of Arcing Lightning
Addons
Here are a handful of addons that I recommend you try out. Make sure you keep these addons up-to-date so they work properly.
Changelog
[3.6.2013] Revamped some of the stat priority’s. Included the required Haste for Patch 5.2.
[3.7.2013] Patch 5.2 Gear list has been added. Enjoy!
THIS LOOKS AMAZING! Seemed like I was looking for the website for a while and couldn’t find anything. I just found it now. AWESOME!
[...] Mistweaver [...]
Revival – I only use this ability when I’m falling behind in heals groupwide. It will hit all targets within line of sight meaning as long as all of your party/raid members are shown on your screen, you’re good. If you can melee a boss, doing (x2) Blackout Kicks or Tiger Palms, casting this should improve it by 100% doubling the amount healed.
Tiger Palm – Its viable to get (2) of these off making your next heal gain a 100% bonus. Now you can use this with Thunder Focus Tea making your next Uplift have a huge increase. Make sure to only do this if you’re group isn’t falling behind in heals.
What do u meant with that 100% bonus? I dont get it…
PD: Congratulations for that usefull guide ^^
Just noticed I put the wrong ability, actually editing that now
Wow, Just what I was looking for. Quality and finnesse thanks for posting this wonderful piece of information
Any comments on Mistweaver as DPS. Had guy in a dungeon trying to kik me for “no DPS speck” thought I was doing decent damage. Seems like Mistweaver does well as a alternative to a shadow priest. Thx
With the numbers I’ve gotten while throwing in Tiger Palms/Blackout Kicks/Auto Attack, as an alternative to a Shadow Priest? No. Our melee damage is great but is situational and isn’t always going be boss friendly. What is going to make Mistweavers unique and IMO, the most wanted healer for challenge mode dungeons is that you can do decent to great DPS while healing for 50% of the amount. I’ll be discussing/editing this issue soon on the guide. Great question BTW, TY!
I would like to know how you are coming up with healing through damage viable however blizzard come out and said that a misweavers rotation should be mostly the same as a windwalkers and rarly casting heals. I am just wondering do you belive that the DPS heals are not strong enough for this to work as blizzard thinks it should?
I believe if the encounter allows you to be in melee, you can do some very nice healing with Serpent’s Zeal(Auto attacking).
Our portal like ability(allowing us to port from melee->ranged and vice versa) allows us to quickly jump out of harms way.
If you are uncomfortable with melee healing, spamming Crackling Jade Lightning does great heals and also has a Chi %.
If they were to buff Eminence up to 75% of damage goes off as heals, we would never have to heal tbh. Its actually very balanced where it is now.
Hello! Nice guide here. I am a bit sceptic about your single target rotation. What about Surging Mist and Envelopping Mist being instant spells when Soothing Mist is chanelling (without breaking the channel) ? Why are you discarding what seems to be a obvious rotation? Are there numbers that don’t support this? Thanks.
As I mentioned to my streamers, the guide is missing some rotations(They require graphics and to be implemented correctly). There are some known missing things in this guide that will be finished being put in prior to Mists of Pandaria launch.
Wonderful guide, originally saw it on MMO-C, which naturally led me here. My own experiments & testing before I found the guide at all led me to most of the same conclusions as what I read & anywhere I disagreed, I ultimately, after further testing, agreed with the guide :’3.
That said, I have a couple questions:
1) My tests show that “Melee Healing” is perfectly viable for 10NM & 10HC. I have based this on many hours of raw numbers with my future healing partners data introduced also, them being a Restoration Shaman & Holy Paladin. The question is, would you agree that I could persistently melee heal?
2) I have heard tell that there is an extremely low Haste threshold for the first breakpoint on Renewing Mists, somewhere around 1350(?) & that once it’s obtained, Mastery becomes superior. While Spirit remains the #1 stat along with Intellect…is the previous supposition true, does Mastery exceed Haste after only the first breakpoint?
Ty for the kind words Legendary!
1) Melee healing is viable! It requires playing at the best of your ability but also playing with a group that feels comfortable with you doing so. Its a matter of allowing some downtime between Jabs/Tiger Palms/Blackout Kicks to regain some of your lost mana. Mind you, if you visit our stream, we do fairly well with a mix of PVE/PVP gear. Cant imagine the regen the the proper gear & enchants.
2) 1350 is the first threshold and the next tick point is around 2350(or close to) which is a serious amount of secondary stats your are losing for a mere extra tick of ReM. Our Mastery scales properly with Intellect values making our spheres(once in PVE gear) very nice. I’ve mentioned this a lot during our casts that it takes a group that knows they have to consume them for yours and theirs sake in the end.
If there are any changes to what stat priority, I’ll be sure to update the guide accordingly.
Thanks for the reply <3. Your words on melee healing being truly viable is a weight off my shoulders!
As far as I'm aware, current Monk Tier 14 provides 1325 Haste Rating…so with that much Haste coming from only 2 (yes, TWO!) pieces of gear, is 2350(ish) for a second tick all that unrealistic when compared to 1000 extra Mastery Rating? Or will we be forging away & retaining 1350 Haste Rating indefinitely, do you feel?
Assuming nothing changes, sticking to 1350 Haste Rating will be an impossible feat, in my opinion, BEYOND Tier 14…but I guess that's a discussion for a (much) later time, hehe.
/cheers!
We’ll have to see. Right now, 1000 extra mastery sounds a tad bit better due to the potency of our orbs(they scale with intellect making them very nice with adequate gear). It’s all on the raid group learning to walk over them and heal themselves.
I strongly believe maximizing the amount of Spirit & Mastery is important, especially going forward into heroics. In my mix of PVE/PVP gear on beta, I almost have 25% mastery orb spawn, imagine with real PVE gear how badass it’s going to be!
Later gear sets, we will probably go for 2350 haste as I can see it easily fluctuating to those numbers. But that is a discussion for later date!
Hey again!
A little pre-emptively (as this particular version of the guide hasn’t been updated just yet) but…
…the “Pre Raid” gear section on the guide doesn’t include a Staff & as I’m to understand it, Melee Healing makes use of a Staff.
To that end, would it be possible to advise on a Staff – perhaps add it to the gear section also?
Many thanks once again :3.
I would recommend you to use wowhead links because they popup on mouseover, that way it is easier. Thanks for awesome guide!
Wowhead tool tips wont work with our CSS, you basically get a tool tip that’s a white box and no text. We’ll continue to look for an alternate method.
If I’m reading this right, you’re saying that using power strikes is more mana efficient than Chi Brew. If I theory craft it though, power strikes = (3%/cast) 12% mana for 4 chi not to mention having to spend 4 GCD, every 80 seconds. Whereas Chi Brew = 0% mana, 1 GCD, for 4 chi, every 90 seconds. If used on CD, wouldn’t Chi Brew stack up mana tea more efficiently than Power Strikes?
The only situation I can see power strikes playing above Chi brew is if you’re at max chi and don’t want to spend it, and then generating chi orbs to pick up later. I’ll be raiding as a mistweaver healer
thanks for the great guide!
[...] Mistweaver Guide [...]
[...] Mistweaver Guide [...]
[...] Mistweaver Guide [...]
[...] Mistweaver Monk Guide(5.2) [...]
Agreed!
I enjoy, especially in LFR, jumping in and doing some nice melee damage. Really enjoying Monk ATM. Lets hope they don’t nerf them 2-3 months into the game!