Mistweaver Monk

Mistweaver is one of the two melee healer specs of World of Warcraft. They are very fast-paced and fully include damage abilities for their maintenance healing. This is actually true to the point that they change their maintenance healing rotation with the number of targets.

In Mythic+, a lot revolves around the proper use of Faeline Stomp to activate Ancient Teachings and Awakened Faeline

I want to start by mentioning that the guides are made by myself, and I am not a class expert. Hopefully, this will help get you started and will include some information that was harder to find. I want to emphasize that these pages more than anything are here to act as a portal to the content creators and other useful links in the right column (or scroll to the bottom on mobile). They are the experts :) In the mean time, if you read something that you think is inaccurate in this website, please let me know, so that we can make sure no erroneous information is shared!

Starting up

When starting Mythic +, the healing requirements are actually pretty low, unless a mechanic is butchered, which, well, is not really your fault. What is important then is to be able to produce solid maintenance healing.

"Fistweaving"

For Mistweaver, Maintenance healing is primarily done through damage.

At low target counts, Ancient Teachings will make Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick and Rising Sun Kick heal your group. Rising Sun Kick in particular will produce very decent healing. If there is only one thing you should care about as a Mistweaver, it is to press it on cooldown. Making sure that you press it as soon as it is up is the main difference even in raid between a 80% and a 95% parse. Other than that, Just alternate Tiger Palm and Blackout Kick to fish for RSK resets (Teachings of the Monastery).

At higher target counts, in a somewhat counter intuitive fashion, Mistweaver gets easier. This is due to the incredible strength of Awakened Faeline. At more than 5 targets, you can just start spinning (Spinning Crane Kick). There is very very little sources of damage that will be too much for you to heal. Make sure to communicate to your tank that bringing some extra is fine, as long as it stays in the control zone of your group (interrupts, AOE CC)

Both Ancient Teachings and Awakened Faeline are triggered by Faeline Stomp in mythic +. You will want to stay on it as much as possible, to proc its reset and maintain it. One very useful tip when the pull moves away from it is to use Chi Burst from the stomp. Each hit from chi burst on allies and enemies has a chance to proc the reset. This is your best last chance to get a reset.

Your Faeline Stomp is in general your comfort zone. You do not want to play without it.

Vivify Cleave

The other main loop of healing is through spreading Renewing Mist, and healing with Vivify. Each Vivify heal is cleaved to all allies with Renewing Mist through Invigorating Mists. While it is not the best way to heal large AOE damage, maintaining a healthy amount of renewing mists on the group helps you:

• Do some solid maintenance healing by consuming your instant Vivify procs (Vivacious Vivification)
• Be prepared for bursts of damage (more on this later)

Remember that spreading renewing mists is a healthy habit, it is very simple to do: press Renewing Mist and Rising Sun Kick on cooldown. Rising Sun Kick extends all your Hots (Renewing Mist and Enveloping Mist) through Rising Mists. Again: Press it on cooldown. This loop is even more important in raid than mythic+, this is easily the most consistent component of Mistweaver Monk healing. The only time you can "ignore" it is when you have 8+ targets. In this case, just enjoy life and spin.

Thunder Focus Tea

More often than not, unless intense healing on a single target is required, you will use Thunder Focus Tea to empower Rising Sun Kick. The shorter cooldown on the next rising sun kick will give you extra damage and Ancient Teachings healing.

You should now be ready to heal pretty much anything until you reach a 15 Tyranical.

How to handle burst of damage on the group

A good part of the standard healing checks are about burst of AOE damage on your group. This is generally where you will use your cooldowns.

Chi-ji

Our main cooldown in keys is Chi-ji, along with Gift of the Celestials to make it a 1-min cooldown. This will allow to produce really impressive healing over ~15 seconds. It is also an extremely strict rotation. Without proper gameplay, Chi-ji does, well, nothing. So learn it, enjoy it, you are more or less invicible during Chi-ji, unless the group really messes up mechanics. You want to start this sequence ~5 sec before the damage starts:

• Put down a Faeline Stomp
• Stack at least 2 Teachings of the Monastery
• Press Chi-ji
• Press Blackout Kick, this will get you to 3 stacks of chi-ji, making your next Enveloping Mist instant.
• Press Enveloping Mist
• From there, you want to repeat the sequence Get 3 stacks > Enveloping Mist until Chi-ji wears off. To get 4 stacks, it is always 2 buttons:
  [Preferred] Rising Sun Kick is available: Rising Sun Kick > Blackout KickTiger Palm > Blackout Kick

As long as you are on your Faeline Stomp, both will get you to the 3 stacks. However Rising Sun Kick > Blackout Kick is much much stronger. It heals a ton by itself, and extends those sweet sweet Enveloping Mists.

Chi-ji way to heal is very (unnecessarily?) complex, with many components to take into account. Only know that during this window, with the proper rotation, and everybody stacking decently (for Celestial Harmony), anything you cannot heal can be considered more or less unhealable. A last note about the spell is that it provides immunity against roots and snares (exactly like Blessing of Freedom), which can situationally be very useful!

Finally, please check out this awesome video from Megasett about Chi-ji:

Sheilun's Gift

Another tool for handling burst of damage is Sheilun's Gift. It does not work on a regular cooldown, but rather you earn stacks of it every 8 sec (4 sec with Veil of Pride), and you can spend them at any time to heal your group. The more stacks the more healing. Concretely, it is flexible but expect it to matter healing wise with a cooldown of 60/30 seconds. It is meant to be used in between Chi-ji casts to support patterns that are on a faster cadence than every min.

Both Veil of Pride and Shaohao's Lessons are good options. Veil of Pride shines for its flexibility, and ease of use, while Shaohao's Lessons provides great buffs, and the ability to boost both healing and damage. It is up to your preference and experimentation, early on, you might prefer Veil to learn the pattern safely. Don't hesitate to follow more experts Mistweavers to get ideas on how to use both!

Use and abuse Sheilun's Gift. The only drawback is its cast time although Legacy of Wisdom makes it much more palatable.

Revival

Revival is to say the least pretty weak in keys. However, it can fill in a hole in your rotation, for patterns that are faster than every 30 sec. In this case, you can go Chi-ji -> SG -> Revival -> Chi-ji -> SG and this will help you cover a much longer time without getting into the oh shit phase. Revival also is the ultimate mass dispel. It is of course on a much longer CD than the real one, but it also heals, and it works on poisons and diseases, which is a rare case, but it is a very strong niche (#Naraxas).

How to survive

As a melee healer (and with a short range), you will be exposed. And you will quickly realize how important it is for you to be in melee, since all your maintenance healing and Chi-ji depend on it, you cannot weave as easily as a Holy Paladin. So your first task is to learn to dodge swirlies. Setup comfortable keybinds to be able to use your instant abilities as you move.

Proactive play

Mistweaver are a mixed bag in this department. they have many cooldowns with Diffuse Magic, Dampen Harm, and Fortifying Brew. They are efficient but on a very long cooldown. They also are all very specific. Diffuse Magic only works on magic damage, which means you will need to know which damage is magical or physical, in particular it will do absolutely nothing against a bleed. However, it also dispels magical effects and in some cases puts it back to the source, which can be a source of damage. We will provide a list of the magic debuffs that can be sent back, do not overthink that aspect though, it is primarily here to defend yourself. Dampen Harm does work against all types of damage, but works better against bigger hits. Excellent against 1-shot, very inefficient against high tick rate damage with lower hits. Again, not great against bleeds. Fortifying Brew is nothing crazy but a good jack of all trades, except its cooldown is 6 min.

While you will need to know these limitations, in practice, we get back to rotating them if they are applicable, starting as always with the lower cooldown, which means Diffuse Magic, which is also by far your best, you will hate physical damage. A good rule of thumb as to when to use your defensives is as you press Chi-Ji, right before using Sheilun's Gift or of course if you are targeted by a hard single target family.

Reactive play

This upcoming season, you will also get Expel Harm as a strong self heal when you got surprised by a mechanic or simply because you took some damage. It will be very efficient, although it is on the GCD, so it will have to enter your consideration for triage, you will not be healing someone else at the same time, which makes it unpractical during AOE burst of damage. However it will be very good if a ST mechanic is targeted at you.

Passive

You will get a nice little buff of passive survivability with season 3. More passive DR and auto Healing Elixir will help you survive. You loose the ability to control Healing Elixir off the GCD, but still probably a good trade off.

Get further

Single Target Burst/Bleed

Single target damage can be tough to deal with. Or rather it used to be, since S3 2-set bonus Chi Harmony will be of great help. Consider casting Renewing Mist on your target before using any of the following combos to increase the throughput by 50%! Using the targeted spells weak auras will help you sneak in this extra GCD.

Life Cocoon

Life Cocoon can be considered a great tool or a really poor external. It depends on the point of view. As an external for a tank, it is lackluster. Relatively to the amount of damage a tank takes, it is othen insignificant. However, if used to support a DPS targeted by a heavy DOT, it is rather brilliant, especially when considering that it puts Enveloping Mist and Renewing Mist on the target through Mists of Life. There are not many mechanics that will require any extra GCD from you, which can be really awesome to catch up on healing during intense moments. Its cooldown is also short thanks to Chrysalis.

TFT + Enveloping Mist

Using Thunder Focus Tea to empower Enveloping Mist makes it a truly excellent single target emergency tool. It is now an instant heal with probably the strongest HOT in the game to follow. A really valuable tool, it becomes your most common usage of Thunder Focus Tea as key levels progress.

Zen Pulse

Zen Pulse is an interesting tool, it is primarily seen as an AOE damage tool, but it also delivers some decent healing. Only use it on someone in melee (mostly on the tank) and know that its efficiency depends on the number of targets (once more, you will like big pulls more than any other healer!)

Double Magic Dispel

You get a joker with Revival. Outside of it, Diffuse Magic is excellent if you are one of the targets. Be also on the lookout for magic dispels which can be removed by Tiger's Lust (any debuff that also reduces your speed however slightly or roots you). You are not a priest, but you are the best second!

What to do without cooldowns?

This is when things get hairy for Mistweavers. You will rely on Vivify cleave. This is an important reason to be careful with maintaining renewing mists on your group at all times. If a target is lower than the other, this is good time to use Soothing Mist and spam Vivify. This also works for Single Target.

Soothing Mist

Without cooldowns, you can always channel Soothing Mist, which is pretty decent to support someone. The main issue is that you cannot move and it eats GCDs and Mana.

Utility

You are a monster of utility, often overlooked. You can do a lot to control enemies, and you have some really unique utility such as Ring of Peace.

Ring of Peace

Ring of Peace is the most unique piece of monk utility. It shines by its versatility, but its uses can still be put in some great categories:

• Mass Interrupt: it is not ideal compared to Leg Sweep, as it can disturb the pull. But it can also save a pull!
• Sorta Defensive for the Tank: you can give a tank some room when they are getting swarmed. They can use the ring to gain some seconds of respite.
• Bring Casters into the pull: sometimes casters are stubbornly standing outside of the pull, you get a way to get them in
• Create Skips: moving some mobs slightly can create solid skips at times.
• Counter Sanguine: absolutely brilliant to push mobs out of sanguine!
• and many more, please share!

Compared to a regular push (e.g. Typhoon), you do not need to position yourself to be effective. Additionally Ring of Peace stays up and can be used as a wall. It is truly an exceptional spell.

Leg Sweep

Second in the list of monk controls, Leg Sweep is one of the strongest AOE controls in the game. It is simple, stuns for a long time, and you should make the best use of it. It is a great tool to start the AOE CC rotation, don't hesitate to stun all mobs once they are grouped and start casting. Do be careful, it is really a long stun, make sure you do not get the mobs stuck in a wrong spot (hello Sanguine).

Melee Interrupt

Third in the list of monk controls, Spear Hand Strike is a melee interrupt, with a melee 15-sec cooldown which makes it really good, especially if the meta is ranged heavy.

Paralysis

4th (!!!) in the list of monk controls, Paralysis has a 45-sec cooldown, but it is instant and works on any mob category. It is obviously a CC, but these particularities also make it an emergency interrupt against CC-susceptible mobs.

Tiger's Lust

Tiger's Lust is the last bit of active utility of Mistweavers. It is a bit discouraging that it is basically a cheap Blessing of Freedom. While it does not provide immunity against roots and snares, it does remove them, meaning that it will not prevent the initial hit of the application of such a Debuff, but it will avoid further ticks (or simply get people back their mobility). If you are coming from paladin, what it basically means is that you do NOT want to pre-apply it! We will indicate in the dungeon guides what Debuffs you can dispel with it.

Mystic Touch

Mystic Touch augments all physical damage against your targets by 5%. Its efficiency is dependent on your team composition, but it is always good to have, and can make a 30-seconds difference at the end of the run.

Damage

You will do a great part of their damage through your maintenance healing. Improving your overall damage comes in great part to relying on Spinning Crane Kick strength, which you will learn to do as your progress playing Mistweaver. There are some extras that are worth mentioning

Zen Pulse

Zen Pulse is a great damage cooldown. Better don't try to min max damage and healing, the best is really to press it as often as possible, unless you know that extra targets are about to be added into the pull in the next 5 seconds.

What's next?

This was hopefully a nice and helpful introduction, but if you want to get further into healing with Mistweaver Monk, you should look for more information, from more expert players. IV Mistweaver Monk Guide and Wowhead Mistweaver Guide might include more than this present guide, and be more precise about the priority list.

When it comes to video content, I really recommend Megasett's Youtube Channel, her content is very clear, and it is a boon to the mistweaver community to have their best player be also a great teacher! Start with her 10.2 guide:

At this point, you should have enough information to get pretty high. What's left will be gear and stat optimization, for which you should use the QE: Live tool.

And then it is really watching the very best play, review some logs, ask for for feedback in the class discord or in the streams chat, and get better, one step at a time. Good luck!