Mistweaver Monk Healing Guide — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

Mistweaver Monk is a very strong option in Mythic+, in no small part due to our immense durability. Mistweavers have a plethora of damage reduction cooldowns and passives that allow us to take a substantial amount of punishment without dying. Furthermore, Mistweaver's kit is designed around dealing damage, passively increasing your group's total DPS. However, where Mistweaver falls short is its lack of meaningful group utility; we do not bring a strong group-wide damage reduction like Spirit Link Totem or Power Word: Barrier, nor do we have a battle resurrection or Bloodlust. Equally, our external DR cooldown Life Cocoon provides a flat amount of damage prevention, meaning it scales less effectively into higher keys than other healer's cooldowns like Ironbark or Pain Suppression. All that being said though, while a Mistweaver likely won't be used in a rank 1 run, they absolutely still excel in bleeding edge keys.

Utility is Mistweaver Monk's Achilles' heel; while we do have numerous interesting utility options, many of them are particularly niche during combat. The obvious stand-outs for us are Ring of Peace, Leg Sweep, and Paralysis which give us excellent group CC ability in dungeons, however it is extremely rare that a strategy will uniquely revolve around any of those abilities in specific; other classes can be brought to do the same thing. Our raid cooldown Revival includes a group-wide magic dispel, but given the current design philosophy of debuffs often requiring intentionally timed dispels, this effect is often a detriment rather than a boon (so much so that Revival as a talent exists on a choice node with another talent Restoral, which does the exact same thing, just with no dispel). Lastly, we bring the debuff Mystic Touch as a monk specific raid buff. However, the debuff can also be brought by a Windwalker or Brewmaster, and as far buffs go, 5% physical damage is among the weaker buffs as most damage in WoW is magical.

Mistweaver Monk is one of the most durable specs in the game. With talents like Dance of the Wind making us straight up immune to certain attacks, as well as two separate personal DR cooldowns such as Fortifying Brew, and a plethora of passive damage reduction talents, it is very hard for a Mistweaver to run out of defensive options.

In terms of mobility few specs can hold a candle to a Monk's toolkit. Between Roll, Tiger's Lust, Transcendence, and Lighter Than Air, it is almost impossible to be caught flat-footed as a Mistweaver.

Mistweaver is largely designed around dealing damage to a target in order to heal, either directly through effects like Ancient Teachings or by buffing our spells like Rising Mist and Rushing Wind Kick. As such, Mistweavers will passively do more damage than the average healer, however with proper play, certain healers can exceed our top end throughput.