Mistweaver Monk Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.1

If the explanations below seem too in-depth for your purposes, then check out our Easy Mode section, for a more quick and concise description.

The following information is purely tailored to PvE situations. While some of content is applicable across content types, for a more rigorous look at our spells within the context of PvP, please visit our PvP guide.

For single-target healing, your bread and butter heal is going to be Vivify. If the target is going to be taking consistent damage, then you should channel Soothing Mist onto them as well. If the damage is high enough, you can also apply Enveloping Mist. Enveloping Mist can also be used to pre-empt damage, as it does not tick immediately upon application.

Renewing Mist should be used on cooldown, unless there is no damage to heal, or you are intentionally saving charges. A good time to hold charges would be if you are running Focused Thunder and Thunder Focus Tea is coming up within 16 seconds, allowing you to double-empower Renewing Mist.

If things get messy, be ready to cast Life Cocoon on a target who is in immediate danger of dying.

If you are healing raid damage, you need to be aware of the type of damage intake, how many targets are taking damage, as well as how efficient you need to be with your Mana in relation to raid damage.

To begin with, you should use Renewing Mist on cooldown, again, unless you have a specific reason to hold your charges.

If there are 3-4+ raid members taking damage, you should use Vivify to top them off; however, only do so if they are in danger of dying, as Vivify is not the most efficient spell in our toolkit.

When 6+ raid members are taking damage, and it is off cooldown, use Essence Font. Essence Font heals targets within 30 yards of you. Since you can cast Essence Font on the move, do not be afraid of accidentally wasting the ability. Essence Font is the highest priority AoE healing spell assuming enough targets have taken damage, so it is important you use this ability often, and get full value out of it. Also, it is wise to take full advantage of your ability to move and cast the spell in order to effectively increase its range.

Essence Font places a HoT which lasts 8 seconds, which applies the benefit of Mastery: Gust of Mists twice. It is very important, regardless of how much Mastery you have, to make use of the double Mastery procs from Essence Font. After every usage of Essence Font, if damage warrants it, you should immediately follow up with casts of Vivify. The only things that take priority over this are Rising Sun Kick (if talented into Rising Mist), Chi Burst and Refreshing Jade Wind. It goes without saying that you should heal people without the Essence Font HoT on them if they are about to die, but you should try to avoid healing people without the HoT in general. Finally, as mentioned previously, the minimum number of targets for Essence Font to be efficient is 6, however, you should aim for closer to at least 10. This is because roughly 25% of Essence Font's healing comes from the HoT it places after the bolt heals a target. If there are only 6 available targets, then Essence Font is guaranteed to overwrite the HoT and lose a significant amount of throughput.

If you have Refreshing Jade Wind talented, and 6 targets are within range of you, cast Refreshing Jade Wind on cooldown.

Finally, if you are using the Chi Burst talent, you should use it on cooldown provided that you can hit 6+ damaged allies with it.

The 8.3 patch brought significant buffs to Rising Mist, making it the default pick for most content. The healing was increased by 33% and the amount that it extends the duration of our HoTs was doubled. Before, the amount of time gained from extending our HoTs was almost completely lost to the GCD of Rising Sun Kick itself. Now, we can rack up to +100% of the original duration of the HoT, allowing for large burst windows, or just increased efficiency. We will be going through how you should think about these HoT extensions for each of our spells, then how you can put it all together in whatever content you are running.

This is an often overlooked aspect of Rising Mist, but it is important to know. Since Enveloping Mist lasts for 6 seconds by default, each Rising Sun Kick is a 66% increase to that duration. The Mana efficiency gained from that is insane. In a situation in which you would otherwise be casting back to back Enveloping Mists, getting 2 Rising Sun Kicks effectively gives you a free Enveloping Mist. This also says nothing about being able to put two Enveloping Mists on each Tank during raids. Of course these are only really powerful if they are not overhealing, so the Tanks must be taking significant damage, but it is something to keep in mind.

Of the three HoT interactions, this one is the weakest and there is little to talk about. It is worth noting though, that a single extension from Rising Mist, is equivalent to the extension granted from Upwelling. In fact, it is very easy to extend several Essence Font HoTs all the way until Essence is off cooldown again.

The interaction with Renewing Mist is what makes Rising Mist so powerful. Without even trying, you can extend the duration of every Renewing Mist by 8 seconds, which increases its efficiency by 40%. But more importantly, this also increases the power of Vivify as well. In fact, once you reach 5 Renewing Mists it is actually more Mana and throughput efficient to cast Vivify instead of Essence Font. So your goal should be to get the longest duration Renewing Mist that you can. This means, if you have a charge of Renewing Mist up and you see that Rising Sun Kick is coming off cooldown, it can be smart to wait until Rising Sun Kick has 1.5 seconds left on the cooldown before casting Renewing Mist, in order to more closely align those abilities.

Furthermore, you want to consider HoT durations when it comes to your Thunder Focus Tea usage too. It can be all too easy to assume you simply always spend Thunder Focus Tea charges on Rising Sun Kick. However, this might not always net you the longest amount of HoT duration. Consider that, if you only have 2 Renewing Mists out, then the extra Rising Sun Kick will only grant you 8 total bonus seconds of Renewing Mist, whereas if you had spent Thunder Focus Tea on Renewing Mist itself, then you would gain 10 seconds. This does not mean it is good to sit on Thunder Focus Tea, however; if Renewing Mist is on cooldown, and you have a chance to Rising Sun Kick, you might as well take it even if you will only get an 8 seconds increase.

In Raids, your general goal with Rising Mist is going to be to maintain large amounts of Renewing Mist, enabling you to burst during damage windows, and sustain through rot damage with Essence Font. If the tanks are going to take large extended damage, hard cast Enveloping Mist into them before extending with Rising Mist. It is worth noting that, if the Tanks need additional healing during this time, Vivify will act as both triage for them, and group cleave healing for the 4-6 targets with your Renewing Mist.

In Mythic+, Rising Mist will be used to passively increase your damage While allowing you to sustain a large number of Renewing Mists. You will be able to pretty easily maintain Renewing Mist on most of the group, while also reaping the benefits of the single target Enveloping Mist extensions mentioned above.

As a Mistweaver Monk, you have a number of cooldowns in your arsenal, which you must use in tandem with your regular rotation.

• Thunder Focus Tea should be used as many times as possible during the encounter. You should normally use this spell either with Vivify to save Mana or with Rising Sun Kick if you are fistweaving.
• Life Cocoon should be used on the tank or another target who is about to sustain a large amount of damage. You should time this in such a way that its effect coincides with dangerous encounter abilities.
• Revival is a raid-wide heal, and it could be considered a raid cooldown, in which case your raid leader may ask you to use it at a specific time. Otherwise, just use it when the raid is dangerously low, or when you want to dispel the entire raid.
• Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent is one of your more powerful cooldowns and should be used as frequently as possible. To get the most out of this cooldown you will want to pair it with Mana Tea so that the repeated casts of Enveloping Mist do not deplete your Mana supply.

Additionally, your talents have the potential to provide you with additional abilities and cooldowns. We discuss this, as well as the proper timing and usage of your default cooldowns in a subsequent section.

The information we provide above will set you on the right path towards healing efficiently as a Mistweaver Monk. Indeed, you can probably perform to a relatively high level just on what we have written above; however, to fully reach the maximum potential of your character, you must understand several subtleties and complexities about your class and spec.

There are many mechanics that, together, make up the complex playstyle of Mistweaver Monks.

Soothing Mist is a cheap, efficient, channeled heal that allows us to instantly cast all of our other single target abilities onto that target without breaking the channel. It also has a 1 second global cooldown, as opposed to the normal 1.5, meaning it is faster to channel Soothing Mist then Vivify than it would be to just cast Vivify on its own. However, you are not actually gaining any GCDs, you are just front-loading cast times, so if you are ever swapping targets, the "borrowed" time from the instant cast will catch up to you as soon as you need to hard cast. There is a strong temptation to precede every ability with a Soothing Mist, but it is important to remember that the SooM -> instant spell combo is a Faustian bargain of sorts; it delivers the healing of your powerful abilities after just 1 second, but it costs 2.5 seconds of GCDs that need to be paid eventually.

Rising Sun Kick is the core of the Fistweaving build, and our strongest single target damage ability. Its cooldown is augmented by 3 seperate mechanics, offering some on the fly randomness and variation to our rotation. First, haste will reduce the its cooldown such that it will always be in sync with your GCDs. Second, Teachings of the Monastery give Blackout Kick the chance to reset Rising Sun Kick. Third, Thunder Focus Tea reduces the cooldown by 9 seconds. This reduction happens before the haste reduction, so you will always have 1 global cooldown in between your two Rising Sun Kicks.

It is a good idea to plan out your Blackout Kicks in such a way that they provide high value resets. For example, using a 3 stack Blackout Kick when Rising Sun Kick has 3 seconds left on its cooldown is generally pretty weak, when you could save it and get a very high chance for a 1st GCD reset.

Your Mastery: Gust of Mists causes each of your Soothing Mist, Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, Vivify, and heals to also heal the primary target for a certain amount (determined by how much Mastery you have). The primary target mention refers to the fact that only the player you cast Vivify on is healed by the Mastery, and only the first heal of Renewing Mist (on the initial target) triggers a heal.

It is also worth noting that players under the effect of the HoT applied by Essence Font benefit from your Mastery twice, meaning that each of the above-mentioned heals triggers two Mastery heals on them instead of just one.

Thunder Focus Tea is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown that empowers your next Renewing Mist, Rising Sun Kick, Enveloping Mist, or Vivify cast within 30 seconds (the cooldown does not begin until the effect has been triggered). Depending on which spell you use the effect on, it has the following consequences.

• Renewing Mist: extends Renewing Mist's duration to 30 seconds;
• Enveloping Mist: makes Enveloping Mist instantly heal for an additional 200% spell power;
• Rising Sun Kick: reduces the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick by 9 seconds;
• Vivify: removes the Mana cost of Vivify.

It is also important to note that Thunder Focus Tea is not on the global cooldown, and can be cast during channeled spells, like Soothing Mist and Essence Font.

Most of your Thunder Focus Tea casts should be used on Rising Sun Kick and Vivify. The choice here will depend on if you are running Rising Mist or not. Enveloping Mist can also be used in a pinch to counter extreme damage on a target you were already channeling Soothing Mist onto, but its applications are much more niche than the others.

For Mythic+, most of your Thunder Focus Tea casts will be used on Renewing Mist. This allows for a high uptime of Renewing Mist coverage on the group, significantly buffing the throughput of Vivify.

Life Cocoon is a single-target healing cooldown, which places a damage absorption shield on the target, lasting for 12 seconds, or until broken by damage. While the shield is active, the target also receives 50% increased healing from healing over time spells. It is not on the global cooldown, will not break Soothing Mist's channel if cast into the same target.

Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent can be a somewhat awkward cooldown to maximize the efficiency of. It often times requires an Innervate, as well as fairly specific group positioning or damage patterns. An optimal situation (for reasons we will explain in a moment) would involve some large, extended group damage in which your raid can stack up or at least be clustered in 4 groups of 5.

The way this cooldown functions is it summons an effigy of Yu'lon lasting for 25 seconds that will periodically heal several members of your raid. Additionally, after level 58 you will unlock the passive Enveloping Breath which will cause each of your Enveloping Mist casts during Yu'lon to apply a HoT to up to 5 players within 10 yards of your target.

The main portion of this cooldown's power comes from Enveloping Breath. Each of the HoTs applied tick for half as much as an Enveloping Mist, making them extremely powerful. Lastly, the duration of these HoTs are the same as Enveloping Mist, and are also affected by Mist Wrap.

The ideal rotation for this cooldown should look like this:

• Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent
• Innervate + Enveloping Mist
• Enveloping Mist x3
• Essence Font
• Rising Sun Kick
• Mana Tea (or Innervate) + Enveloping Mist
• Enveloping Mist x3
• Essence Font

In other words, within the windows of each Mana reduction cooldown, you want to cast 4 Enveloping Mist, then end on Essence Font. The reason for that is that 4 casts of Enveloping Mist is enough to blanket the whole raid with Enveloping Breath. As you might imagine however, positioning is often not this clean, and also, depending on your haste level, you will often find yourself able to cast more than just 4 Enveloping Mists before your Mana cooldown falls off. These sorts of situations will require more on-the-fly thinking, just remember that you want to refresh Enveloping Breath on the lowest duration first.

Lastly, a small tip to remember is the often times the tanks will be farther than 10 yards away from the melee. A good way to ensure that they are hit by the splash of Enveloping Breath is to use yourself as a bridge. You can position yourself inside the boss' hit box, equidistant from the tanks and melee, then cast Enveloping Mist on yourself in order to hit everyone.

Revival is a raid-wide heal, which also removes any Magical, Disease or Poison effects from all targets. It can be considered a raid cooldown, in many respects.

In most cases, you should use it for the heal it provides (which is quite powerful, considering the number of targets it heals), but it can also be used as a sort of "mass dispel". The spell has a 3-minute cooldown and a 40 yard range.

Chi Burst should be used only when there are 6 or more damaged raid members that you can hit with the spell, in which case it should be used on cooldown. Alternatively, in dungeons it is a great spell to pre-cast before your group pulls a trash pack, as it will apply Mystic Touch to all enemies it strikes.

Mana Tea should be used as often as possible throughout the fight, ideally during periods of heavy damage when you can gain the highest overall Mana cost reduction. The optimal usage of Mana Tea is to cast Essence Font before using the ability, use the ability, and cast as many Vivifies during the buff, finishing with another Essence Font cast at the end.

Refreshing Jade Wind is always worth casting over Vivify, provided that it will hit 6 people per cast.

Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane should be used as often as possible during the fight. It is best used during heavy AoE damage phases, or before predictable raid damage.

Summon Jade Serpent Statue should simply be kept up with maximum uptime, and you will benefit passively from its effect.

With Focused Thunder talented, you should ideally be using the additional Thunder Focus Tea charges on Renewing Mist. Having both charges of Renewing Mist's duration extended to 30 seconds allows for terrific coverage of the group. If you want to maintain a high average coverage, be sure to hold your Renewing Mist charges as Thunder Focus Tea is about halfway through its cooldown to ensure you have 2 charges ready to go when it comes up.

Roll is an ability that allows you to quickly move 15 yards in front of you. It is a useful mobility ability, which you should use extensively for quickly traversing short distances. Here are a few facts about Roll:

• Roll has no resource cost and no cooldown. It is based on a charge system.
  • It has a maximum of 2 charges, and each charge has a 20-second recharge time.
  • The Celerity talent increases the number of charges to 3, and reduces recharge time to 15 seconds.
• Roll is off the global cooldown, but while you are rolling, you are unable to use any other ability.
• Roll will always send you in the direction that your character is currently moving (including backwards). If your character is stationary, Roll will send you in the direction your character is facing.
• You cannot roll through objects or obstacles. If you encounter an obstacle, your Roll is ended prematurely.
• Your movement speed while rolling is greater than while running, so rolling off a cliff will push you further than if you were just running and jumping.

Transcendence allows you to place a copy of yourself behind for up to 15 minutes. If you then use Transcendence: Transfer, you will be instantly moved back to the location of your copy. This can be useful in a wide range of situations, typically those where you know you will have to return to a certain location after moving away from it.