Mistweaver Monk Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.1.0)

The following will be a quick explanation of your goals while healing certain content. Obviously, unlike DPS players, our rotation is much more dynamic and changes based on moment-to-moment gameplay, but everything listed below should be followed.

Maintain Renewing Mist on as many targets as possible so that you can burst damage windows with Vivify when needed. Your Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent should be used early and often to counter periods of high damage. Rising Sun Kick should be cast basically on cooldown, not only to extend your HoTs with Rising Mist, but for the passive healing from Crane Style, and the cooldown reduction from Pool of Mists.

This build still wants to maintain a high uptime of Renewing Mist however, the avenue to get there will be by using Enveloping Mist to proc Rapid Diffusion rather than relying on Rising Mist to extend durations.

You will still want to use your Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent frequently; however, your gameplay will no only be punctuated by Rising Sun Kick, giving you the freedom to position in range if you prefer.

Peer Into Peace also facilitates the rapid-fire applications of Enveloping Mist by allowing Soothing Mist to swap targets with you as you cast. This also has the ancillary benefit of reducing your GCD to 1 second instead of 1.5.

As always, maintaining a wide coverage of Renewing Mist is a top priority however, in M+, you will oftentimes need to be more concerned with your placement and uptime of Jadefire Stomp. Make sure you are always buffed with Awakened Jadefire and Jadefire Teachings. Use Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane liberally, as the cooldown is very short. Spam Vivify when things look hairy. If single target damage is high enough, then cast Soothing Mist (if talented) into the target followed by a Enveloping Mist, then spam Vivify

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 preempt 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. This can be done when you expect a period of heavy damage to hit your group and want to be prepared by having a wide coverage of Renewing Mist. However, you should never sit on 2 charges (3 with Pool of Mists) of Renewing Mist. Always have the cooldown rolling.

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, unless you have a specific reason to hold your charges, like mentioned above. If playing Rising Mist you will want to press Rising Sun Kick on cooldown as well.

If there are 3-4+ raid members taking damage, you should use Vivify to top them off, provided you have a few Renewing Mists out to effectively make use of Invigorating Mists. Alternatively, you can also spot heal them with Enveloping Mist, especially if there will be follow-up damage, as these casts will proc Rapid Diffusion and give you a small window of a higher than average Renewing Mist count.

When +10 members of the raid are taking damage, it's time to start considering your cooldowns. Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent should be used as often as possible, given its short cooldown if talented into Gift of the Celestials, or to maximize cooldown reduction if talented into Jade Bond.

Finally, if you are using the Chi Burst talent, you should use it on cooldown provided that you can hit 5+ damaged allies with it.

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 Renewing Mist or Enveloping Mist.
• 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 Chi-Ji, the Red Crane causes certain DPS abilities to proc your Mastery of two targets while also empowering your Enveloping Mist. This should be used during periods of extended damage, during which you are able to melee the boss.
• Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent passively heals your raid as well as buffing your Enveloping Mist in the same way Chi-Ji does, while also reducing its mana cost by 50% for the duration of the cooldown. How you play during this buff window will change based on what talent build you are using, which we will discuss below in the Yu'lon section

The information we provide above will set you on the right path toward 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, channelled 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 a core DPS and healing ability for Mistweavers and our strongest single-target damage ability. Its cooldown is augmented by 3 separate mechanics, offering some on-the-fly randomness and variation to our rotation. First, Haste will reduce its cooldown so 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 can reduce 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 4-stack Blackout Kick when Rising Sun Kick has 3 seconds left on its cooldown and is generally pretty weak when you could save it and get a very high chance for a 1st GCD reset.

Rising Sun Kick is also a large driver of our healing through talents such as Rising Mist, Rapid Diffusion, Jadefire Teachings, Crane Style, and Pool of Mists.

Your Mastery: Gust of Mists causes all of your direct healing spells to also heal their primary target for a certain amount (determined by how much Mastery you have). The primary target mentioned refers to the fact that only the player you directly cast Vivify on is healed by your Mastery and only the first heal of Renewing Mist (on the initial target) triggers a Mastery proc. The exception to this is Revival will proc Gust of Mists on everyone it hits.

Thunder Focus Tea is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown that empowers your next Renewing Mist, Rising Sun Kick, Enveloping Mist, Vivify, or Expel Harm cast within 30 seconds. 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 312% spell power;
• Rising Sun Kick: reduces the cooldown of Rising Sun Kick by 9 seconds;
• Vivify: removes the Mana cost of Vivify;
• Expel Harm: transfers 25% more healing into damage and grants you a large shield.

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

Most of your Thunder Focus Tea casts should be used on Renewing Mist for the extension on the HoT, but using it on Enveloping Mist can also be a good idea when you need the extra boost in single-target healing.

If running Secret Infusion, you can also select what spell you want to empower based on what buff it will give you. Most of the time, you will still want to go with Renewing Mist as it grants Haste; however during defensive moments, Expel Harm granting you Versatility can be a welcome addition to the shield it was already providing.

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 and will not break Soothing Mist's channel if cast into the same target.

The way this cooldown functions is it summons an effigy of Yu'lon lasting for 25 seconds, which will periodically heal several members of your raid. Additionally, after you talent into Celestial Harmony, your Enveloping Mist casts during Yu'lon will apply a HoT called Enveloping Breath to up to 5 players within 10 yards of your target.

A sizable 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 is the same as Enveloping Mist and is also affected by Mist Wrap.

Use of this cooldown is fairly simple but varies slightly depending on if you are running the Rising Mist build or the Tear of Morning build. For Tear of Morning, prior to casting Yu'lon, you will want to Thunder Focus Tea into Renewing Mist, then hit Mana Tea for a global. Press Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent, then start channeling Soothing Mist and cast Enveloping Mist on as many injured raid members as you can. Try to jump from group to group, so you spread your Enveloping Breath, though that is not as big a deal as it used to be. Near the end of Invoke or once you have sufficient coverage of HoTs, you can Mana Tea and cast a few Vivify to make use of the spike in Renewing Mists out.

For Rising Mist, the game plan is very similar, open with Thunder Focus Tea, Renewing Mist and then use Mana Tea into Invoke Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent. Since this build does not make use of Soothing Mist rotationally, you will instead simply hard cast Enveloping Mist into targets who need it. After casting 3-4 Enveloping Mists, you should Rising Sun Kick, pressing it every time it comes off cooldown. After that, you should be filling with Vivify casts to make use of all the extra Renewing Mists you have spread via Rapid Diffusion. Also make sure you keep weaving in casts of Enveloping Mist after every couple of globals to keep your HoTs rolling.

Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane is the Mana-friendly version of Yu'lon that allows you to leverage your DPS to do tremendous healing. It causes all your Blackout Kicks, Rising Sun Kicks, and Spinning Crane Kicks to trigger a Mastery: Gust of Mists proc on 2 allies. Equally, each kick will also give you a stack that reduces the Mana cost and cast time of your next Enveloping Mist by 33%.

The rotation is fairly simple; before pressing Chi-ji, it is important to make sure you have 3 or more stacks of Teachings of the Monastery ready to go for a Blackout Kick as soon as you pop the cooldown. From there, you just want to DPS and spend your "bird stacks" to get Enveloping Breath on as much of the raid as you can. Keep in mind that it takes the same amount of time to cast Enveloping Mist at 2 stacks as it does at 3 since you still have to take the Global Cooldown into consideration, so if you mess up your rotation and only get 2 stacks, that is fine.

While DPSing, you only want to stack your Teachings of the Monastery to 2, since that will give you 3 Blackout Kicks (and therefore 3 bird stacks). Keep in mind; you will need to also Rising Sun Kick from time to time, and so following or preceding the use of RSK, you will only want to stack your TotM once.

Revival is a raid-wide heal, which also removes any Magical, Disease or Poison effects from all targets. Revival also procs Mastery: Gust of Mists on everyone it hits, so if the damage patterns allow, it is a good idea to cast Essence Font prior to proc the double Mastery buff.

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. If a fight requires your use of Revival, but the Magic dispel would cause a wipe, then talent into Restoral instead. The spell functions exactly the same, just without the Magic dispel and with the added perk of being able to be used while stunned.

Chi Burst should be used only when there are 5 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. It is also excellent at resetting your Jadefire Stomp.

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 while also making sure not to overcap your stacks.

When combined with Awakened Jadefire and Jadefire Teachings, the amount of passive healing that this ability can generate while DPSing cannot be understated. It causes Blackout Kick to hit multiple targets, as well as Tiger Palm to strike twice, granting us 2 stacks of Teachings of the Monastery. This means that while standing on your Jadefire with these talents selected, your DPS rotation will change so that you only ever want to press Tiger Palm once before pressing Blackout Kick.

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 cools down a charge system.
  • It has a baseline maximum of 2 charge, and this charge has a 20-second recharge time.
  • The Celerity talent grants an additional charge, and reduces recharge time to 15 seconds.
  • The Lighter Than Air talent grants a dash that you can use for a short time after a Roll, however increases the recharge time by 2 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 backward). If your character is stationary, Roll will send you in the direction your character is facing.
• If you hold backwards and forewards, your character will Roll in place.
• You cannot roll through objects or obstacles. If you encounter an obstacle, your Roll can be halted.
• 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.