Playstyle & Rotation
Healers are generally quite dynamic, and we abide by a priority system rather than a set rotation. Your gameplay will be dependent on the boss fight, damage intake and who is in your group.
Raiding
The Mistweaver playstyle in raiding fundamentally revolves around spreading Renewing Mist, casting Enveloping Mist, and using both of these spells to facilitate Vivify cleave healing.
Mistweaver will want to play Rising Mist in The War Within as it’s slightly ahead of the build we’ve previously played in Dragonflight using Tear of Morning. The difference between the two builds are somewhere around 5-10% so both are viable and you should play what you're most comfortable with even if Rising Mist is slightly ahead in overall healing.
Tear of Morning plays closer to a true ‘ranged healer’, although it is important to note that Mistweaver Monks are tagged as ‘melee’, therefore you will get melee-specific mechanics.
If you are the sole monk, it is also important to ensure that the boss has Mystic Touch, which is applied by any damaging spells or melee attacks.
Rising Mist
Rising Mist requires you to stay in melee as much as possible, as you need to make sure you always use your Rising Sun Kick on cooldown. It is fine moving out for shorter times, but you should make sure to use your high mobility to help you get back as soon as possible. As Rising Sun Kick is your highest priority spell you always use it whenever it comes off cooldown.
Never let Renewing Mist hit 2 stacks. You can either use it on cooldown, or maintain 1 stack, if you are anticipating incoming heavy spot healing.
Your general priority of spell casts should be:
- Vivify if someone is in risk of dying if not healed
- Renewing Mist if you’re at 3 charges (2 without Pool of Mists)
- Rising Sun Kick
- Thunder Focus Tea
- Enveloping Mist with Strength of the Black Ox buff
- Vivify
- Tiger Palm if there’s nothing else to do
Raid cooldowns like Yu’lon / Chi-JI and Revival / Restoral are used whenever needed or assigned.
Keep an eye on how many stacks of Mana Tea you have as it only goes up to 20. Make sure to use Mana Tea often throughout the encounter so you never lose out on any stacks. You should also use Mana Tea right before costly abilities to reduce the mana cost of them, for example before using Enveloping Mist. You can cast one Enveloping Mist while channeling Mana Tea without interrupting the channeling.
Use your Hero Talent Celestial Conduit as soon as it's off cooldown and there’s incoming raid damage.
Using Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent
Below is an example of how a ramp can be done using 1 minute cooldown Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent with Gift of the Celestials talent.
- Renewing Mist
- Rising Sun Kick
- Mana Tea
- Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent
- Cast Enveloping Mist 3-4 times
- Vivify once
- Cast Enveloping Mist to use your Strength of the Black Ox proc
- Vivify several times until Rising Sun Kick is available again
- Rising Sun Kick
- Vivify several times
If you’re using Jade Bond instead of Gift of the Celestials build you’ll have a different ramp during Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent. As your celestial will be up for 25 seconds it’s inefficient to spam cast enveloping mist. Improvise your rotation depending on what your raid needs during your Celestial window.
Generally you’ll always start with this cast sequence.
- Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent
- Enveloping Mist 3-4 times
- Rising Sun Kick
- Vivify
- Improvise rotation based on the need of your raid and keep the following in mind.
Always use Rising Sun Kick when it comes off cooldown.
Use enveloping mist before there’s damage incoming to increase Renewing Mist count.
Vivify during damage as it is your main healing ability.
Tear of Morning
With Tear of Morning, your main healing will be coming from Vivify and Enveloping Mist. You’ll want to utilise Thunder Focus Tea with either Renewing Mist or Enveloping Mist, depending on the situation. If there is little damage to heal but you will lose a use of Thunder Focus Tea then it is fine to pair it with Renewing Mist outside of your ramp. If there is a lot of damage to heal or you are within a ramp, then pair it with Enveloping Mist.
The ramp sequence can be quite varied and still do significant amounts of healing. Generally:
- Mana Tea
- Sheilun’s for Shaohao’s Lessons
- Yu’lon
- Soothing Mist
- Enveloping Mist 5-7x, prioritising low health targets.
- Re-cast Soothing Mist
- 1x Enveloping Mist on low health target
- Vivify x2-3 times
Thunder Focus Tea can also be used without breaking Soothing Mist and ideally it is paired with one of the Enveloping Mists casts.
Never let Renewing Mist hit 2 stacks. You can either use it on cooldown, or maintain 1 stack, if you are anticipating incoming heavy spot healing.
Mythic+
In Mythic+, we are far more focused on DPS. Tiger Palm is used to generate Teachings of the Monastery stacks, which are quickly gained in a multi-target situation via Awakened Jadefire. Furthermore, Ancient Concordance causes Blackout Kick to cleave multiple targets, multiple times. This further increases the reset chance of Rising Sun Kick.
Spinning Crane Kick is utilised far more in Mythic+, being fundamental to the spec in Mythic+, compared to a raiding environment. This is because of Ancient Teachings, which makes Rising Sun Kick / Blackout Kick / Tiger Palm heal a player within 40 yards.
Mistweaver is incredibly durable, with our repertoire of defensives. This is incredibly useful, as in a raiding environment, we are often incentivised to remain stationary. In Mythic+, of course, this means that the spec is able to play at the highest, cutting-edge levels.
Cooldown Usage
Revival and Restoral
Revival and Restoral are essentially the same spell with the only difference that Restoral doesn’t remove magic effects and is castable while stunned. Restoral is used for situations where you need the healing cooldown on your raid but don’t want it to dispel magic effects. For example during Tindral Sageswift where dispelling the fire pool mechanic twice in short succession on Mythic difficulty would wipe the entire raid.
Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent and Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane
Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent and Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane are your major healing cooldowns. Yu’lon mainly being used for raid healing and Chi’Ji in Mythic+ group healing. If talented into Gift of the Celestials, the cooldown is reduced from 3 minutes to 1 minute.
Both cooldowns rely on using Enveloping Mist to proc its effect. When using Enveloping Mist Invoke Yu’lon, the Jade Serpent will breath AoE healing on your main target and allies around them. This makes for a ramping playstyle where you use Yu’lon and cast several Enveloping Mists in succession on targets needing healing.
Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane has the same interaction where Chi’Ji heals your main target and allies around them when casting enveloping mist. However Chi’Ji will also trigger Mastery: Gust of Mist when you Blackout Kick, Rising Sun Kuck or Spinning Crane Kick and lower your cost and cast time of your next Enveloping Mist by 33%, stacking up to 3 times. Ideally you want to use Enveloping Mist everytime you have 2 stacks as you’ll always have a global cooldown after usage so 3 stacks instant cast Enveloping Mist is barely faster than a 2 stack cast.
Defensives
- Fortifying Brew - Our strongest defensive that increases maximum health by 20% and reduces all damage taken by 20% for 15 seconds. 1.5min cooldown if talented into Expeditious Fortification.
- Diffuse Magic - 60% reduced magic damage taken for 6 seconds. It also transfers any active magic debuffs back to the enemy that cast it on you. Great for bosses that put magic DoT’s on you that can be sent back at them instead.
- Yu’lon’s Grace - passive magic absorb damage shield based on your maximum health. Great for raid encounters where you’re taking constant magic damage.
- Life Cocoon - this is your only external defensive that can be given to others. The amount of damage absorbed is based on a percentage of your targets maximum health.
- Chi Cocoon - smaller versions of Life Cocoon that are applied to several allies when using Yu’lon or Chi’ji if talented into Celestial Harmony.