Playstyle & Rotation
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.
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.
General Rotation
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)
- Rushing Wind Kick
- Thunder Focus Tea
- Enveloping Mist with Strength Of The Black Ox buff
- Vivify
- Tiger Palm and Blackout Kick! 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.
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
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 times
- Renewing Mist
- Rushing Wind Kick
- Vivify
- Repeat from Step 2
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, Way of The Crane makes Blackout Kick! cleave onto 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. This does not mean you’ll be using Spinning Crane Kick constantly however. Whenever you’re forced to move out of range from your primary target in a fight having multiple enemies, Spinning Crane Kick can be used as it has slightly longer range than your melee abilities.
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. Even though Mistweaver haven’t seen a lot of play in the highest of competitive key levels the recent tiers it’s still a solid pick for most players not actively pushing.
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 Kick 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 every time 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
Mistweaver Monk has a few Defensives that you can use:
- 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.
- 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.