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Raid Rx: Mistweaver Monk 101

Matt Low
Updated ·5 min read
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Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

Ghostcrawler introduced the monk in detail to us back during BlizzCon 2011. We didn't have as many details available to us until we entered the beta stage of the game. This week, I want to introduce you to the different aspects of healing monks.

The mistweaver monk is a stance-based class that has two forms of energy at their disposal: mana and chi.

  • Stance of the Wise Serpent Healing stance that replaces your energy resource bar and turns it into mana and converts your spirit rating into spell and melee hit rating. Abilities that would have cost energy now cost mana.

  • Stance of the Fierce Tiger Increases your damage done by 20% and allows access to a different set of offensive abilities.

When healing, you'll mostly be in the Stance of the Wise Serpent.

In terms of equipment, monks can use axes, staves, maces, fists, swords, and polearms. Your preferred weapons will mostly be staves or maces (although that may change as more items are revealed). For armor, you'll have access to leather and you'll get the 5% intellect from Leather Specialization. Like the other healing classes, your mana regeneration is going to rely on spirit.



Healing monk spells and abilities

This area is still under heavy development. Expect more spells to be added or changed during this stage.

  • Your mastery is called Gift of the Serpent. You have a chance when you heal to summon a Solace Sphere close to an injured ally. The higher the mastery, the higher the chance of the sphere showing up and helping your friends.

  • Chi Wave Causes a wave of chi to bounce between friendly and enemy targets. It'll bounce up to five times to targets within 15 yards. Take advantage of the ability by targeting your tank with it (as the spell will bounce between tank and enemy).

  • Detox This is the debuff remover for monks. It'll get rid of magic, poison, and bleed effects.

  • Healing Sphere You can place up to three spheres on the ground, and they'll heal any allies who walk through them. They're extremely cheap spells and I expect these to be your mana-neutral abilities.

  • Renewing Mists As one of your healing over time spells, it'll bounce to friendly targets up to three times.

  • Surging Mist You can probably classify this as a monk smart heal, since it'll instinctively switch to a target that has the lowest health pool. You can cast this spell while channeling Soothing Mists. If you do that, then Surging Mist will be an instant-cast and heal the target affected by Soothing Mists.

  • Soothing Mists This is one of the more powerful channeled healing spells in the game. It also has a slight chance of generating 1 chi.

  • Uplift Automatically refreshes the duration of your Renewing Mists periodic effect on allies. It only costs 2 chi, to boot! Keep an eye on your Renewing Mists, and be sure to hit this as Renewing Mists winds down to refresh it.

  • Summon Jade Serpent Statue This Jade Serpent statue functions as the monk equivilent of the priest spell Lightwell. Your friends can click on the statue to instantly receive a heal. If your monk deals damage, the statue will heal friendly targets with the lowest health that's nearby for 50% of the damage done. Bonus: You can drop two of these.


For mana regeneration abilities, there are several options in the game right now.

  • Cherry Mana Tea Whenever 3 chi is consumed by your various abilities, you gain a charge of Mana Tea. Using the Mana Tea uses a charge, which restores 5% of your maximum mana (per charge of Mana Tea). For now, it takes 1 second to go through each charge. You're limited to 50 charges of Mana Tea.

  • You need to balance your skill use by using abilities that regenerate chi and use chi to power the Cherry Mana Tea in order to gain mana back. Spells like Jinyu Cider and Jasmine Force Tea will allow you to gain chi back quicker.


Healing monk talents

  • Life Cocoon Every 2 minutes, you can encase a target in a cocoon that heals them for 6% of their health every second and renders them immune to damage and effects. The downside is your target can't attack or use abilities and moves at a really reduced rate.

  • Ring of Peace Every 2 minutes, you can create an area around yourself where enemies cannot cast harmful abilities or attack for 10 seconds.

  • Chi Torpedo You torpedo a short distance in front of you and either heal all allies in your path or damage all enemies in your path.

  • Rolling Force Globe Every 2 minutes, you can summon a globe of Chi energy that deals damage and heals targets within its path within 50 yards. You can also activate it while it's traveling to completely discharge the globe where it will damage or heal targets at the current location. It will also speed up friendly players and reduce the movement speeds of enemies for 3 seconds.

  • Chi Bind Binds yourself to a targed statue with a tether. Any friend or foe caught in the path will take damage or receive healing.


There's not much in the way of healing glyphs right now other than Expel Harm.

The monk class is definitely shaping up to be an incredibly mobile when it comes to healing. It does seem a little imbalanced right now. I'm waiting for the next pass to seriously give it a go, and then I'll add my thoughts on actually playing one. Raid leaders and guilds are going to be delighted with having mistweaver monks as assets in their healing corps.

Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.