Mistweaver Monk Healing Stat Priority — The War Within (11.0.5)

The stat priority for a Mistweaver Monk is slightly different depending on what sort of content you are doing.

For stat weights, we recommend checking out the Mistweaver module of WoWAnalyzer, maintained by Vohrr and Trevor. It is important to note that at high levels of gear, diminishing returns on stats are likely to start applying, so it is important to check these tools.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste;
3. Critical Strike;
4. Versatility = Mastery;

While Haste has always been a strong throughput stat for Mistweavers, it has historically taken a back seat due to it not increasing our healing efficiency. However, now, due to our talent interactions, procs, and passives, Haste has become substantially more powerful for us. Critical Strike is also very strong for us, not only in terms of throughput and efficiency but also in terms of Mana Tea generation.

As it stands, with the exception of Haste, all our stats are actually incredibly balanced. Mastery received substantial buffs leading into The War Within, and while we still do not necessarily want to stack it, it is no longer a burden on our gear.

Stat priorities are somewhat ephemeral for Mythic+ because they can change dramatically based on not only your skill but the skill of your group, the route they take, or even the affixes in play. Keep in mind the following are loose guidelines.

1. Intellect;
2. Haste;
3. Critical Strike >= Mastery;
4. Versatility;

Haste is still very powerful, but in 5-man content where you need to more frequently spot heal, Mastery gains a lot of value. If you want to focus on healing, then Mastery is slightly stronger than Critical Strike, however in terms of overall usefulness, Critical Strike edges it out. That being said, it can be wise to budget for your gear to have some arbitrary amount of Mastery as a way to ensure your Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane windows are powerful.

As you progress into higher and higher keys, you may find yourself needing to stack Versatility, simply for the damage reduction it provides.

To get a better understanding of why these stats are prioritized this way, as well as the best gear/consumables given this list, check out the following links.

Intellect is your primary stat. You should look for this stat in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Spell Power, which increases the power of your heals.

Critical Strike increases your healing throughput by granting your healing spells a chance to heal for double the amount. Mana Tea also has a chance equal to your Critical Strike to generate an extra stack.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Haste lowers the cast time of your heals, as well as your global cooldown and the cooldowns of Blackout Kick and Rising Sun Kick.

Mastery ( Mastery: Gust of Mists) causes Renewing Mist, Enveloping Mist, Sheilun's Gift, Revival and Vivify heals to also heal the primary target for a certain amount (determined by how much Mastery you have). Soothing Mist also triggers our Mastery once out of every 8 ticks. This proc rate is on a "deck system". This means that each tick does not actually have a 1/8 chance to proc Mastery, but instead, the proc is hidden within a virtual deck of cards. Each tick draws a card and is either a Mastery proc or nothing. Once the whole deck is drawn, it is shuffled and begins again. This deck cannot be reset by anything short of logging out or reaching the end of the deck. This means that it is impossible to get 3 Mastery procs from Soothing Mist back to back. The most you could get is 2, and that would require two decks where the Mastery proc is on the bottom of the deck, followed by the top of the deck on the subsequent shuffle.

Along with the default stats listed above, items have a chance to acquire bonus stats called Tertiary Stats. While most of these are nice bonuses, the two you need to look out for are Leech and Avoidance.

Leech will cause a percent of all the damage and healing you do to heal you as well. The amount of healing done is determined by the percentage of Leech you have. Pound for pound, Leech is the strongest stat in the game for Healer throughput. It requires very little stat rating in order to get a 1% throughput gain when compared to other stats. Nothing can beat Leech in terms of raw healing.

However, this comes with a huge asterisk. Because all this healing is being done to yourself, it is very likely to overheal. Furthermore, it can be argued that a stat that exclusively heals yourself, which cannot provide a benefit to a friendly player in need, is inherently worse than other stats. Others could counter by saying that all fights have some number of total healing required, and Leech reduces that number just like any other stat.

There are further philosophical questions about what is the "true" value of Leech. While Leech may in fact be doing a large amount of healing, it might not actually be doing effective healing. Consider the following hypothetical: you are at 90% and cast a heal, which causes your Leech to bring you back up to 99%. While all this is happening, imagine a Chain heal is coming your way, which will heal you for 10% of your max Health. The bounce of this Chain Heal hits you, heals you for 1% of your Health and overhealing for 9%. In this situation, the Leech did literally no effective healing because it just sniped from another healer that was going to happen anyway. But if that Leech was to bring you to 100%. Instead; it would have taken you off the target table for those spells, causing them to hit people who might need the healing more.

If an upgrade rolls with Leech, then you likely will not have to think about these sorts of things since it's a tertiary stat; it is just a bonus on top. But when you get your next upgrade, it can be tricky to know if you ought not to equip something of a higher item level just because your old gear has Leech on it. Just how much item level is Leech worth? It depends; on a fight with constant ticking damage, where you are unlikely to ever be fully topped off, then Leech is almost certainly worth dropping item level for, so long as you maintain a good amount of Stamina. Otherwise, I would recommend against dropping item level for Leech. Unless it is your first Leech piece, then dropping a little bit of item level is okay. If you would like to get a stat rating for Leech, check out QELive linked on our Simulations Guide.

Avoidance is a tremendously powerful stat that some people often undervalue because it does not increase throughput or make your parses look better. Avoidance will reduce the damage you take from AoE attacks by a percentage, capping at 20%.

Most damage that you will be taking in a Raid is considered AoE, aside from specifically targeted abilities. With this stat, you are able to significantly reduce the amount of healing that you will require over the course of an encounter. So not only are you less likely to die, but you will be increasing the mana efficiency of your healing team.

It is a good idea to keep all pieces that you find with Avoidance, even if they have suboptimal stat distribution. Certain strategies will only become available to you at high levels of effective Health, and Avoidance can be the last little bit of damage reduction that brings you over the edge. For example, all the way back in the Tomb of Sargeras raid, the penultimate boss, Fallen Avatar placed circles on the ground that needed to be soaked by a few people. However, a Mistweaver with a full set of Avoidance gear and a Prydaz equipped could cycle between using Diffuse Magic and Fortifying Brew in order to solo soak that mechanic.

Outside of countering specific mechanics, however, we would not recommend sacrificing item level in order to equip Avoidance.

Like the name suggests, Speed increases your movement speed by a percentage, up to 20%. Unlike the previous two, Speed does not directly change your output or the effective healing of the group in a major way. It can be argued that sufficient levels of Speed would allow you to gain extra casts during a fight by reducing the amount of time spent moving. However, this is not a real concern for Mistweavers who are already very mobile. Speed should be thought of as a nice bonus, but never drop the item level for it.

Indestructible removes the durability attribute of an item. This means you will never have to repair it, nor will it ever break. Not much to say on this one; it provides no benefit in combat, making it the worst of the tertiaries.