This thread is for basic discussion of Healing Monk mechanics and abilities. It is our hope that in time a proper guide thread will be created to summarize and organize the known information for easy consumption; if you are interested doing so, please contact me. In the meantime, the sort of discussion that would normally occur in such a thread can happen here instead.

As monks are a new class and their mechanics are still changing fairly frequently, it is understood that discussion may be somewhat more speculative than is typically the case for this sort of thread. It is fine to reflect on which mechanics you think do and don't work, and proposal reasonable adjustments you might like to see; however, please keep in mind that all forum rules still apply, so excessive wishlisting will still be subject to moderation.

I somehow managed to get a L85 premade Monk before they closed the premades off. I've been studying the Mistweaver pretty closely to get an idea what things will be like. I'm writing from the perspective of a healer in Cata, particularly priest/paladin.

This is not a guide, simply me performing testing and organizing my thoughts about the spec. It's worth ignoring all numbers right now. Things just aren't right. Ignore mana, ignore mana regen. The numbers worth thinking about are the Chi cost of abilities and cast times. The rest need so much tweaking and adjusting that they should just not even be discussed yet.

The big divergence for Mistweavers from other healers is Chi. Unlike Holy Power, abilities have a fixed Chi cost and do a fixed amount of healing (ie, you don't get more healing from Uplift if you have 4 Chi instead of 2 Chi). Holy Power in Cata always depletes when you use a relevant ability (though in Mists, apparently there is a 3 HoPo cap on abilities).

In comparison to the existing healing model, Monks currently have no direct cheap *or* expensive *or* fast heal. Instead, we have a targetable channeled heal, a 2s smart heal, a 2s positional heal, a variety of damage-related heals, and an AOE hot that jumps around and can be renewed by a Chi-consuming spell.

Chi

Chi is accumulated by using various abilities. You can have at most 4 Chi (5 if talented to Ascendency), and spells cost either Chi or Mana, never both. Currently there are three ways to generate Chi:

Clobber/Jab - depending on your equipped weapon. A melee attack that generates 1 Chi. 1.5s GCD.
Soothing Mists - our channeled, direct heal; when a tick is fully effective (ie, no overheal), you gain one Chi. Ticks once per second for 8 seconds. The tooltip says it has a 25% chance to generate Chi; unknown if the tooltip is bugged or the ability is (I tend to think the ability is).
Jasmine Force Tea - Channel, gain 1 Chi every 2s. No cooldown.

Currently, Soothing Mists is the fastest Chi generator, but if the tooltip is the actual intended behavior, then it will fall behind. I tend to think the tooltip is more proper because otherwise you generate Chi very quickly. Jasmine Force Tea is a decent generator of Chi when at range, but you are not healing while using it. It generates 1 Chi every 2s, which is slower than Clobber/Jab. Put another way, the fastest way to generate Chi is to use Clobber -- it is free, generates 1 Chi per 1.5 seconds, and heals via your Jade Serpent Statues.

Several heals/self buffs use Chi to function. The simplest is to directly use the Chi to damage, via Tiger Palm. This triggers statue heals as well as, after 5 uses, makes your next Surging Mists instant via Teachings of the Monastery. Using Tiger Palm (or Blackout Kick, though it lacks the TotM synergy) simply triggers two smart heals.

Chi Wave, which alternates heals and damage, requires 2 Chi. It is instant (like most Monk heals) and ticks 5 times -- either 2 damage and 3 heal, or 3 damage and 2 heal. It seems to be based on proximity rather than being a truly smart heal. Currently it seems to heal for a significant amount.

Uplift refreshes Renewing Mists on all targets that have it as well as providing a small, instant heal to them. The benefit can be doubled with Thunder Focus Tea. This will likely be a standard part of our AOE rotation, and if you have Renewing Mists spread out, then using it on CD will refresh them all. Costs 2 Chi.

Spinning Crane Kick is the DPS monk AOE ability, but it also provides AOE healing via TotM. The more targets it hits, the more healing it does. Costs 1 Chi.

Thunder Focus Tea. An instant that doubles the effect of the next Surging Mist or Uplift. Cannot currently be cast during Soothing Mists, but perhaps this will change as it boosts the one spell you can cast while channeling Soothing Mists. Costs 1 Chi.

Transcendence. Our level 87 ability. Similar to a Warlock teleport, except you can return to the position you teleport from. Placing your teleport destination is free. Teleporting to it costs 1 Chi, and swaps your teleport position with your pre-teleport position. In other words, spam it and you swap between two places.

Mana Healing

Most of our heals use Mana. Our only heal that generates Chi is Soothing Mists; otherwise our Mana heals are unaffected by Chi.

Surging Mist - a smart heal of significant size. 2s cast.

Soothing Mists -- 8 second channel, during which you can cast Surging Mists (which does not break the channel) as an instant that only heals the target of your Soothing Mists.

Renewing Mists - a HoT that spreads and can be renewed with Uplift. Lasts 10s with an 8s cooldown. It would appear this can be spread to cover a large portion of the raid, and refreshed with Uplift (see above).

Expel Harm - a self-heal that becomes targetable when glyphed. Instant. Also damages a nearby enemy.

Healing Spheres - up to three spheres can be placed at a time. In addition, our mastery will proc spheres near the players we heal. Spheres can be cast under players, and they do currently heal whoever is under them, making them an interesting AOE heal when tight stacking is an option. Likewise, pre-placing them for on-demand heals or when raids collapse to a location can be very effective. It will depend on raid and dungeon encounter design.

Cooldowns

Ignoring talents, we have two core cooldowns.

Meditation - redirects all raid spell damage to you and reduces the damage you take by 99%. 3m cooldown, broken if meleed. Channeled.

Revival - instant raid-wide heal of significant around you, removes bleeds, magic debuffs, and poisons. 3m cooldown. (Note the tooltip is incorrect; in-game it also is a 35k heal to all players)

DPS Healing

Healing via DPS is primarily accomplished via Jade Statues. For every point of damage you deal, each state (of which you can have two) heal a nearby injured ally for half that amount. This includes white melee attacks, Clobber/Jab, Tiger Palm, and most other abilities. With both statues up, 100% of damage dealt will turn into smart heals.

In general, the DPS "rotation" currently would appear to be Clobber/Jab to build Chi and Tiger's Palm to spend it. Every 5th Tiger's Palm results in an instant Surging Mists smart heal as well. In addition, every 15 seconds a Chi Wave will damage and heal; depending on how it targets the heal, it may be very potent or largely worthless, but either way it is a significant amount and likely worth using on cooldown.

Using glyphed Expel Harm to instantly heal a target also deals damage which, presumably, will trigger Jade Statue healing.

Currently though, Jade Statues only heal from Clobber/Jab and white melee damage. This means Crackling Jade Lightning, Chi Wave, and Expel Harm do not trigger heals when they do damage. Either JCS's tooltip is incorrect or the ability is bugged.

Mana Management

Every 3 Chi you spend results in one stack of Cherry Mana Tea. CMT can be consumed by the ability of the same name. Every stack consumed returns 5% mana.

Spirit also affects mana regeneration, currently at 1 mp5 per point of Spirit.

In practice, once tuned, in general the rotation will be mana negative without making use of CMT. Using Chi for healing (which currently seems to be lower HPS, much like Disc Priest Atonement) is mana positive via CMT as well since you aren't spending mana for your core DPS abilities. During lulls, there will time to drink CMT to regain mana, or to DPS further to build Chi.

Currently regen is not tuned or likely even properly functional so more details on the ratio of use of Chi vs Mana is impossible to guess at. The main takeaway is even if not DPSing, Chi will accumulate and provide opportunities for various buffs, use of Uplift, Chi Wave, and other utility abilities.

Direct Healing

With no direct counterpart to Heal, Greater Heal, or Flash Heal, what is a Mistweaver to do? The answer currently would appear to be channel Soothing Mists and use Surging Mists based upon target health. Currently Soothing Mists is tuned pretty decently (roughly equivalent to Heal at level 85), and does not trigger a GCD on Surging Mists -- this means with one keypress, both the first tick of Soothing Mists and a hit of Surging Mists can be applied. For light damage, Soothing Mists is sufficient; during heavier periods, Surging can supplement (currently a hit of Surging Mists is 2.5 times as strong as a tick of Soothing Mists).

In addition, Expel Harm, when glyphed, is targetable and heals for roughly as much as a tick of Soothing Mists. It deals damage but generates no Chi.

Renewing Mists, while an infectious AOE heal, can be used on tanks and maintained on many targets via Uplift.

Miscellaneous

Roll has a 3-4s cooldown when in Stance of the Wise Serpent. This is likely to balance its near zero cost.

Touch of Death, when used when there are Jade Serpent Statues down, will produce two heals of 50% of your health -- but only if you kill the target. Likely not usable in many cases, but perhaps usable for some add phases or other specific situations. Will Touch of Death survive balancing? Who knows.

Like many other classes, we have three spells with similar names -- Soothing Mists, Surging Mists, and Renewing Mists. The names are indicative of what the do. Renewing is a HoT, like Renew; Soothing is a smooth, channeled heal; and Surging is a burst heal (used generally during Surging Mists.

Each cast of Renewing Mists results in 3 HoTs on players, which Uplift can renew. It may be possible to pre-stack this before an encounter and maintain it throughout. It needs to be tested in a raid environment.

Summary

Currently, Mistweaver healing is unlike anything in the game. On the surface, it shares similarities with Atonement healing, but has a strong incentive to be in melee range. It completely does away with the slow/cheap heal, fast/medium heal, slow/big heal model in other classes in favor of a more flexible model of channel+instant.

As stated above, quite a bit about the spec doesn't work or needs tuning. However, the core skeleton seems to be in place and provides a functioning model completely unique from other healing classes, both for single target and AOE heals.