Eugene approves of this message.

I have been playing with some different combinations of stats on my Monk throughout the tier. Mistweaver Mastery is sill meh and although I was letting my Crit climb in lieu of Mastery and to keep my Haste at 3145 for the longest time, I saw no real benefit to Crit. I have come to realize I am most impressed with just beefing up my Haste.

So I have been reforging every piece to Haste, and looking at pieces carrying a large amount of Haste natively. This is somewhat contrary to my original BiS List, which focused on pure amount of stats, simply because I really had no idea what was best for my Monk. (Even now I am still kind of guessing, since there is so little on Mistweavers still. If only I could Theorycraft!)

If reforging everything to Haste is good, then dumping all my other stats for pure Haste is better, right? 😀 Well, that is the plan, anyway!

My logic? More ticks for Renewing Mist. Also, faster casting of Soothing Mist, which I use quite often to “fill in” while waiting for Renewing Mist to come off cooldown and to build Chi for Uplift. Quicker casting of Crackling Jade Lightning is another nice bonus, as I have noticed it to be good damage and healing. A kind commenter on my original BiS list mentioned a higher Renewing Mist tick at 6145, making it 12 ticks, which I am currently past and loving.

The biggest hurdle will be keeping my Spirit up to speed with my Haste. I have several pieces without Haste currently. Replacing those pieces with Haste/Spirit pieces this should logically continue to balance out my casting speed and mana regen. So far, my mana regen is very manageable, but I fear tipping the scale too much in either direction will cause me some problems as we push further through Heroics.

At this point, though, my gear is good enough that I am only focusing on pieces with more Haste and Spirit if they are either Thunderforged or Heroic (or both!).

So here is my “better” BiS list, now with more Haste! (Except in slots I could not find a piece with Haste, which made me sad.)

BiS Normal

My list includes only 3 Tier pieces, because I cannot bring myself to get excited about the 4-piece bonus. The 2-piece seems to work nicely, though.

Head – Fire-Charm Helm (Twin Consorts) – no Haste option
Shoulders – Spaulders of Dinomancy (Horridon)
Chest – Robes of Concussive Shocks (Tortos)
Wrists – Vampire Bat-Hide Bracers (Tortos)
Hands – Fire-Charm Handwraps (Council of Elders or Nalak)
Belt – Girdle of Night and Day (Twin Consorts)
Legs – Fire-Charm Legwraps (Ji-Kun or Nalak)
Feet – Deeproot Treads (Trash)
Back – Constantly Accelerating Cloak (Dark Animus)
Neck – Soul Prism of Lei-Shen (Lei Shen)
Finger 1 – Ring of the Shado-Pan Assault (VP – Shado-Pan Assault Friendly)
Finger 2 – Durumu’s Captive Eyeball (Durumu the Forgotten) – no second Haste option
Trinket 1 – Soothing Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault (VP – Shado-Pan Assault Friendly)
Trinket 2 – Horridon’s Last Gasp (Horridon)
One-Hand Mace – Torall, Rod of the Shattered Throne (Lei Shen)
Off Hand – Orb of Arcing Lightning (Iron Qon)

BiS Heroic

After a good hard look at Heroic and Ra-den drops, I really see very little changes in my gear list, except Ra-den’s ring and a possible swap of trinkets, since I cannot get the Shado-Pan trinket in Heroic. 😛 Honestly, I am quite fond of my Shado-Pan trinket, and might not even upgrade that! I am not yet sold on the proc from the Chalice. I suppose I would have to see it in action.

Ra-den’s drops appear to be guaranteed Heroic Thunderforged items, which is interesting, but it also means with some luck from other bosses, unnecessary. I am okie with this since I was not thrilled with the stat distribution of most of Ra-den’s drops upon a second glance.

Definitely

Finger – Ra-den’s Evolving Signet (Ra-den)

Maybe

Trinket – Lightning-Imbued Chalice (Lei Shen)

With Ra-den’s ring, that would put me with Haste and Spirit in every slot except my helm. I can deal with that!

I did see a Heroic Thunderforged version of the Deeproot Treads on WoWHead, but I am unsure of where/how they drop, since the normal version drops from trash. Random boss drop maybe?

Closing Thoughts

Next on my list is improving my playstyle more. I always have more room for improvement.

The Haste has made a notable difference in my performance so far, but I am sure my technique could use some tweaking. It is really hard to gauge most of the time, since we tend to run heavy on healers and my Monk’s particular healing cooldown, Revival, is more of an “Oh shit!” button for when things get messy. This means I usually go several attempts, or even several bosses, without using Revival, which is certainly affecting my overall performance.

But I would rather save lives and brez’s than blow Revival just to make my numbers pretty.

~ Effy