PvE Mistweaver Monk Stat Priority & Reforging

Mistweaver Monks in Mists of Pandaria are primarily interested in Spirit and Intellect, with their secondary stat priority favoring Haste until they reach a breakpoint, and Critical Strike otherwise. You’ll need to know how to prioritize these stats so you can select the appropriate gear, gems, enchants, and consumables as well as for reforging, which is also covered in this guide.

Stat Priority

Here is your general stat priority as a Mistweaver Monk:

1. Spirit (until mana is not an issue)
2. Intellect
3. Spell Power
4. Haste (to reach a breakpoint)
5. Critical Strike
6. Mastery
7. Haste (beyond breakpoints)

Spirit is the primary mana regeneration stat for all healers in Mists of Pandaria, with raw MP5 having gone away in Cataclysm. Monk healers gain 50% of their Spirit-based mana regeneration while in combat thanks to their Mana Meditation passive effect. In addition, they also gain Hit and Expertise equal to 50% of their Spirt via Stance of the Wise Serpent. If you want to ensure that your attacks and crowd control abilities never miss, you’ll need enough Spirit to reach the 15% Hit cap. Beyond that, the amount of Spirit you need comes down to how comfortable you feel with your mana pool. Once you get to the point where you are not burning through your mana on a typical fight, you can start dropping some Spirit in favor of throughput stats. Until then, it’s more valuable to you than throughput stats since you can’t heal at all if you run out of mana. All healers have a static mana pool in Mists of Pandaria, so mana regeneration is the only way to extend your mana.

• Each point of Spirit equals about 0.56 mana regained per 5 seconds.
• Human gain 3% more value from Spirit due to their The Human Spirit racial passive.

Hit Chance is more important for Mistweaver Monks than other healers due to their Fistweaving mechanics, but Stance of the Wise Serpent should make it easy to reach the Hit cap through Spirit, which you will need plenty of anyway for mana regeneration. You should avoid Hit and Expertise on gear since they don’t give you other benefits the way Spirit does. Draenei characters get 1% Hit from their Heroic Presence racial passive while Dwarf and Human characters gain 1% Expertise if they have a Mace weapon equipped in their Main Hand slot and Orc characters gain 1% Expertise with an Axe or Fist weapon equipped in the Main Hand slot.

• You need 15% Hit Chance to ensure that your abilities never miss.

Intellect is your primary stat as a Mistweaver Monk, and you’ll want as much of it as you can get once you are comfortable with your Spirit. Intellect is the main source of your Spell Power and also increases your Critical Strike. (Note that in Mists of Pandaria, it no longer increases mana pools.) Your Leather Specialization passive effect increases your Intellect by 5%, adding further value to every point you acquire. You can’t reforge other stats to Intellect, so you’ll want to get as much as you can from your gear, although you will still want to avoid items that have undesirable stats such as Hit.

Spell Power directly increases the healing and damage of your spells. Most of your Spell Power will come from your Intellect at a 1:1 ratio, but you will occasionally see it as a secondary stat on certain items such as weapons and trinkets. Each of your spells has its own coefficient that determines how much its effect is multiplied by your Spell Power.

Haste is similar to Spirit in that you want to prioritize it until you reach a certain level, and then largely ignore it. In this case you’ll be stacking it to reach specific breakpoints at which you will gain additional ticks from your heal-over-time spells over their duration. There are Haste breakpoints for Renewing Mist, Zen Sphere, and Enveloping Mist, but you will focus primarily on Renewing Mist. Beyond the caps, you can still benefit from Haste’s other effects: a quicker global cooldown for your instant spells and faster cast times for all of your cast-time and channeled spells. But it’s not worth prioritizing for these purposes. Once you have your Spirit at a comfortable level, you should aim to reach an attainable Haste breakpoint without sacrificing Intellect. At times it may be worth trading out an Intellect gem or two to reach a Haste cap, but you should aim to do so by reforging first.

• Every 425 points of Haste is equal to 1% increased casting speed.
• The following Haste breakpoints for your spells are baseline and can be affected by trinket effects, cooldowns, and the 5% Haste raid buff:

Critical Strike increases your chance of getting a critical hit with your spells, doubling their healing or damage. Crits can be a little iffy for healing since you can’t make them happen when you really need them, and they usually amount to wasted overheal when you don’t. But for Mistweaver Monks, Crit also helps your mana regeneration thanks to Brewing: Mana Tea. Every time you gain a stack of Mana Tea through this passive ability, you have a chance to gain a second that is based on your Crit chance, which lets you get more mana out of it. Crit also boosts your damage, which Mastery doesn’t do. For these reasons, Critical Strike becomes your best secondary stat when your Spirit and Haste needs have been met.

• Every 600 points of Critical Strike is equal to 1% increased crit chance.

Mastery causes your heals to summon Healing Spheres through your Gift of the Serpent passive ability. These Healing Spheres will heal anyone who walks through them during the next 30 seconds, or will heal a target within 6 yards for 50% of their effect when they expire. Unfortunately, maximizing the effect of these spheres requires having your teammates move to pick them up, which is problematic for two reasons. One, it means interrupting whatever they’re doing to move, which is not optimal for their own output. And two, you’re counting on players to take responsibility for their own health, which should be your job as the healer. This stat also doesn’t scale very well and it doesn’t boost your damage, so it’s best left as a dump stat.

• Every 480 points of Mastery increases Gift of the Serpent by 1%.

Reforging

Reforging can only be done for secondary stats, so you won’t be able to alter the Intellect or Stamina on your gear. Mistweaver Monks will want to reforge less valuable stats to Spirit until they are comfortable with their mana supply. After that, Spirit and other less valuable stats can be reforged into Haste to try to reach one of your breakpoints, or Critical Strike otherwise.

1. Spirit (until no mana concerns)
2. Haste (to reach a breakpoint)
3. Critical Strike (any other situation)