To Fistweave or Mistweave?

I was asked the other day which character I consider my main, and I was stumped. That used to be a clear-cut, easy answer- my druid. She was my first max-level character, and the only one I did anything besides professions and leveling with. Then I leveled the monk. I took her into LFR, and had a blast. LFR, as a healer, can sometimes have a lot of downtime, if the other healers are decent. But with the monk, I could hit things between heals! I had no downtime, it was more engaging and fun! My druid was still my best-geared, and my raid toon.

Then we hit Gara'jal, and wiped. Many times. At 7%, once with about 220k health left on him. That was annoying. So I brought the monk the next week, for just a tad more DPS to push us over. And she stuck. I'll admit, on the monk, I am kinda half a healer. But I feel that 2.5 healers is about where we're good at for most of those fights. Because of that, I was hesitant to heal Elegon. I preferred to DPS on my monk there, but I was pulled to healing, and did fine. But if I am going to really heal, be a main healer, part of a 2-man healing team, I'd rather be on my druid. Our other regular healer, however, is a druid. I'm already competing for the same gear, I should at least bring different skills to the table. (Like the monk 3-min healing cooldown- it's great!) Plus, then I would be the 4th druid in the raid. And we've run with a full spectrum of druids before, that was no planned. So the monk has become the toon I spend the most time on.

And I love her, I do. She kills things so quickly, there is just enough to keep track of with DPS, not too much. I can heal and dps at the same time, and now she is the best geared toon- in both her specs- that I have. But I don't think of her as my main. I don't think of the druid as my main either. I'm mainless, aimless maybe. I feel disloyal to my druid to call anyone else my main.

But the title of this post was to fistweave or mistweave. so, to get back to that. Looking at the meters, my HPS and DPS appear to be awful- both about 20k. I'm doing both at the same time, so I feel it is ok. But with monks as a new class, I can find so few resources to really help me. I fistweave because I enjoy it, and because our raid is at the point where we can maybe run with 2 healers, and maybe not. So I feel two-and-a-half works great for us. I should ask our other healers, though, see how they feel. If they feel differently, I might switch back to my druid, or gear up my priest and try that for a while. 

I feel a tad uncomfortable mistweaving, because I am not familiar with mana management. I can so easily run out without paying attention. I can do it, I did just fine with Elegon. But if I am going to be doing that all the time, I would rather be on my druid. Maybe I'll fall in love with priest heals, but from running dungeons while leveling, I think it'll take a while to get used too.

So, to conclude: my monk is a fistweaver. She does light healing while doing a bit of DPS, and mixes in big heals when the raid needs em. She is not a mistweaver, to focus solely on healing and little else. She supports healers, and can step in to be a main healer, but she prefers to be the supporting role.

My druid is a healer. She heals, and that is her job. She enjoys it, believes healy druids should be trees, and really that seeing your armor as a druid in a raid is wrong. (Probably why I am so slow to transmog- why bother when you never see it?) She will be a lead healer, and do a great job at it, as that is all she knows to do.

My priest is an enchanter. He will do LFR for loot to disenchant. Maybe, if I start to fit into the priest groove, he might join a raid, depending on the composition of raid healers.

I do love the monk. I believe playing a fistweaver has made me a better player. I had to become much more situationally aware. I had thought I was before I began fistweaving, then I realized how much I really only paid attention to the health bars and what I was standing in. Now I focus on the whole encounter in a much more comprehensive manner. I would be sad to stop playing my monk in raids. But I don't want to hold the team back, and I don't want to stop fistweaving. If they need me to be a full time healer, like when we move on to the next raid, I will probably switch to my druid. I'll give the monk a try, and talk to the other healers, get their opinion. We'll work it out.

I feel like I have heard that conversation before, about fistweaving and healing. In another raid. And I think I just hit on what bothers me about my raid group right now. My guild is a casual guild. The raid team takes raiding seriously, but not that seriously. Oh, they come prepared, and gemmed and enchanted and reforged, having watched video and seen the fights in LFR. I love them all to death. But I feel like they should be further than we are. I suppose we're doing well for a group that started late on the raiding game, and only raids 2 nights a week.

So what I am saying is I need to chill out. And relax. And not take things so personally. This is all just the aftermath of a bad raid night. I will sleep, and be happy not to have a Classy priest hanging over my shoulder, and- have some fun! What to do for fun?