Is fast cast or recharge bonus better for monk?

Hi all, got another question for you pro-monks

I'm trying to decide on what weapon/offhand to use for my healing monk. Currently, I'm using Stormray (5>50, 20% fast cast) and 20/20 collector offhand. Just wondering if that's the optimum combination for a healing monk.

Personally, I feel that fast cast is more important than recharge for monks. The sooner you can get that heal off, the better the survival rate is for the person being healed. Also, the recharge for healing spells are really short, so I don't see how faster recharge would help very much here.

I also plan to play a prot monk later when I get the necessary skills. Would fast cast or recharge be better in this case?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. Main healing spells I use are Orison of Healing, Dwayna's Kiss, and Word of Healing, sometimes Healing Breeze, all of which have small recharge times.

I personally think both are sufficent and haev their spots when needed in a fight PvE or PvP. The recharge I think generally will server better due to the very short casting times of most healing spells (1/4 sec - 1 sec). But you have to be careful when you have those mods when they start casting crazy fast and recharging crazy fast that you don't start mindlessly spamming the hell out of all your spells to 0 energy. The three spells you mentioned - Orison of Healing, Dwyana's Kiss, and Word of Healing- are good choices . But I will have to note on the usage of Healing Breeze. Healing Breeze can give them up to +10 health regeneration, but the flaws in Healing Breeze come from several aspects. 1. 10 energy + recharge 2 sec= No energy to many monks who are not careful with it. 2. 10 regeneration while taking heavy damage or minimal damage will most likely result in a minimal heal in which you wasted 10 energy for . I will highly suggest using Heal Party because there are those times in which your entire party is taking damage or and Heal Party will save you energy over time. Healing 6 people = 6x5 energy(basic 5 energy heal) = 30 energy, Healing 6 people= 1x 15 energy (heal party)= 15 energy. A saving of 15 energy <-- Even Wal-Mart can't do that. Yes, I realize I went extremely off topic to your question - my apologies - But back on topic for your overal weapon set I would suggest replacing your 5>50 rod for a +5 energy sword of some sort. And if you don't have much money to spend for only 10k you can craft a +5 energy sword or axe in the Divine Path after beating Shiro in Imperial Sanctum. -- You'll have to check guildwarswiki.com for the crafting materials needed --. And then in addition to your axe/sword that gives you +5 energy always you can have that 20/20 focus item. Because with the 5>50 rod the 5>50ness can be dangerous. Say you go under 50% hp and not only you but other team member are under heavy damage then all the sudden you have lost 5 energy for no reason. Not good . That's just my extremely long presentaion of an answer to your question and some advice.

Ok cool, thanks. If I use an axe/sword, what suffix should I use as a healing monk? Fortitude? Defense? Maybe Defense in PvE and Fortitude in PvP? I don't think prefix matters, but if that's not the case, I'd like to know too

I'm also thinking of using the Totem Axe when I'm playing prot.

Generally, you want recharge items for a prot monk, and fast cast items for a heal monk, due to the fact that many of your essential prot skills already have a fast cast time, and if you're hoping to catch spikes with anything other than infuse on a healer, you'll definitely want the fast cast. However, I rarely care enough to actually go for fast cast/fast recharge when I'm monking, it's simply unnecessay for most skill bars.
I usually use either a 30/30 20/20 staff or a +45/-2 while enchanted gold shield with a +5 ene/+30 hp sword as my main switch while monking - obviously the second set is meant for boon prot, though I have a +30/20% -5 shield and wand for healing swaps as well.
Also, go with the Fortitude mod if you're using a sword/axe.

It really, really depends what you're doing (as mentioned above more or less).

If you're a healer, most of your spells come back rather fast. Most healers will be running spot heals, for small management and large heals, for critical saves or post-rez buffing to prevent a 2nd drop. These skills generally come back quickly and you're more focused on having them timed, more than having something to cast. You should nearly always have something to cast as a healer anyways. So the faster cast option can come in pretty handy.

As a protection monk, your skills are either really really fast already, or have a longer recharge time (such as many of the enchantments that you will find). This one may seem too obvious, but longer recharge times on skills that have shorter durations leads to not protecting. So if you can get things to come back faster, it means you can cast them again and keep some form of protection going on. This is especially critical if you're interrupted in some fashion, be it a real interrupt, or a knockdown effect, etc. Something that has a long recharge time both didn't get cast and is recharging now and you're had. If you can get things to recharge a bit faster, this will help you recover and also aid your party better.

Now, it's not completely black & white. Both are good in both situations. Nothing wrong with always have skills ready to go and nothing wrong with having a skill used faster. However, you can't always have both. So consider the duration compared to the recharge time on skills. If they outnumber your speedy spells, you may want that recharge % a little more. If you have many quick skills that you use over and over, and less of the long recharge, you may want to focus more on the % to speed it up.

Either way you can't go wrong, but it will shine one way or the other if you are using skills which benefit one or the other more than not.

Cheers!