Morning blog lovers!
I received an email a few weeks back about healing charts and what I thought of them. I figured I would write a post about it and my thoughts on them. Here is the email I received...
I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your blog...early this year I joined a new guild and decided to respec my shaman into resto so that I could be more beneficial to the guild. We raid, but we're not a raiding guild per se; so while we'll never see true end game content we have a blast clearing Naxx 10 & 25 weekly and pushing our way through Ulduar.
I was hoping that you might consider discussing your thoughts on healing meters on a future blog...because my GM and I had a fairly heated debate about them most recently. I'll give you the background on the situation that let to this.
We farm OS10 & 25 for Emblems of Conquest every week...and for the most part we're all fairly overgeared for the instance; especially when we do it with no drakes up. On a recent run we went with three healers..two Resto Shamans (one being me) and a Holy Pally. (who happens to be the GM.) She assigned herself to heal the MT and told the two shammys to handle OT and Raid.
As I said we're all overgeared for the raid, so there wasn't a whole lot of significant damage being taken by anyone..other than the MT who always holds aggro like a pro. After each fight the GM started linking healing meters and getting on the shaman's cases for not doing their job. (no one died, btw). She knows my thoughts on healing meters in general, and I also tried to explain to her that she was single target healing the only person in the raid who was taking any significant damage but she wasn't hearing it. I told her that I could have outhealed her had I stood in a pool of lava and spammed RT>HW>HW during the boss fights...but that wouldn't necessarily make me an effective raid healer.
IMHO, you can't measure healing the same way that you measure total damage/dps. There are too many extraneous factors (one of which is illustrated above.) I do think healing meters have their place as one piece of the puzzle in pinpointing immediate problems; but if no one is dying and no healers are going OOM then there isn't a problem to pinpoint.
It has gotten so bad that I've taken a break from raiding with the guild (particularly when she's around...lol); but it seems weird to me to keep saying "no thanks, I'd rather run Ulduar with a pug this week."
Now I don't claim to be neither a master healer nor an uber raider; but I am good at my job to the point where I'm typically on the top of the list when raid invites go out. But if I have to concentrate on putting up high numbers as opposed to doing what is best for the raid I may need to either retire from raiding or find another guild to run with.
Again, take care and thanks again for your blog!
First off, your welcome and thank you for your compliments...they make me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
Now, about healing meters and your retarded GM...
It completely dumb founds me that raid leaders do not know how to use healing meters and is one of my biggest pet peeves in terms of WoW. My beef with healing metes is that you can not look at just the "healing done" portion. You have to look at several different charts to get a good idea of what is going on and if someone is slacking.
The three that I check are...
- Healing Done
- Over healing Done
- Heals per second
Healing Done
It gives you a very generic, non detailed view on the healing output your healers are doing. Not much more to say other then that really. This is what everyone looks at and makes judgements off of.
Negatives - It doesn't take into effect the role of the healers, being raid healing or single target healing. It also doesn't care about over healing. It just measures straight healing done. If you decide to spam heal yourself until your out of mana while you are already at full health....it will take all of that and put it in its records. I don't know about you, but I strive for no over healing. There are some that do not care and like to see themselves at the top....so by just looking at this chart and nothing else, you are not getting the whole picture.
Positives - It does show overall healing done, which in most cases, paints a pretty good picture. However, like I said before, it does not give you the whole picture and this more times then not causes drama.
Over Healing Done
Druids, beware, this is mostly about you! A good resto druid should always be at the top of the healing done. It is very, very, rare that one isn't. Alot of the time Druids are number 1 on the healing done chart by 5-10% more then everyone else. I have had numberous "talks" with people asking me why my healing wasn't up to par with the driud and I always link them the over healing chart.
The majority of the time, Druids are numbero uno on that chart too. Usually by more then 5-10%....more like 15-20% more then almost everyone. Druids can't really help overhealing though, its just one of those things about HoTs.
I notice that holy pallys have alot of over healing too. That is because they are more of an "active healer" compared to a "reactive healer". Meaning that it is better to keep the tank top off and not let them get too low. This type of healing is going to have more over healing due to the mechanic, not the healer.
Everyone else though, really should have low over healing. If any other class / spec has a higher over healing percentage then a holy pally or a resto druid, then then are either....
A. Trying too hard
B. Stroaking their epeen to show off on the healing done charts.
C. Being stupid
Remember, over healing is a negitive stat, not something you want to be number 1 at ok?
Heals Per Second
This is a good chart you can take at face value. However, you have to take the role of the healer before coming to a clear result. For aoe healers, 2k hps overall is a good number to shoot towards. I have done boss fights and ended with doing 4k hps for the fight. That normally doesn't happened though. When you are done raiding for the night, look at the hps...if its 2k or above, the healer was pretty much on his/her game. If lower, think about the situation a little more before coming to a conclusion.
Overview
When you want to see how you are stacking up against other healers in your raid, first check the healing done charts. If you notice anything weird or something that doesn't make sense to you, (ie - you are healing your ass off and you are 3rd on the list) go to the Over Healing chart. More then likely the people that are above you in the healing done chart will be WAY above you in the over healing chart.
If you want to do further research on how a healer(s) is doing, check the hps chart. This is the only way to effectively grade your healing cores. Not by linking the healing done meter in raid and then asking your healers why they suck....what a doucebag.
The Black Sheep
There is always one of them and in the healing world its disc priests. They will ALWAYS be dead last in regards to healing meters and this is because the majority of their spells are designed to absorb dmg, not heal through it.
There is a mod out there will take this into affect and actually show you the way that recount does, but I have no idea what it is or what it is called. I looked for it for awhile, but due to being a work, everything is blocked. If I find it later when I am home I will update.
EDIT: - Check out this post, it should open your eyes in regards to Disc spec'd priest.
In regards...
To your raid leader that decided to make an issue on a OS 10 run given the situation you explained is utterly retarded. I hate drama and to have a "heated conversation" (aka drama) over healing meters for a OS 10 run would make me /gquit with the quickness.
I mean seriously....who does that?
As a healer you need to do what is needed for the raid to succeed, not just heal and be number 1 on the healing charts.
8 comments:
This post made me laugh! :)
As a healer with a pally, a priest (holy), a shaman, and soon to be druid too, I find this post very humorous.
Since Wrath came out, druids have always beaten everyone on heals and overheals.
Pallies are generally next, or at least a single paladin is. That paladin is the one that judges Light. In a 25-man raid the small heals from JoL add up pretty damn quick! On non-mana intensive farm bosses, I like to see if I can get the top overheals with JoL, beacon, and Holy Light spam. :P
Disc priests as you said are dead last because of the damage mitigation rather than direct heals.
Shamans I've noticed are interesting because they should be near the bottom on overheals, especially those that chain heal spam. The "smartness" of chain heal limits overhealing. So if you see a shaman with large overheals, then he's either using heals other than chain heal or doing something really, really wrong!
The biggest thing I look for in healing meters is what heals is the healer using? IMO that's the most important.
@Kyr
"The biggest thing I look for in healing meters is what heals is the healer using? IMO that's the most important."
That is another great point I forgot to touch on. If I am a shaman and I am assigned to raid healing and my number one heal is anything put chain heal...that is a problem
That GM is clearly a nob. Time to find a new guild?
This is a very nice overview, but the OP touched on something else - the amount of damage and who's sucking it up. If you *really* want to check up on a person's performance, you can look at who is taking damage and who is healing who, to get another angle on 'effective' healing - something I find useful when trying to analyse wipes.
Is the recount thingy recountguessedabsorbs?
The other thing to check: who was the healer healing?
Had a healer swear up and down that they were healing the tank and we couldn't figure out why the tank was dropping so fast. Turns out everyone but the tank was getting the heals (tank was 7th on a 10 man). No explanation as to why, but that's why the tank was dropping. >.<
But hey, his healing chart looked great for HPS and amount of healing done!
this is kind of off topic, in fact, the poll made me think of this...
after seeing which toon you would like to raid with, noone picking a warrior, your pic at the beginning of the blog made me think WTF mate, is he even worth playing anymore!?!?1
time to get heals set on sham :D
Well having read through everything that was posted, all I can is that I agree and I would recommend to look for a new guild.
Not to sound mean but if the guild/raid leader is a healer and does not understand the way to look at the healing classes, then that is not a good sign.
Recount has an addition that can track absorptions from shields. Also World of Logs does a fairly decent job at representing what was absorbed. If no one is dying, then I don't care what the healing meters are doing. But if I think that someone is not pulling their weight or needs help then logs can give you a good idea in helping people if the information is used appropriately. I recently played with a holy priest, and I found I was able to out heal them as Disc in a heavy raid intensive fight. I was able to find in the logs that they were using greater heal over flash heal for a majority of their heals. Talked with the priest, and they switched to using Flash heal and their healing improved by a ton. Logs for the sake of epeen are lame, but if you are looking to improve yourself by all means parse away.
Recount Guessed Absorbs is correct, it is not very accurate but it gives you a good interpretation.
I find my Disc sits around 2k hps and around 1700 aps (absorbs per sec) with toc/ulduar gear Where as my druid in mostly pvp gear can pull off 3-4.5k hps due to the mechanics and sheer amount of overhealing.
Overhealing is a negative stat but ONLY when mana is an issue... If you never need to innervate then overhealing helps (not the actual overheals but having the heals always on so when they do take damage your healing them instantly)
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