Why healing meters suck
by Mike Schramm 
Jan 8th 2009 at 9:00PM
Matticus also has a guest blogger on his site (I posted about Phaelia's guest blogger earlier today), and he's got a great post up too, about healing meters and why they just aren't helpful to anyone. Damage meters are well known to be disliked by many players -- while they can often show some DPSers where they fit in the general rankings, they're usually still not a great indicator of performance (and when DPS gets really involved in beating the meters, then things go bad quickly).But healing meters are even worse. Given all of the crazy mechanics in the game (from armor and self-heals to situational abilities and AoE heals), they are very rarely (if ever) a valid interpretation of who's doing the healing and whether they're doing it right or wrong. And as guest blogger Ulkesshern says, more healing doesn't make a better healer anyway -- overhealing and spamming big heals do not mean you're a good healer, though they may get you higher on the healing meters.
There is one good word for healing meters, and that's to give the healer an ego boost after you show off the DPS meters at the end of the instance (usually they're on the bottom of DPS, and so when you switch over to healing, they're happy to be back on top again). But Ulkesshern makes a good point: for anything worth tabulating or tracking, healing meters are not to be trusted or followed.
Filed under: Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding, Bosses, Buffs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
skreeran Jan 8th 2009 9:04PM
LOL! I just made a blog post about this over on PathofaHero... xD
You know that site that everyone heard about and went to check out before promptly forgetting about it... :P
Kiristo Jan 8th 2009 9:07PM
I don't think this is news to anyone. Healing meters have always sucked.
Kassu Jan 9th 2009 5:49AM
Make use of the "Overhealing done" tab in Recount.
Poof - Suck factor disabled.
Gallatin Jan 9th 2009 1:40PM
Healing meters are data, and data generally doesn't suck, especially when you use it correctly. Meters can be a *vital* tool when healing in figuring out why your party/raid wiped or why your healing output is not where you think it should be. The more advanced tools such as Recount can bury you in data, and can often surprise the curious as to what is *really* going on. This is a good thing when used correctly.
What does suck is the slack-jawed notion that you can take something like healing meter ranks and assess how "good" a healer is by a single ranking or overall HPS. But this is really a player attitude issue more than a sucky tool problem if we're honest, no? Articles like this should challenge the people who apply this type of thinking and make the case for why it is incorrect rather than just pin blame on the data source used to support their faulty premises.
Jennifer Jan 9th 2009 2:08PM
@Kassu
I'd be pretty upset if a paladin wasn't on top of the Overhealing meters, particularly if that was the role they were assigned.
I'd also be upset if the healers assigned to the soaker offtank Patchwerk didn't have a ridiculous amount of overheal. Even if you overheal in the hopes of getting one of the shammy/pally armor buffs, it's worth it for certain encounters.
Also, healing meters don't take into account shields and bubbles, nor does it take into account mitigation talents like Grace, Inspiration, Ancestral Healing... It doesn't tell you whether a Pain Suppression, Nature's Swiftness, Guardian Spirit, or other healing cooldown was used appropriately.
Healing meters are useful tools, but they don't give a "best" and "worst" to healers, just like a damage meter wouldn't give an accurate representation of the worthiness of a person's role if, for example, they were assigned a job of CCing or providing utility for that encounter.
Even overhealing isn't a good representation of how "bad" a healer is doing. Holy priests gain mana when they overheal. Shamans can give armor buffs from crits, even if they don't have any effective healing. Disc priest crits give protective bubbles and Grace stacks. Druid HoTs provide stability when a spike occurs and something for them to swiftmend without wasting multiple GCDs. Pallies gain mana from crits and have a cheap spammable flash of light designed for constant casting.
Lanth Jan 8th 2009 9:11PM
Hell, I always just keep Recount open to the "Deaths" page, so I can figure out why they died (no heals, stood in the fire, etc) and call them on it.
Harmun Jan 9th 2009 11:20AM
More importantly, recount can show you what spells were cast, and who got the most healing from a healer. It should be used to verify healer execution, not see how many hit points the healer healed for.
A good healer is a healer who has the gear and talent to perform the tasks assigned to him. A priest who is assigned to a single target but spams circle of healing to top the meters is a bad priest, regardless of their effective healing and their gear.
Procris Jan 8th 2009 9:22PM
Well i totally agree that healing meters suck and most would agree. They just aren't useful in measuring how good a healer is, not to mention it doesn't really matter if you did the "most", as long as your saving lives, keeping people topped up. I don't use any form of damage/healing meter personally but from what i know, most of them do not count over healing anyway.
Shionia Jan 8th 2009 10:05PM
Recount tracks Overhealing
Stephen Jan 9th 2009 12:00PM
See, but again, you have to understand that all overhealing isn't necessarily bad.
For a Holy priest they have the Serendipity talent to use overhealing as a mana regen.
A lot of overhealing is caused by HoTs that have had someone direct heal over them.
Group heals often do a lot of overhealing, but are the fastest & most efficient way to heal 3 or more players in a group.
Disc priests are at a huge disadvantage on a healing meter because around 30% of their healing is through mitigation.
zappo Jan 9th 2009 1:38PM
And also to expand on what Stephen is saying, crit is now a good stat for holy priests. Raid buffed you can get over 20% crit rate fairly easy. Even if your spell wasn't going to overheal, the higher crit rate means you'll probably end up with a lot more overheal. Which is again good because that means Serendipity kicks in for a holy priest.
Everything must be taken with a grain of salt. If someone doesn't know how to read statistics and healing meters, THEY are the problem - not the meter.
Erixx Jan 9th 2009 4:43PM
Chain heal?
Someone gets put into an aoe for a single aoe as melee and chain heal branches to them and overheals 3 people for a ton, but all 3-4 got healed so even that with classes can be a bad call.
eblume Jan 8th 2009 9:22PM
I agree that the overall healing meters aren't worth watching, but recount has this very useful Raidwide Heals-Per-Second tickline graph. I keep it open during all boss fights, as it is a GREAT indicator for how hectic things are getting. As a druid healer myself, I often need to gauge whether or not I should switch from passive HOT mode to reactive Regrowth/Nourish mode, and this graph helps me make that decision.
Lynkfox Jan 9th 2009 6:21AM
HPS doesnt matter much either. What if your the 6th healer brought along just so your raid will have 2 healers a tank on Patchwork, and an extra healer on Razuv? Then your not doing much healing during most of the instance, maybe your a resto shaman who'se dps in the mean time... so your DPS is low cause you dont even have the (few) talents that make elemental do more damage, and your HPS is low cause you arent healing.
Meters suck in general. My view: Is your assigned target still alive and did you not step in the (Insert x hockey puck/breath/other environmental hazard)?
Mithuata Jan 8th 2009 9:23PM
Like damage meters, there is a place for healing meters. If you're testing a new guy out, and you're noticing that he's doing half the healing of your other healers, with as much or more over healing, you can be reasonably sure something is wrong. Straight up healing meters are useless, but as always, having more information available to figure out what's going on is better than less. It's question of interpretation after that.
Theyas Jan 8th 2009 9:36PM
Not always. Take Discipline priests for example. Charts won't show mitigation, just effective heals. If us Disc Priests are doing our jobs, the tank has taken considerably less damage over the course of any given boss from talents like Divine Aegis and Grace, and from spells like Power Word: Shield and Pain Suppression.
Ferarro Jan 8th 2009 9:35PM
Healing meters are extremely helpful - provided you understand them and know how to interpret them. It's not as simple as damage meters where you can see the top 5 names and go, "Well, they're the best!" (even though that's not totally true either). There are times when I'm top in healing on meters and 94% of my healing was Judgement of Light. And other nights I'm going crazy and pulling out all the stops and a Priest owns everyone by a heavy margin and his Recount is almost completely Circle of Healing.
For an accurate read on healing via meters, the person has to understand the mechanics of the types of heals as well as considering the situation of the encounter.
Bottom line, healing meters are only as valuable as the reader.
AyaJulia Jan 8th 2009 11:06PM
This, exactly.
You can't just look at who's number one or number two, you have to understand the healing classes, how they do their job, how much healing vs. overhealing they should have, etc... for example a disc priest will be lower because of shielding, while a pally will be higher on the overheal due to judgements and beacons and the like. But when you have a tree doing half the healing of anyone else in the group, or a priest doing 70% of the group's total overheal, it's not rocket science. Your meter isn't sucking, it's being very, very informative. Just learn how to read the damn thing. :P
kayron Jan 8th 2009 9:49PM
Healing meters are bad, but not completely useless. A good raid leader (or even a good group member in situations of lesser number) can use the healing meter to a great deal of benefit. The way you use a meter is just different, a little more complicated, and requires a lot more individual class, situation, and ability knowledge than it does to get information out of a dps meter.
In other words, to use a healing meter effectively, you need to know what healing abilities each class has for each situation, what each healers assignment was, and what encounter effects are present and how they can be handled. Thats a lot more complicated than a simple differentiation between aoe and single target, the mistake which is often made.
Specifically, a full-featured meter (like recount) can help in the following kinds of situations - healers healing the wrong targets, healers using the wrong abilities (or not using the right ones) to best cope with their assignment, it can also show when healers of similar gear, with the same class and assignment, have large gaps in performance (ie, one of them is watching tv or just generally lazy).
Take home message, healing meters are harder to use, but they are certainly not useless.
dejoblue Jan 8th 2009 9:51PM
While I agree with your blog...This does not tell WHY healing meters suck. it just opines that they do. Explain why or change the title of your blog .....