Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
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The latest patch 5.4 newsForum post of the day: Be disciplined about healing meters
by Amanda Dean 
May 17th 2009 at 2:00PM
Mellere of Wildhammer posted a brief lament about her guild leaders treatment of a Discipline Priest. The discipline priest was below a Retadin on HPS. Without understanding the role of mitigation as a healer, the Raid Leader told him to go holy to bring up his HPS. The OP expressed disappointment in the RL at this action.Several responders posted that this is partly the fault of Blizzard as they don't take into account shielding and mitigation to healing scores in the combat log. Daerilla of Spirestone intimated that she did not want to see mitigation included in healing figures, because then people would take notice of how overpowered Disc Priests are in raids. There were some less-than-kind comments about the Raid Leader's competence.
Raid leaders, be sure to give credit where credit is due. Trust that your healing leader and raiders know what they're doing. The raid leader should have a decent understanding of class/spec roles, and adjust their expectations respectively. If the GM is in charge of making healing assignments, be sure to give healers appropriate assignments. Not based on HPS, but based on healing abilities. It some cases it might be best to give a healer the opportunity to dole out orders to the healers.
As Mike Schramm pointed out, basing "performance" off healing meters can lead to doom for a raid. This practice supports over-healing and potential mana issues. When healing becomes a competition healers can lose sight of their assignments and slow down or even wipe the raid. As always remember to keep meters in perspective. It's not about being a star, or a prima dona, raiding is about working together as a team to accomplish a common goal.
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Raiding, Talents, Forum Post of the Day
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
Michael May 17th 2009 3:04PM
HPS is a horrible way to measure healing effectiveness, as healing (unlike DPS) is situational. The key to good healing is making sure the tank doesn't die and the rest of the raid can focus on DPS. If a boss is dead at the end of a fight, then the healers did their job.
That is not to say that healing meters are worthless. I use them to gauge how effective I was on a given fight and how much I was able to contribute. When I first started healing in 25-man Naxx, I was able to compare my healing rotation to that of the other resto druid healer in the group (who did outheal me). I noted in Recount that he was putting a greater emphasis on Rejuv than I was (I was still stuck in BC-raiding patterns). I used that info to change my rotation and my healing improved dramatically. Now, in Uludar, I've had to change my rotation again to focus more on Nourish and Swiftmend because of Blizzard's nerfs/buffs in 3.1, and I use Recount to gauge the effectiveness of my rotation as I tweak my healing.
Taladan May 17th 2009 6:18PM
DPS is also very situational. I do awesome DPS (and total damage) in Naxx, 'cause I'm the only paladin that knows Holy Wrath and the incredible amount of "Undead"-type mobs.
Now give me HoL and I suck.
[Note: Not actually. I'm usually on the top of the DPS/Damage even on HoL.]
Cthulu May 17th 2009 3:05PM
@cailleach
if you read my post WWS is a meter of performance also and I did not delineate which tools I was using only that if you don't use them you are lazy. Your reasons are exactly why meters of all types should be used.
me⋅ter3 /ˈmitər/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [mee-ter] Show IPA
–noun 1. an instrument for measuring, esp. one that automatically measures and records the quantity of something, as of gas, water, miles, or time, when it is activated.
So WWS is a meter.
ivyleaves May 17th 2009 8:46PM
Shorter Cthulu: I made a blanket troll comment dismissing the whole conversation, and now everyone is wrong for not reading my mind and crediting me with all these ideas I never expressed. How could they possibly get the wrong impression of me?
Allbeter May 18th 2009 7:58PM
As a healer, I value meters to help me assess my performance and particularly my spell utilization. However, it is foolish to try to top the meters as a healer or to measure healer performance strictly by the meters as a raid leader. Healing assignment (i.e. your role in the raid) > HPS. It doesn't matter what your HPS is if you don't dispel fusion punch when you should, or when you raid heal to up HPS and end up neglecting the tank you were given as your priority. In these cases meter gazing cause wipes.
Still, meters are valuable for healers too. One of the best things I've been able to do for my healing is look at the meters when another healer of the same class and spec had a similar healing assignment. It has allowed me see if I'm measuring up, setting the bar, or dragging the raid down. By looking at what spells others are using to maximize their effectiveness in an encounter, I've been able to change my style to improve my healing and the raid's performance.
Plus as one of the lead healers in my guild, it's allowed me to know specifics that help me coach less experienced healers. Like when I saw 2 of our holy priests raid healing on Ignis and one putting out a lot more HPS more than the other. I looked at the stats and saw the lower HPS one was not keeping PoM up. A quick tip on that and his HPS jumped by 400-500 for the next three attempts, ending with us downing the boss while he finished near the top of the meters in HPS.
Ruzgob May 17th 2009 3:29PM
For those who use the damage/healing meter Recount, you can get an addon that estimates the amount of damage absorbed by shields.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recountguessedabsorbs.aspx
My 2 cents on the matter, healing meters are good to see who is slacking but generally as long as people aren't dying unnecessarily, healers are doing their jobs, and the exact placement of healers on the charts is pretty irrelevant.
ToyChristopher May 17th 2009 3:42PM
Cthulu I don't think your backtracking is going to make your orginal comment any less inflammatory.
As a holy paladin I could do a lot of things to top the meter, like never using sacred shield, overwriting the ret paladins judgement of light with my own, and placing beacon on the tank and sniping raid heals. All of those things would increase my hps and make me win the meters but none of those things are probably what I should be doing.
When healing becomes a meter race healers waste mana and start spamming anyone who takes damage instead of having faith in other healers to pick up their targets or waiting for a longer, more efficient heal or hot to do the healing. In fact it's kind of similiar to how it used to be for dps when they needed to watch threat or worry about mana.
Unlike dps though there is a finite amount of healing to do which goes down as the raid gets more geared and learns to avoid damage in the fights, so it makes no difference who is the top of the healing meter if the damage is being healed.
tamrisa May 17th 2009 3:47PM
I for one hate judging a healer simply on the basis of meters. I was actually removed from a guild due to my not topping the healing meters as a priest. GL was a disc priest that ran out of mana just to top the charts. His thinking was screw it and top the charts. I on the other hand judged fights based my heals on damage coming in vs. heals going out. Why would I simply try to top the charts? Looking back at WWS reports his over heal hovered in the 75% range where as mine stayed about 25%. And he didnt bother using PWS cause well in his words the hps didnt show that.
I have since stopped raiding as a priest and gone to the ranged dps side of life.I saw no point in beating a dead horse on why hps over all dont mater as a raid tool to judge your healing team. WWS can be a good teaching tool though if used correctly.
Stephen May 17th 2009 4:01PM
While I agree that healing meters are overused and VERY often misinterpreted, they have their place. When one healer is doing 50-60% of the healing done, while the others are in the teens, then there's a problem. Especially if the ones below that healer are above him in overheals.
Basically, don't use the meters unless there's a problem. Then go to the meters, as well as the combat log and spell usage monitors and take the whole thing as a large mass of data to analyze and find the problem. Meters are a single tool among many, nothing more.
Anelf May 17th 2009 4:36PM
Healing meters are a tool to show that something may need looking at closer. Its not the only thing you should use to work out what the problem is. If you're evaluating healers in your own guild, then its easy to make comparisons on healer performance over time -
If you have 4 healers to fill two slots, and the raid does significantly worse when one of those healers fills one of the slots (regardless of which other healer they're grouped with), then that healer needs looking at closely.
Similarly, if your raid does better when one particular healer is present (regardless of who the other healer is) then you probably have a good healer.
And if you want to drill down into why a particular healer is good or bad, then use the detail screen of your healing meter to look at the different spell ratios for two healers of the same spec where one is good and the other not-so-good.
Bacclor May 17th 2009 4:46PM
I find it ironic that you made this post almost exactly a day after my post, http://www.bacclor.com/blog/?p=1368, went up. In my audio post, I was having the exact same problem, only it was the healing leader, rather than the raid leader, that was giving me crap.
Blachand May 17th 2009 5:10PM
Meters a great tool, but only in the correct hands. To take a "meters are bad mmmkay" stance is not only immature; it's irresponsible to your raid. Knowing how to use the number data and being intuitive about interpreting the data is the key. For instance, you can look at the following charts;
1] HPS
2] OVERHEAL
Look and see if the high HPS'ers are also high on OVERHEAL. This will give you ineffective healing done. Address the ineffective healing, if not within the mechanics of the healer. (aka paladin healing a tank) Then combine what you know about the encounter. Did you hear a healer call OOM? Did one/multiple raiders die?
In essence what I'm saying is don't hate meters because they call people out. Use them as a tool to gain direction to how to improve individual healers AND the synergy between them.
syco May 17th 2009 6:02PM
Recount is a great tool for friendly DPS competition, and it can be used to determine the relative stregnth of two healers of the same class and spec, but passed that it's not great for healers. Holy looks good on a meter because we're raid healers, CoH and stuff like that.
Disc is amazing, and anyone who tells someone to switch from it because they are not rocking the meter doesn't understand them at all.
Maximize May 17th 2009 6:28PM
I think that over reliance on healing meters to the point of stupidity is certainly a bad thing. However, even with the miscellaneous things a healer does, its probably fair to compare players with the same class/spec. If one resto druid on raid healing is doing 2000 HPS and another is doing 3500, one of them is surely slacking.
The problem I see lies in that there is no clear way to tell if a disc priest is doing his or her job in the short term. I would love to have mitigated damage from shields show up on meters because I know how awesome is a good disc priest.
FoxOfWar May 17th 2009 8:02PM
As quite a few have said in various expressions:
If you just look blindly at the meters as raid/healing lead, you FAIL. You fail so hard that you really shouldn't be raid leading to begin with. There are just so much of variables that meters simply do not show.
If everyone is alive at the end of the boss fight, healers have all usually done equally good job. Sure, meters can point the direction, but do take the spec/class of the healer, the nature of the damage flying around in the encounter, the positioning of the raid, the healing assignments(which you really should be doing by Ulduar) et cetera in consideration.
As a healing lead, I do have Recount. I rarely, if ever, have to look at it to point out where healing failed if we wiped before enrage timer/gradual enrage or dps/tanks screwing up in an obvious way. Knowing the fights and knowing the healers you're leading tells so much more than any meter ever will.
As a side note related to nothing, got to love the Hodir encounter
Nimiel May 17th 2009 10:51PM
As a healing lead, I use recount heavily to judge the performance and styles of my healers. The key things I look at are:
What spells they are using
Who they spend their time healing. Are they following assignment?
Activity - How much time do they just twiddle fingers?
Deaths - the log of how people die
Healing taken - What proportion has been healed by each healer? Are other people carrying for them?
HPS is a garbage stat.
Overheal is a garbage stat unless they are going OOM.
Total healing done depends on the encounter, but alarms will go off if somebody is consistently healing for much less than other healers through different encounters.
Trynyti May 18th 2009 12:40AM
One more thing to note, especially about a overhealing. Having healers that are all running Grid, HealBot or some other healing utility that broadcasts where heals are going is extremely useful, and helps keep the extreme overhealing to a minimum.
I know as a holy priest I sometimes like to throw a gheal, as it's more mana effecient, but the long cast time sometimes leads to someone else throwing some smaller heals before my gheal is done casting. If I see that the heals are coming then I can cancel and cast a different spell. But there have been many occasions where I cast my gheal and someone else healed them as well (without a heal broadcasting tool), leading to an overheal.
Moral of the story: Get your healers using some tool that broadcasts where their heals are going so they can be more effective together!
Gothia May 18th 2009 6:00AM
It is better to overheal than underheal when taking raid damage. I personally do not use G-heal unless someone is taking extreme damage in that case I will throw my angel and follow with a G-heal, but other than that it is an unproductive raid heal compared to PoM, PoH, CoH, Flash, and improved renew. The subject of overhealing is invalid if you do not run out of mana. Contrary to a Disc's opinion healers do not overheal to boost numbers they do it to keep the tank or raid up and probably wouldn't be as stressed if the Disc priest would have done his primary job instead of throwing shields.
ascote May 18th 2009 1:49AM
I think you are all missing the point, the so called ubber discipline priest was being upstaged by a ret pally. Clearly it was not a case of respec, but a case of gkick. Meters are really good to spot failures like that, just like you should kick any dps doing less damage than the tank unless its a very gimnicky fight.
Angus May 18th 2009 2:23AM
When I am ret I can pump out some insane healing numbers on heavy AoE fights. Meanwhile my wife the Disc priest is tossing shields on the tanks and flash heals.
Her numbers are around 1-2K HPS max depending on encounter. Mine will be in the same neighborhood just from judging light and Divine Storm. Some fights I get some insane numbers because Divine Storm is based on damage and having 5 stacks on Thaddius makes that damage significant.
That fight I beat her on the meter when she was disc and I had around 1800 HPS. Same fight as Holy she pumped out around 4K. It isn't the healer, it is the fight.
Now if the Ret was doing better on Patchwerk, then you know there is an issue somewhere because a Disc priest will be working overtime in that fight as much as any healer.