Raid Rx: Don't be a hero
by Matt Low 
Jan 27th 2010 at 7:00PM
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.
Ah, the hero healer. It reminds me of me. Have you been in a situation where it always seems to be that one same healer which steals the spotlight raid after raid? Its as if raiding groups can't take down bosses without that one specific healer there. It gets progressively worse when that healer starts rubbing it in the faces of other healers whether directly or indirectly. Now don't get me wrong. A healer should be proud of what they are capable of doing.
But there are a few problems when it comes to being a hero.
Hold off on the meters
It gets really annoying if I have to endure a druid or paladin (or some other) healer consistently showing off how much healing they've done fight after fight. There's no reason to echo that stuff throughout the raid. Not unless there is a legitimate healing problem, at least.(Note: Personally, I don't hate meters or logs as I use them as a diagnostic tool to tweak and make any necessary changes.)
This is what will happen in the long run if this type of behavior continues unresolved. You get one guy who reminds everyone else how awesome he is, and guess what happens?Complacency: a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.
Dictionary.com
What your healers are thinking
The hero: I have to keep this performance up. If we don't, we're going to die. Look at these slackers! They've got nothing compared to me. If I don't find a way to sustain my output, we're all going to die. Look at that player? They're trying to match my healing output but they're using inefficient healing to do so. They're going to run out of juice! I have to start sniping heals now because they can't sustain it.The other healers: Sweet, I can sneak off and take a quick smoke break. Not like the raid's going to wipe or anything with the alpha healer in the room. He thinks hes all that, but I'm going to hammer out my strongest heals, efficiency be damned. Someone needs to keep his ego in check. Ah, why bother? We can obviously stop trying. He has us covered and we won't have to work as hard anyway.
Having a hero healer might work fine when your organization is progressing through farm content. What happens then when you hit progression content? Reality is going strike you like cold water on a cat and you'll be in for a rude awakening. Its nice for the rest of the healers to realize this early on. Its much better if that they don't devolve to that point in the first place.
Healing in a raid is a team effort. There's no other way around it. You cannot solo heal your way to victory in a 25 or a 10 player raid (unless you severely outgear the place and the other 9 players you work with are light on their feet at damage avoidance).
What this all boils down to ego. Yes, as a healer, you have a special job to do. Don't let it get to your head. Stay grounded. Share your success instead of taking all the credit.
Because one day, you're not going to be there. For whatever reason, maybe you're sick, or you're pregnant, or your house is on fire, you will have to miss a raid. Wouldn't you feel more at ease knowing that your raid can get through that raid night without you? It sure as heck makes me sleep easier at night knowing that I can take a night off and prep for finals without worrying about it.
Nothing sucks more than having a raid called because "X" isn't here.
How your leaders can resolve it
Reminders: Your healing lead or raid leader needs to send a strong reminder to the hero that they need to focus on their assignments. But make sure that their ability to heal the raid in a free for all fashion is an excellent skill to have and will come in handy in the event the raid attempt hits the crapper. There is nothing wrong with being clutch if the situation demands it. I've been in raids where I've died or other healers died, and the remaining healers were able to step it up and keep the rest of the raid alive long enough for a boss kill.Shuffle assignments: In my guild, we run three simultaneous 10 mans. To promote team work, the decision was made at the beginning of the raid cycle to shuffle rosters around on a week to week basis. Healers were paired up with someone new every time. Tank pairings would be different. DPS players would get matched up with others. We did our best to balance the groups.
All groups were able to down all of the bosses (Usually within varying time frames). All the groups were able to eventually knock out Festergut and Rotface.
A nice side effect of shuffling healers like this is that it really magnifies what players are individually capable of. For example, if a different group struggled every week with noticeable difficult and one of the common factors was a specific healer, it can be readily identified and action can be taken.
How other other healers can handle it
Tolerance: Yes, it isn't fun at all dealing with that sort of stuff. Nothing more irritating than a big headed ego. Ignore it and do your job. Relish in the fact that you did your job as asked and that you contributed on the boss kills and the attempts. Don't let them get you down. Stick to what you know and play to the best of your ability. I can tell you that raid leaders would prefer to have dependable and reliable healers as opposed to cowboy ones who want to do their own thing.Report it: If your leadership doesn't know about it, let them know right away whats going on through your head. You shouldn't have to deal with this crap and neither should the rest of your crew. It just might be that others feel the same but don't care enough about it to bring it up. Lack of communication has destroyed more guilds than pre-nerf Kael'thas.
One final note, the healers in the guild should be encouraged to play to the best of their ability. That doesn't mean that the toes of others have to be stepped on. If its plain as day that one healer is covering for others, find out why. If a healer is weak in one area, it needs to be identified and resolved with another player in their place. Sometimes it just boils down to using the sub-optimal healer for the job. I gave a movement heavy healing assignment to a paladin when in hindsight I should've done it myself.
You gotta do what is best for your guild.
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Need raid or guild healing advice? E-mail me at matticus@wow.com and you could see a future post addressing your question. Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check. Filed under: Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Saltypoison Jan 27th 2010 7:06PM
"Ah, the hero healer. It reminds me of me."
That's good sig material right there.
Timir Jan 27th 2010 8:08PM
What? This is bullshit.
You are insinuating that performing at peak ability is what -causes- people to be lazy? Why in your writing would you try to vilify those that strain to get us our purples every week? How about less call for the heroes to 'step down', and more for the others to step up their games and be heroes. Calling for those around them to 'report' X for struggling to... it's just.. Crazy. Seriously. Wow. I am really beginning to see what's wrong with the standard mentality of players.
ZMES_Matt Jan 27th 2010 8:48PM
@Timir
The biggest issue with being the "hero" healer is that for them to reach that status of "Oooh, look at how much healing he did!" That healer usually has to be stopping their focus on their target to heal someone elses', which causes overhealing to be done and potentially their own target to drop dead from lack of attention. It doesn't happen a lot, and that's why when they step on the other 2-5 healers toes they happen to look good even though they're just trying to inflate their e-penis.
The most important part to healing is to keep your own target(s) alive more than anything else, and to TRUST the other healers to do their own jobs. If another healer is struggling and you have the time and mana to help them then that's great, but if you're just doing it to inflate your numbers then you should step-off. If the other healer in question has a consistent problem needing help keeping their assignments alive, then they need to be replaced, not strain the healers around them.
Rowan Jan 27th 2010 10:17PM
@ Timir
I don't think the point was to imply that people who play really well should stop playing well. The point was that you're going to run into those players who play really well but, make a point of belittling players who may not. They adopt this ego-maniacal attitude where they think they are *the* best and the success of the entire raid rests solely on their ability to perform at their best. Nobody is this important - yes, you may be top DPS/heals every single night and outperforming other healers by a mile but, that doesn't mean the world is going to implode if you miss one night. The raid will find a competent player to fill their spot and everything will be well. The point is, many don't realize this.
If a person plays any class well, they shouldn't start pointing fingers about who sucks and begin to list the 10 reasons why. If you really think you can play better than anyone else while doing a handstand blindfolded with the other hand behind your back, you are sorely mistaken. We all have areas to improve upon and these "hero players", shouldn't be mocking others, they should be speaking to them before and after raids, offering some 'imho' advice about their classes and how they can maybe improve a little - so long as you do it in a respectable and helpful manner.
PS - I went off on a tangent but, points still stand.
jeffo Jan 28th 2010 6:39AM
@Timir,
Good points. I don't think it's just about players belittling others for their failures (real or imagined) however. We have a guy in our guild who used to play a druid as his main. Back then (Ulduar 25) he was constantly running out of mana, using his innervate 1/4 of the into the fight, begging/borrowing/stealing every innervate he could as the fight progressed. One night after a raid, he was wondering why he was sucking through mana. *I* knew why, but waited until he made the discovery on his own and then we talked it over a bit. He basically had no faith in the other healers. He believed that if he didn't heal everyone, they would die, because most of the healers weren't up to snuff (in his view). He wasn't flaunting meters, or telling everyone they sucked, but his lack of faith in the healing team impacted the raid for sure.
One of the hardest things to do as a healer is to let someone else take care of that rapidly-dropping green bar, but it's essential.
uncaringbear Jan 28th 2010 5:32PM
@jeffo
"One of the hardest things to do as a healer is to let someone else take care of that rapidly-dropping green bar, but it's essential."
That was probably the smartest bit of advice in this entire post. I still have problems following this myself. You have to trust your other healers to do their jobs and focus on their healing assignments. When you jump over to snipe in a heal you're risking your assigned targets' survivability and reducing your healing efficiency.
James Jan 27th 2010 7:12PM
And for the love of god don't complain about the disc priest being lower than the druid. This is what made me jack in my priest and swap it for the easy life of dps...
elvendude Jan 27th 2010 7:19PM
One word: Skada. =)
It's a meter addon that actually counts absorbs as healing.
Pain Maker Jan 27th 2010 7:32PM
Elvendude is right, Skada rules at displaying Effective Healing + Absorbtion combined. With this meter, I can beat any class.
Greech Jan 27th 2010 7:14PM
Ill stop posting healing meters right as soon as dps stops posting epeen boosting dps meters.
bennet Jan 27th 2010 7:20PM
Our MTs response to people who post dps meters is to post the damage taken numbers as an immediate follow up. Inevitably the kind of people who feel the need to crow about their dps are also the people who don't get out of avoidable damage, and it's a little deflating for the ol' epeen to have everyone else in the group laughing at you...
elvendude Jan 27th 2010 7:21PM
In the guild I run with, we very strongly frown on meter posting. We will do it in the relative privacy of officer chat as a diagnostic, and encourage everyone to run their own meters. But if someone posts a meter unasked, it usually receives a pretty chilly reception.
It's about the group, not your personal damage done.
Avan Jan 28th 2010 12:27AM
Which addon are you using that has the "perfect heals on the right people at the right time" meter?
Oh, there isn't one? Then you shouldn't be linking any meters. They make you look like a terribad kid. TBK, you should be called.
curtisrutland Jan 28th 2010 9:32AM
In the guild I run with, nobody ever posts DPS meters. There's absolutely no reason to. The raid leader has the parse up on WorldOfLogs within half an hour of the raid being done. And it's more accurate and more useful than a text spam of recount in /ra chat.
Side note, it boggles my mind when people post their DPS meters when they're doing poorly too. Last night in a random, the hunter in the group posted the DPS meter after each boss fight, and he was in fourth place, ahead of the healer, below the tank. I couldn't figure out why he would want to hilight his own poor performance.
jrizutko Jan 28th 2010 11:10AM
My standard response to inane meter posting is to post the recount logs for the same period for either interrupts or dispels.
Kelz Jan 27th 2010 7:15PM
I know I've had similar problems recently - We have a holy pally in our 10man team, and he's away atm. As a holy/disc priest, though primarily holy for the raid, I was asked to go disc and cover tank heals.
We downed the first wing of ICC fine, and then we get to Plagueworks. We clear trash, and then we're looking at Festergut.
"We'll give it a try," the raid leader says, "But I don't think we can do it without X."
We then go and one shot deathless kill it.
I felt awesome for having surpassed his expectations, but also not so good because he thought we couldn't do it.
Stone Jan 27th 2010 7:34PM
at the point of downing Festergut i would of been like "soo, who did we need again?"
Hivetyrant Jan 27th 2010 8:53PM
This is one of the few times you should be allowed to gloat, if only to make up for the fact that they effectively put you down (No healer likes to be treated like that)
relmatos Jan 27th 2010 7:20PM
Every guild should have a "do not link meters" policy.
If a new\insecure player does something super nice, go ahead and praise his good work. Just dont make it a constant thing.
I also advise players to leave any guild that promotes that kind of "rub it in their face" linking.
The game is supposed to be about having fun. not making others feel superior to you.
So glad I left the raiding guild world. Casuals have a lot more fun.
Wavemancali Jan 27th 2010 7:58PM
A guild that I ran with in the past had a great solution. They created a separate chat channel specifically for metering. If you don't want to see the meters, you won't because you won't join the channel. Worked very well for those who wanted to see it.