Spiritual Guidance: Assessing yourself
by Dawn Moore 
Feb 14th 2010 at 5:00PM
Last week, I had a bad day. More specifically, I had a bad raid day. I logged in, prepared, researched, and with high hopes of downing 25-man Sindragosa that evening. My guild had plenty of attempts, and many members had the weekend to explore the fight on 10-man or at least watch a video; I was certain we'd succeed, even with the initial difficulty of the ice block gimmick. For whatever reason though, it didn't go as planned, and with our attempts on the line, a small debate would break out after every pull. Tension between guild members rose quick and appropriately, my own focus and abilities deteriorated. What started out as an occasional mistake on my part turned into frequent and reoccurring disasters. I did keep trying hard, even though I failed, but there was no amount of effort to change how awfully I was playing.
Despite everything, I understood everything that was happening as it exploded around me. I could source each mistake I made to some bad step, wrong guess, or mistakenly pressed button. Past the mistakes, as I looked over my output on each attempt I could see it was suffering tremendously as well. This is what we'll be talking about today; how do we assess ourselves as players, and as healers?
I've said it before, but let me say it again: there are many dimensions to a good player, and even more to a good healer. If you focus too much on one aspect, you risk forgetting about another. This is why HPS meters aren't a good, absolute form of assessment. Output is important, but so is appropriate response (doing the right thing at the right time), spacial awareness, and proper selection of talents and equipment. You can top meters all day but be useless at saving the tank in a bind. In contrast, you could never die to a single fire, flying slime ball, or spawned add, but only generate as much healing output as a level 79 elemental shaman healing a 5-man dungeon. The best players excel in each important dimension of good play.
The first and most important thing to assessing yourself is accepting that you will be wrong sometimes. You aren't the best player or priest in the world because you're not perfect; you can and will make all kinds of mistakes. In-game mistakes like the one I talked about in my story are one possibility, but so are poor gear or gem choices, or inappropriate spell priorities for certain fights or group compositions. Remember that there is always more than one way to do something as a priest, and your way might not always be the best way. World of Warcraft is a constantly changing game. We have to change with it so our style of play doesn't become outdated or obsolete. Take for example, the usage of Greater Heal during the Burning Crusade. This spell used to be a bread and butter spell; but if a priest went into a raid today and used Greater Heal the way she did two years ago, she'd find herself doing exorbitant amounts of overhealing and little to nothing for the raid. More recently, there is the newly popular Renew-spam style of holy raid healing. This method of raid healing wasn't as ideal for the unpredictable, spiky raid damage in Ulduar, but it's perfect for the type of damage in Icecrown Citadel. This is why we need to be self-aware, so that we can play to our strengths, especially if our class' strengths change overtime. What are your strengths as a priest? What about weaknesses? What about as a player? What standards of measurement are you using?
The first step off the alabaster pedestal is the hardest, but once you're down everything gets easier. The next step is finding good resources for yourself. I mentioned the words "standards of measurement" earlier. What I meant by that is what are you comparing yourself to, and how? What are your resources? A resource is anything you can go to for information about your class. Online resources are a great first step. Obviously, WoW.com is one of them. The official World of Warcraft website is another. There are also many other forums and blogs that can be found via any search engine and simple keywords like "warcraft," "priest," and "blog" will lead you to them. (Just be wary of fishy looking sites, and anything making mention of gold.) I recommend taking some time to review a little bit of content from each potential source you can find. If you come across something you like the style of, or consistently agree with, bookmark it and check back in once and a while. After that, look for something you disagree with and bookmark it as well; it's always good to review the writing and practices of an opposing ideology so you can be introduced to new ideas. Even if you never see eye to eye with that source, you'll know what kind of options exist.
Another source can come in the form of a friend or other player in game. This is a good way to get immediate or more specific answers to the questions or thoughts you have. When I first started raiding, I didn't have much to go on so I looked at what other priests were doing in my guild. I examined their gear, their talent trees, and where they stood in raids. (You'd be surprised how far the simple idea of "monkey see, monkey do" will get you in raiding.) After I started to get a hold of things, I found that I disagreed with some of my guildmates rather drastically, so I looked to priests in other guilds, then to other servers until I found a good network of players I respected and trusted. Some of those players have become good friends of mine as a result; other players I've never even talked to, I just check out their armory now and then to see what they're doing. If you want to do like me, be sure that when approaching a priest you don't know, that you're courteous and respectful of their time. Don't ask someone for help when they're in a raid or dungeon. Send them an in-game mail and suggest a time or way to talk that works for both of you. When you do get a chance to talk one-on-one, try not to be annoying: be thoughtful and intelligent with your words and questions. Try to minimize your personal complaints. If you have a habit of misspelling words or using bad grammar, say so upfront and apologize that it's a weakness of yours. If you tend to get off topic, prepare a list of questions ahead of time. Be sure to explain your situation to the person you're talking to, as it will give them a better context as to where you're coming from so they can answer your questions in a way that suits you. Obviously, if you copy your gemming from the priests in Blood Legion, it might not work for you if the encounters you face in your own raids last twice as long.
After you've found and reviewed your resources, you'll find you're already on a good step to becoming more aware. Just being exposed to more information will get you thinking about what you can do to become better. The next thing to get are tools to assess yourself. By tools, I mean AddOns or parsers that read and summarize your combat logs. Recount is one of the most popular in-game AddOns. For web-based logs, where you upload a .txt file copy of your combat log through a client, or browser, my favorite is World of Logs. Both methods do require extra game memory to run, so if your computer can't handle it, try to find someone in your raid who is willing to share log information with you later.
When you look at your logs, don't focus so much on your HPS or who you 'beat' on the meter. Instead look at what spells you cast, how many you cast, and who you cast them on. How much overhealing did you do? Think about how the encounter went. Did you have enough mana? Did you run out half way through or at the end? If you're doing a lot of overhealing, look at the spells you cast and consider if there are more efficient ones for damage you're seeing. If you're running out of mana, check to see if you used more mana intensive spells over more cost effective ones. You should be able to make many logical connections between the encounter as you remember it and your logs. If you want to improve yourself more, next compare your numbers to other healers in your raid, server, or broader (if you use World of Logs, you can easily compare yourself to all public logs availabe). Look to see how you might improve. Is a priest with the same spec as you casting a lot more and doing less overhealing than you? Look at what spells he cast vs. what you did. Think about it and see if what he is doing might be a good option for you or not. Consider if it's right for the role you're playing in your raid, your gear, and your abilities.
After the logs, there are a few more important questions to ask when you assess yourself as a healer: Did anyone die? Did they die because of a lack of healing? Was there anything you could have done to prevent it? These are questions that meters or resources don't always have the answers to. You have to assess this on your own, and it's often time the hardest questions to ask yourself. Be fair to yourself though; harsh self-criticism can be very stressful. Stay positive and set up goals for yourself to address any problems you find. Self-assessment is the means to becoming a great player, but it isn't an overnight process.
I know this article might strike some readers as very basic, but to others it might not be. There are many things about being a good player in World of Warcraft that just can't be taught, but it's my wish to force those unteachable ideas into submission. Research skills and networking skills are a surprisingly overlooked asset among WoW players. Perhaps because sometime doing all this research sometimes feels like work. However you feel about it, make sure that above all things you are having fun. If the way you have to play to be better is not enjoyable for you, consider another way of playing the game.
Now, on a completely unrelated subject: next week I would like to cover priest macros. If you have an excellent priest macro that you use, or an online source for them, please send me what you've got in an e-mail to dawn@wow.com so that I can review them for next week! Thank you!
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries! Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Shashank Feb 14th 2010 5:13PM
Unfortunately the only way to truly assess yourself, at least in a raid environment, is to understand your class inside and out while keeping in mind the game's, and to an equally important extent, that particular fight's mechanics.
When I heal, if someone dies it's usually truncation (i.e. there was little choice in the matter, and I had to let them go). I ignore HPS because, honestly, I can't compete with the druid who just spams HoTs on everyone and goes for a sandwhich and some TV. I, instead, look at overhealing done and insure that my heals are on people who need it when they need it.
During DPS I check my dispells, interrupts, -and- damage output. If I'm not the meat shield or the holy savoir of the raid then I need to self-heals if things are currently stressed.
During tanking I look at damage taken, what's kicking my butt, and talk with others to see what I can do to improve it. I also reevaluate harder fights, specifically those we wipe on, and see if there's a cooldown I should have remembered to blow at a different point or if I simply need more of one or another kind of mitigation.
Overall, this is an excellent article to remind us all to look at ourselves, not immediately throwing blame elsewhere, and see if we individually could bring more to the raid to assist in making it a success.. and not just topping those meters.
But shhhh.. don't admit any of this to your PUG raid or /kick will follow.
deluded spider Feb 14th 2010 5:17PM
As a Disc priest, I've never even looked at HPS. If people don't die (including me), I've succeeded. I'm harder on myself when I'm DPS than when I'm healing, because even though I'm much, much newer to healing, I feel that I'm a little better at it sometimes. There's only so much you can do DPS-wise if you're doing everything right, and the rest is just hoping for more gear to drop. But you can do crazy amazing things with your heals if you time everything right and don't run out of mana.
I'm hard on myself if I screw up, but I've been lucky so far. I run with nice people who don't point fingers when mistakes get made, and likewise, if someone else messes up, it's not a big deal and I don't place blame on them. As you said, no one's perfect, and this is a game, after all. The more we screw up, or the more attempts we make to kill something, the better it feels when we finally all get it right. :)
Avan Feb 14th 2010 6:50PM
I disagree that there is a limit to what you can do as DPS. You get better gear. you do more damage. You refine your rotation, you do more damage. The sky is the limit to how much damage you can do, until the boss is dead of course.
Healers? We get better gear, but everyone will still take the same amount of damage regardless. It is a very real limit to what we can do, in that regard. We can push ourselves harder and harder, gear up as much as we want, but we'll always be limited by how much damage the boss is doing. As everyone else gears up, they take less damage and reduce our limits further. We're always working on a deadline, and our output is always has a cap that is out of our hands.
Heilig Feb 14th 2010 10:06PM
The point he's making is that DPS gains are always incremental and your basic rotation never changes within any given fight, whereas healing presents an entirely different challenge.
A priest's widely varied toolbox allows for some truly miraculous feats when you line everything up right. Solo healing a ten man ICC that just lost its other two healers is not something a paladin or Druid is likely to be able to do, but Priests have the tools to pull it off, albeit not for very long. But PW:S, CoH, Prayer of healing, PoM, and Renew can really put out some incredible group healing in a pinch along with giving the tank some breathing room while you heal the raid. You don't ever see those kinds of accomplioshments as DPS.
Avan Feb 15th 2010 12:34AM
I'm not so sure about that, either. Gear upgrades are great for everyone for the same reason. But DPS rotations will change as a result of it. Before ToC25 gear, rogues had rupture in their rotation. Now they don't because it scales terribly.
I can get the idea behind pulling off some miraculous, raid-saving feat, but I have to disagree there, too. As a healer, our "moment to shine" is when the deadline is about to be met; someone (or many) is going to die. The perilous mission, should you choose to accept it? Bring them all back up to full. Raid saved, healers get huge praise for pulling it off. Hurray.
DPS, on the other hand, have the same moment. However, their moment to shine is usually when the healers didn't; there isn't enough DPS alive to kill the boss before the berserk timer. They've got to hit harder, they've got to hit faster, they've got to get this one in at the last second. When they do, thats their feat. Or maybe both tanks are dead and the DPS is falling one by one with the boss at 1% health, and they're on the last attempt (pre-nerf) for the fight. Or if you're one of the unlucky ones to have a healing spec possible, start offhealing when a healer drops.
zetathran Feb 14th 2010 5:22PM
Great article, I know for myself at least it's really easy to fall into a set pattern which may have some weaknesses, especially on new fights I haven't seen before. If you don't ask yourself those tough questions about your healing style and personal awareness, it's not very fair to just always blame the dumb never-move-out-of-fire dps :P
uncaringbear Feb 14th 2010 5:54PM
One of the traits of playing a healer is that our mistakes can, and often result in a team mate's death or a raid wipe. We're expected to survive through the same fight gimmicks as the DPS, all the while trying to avoid tunnel vision while keeping everyone alive.
That's the life of a healer, isn't it? I find myself far more critical and analytical of my healers' performance, compared to my DPS toons. And as this article has shown, assessing your effectiveness as a healers is far from straightforward. It's fine when no one dies, but those occasions are rare.
Redielin Feb 14th 2010 7:35PM
The first step is the hardest.
Not only do you have to say "How can I improve?" but you have to say "yes, I can improve".
No, meters aren't everything for healers. They can tell you a lot of useful information, and they are an effective comparison if you control for gear, class, and spec. In other words, if a Holy Priest with similar (or worse) gear is doing much better than you at the same job on the meters, you might want to take another look at your play.
You can't say "well, if people didn't die, I did my job" because you *can* still improve, which means when you run into the next (harder) encounter, people still won't die. Find logs or players you can compare to. The moment you stop trying to improve is the moment you start getting worse.
You can't say "well, Druids just are OP on the meters". You need to say "that druid is healing really great, is there any way I can come close or match him?" Or at least "well, last week I did this much, lets see if I can do more". You run into this a lot in Arenas. Its really easy to say "well, so and so class and comp is completely overpowered, therefore its not me that needs to improve my play, Blizzard just needs to buff/nerf". When you say that, you are in a logical fallacy. No matter what class/spec you play, there are players out there who are better than you. Do they have better gear? Perhaps they earned it. If you're so uber, why don't you have their gear? No, its not your comp, there's more than likely another team running your comp out there that is doing better than you are.
9 times out of 10, its not your comp, its not your class, your spec, or your gear (especially when we're talking healers) - remember how those guys downed Yogg while wearing blues? The moment you start looking for excuses for your poor performance, you are selling yourself short.
So, the very first thing you should do after every encounter, even if it was a kill, is say: "Great! Now, how can I improve?" When you can't come up with an answer, that's when there's a problem.
Clevins Feb 15th 2010 11:48AM
Everyone points to the guys who killed Yogg in blues, but keep in mind it was mostly 200 level blues enchanted etc and far more key - they wiped a TON. Like 20 times. They did it and that's very impressive, but they pretty much had to execute PERFECTLY. That's all fine if you want to do that, but a lot of us aren't out to stress ourselves about doing 1% more DPS - 4500 is OK, 4545 won't usually matter. Yes, it will on 1% wipes and cutting edge stuff... but we're not all doing that.
"So, the very first thing you should do after every encounter, even if it was a kill, is say: "Great! Now, how can I improve?" When you can't come up with an answer, that's when there's a problem."
Depends how serious you are. I take the game seriously in the sense that I want to do well and help the raid suceed so I gear up, grab badge stuff, epic gems, learn my class... but you know what? When we down a new boss we enjoy that fact, we don't immediately go "nice. Now what can we do better?" Oh, we'll look over the WOL logs and see if there's stuff that could have gone better the next day, esp if it's a sloppy kill or whatever, but dammit... it IS a game.
dissopia Feb 15th 2010 10:40AM
Just want to say that when Ulduar came out, many guilds wiped on Yogg. My guild got to him the first week, then spent 20 hours wiping on him. We would have been in full 213 gear. The fight required perfect execution back then as well and my guild only had a few good dps so the rest of them might as well have been in blues. Killing Yogg in blues certainly makes a point that skill>gear but that is the case for most progression guilds. Look at the guilds who killed Lich King last week - do you not think that required perfect execution? What about vodka clearing all the heroic nonattempt bosses that many people are going to be stuck on for weeks? Skill sets those players apart from everyone else.
Zu Feb 15th 2010 2:00AM
"Tension between guild members rose quick and appropriately, my own focus and abilities deteriorated."
Hun, you could always do better, we all could. But the situation as you described it, well, the rest of your raid bears a heavy share of the blame. Sniping, pointing fingers and general poor moral will bring people down faster than tough raid content any day. Nothing distracts people like watching a fight or blamefest unfold. Raid leaders, keep it constructive and put a cork in that baloney before it asplodes your evening.
ragnos Feb 15th 2010 9:33AM
maybe its my nature as a tank, or maybe its my nature as a blood tank[due to rep] but first and foremost I will never blame a healer for a wipe, with of course exceptions to some idiot healers that have tunnel vision and end up infront of marrowgar and then stand in his blue beam of lag..... yes im looking at you.... you idiot squishy priest...grrrrr
but i digress. tanks have it easy compared to healers, all we have to do is say 1.2.3 taunt.... while you are playing wack a mole.... and i dont know about you, but i have never won enough tickets from that game to win anything higher then a chineese finger trap. even when im cheating using the mallet from the game right next to me as well.
dps job to do damage and reduce their own damage by any means nessacary [including stopping their rotation or throttling back if threat is going to be an issue (you cant do any dps if the boss 1 shots you)]...
a tanks job to recieve damage coming from the boss and keep themselves alive by any means nessacary.
a healers job to make sure everyone survives to the best of their ability.
if someone dies then a.) someone stood in crap/wrong location/had a debuff that was not or could not be maintained/didnt interupt b.) they forgot to use/out of their safety cooldowns/pots c.) did not understand the fight. d.) heals were incoming however timing was off[possibly due to lag], E.) bad luck with RNG or F.) tunnel vision
now some fights...toc faction champs... the machanics are different... but personally if i die its due to something that happened about 3 mins before that while a minor mistake, ended up being a giant raid mistake. [dps dies early=boss enrage], healer forgetting to cont. healing tanks after gormok but b4 worms and 1 tank goes down and needs a b res, casting infront of ony's whelp cave on phase 3, forgetting to bite someone... the list goes on... its never a failure of 1 person, its a failure of a team effort and thats the way i have always viewed it... and the effort begins before the fight starts when your composing your raid.
glasstrader Feb 15th 2010 10:11AM
Very nicely expressed, Dawn; your first few columns have been terrific. As a general proposition, I couldn't agree more about finding resources -- chasing down rabbit trails until you come across that handful of key sites, articles, threads, and discussions that ring your bell and provide you with the information that helps you to manage your character better and play smarter. I've tried my hand at writing an article about just that, with focus on a level 80 raiding healing priest:
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?57429-At-the-Top-of-Your-Game
Thanks again and keep up the good work!