Raid Rx: Healing indecision
by Matt Low 
Jun 3rd 2010 at 3:00PM
Heal the raid.
How many times have you been instructed to do that by your raid leaders? What does that even entail doing? It seems like such a monstrous task to keep everyone alive. Especially for first time healers, it certainly is an overwhelming responsibility. I did write a similar piece several weeks ago that detailed what things to consider when healing. That was more of a micro-level analysis of my own personal decision-making when I was healing. One of the complaints was that it was still a little too advanced even for the entry level healer. I'll try to simplify it further by tackling a slightly related topic, which I call "healing paralysis."
What happens is the classic triage scenario. There are two (or more) players in the raid who are slowly dying. You have enough time (and maybe mana) to heal up one of them. Which do you pick and why? Assuming they have the same role, do you base your choice on class? Do you shoot for the one who you think is a slightly better player? The one who is closer to the boss than the other? I know that when I started out healing, I was overloaded with way too much stuff. You have to remember that this was during the period where 40 players comprised a raid.
When confronted with too many choices, individuals have a higher chance of doing nothing or taking longer to make a decision (also known as decision paralysis). A classic example is deciding on which flavor of ice cream to get based on the amount of flavors. For instance, a hypothetical consumer is more likely to grab ice cream if offered six flavors as opposed to 40 flavors (and one of those flavors had better be Oreo). People who are given the sample selection of 40 typically take a lot longer to decide on what flavors to go for because there are so many options and the brain is trying to process and decide which one to get. On the other hand, people exposed to just six flavors have a higher chance of actually making a purchase.
So how does this apply to healing exactly?
When a new player (or healer) graduates from healing in 5-player dungeons to 10- or 25-player dungeons, things get a little more complicated. There are more targets to choose from. Newer healers often feel as if though they are falling behind in their assignments. Once that new healer is done healing one person, there are another six players who need their attention. I get a little frazzled sometimes wondering who to heal next.
Not sure what I mean?
The closest scenario to that would be healing in Alterac Valley while being the only healer inside (or at least, the only healer where all the major action is). Everyone is scattered all across the zone and there is not a chance that all of them can be saved. Is raid healing anything like this? True, it does not have that level of intensity (although hard modes would be a different matter -- but I'm trying to focus on the newbie healers here).
Making the decision process easier
The best idea I can come up with to help is that when you're making healing decisions, have a set of guidelines (or a schema) to follow.
Weakest players take priority. Yeah, I know this goes without saying. You have health bars from your raid frames and you should be able to assess which players are the weakest. I personally like to have both health bars and the actual current health/maximum health displayed. I had a discussion about this with some of my healers the other day. To my surprise, they either showed percents or relied on the bars themselves without showing absolute health. However, 10% health for a tank is different than 10% health for a mage. A tank might be able to survive a tick or two from some raid-damaging aura, but not a softer target such as that mage.
Are there multiple players at low health? Then hit them all at the same time! As you gain more practice healing, you'll start to notice different patterns. You'll start to effortlessly switch between a single heal and an AoE heal. It gets to a point where you don't even think about it anymore and can simply react to it.
Still stuck on raid healing? Frozen and can't make a choice? Just heal someone. Anyone! It doesn't matter at this point, so long as you keep working that global cooldown and as long as you still have the mana to do it. Mana management isn't something to be worried about until the late stages of an encounter, anyway (unless your gear isn't giving you much help either). You're better off losing one player than losing two or more.
If you want to add an extra layer of depth and organization, you can speak with your other fellow raid healers and just tell them what you're doing. In my experience, I've found asking questions such "Who is healing who?" to be ineffective. Rarely anyone speaks up because no one wants to make that first move. What I've found to work is just straight up telling other players what you're doing. For example, you can say you'll cover the melee or that you'll cover groups 3 and 4. Only do this if you haven't been given any instructions that are more detailed than "heal the raid."
Yeah, being told to raid heal and expected to keep everyone alive is a mess. Ultimately, do the things that will give you the best chance of survival.
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? Email me at matticus@wow.com or follow me on Twitter 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: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
niko Jun 3rd 2010 3:13PM
Typically raid healing always changes from logic into intuition for me as the night goes on. At first, it's all new, since the grid assignments are fresh and it's not always easy to pick out from first glance who's going to be getting a lot of attention that night from me and the other raid heals.
However as the raid goes on, patterns emerge and if you're paying attention closely, you'll see who you're healing the most and tend to gravitate toward instinctively, even when dmg hasn't even hit yet.
I think this is an important part of raid healing: finding the patterns in what what otherwise be a giant mess of characters to worry about. IMO, what makes a great raid healer is being able to create order out of impossible chaos, and rotations out of a priority system.
Beli Jun 3rd 2010 3:14PM
One of the things i hate the most is people who say they'll heal group X. I take a few seconds at the beginning of each raid to organize player layout - the melee all get grouped together, and the ranged all get grouped together. That way, AOE heals can be more intelligently issued, instead of casting it on a ranged who happens to be low when it's really the melee who need it. After doing that... I have no idea who's in what group. And beyond that, a lot or raid leaders don't keep groups organized very well.
Instead, assign yourself to healing the melee or the ranged, as that'll let your AOE's doe the most good. Whisper an experienced healer in the raid and ask them about the upcoming fight - is there constant AOE damage that needs to be healed? are there large, predictable spikes in damage? Does the damage shift from one part of the raid to another depending on the phase of the fight? Those are the things a healer needs to know to prevent indecision. Festergut is a great example of how healing patterns need to change through a fight, and how just "healing group X" won't work to the raids benefit.
I-man Jun 3rd 2010 4:14PM
"I'll heal group X". Sounds like you run with lazy, prayer-of-healing-spamming holy priests ;)
theRaptor Jun 3rd 2010 11:33PM
No, I-man that is how you heal efficiently with minimum overheal. If you don't assign groups it is just a snipe fest. Which if you aren't horribly out gearing the content can mean a wipe.
And in cata infinite healer mana is going away so assigned groups is how it is going to work.
kozom Jun 3rd 2010 3:16PM
Okay, who do i heal first? The DPS standing in the fire or the other DPS standing in the fire, well who has a higher damage per sec- Oh, they're both dead.
tyler Jun 3rd 2010 3:24PM
Neither, GTFO of the fire!
feniks9174 Jun 3rd 2010 3:35PM
@ Tyler - . . . yup. My thoughts exactly. If a fire bomb/void zone spawns at your feet, you get a Riptide. If you continue to take damage from it, you get a LHW . . . maybe 2 under the assumption that you may have hit a lag spike or some sort of RNG put you directly into another fire bomb/void zone. If you're -still- taking damage from it, you're just standing in fire and you get to die.
Dave Jun 3rd 2010 4:20PM
You two clowns are quick.
He was joking.
Xaklo Jun 3rd 2010 5:52PM
Someone needs to make an addon which incorporates dps in a healing grid. Like as dps on certain players goes up throughout the fight, their raid frames intensify in color, making it easier to distinguish the priority targets from the fodder.
Kemikalkadet Jun 4th 2010 9:11AM
@Xaklo
I'd sooner heal the player that's doing a steady 6k DPS and knows how to move out of the fire than the DPS that does 8k and blows himself up because he refuses to move out of the bad stuff.
tyler Jun 3rd 2010 3:19PM
This came at a perfect time, as my priest is nearing 70 and I am considering putting together some BC raids (which I totally skipped on my main, who was a late-comer to WoTLK) Thanks a bunch!
feniks9174 Jun 3rd 2010 3:26PM
Another point, and one that should go without saying but is often forgotten in the midst of a fight with heavy raid damage (ie Toravon, BQ, Sindragosa) . . . DONT FORGET TO HEAL EACH OTHER.
I often find this to be the biggest problem in PuG's where you dont have an established synergy with the rest of the heal team, less experienced healers (or just plain bad ones) tend to get tunnel vision on healing the melee or the ranged and stop looking at the heal group at the bottom row. I don't care how much DPS the rogue is doing, if the Tank healer goes down, you're all going down.
Aceman67 Jun 3rd 2010 3:59PM
"if the Tank healer goes down, you're all going down. "
Amen.
Urizen Jun 3rd 2010 4:10PM
In addition to this please don't forget to heal yourself. As a priest Desperate Prayer is an amazing talent for this and having key bound is an essential thing that has saved my life on numerous occasions as well as binding heal that is often over looked. I personally tend to get tunnel vision every now and then and just forget to heal the groups that are at the corners of my raid frames or the healer group itself which usually is group 5 for me. Throwing a prayer of healing on the entire group after three serendipity stacks can prove the difference between life and death.
Another important aspect is knowing when to switch to healing the tank when the tank healer is incapable of healing (such as the sindegrosa fight when the tank healer is frozen). Calling out when to switch or keeping an eye on when the tank healer is incapacitated is key to many fights.
Cheb Jun 3rd 2010 5:20PM
Agree. I used to raid with a group of friends, and I can't recall how many times one of the healers would go down because they wouldn't heal themselves or each other. I used to sort of make an experiment out of it - how long would it take the raid healers to heal themselves? Short answer, never. So then I found myself being the tank/healer healer on their runs. You'd think it would be simple - raid healers need to also take care of the healers, but people try their darnedest to prove you wrong.
Trynyti Jun 4th 2010 8:09AM
As a priest, whether I'm in Holy or Disc spec, I never, ever, ever (ok, maybe a renew on really light damage) cast a heal on myself. Why? If I need a heal, so does someone else, so I cast binding heal and we're both taken care of. It's an oft overlooked spell, but in a single spell cast I take care of us both.
katyanna Jun 4th 2010 6:54PM
My fellow healer in my old guild was a Pally Healer, he and I had great chemistry, if I went down he immediately picked up decursing or whatever it was that I was doing, no questions asked. Given the choice to heal him or the tank, I heal him, because I know as long as he is alive, so is the tank.
danarchy Jun 3rd 2010 4:05PM
I heal as a resto shaman. The most effective heal I have is chain heal. Glyphed it heals 4 players for a decent amount, the real problem I run into is when I lose track of who is ranged, who is melee, and who is an idiot. One of the very basic rules you should learn first is where to stand and how to stand. On fights where you need to be a certain distance from each other this means using something like dbm to keep a minimum distance from other players, this does NOT mean trying to find every wall, corner, and staircase to hide behind. Smart dps keeps the distance but doesnt go overboard, they stand close enough still to be effected by an aoe heal going off on the guys next to them.
One of my biggest gripes has always been the "Rambo Ranged DPS". The guy standing at max range from both the boss and the other players. These guys force me to move which in turn guts my HPS down to ah crap we wiped. These are usually also the guys that stand in pudding and type in all caps "Whuy i didnt get healed???! healerz suck!"
Prioritizing my heals goes tanks--->healers--->off tank--->good dps---->bad dps--->vanity pets--->vargoth--->pudding boy.
Mygirlsguns Jun 4th 2010 9:51AM
Wow i go vanity pets before bad dps or dum tank in randoms.
nekorion Jun 3rd 2010 4:21PM
in wrath ABC is the rule
always be casting ;o