Raid Rx: Delivering and receiving healer feedback
by Matt Low 
Feb 4th 2011 at 4:00PM
You ever get called out for being bad? I'm sure you have at some point. It might have been in a pickup group within the dungeon finder. Maybe it was in an organized raid with random players. Or perhaps it was by members of your own guild? It could happen at any level. You could be a lowbie working your way through The Deadmines alongside a bunch of players leveling alts.
It really destroys your pride. You start reeking of self-doubt. People start whispering and talking about you when you're not around. "Why is that player so bad? He's terrible at this game. We need to find a replacement immediately."
Something along those lines sound familiar? I daresay every healer has experienced the receiving end of words like that before. I know the immediate reaction is to lash back right away. As much as we healers like to wish it were true, we are not always right, and there are times where the reason the group isn't "getting there" is because of us. I think one of the hardest aspects about the game to learn is swallowing your own pride and really taking stock of your own abilities from an objective standpoint.
I am much harder on myself than others. If I know I'm not doing enough of something, I have the tendency to dwell on it for a long time. This past week, attempts were made against Cho'gall on 25-man. He is the last boss in the Bastion of Twilight (and has many eyes). We were able to get through 95% of the encounter consistently.
In post discussion raids and forums, our healers came under scrutiny. To be specific, I was under the microscope. I was being dissected at every point in the fight. The main problem is that we could not keep players alive past the third wave of tentacles near the end of the fight. As Cho'gall's health steadily dropped past 8%, we just did not have enough gas left in the tank.
We examined the problem from both a macro perspective and a micro perspective.
The big picture
The first step was to look at the different cooldowns we had available and determine when was the best time to use them. With three druids (Tranquility), three priests (Divine Hymn), and holy paladins (Aura Mastery), we had the theoretical health and resistance cooldowns to float everyone in a safe range. We figured if we could keep players alive through four waves of tentacles, then the raid just might have enough to Cho'gall down the rest of the way.
The second step was to determine if there was enough mana to do it. The healers were definitely pushing past their mana limits at the end of the fight. We had to really dig down and find ways to extend our mana for another 20 seconds or so.
Being the critic
First, going off on a healer in a condescending manner doesn't help matters at all. You immediately put your healer on the defensive, and any credibility you had beforehand gets thrown out the window. Why would you believe anyone who belittles you? That's a form of resistance, and your healers will just tune you out.
So if you really want to help your healers out, you'd better keep a few things in mind.
Be armed with facts. Have a basic understanding of what you plan to address them with. Have parses of other, similar players with similar gear. Between parsing sites like World of Logs and the official WoW armory, it's easy to get the data you need.
Compare assignments. You can't expect someone who is tank healing to really keep up with raid healing. Tank healers are generally responsible for one to three players. Raid healers can cherry pick off of everyone else in the group, including the tanks. Classes and specs do matter as well. You can't really do much between a discipline priest and a holy priest just because the playstyles are different from each other.
Keep the context of the encounter in mind. If healing per second is low, it could be attributed to any number of reasons. Perhaps the player needs more tweaking with spell usage. Maybe he's not getting enough mana to really deliver the big throughput bombs that are needed. In this case, the Corruption debuff on Cho'gall stacked high to the point where all heals on affected players were reduced to 0. Yeah, this definitely had a big factor on healing throughput.
On the receiving end
For healers on the other side, getting that feedback, there are a few things to do as well.
Bite your tongue. This is the most important thing to do. You can choose to listen or not to listen. Sometimes the other
player might have a valid point of technique that you haven't considered yet. Other times, you're already doing something that they've suggested. (I've seen this happen multiple times.) Then there's the odd suggestion, when you're told to do something that's just ludicrous and you end up jeopardizing more players instead.
Get your own facts. If you're being confronted about the things you are or aren't doing, then you'd do well to have your side of the argument ready to go. Think about the fight and the different difficulties you had throughout it. Where were you struggling? Why were you struggling? Talk about it, and see if there are any other solutions that can help ease it up.
The reason why I enjoy some of these after-raid discussions is because something comes up that no one thinks of. There might be an obstacle restricting someone from doing his job effectively. For example, one of my healers brought up the point that players mind-controlled by Cho'gall were frequently hit by the shadow ability he does. The stuns used to get rid of the Mind Control would keep those players in place. We started exploring the option of using disorient abilities instead.
Ultimately, you and your group are here to take down bosses. No one is really out to get you (unless they actually are out to get you -- then you have a different problem). Anything that helps you get to that goal is a positive thing. Your officers and your guild want you to get better.
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.Filed under: Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
JT Feb 4th 2011 4:01PM
on Feb 4th 2011 ((X) ago)
As long as I don't have to solve for X...
Harvoc Feb 4th 2011 7:06PM
Pretty sure I'm going to get downrated for this but whatever:
x>9,000
Mojo Feb 4th 2011 4:03PM
"You ever get called out for being bad?"
No.
BB Crisp Feb 4th 2011 4:22PM
He's not saying that being called out for being bad means you're a bad player. As he points out, sometimes it's the misconceptions of other players that lead them to believe that you're at fault. You could do everything right and still get blamed when the group fails.
Have you ever been called out for being a bad healer when you weren't the problem? For me, yes, that's happened in pugs, normally moments before the vocal player leaves the group. Given the current state of pugs, I don't really get this anymore (I don't pug heroics), but it happened at least once in Wrath.
Necromann Feb 4th 2011 4:16PM
I only got yelled at while healing while in pugs. I haven't raided yet this expac, even healing heroics I don't get yelled at like wrath pugs. Part of it was that people like to assign me (disc) to raiding healing and yelling at me that my output was not as high as a holy priest. This happened a lot in ToC.
BB Crisp Feb 4th 2011 4:29PM
I always hated raiding as disc in Wrath specifically for that reason. I did very well in the meters as holy, but my numbers plummeted whenever I switched to disc. I didn't get crap from guildies because they knew better than to assume my low numbers were due to me being a bad healer. I think the only time I was blamed for bad healing as disc was also in ToC with a pug group. It bugged the hell out of me and I switched to holy after the wipe. I'm very glad that absorptions are now properly tracked.
Necromann Feb 4th 2011 5:59PM
The reasons that the throughput numbers were low is that the shields- PW and divine ageis wernt in recount's healing number. I remember the raid leader calling me out on it and then someone with an add-on that included absorbs and the raid leader shut up about it.
Rohannor Feb 4th 2011 4:18PM
Where'd you get that picture of my Mother-in-law?
Pam Feb 4th 2011 5:07PM
If I hear one more non-healer say "suck it up, healers", I'mma give in the towel. I'm tired of the automatic assumption that it's the healers fault.....that adage of "If the tank dies, it's the healers fault, if the healer dies, it's the tanks fault" is no longer true (yes, if the dps dies, it's still their fault).....tanks are taking huge damage, and not blowing CD's, then yelling at healers, then yes, it's your own fault, mr. tank.
Please note, tanks that have a healer alt know exactly what I'm talking about, and always use their CD's, watch healer mana...I've seen bear tanks hot themselves up with the healer hots before pulls.....
I'm looking strictly at the 'run/charge/not blow CD's ever/blame the healer' tanks.
Scott Clark Feb 5th 2011 2:57AM
This is clearly not what we're talking about, though. Any tank that tries to brute force their way through current content and then pass blame when it fails is clearly demonstrating a poor grasp of game mechanics and an inability to objectively analyze how they or anybody else is playing. Why do you care what that player has to say about your healing? Put them on your ignore list and get on with your day.
What is being discussed is the case where the healing team is coming up short. If the tanks are missing something they can do to keep themselves alive then they should be expecting the raid leaders to have a similar conversation with them.
As someone who spends equal time raiding as a Warrior tank and Disc Priest, I can absolutely attest that if I'm healing and my tank goes down, unless she did something obviously wrong, it's my fault. Every single time. Heck, even when it isn't my fault - it's my fault. I asked for that responsibility, I'm going to own it.
Peli Feb 7th 2011 11:30AM
There's nothing that makes you a better tank than running those same encounters on a healer. And there's nothing that makes you a better healer than running encounters on a tank.
It really is a huge benefit in this day and age of - *gasp* - difficult content to see what it's really like on the other side of the tracks.
Yomamma Feb 4th 2011 5:28PM
You mentioned Paladins, Priests and Druids....Even Wowinsider doesn't bring Resto Shamans to their raids anymore :( /cry
muiir Feb 4th 2011 5:35PM
lol I was thinking the same thing.
zubbiefish Feb 4th 2011 5:54PM
I knew it, he IS out to get resto shaman.
I guess they do have a different problem after all.
Kosigan Feb 4th 2011 5:58PM
*buries her resto shaman*
Yomamma Feb 4th 2011 6:15PM
Its a very depressing state Resto Shamans are in right now. I've gotten used to the new play style..and I like to think I do very well with the tools given to me. However, I think the big problem is that It's not that we aren't capable of healing a raid...it's just the other classes can do it so much better and more efficient than we can.
So in the meantime, I've jumped on the Pallywagon. Doublewide the Tauren Pally just dinged 30 last night :)
g2g591 Feb 4th 2011 7:18PM
Well, I have a story about a resto shaman my guild pugged in to fill a spot on a Baradin Hold run. After two wipes, we took a quick look at the shaman's spec.... For some obscure region he refused to take the talent that lets healers dispell magic, we offered to pay for his respec, but he just refused totally and left the group.
Myth Feb 4th 2011 7:10PM
We (Resto Shamans) weren't mentioned because we don't have a big, raid-saving cooldown, which is equally as sad. :(
Shinhan Feb 7th 2011 3:54AM
Oi, where's my Mana Tide?
Harvoc Feb 4th 2011 7:20PM
On my priest alt, the first time I got called for being a bad healer was in my 2nd Dire Maul North run. I had been so used to dpsing in the downtime between heals that I hadn't noticed the insane amounts of damage the tank was taking. Sadly, we wiped and the everyone left, with the mage being the only one to call me out on it, in a condescending tone however. I took it to heart though, and queued up for it again. The next few groups kept disbanding though because people didn't understand the fact that we were doing a tribute run as well as not understanding that the mobs hit really hard. Luckily, I was able to finish it that day, only killing one boss, the guard that paths around the door to the inner part. The tribute was horrible for the group though as it was all leather, and the two leather wearing members had already dropped when the tribute appeared.