^^ This.

I'm one who doesn't think there is such a thing as heal sniping as much as it's "pissy little brats who think the only good player is the one with the best numbers." Look. In a raid, the healers are a TEAM. If all of them ran around willy-nilly healing whoever the hell they wanted, people would die and internet dragons would go unkilled. The point of being part of a healing team, is, oh, I dunno, healing.

I dunno about the rest of you, but if I were in a guild where the healers are all about big numbers and nothing else, I'd likely find a new guild to call home. Cause I can tell you right now, there's something not right about a guild who "snipes" from each other.

I approve this message.

Discouraging heal sniping is the same thing as encouraging DPS to develop tunnel-vision and stand in the fire. Topping the meters =/= being the best player. You succeed and fail as A TEAM.

fireflyoftheearth: "Cause I can tell you right now, there's something not right about a guild who "snipes" from each other."

Tyler is encouraging guilds to weed out certain bad apples because there's something not right about a healer who "snipes" from others. You might want to revisit your post if you don't actually agree with him, because it sounds like you do.

Yes - heck, I'm not even sure what "heal sniping" is. Maybe I just run with a more relaxed group of raiders. Some one up-thread said that healers are team -- you betcha. If they aren't, your raid gets nowhere. Cataclysm has a lot of movement heavy fights, fights that split the healing teams up -- you have to back each other up or else.

Straz: "Discouraging heal sniping is the same thing as encouraging DPS to develop tunnel-vision and stand in the fire. Topping the meters =/= being the best player. You succeed and fail as A TEAM."

Straz, *encouraging* heal sniping (aka topping the meters) is the same thing as encouraging DPS to top the meters. Heal sniping =/= cross healing.

Regarding the blog posted above:

The vast majority of the examples she mentions aren't heal sniping. She should've stuck to examples that *were* and argued those.

Sniping is an issue during a mana-intensive encounter.

For example, if you see a large incoming heal from another healer but decide to cast Swiftmend or NS+HT because it's off CD, you cause the other healer (who made a conscious decision to use the large expensive spell) to waste GCD and/or mana. If there is an incoming damage in the next few seconds and the target needs to be healed asap then you absolutely need to do this, but if that is not the case then this is sniping.

I have been in a situation where people who are almost at 100% with HoTs already ticking on them were getting healed by other healers, and those healers ran out of mana later during the final AoE damage phase. If they let HoTs heal to 100%, instead of casting their own healing spell on top of it, they would've had extra mana to spare or even use Volcanic Potion rather than Concentration/Mana potion to buff healing when it is needed the most.

Cross-healing to help other healers out is fine and is actually a good practice as long as you don't cause other healers or yourself to waste mana when mana is tight, or neglect your healing assignment.

As for sniping, if you are intentionally cutting other healer's healing spell off in a progression encounter, then I think you really need to have a good reason for that. If your raid frame does not show incoming heals or other healer's HoTs, this may lead to unintentional sniping but this is easy to fix.

I heard there are people who snipe to top the meter. I haven't met too many of those myself, but if a guild is too meter-focused it will encourage such behavior. It really comes down to the raid leader, the healing lead and the rest of the healing team to foster an environment where healers are totally focused on beating an encounter and playing to the best of their abilities, as opposed to meter padding.

Good healers put out every last bit of USEFUL healing they can muster, IMO.

Take Alysrazor as an example. Assuming it's not a one-shot, as a Disc Priest, I can inflate my numbers enormously on that fight by building up a 50+k Divine Aegis on everyone before the pull. Constant PoH spam before the pull is boring, but I can do it.

If I don't do that, my Resto Druid buddy can pop Tranq during the big initial AoE to inflate HIS numbers. (Obviously he can Tranq even if I do build up shields, but the numbers won't look nearly as pretty.) Tranq won't be needed again until the Burnout phase, and the cooldown will be up by then, so there's no reason for him not to use it.

He cares about the meters, I don't, so he Tranqs and I twiddle my thumbs. Everyone's healed up to full regardless, and we're both still at full mana when the real damage goes out. The job's been done without over-extension of resources; does it really matter how we got there?

I could, however, make myself look better and make him look worse if I wanted. I think /that's/ what's called snipe healing, when the heals would have gone out in any case on non-threatening damage, and there's absolutely nothing extra to be gained except gratification of the ego.

Always pushing yourself on the meters can be a good thing to a certain extent. Beyond that, it's silly -- for instance, my Resto Druid buddy apparently had a /cancelaura macro for my shields back in T11. I'm sure it did up his numbers slightly when he used it, but did it in any way make him a better healer than when he refrained from using it?

To me, snipe healing is cross-healing that goes past that extent. I don't think it's particularly productive, but YMMV.