Thursday, December 27, 2007

Heal Meters

Many people tend to be competitive about things. DPS meters are a good example of this, though they can cause some problems. But what about healing meters?

I have a love-hate relationship with healing meters. In Kara, I'm generally third out of three healers on it for amount healed. I run with two pallys or a pally and a priest generally. Most people would say "that makes sense."

No, no it doesn't.

I'm talking about healing meters where over-heal is factored in. We have very good healers in my guild, and they do their job. But I am a mitigation healer. They are reactive healers. My HoTs stop ticking when their target is health-capped. Reactive healing such as Flash of Light and Greater Heal will hit a target for their amount regardless of where the person's health is, and any extra is lost as "over heal."

Druids can overheal in four ways:
  1. The initial burst of Regrowth
  2. Swiftmend
  3. Healing Touch
  4. Lifebloom's bloom (self-only)

Of those four ways, the third is used least of all heals on a druid (save for perhaps Dreamstate spec). Regrowth is the least used HoT of the three, and Swiftmend is situational. And you shouldn't let Lifebloom bloom if you can help it, though Lifebloom's bloom only counts as your own personal heal when it blooms on yourself. A druid's heavy reliance on continuous stacks of Lifebloom and Rejuvenation means, more often than not, we don't overheal, or at least it isn't counted as overheal.

Instead, when using a heal meter, check to make sure the option that counts overheal is removed. Or do a heal per second chart. This should give a more accurate idea of what your healing actually is and how well you are doing. Don't forget to also post pure over-heal, as that should help you see if you need to be more careful when applying your skills with that potential.

As druids are generally employed as "off-healers" who keep HoTs on the tank(s) while spot-healing the raid, you should actually be healing for more, depending on your gear and your other healers.

Just be careful you don't get too competitive! Remember, first priorities are to work with your fellow healers to keep the raid alive. Competition comes second.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Heals the target for 273 over 7 sec. When Lifebloom completes its duration or is dispelled, the target instantly heals themself for 600. This effect can stack up to 3 times on the same target.

This explains why you don't get credit for that portion of the heal. Even though it's your spell, the final heal doesn't technically come from you.

Bell said...

Thank you! I suppose I should read the tooltips more thoroughly!

Anonymous said...

I just started reading your blog. I found it on wowinsider. I am a resto druid that is in SSC gear and i'm about to enter MH/BT in a guild I just joined.

I to watch the healing meters. I was lucky enough to be trained by a very good druid in my previous guild. I thought I was pretty good until I got into a guild with a very good healing group. It was very competitive. We all have 1800+ heal. Most 1900+. I am at 1930 now myself.

When the other druid and I are both healing he would constantly beat me. I could understand how the other healers might but we were both casting the same spells. How was he doing this?

Well we spoke several times in the guild forum about it and it turns out it comes to down to HOT uptime. I actually have more plus heal than he does. I used Recount and SW Stat numbers. All of our spells were about the same but he blew me away in life bloom. It all came down to keeping them going as much as possible.

There were a few other tricks. He told me to get sRaidFrames and a plus heal trinket. With sRaidFrames it shows you who is in range and it shows you who has aggro. When you see somebody with aggro you pop your plus heal trinket and load them up with life bloom. You keep rolling hots on tanks. Also it is very important to watch warlocks and shadow priests. They will lose health by their own doing. You can actually learn when they are going to do it and time a LB on them.

Another thing you can do is to actually talk one of them into putting a whisper into a macro with that spell so you have inside information about when they are going to drain their own life.

You need to watch the raid as well. Sometimes you can see a mob making a bline to a caster and load a rejuv so you can swiftmend it when they get hit.

Another thing you can do is hurt yourself. I like to jump in the water during lurker and keep LB on myself while I heal the tank. I am always number one on healing charts during lurker.

Make sure that everybody knows you are the MT healer. That will keep your healing numbers up as well.

Unknown said...

I can't help but feel that Toetar is missing the point somewhere along the line. Missing it by a really large amount too.

The point isn't to top the healing meter, and if I found that people were using 'tricks' to top the healing meter in the guild I am an officer in I'd be quite mad about it. I would probably tell those people, in no uncertain terms, to pack it in.

The point of the meter is to show where you actually are. We use it to guide people. When they see another person of the same class out-performing them we ask them to find out why, do their own research and come back with what they found. If they came back and said so-and-so is ahead of me because they cause themselves damage so they can heal it, well, we'd not value that person's contribution any more. They're wasting our time by being petty and childish.

I actually like the advice about getting the locks to whisper a healer when they are about to life tap though. I might get them to try that out on our next raid, it strikes me that they would benefit and the raid would benefit from someone knowing as soon as they press their button that they are doing so.

Anonymous said...

Ive been in kara 2 times total after lvling 70, with 1150 +healing, on first run i outhealed +1500 h. pala (other healer with me was drood) and on second run i outhealed +1900 healing pri and ~1700 pala. Healing done, not counting overhealing.
Im wonderins is that coz my skills, pri sucking or something else ?