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Shinwei · 05/21/08, 4:40 AM

I completely agree with deadbeatdad, and I have been waiting a long time for someone to say something like this.

It seemed for 90% of this thread the way things were being handled were as follows:

NewGuy: "what's better, Item A or Item B?"
Veteran: "Well from my calculations Item B has more HEP than Item A so there you go."

This is just about the most useless answer you can possibly give someone. Healing is not about maximizing HEP and theorycrafting based on HEP values is largely a waste of time.

The only thing you can really theorycraft freely about is mana regeneration, and a few charts displaying "How long will it take you to burn through 10,000 mana?" one displaying constant CH5 spam at different MP5 values, another with constant CH4 spam at different MP5 values, and a few more with different haste values would be much, much more useful to any Resto Shaman than HEP values. These charts would actually be able to help Resto Shamans to select what gear to wear to which fight rather than plug in some HEP values into lootrank and go.

Also, despite the post being named "How to Heal like a Pro" it still has remarkably tiny amount of actual healing advice. To correct that I've put some of the strats that I employ while healing into writing. Here it is for your review:

Tank Healing

While assigning a Resto Shaman to tank-healing duty is generally a waste of potential (since we're such good raid healers), there are times when this is useful. The most important thing when healing the tank is to get a feel for what kind of damage said tank is taking. The idea is to match the DPS taken by the tank with a matching amount of HPS to counter it. E.g. if a tank is getting hit for 1000 points of damage every second, he should be healed for 1000 points of health per second, or 2500 points of health every 2.5 seconds (the standard cast time of our heals). Note that HPS given to the tank is often combined HPS since there is usually more than one healer healing the tank.

There are two methods a Shaman can use to heal the tank - one involves spamming Healing Wave and the other involves spamming Chain Heal. Both of them simply involve choosing the rank of either Healing Wave or Chain Heal that provides the amount of HPS closest to the amount of DPS on the tank that you want to counter, and spam it.

Healing Wave spam should be used in the following situations:

You are just starting to raid and you don't have a lot of gear, meaning your Chain Heal is still too weak and insufficient for the job.
You are the only healer assigned to that particular tank and your Chain Heal is not enough to counter his damage intake.
The tank is taking an extraordinary amount of burst damage and you need your biggest heal to keep him alive.

In all other situations it is usually better to spam Chain Heal. As you gear up with a lot of +heal, and especially your T6 set bonuses, the mana efficiency of Chain Heal quickly outperforms that of Healing Wave - even with Healing Way, even if Chain Heal does not jump to any additional targets. The advantages of Chain Heal spam are further increased if there are people standing near the tank who occasionally take damage as well, such as off-tanks eating saber lashes, or melee when fighting a "skinny" boss.

Sometimes there were be a lot of healers assigned to a tank because the raid isn't really taking any damage. In these situations the amount of healing is being given to the tank is much greater than the amount of damage he is taking. In these situations I like to spam Chain Heal rank 1 to clean up any stray damage to that tank and anyone who happens to be standing near him - since CH1 spam is easily sustainable with any amount of mana regen.

Raid Healing

This is what Resto Shamans are going to be assigned to for most of the encounters in the game. Raid-wide damage is very different from tank damage, and it is very important to recognize when the damage is going to happen, who is going to get hurt, and how much damage the various members in your raid are going to take. There are going to boss fights with periods of intense raid damage and periods of no raid damage at all. There are going to be times when the damage is spread out amongst a number of raid members and times when only one raid member is taking the brunt of it. There are fights in which the raid is clumped up for optimal chain-healing and fights in which the raid is so spread out you can't even jump Chain Heal at all. With all of these variables it can sometimes be difficult to make decisions on who to heal and what spell to use. To make this decision-making process easier, I have attempted to come up with a few simple principles you should follow when raid healing.

Principles of Raid Healing

Keeping people alive is our top priority. Topping people off is our second.
Four people at 1 health is better than three people at full health with 1 dead. Heal that guy who's about to die before throwing your fatty chain heal to top off those three guys who just ran out of the fire. Use Lesser Healing Wave if you must.
Worry about keeping people alive before worrying about your mana efficiency.
Don't refuse to cast Lesser Healing Wave because its' mana efficiency is horrible. If it's going to save someone, cast it. Don't cancel your Chain Heal 5 just because that guy who's missing 4k health just got flashed for 2k by a pally when there's still two guys standing right next to him who still need a heal.
Top people off.
If they're missing health, they need a heal. Heal them as early as you get a free moment after you save anyone who's really about to die. People at full health are much better prepared to survive when that damage does come, so make sure they're prepared - that's your job.
Stay calm, don't get stressed out.
Being assigned to raid-duty means that you are responsible for the life of every single person in the raid. There are times, though, that you will have no choice but to let someone die. Don't panic when this happens. Remember that no matter what buttons you press, you can only heal a maximum of three people at a time.
Always, always, always know how the raid is positioned. Know who you can cast Chain Heal on, and have it bounce, and know who you can't do that on. Play to your strengths. If everyone is missing a similar amount of health, and you know there isn't a huge fireball coming to finish anyone off, Chain Heal the people who are clumped up before you clean up the damage on the people who are spread out.
If you really believe that he's about to die, save him - then yell at your tank-healers later. Only do this if you really really think he's going to die though, because if those tank healers actually have it under control, then you just wasted some mana or perhaps even sacrificed some raid members' lives for nothing. Do not hesitate to use Nature's Swiftness to perform this task, and if it is on cooldown use Lesser Healing Wave.

If anyone has different styles of healing or principles of healing I'd love to hear them.

Also, from my description of raid healing vs. tank healing it follows that gearing strategy for the two roles is also different. Tanks are usually taking a somewhat predictable amount of damage, so in order to increase your effectiveness in healing tanks, adding more +healing to your gear trumps everything. However, while raid healing, you will need a better balance of gear because: A) you are being more wasteful with you mana, so you need more MP5, and B) you need to heal a lot of people instead of just one, and the only way to increase the amount of people you heal in a certain amount of time is with spell haste.

05/21/08, 4:40 AM	#1270 (permalink)
Shinwei Von Kaiser Eniwei Draenei Shaman <Eternal Reign> Lightbringer	I completely agree with deadbeatdad, and I have been waiting a long time for someone to say something like this. It seemed for 90% of this thread the way things were being handled were as follows: NewGuy: "what's better, Item A or Item B?" Veteran: "Well from my calculations Item B has more HEP than Item A so there you go." This is just about the most useless answer you can possibly give someone. Healing is not about maximizing HEP and theorycrafting based on HEP values is largely a waste of time. The only thing you can really theorycraft freely about is mana regeneration, and a few charts displaying "How long will it take you to burn through 10,000 mana?" one displaying constant CH5 spam at different MP5 values, another with constant CH4 spam at different MP5 values, and a few more with different haste values would be much, much more useful to any Resto Shaman than HEP values. These charts would actually be able to help Resto Shamans to select what gear to wear to which fight rather than plug in some HEP values into lootrank and go. Also, despite the post being named "How to Heal like a Pro" it still has remarkably tiny amount of actual healing advice. To correct that I've put some of the strats that I employ while healing into writing. Here it is for your review: Tank Healing While assigning a Resto Shaman to tank-healing duty is generally a waste of potential (since we're such good raid healers), there are times when this is useful. The most important thing when healing the tank is to get a feel for what kind of damage said tank is taking. The idea is to match the DPS taken by the tank with a matching amount of HPS to counter it. E.g. if a tank is getting hit for 1000 points of damage every second, he should be healed for 1000 points of health per second, or 2500 points of health every 2.5 seconds (the standard cast time of our heals). Note that HPS given to the tank is often combined HPS since there is usually more than one healer healing the tank. There are two methods a Shaman can use to heal the tank - one involves spamming Healing Wave and the other involves spamming Chain Heal. Both of them simply involve choosing the rank of either Healing Wave or Chain Heal that provides the amount of HPS closest to the amount of DPS on the tank that you want to counter, and spam it. Healing Wave spam should be used in the following situations: You are just starting to raid and you don't have a lot of gear, meaning your Chain Heal is still too weak and insufficient for the job. You are the only healer assigned to that particular tank and your Chain Heal is not enough to counter his damage intake. The tank is taking an extraordinary amount of burst damage and you need your biggest heal to keep him alive. In all other situations it is usually better to spam Chain Heal. As you gear up with a lot of +heal, and especially your T6 set bonuses, the mana efficiency of Chain Heal quickly outperforms that of Healing Wave - even with Healing Way, even if Chain Heal does not jump to any additional targets. The advantages of Chain Heal spam are further increased if there are people standing near the tank who occasionally take damage as well, such as off-tanks eating saber lashes, or melee when fighting a "skinny" boss. Sometimes there were be a lot of healers assigned to a tank because the raid isn't really taking any damage. In these situations the amount of healing is being given to the tank is much greater than the amount of damage he is taking. In these situations I like to spam Chain Heal rank 1 to clean up any stray damage to that tank and anyone who happens to be standing near him - since CH1 spam is easily sustainable with any amount of mana regen. Raid Healing This is what Resto Shamans are going to be assigned to for most of the encounters in the game. Raid-wide damage is very different from tank damage, and it is very important to recognize when the damage is going to happen, who is going to get hurt, and how much damage the various members in your raid are going to take. There are going to boss fights with periods of intense raid damage and periods of no raid damage at all. There are going to be times when the damage is spread out amongst a number of raid members and times when only one raid member is taking the brunt of it. There are fights in which the raid is clumped up for optimal chain-healing and fights in which the raid is so spread out you can't even jump Chain Heal at all. With all of these variables it can sometimes be difficult to make decisions on who to heal and what spell to use. To make this decision-making process easier, I have attempted to come up with a few simple principles you should follow when raid healing. Principles of Raid Healing Keeping people alive is our top priority. Topping people off is our second. Four people at 1 health is better than three people at full health with 1 dead. Heal that guy who's about to die before throwing your fatty chain heal to top off those three guys who just ran out of the fire. Use Lesser Healing Wave if you must. Worry about keeping people alive before worrying about your mana efficiency. Don't refuse to cast Lesser Healing Wave because its' mana efficiency is horrible. If it's going to save someone, cast it. Don't cancel your Chain Heal 5 just because that guy who's missing 4k health just got flashed for 2k by a pally when there's still two guys standing right next to him who still need a heal. Top people off. If they're missing health, they need a heal. Heal them as early as you get a free moment after you save anyone who's really about to die. People at full health are much better prepared to survive when that damage does come, so make sure they're prepared - that's your job. Stay calm, don't get stressed out. Being assigned to raid-duty means that you are responsible for the life of every single person in the raid. There are times, though, that you will have no choice but to let someone die. Don't panic when this happens. Remember that no matter what buttons you press, you can only heal a maximum of three people at a time. Always, always, always know how the raid is positioned. Know who you can cast Chain Heal on, and have it bounce, and know who you can't do that on. Play to your strengths. If everyone is missing a similar amount of health, and you know there isn't a huge fireball coming to finish anyone off, Chain Heal the people who are clumped up before you clean up the damage on the people who are spread out. If you really believe that he's about to die, save him - then yell at your tank-healers later. Only do this if you really really think he's going to die though, because if those tank healers actually have it under control, then you just wasted some mana or perhaps even sacrificed some raid members' lives for nothing. Do not hesitate to use Nature's Swiftness to perform this task, and if it is on cooldown use Lesser Healing Wave. If anyone has different styles of healing or principles of healing I'd love to hear them. Also, from my description of raid healing vs. tank healing it follows that gearing strategy for the two roles is also different. Tanks are usually taking a somewhat predictable amount of damage, so in order to increase your effectiveness in healing tanks, adding more +healing to your gear trumps everything. However, while raid healing, you will need a better balance of gear because: A) you are being more wasteful with you mana, so you need more MP5, and B) you need to heal a lot of people instead of just one, and the only way to increase the amount of people you heal in a certain amount of time is with spell haste.