Ralahast

I've been reading on this forum for over a year now, but this is my first post. I've gleaned a lot from the discussion that I've read and now have run into a road-block of my own that hopefully you all can give some insight into.

First let me give some background. I came from a medium progressed guild pre-BC, we had downed Fankriss and were working on Huhuran in November before attrition basically tore the guild apart, and we stopped raiding. The guild soon disbanded since we weren't raiding, and the officer group attempted to reform and re-build from the ground up. Most of the healers (barring myself, one holy priest and one priest rerolled paladin) either quit the game or found homes in the top dog guilds on the server, opting to raid for 3 more weeks rather than rebuild.

The guild is now currently progressing in Karazhan, we've run into a few snags but have cleared up to the Curator on 2 occasions. The problem is, we need the 3 healers that had previous raid experience in the raid to be able to accomplish this. All of our new healers that we have picked up since rebuilding simply don't know how to heal. I have tried to coach them as far as anticipating incoming damage and timing their heals correctly and not spamming when its not needed, but all this seems to be to no avail.

Is there a way to better prepare these healers for a raid environment? Will it just take them time for it to sink in that they need to be more conscious of their actions in these more advanced encounters? Or should I just tell them to re-roll damage classes because there's no hope for them? I appreciate all input anyone can give, and look forward to your responses.

 

Groglox

If you are really having that much trouble take them to Naxx and practice on patchwerk (assuming you have a decent amount of people). He does a lot of predictable heavy damage. Heroics can also work if that isn't an option.

 

• Playered

Team-play perhaps... if all your experienced raid healers are used to each other... they may fall into a technique of knowing that one of the others will look after <x> while they manage <z> etc... which is never a great environment with new people in small groups..

How do they perform in 5mans, heroics, PvP?

I must say our best healers generally tended to be the PvP ones we had join us, quick thinking, adaption etc are very useful traits in most places, and PvP is a great way to 'train it'.

Perhaps look into why things go wrong when they are there, what are they doing/not doing?
Running oom too fast? no good reflexes? always dieing? and also classes may help... ^^

 

◊ Bekah

Time and patience are my only guesses. I was pretty terrible for my first 3 months or so of raiding- the time and experience with the controls and coordination of effort can either come naturally (and it does to many) or it can take effort and learning (as it did for me). Regardless, unless they're willing to put in the time and effort to understand what you're asking of them and why that's different then what they're doing- it's like trying to teach them a foreign language. (aka some people have no interest in working hard to do what comes to others naturally)

If they lack the interest in learning how to heal on the level you need them to heal at- rerolling is one viable option for them. They'll probably never be steller dps either, but lackluster dps seems to be more forgiven.

 

Pyros

You could have some of them rerolling paladins, since you can usually manage with flahs of light spam on most fights as a paladin ^^.

More seriously tho, there's no magic formula to make people learn how to play their class. You can make them improve a bit, by making them watch videos, explaining basic concepts and such, but bad healers, or players for that matter, have little chance to improve in a relatively small amount of time. If they didn't improve after only a few instance runs at level cap, and that's only assuming they weren't playing a healing class before BC, they won't improve fast. There's also people who reach their own "limit" faster than others, and then they can't really improve anymore. I know, and I'm sure I'm not alone, people that just simply suck, or are barely average at their role, even tho they've been playing since release, or even before.
In a game like WoW, which has so many people playing, and which is a first mmorpg for many, you're bound to find individuals that simply can't fit in a raiding environement, even tho they have time, because they lack skills they should have learned in the past(not only from mmorpgs, but from games in general).

I've played every side of WoW, PvP, raiding, as a healer, a dps or a tank, I'd say the "hardest" is main tanking, not because it requires more skill but because you have more weight on your shoulders since a personal mistake means a total wipe everytime. Healing is not terribly hard, but it requires a different mindset than the rest of the classes, where you have to be proactive and aware of the "rythm" of the fight to perform efficiently, while most other classes are reactive, or just plain dumb(dps rotations 4TW ^^).

Solo training them in certain heroics could help them get better, or PvP, but PvP is harsher than raiding when healing imo, because you have to be aware of everything around to be able to use your non healing abilities between heals(AE fears, grounding totem etc). But you need to monitor what they're doing to point out mistakes as soon as they're made, which isn't always easy, and they might not like it if you bitch at them too much, which leads to mitigated results.

My best advice, while not very friendly, would be to replace them with new people if they're not willing to improve.

 

Malan

The early raid instances gave people a fairly stable environment to learn how to heal. Unless things went wrong the healers could just focus almost entirely on a few targets - the warriors (aoe trash packs aside). Then we sort of stepped up from there into BWL/ZG/AQ40 where more and more people were taking dmg at one time and you had to begin prioritizing targets and doing more healing with less mana over longer fights. Heroics might be a good way to replicate this since these healers will be the sole reason for success or failure if they can't heal through some of the massive dmg the pulls do. Take some patient tanks/DPS in with you.

Also pick up something like SW_Stats which will allow you to broadcast that healers every move to the group - with SW_Stats you can show who they healed, all their averages/crits for each ability used, mana efficiency, overheal, etc etc.

I also found when I was a shaman class leader and working with both shaman and other healing classes that needed help, that making them personally responsible for 2-3 people (and basically restricting their attention to those people) is a great starter. Announce to those 2-3 DPS/Tanks that the sucky healers are going to keep them alive. That always seemed to work for me - the rogues and warriors were a lot more unforgiving of their failures than I could be as the class leader.

 

Oneiros

Just reiterating what most people said above, you can't really teach someone to play well. I mean, it just makes sense. You either get it or you don't. Sure, some things will come through experience and everyone will (hopefully) become more skilled in time, but there's not really much you can do to teach someone what to do. You can try holding their hand and babysitting them to keep them alive on encounters but you can't really teach them to prioritize who needs to be healed, predict incoming damage, manage different ranks of spells, have quick reaction time, etc. Those are all things that you naturally are able/aren't able to do. When I used to play my druid, I had a couple other druids who would always ask me "What are some tips about healing as well as you do?" or "Why do you seem to be such a powerful healer compared to the rest of us?" and to be honest, I never really did anything special. I knew my class. I knew the mechanics of every fight inside and out. I knew how to manage my mana. I had very quick reaction times. I am a very intelligent and focused individual and it just all kind of came natural. In my experience, I've never really seen a mediocre player ever be anything more than a mediocre player and I've never really seen a bad player become semi decent, with really only one exception and that was a tank who upgraded his PC from a total piece of junk to a top of the line system. You can really apply any of this to every class. You can't really teach someone how to max out their damage capability, its honestly something so simple to do. You can't teach a healer how to heal, its something they either need to learn on their own or they aren't going to get it.

I believe in Harvey Dent.

 

Amera

I think AQ was the first big step for healers, it taught you to manage mana (Emps) and to actually move around and watching positioning while healing (Emps, c'thun, etc). I've generally noticed a trend since then that healers we recruiting who never experienced late AQ tend to lack these skills.

In general, though, I've always liked the axiom that DPS is a science, and healing is an art. By which I mean, DPS needs to have planned their gear very well, and figured out perfect damage cycles, and such. Of course healers plan gear too, but DPS gear is more important generally (partially because of the power of, say, mana potions), and on-the-spot decisionmaking for a healer can literally mean wipe or not wipe very often. Missing one shot rotation is typically less detrimental.

So healing generally takes time to learn, because it is often about feel more than numbers.

 

• Playered

Thats not really true, if you mentor them properly, give the basic tips and tricks your class can do, try and look into what they are doing wrong or not doing and mention it to them kindly with helpfull suggestions..

I believe once I really looked into my class indepth and understood every little thing I could (as a Rogue), my performance shot up and the others noticed... some started asking me advice on general things... talent specs.. gear... and eventually we (the Rogue class) ended up with a relationship where I felt like a 'father' figure to them, they may of just been lazy or perhaps not so good at researching/theory as me, but my goal was to help make my class the best it could be, and in the end we were an amazingly good 'team' within the guild. Whenever I found useful little tricks out on certain bosses, things that made my DPS higher than normal, I shared it with them and it helped everyone and the guild overall.

You need them to be willing to learn, they have to want to be good, and you need someone willing to be there and provide the knowledge and support they need.

However if they dont want to be good, get rid of them in all cases.

 

Ralahast

Thanks for the all the quick responses. Most of my healers, as far as I know, haven't really made any forays into heroic instances. I think I'll start pushing them to get in there and really feel the responsibility they have to prioritize their heals and be responsible for the success of the group. From my experience in heroics (done most except for blood furnace and mana tombs) they really represent raid healing just on a smaller less forgiving scale, maybe that will either shock them into learning how to do it right, or convince them that healing is not for them.

 

◊ Bekah

Eh, I'd argue it really is possible to teach, but often the teaching itself is the problem. Most players I've ever been in the position of needing to "teach" reacted fairly violently to the suggestion that they needed to do X,Y, or Z. Part of which I really think is/was related to teh fact that at the time they made it into guild many took the tag as confirmation of their greatness (I made it into the top raiding guild on server, I'm badass!) when it was more a confirmation of their potential. I remember several recruitment discussions in officer chat that came down to- He/She is simply not as good as our current people- but they've also never been at this level of play before either. They're showing notable improvement in their trial period and I think in a few weeks/months they'll be top game. Tag them and lets hope we're right. Sometimes we were and they turned out simply amazing- sometimes we weren't.

It's rarely the people who are open to suggestion who need to be taught though. The people who come to you and say "My overhealing % is higher than 'd like and I'm noticing my targets aren't staying alive as much as that person. What can I do to improve?" Those people are usually either the best or getting there because they are looking to better themselves.

It's the people who show up and, at the slightest amount of criticism- even if it's a glaring chasm of an issue- either deny there's a problem, or excuse it as not their fault. There's not much else to say unless you need to aggressively approach the problem, and once it turns from a friendly chat into a lecture or threats (fix it or your out of the raid/guild) it's usually more a case of minimizing collateral damage (when they gquit over you being mean or unfair and try to take their friends or start rumor mongering about how the officers are going to cut OTHER people... it's like leaving a viper in the cradle.) than fixing the problem.

If they're willing to be taught, they can be taught and most will learn well although it may take time. If they're teenagers rebelling against mommy telling them how to play or totally uninterested in mechanics- that's another problem. =/

Not every gamer was born with a silver NES controller in their hands and has been gaming since they were 5. Those of us late on the scene can be taught, but it's slower. =P

A year and a half ago I'd have gotten into a good guild because my husband is a strong player and I came as part of the package price. My major gaming experience was an obsession with console side scrollers (Mario3!)and pen and paper rpgs. I picked my gear because it looked pretty and I thought agility was pretty good for a mage- after all when I aoe'd and everything came to kill me I wanted to dodge!

Now I'm fairly sure I'm a strong enough player to stand on my own merit. =P It's easy to see the gems though- they're the ones who know they're godawful and want to improve.

edit: That was really freaky, but I thank whatever mod attempted to clean it up. I think my mouse was shorting out when I clicked post o.o

 

• Falk

Eh, WoW was my first MMORPG (barring Eastern-developed turds like Maple Story... yes, go ahead and laugh, why don't you) and when I rolled druid and got into an MC at lv58 I expected to DPS, because that's what all my lovely greens were cobbled together for statwise.

It was a running joke in officer chat (I found out much later) that I was absolutely the worst person to be put in a healer spot, and it was like punishment if you got put in my party. I'm the kind of guy, however, who likes to figure out things on my own... maybe that's due to my ego or something, but I guess you could say I'm one of those self-taught people and I got promoted to becoming an officer midway into AQ40.

To me, good healing is all about two things; Knowing the fight, in terms of what kind of damage to expect in the next 5 seconds or so, and knowing yourself, in terms of getting a second-nature feel of the class, (how much each different heal can put out, the casting time lengths, how long your mana can hold out, burst healing, clutch healing vs sustained healing capabilities, etc) and knowing your gear level.

Nothing is more valuable than a healer who knows what he's capable/not of vs a particular fight. That kind of knowledge plus good communication skills with the rest of the healers and/or the raid leader for feedback on the strategies involve will greatly reduce the learning curve of many fights.

There's nothing shittier than going in attempt after attempt where mistakes aren't pinpointed and fixed... and that tends to happen a lot more when people don't know their class and gear. This seems to apply to healers more than anyone.

The basics that need to be learnt by good healers (it surprises me how many aren't aware) are habits like cast-cancelling, understanding the five second rule, understanding the utility of each type of heal... PW:S vs flash vs greater vs renew, (back when PW:S saved Firemaw/Twin Emps/etc tanks) rather than just mindlessly spamming 1 button whenever someone's HP goes down below 50%

Edit: how did my post end up starting with "Eh" as well? zomg herd instinct!

 

Pater

Dumb, condescending thread title. How about teaching tanks to tank? Teaching dps to dps? Teaching players to play?


The only lesson here is that you can't push a rope. If you have people who want to be good healers, they'll learn.


The most I can say is that healing is the quintessential team effort. Playing DPS you pretty much only need to focus on what you're doing. As a healer, your actions (heals) are meaningless unless coordinated with all of the other healers. So you as GL can try to encourage communication among the healers at least.

 

• Falk

What would an appropriate title be then? "Best Practices: Healing basics for beginners"?

 

ildon

How is it a dumb and/or condescending thread title? People don't just magically understand how to tank/heal/dps well. If they're not learning it on their own, you have to try and help them improve. This may come as a shock, but there was a time you did not know how to read. It had to be taught to you.

 

DeusEx

This is very much true and has to be emphasized. There is a scientific and hard numbers side to healing and this is the part about mana management. Decisions regarding mana management are conscious ones and often can be planned in advance, but the actual healing process is an intuitive one, because at the moment of healing you don't have the time to think it through:

Someone is taking damage, do you slap on a renew, start casting a greater heal, or perhaps it is too critical for this and you're better off spamming flash heal or even casting a shield? So you have to be able to classify the kind of damage someone is taking (is this the result of a crit, a special ability, is there the possibility that it will reoccur in within the next seconds, if it is continous damage, how much more there is to expect in the next few seconds), weighting it against time constraints when healing other targets (switching from the tank, to the person which took damage), as well as weighting it against your mana pool and regeneration (flash heal is mana inefficient). All this in a split second.

A good healer with some knowledge about a certain encounter can judge a situation just by looking at healthbars, their rates of change, as well as on the debuffs. Typical among healers is that they've seen it coming. They just knew the tank is going to die in the next second (sometimes, during the same encounter a tank at 33% is just fine, at other times it is a death sentence). In a five man a healer just knows whether the the situation is fubar, because the amount of damage taken per second is just way to high, or if everything will be fine, even when things looks dicey at first.

This can only come from experience and a certain ability to process large amounts of data on a intuitive level.

Get your healers in critical situations as described above. Don't(!) be gentle and assign them to easy tasks. A bored healer is a slacking healer; most healers will confim this. If you don't push them to their timing and mana limits they will never improve, they will never devolop the ability to intuitively grasp a healing situation, because they just don't have to. Run heroics or fuck up pulls in normal instances. Surely people will die, because there are situations where it simply is impossible save everyone, but if your healers manage to heal out of a bad pull, you know that you have good material

I'm not an addict ... maybe that's a lie.

 

Dakous

The thread title, if it were presented to people to coach, would probably be seen as less than stellar. "Coaching tips for improving our healers?" if I may be so bold, would probably be a winner. Or even, to make it slightly more relevent and a subset problem, "improving our new healers?"

The fact is, most people who play WoW have only the vaguest of notions as to how the actual game mechanics work. There once was the equivelent of a blue post by someone from City of Heroes where I think it was the lead designer? said less then 1% of the people who play the game ever visit the forums. Most people start the game and play, and that's it. Think about that. How many informed, insightful people are on your given realm forum versus ... the other guys? What's the scale for representation of EJ or similar readers?

So there's a lot of room to convey information to people without being condescending.

Another point, an officer who hasn't raid led before was doing the Shade of Aran briefing. He was explaining how much damage each ability did, and outlining the entire thing, as if we were getting the entire raid to solve the fight. This does that much damage, that happens every so this, dah dah dah. The bulk of the information, to the bulk of people, goes in one ear, and out the other. It's too much, and means nothing. "When this happens, do that. When that happens, do this. You, do this. Every so this, this is going to happen. Let's go." When people have seen it in motion, while loot is going around, explaining, "Yeah, that hits for so and so," or "If you didn't do that for this, it'd have done this other thing," and then there's less information, and it's interesting.

Providing coaching in the abstract isn't going to get anywhere. You've got to have a good healer, who is a good coach, have a mentored healer as their /focus, and watch what they heal, and how. Then the tips are easy to provide. "Have you considered using renew for that? Uses way less mana, they won't need another heal for awhile." "Next time try this, I find it's great for that." Sometimes it may take a few other examples of the same thing for the rule to generalize ("Hey, he's not going to take damage for awhile, ALWAYS use renew" <- "Hey, that guy at Ramparts's off charge is just one hit."), but it shouldn't be pushing a boulder uphill.

And again, if you have someone who is AMG AGILITY ON CLOTH SWEET, approaching it as a coaching with suggestions, "Nice belt. Have you been to Crypts? There's a really nice upgrade that I want there too."

At all times positive, and never criticizing. "HAY Y AREN'T I INVINCIBL AMG WRU HEALS?".

Then there's something to be said for practice.

Edit: To add to DeusEx's post, when we started running ramparts at 60, we'd pull three groups at once. Partially noob mistake, partially not caring because we're totally sweet (if I may say so myself - and I'm quite sure it's beneath everyone, so who cares right). Our best healer had no problem with that. Another time, we have had a warrior reroll paladin, and when he had the best healer to fall back on, after seeing the three pulls coming, immediately DI'd the priest.

I'm not sure if I'd make a habit out of testing every single healer that specific way, but it's certainly a thought.

A random addition: Coaching should be thought of as a challenge to be met and exceeded, not the need to be coached as a failure.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

GamingManiac

I'm just glad I was a really bad healer when no one understood the game. I remember being 60 and joining an MC raid every now and then and being in the mindset that stam and int were king (I'd brag about my Helm of Narv). Eventually, I figured out why our MC set got changed from dmg/healing to healing (wtf this +healing is worthless).

The memories.

 

Magunsson

Didn't see the potential of this thread at first, but there is some good points, especially from Dakous. I agree with a lot of this, it is the finer implementation of the "you can't push a rope" comment, which is also true. I disagree with the fact that healing or DPS cannot be taught.

The issue here is that people play WoW for different reasons, even within a high end raid group. Some play for self-improvement and mastery of the challenge. Some just play for light entertainment, and don't want the feeling of being at school or work, even within a raid.

People are often more keen to learn when it happens in the context of a friendly relationship and not in front of a group. For example. we had some poor healing for a while, and some random posts in our forum about it did nothing to help. Strategies and talk in our healing channel didn't help either. Then our healing leader did some one on one coaching with individual healers... though he disgusised this well as freindly chat, and game-talk, with the importance on two-way dialog. Result = the learning process took place.

 

Cel

I'd go so far as to say this is a dumb, condescending post. You can teach a healing class to heal... many "healing" classes leveled as not exactly a healer, ie: shadow, feral, ret. They may have soloed their way to 70 and just don't know the difference between anticipating a heal and healing people when the green bar gets smaller. Passing on experiences helped me a lot when I started healing in BWL on my alt druid, even though I'm a rogue in general. I had never really played my druid as a healer, or any class for that matter, so every bit of information (such as "spam regrowth/rejuv/swiftmend, not HT during Vael" "down rank your HTs" etc etc) was very useful for me... not because I couldn't figure these things out, but because I hadn't figured it out at that point in playing the game.

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell

Alpha is recruiting... go go.

 

Introvert

I think the most important part to playing a healing class is to sort out a decent UI. I doubt I could heal in raids as quick nor efficient if it weren't for Grid and Clique, as well as a decent party frame mod which includes healing deficit.

The second most important part is to sort out the spells. I carry around a efficient heal (GH r1), a large heal (GH r7), quick burst heal (Flash Heal) and HoT (Renew). I also use Prayer of Mending from time to time as an aggro-free heal, and of course PW:S for oh-shit situations. Healers have to have knowledge of each spell in their repertoire and how much each does as to know which to use in specific fights, of course.

 

Spatula

Teaching tanks to tank would be a good topic too. Healing is pretty intuitive, at least (people are taking damage, you have spells that restore their health); the game never actually teaches people even the basics of tanking. It just gives them the toolbox and expects them to figure it out themselves.

The "skill" of healing is damage anticipation and mana management. Educating them about the 5 second rule and the importance of mana regen is a good first step. "Wouldn't it be great if you didn't run out of mana so much?" The anticipation aspect is something only experience can teach. Gear choice also factors into it - if you're a priest or resto druid, you want spirit. If you're a paladin, you want spell crit. Everyone wants mp5. Getting your healers to itemize correctly can be a struggle in itself (especially when they're presented with crap "upgrades," like 75% of the shaman tier 2 - no, the wolves with lightning shooting out of their eyes do not make you a better healer).

 

jilanea

My biggest tip is give a new healer a task your confident is doable and don't interfere with that task too much. That way if there task players die, they know for sure its there fault and are more likely to improve. Try not to make them feel terrible, its already prety stressful being a new healer in a new zone, with suboptimal interface and being fairly certain you are the reason you raid is sucking.

 

Mearis

I disagree with all the comments about art of healing, or innate talent or anything along those lines. If someone is a great player, they will perform fantastic at any role, regardless.

The most important things for healers are:
- A very good raid UI. Grid is fantastic for me, but lots of people hate it.
- Situational awareness. This is important for DPS too, but moreso for healers. DPS usually have to be aware of their enviroment and the boss, healers have to be aware of their enviroment, the boss, and other players health.
- Good teamplay. While most of the time intelligent players will sort out healing on their own, it is a very good idea while content is new to make it very clear who will be assigned to heal who.

Things that are very nice to have, but not needed:
- Fast reflexes
- Good sense of mana management

If you were trying to improve the quality of your healers, the concrete steps I'd take would be:
- Make a POST YOUR UI thread, where you showcase a very clean healing UI.
- Get some positive discussion about relative healer spec.
- Very strict healing assignements on a few raids, then relax them.

 

Mem

From my experience as a rogue there are several aspects that have to mastered:

1. when counseling your classmates do it in a way that people are not humiliated. Have a very strong grasp of the topic you are talking about (competence) but be aware that you are talking to fellow humans who might have feelings as well

2. the person you try to teach has to be in a mood to learn. If he is not willing to learn you first have to change his basic attitude.

3. try different approaches. People learn in many different ways. Some folks are more audio oriented and can learn by listening in vent/TS. Others might need to see examples of how to do certain actions. Another option is always you guild board, where you can give folks something to read and to think about it. Some folks are more practical minded whereas others prefer to theorize about the game.

4. Everybody can become a reasonable player in wow (this game isn't that difficult), provided, he is willing to learn and to improve (see 2.).

5. I have had some class mates whoose performance increased enourmously by giving them 2 or 3 hints. They were ready to learn and in fact their performance reached the average level within few weeks. I have seen others who thought they knew already everything and they failed in terms of performance.

6. Work in steps. Overloading newbees with information won't work. One step after another.

7. Teach and lead by example. This might only sometimes work in WoW but nevertheless. If you demand concentration from your fellow classmates in order to improve, try to be on your top game as well. Folks might watch you to learn after all

Conclusion: if you try to teach someone something about the game, first check whether you are indeed able to teach. If you go back to your days in school or university there were always those who were gifted to teach and those, who weren't. OtoH there are folks who are not willing to learn at all. If this is the case, don't waste your time imho. I realize that most of the points I made are pretty obvious, but in my experience quite a lot of folks in WoW do not follow all of them when trying to integrate new members of their class into the raid.