In your original post, I would separate administrative things like which chat channels and which potions from the methodology of healing. They are separate topics. It would also shorten the posts. While brevity may not be important right now, I'm sure you'll add information later. This could make the posts unwieldy if you accumulate several different types of information in the same posting.

A main difference between raid healing and raid DPS is that healing is competitive while DPS is not. I'm not talking about players' interpretation of damage meters after the fact. I mean the act of healing a raid tank is a competition with the other players healing the raid tank. Think about what happens if someone's Steady Shot lands right before your Fireball versus what happens if someone's Flash of Light lands right before your healing Touch. If you win, your heal lands and is mostly useful. If you lose, your heal misses and you lose all that mana you just spent, not to mention that your target gets nothing from it except a warm feeling that you care. What has to happen, oddly, is that players have to overcome the competitive mentality (like you're saying in reference to meters) and try to accomplish something cooperatively with the other players. Ideally, no one's mana would be wasted but there's no way to avoid some overheal.

I was a raiding druid for 2 years, and during that time I was always trying to get my overheal down through better timing and spell selection. Nonhealers (with nonhealer alts!) always contended that as long as no one died, overheal wasn't important but I don't believe that's true. One reason is just my personal aversion to using mana for no result (meaning I should have cast on someone else) and another is my belief that your healing performance should be future proof. You may not go OOM on this fight but you don't know what mana demands will be like later on.

Healing is 60% art and 40% science. You can understand every mechanic in the game and still only be an average healer. Understanding the strengths and weakness of each healing class is important, however even more important is understanding what your particular healers are excel at. For example, I know that I am excellent at raid healing (Kazzak, Void Reaver, etc) and solo healing targets (Priest tank on FLK, etc). I also know that I am weaker on fights that require mass healing on the MT from multiple healers. I would ask your healers what they think they are good at and work from there.

I also agree with having the healer lead doing all the bitching to the healers if possible. Whenever I hear DPS cry about healing I want to stab people. Try to be as specific as possible when talking about what went wrong with healing. I personally hate hearing "healing sucked" and thats it. Most of the time healers will know when and how they fucked up, so give it an attempt our two before giving them a tongue lashing.

Maybe going a little OT here but I really like where healing has headed in TBC. Fights are more dynamic, multiple people tanking damage. It gives me the feel that if I slack off people are gonna die. This is a double edged sword as your healers all have to be on the ball now.

I think really the only reason overheal is bad is if one of the following occur:

1) you run out of mana before the fight is over
2) you don't/won't have spare mana in event of an emergency (ie another healer dying)
3) other assigned targets are dying while you are overhealing someone else

Related to this, it's worth noting that not all deaths are the fault of healers. For example, the following wipe situation is not as rare as you might think (although hopefully not that common for you either).

1) Random DPS guy does something stupid to take damage like pull aggro
2) A couple healers try to keep him alive
3) The healers waste a ton of mana and/or the main tank gets low on heals
4) Tank dies from lack of heals

Now the ideal situation would be for one healer to help out the random DPS guy while he bandages himself and the other healer to stay on the tank. If you have 3 healers on the tank, the ideal number of healers to heal the unanticipated collateral damage in step 2 is probably 1. 0 is bad because he'll die, but 2 and 3 are worse because the tank dies instead, wiping the whole raid. It's challenging to coordinate the unexpected but necessary heals.

But the real fault occurs in step 1, when the DPS guy screws up, and he wasn't even the person who died first.

Agreed.

I don't give anybody a tongue lashing when we wipe due to healer error (which, fortunately, is rare). But I will if somebody takes it casually and doesn't try to learn from it.

In my experience leading raid healing all of that is just not neccessary Fondren.

Your job is to assign and organize, not teach your healers how to do thier job.

Generally what i'll do is assign roles (raid healing, tank, offtank, positions, etc etc etc) beforehand with some helpful reminders for the encounter (ie poison clense on Vashj) and let it go from there. If they dont know to use efficient heals, what heals to use, to stick to thier targets, then they dont belong in an end-game guild

One key thing is to remember who your healers are and what they like to do and what thier strengths and weaknesses are as a player and as a certain class

I just worry that with your setup you are going to drive compitent players nuts and be holding the unskilled players hands through content, which you simply cannot do as you progress

I remember when I led as a healer on Quigon I yelled at the warriors a lot.
Now as a warrior I yell at the healers a lot. Not really on topic, but kinda amusing.

This. Nothing pisses me off more than a tank screaming "WHERE THE FUCK WAS THE HEALING?!"

Having the big warning in the middle of your screen with the stupid sound "Tank xyz has died!" is more than enough as a insult - "You failed to heal the tank, congratulations". If someone begins to comment how much the healing sucks, that just makes it worse. Much worse.

Better to address the issue than wipe again in blissful ignorance right?
I mean yelling like a moron is one thing - but you should always find out why you wiped, cause tanks shouldn't ever just straight up die, unless their gear choice is terrible.

Well obviously, first thing after a wipe because of the tank died should be a checkup.

1) Did his healers crossheal?
2) Did he get crushed an obscene amount of times?
3) Does he need more healing? (How hard is the mob hitting?)


All of this should happen with some decency though, not mindless screaming and shouting - not to mention it should be done by people that are in "charge" of healing. I rather listen to the person assigning the healing than to the MT screaming he needs more healing - if you get what I mean.

You got me there - I've had very bad experience with tanks shouting for heals, it just sends shivers down my spine.

I don't mind people with half an idea about healing commenting about it, but that's rather the exception than the norm - usually the tank only sees two big legs and his combat log, often doesn't know half of whats going on with the healers. Not that thats an excuse, very rarely should there not be a steady stream of incoming heals to the tank.