Marieth

We also frown on posting any damage or healing meters in raidchannel, if people do it in ther class channels it doesn't matter.
As I agree with the fact, that it is more important, that tank and raid are kept alive during an encounter, sometimes it is important to analyse someones performance.
Best example is for new recruits.
But even then I don't think that recount or similar mods are sufficent enough to judge a person.
Thats what WWS is for. We do log every boss fight, to evalute perfomance of the whole raid. When we have new recruits, the class leaders can ask me to log the trash clears to.

I think a combination of thrash and boss analysis allows for a good judgement of the recruits perfomance.

"...gone missing."

 

Secor

I heal to keep people alive, not for some chart. Have not run swstats or anything similar for at least half a year.

 

Koceron

Well someone has to care, trying to improve only when something VERY obviously goes wrong, like MT death, is not the best approach =)

You see this doesn't say much about the usage of healmeters, because obviously if you a have an exceptional core healer team that trust each other and are better than average raiders that use their abilities/consumables cleverly, getting the job done in the highest tier instances, you won't need to gauge them. Unfortunately this is not the case for all, or even most of us.

Again, non-analytical approach. While not being the same thing, a DPS'er could've said I dps to kill the raid boss, not to top charts =)
Charts are still important. There can be talk about dropping one healer for a progress encounter upon analyzing the heal meter, trading it for a DPS'er.
You can analyze charts and say, "Hmm, x and y class perform better in this fight, so let's make sure we always have at least two of those classes the next time we do it."
You can analyze charts on a mobility fight and say, 'Hmm, that new recruit probably ran around too much, overfocusing on survival instead of standing and healing like he's supposed to do."
You can analyze charts and say, 'Hmm, healer A&B who were healing group X have healed significantly less than the other healers, so it might be a better idea to let just healer A do it."

Now I didn't see T6 content at all, but from what I can see in T5 content there is always room for improvement, and many bosses in SSC/TK allow or even need FFA healing, to prevent random deaths. Depending on execution, there *can* be many occasions in Al'ar, Solarian, Morogrim or Vashj especially P2 where almost every healer seriously needs to *pump*(as our RL likes to say =)) the healing almost regardless of assignment. And those healers that are pumping it through efficient, fast reacting-heals while chugging pots and avoiding OOM'ness will also show on healmeters, won't they.

Now several points:

*This all of course depends very much on the number of healers you take to a specific encounter, which many people overlooked. If you take 9 healers to vashj, then obviously healmeters won't do much else than pointing out a slacker, as everyone else should have about the same values. Or in general if you trivialize healing completely by trusting your DPS team and taking 9 to a fight that requires much less in reality, you can ignore healmeters for the most part. This all changes when you take 6 healers though, cutting your raw healing potential by %33. Then all 6 of those vashj healers have to seriously pump it through phase2, letting no one die, and in the end it will show who worked hardest, bar some specific assignments. I am quite certain there are many similar scenarios in T6 content.

*Long fights. Now again, a non-issue for exceptional healer core groups, but very long fight healmeters WILL favor the ones who are using their heals efficiently, timing their trinkets/tides/innervates/potions cleverly, again, bar some specific assignments.

*Trash. Points out the players who are carrying trash healing, while the others are eating chips/watching TV/reading forums. Now I do read forums during trash, or chat around, but I still heal my part.

I feel the urge to reiterate, the talk is not about exceptions, or strict MT healing assignments. Pointing out exceptions like rogue&tank healer on the priest in karathress is a kind of fallacy, diverting the discussion =)
He doesn't need to be gauged by any metrics at all if his assignments didn't come close to dying, of course.

To summarize, yes there are many exceptions, be it specific assignments, or organizing healing on a broader level like crit healing, as in continuously spamming lower ranks on MT to keep proc up, and whatnot. But there are also many cases where it's valuable to gauge the team.

 

Maikel

Healing Meters should only be used relative to the target(s) being healed. Meaning use SW stats to see the healing meters on the Main Tank/Off Tank. I feel if the healers assigned to Main Tank healers stagger their heals they will all end up being within a few percent of eachother, which will mean more mana in the long run.

I do remember an instance in an old guild where an officer lost his mind about how a shaman was lower than a shadow priest on Non-AoE trash pulls in Karazhan in terms of healing, and I just said it's not necessary for him to be healing and he knows that. Situations such as that tell me that Healing Meters are not as necessary to go witch hunting about unless you really feel someone is slacking off on Boss fights.

I am more interested in looking at the DPS and Damage Charts anyway.

 

• Mongoe

In general, yes, healing meters, like swstats, are evil. I'm also one of the people who have banned them from the healing channel during raids. All you can see at that level is raw effective healing which can be manipulated in too many ways to draw any real conclusions from it.

However, what I will use them for-web stats especially-is comparison of people in similiar roles. I think the greatest clouding factor in comparing healers via meters is assignment-since that absolutely dictates your effective output. Once you get passed comparing the Shaman who is chain healing the melee for Void Reaver to the Holy priest healing the Raid's sparkle ball damage and actually compare apples to apples-you can begin to make some meaningful conclusions (our shaman on that fight have topped 30% of all effective healing-its nuts). We have an app resto druid now and being able to compare his spell selection and output to one of our established druids from a previous raid (who had the same assignments) has been a huge help.

Maybe a better way to think about this is that meters in the sense of recount or swstats are fairly useless, but web stats, which I think of as a sepearate tool-is very, very useful. I realize they can do a lot of the same things, but web stats is always used post raid, to analyze-whereas I think of swstats as 'omg look at my big barz' kind of thing.

 

• Mongoe

I dug up the post I used to try and illustrate why healing meters, like ret pallys, are bad. (<3)


Last night I snapped at someone about healing meters. I wanted to explain in a little more detail why I don't think you can view healing meters the same way you can dps meters.

Quite frankly, meter friendly healing is HUGELY determined by assignment. Tank spamming with 3 other healers is a recipe for overheal. Being the lone raid healer for a group of melee taking regular AE damage is recipe for being a meter hero. Every time you decurse/remove poison, you lose a gcd that could have been a meter friendly heal.

However, is one job better than the other?

Is keeping the dps up more important than the tank?

If all of them live, did one do a better job?

Should we not be decursing?

hell no.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Here are two meters of my healing for the same encounter. In both fights I have 100% up time:


My healing almost doubles, accoring to the meter, from one fight to the next. Did I suddenly not suck? Did my gear change dramatically? Nope. I went from being on the Main Tank to being on the raid.


Now am I saying that meters are useless? No. They are great resources to compare people in similiar roles. To look at your mix of spells. To see who is getting AE'd and a lot of more subtle things. The thing that's going to make us more successful as healers is to focus on our jobs and not on doing things to improve on our meter standing. The heal you toss to a dps to get some free effective healing may be the missing heal that kills a tank because the other healers were silenced/graved/buffeted or otherwise borked.

 

Mokhtar

As everything else, but perhaps more blatantly than dpsmeter, healmeter is a tool. A tool only add as much intelligence as you put in there, point that out to people and crush the "omglol I'm first on epeenmeter" crowd...

 

Vaya

I play a resto druid, and until recently I was normally #1 on the heal meters, every fight, more or less regardless of the role I was on. Lately I've taken up the job of raid leading, and on any fight we don't have on complete farm I am normally coming in last out of all the healers. It gets to me a little bit as I enjoyed setting an example before (I was the healer lead since I joined the guild, really). I guess they matter, but I mostly look to see what spells people cast in what proportion, and compare that to what I expect from their role in that fight.

 

Llewelyn

I'm the same way. Every so often I'll ask somone to whisper me some of my data such as crit rate and stuff though. I could give two rips about healing meters (for the most part) as long as the tank(s) stay up.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

When you have all pro healers, the biggest thing healing meters really tell you is how effective your class is on a particular fight. Typically it's "wow that's a chain heal fight" or "lifebloom gg"

This seems like a bad assignment for me unless you have another resto druid there as well. Shamans are generally the best raid healers, and resto druids are great when multitasking between tanks and doing some raid healing inbetween.


Our paladins are generally lower on the effective healing, but I sure as shit want them healing the MT when they can pop out an 8k crit in under 2 seconds.

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

Ente1369

Disclaimer: I'm slightly hesitant to post in this thread as it would be from the perspective of a casual raiding guild with a changing roster and, accordingly, some challenges which might not reflect the average EJ user's profile. Focus shifts more towards the mob and encounter, away from the team performance, in a steady raiding team. But here goes...

True, but depending on meter software, the opposite is quite visible. Instead of focusing on the 'healing done' numbers, suggest to use (and spam) meter/log data relevant to troubleshoot healing issues. Recount for example has two really useful metrics for post-mortem analysis:

1. 'death' lists any heals or damage taken by a person in the x sec before his death = shows exactly which hots were going and who landed direct heals at the time, and whether the responsible healers were on the ball.

2. 'healing taken' shows who healed a specific person and to which degree = helps to verify alignment with healing assignments. Two healers assigned to the same tank should have a reasonably comparable output (or at least activity profile) given mana.

WWS is good, but not available until after the raid. Meters are immediate. And why not share the data in healer channels, if it helps everyone understand where to improve?

And now back to the pros...

 

Melador

Well it can be fun sometimes to have competitions on trash or point out something particularly crazy about your healing role in a given fight.

I know our other resto druid and I would compete for top effective healing in the easier Hyjal trash waves. And I've posted healing meters on Shade of Akama or Illidari Council before just to laugh at how overpowered lifebloom can be under the right circumstances. It's all in good fun though, no one ever gets upset over them.

The only time healing meters are really useful is when you have two people of the same class doing the same role at similar gear levels under pretty controlled fight circumstances. And really, how often is that the case? Even on trash different classes are going to show up completely differently. Multiple tanks taking steady damage? Druids should destroy everyone. Lots of AoE-style damage from mobs? Shaman should win. Medium, random, bursty damage? Paladins or Priests should probably be at the top.

If healing meters are causing drama, that to me says more about the people and their lack of understanding of what meters represent, and less about the meters themselves.

 

Liryn

This may be veering off topic a bit, but given that we all seem to agree that a simple healing meter is of limited use, I'd like to hear some more advice on how to analyze healing from a WWS report (particularly priests, from my own selfish perspective). I'm not quite sure how to use all that information to look for places where I or others could improve.

 

• Falk

A very simple way to put it:

Comparing healing done is almost always akin to trying to see which tank is the best by comparing how much damage they take on Karathress. It just doesn't work due to different job scopes.

You can't use that basis as a comparison to which tank is better - problems with gear or performance or whatever would be looked at on a case by case basis. Pretty much the same for healing, really.

 

Hearthly

QFT. If I want to top WWS, I'll use Flash of Light 100% of the time. With the way bosses hit in Hyjal and BT, Tanks aren't gonna live long with only FOL spamming so I heal with Holy Light Rank 4/7 and doesn't really matter to me if I get down to last on WWS reports with 60% overhealing as long as I do my job.

 

• Mongoe

A few things:
HPS Time: Get a baseline from looking at all the healers and see is this person sitting on thier hands a lot or are they proactively casting heals.
Restore Mana: Under buffs/debuffs - Are they using mana pots
Focus: Under the who heals whom tab - Are they following assignments, how well are they spreading it around
Logs: Look at deaths and see how long the tank/player went without heals
Damage In: On fights like Void Reaver or Alar the area damage spells can be clicked on and you can see how much damage each member of the raid took. Is the healer aware of whats going on around them.

For priest specific feedback? The only thing I can think of is look at other guild's WWS of the same fight and compare your priests to others. This isn't an exact science though since gear, style and assignment could make them look very, very different legitimately.

 

PSokar

Edit: just redundant

Who healed who: Was this person doing their job (assignment)?

Who healed "x" player "y" seconds before his death?

Graphs - Does anything stand out as unusual in the context of their assignment and the fight?

Spells used - Again fight/assignment specific. Was the tidalves tank spamming fol? If yes, big time problem. Were cooldowns used correct/at all?

# of cure spells used - who isn't using them?

sources of mana gains - who isn't potting (when they should be).

effective healing - consistently abnormal performance should raise questions. For example shaman "x" is always much higher than shaman "y", no matter what, why?

 

Coriolis

Honestly I think healing meters (or more accurately swstats or a similiar addon) are very useful to identify problems with healing - if used correctly. SWstats can tell you not just who healed for how much but:

- What skills did they use (i.e. did you just pickup a flash heal spamming priest)
- Who did they heal and for how much (Yay you're on top of the healing meter but you randomly healed the raid and let your assigned tank die - screaming is in order).
- Sort of the above in reverse, see who healed a certain tank for how much (i.e. that guy was kinda low on healing meters but guess what he was the primary guy that kept the tank up).
- Decurse count

All that info combined can help you diagnose your healing problems - the healing meter is just one part of it. WWS is of course better but more annoying to use for me.

Gruul and mag are to my mind both fights where winning the healing meter is especially worthless - neither is a healing intensive fight, but rather a tank might die to burst fight, so the most useful healers are the ones cast-cancelling big heals on the MT, and yet they are very likely to loose the healing meters fight to people who instead jump to heal random damage which is ultimately irrelevant. If your MT tends to die when there is raid-wide damage (which you know is NOT fatal, like mag 30%), you have to assign certain healers to the MT and force them to not heal anyone else and just pre-heal. If that means screaming at them because swstats shows them healing someone else so be it (for the record I've never had to go that far ).

Having said all that, when two people of the same class are healing the same target in the same fashion and one for some reason ends up with huge overheal and terrible effective healing then a talking to is in order. And at least for me fighting the healing meters game is frankly just fun . I really don't see the need for excessive posting however, maybe once every other night or something.

And lastly there is nothing to be proud of for winning the healing meters on morogrim as a shaman AOE healer - it's so obviously to be expected. If he's gotten himself killed so much by being a retard and healing after EQ immediately when the pally tank has no aggro you should tell him he's a freaking idiot and make him stop it. There's plenty of time when the pally has already casted 2 big heals and the mobs are getting in consec, and you can still win the healing meters easily if that's neccesary - without getting both yourself and everyone else killed by pulling aggro from the paladin .

 

Mooncrow

Back to OP, its pretty obvious you have somebody just looking to prove his worth to his new guild; "hey guys, you didn't make a mistake when you let me in". It sounds like he was rather obnoxious about it and put the backs up of some of your other members. It's a simple new recruit integration issue, it doesn't have anything to do with heal meters per se.

Personally, I would do a couple runs with him having assignments like hurtful tank healer on Gruul where his healing numbers are going to be terrible, and after you win be sure to tell him "good job". Once he feels like he doesn't have as much to prove, you're going to see the healing meter epeen crap go away.

 

Zev

healing meters on boss fights are really dependent on the type of fight and the healing assignment that you really cant tell anything from the meter. unless u have 2 of x class doing the same thing and one is outhealing the other by a fair amount like on vashj p2.

trash healing meter tho, i think can give you a pretty good indication who is on the ball and who's just afk half the time.

 

Pyxis

When you take the information in them in context I think the meters are great. For example we generally run with 2 resto druids and for the most part we are 1-2 on the overall effective healing meters. Both of us are intelligent enough to realize that we are ahead of other classes based on our assignments (tanks) and because of the mechanics of lifebloom not because of any inherent skills. The good part is that we compete with each other to try and find new ways to squeeze out a bit more healing on our targets. The competition is healthy and because we're not idiots we don't let it affect anything negatively. It just means on a fight like Gorefiend I'm more focused on throwing a bit of raid healing in while I'm keeping the tank in good shape.

We also use it to adjust our healing mix slightly fight to fight and to optimize our assignments a bit. In the end it's just information and it can be used for good or evil like any information.

 

Wibble

I think most people are saying the same thing--if you have a healing group with some issues, intelligently deciphering healing meters can help you figure out what problems you're having. If your healing group is extremely solid, by and large the meters are just random numbers. You fluctuate on the list depending on your assignment and your spell choice.

During Naxx, I used to be able to regularly top healing meters as a priest (Lost Anarchy had one of the best healing groups I've ever played with; we shared the numbers for fun). Shortly after we started raiding in TBC, our guild lost our remaining priest specced for spirit, and I went ahead and took that spec over. I was never above 4th place on the healing meter, which bothered me a little. I felt like I should be able to do more.

But the one time before I'd had to spec spirit that I topped healing meters, I ended up assigned to the melee on Void Reaver. I spent literally the whole fight running in a circle around the boss spamming the Circle of Healing button. Sure, I restored a bunch of health, but being able to get to the top of the chart by being a brainless idiot changed how I viewed the healing meters in general.

Now I'm with a new guild and they've been letting me stay COH. I trounce people on healing in a number of fights because of that spell, but at the end of the day what's important to me is that I excel in taking care of the people I'm assigned to watch. Proactive healing and fast reactions otherwise--shield absorbs and other timely spells do not always come through on the charts. But when someone takes a bunch of damage, has a second to start to panic, and then gets returned to full immediately because I started casting a long heal before that damage built up.. hearing that person switch from "OMG I NEED A H--" to "Nice heal, thanks!" is more valuable to me than a number or percentage. Having a raid that trusts you completely, no matter what kind of crazy damage they're taking, is pretty much the pinnacle of what being a healer is to me.

 

Kasi

How about information on the use of mana pots in raids? WWS keeps track of that I know. But if one healer uses 1-2 mana pots on every attempt and another uses none, is that an indicator of something? I find that for mana using classes, if they aren't using mana pots when they're up they're not pushing out enough output.

 

Harth

I use Recount during raids and analyze WWS after raids. I am usually the person handing out healing assignments. My main concern when looking at any data is whether or not that person is doing the task they've been assigned. As far as tanks/DPS/whoever looking at healing meters they can come talk to me about them. I can tell them what that person was assigned to doing and why there numbers look a certain way. Other healers have far more to worry about from me analyzing their numbers than anyone else in the guild. Either way every healer is measured by the success of the raid. And really it only matters what the Raid Leader or whoever is in charge of healing thinks of your performance.

I think this is key. Since TBC has come out especially I think more of myself as an incomming damage manager. I have so much damage coming in at certain times, how do I most efficiently handle the situation?

I chuckled when I read this. Again has to do with knowing damage patterns and just shows how excellent you are at playing your class when they get a heal before they can even ask for one. And for those who always call out for heals I usually inform them that if I'm not healing them before they ask, they are likely already dead.

 

Ribeye

Healing Meters don't tell you everything, but as a tool readily available immediately after every fight you would be a fool to not use it. If all you see is a list of healer epeen sizes then you are clearly missing the point. If two healers share approximately the same job, and survive for approximately the same time, then all things being equal they should have similiar healing numbers. If not you have to wonder if the healing job is truly a 2 man job, or if the healer with the lesser numbers is slacking in some way.

Often the case is simply that you don't need 2 healers for that job and one person is simply faster and thus recieving the better numbers. This instantly tells you that you can refocus healers to better manage the fight.

Confusion about the fight or task at hand can also be very evident through the numbers. If your favorite guild druid often puts up 250k raid healing on a certain fight with a certain task, but the guy replacing him that day only puts up 100k on the same task, you have to wonder if the new guy was clued in to his exact job. A win is a win of course, but if you wiped 3 times in a row then obviously this information is important!

In the end, healing meters are only as relevant as the context surrounding them. Show me someone else's healing meter and I just see numbers, but show me my guild's healing meter and I'll tell you a story.