Once read a mage GM post this on the EU priest forums but he believed that less healers actually made raiding smoother because less people assumed that they'd be covered and kept their concentration levels high, esp. during trash as they had more to do. He also suggested talking to them in party chat for the same reasons...

Wouldn't doubt this. There is also the general tendency to assume if you can't beat something, you need more healers, as ernoeous as that assumption often is. So I've seen raid groups stacked with healers who stand around bc there is no one to heal, which teaches bad habits.

In general, I'd say PvP healing and 5-man healing are decent tests of a healer's general aptitude. Try pulling a bunch of packs in Strath at once and see how they handle agro/prioritizing, etc.

I've noticed a few types of weird quirks a lot of healers tend to have and try to identify if a person has any:

1) The Helper - the person that just wants to keep everyone alive. Usually good at healing a single target, or maybe multiple targets, but tends to forget about everything else. Tends to have agro problems from over-healing, and is also prone to "tunnel-vision" where the world may be exploding around them, ticking down their health bar, but they don't notice bc they are staring intently at their whack-a-mole health bars.
2) The Slow Starter- This person may be a very aware, awesome healer, but they never pay attention til 10 seconds after the pull. The tank charges in, gets agro...and might die before the first heal lands bc this guy was slow. Once the fight is going, they tend to be good. I notice this as a big problem with many paladins.
3) The Blamer - Never takes responsibility for anything. The warrior didn't eat a pot, the burst was too high, they were lagging, x person pulled agro, whatever the excuse, it isn't the blamer's fault, and they get touchy when people try to hold them accountable.
4) The Whiner - Clearly this person hates healing but rolled the class to get in a group/guild. They don't find it rewarding, they don't like the responsibility, and so on. They may actually be very good at the class, but they probably won't last.

Healing meters are pretty worthless, except on a few very straightforward boss fights.

In raid trash and on farm content they'll favour people who spam their quick heals without regard for mana efficiency, while people using Heal or Holy Light and all your druids will do badly because they'll constantly have their heals sniped. It's very easy to top the healing meters by using EM and mashing Flash Heal.

I agree that the best measure comes in 5-man groups, or else in boss fights with lots going on, where you assign individual healers to individual groups.

But even then, the best healer can't always keep people alive. If the Rogue in my group gets aggro on Onyxia and doesn't lose it quick, there's nothing I can do to keep him alive and I'm not going to waste good mana trying. Mindlessly blaming the healers when ever someone dies is a large part of the reason why so many healers burn out and switch over to a DPS class, where you're just one of a big horde of players and rarely bear much individual responsibility for anything.

Healing is the very most team-oriented role in the game. You've got ~15 people making healing decisions every few seconds. It can either be a thing of beauty if it's coordinated or a disaster. But you can't just expect it to go well if you haven't communicated a plan that makes sense.

If you're having problems with healing/people dying, the most likely answer is that you have no leaders communicating to the healers who or what they should heal. You can't just expect healers to figure it out - there's a huge collective action problem. Healers come up through L1-60 heaing instances and believing they're great healers with great judgment. Any person who tries to coordinate healing will be resented, unless that person has explicit authority within the guild to do so.


With CTRA and all of our other mods, raid healing is a breeze--as long as each healer has some kind of idea of his priority healing targets.

So it's obviously sometimes not the healer's fault; that's a given. As a small derail we're working on Broodlord now. I play a mage and I die in the supression rooms. ALOT. Downrank AE? Still dead. Completely busted equipment? Dead. Part of it was I think our only real night of supression room clearing we had two mages so aggro wasn't being split up like it would with a solid four or five. This me or something that can be fixed with some healer tweaking?

All non-healers should try some twoboxing to see how fucked up the lag makes things sometimes. On a ZG run the other day I was getting heals from my priest 3 seconds after I saw it go off on my other monitor :)

if you are just starting out there then assign healers for the aoe:ers. If you wanna go really overboard with it then perhaps two groups with 1xshaman with tranquil air, 1xpriest, 2xmages, 1xwarlock and tell the shaman+priest in each group that he's responsible for the aoe:rs. warriors can try to help with taking agro but the biggest thing is probably most healers focusing on whoever is lowest instead of spreading out responsibility. it can also be that you're really bad at handling the packs and the ranged/healers taking debuffs. if the pulling/moving is done at the wrong tempo it might just be that they have alot to do so go easy on them.

For stuff like this assign priests to heal the mages. Druids and pallies can take care of the rest of the raid, if indeed there's any healing that needs doing. You need Flash Heal to keep an IAEing mage alive.

We put one Holy Nova healer in with the heavy AE crew and a paladin keeping an eye on us, as well. It worked pretty well and we got the supression rooms cleared with a quickness. Honestly, the only dude dying a ton was me so it's something on my end, most likely.

A fun trick is to PI one of your buddy priest's mages in the depression room and watch him panic. hee hee.

I must echo something that's been said already in this thread, but is without question true: healing in the WoW endgame is all about timing. The druid who might not lead "effective healing" but drops the NS+HT macro'd combo on a tank with 400 health = wipe saver. The on-the-ball priest who times their bubble right before a shadowflame hits and then immediately starts a gheal rank4 and drops it right after the shadowflame hits = uber.

Seriously, the game doesn't deal damage out at a nice, even rate. It comes in spikes, dribs, drags, and rushing floods. Teaching all of your healers to anticipate the ebb and flow correctly is the best possible thing you can do. Treat each type of trash, and each boss encounter, as a unique opportunity to learn exactly what kind of healing (fast 'n' furious, timed, HoTs + bubbles + NSHT) is required for a "perfect" take-down or clear.

Then teach those techniques again and again and again until your healers can execute it perfectly, and are teaching newer recruits as they come in the door.

Plenty of tools can be used for feedback - SW Stats "effective healing" is good (just to show that someone isn't AFK'ing 90% of the time), the overheal % is good as well (as a general guide, anything higher than 30-40% overheal isn't so hot as it indicates a general lack of attention), and combat parsers are great for specifically calling out someone who was assigned to a target and asking them why in tarnation they didn't heal that target at all or forgot to bubble them...etc.

However, feedback is only one part of the puzzle.

Steps to success:

1. Learn the optimal healing required for each encounter. Study which healing "specials" (druid NS+HT, priest bubble, pally Lay on Hands, etc) work great in the context of the encounter you're working (be it trash, or a boss).

2. Teach your healing corps. Then teach them again. Be patient.

3. Make smart assignments. Assign your people into situations that set them up for success, not failure. "Self-contained groups" composed of single parties are great. They help contain mistakes and create better possibilities for success. Caveat: in most situations, of course. Sometimes you just have to have 6-7 healers on X target.

4. Use log parsers and SW Stats (or similar) for feedback and "what went wrong" analysis.

5. Encourage active discussions re: talent builds and gear wish lists.

It's all about a dynamic approach to the problem. :) No single, silver bullet.