Overhealing, Assignments and Puppies.

Myshra · 10/11/06, 2:27 PM

Thereâ€™s been a thread sort of on this topic, but it included a lot of needless info on Sartura. This is more of a â€˜best practicesâ€™ kind of question on crosshealing, using classes effectively, and reducing overhealing. Due to some recent drama and reforming, the guild is trying for a more proactive approach to make sure everyone is maximizing their healing potential.

Weâ€™ve got experience in Naxx, up to Faerlina, and AQ up to, but not including Câ€™thun. Thereâ€™s some stalling in progression due to the above-mentioned reform.

Other than the obvious down-ranking, what other approaches are recommended?
Please try and keep it to the Horde.

There are no puppies. It was just a clever ruse.

Cerralius · 10/11/06, 2:31 PM

Is your question asking on methods to overheal less? I would suggest having healers get a mod that shows spells currently being casted on the target. I'm not sure what the specific mod is called, but it's a variation of CenEMYCast bars. Basically, some of our healers have a mod that when they target a player to heal, it shows a bar of other heals currently being casted on him if any. So if they see this, they know they can just move on instead of tossing a second overheal as well.

Other than that, my best suggestion would be downranking as you said to heal appropriately, and using hots effectively and having a healer mindset where healers won't toss someone who's down 800 HP with a hot or two on them, a quick heal, and instead let the hot have some benefit. (Exceptions for fights where you can be one shotted or something).

Using SWStats to measure overhealing and effective healing can be a really good tool as well.

-Cerralius

Kaubel · 10/11/06, 2:37 PM

Originally Posted by Myshra

Please try and keep it to the Horde.

This isn't a horde-only forum.

-Cerralius

Cerralius · 10/11/06, 2:42 PM

Damn =). I'm used to doing that on other forums out of habit, and on previous posts on EJ forums I reminded myself not to sign after reading the agreement page... Looks like 3 days later I forgot that =(. Oh well.

<3

Eluned · 10/11/06, 2:47 PM

I think we've had marked improvement with the addition of some basics like the aforementioned SWStats (who's casting which spells most often? Who is healing which tank when they shouldn't be?) and then Natur's ECB.

I highly encourage Clique and Perfect Raid and gladly answer any questions on them for our healers, but it's by no means required. One of the best healers we have doesn't use a mouse (ibm trackpad with the nipple thingie and a lot of macros.)

How clear are your healing assignments? Do you heal by target, by party, by quad? Even one out of sync completely over / under performing healer can really make a difference, it's good to identify who's not with the program.

Zalera · 10/11/06, 2:48 PM

Precise healing assignments on bosses should do enough on their own to curb overhealing. Distribute the healers amogst the targets that require healing in a logical manner that they only overlap on the people taking the most damage, and there shouldn't really be much overhealing in the first place, except for the targets with multiple healers. Assuming people are following their assignments, it's not particularly difficult to decide which spell ranks to use depending on how much damage they've taken.

You also have to consider a variety of things, like where the damage is coming from - if it's something like Faerlina's Poison Volley, then they're obviously not going to keep getting hit for that amount of damage, so a 1500 heal should do them fine for now. If it's something like tanking a mob, and you're the only one that's healing him, then it's likely that he's going to get hit again while you're casting your heal, so you should factor that in when deciding which spell to use. Using unit frames that shows combat stats (like how much he's getting hit for) helps quite a bit when deciding this. You also have to consider environmental damage, too; if he's missing 1k health, and Faerlina is going to cast Poison Volley in 2 seconds, how much should you heal him for?

Malan · 10/11/06, 2:57 PM

HealingGroupsSuck
http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/a...-suck-v14.html

Easy to follow directions-
Step1 - snag that mod.
Step2 - enter the names of each "tank" that's picking up a mob. (double up if you've got multiple tanks)
Step3 - enter some other assignments (such as "rogues", "casters", "huntards" or "warogues")
Step4 - I always start by assigning the priests first, usually to the tanks unless its a heavy AoE fight.
Step5 - Now allocate the druids across the board but primarily on tanks.
Step6 - Add the shamans, I try to fit them into a role that utilizes Chain Heal, which is hands down the best healing spell on trash fights.
Step7 - Broadcast to the raid, be amazed when nobody dies.

More lengthy reasoning -
Be as detailed as possible in your healing assignments. Get people out of the mentality of spamming the top guy on the EM. Give healers something specific to watch for, a class or a tank, or a group, but don't just tell them to 'heal the raid'. You'll suddenly be amazed at how many extra healers you have and you'll probably start cutting back.

Example - we used to barely survive Fenkriss with 15 healers. Now I've got 5-6 guys telling me they have nothing to do on the fight because the healing is "too detailed".

I tell my healers that they need to quit worrying about the stupid healing meters. Meters are useful for figuring out who's slacking compared to someone else who has the *exact same* healing role, and not for much else. Make sure they understand that their assignment is their responsibility - if that guy dies, hold their nuts over the fire. At the same time don't be so rigid that they won't throw a flash heal on a rogue whose got 10 health left if its not their assignment. You need a good blend of the two. Nothing to heal? Throw on some DPS - but again, their assigned healing target had damn well better survive.

goss · 10/11/06, 2:58 PM

Maximizing healing assignments obviously varies a lot depending on context.

For trash, my guild focuses on doing self contained group healing first - healers are instructed to pay attention to their groups first, raid second. Tanks have slightly stacked groups (usually priest/paladin or priest/druid). On any boss fight where the tank(s) are taking a fairly variable amount of damage (Twin Emps, Sartura, Faerlina), mixing a group of healers on the tanks makes sense. Some of the more unique fights in the game lend themselves to odd healing configurations to optimize longevity (reduce overhealing) or throughput. Using exclusively paladins on the MT on Patchwerk or Thaddius frees up the higher throughput classes for the more time sensitive healing portions of those fights. C'thun, all healing classes are effectively equal and can be assigned a la trash.

Its also important for healers to communicate with each other regarding different healing tactics within an individual encounter - obviously each healing class can and should react differently to an UBS on Emps or a GWF Enrage.

Another point thats somewhat related is - some healers are better raid healers (either they're ADD or can multitask better...pick one) and some are more reliable MT/OT healers. Figure out which of your healers are good at keeping lots of targets topped, and which can triage the tank and not get distracted from their duty of keeping them up. Assign them appropriately.

Myshra · 10/11/06, 3:35 PM

For the most part we are trying to make groups more self sufficient as possible. This isn't always as feasable as it seems due to turnout, specific encounters and what not.

It seems the biggest baseline theme, aside from instilling common sense in spells, is be anal about assignments, and watch to see who isn't doing them.

Eluned · 10/11/06, 3:39 PM

One more thought -- somewhat by dint of gear and talent build sometimes we end up splitting up assignments based on the spell. X priest to do gheal with 8 trans on, Y druid with the lbrs Rejuv idol and a ton of +heal to do Rejuv, etc.

Severed · 10/11/06, 4:09 PM

Originally Posted by Myshra

Thereâ€™s been a thread sort of on this topic, but it included a lot of needless info on Sartura. This is more of a â€˜best practicesâ€™ kind of question on crosshealing, using classes effectively, and reducing overhealing. Due to some recent drama and reforming, the guild is trying for a more proactive approach to make sure everyone is maximizing their healing potential.

Weâ€™ve got experience in Naxx, up to Faerlina, and AQ up to, but not including Câ€™thun. Thereâ€™s some stalling in progression due to the above-mentioned reform.

Other than the obvious down-ranking, what other approaches are recommended?
Please try and keep it to the Horde.

There are no puppies. It was just a clever ruse.

This is one of the most vague questions I have seen on these forums. After re-reading it a few times to make sure there isn't something subtle I missed I will give an equally vague answer; don't overheal, heal effectively, reroll a palidin for damage not healing.

Myshra · 10/11/06, 4:23 PM

Yea, I know. I left it kind of vague to see what kind of direction I would get. There is a pretty irritating amount of overhealing going on. I'm pretty sure its rooted in the amount of crosshealing that's happening.

It's not such an encounter breaking thing for the moment, but if we intend to continue it's gotta stop.

probiscus · 10/11/06, 4:26 PM

Originally Posted by Cerralius

Damn =). I'm used to doing that on other forums out of habit, and on previous posts on EJ forums I reminded myself not to sign after reading the agreement page... Looks like 3 days later I forgot that =(. Oh well.

<3

Get a new avatar while you're at it ;)

Eluned · 10/11/06, 4:30 PM

Ok... I totally missed this earlier?

Why is your overhealing a problem? Are your healers oom such that people are dying because they foolishly pissed away their mana?

I tend to prefer a healthy amount of overhealing as the alternative is underhealing which is more offensive. Repair bills = bad.

One thing our druid leader did to correct a new druid who was consistently heal spamming and oom all the time was tell him to ONLY ninja heal with Rejuv. It still annoys me when I'm -200 and he Rejuvs me, but it's better than when he healed me for 4k. :)

Ghostz · 10/11/06, 4:50 PM

Overhealing is acceptable to a point. There will always be some, but if your tank is just getting spammed with heals he doesn't even remotely need, that means you need to revise your healing assignments, which IMO are the biggest cause of overhealing. A lot of people say mana pools aren't an issue so overhealing isn't really a big deal. The problem with that is that overhealing affects more than just your longevity, it affects the number of targets your raid can heal simultaneously and the time it takes for your healers to get to them.