I have a question about healing meters. How much stock should be put into them? I’m always at the lower end of the meter (under the other druids) and our healing class lead often asks me about it. I’ve got good gear T6 BT and sunwell. I’m almost always on tank healing, we mostly have 3. So I role LB and rejuv between them or sometimes just the pally as he takes more dmg. The tanks never drop and I feel I’m doing my job, and well. On Kal I heal a group of 6 with no problems but after the kill I will still get “why are you low on the healing meter”. I feel doing my job is enough. I don’t know if I don’t use SW enough or other spells. Any thoughts on this would be helpful to put my mind to ease or fix my short comings.
I have always found healing meters misguiding and I always dismiss them as a Raid Leader myself. We give out healer assignments and if no-one dies, the healers did their jobs. There is always people above others on the meters, due to various reasons:
1. Nature of their assignment. If you're tasked with HoTing up the tanks and there is also direct healers like Paladins on the tanks, there is a good chance their heals will land before your HoTs can do most of their work. In turn, the Paladins will get "credit" for healing the tank, although your HoTs were there as well. Overhealing only gets credited to one person, but it's normally more of a strategy issue than an individual player issue.
2. Players "cheating" the meters by healing outside their assignment, to show up on the healing meters. I personally hate this, because it is also always those players that go OOM and ask for innervates about 1-2 minutes into the fight. As a healer myself (resto shaman), I get pretty annoyed when I tell my fellow healers I'm healing melee and I see the melee group topped before my first Chain Heal lands and then tanks start dying because healers go OOM.
3. Your gear vs. the encounter. In fights that you over gear, there will generally be more over healing. Players will have mana to spare and frankly if I can spare the mana and the fight has random raid burst damage, I'll top players outside my assignment just to be on the safe side.
So in short, healing meters can say something, but they are generally misinterpreted.
Heya, with the recent patch 2.4.2 addition of "Purified Shadowsong Amethyst" which gives +11 Healing +4 Spell Damage and +5 Spirit "Matches a Red or Blue Socket." I guess we will be updating our [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] to this one? or? Perhaps nearly all of them?
2. Players "cheating" the meters by healing outside their assignment, to show up on the healing meters. I personally hate this, because it is also always those players that go OOM and ask for innervates about 1-2 minutes into the fight. As a healer myself (resto shaman), I get pretty annoyed when I tell my fellow healers I'm healing melee and I see the melee group topped before my first Chain Heal lands and then tanks start dying because healers go OOM.
3. Your gear vs. the encounter. In fights that you over gear, there will generally be more over healing. Players will have mana to spare and frankly if I can spare the mana and the fight has random raid burst damage, I'll top players outside my assignment just to be on the safe side.
So you hate when people heal outside their assignment, but you do it too?
Originally Posted by MaeltneWindrunner
I have a question about healing meters. How much stock should be put into them? I’m always at the lower end of the meter (under the other druids) and our healing class lead often asks me about it. I’ve got good gear T6 BT and sunwell. I’m almost always on tank healing, we mostly have 3. So I role LB and rejuv between them or sometimes just the pally as he takes more dmg. The tanks never drop and I feel I’m doing my job, and well. On Kal I heal a group of 6 with no problems but after the kill I will still get “why are you low on the healing meter”. I feel doing my job is enough. I don’t know if I don’t use SW enough or other spells. Any thoughts on this would be helpful to put my mind to ease or fix my short comings.
As a Druid, your position on meters is largely going to depend on how many people are taking steady damage (this benefits Lifebloom) versus how many people are taking random burst damage (this benefits Chain Heal/Circle of Healing). If you're worried about your position on meters, ask yourself a few things:
1) First, fight circumstances: on a fight like Teron, single tank with high amounts of random raid damage, it's difficult to compete with Chain Heal. Is this fight more suited to non-Druid healing styles?
2) Second, Lifebloom targets and uptime: are you hitting as many targets taking steady damage as you can? Are your LB stacks ever falling off? Check out average LB tick values and number of ticks on the WWS to compare yourself to your other Druids.
3) Non-LB spells: ok, you're keeping up your LB on tanks. What else can you be doing? Usually, the answer is keep a Rejuv on tanks and be fast on Regrowth to top up random raid damage. It's rarely worth throwing out single Lifeblooms; someone else will heal on top before the Bloom fires.
If you want to benchmark yourself off your other Druids, take a WWS and look at things like: what % and amount of his healing came from each spell - figure out what he's casting that you aren't. Look at the "Who Healed Whom" chart to see who they are healing that you aren't. Look at Lifebloom number of ticks and tick size to see if you're doing something wrong there.
And lastly, Kalecgos is a terrible fight to run meters/WWS on, because of the split-realm effect.
2. Players "cheating" the meters by healing outside their assignment, to show up on the healing meters. I personally hate this, because it is also always those players that go OOM and ask for innervates about 1-2 minutes into the fight. As a healer myself (resto shaman), I get pretty annoyed when I tell my fellow healers I'm healing melee and I see the melee group topped before my first Chain Heal lands and then tanks start dying because healers go OOM.
If your healing assignment is under control, there is nothing wrong with going outside of that assignment and throwing heals to people who need them. I hear what you're saying when people doing so cause their own assignment to die, but that isn't the case in the majority of scenarios (though when it does happen, the offender should hear it).
You could argue that going outside of your assignment causes other healers to lose mana on an overheal, when they weren't expecting help. But as a tree druid, you're not going oom. And you generally don't spike heal, so the above scenario won't happen if you go out of your assignment. So in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with spreading the HoT love around.
If you can safely pull off 5 heals per 7 seconds (without letting a LB drop every third rotation), then it is going to increase your throughput more. 4 heals and more +heal is not much worse id reckon and a bit more relaxed, but it is worse.
Is it worth dropping off healing with the gear I have now to pursue more haste, or should I wait until I'm able to grab stuff in Sunwell with haste already on everything as well as having like five million slots?
Lighten up guys, he's not talking about druids with the whole healing outside their assignment to try and buff healing meters while their assignment dies, he's talking about usually paladins, maybe priests. Druids don't exactly have a spell to be undercutting his chain heals, that's Flash of light or CoH probably. One of the core strengths of druids in a raid is they can heal outside their assignments while still keeping their full output on the tank(s).
This whole discussion of healing meters happened back on page 34 so, probably best to read that, and only add things if they're not covered there.
Plox, at this stage it looks like you're just getting into T6 content. Start picking up the haste gear as it drops. I see you have some ZA gear and the gloves from Teron already. Pick up the gear as you can, then as you go forward put the set on and try out your heals. Find out where your healing picks up at, where you can squeeze in an extra regrow. This number is going to vary on your latency. I went back and regemmed my boots from Leo for haste since I didn't get the boots of Divine Light in MH, but before then my boots were gemmed for straight plus heal. At the 250 mark, I found I had what I needed, so now I gem to maintain that.
Plox, at this stage it looks like you're just getting into T6 content. Start picking up the haste gear as it drops. I see you have some ZA gear and the gloves from Teron already. Pick up the gear as you can, then as you go forward put the set on and try out your heals. Find out where your healing picks up at, where you can squeeze in an extra regrow. This number is going to vary on your latency. I went back and regemmed my boots from Leo for haste since I didn't get the boots of Divine Light in MH, but before then my boots were gemmed for straight plus heal. At the 250 mark, I found I had what I needed, so now I gem to maintain that.
My guild is currently working on Kalecgos, and I'm respeccing from my normal Feral build to a Resto build to help out with healing and decursing for the fight. I haven't been able to find the optimal spec for the fight, and I was wondering if anyone had any advice. Due to the nature of the fight, I'm not shifting into Tree form, and I'm also not in the main tank group, so the loss of the aura isn't a big deal deal (I don't think anyway). Could anyone provide a template spec? I've looked at the main post, and have gotten some ideas from that, but I think my real problem is that most resto builds are focused on Tree of Life.
Heya, with the recent patch 2.4.2 addition of "Purified Shadowsong Amethyst" which gives +11 Healing +4 Spell Damage and +5 Spirit "Matches a Red or Blue Socket." I guess we will be updating our [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] to this one? or? Perhaps nearly all of them?
I am wrestling with a similar gemming issue and could use some words of encouragement (or otherwise) before I take the plunge. I know gem strategies have been previously discussed in this thread, and many on this forum lean toward pure +healing gems.
With that in mind, I am now facing the possibility of regemming nearly all of my gear since the Sunwell gem vendor is opening up, rather than doing so piecemeal as raid gems are distributed to the entire guild.
Currently, almost all of my blue slots contain the Royal Shadowsong Amethyst with +11 healing and +2 mp5, or the equivalent drop from heroic Slave Pens.
I ran the math on two gem "strategies." Option 1 is to use the new Purified Shadowsong Amethyst with +11 healing and +5 spirit in all blue slots. Option 2 is to use the Teardrop Crimson Spinal with +22 healing, regardless of slot color. (For the second option, I made tiny exceptions where a piece of gear (like the T6 helm) had a single blue slot with a big +healing slot bonus.)
Here is the tradeoff:
With Option 1, my healing stays constant (currently at +2240), spirit increases by +55 spirit (currently at 472), and mp5 decreases by -18 mp5 (currently at 598).
With Option 2, my healing increases by +85 healing, spirit stays constant, and mp5 decreases by -18 mp5.
My initial thoughts: Option 1's tradeoff between spirit and mp5 seems worthwhile, if I decide to stay with gems that are not exclusively +healing. I am less certain, though, whether Option 2's extra +85 healing is worth the loss of spirit/mp5.
Decisions, decisions . . . Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
With the first option everyone in your group receives +19 healing to all heals on them in addition to your better mana regen. Depending on what group you're in, that may trump the +85 healing for your heals. Likely it won't by itself, but that plus the spirit bonus to you may be good enough.
Honestly though, it's a question that only you're going to be able to answer. Is your mana regen enough right now? If it isn't, more spirit will be better. If it is, go with more healing. My suspicion is that +55 spirit will be the way to go given that loss of mp5.
As we're still looking for another resto druid so one of our main ferals can go back to being feral, and looking at cross server recruiting, I wanted to check in with what could reasonably be expected for gearing for someone looking to join. I wanted to see how well you could gear a druid without depending on raid drops.
-Used only rare gems, all red except for 1 purified (happen to be what it defaulted to, might optimize a bit better, but that's not really relevant)
-No sunwell recipes.
-Alchemy/enchanting
-10 man gear
-Badge gear
Buffed with AI, BoW, BoK, Fort, iDS, iMotw, Fishsticks, Healing power, Draenic Wisdom, Superior Wizard oil (had to add manually).
2484 +healing (not counting talents or aura)
381 mp5 while casting + 40 mp5 value of the alch stone
703 spirit
63 haste (4% - 1.44 GCD)
11165 mana
9314 hp (doesn't include commanding shout or imp)
9.41% crit
Tree aura: 175
In Party
LB x 3: 931 ticks
RJ: 1129 ticks
RG: 2470 + 551 ticks
SM(RJ): 4516
SM(RG): 3307
Out of party:
LBx3: 880 ticks
Bloom: 1785
RJ: 1076 ticks
RG: 2403 + 528 ticks
SM(RJ): 4306
SM(RG): 3168
NS-HT: 6535
That is ridiculously good for not having set foot in a 25 man instance.
My initial thoughts: Option 1's tradeoff between spirit and mp5 seems worthwhile, if I decide to stay with gems that are not exclusively +healing. I am less certain, though, whether Option 2's extra +85 healing is worth the loss of spirit/mp5.
IMHO, your level of gearing plus you being an alchemist make regen a non-issue for the most part. As was discussed by the guys in the previous pages, if you take into account 140mp5 from alchemy chain-potting, you have a ton of room to itemize into +healing.
However, unless you are swimming in badges, you can hold off re-gemming until you get another upgrade.
So you hate when people heal outside their assignment, but you do it too?
Yes, I over heal on farm content when my assignments are fine, because I know I will end the fight with 80% mana anyway. I hate people healing outside their assignment to show up on the meters and letting their assignments die.
My post tried to amend the usefulness of healing meters. I gave a few reasons why players show up in different places and I gave some of my experience as a healer and raid leader on how some can get obsessed with hitting that #1 spot.
Maybe my post wasn't clear enough, but the two points I wanted to make were:
- Generally, classes with faster heals will probably beat you to raid healing, especially with the content on farm.
- Players can get so obsessed with healing meters that if you suddenly put them on tank duty and they see themselves fall on the meters they will find ways to get higher, neglect their tank and let him die.
So meters are a double edged sword. Yes, they can measure some kind of activity and at times you can use them to analyze who might be slacking or under performing. But if no-one dies then the healers are obviously doing their job (or you can bring less healers) and in that case, you cannot really say anything about the meter readouts, because healing is a lot more complex than DPS. And even when it comes to DPS, the ones that show up "doing" the damage, aren't actually "providing" the damage: imp Shadowbolt, CoE, CoS, Stormstrike debuff, Blood Frenzy, Wind Fury Totem, etc.
So meters are a double edged sword. Yes, they can measure some kind of activity and at times you can use them to analyze who might be slacking or under performing. But if no-one dies then the healers are obviously doing their job (or you can bring less healers) and in that case, you cannot really say anything about the meter readouts, because healing is a lot more complex than DPS. And even when it comes to DPS, the ones that show up "doing" the damage, aren't actually "providing" the damage: imp Shadowbolt, CoE, CoS, Stormstrike debuff, Blood Frenzy, Wind Fury Totem, etc.
You can't say that if nobody dies, healers are doing their job. If you're "pr0" and you have to partly abandon your assignments because someone else isn't doing his job, then you will be pulling more than your own weight while that other person is slacking. This will show up on the meters, like you said yourself. If you are always last on the meters, I would seriously wonder if I am doing things wrong. Someone has to be last of course, but it shouldn't always be the same person, especially on different encounters. So the concern of the raidleader who noticed the resto druid always being last on the meters is justified, in my opinion.
Yeah, I'd say that overall, if a resto druid is consistently low on the meters for many different fights they're doing something very wrong. Every feasible role for druid healing comes with a pretty large chunk of raw output. We can get out healed by paladins in fights where essentially whoever heals the fastest, particularly on different targets, does the most healing. We can out healed beat by shaman / coh priests on fights with tons of raid damage. We can get out healed by paladins or priests on fights with just 1 tank and little raid damage. But in all of those fights other than massively CoH favoring fights, a druid should probably be right behind the top healer. Throw in a few fights where druids are just as untouchable for effective output and over all, you're going to be very close to the top if not the top person in output across an average of fights.
Its definately all about which fight, for eg on shade of akama i crush the meters with 1990ish healing where my priests and shamans are 2300+ but that doesnt tell you whether im any good. Its just a fight tailored for me.
Edit: also wanted to add that the same classes 'should' (on most fights) be doing very similer numbers. Its my opinion that if your priests and shamans and druids are grouped with the same classes on the heal meter, this is a great way to quickly see that your healers are performing well. (assuming similar gear)
We had another druid that was always coming last on the meters, even on fights where I was on top, and this was _very_ useful as the first clue that she was underperforming. After that wws takes over, and if wws looks ok right % of heals and healing right people, take them to archi or mother and that guy with the constructs and see how they handle it.
Those tests are much better at determining whether someone has skills in my opinion.
Last edited by syx : 05/14/08 at 11:00 PM.
Reason: extra reasoning
I follow this thread pretty closely, and I've looked for other threads, but haven't found any that address or mention this issue. If there is one and I've missed it, please point me in that direction.
My guild has killed Kalecgos and we're likely going to be starting attempts on Brutallus this timer. We did have 3 resto druids and at times all three of us were in the raid mostly because A) we run very minimally so that we don't have a lot of guild bloat and people sitting for raids and B) one of the druids stacked spirit so he was consistently in the tank group which gave us a reason to bring three. Due to some issues that we had, the spirit stacking druid is no longer in our guild and we're running with just two. When asked if we were now recruiting another druid, I was told no because 'druids aren't great farther in Sunwell'. After pushing for clarification, the reason given was that druids are still good, but there are other classes that could fill the healing spot better, and since hots don't scale well there's no real reason to bring more than one, maybe two, to raids.
Since I've not seen any mention regarding the decay in our effectiveness the farther through Sunwell a guild progresses, I'm skeptical. Based on some of your posts I believe we do have a few raid leaders/guild leaders/people who do healing assignments contributing here and I'm quite interested in your take on this. For the guilds farther in Sunwell, would you cut down on your druids if given the chance?
Brutallus was not specifically mentioned (that's just where we are currently), it was the rest of Sunwell (everything post Kalec) that the claim was made that resto spots could be better filled by other healing classes.
When it was brought up in this thread previously, Felmyst wasn't out yet. Now that it's possible to get through Muru, I'm interested in our "usefulness" compared to other healing classes in those fights so that I can refute the argument. As for healing style and assignments neither of us focus on LB to the exclusion of RG, RJ, SM and we're not pigeon-holed in the healing assignments we're given.
Last edited by Imalinata : 05/15/08 at 4:22 AM.
Reason: fixed weird language choice
I've seen sunwell only up to Felmyst, and i feel very useful in that encounter, i'm in the tank group stacking Lifebloom/Rejuvenation on him (and the occasional Regrowth) and heal my Group through the constant damage with with Lifebloom (letting them Bloom). You can NS/Regrowth on encapsulate and heal in P2 while running away from the beam just fine.
I do the burn healing on Brutallus together with an other healer (just stacking lifeblooms on the burn victims) and keeping lifebloom on the tank aswell.
I feel very useful in those fights, but personally i wouldn't bring more than 2 resto druids to a raid if I had other options to fill the spot (Shamans).
"Progress just means bad things happen faster." -- Granny Weatherwax
It sounds like your raidleader just wants as many resto shamans as he can get his hands on and is just trying to come up with a way to make you accept that he doesn't want to recruit another druid
This isn't necessarily a bad idea of course, if you can actually get the (quality) shamans. In the end a good (and properly/well geared) druid still has enough going for him to be recruited over an average shaman unless you barely have any shamans at all. Especially in late Sunwell content.
This isn't necessarily a bad idea of course, if you can actually get the (quality) shamans. In the end a good (and properly/well geared) druid still has enough going for him to be recruited over an average shaman unless you barely have any shamans at all. Especially in late Sunwell content.
05/13/08, 8:36 AM
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