Lywyn

Yes, in my guild I am one of 2-3 maybe more assigned to raid healing at one time. (During trash pulls - and usually about the same on bosses). My raid leader is using recount ... which means it counts the final bloom of life bloom towards my over healing (if not the ticks) as well as counting each tick of rejuv past full health. It doesn't count rejuv if the target never takes dmg but it seems once a target takes even a small amount of healing from rejuv it will start ticking for over heal (at least on Recount). I was playing around by myself today with it and it seems that I get massive over heal with life bloom AND rejuv on these meters.

I guess my biggest two challenges are 1) I am consistently and constantly over healed by other raid healers (even other druids as we end up HoTing the same targets and such for raid heals 2) I have two other resto druids who keep their over heals WAY down, I've tried but I honestly don't know how they do it, I feel like I'm holding myself back as I can't throw a quick LB or even rejuv up on anyone unless they are near 50% or I'll risk over heals. So do I heal less overall to heal more effectively? I'd rather save other healer's mana by using a quick HoT to get someone back to full when they are 90% and up and maybe thats my problem.

I'm rather frustrated with the whole thing. Our raid leader takes healing done - over healing to get effective healing. I don't have ANY problems with mana so I'm frustrated with the fact that our raid leader feels that if you aren't healing "effectively" you can't be in raid because you don't know how to manage your mana pool. Even though the only to fights I've run OOM on are Azgalor (the first time I ever fought him) and Hex Lord once or twice (largely due to spirit bolts).

I'd debate the point with my raid leader but he feels that if the other two trees can keep THEIR over healing down then I must do the same or frankly I'm not a skilled healer. He kind of has the attitude of... "If they can do it you can too, stop QQ'ing and do it or don't get into raid. If you don't like it leave." He needs a way to compare the resto druids as all 3 to 4 are on for raid on time and ready to go. All of us are competent so he says its hard to choose between us. In order to be "fair" and to take his 110% rather then his 100% to Kael he has chosen "effective healing" as the healers (mainly tree's) evaluation of skill and therefore ... I guess I loose, heh.

 

malthrin

I have some numbers for us! We have three raiding tree Druids, but only take one at a time to M'uru, so I was able to get some direct comparison numbers between myself (with SSO neck, Hyjal ring, and Essence of the Martyr) and one of our other Druid using static heal/haste items in those slots (Nature's Mercy, Quiet Forest, and Memento). I have 2389 healing unbuffed and Hamlet has 2463. We both use the standard raid buffs and were in the same group, etc.

Here's the WWS if anyone wants to browse (Wow Web Stats). I'm looking at attempt #12 for me and attempt #17 for Hamlet. Some background on M'uru for those that don't know the fight: you roll Lifeblooms on 3 tanks and use your spare GCD to throw out Rejuvs and occasionally Swiftmend. Obviously, this is a fight where there's nothing to gain from haste, so this is strictly looking at these healing procs for their benefit relative to static +healing.

What I'm seeing is this:
#12
#17
What we're seeing here is that the collective value of these procs is equal to the value of that 74 healing Hamlet has over me. I have a tiny edge on Lifebloom average tick and exactly equal on Rejuv average tick. The advantage on Lifebloom is actually slightly larger than the average above reflects: Hamlet had 5 blooms expire (presumably 3 of them on the wipe) and I had 9 expire (one per tank, at the wipe, for an emergency NS, and once due to player error). Time restacking those extra 4 blooms definitely hurt my average.

On #12, I had Light's Salvation (SSO neck) proc 8 times, Band of the Eternal Restorer proc 5 times, and Essence of the Martyr clicky 3 times.

 

malthrin

Overhealing is a useless metric and your raid leader is an idiot who needs to get with the times. Ask him bluntly about this situation: you're clearing Hyjal trash. You see the aggro dot on Grid light up for a Warlock. Do you: A) cast a heal on him just in case the mob gets to him without being taunted back onto a tank? or B) Do nothing, because you know 90% of the time he won't actually get hit and it will just overheal? The answer is clearly A for anyone with a brain. There's no prize for finishing a fight at 90% mana. Argh, I can't believe people still look at overheal like it's a metric of a good healer.

 

• giansm

Your raid leader is severely in the wrong here, I cannot state this strongly enough. If you are not having mana problems there is absolutely no reason to worry about overhealing at all. There may even be cause to criticize healers for not having enough overhealing, since this may indicate that they are being excessively conservative with mana. Like malthrin said, good healers may cast heals that they know have a high chance of being 100% useless on the off chance that it will catch some damage (or in the druid-specific case, to put a hot on someone for possible swiftmending later).

In addition to your raid leader's severe misunderstanding about how healers work in TBC, it is also possible that he is calculating effective healing incorrectly. I don't use Recount, but most damage meter mods will subtract overhealing from total healing done (usually called "total healing" or "raw healing") and then show you effective healing directly (usually called "healing done" or "effective healing"). It is possible that your raid leader is then double-counting overhealing by subtracting it again.

Furthermore, even with a correct calculation of effective healing, it is extremely difficult to compare two healers unless they are on the same assignment. For example back when my guild was on Kael'thas I was normally assigned to heal the warlock tank, and I ended up topping the meters by a huge amount. Sometimes we had another resto druid and he would usually be assigned to raid healing, generally ending up around #4 or so. Does that mean I was better than him? No, it means my assignment was more likely to generate a large amount of healing because the warlock tank takes continuous damage and has only one healer. If you haven't read the first post of this thread I suggest looking at the "Who should I heal?" and "Healing Strategies" sections, especially the "Raid Healing" subsection. If you're doing something close to that, odds are you're playing mostly okay.

 

• giansm

Hmm, it's interesting that you have a comparison for a lifebloom cycle fight, since that removes my two general arguments against +healing procs (haste is usually better in those slots, can't purposely clip your own rejuv). It's also very interesting that the average tick sizes ended up being so similar, since I would have expected the passive-ticks to be somewhat smaller due to the fact that you tend to get more "bang" on item budget with proc healing. This may be accounted for by the time that your lifeblooms dropped, though. I do notice that you didn't express a conclusion in your post, was your conclusion that the proc-set and the passive-set were about the same effectiveness, or did you not reach a conclusion (just wondering)?

Anyway I think it's hard to say which druid here is helping the raid more. The main thing that I would keep in mind when trying to make a judgment is that the fundamental difference between passive healing and proc healing is that passive healing is always there, and proc healing is sometimes there and sometimes not. I notice that in your WWS you are healing Duoctane (solo), Rioht (with Asharte), and Frotes (with Kyb). Kyb appears to be pretty much only chain healing Frotes, not really doing anything else. Asharte is doing the same with Greater Heal on Rioht. In attempt #17 the same things are happening except with Hamlet in your position.

In my mind, just from a theorycrafting point of view it is easy to say that passive healing is best for the Duoctane job. The reason is this: consider the periods when you have no +healing procs up. During these times, are you still capable of solo healing him comfortably? If so, then it doesn't really matter what you wear. If not, you risk requiring a raid healer to help out when your procs are down. Passive healing gives you consistency at the cost of maximum burst, but consistency is more important for a solo-tank-healing assignment. It's possible that this theory is borne out by the WWS, since I see that on your attempt Berkeley did a fairly significant amount of healing on Duo and on Hamlet's attempt, no other healers helped out to a significant degree. Obviously this is very sketchy evidence in support of the theory, and it may be based on something else like a strategy change.

It's hard for me to say what's better for healing Frotes and Rioht. I suspect passive healing is better here too, since it gives your co-healers a more consistent experience, but it's possible that healing procs will win out if they are good enough to allow your co-healers to take a break or do some useful cross healing.

For a tentative conclusion, I would guess that if the "hard part" of your job is healing Duo, you should go with passive healing. If Duo is usually fine but Rioht or Frotes is "harder" then it's difficult to say and would depend on whether your co-healers prefer consistency or the potential to have burst from you every once in a while.

edit: Sorry for double post but they were both pretty long, and on wildly different topics.

 

Kalaghan

Lywyn, I'm almost positive Giansm is correct. Recount already is displaying effective healing. Your raid leader is effectively doubling up on overheal removal. If he wants confirmation, have him look at minimum HOT ticks. As you noted, if it ticks, it ticks for the full amount. However, recount will provide you with a min/max and average for each heal type. You'll notice (assuming I remember right) that you have rejuv/LB ticks for much lower amounts than they should be ticking (eg. a rejuv tick for 150), and this is because the tick was say a 800heal tick, with 150 being effective healing and 650 being overhealing (unless of course you were on Rage Winterchill or in BM).

And as has been stated, overheal is completely irrelevant if you aren't having mana issues. Effective healing is the bottom line and what really matters (along with timeliness of heals and target selection/prioritization, which are probably more important and best measured by who lives & dies among your assignment(s)).

Malthrin, regarding your example, it seems that you're just comparing average tick to average tick. Couldn't we just do that using actual math and get a more accurate result than the small sample provides? I thought the concern was less about the average tick and more about the impact of tick variablity. For example, we can exactly equate EotM to static 133.5 +healing (84+297/6), so of course it should result in higher average ticks than Memento (118static heal) in the same slot if you're using it on cooldown. I don't see how a comparison of averages helps resolve the debate.

 

malthrin

No real conclusion yet other than establishing some relative value - this amount of procs is basically equal to that amount of healing on a Lifebloom cycle fight. Next time we're there I'll probably ask Hamlet to try wearing the SSO neck and see how that impacts the numbers. On another note, I actually like the ability to clip my Rejuv on this fight, because it gives me two opportunities to Swiftmend each Rejuv rather than just one.

Yeah, that was attempt-specific. If you look at my post in the SC M'uru thread (http://elitistjerks.com/786510-post590.html), you can see that Duo just happened to take about 25% extra damage on attempt #12 compared to later attempts. I suspect he was experimenting with different levels of threat vs. shadow resist throughout the night. The interesting thing about the damage in this fight is that it's very periodic; Duo spends 5-6 seconds tanking nothing, then 30-40 seconds tanking 6 void spawns, then 10-20 seconds tanking 12, then they die and we repeat. Likewise, Rioht (Sentinel tank) spends 3-4 seconds moving to a new sentinel, then heavy damage until the Void Blast debuff goes up, then moderately high damage until it dies. Frotes (door tank) takes heavy damage as a wave of humanoids comes in, dropping off as they die. Unfortunately, none of my proc timers line up exactly with any of the fight timers, but having any of them up at a high damage period is a net gain over the static healing set.

Anyway, I don't want to come across as crazy about healing procs or anything, but I think that the SSO neck in particular is quite valuable due to its high uptime - 10 seconds out of every 46-47. The other two are kind of just along for the ride since I don't have any of the better alternatives in those slots.

Well, the point of the examples was to give the "actual math" some grounding in reality, to see how the predicted increase in healing output actually compared when put into practice. M'uru P1 is a very regimented fight where everyone is doing the exact same thing on every attempt (until something goes horribly awry) - that makes for much better comparison data than just about any other fight I can think of.

 

Daedalix

Lifebloom and other HoTs can account for significant chunks of overhealing if the tick brings the target up to full but didn't require its full tick value to do so. Over a long fight with 1-3 tanks LB'd and the big ticks of LB, this can lead to decent enough OH from both LB and RJ. Scrolling combat text mods show this quite well if you take time to look at them. A quick glance at last night's WWS had 14% of my LB being OH and I know it wasn't all "blooms" on myself.

@ Lywyn You are right to get frustrated. If he were looking at the numbers of you tank healing versus the other trees tank healing, he'd have a valid argument. He's looking at numbers where all 4 trees are in the raid with different assignments. That's impossible to make any conclusion from. If you guys are doing Kael now (as my guild is), it's entirely likely that you A) way over-gear your current content B) have many other competent healers who probably have haste. Both will lead to very little room for a druid raid healer in almost any situation you are likely to face.

Unfortunately there's very little you can do about it. Sounds like you are a pretty big guild (4 quality resto druids?) with a close-minded and less-than-expert raid leader. How many healers do you take? 4 of one spec is extremely odd. That must be half your healers. From my experience, healing for Kael isn't particularly hard and has very little to do with your ability to "effective heal". If I were you I'd bite the bullet, pick up some haste if they are going to continue to put you on MT healing, and perhaps start looking for a better, smaller guild.

If you're looking for some real guidance, post a WWS of one of your raid nights and ask your other druids how they go about healing. I'm going to bet your raid leaders plays A) a mage B) a hunter.

While we've discussed raid healing ad nauseum lately, and of course we are capable of doing it, we lack a certain utility with it that we will get in Wrath. It's not our bread and butter.

 

Haase

Hi, sorry for interrupting your discussion, but even after reading nearly the whole thread i still have some questions i would like to hear your opinions on.
First, i'm in a guild with 2 bosses in mh down and one kill (naj'entus) in bt, i own mostly ZA/badge items giving me 2k addheal.

My first question is about the Naj'entus encounter. How should i react after the tidal shield exploded? i continue rolling lifeblooms on the MT, but how to react correctly on so much heavy raiddmg? Just one lifebloom one everyone and let the other healers do their job? Lifebloom stacking on some ppl? Rejuv on everyone? Or even Regrowth spamming?
I tried a lot, but i just have the feeling, that healdruids don't shine here, because it's so hard to heal people up in such a short time period?!

My secound question is a shorter one, how useful is spellhaste BEFORE you get enough to get a 5 Lifebloom in your rotation? Atm it looks to me like it makes keeping your cycles easier, but doesn't helps you a lot anymore then that?

 

Rannasha

Depends on what your assignment is. A single resto Druid can generally keep the tank alive while the other healers top up the raid. If you are this resto druid assigned to tank healing, stick with keeping your HoTs up on the tank. If you're assigned to raid-healing, i'd go with Regrowths. With the ~60% crit-chance it has, it'll heal for a very nice amount and will get people out of the "danger zone" quickly.

Once per fight, you can use Tranquility to very quickly top up your own group.

 

Norfair

Hmm yes, that of course can be a way that they overheal, I actually did not think of that. :P But the fact remains that with hots your overhealing will always be extremely low compared to other classes, unless you solely spam Regrowth / Swiftmend. To be honest I find 14% of Lifebloom being overhealed still quite a lot, but I never bothered to look at it at WWS because like others already pointed out, overhealing is pretty much a care metric (granted you don't have mana problems). If anything, the general opinion on overhealing has changed to "the more overhealing you do the better", because overhealing means you don't take any risks as a healer.

Yes and no. The great thing about having more haste is that at some point you can go 3x gcd + Regrowth or 2x gcd + 2x Regrowth etc. It adds more flexibility that way, so it does have value imo, but not so that you should make major sacrifices for it.

For Naj'entus, what worked for me was spamming Regrowth at the tidal shield, and let Lifebloom fall off the MT till the raid was stabilised.

Keep f**king that chicken.

 

malthrin

You can do 3x GCD + Regrowth without Haste if you have a good connection. The utility of haste is mostly just to give you some margin for lag on your standard 4x GCD rotation. If you don't need it, you don't really need haste unless you find yourself making heavy use of Regrowth.

 

Lywyn

Yes... he plays a mage.


I am now however adding more rejuv + swiftmend into my rotation - I never used it before (didn't even have it on my bar). I have found it very useful so this research as definitely done me a LOT of good. This has allowed me to make bigger heals much more frequently. It has certainly made healing 5 mans a bit more pleasant. Where I used to use regrowth I'm finding rejuv + swiftmend filling in quite nicely much of the time saving on mana greatly.

I'm still trying to find a balance for my raid healing between using LB over rejuv - I'm thinking of going with what a few of you said and using primarily LB and using rejuv mostly on those who I know will be taking dmg and may need to swiftmend at some point. I'm also toying with using 1 rejuv per raid member then following with 1 LB per member if a lot of dmg is occurring. That however is very hard on my mana as some have pointed out.

Again thank you to those who replied to my former post. I appreciate it greatly.

 

Dynalisia

Your willingness and ability to learn as shown by you coming here and taking a productive part in discussion alone should help with making your raidleader appreciate your value as a player.

 

Relin

Is the [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle] worth anything as a druid? I have it and the [Battlemaster's Perseverance] at the moment but I was thinking of replacing the scarab with the [Essence of the Martyr]

 

malthrin

No, the proc isn't very useful. Go with Essence of the Martyr.

 

DrVishnu

This may be a dumb question, but keep in mind it's coming from a Priest that is trying to help my Tree brothers with proper assignment. That being said, with two trees in the raid party, can they stack HoTs at the same time on the same target? When we have several Holy Priests (rare, lately) we all keep Renew up on the tank(s) at the very least and they stack. Can the trees both keep a rolling LB (3 stack) on a single tank or would they just keep refreshing a single stack?

 

• Arawethion

They all can stack their own HoTs. As a general rule, you'll usually want all Trees rolling their Lifeblooms on the tank(s) in a fight, regardless of what else they're doing.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

DrVishnu

Thanks, Ara, for the quick reply. I was concerned that in assigning both of our Trees to all three tanks they were overwriting each other's LB stacks.

On a semi-related note, does anyone know if hot counters (particularly the one built into X-Perl) count each LB individually...such that a rolling LB would show up as 3 hots vice 1? The point being that in our setup(2 trees, 1 priest), it seems to me the three tanks should show 7 hots on them at all times (2 rolling LB + my renew)...I think.

 

syx

The answer is that the lifebloom buff will show up with a number 2 on it for a double stack and 3 for a triple stack.

Get your two druids together in a party with you, then get them to both roll hots on you to see what it looks like.
Please give it a go yourself to get it clear in your mind.

 

MystRayne

I have read through all the notes supplied above, and attempted to apply them to the druid I love to play so much, however it seems lately I slide further and further down in the “oh so important” healing meters.

It does not help that I hardly ever lose the Tank I am healing, or that I try so hard to keep the entire raid alive, when on raid healing, I am still healing to HALF it would seem of what any other druid does. What AM I doing wrong?

On the last raid I attended my assignment was to heal the warlock and his pet. As on previous times, when this has been my assignment, I seem to have no option but to pop heals on myself, as often I was within a hair's breadth of dying myself. I supply wwstats, so that perhaps someone could help me to analyse what I am doing wrong.
Wow Web Stats

To give you the opportunity to look at another set of stats, where I was on general raid heal, I submit Wow Web Stats (1) and Wow Web Stats (2). The last being where I was on general raid healing and MTs (I think) on the Kalec fight. However, it seemed that whichever “world” I ended up in, there would be no MTs or only one 95% of the time.

I know it should not be up to someone else to tell me how to heal, and I have always been a consistently good healer, only, in the past few months, no matter what I do, I seem to be sliding down into some pit, one I cannot climb out of.

Until a while ago, I was having the most awful freeze-ups – something would freeze my screen, mouse, the entire game, for periods of up to 30 seconds. I ended up switching off just about ALL my addons, and then re-enabling them, one at a time. I did not put Recount, Auctioneer (and its pack) back on, along with a few other addons and this seems to have helped that problem. BUT … I am still too low on the heal meters.

Something which baffles me is this - I do try my utmost to heal my heart out, … so WHY are my heals now registering as overheals, instead of the heals they should be? … Those overheals would surely bump me much higher on WWS than I currently am, if they landed as the heals they should have been.

Please if you can offer any advice, or help me get an understanding as to what it is I am doing wrong, I would be eternally grateful, feel free to PM me with any advice, and notes, I want to heal, and I want to heal to the best of my abilities.

Thank you in advance, for any help that can be given. I did try speaking to the other druid, but other than telling me to keep up the rolling LBs, which I already do try my utmost to do, he has been very silent, mostly ignoring me or not wishing to divulge his secrets perhaps ... and I would love to know why regardless of how hard I try, they do drop off on a few occasions ... see on the WWS that he seems to manage to heal at least 1 million more than me on an average, I have sat looking at the stats till my eyes burned and watered, trying to see what I am doing different, and I cannot. So I throw myself on the mercy of Those Here With Knowledge.

Armory link: The World of Warcraft Armory

Linked the Armory, so that you could see my build, and gear, I have respecced build as I was made to feel that a druid in end game raiding should NOT have points anywhere else, and that I was being wasteful having 2 points in balance, as it was more effective to put that into the Resto tree as well. I do a lot of jumping in and out of tree to help out with decursing, but have found that I still do not run out of mana, I hardly ever have to use innervate on myself, so with the present builds on offer, I fail to see that it would give more +heal to have more points in Natural Shapeshifter (and reading notes here, have not seen anything to say "you HAVE to have those points"). The reason I left that 1 point in Nature's Grasp, was because when I am alone, it makes it a little easier to run and get distance to cast on a mob, if the mob gets rooted. Originally I had a more points in improved Nature's Grasp as well, but took them out to get Improved Tranquillity.

 

Jasyla

I find tree druids shine on this fight when they focus on the MT, with some HoTs tossed around on the raid after the Tidal Shield and to help out when someone gets hit by an Impaling Spine. I'm always assigned to heal the MT and help top my group up after the Tidal Shield bursts. When the Tidal Shield pops up, I try to throw a lifebloom on everyone in my group, and time it so they explode shortly after the shield bursts. After this, I may throw on some more lifeblooms, but the pallies and priests are usually much faster at topping people off. Once a fight I'll use tranquility after the shield is broken, to heal my group to full. I usually save regrowths and rejuvs for the MT and people who get hit with spines.

 

malthrin

Regarding the Twins parses: either the healing assignments you have on Twins are beyond bizarre or people aren't following the assignments. Could you tell us what you and the other healers were assigned to do? Here's what I'm seeing from the WWS, based on attempts 3 and 4 (the longest):
-Andromedia is dominating the healing meters because he's the only Druid rolling Lifebloom on the Warlock tank
-You're only keeping Lifebloom on one of the melee tanks, while Gwynthan is doing both.
-For some unknowable reason, you have a Paladin on raid healing and 2 Shamans healing the tank

You're doing poorly on Twins meters because the job you do best is being done poorly by other classes. Once your guild figures out better healing assignments, you'll see better performance.

Regarding the BT parse:
-Najentus: you have much less healing done on the MT (Ryu) than Andromedia. You clearly weren't keeping up your hots.
-Supremus: you have lots of overhealing from Lifebloom and a much lower average tick than Andromedia, as well as less healing done on Firian. Less raid healing with Lifebloom, more healing the tanks.
-Teron: again, less raid healing with Lifebloom, more Regrowth
-RoS p2: Andromedia used Rejuv heavily here, which is interesting, keeping it up on 6 people. You opted to roll Lifeblooms on 4, but that was actually more healing than those 4 needed.
-Gurtogg: looks like Andromedia was more focused on raid healing, while you were more focused on tank healing. Not a bad thing, but raid healers will naturally do better here.
-Shahraz: you died or DC'd?
-Council: you died again
-Illidan: you weren't healing both flame tanks, Andromedia was. You also weren't healing the Warlock tank, which is fine if that was the assignment.

I hope some of this helps. Overall tips: roll Lifeblooms on anything taking high, steady damage. Don't raid heal with single Lifeblooms. Don't die.

 

meringue

I've actually found this to work well, am I missing something? (recent convert from bear)

Numbers: (2203 +heal)

Lifebloom: 7 ticks x 265 + bloom for 1658 = 3513 healing done in 7 seconds for 220 mana (assuming no crit on bloom)
501 HPS, 16.0 HPM
1100 mana every 7.5s to keep a party going, no free GCD
147 mana per second used on party.

Rejuv: 4 ticks for 992 = 3972 healing done in 12 seconds for 415 mana
331 HPS, 9.6 HPM
2075 mana every 7.5s to keep a party going, 3 free GCD
173 mana per second used even if no spells cast in free time.

With a 1.5s GCD you can almost keep lifebloom up on a whole party, casting a new one less than a second after the old expires, which I find to be very useful for times I'm assigned to party heal situations like najen'tus, reliquary, bloodboil, kalecgos, etc. I have better HPS and better HPM, and the worst case average healing comparison over a 3 second period is only 795 (3 LB ticks) vs. 992. Now if other people are healing the same targets as you this breaks down, but for tightly assigned raid healing Lifebloom looks superior.

 

malthrin

You've hit the nail on the head. Single Lifeblooms work fine in 5-mans or situations where you are solely responsible for a group. However, if there are other healers watching your group, people will be topped off before Lifebloom can bloom.