How to deal with a healer union?

[Deleted]

Progress has been over for a long time, but reflecting on the tier I as a raid leader had a huge problem with trying to criticize and talk to healers during progress. Any discussion was met with hostility and denial as all the healers grouped together and deflected any blame leveled towards any of them. What was especially frustrating was their constant complaints about DPS whilst being unable to look at their own shortcomings so we could improve.

Have any of you guys had this problem and how did you deal with it?

edit - for those asking for logs, this post is on behalf of a friend who wants to keep it confidential

[Schattenlied]

You're the raid leader, tell them to be willing to take criticism or gtfo.

[Deleted]

You're the raid leader, tell them to be willing to take criticism or gtfo.

All 5 of my healers mid progress?

[EzG]

Progress has been over for a long time, but reflecting on the tier I as a raid leader had a huge problem with trying to criticize and talk to healers during progress. Any discussion was met with hostility and denial as all the healers grouped together and deflected any blame leveled towards any of them. What was especially frustrating was their constant complaints about DPS whilst being unable to look at their own shortcomings so we could improve.

Have any of you guys had this problem and how did you deal with it?

If you want to criticize them I would suggest learning their spec in and out then comparing them to other healers/comps/guides and determining if they really are doing something wrong at all. Of course a simple solution would to tell them to get it straight that they might be the problem, but dealing with a stubborn healer is like dealing with an infant child. I would start with the informed criticisms then move on to other repercussions like being benched or even kicked. Something that this forum does good is having healer discussions for each class, and what you could do is take logs from your run and post them to their proper place and let other healers that creep this forum analyze and pick apart how they heal and give you information on what is going on instead of trying to figure everything out yourself.

But I agree with @Schattenlied. You're the raid leader, you can't let children walk all over your opinion or even a fact during progression.

[Breccia]

Progress has been over for a long time, but reflecting on the tier I as a raid leader had a huge problem with trying to criticize and talk to healers during progress. Any discussion was met with hostility and denial as all the healers grouped together and deflected any blame leveled towards any of them.

Well hold on. Were they right? It's not the healers' fault if your players stand in the fire.

[Deleted]

Well hold on. Were they right? It's not the healers' fault if your players stand in the fire.

Was more like they couldn't do more healing when other raids where taking more damage and their healers were coping. Or any mistake they made mechanic wise was because they were trying to save other people and so wasn't their fault.

[Dukenukem]

Progress has been over for a long time, but reflecting on the tier I as a raid leader had a huge problem with trying to criticize and talk to healers during progress. Any discussion was met with hostility and denial as all the healers grouped together and deflected any blame leveled towards any of them. What was especially frustrating was their constant complaints about DPS whilst being unable to look at their own shortcomings so we could improve.

Have any of you guys had this problem and how did you deal with it?

Do the DPS maximu for their performance and self defence? if you have 0 healthstones 0 HP potions used, self defence CDs laying idle and mediocre DPS prolonging the hard phases clean those up before ANY complain to heals.

Unless they are really underperforming there is more likely be a DPS error than healers

[clevin]

Without logs this discussion is kind of useless. They might be shit healers, banding together and being defensive. Or they might have been tired of being blamed constantly when your DPS is too stupid to avoid optional damage. No logs, no way to tell, no point.

[RuneeBH]

All 5 of my healers mid progress?

Sounds more like regress to me if you can't talk to them...

[Sithalos]

Boot them and find people that don't suck.

[Demeter]

I refuse to work with any raider who cant take criticism, its time to find yourself a good recruiter and just replace them - there are a lot of good players out there you just have to find them.

[shi]

Do the DPS maximu for their performance and self defence? if you have 0 healthstones 0 HP potions used, self defence CDs laying idle and mediocre DPS prolonging the hard phases clean those up before ANY complain to heals.

Unless they are really underperforming there is more likely be a DPS error than healers

how does it make sense to always blame dps before healers? it's a team effort, healers should try their best to cover for dps mistakes, dps try to take as little damage as possible to make the healers job easide.

responsibility goes both ways, all the burden shouldn't be filtered through dps doing absolutely everything perfectly before any blame goes to healers.

[clevin]

how does it make sense to always blame dps before healers? it's a team effort, healers should try their best to cover for dps mistakes, dps try to take as little damage as possible to make the healers job easide.

responsibility goes both ways, all the burden shouldn't be filtered through dps doing absolutely everything perfectly before any blame goes to healers.

Again... we need logs. At some point it IS the fault of the DPS - there's a certain amount of covering that healers can do but if they're stretched, it's on the DPS. There's also (as you note) healer responsibility. But we need logs so we can look at specifics. If these are just prima donna healers, F them. On the other hand, if the raid always looks to blame the healers and lets tanks and DPS off the hook, the RL is wrong. We need facts, period.

[Dukenukem]

Again... we need logs. At some point it IS the fault of the DPS - there's a certain amount of covering that healers can do but if they're stretched, it's on the DPS. There's also (as you note) healer responsibility. But we need logs so we can look at specifics. If these are just prima donna healers, F them. On the other hand, if the raid always looks to blame the healers and lets tanks and DPS off the hook, the RL is wrong. We need facts, period.

Also this, logs are really the only thing that can settle this.
And sorry to be so jumpy, but after 8 years of raid healingits DPS pulling sub optimal numbers and blaming heals

[Schattenlied]

Or any mistake they made mechanic wise was because they were trying to save other people and so wasn't their fault.

If that's the case, the proper response is "It is your fault. save yourself first, you ignoring mechanics to try and save someone else who isn't doing them right just hides the real problem and gets everyone killed, losing a DPS isn't as big a deal, if a healer dies, a lot of people go with them."

If the healers are not lying to cover their own asses, and not stupid, they will stop getting themselves killed to save other people, and the ones who are causing the fuckup to begin with will be revealed, and you can start addressing the core problem.

If they are lying, they won't be able to use that excuse anymore if you make it clear that it's just covering the real problem, and this is your stance on it, and it's not acceptable.

[Deja Thoris]

Yea without something like facts to work with it could be anything from

1) They are bad, wrong and sticking together

or

2) They are right

How you deal with it depends on the circumstances.

[Fayenoor]

Boot them and find people that don't suck.

I agree with this person.

Unions/cliques within a guild need to be disbanded as quickly as possible. Find the Alpha; kick the alpha. In the long run, it will help you more.

I had similar issues with our guild back in Firelands. I kicked some, rest left in protest to form a competing guild. That new guild lasted exactly a month before they broke up over loot dispute.

Meanwhile we are still raiding (albeit way more casually).

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

All 5 of my healers mid progress?

To be fair if you let it get to this point then its your problem to fix.
Issues like this I IMMEDIATELY deal with.
I don't tolerate children in my guild, and if some one acts out or tries to coordinate dissent then they are immediately spoken with and if it continues kicked, no matter what.
Some times, the fastest way to progress is to replace players.

It sucks, but as I said, you have allowed it to get this way, so now its your job to fix it. Hopefully your Officers support you, otherwise that may be the end of your tier.

[Deleted]

Also you shouldn't judge healers on their numbers per se. You can't say "your druid sucks because (s)he does only 100k hps during that fight, where i see druids doing 150k on that fight.

It depends a lot on the amount of healers you bring, composition (druids and shamans heal less if there is disco's and pallys around whose shields heal first), and determining how their cd rotation is set.

"top logs" are always scored by healers who saw their fellow healers die halfway throught the fight and they had to makeshift alone, or were underhealing from the get-go.

footnote: this might be a little off-topic though, not really sure.

[judgementofantonidas]

Progress has been over for a long time, but reflecting on the tier I as a raid leader had a huge problem with trying to criticize and talk to healers during progress. Any discussion was met with hostility and denial as all the healers grouped together and deflected any blame leveled towards any of them. What was especially frustrating was their constant complaints about DPS whilst being unable to look at their own shortcomings so we could improve.

Have any of you guys had this problem and how did you deal with it?

have run into it often. as the tank you can tell when the healing changes on you but healers will deny it until you show meters and beat the truth out of them. this need not be because they are slow on healing but maybe because the dps is being stupid and standing in shit, but the bottom line is something needs to be fixed because you keep wiping. with current non mythic content if a tank dies it is to lack of healing. even a marginally geared tank. it is that easy to keep them up.

i would have to hear more. dps could have been the problem. many special snowflake healers become accustomed to raids that have top dps that shorten the fight to the point healing is trivial.