I want to take my healing a step further.

[Myrrar]

I hate site maintenance =/

A non-crit Healing Touch heals slightly less than a crit Regrowth, so it won't give any more overhealing than Regrowth.

Then why use HT with a long cast time, that won't proc NG, and won't proc LS? HT is only useful on a tank when you just can't catch up. You don't want to spam RG 5 times, so this is when you use HT. Almost every endgame druid plays this way. It's just the most efficient way to play mana and throughput wise.

It doesn't matter if its progression or not. This thread was about improving as a healer and you can do it very well outside progression as well. Just think what you do and really try to focus on improving a single aspect first, as an example.

Yes, but pretending people need to not RG/use RG on CC for NG is silly. As I said, it hurts more than helps. If you NEED NG, save it. If you don't, don't. Wasting a lot of RG potential during a raid isn't practicing for the future, it's playing badly. You adjust to what your raid needs. And at no point right now does your raid need you to hurt your overall effective healing for a phase you don't need NG in.

My original point was and still is that why would using Nature's Grace when it's not needed at all useful? The moments when you can easily top people with Swiftmend, Nourish, HoTs and Healing Touch on clearcasting procs don't really require those faster casts or one extra tick more on HoTs, so might as well save the cooldown for a moment when you do.

Because it's still useful. All healing that's not overhealing is useful. If you never use ToL or Tranq unless it's super useful you miss out on a ton of healing and don't use CDs 50% of the fights. If I save tranq for a phase that normally needed it, and it just goes to 90% overhealing, it's wasteful. Why? I could have used it twice in the fight and it would have led to more overall effective healing.

Random #s but:
1. Use NG on CD. Leads to 200k effective healing over an entire fight.
2. Save it and use it a phase it's still not needed. Heal 100k over an entire fight.\

As I said multiple times, if you NEED it and it's going to be helpful, save it. Saving it now when it's not needed it a waste healing. You don't heal now like you heal at the beginning of a raid. You don't need extensive practice to watch a timer before a big phase and not use a CD. You already do that with Tranq and ToL. It's not new or exciting.

[Alzu]

Now I actually understood where our mindset differences come from. I like to think every farm raid as progress and try to improve. And you (at least seem to) think of them as just farm raids that don't require any attention.

My usage of Healing Touch comes also from my mindset. You ask why use it. My answer is just because I don't want to proc Nature's Grace. That is the benefit in my opinion, but of course if you want to proc Nature's Grace, then it's not a benefit, only the opposite.

But at this time, after all nerfs and clears, it's very true that it doesn't matter a damn thing to save it, so better use it off cooldown.

[Myrrar]

Practicing on a raid that is taking no damage isn't practicing. It's not teaching you anything. It's not showing you how to react or heal, because it's not real time numbers. If you have the time to heal baby content at full force, dps. Make the fight last less time and clear the content faster. If you want to go full force all the time more power to you, but farm content is farm content. They don't require attention. Sit as many healers as you can. In 10s, if you need 2 healers, try and help your raid finish the fight as cleanly and fast as possible. Spamming 90% overhealing does nothing for you or them.

And even on progression, NG isn't going to save your raid in a high phase. It's still more useful, besides just huge dmg phases when you have no more CDs, to use it on CD throughout the fight. Enough people will be taking dmg that it wont be going to overheal. It has a 1min ICD, if you are constantly not RGing to save it in you are just hurting yourself.

NG isn't tree, it isn't tranq. I get you want to min/max, but saving NG isn't min/maxing. In most cases it's just hurting that goal.

[Alzu]

Now I'm confused. Dragon Soul has 25% nerf so one quarter of the damage has been cut off. Our 10-man guild healed most fights with 3 healers, now every encounter with 1 or 2. Thats one third of the healers. So a single healer has to heal more than before. Sure we got better gear now but it pretty much equalizes it, doesn't it? I don't know where you get your claims for "no damage" or "90% overhealing" from.

Zon'ozz was a healing intensive fight at start. It still is just because we just ignore the adds at high health and we have dropped a healer. I checked our logs. I took the earliest Zon'ozz kill that wasn't deleted (from 1st of February, 5% nerf I believe) and our log from a week back. On the earlier log, we had taken 96.8k dps as a raid and used 3 healers and had even a Blood DK tank. On the last week's kill, we took 85.6k dps as a raid. That was with 2 healers. Even if ignoring the Blood DK's heals and the rest of the raids self heals, on the first raid us healers had to heal ~32k hps. On the other kill, we had to heal ~43k hps.

I don't know about other guilds. I didn't do any region wide research about this but we're taking a lot more damage for each healer to heal nowadays. Than back then. Of course gear was worse back then but it makes our effort pretty much the same then and now. Your claims about no damage baby raids are baseless.

And claiming that playing during farm raids doesn't teach you anything. With your mindset, damn right you don't learn anything. You have to be willing to learn to get anything from it. If you think what you do and just set your brains to "On"-mode, you really pick up things what you focus on. Say you're trying to improve on keeping the Lifebloom stack refreshed with Nourish and focus that particular thing during the whole raid. Now why would it be impossible to get better at it just because it's farm or "baby" content?

And here we are again. "NG isn't going to save your raid in a high phase." Why wouldn't it? People do sometimes dip to less than 1k health and then get the heal they need and survive. Tadaa, Nature's Grace just saved someone because he gained an extra Rejuvenation tick or got that lifesaving heal faster. Everything counts. Always. One enchant is a small thing, why would it save someone? If one enchant doesn't matter, why get them at all? Because they do matter. If a dps in this raid (link) missed an enchant, the wipe would be his fault. Thats one single enchant from next to 20 dps that would have been the reason. If one enchant can prevent a wipe, why couldn't Nature's Grace? It is the small things that makes it whole and things like Nature's Grace or Tauren racial do save people.

[Myrrar]

Healers need to do more per healer than before, but:

Raid takes 25% damage and less damage from gear.
Mobs have 25% less health, raid kills faster due to that and gear.
Healers have less mana problems due to both, and more gear.
Healers heal more, due to gear.

It really doesn't even out. Even with 3 healers beginning hmDS 10 you had to watch your mana. Now, with 2 healers you really don't. Mana is a non-issue. No one should be having healing issues in HM DS, 10 or 25. Yes, you still put out a lot of healing due to the nature of fights, it's not the same kind of healing as before. It's not 'I need to push myself 120% to clear a fight. You can't watch netflix and AFK, but min/maxing isn't necessary.



Farm content doesn't teach you anything because if you are farming DS HM, you already know most of what you will get from there. To clear DS HM know, and clear it easily, you need to know the basics of your class. Knowing how to refresh LB with nourish, knowing how to manage CDs, knowing basic synergy with your partner and what place you have in that synergy are the basics. Where upper level skill comes into play is RNG, panic situations, and real group synergy. Like I said, this isn't something farm content will teach you. I can play 120% on this content if I wanted, the places where all players can use the practice..it's not going to happen. The boss strats have been on farm for 6 months, RNG panic situations are pretty much a non-issue, and seeing how real damage goes out isn't happening.

I completely understand what you are trying to say. We expect all our raiders, backup, recruits to be min/maxed 110% skill, gear, everything wise. I think all the different discussions are crossing too much. At this point in the game, and from the skill level he claims to be, the difference between being a good healer and a great healer aren't things that can be practiced in 25% nurfed DS farm content.

As for NG, even if you use a fight at the beginning of progression, between cross healing, CDs, and the rest of your spells NG isn't going to make a big difference. You don't never use SM and never use NS in case you may need it. I have had many fights over the years that have been right on the edge due to the progression race and doing HM fights in last tiers gear, but healing isn't black and white. If someone is at 1k health, you/they did something wrong. You don't base your healing style around mistakes. You learn to react to them, but you don't hurt healing elsewhere just in case. The RGs you didn't throw earlier could have been the life savers. The extra ticks on the hots in a place you couldn't predict could have been a life saver. Huge predictable phases, you already have a full arsenal of spells and CDs you and your raid will have ready. Let spells that are supposed to be constantly used be constantly used.

[Deleted]

While this is true, there's one very important thing to note: Healing is about keeping people alive as a TEAM.

I think it's important to point that out. While I enjoy technical discussions, this is one of the most important issues, especially in 25-man raids.

Maybe this is the simplest answer to your original question: know the healer(s) you are healing with. Everyone should do what they can do best. That means not only to calculate with the classes - some classes will shine for special tasks at a specific boss, others won't -, but also to take the talents of every player into consideration. In the end, you can only be as good as your raidlead is.

For example, there are still some raid leads who think that palas are only tank healers because they used to be. For some bosses it might be best to let a shaman heal the tank, for another boss you might not need a dedicated tank healer at all. That example might be extreme, but it illustrates what I'm trying to say. It applies to the little things as well, like when to prefer which raid cd and so on.

Being flexible, thinking out of the box and reacting to unexpected situations exactly the right way in harmony with the other players in your raid - THAT makes a really great player. I think this is much more important than playing "perfect", whatever that might be as a healer. Unfortunately you can't really "train" that. It comes with experience. And some players just have it in them, some don't.

And yes, I too analyse my harmony uptime, cd usage, hot uptime, overheal etc. etc. ... but I don't think that theorycrafting only will make you shine as a healer. There's much more to it that comes with the attitude of a supporter vs. egoistic hps ranking maniacs.

[Alzu]

Now this is text I actually agree on and understand myself also. I guess this has been what you've been trying to say?

Anyways, as I don't really have the patience to continue this as neither of us can truly convince each other in our causes, I'm going to say: Thanks for the debate. You have many points that I agree on, but at least the way you said some things, I didn't quite catch the true meaning of it and even got quite angry about it and that's why I don't want to continue really. Sorry about that, btw.

About NG, it's just difference in healing style. And there isn't any rotations to it so no one can say that use it exactly as the fifth spell to cast. I prefer to do it in different times as you and most others do, but that's just my style and I'm fine with it. Maybe a bit sub-optimal but keeps myself more calm as I know that I got that 1% more when needing it. But I don't think there's anything you can do to convince me otherwise, or I can do to convince you.

[Ashrr]

Maybe this is the simplest answer to your original question: know the healer(s) you are healing with. Everyone should do what they can do best.

And yes, I too analyse my harmony uptime, cd usage, hot uptime, overheal etc. etc. ... but I don't think that theorycrafting only will make you shine as a healer. There's much more to it that comes with the attitude of a supporter vs. egoistic hps ranking maniacs.

Yes. Luckily, I have the luxury of healing alongside every healer class so I have a fair understanding of what my team mates are capable of. That being said, in my raid group I'm brought in to throw out as much overall healing as I can. I don't usually dispel, I don't soak stuff and in most cases, I'm not given healing targets. The only time I did something extra in DS was taunting off the tank on Hagara.

I know my place in my group and for this role, near-perfect and consistent execution plays a big part There are others with better tools to handle unexpected situations and I trust them.

[Deleted]

There are others with better tools to handle unexpected situations and I trust them.

Chapeau! for the others in your raid then.

[Hoticehunter]

1. Better Lifebloom uptime - I play with a 200ms ping so my Lifebloom sometimes falls off when I try to Nourish refresh with 2 seconds left. I'm trying to correct this by refreshing with another LB but I'm all ears to suggestions.

I'm not sure what UI you use, but with Grid, I can set it up to show me down to the tenth of a second (##.#) what the duration is on lifebloom so it makes it a lot easier to know if you can refresh it safely with nourish, or if you'll have to go with regrowth or lifebloom. I can post a picture if you're interested.

[axxey]

Wow. My respect for Myrrar totally gone down the shitter.
Healing isn't about overall max throughput, unless we get another new fight with constant raidwide I'm not going to constantly overheal damage.
There's ZERO reason to waste nature's grace in a low throughput phase of a fight just to pad your numbers(that's absolutely all it's doing by Myrarr's reasoning using it on CD) when it could constructively improve the more difficult phases of a fight.
It doesn't need to "save the day" to be making a constructive difference in the parts of fights where there's higher damage throughput and higher death risk. The fact that it's not a huge difference or that fights are nerfed into the ground doesn't change the fact that it is making some difference where it's worth it(instead of pissing it in the wind constantly), however small that difference may be.

WoL and overall healing throughput really have little to do with good healing, most WoL healing records are by bad raids taking too much avoidable damage allowing more healer padding.

[Myrrar]

Wow. My respect for Myrrar totally gone down the shitter.
Healing isn't about overall max throughput, unless we get another new fight with constant raidwide I'm not going to constantly overheal damage.
There's ZERO reason to waste nature's grace in a low throughput phase of a fight just to pad your numbers(that's absolutely all it's doing by Myrarr's reasoning using it on CD) when it could constructively improve the more difficult phases of a fight.
It doesn't need to "save the day" to be making a constructive difference in the parts of fights where there's higher damage throughput and higher death risk. The fact that it's not a huge difference or that fights are nerfed into the ground doesn't change the fact that it is making some difference where it's worth it(instead of pissing it in the wind constantly), however small that difference may be.

WoL and overall healing throughput really have little to do with good healing, most WoL healing records are by bad raids taking too much avoidable damage allowing more healer padding.

We aren't talking about when it goes to over heal. If you are overhealing with something from NG, you are going to overheal with anything you do since it does so little extra healing. You could spam just RJ all fight and probably be fine. If you have ever read anything I have ever said on these forums as you seem to claim, you should know I am a huge pusher of 'meters don't matter, raid synergy, niches, blah blah'.

The whole topic was, do you want to save NG for a high damage phase even though it's not needed, or use it as you normally do throughout a fight. Both of us said that if you are progressing on something where a life can be saved with it, save it. Save it smartly, but save it.

What we talking about was for instance:
3 big phases during a fight. The damage only brings people down to lets say 20% and there is no spike dmg in between. The chances someone have of dying are only if that person or someone else in the raid really fucks up.

So, do you save it for that slim chance while taking a hit to RG usage and NG actually going to effective healing, or do you continue to use CC/RG/NG usage as normal(on CD most likely). If it leads to 500k effective healing using it normally, or 100k effective healing on a fight that the people aren't going to die without it and it's really not causing more stress for you/your other healers, the 500k is the best way to use it, obviously. NG is a CD, but such a little CD it's not a CD you don't use unless you are right on the line. That's like saying you should never SM because you may eventually need it.

You use it as normal.