1. #1

    Healing assignments?

    I healed in BC and Wrath, and am accustomed to having tank healers and raid healers primarily assigned before an encounter. I took Cata off and have recently started healing in a raid environment again. My guild doesn't assign healers though, and we're wiping on really easy fights like 10M normal Feng because people are dying from, in my opinion, lack of heals. When I mentioned it they reacted like I was an idiot. My question is does the general population just wing it or is there some structure in place that my guild is lacking?

  2. #2
    My guild is consistently assigning the healers to tank, CD rotations, etc. Maybe in a pug people would wing in but I would expect in a raiding environment that there would be assignments.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by thesmuggler View Post
    I healed in BC and Wrath, and am accustomed to having tank healers and raid healers primarily assigned before an encounter. I took Cata off and have recently started healing in a raid environment again. My guild doesn't assign healers though, and we're wiping on really easy fights like 10M normal Feng because people are dying from, in my opinion, lack of heals. When I mentioned it they reacted like I was an idiot. My question is does the general population just wing it or is there some structure in place that my guild is lacking?
    To be perfectly honest with you. Raid assignments pretty much died with the babe of the lich king.
    The other thing tho. We, our healers have been together for so long now, that we are completely sync with each other, sort of speak.
    We know from each other what we usually do. Of course , if we notice issues, we look into it. And if there's need for raid cooldowns, we'll discus that usually after a couple of tries

    TLDR; usually there's no assignments, unless if there's problems.

  4. #4
    I think that it depends on the raid leader. I personally always assigned healers based on what I had, the type of fight, and so forth. But other people may not seem a need. I can see it working either way, it just depends on what is going on in the fight. Try and look at logs, and determine what's really causing the deaths. It may be a lack of heals, but it could be that those people that are dying needed to be healed more because they were standing in something they shouldn't have been. And then go from there. If you really feel like healers should be assigned after that, and the rest of the raid/raid leader, still doesn't want to, then it may be best to find another guild that suits your preferred play style a bit better.

  5. #5
    Healing has changed a lot since TBC and Wrath. Generally, the biggest difference is that no one can afford to only tank heal or only raid heal, that will indeed lead to wipes. Many healers today have a mechanic that is basically wasted if not always kept up on the tanks (Lifebloom, Earth Shield, Beacon of Light), so the question is no longer "who heals the tank", because someone always will a little. In addition, pretty much every healer today has a mitigation cooldown, so there should never be a situation when the tank requires being spam-healed for extended periods of time, that's what the cooldowns are for. The healers can chuck a cooldown on the tank and continue healing him as normal while continuing healing the raid in-between.

    There are some rare situations when assignments are needed, but not assignments such as you mention (tank vs raid healing), but rather assignments of groups. These situations are almost exclusively times when the raid and the tanks need to split up and the healers can't be all in range of everyone. Examples of this are fights like Alysrazor in Firelands (2 groups, each dealing with one side of the area and one hatchling), or Morchok in Dragon Soul (2 groups, each dealing with one boss).

    Additionally, healing cooldown assignments are often a good idea. For example, on Feng our tanks take care of 1st and 3rd Draw Flame, while we as healers mitigate the 2nd and 4th. We will usually have Aura Mastery+Divine Hymn for the 2nd one and then Barrier and our bear's Tranquility for 4th. It works very comfortably.

  6. #6
    Stood in the Fire
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    My guild assigns healer cooldowns specifically but we dont assign a tank healer etc, we have the understanding that we all heal the tank/s by default and divert attention as needed.

  7. #7
    We usually limit assigns to cooldown rotations, location assignments or mechanics rotations in my guild. But those are incredibly useful to have.

    As to who heals what, that's secondary and honestly not very interesting. And as many have mentioned already, you cannot really afford to specialcase anymore, everyone really has to chip in on tank, spot and raid healing alike.

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  8. #8
    Herald of the Titans Kuniku's Avatar
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    I'm in a similar boat to the OP, I've always prefered tank healing to raid healing, but now it seems to be a horrible mish mash of everything in a nasty free for all of snipe healing =(

  9. #9
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    I am the healer officer for a 25 man guild and we assign healers, all the addons for assigning healers are gone so its back to macros for me. I expect its possible in 10 man but not 25 man.

    If people are dying then you need a set up i suppose.

  10. #10
    Mechagnome Sharrel's Avatar
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    we used to have healing assingments till about half through wrath.. then they flew out the window. most the time we don't any more. though we do coordinate cooldowns and the like. generally even if i do have a healing assingment in a run. i'll throw heals out to help out the other healers if it looks like it's needed.

  11. #11
    The most I've had experience with since TBC with regards to healer assignments is things like don't double buff a tank, so don't have Beacon and ES on one and none on the other.
    Other than that the most 'assigning' I've had experience with (even being healer leader + raid leader at the same time) has been discussing/researching what the different specs strengths are and making sure that they play towards that and the more flexible healers cover some small holes

    For instance, Shaman keeps down healing rain and chains melee, priest can use prayer of bong at good times, druids can hot a tank but not spam heal them etc.
    Last edited by Xs; 2012-11-02 at 01:03 PM.

  12. #12
    Yes, there are assignments for both healers and everyone with raid-survival CDs.

  13. #13
    We needs logs to see why people are dying. If they're dying in bad stuff, no healer will be able to keep them up, even with assignments.

    For assignments, if tank damage is high, we have healers watch over their tank and the spare healers heal raid and spot heal on tanks.

    Assignments are more for raid cooldowns and if the raid is spreadout, you would need to assign healers to different areas of the encounter.

    How would you assign healers on feng? I feel there might be an issue with strategy more than healer assignments. If you're not using the nullification barrier correctly, healers will not be able to keep up. You would need to set up raid cooldowns as well when the nullification barrier is not up on a special.

  14. #14
    Just about every fight this tier has something that will cause unhealably high damage on someone if they are stupid enough to stand in it. Most guilds usually wing it, but play to their healing comp's strengths. If you are on a priest and have 2 healing hpals in your comp, tank healing may not be something you as a priest need to worry about. Whereas if you have 2 resto druids you may want to give a little more attention to your tank.

    Both guilds I was in this tier only came up with CD rotations to prevent overlap, healers should know how to heal.

    If your problem is on feng it is probably because people are messing up on the actual mechanics of the fight which makes it overly hard to heal while you are under-geared.

  15. #15
    The main thing we do in my guild is plan healer CDs for the fights that really need CDs for a very powerful boss mechanic. You can't have everybody popping theirs for the first one, then a minute later need more and not have any left, or have everybody saving theirs for later and run into one with no cds. These are best coordinated for the fights that do have predictable, recurring burst damage. Unless tanks are dying consistently on a fight or there's a range issue for a certain mechanic or strat, I never assign anybody specifically to tank healing vs raid healing, and I haven't in a long time. Even then, I just tell all healers to watch the tanks more closely during whichever part of the fight seems to be problematic. Every healer can raid heal and tank heal, so every healer should be healing everybody when needed.

  16. #16
    One nice thing about assigning tank heals is that you don't have six people throwing their OMGHOLYCRAP spells on the tank whenever he/she dips low on HP. Saves a lot of mana for the team as a whole.

  17. #17
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    Some bosses I make assignments, others I do not. Spirit Kings for instance requires no such assignments, whereas Elegon does. For Elegon I'm disc so I smite the boss all p1 while my Paladin friend heals the target outside plus the add tank. Likewise I find it a good idea to assign healers to certain tanks on Stoneguard.

  18. #18
    Elemental Lord clevin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ygorl View Post
    One nice thing about assigning tank heals is that you don't have six people throwing their OMGHOLYCRAP spells on the tank whenever he/she dips low on HP. Saves a lot of mana for the team as a whole.
    This. If you're wiping and it's due to healing issues (people not getting heals, healers OOMing), then you need to have some basic assignments. Something like "Healer A, watch the raid, especially ranged. Backup healer B who will primarily heal the tank and melee. Healer C will get the offtank, melee and will backup Healer A on raid healing" Will be fine (obviously this will vary by encounter, raid makeup etc.)

    A raid that resists any kind of organization or planning would be a red flag for me unless it was a group that was tight enough that they all knew what each other would do and were good at it. However, repeated wiping to issues that grow out of a lack of coordination shows that they aren't all that.
    Last edited by clevin; 2012-11-05 at 05:41 PM.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by clevin View Post
    This. If you're wiping and it's due to healing issues (people not getting heals, healers OOMing), then you need to have some basic assignments. Something like "Healer A, watch the raid, especially ranged. Backup healer B who will primarily heal the tank and melee. Healer C will get the offtank, melee and will backup Healer A on raid healing" Will be fine (obviously this will vary by encounter, raid makeup etc.)
    Some assignment can be useful. Especially for 25m. But for 10m, especially if you are only running 2 healers, both healers need to heal both the tank and the raid. One might slightly favor tank over raid, and vice versa, but both healers need to be prepared to help the other with their assignment regularly.

  20. #20
    Elemental Lord clevin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by openair View Post
    Some assignment can be useful. Especially for 25m. But for 10m, especially if you are only running 2 healers, both healers need to heal both the tank and the raid. One might slightly favor tank over raid, and vice versa, but both healers need to be prepared to help the other with their assignment regularly.
    Yeah, if you're running 2 healers, I'd agree. But you still need some planning if the raid's wiping to healing issues (and it's not avoidable damage being taken by dps, tanks failing to use defensive CDs, etc). Now, it could be that a healer is overhealing like mad, not geared for regen or throughput or something... so it could be a non-planning related issue. But if both people start spamming the tank, end up overhealing them drastically and later OOM...

    Coordination is a good thing. So is in-raid communication.

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