Low Activity Time

[thehordemage]

I do not play a priest but I like to learn a little more about what my healers are doing as I analyze logs. Is it normal for disc priests to have lower activity time than other healers? Why is it I see disc priests in the 65-85% activity time range? Would a priest be doing something wrong if they are below or above that? Thanks for any help.

[Deleted]

Not really tbh, you have filler spells like anyone else, mainly attonement (smite heals).

[Deleted]

Just make sure to not only check healing activity time, but damage activity too. Added together they should be pretty damn close to 100%. If they were at 65-85 for both combined, then I'd say you have a problem. The ABC of healing is ABC. Always Be Casting. Sure there may be times you end up cancelling a cast, but if you are doing heroics, they are few and far between.

[Deleted]

Just make sure to not only check healing activity time, but damage activity too. Added together they should be pretty damn close to 100%. If they were at 65-85 for both combined, then I'd say you have a problem. The ABC of healing is ABC. Always Be Casting. Sure there may be times you end up cancelling a cast, but if you are doing heroics, they are few and far between.

^
This was true in wotlk, not anymore (apart from monks pre 5.1).

Activity can (and should) be very different based on the encounter, there's very few encounters in the game where a healer need to be casting constantly (anywhere between 75-100% can be considered 'normal' for a disc, possibly even less if it's normal content/you are using too many healers for the fight/they have low regen). I'd even argue that if a disc priest has enough mana to cast constantly, even when damage isn't going out, s/he should be focusing more on throughput stats and less on spirit. It's really hard to judge how 'well' a healer is doing, but activity isn't the way to go, for disc you should obviously be looking at what spells they use and when, cd managment (e.g. when/how they use spirit shell) and rapture mana gain. Other things that can be useful is to see when they are doing the healing (healing during non-intensive parts is basically irrelevant) and what actions they took to save the players who died.

If you could link your logs here (or just pm me) I'd be a lot easier for me to tell you how your healers are doing and what to look at.

[Pepper]

According to me, web sites likes worldoflogs calculates active times based on a ratio between HPS and Effective Heal. As a Disc Priest, even if you keep casting some heals, your HPS will always be way higher than your Effective Heal because of the absorb you do. As an exemple, on our last normal Meljarak my HPS was 61k, but my effective heal was only 48.5k and my active time about 80%. On fights where I cast less Spirit Shells, or even less PoH, my active time is a lot higher...

[Deleted]

To Cookie, you notice this bit perhaps: but if you are doing heroics, they are few and far between Short of Amber Shaper (strat dependant) there is almost never nothing to heal in heroics.

Despite my earlier post, now I think more thoroughly (and having checked my own logs) damage + heal active times should exceed 100% substantially unless for some odd reason you don't ever cast holy fire.

Anyway, to judge the OP's healer, logs would need to be given, but as a general rule and checking heal activity time only 85% is kind of ok; I'd likely be concerned if a disc in my raid group was at 65 though.

[Deleted]

To Cookie, you notice this bit perhaps: but if you are doing heroics, they are few and far between Short of Amber Shaper (strat dependant) there is almost never nothing to heal in heroics.

Despite my earlier post, now I think more thoroughly (and having checked my own logs) damage + heal active times should exceed 100% substantially unless for some odd reason you don't ever cast holy fire.

Anyway, to judge the OP's healer, logs would need to be given, but as a general rule and checking heal activity time only 85% is kind of ok; I'd likely be concerned if a disc in my raid group was at 65 though.

Considering that all our sdp spells also heal you obviously can't just add them together and say "cool, I had 150% activity, yay me". I am doing hcs and every single fight have lower damage portions where you don't need every healer to heal (sniping heals looks really cool but it's retarded), the only fight where this may be untrue is hc empress (which I haven't completed yet). I'm typically between 80-100% healing activity on hc fights but there are people topping WoL with as low as 70. Activity is irrelevant even if WoL would be tracking it correctly (I'm quite certain that Pepper is correct that it doesn't).

Posted from my phone, sorry for any errors.

[Deleted]

Considering that all our sdp spells also heal you obviously can't just add them together and say "cool, I had 150% activity, yay me"(1). I am doing hcs and every single fight have lower damage portions where you don't need every healer to heal(2) (sniping heals looks really cool but it's retarded), the only fight where this may be untrue is hc empress (which I haven't completed yet). I'm typically between 80-100% healing activity on hc fights but there are people topping WoL with as low as 70. Activity is irrelevant even if WoL would be tracking it correctly (I'm quite certain that Pepper is correct that it doesn't).

Posted from my phone, sorry for any errors.

(1) Yay for made up numbers and replying to something that wasn't there.

(2) If you've yet to do Empress HC, then it's fairly likely you haven't done several other HC encounters, there are plenty where there is always something to heal.

Without wishing to deviate too much from the OP request, but still saying this as it is relevant, even though it's restating what I have already posted:

If you have ANY healer showing ~65% healing activity, there is almost certainly something wrong.

If trying to analyse a Disc priest and they have total healing and damage activity below 100%, something is almost certainly wrong.

Obviously the waters are rather muddied with atonement being factored in. To clarify what I mean by this: a recent log of mine where I played Disc had me at (for a randomly chosen fight) 93.5 % healing activity and 63.5% damage activity. What I was trying to say in my previous post was that if the total of these two activity figures was not more than 100% something is very likely wrong.

If you disagree, that's your choice, you are entitled to your opinion, however wrong you might be :P

[DailyBB]

Worldoflogs seems to clock my uptime at around 70 percent compared to my other healers being around 95-100. I think its just something about calculating bubbles v. actual healing or maybe cuz of smiting to stack atonement. Like i got 70% on our first heroic shek'zeer kill and do not doubt. . . I was ALWAYS casting something lmao

[Noradin]

So the problem might be that WoL is trying to calculate effective activity and failing?

[Deleted]

I would guess low uptime is due to Spirit Shell. Since when you're putting it up, you're not doing any healing whatsoever unless there's ongoing damage already. On fights where I don't use SS, I usually have a 99% uptime and doing mediocre healing with atonement only (my raid team is going with 3 healers even on fights where it's stupid due to dpsers not being available, so my dps is more important than my healing). But when I use SS, my activity goes down and healing up.

[Deleted]

(1) Yay for made up numbers and replying to something that wasn't there.

Just illustrating how silly it is, if you don't realise how retarded it is to combine the damage and healing activity of a disc when half of our spells do both at the same time I guess you are a lost cause.

(2) If you've yet to do Empress HC, then it's fairly likely you haven't done several other HC encounters, there are plenty where there is always something to heal.

I've done most of the heroic encounters in the game thank you very much (if you think not doing hc empress means that you haven't done most hc encounters that does indicate that you have 0 clue about the difficulty of the encounters though, so right back at you), please give me at least ONE example of a fight in this tier where all the healers have to heal constantly (apart from, possibly, empress).

If you have ANY healer showing ~65% healing activity, there is almost certainly something wrong.

Activity means nothing in the first place, in addition to this WoL doesn't calculate disc activity properly.

If trying to analyse a Disc priest and they have total healing and damage activity below 100%, something is almost certainly wrong.

For what retarded reason are you still trying to combine healing and damage activity when any atonement spell will increase both these values simultaneously? Have you done third grade math?

Obviously the waters are rather muddied with atonement being factored in. To clarify what I mean by this: a recent log of mine where I played Disc had me at (for a randomly chosen fight) 93.5 % healing activity and 63.5% damage activity. What I was trying to say in my previous post was that if the total of these two activity figures was not more than 100% something is very likely wrong.

WHY?! What is your reasoning for saying that these two activities combined has to be above 100%? You are basically saying that a disc who sits smiting the entire fight is doing everything right (he'll have ridicolus amounts of activity) while someone who does well timed PoH/shells are doing a shitty job. You just chose an arbitrary number without ANY reasoning behind your choice.

If you disagree, that's your choice, you are entitled to your opinion, however wrong you might be :P

Sadly you are entitled to your opinion as well, but not giving any reasoning for it and failing at third grade math means that it's worth nothing at all.

[DailyBB]

please give me at least ONE example of a fight in this tier where all the healers have to heal constantly

I don't have any qualms with what you're saying, but I thought i'd answer this question.

Stone Guard Heroic
Will of the Emperor Heroic
Garalon Heroic
Empress Heroic
Tsulong Heroic

[Deleted]

Just illustrating how silly it is, if you don't realise how retarded it is to combine the damage and healing activity of a disc when half of our spells do both at the same time I guess you are a lost cause.



I've done most of the heroic encounters in the game thank you very much (if you think not doing hc empress means that you haven't done most hc encounters that does indicate that you have 0 clue about the difficulty of the encounters though, so right back at you), please give me at least ONE example of a fight in this tier where all the healers have to heal constantly (apart from, possibly, empress).



Activity means nothing in the first place, in addition to this WoL doesn't calculate disc activity properly.



For what retarded reason are you still trying to combine healing and damage activity when any atonement spell will increase both these values simultaneously? Have you done third grade math?



WHY?! What is your reasoning for saying that these two activities combined has to be above 100%? You are basically saying that a disc who sits smiting the entire fight is doing everything right (he'll have ridicolus amounts of activity) while someone who does well timed PoH/shells are doing a shitty job. You just chose an arbitrary number without ANY reasoning behind your choice.



Sadly you are entitled to your opinion as well, but not giving any reasoning for it and failing at third grade math means that it's worth nothing at all.

Points addressed in order:

1. If you are not healing, you should be doing damage/building Evangelism. Unless of course you are on normals, then it doesn't matter a whole lot.

2. Tsulong , heroic of course. There are others. I was careful in my wording of my reply, in attempt to not have you see my point as an 'attack' on you and your progress level. For complete clarity, I will quote myself, bolding the relevant section and then you can compare your answer to my quote.

"(2) If you've yet to do Empress HC, then it's fairly likely you haven't done several other HC encounters, there are plenty where there is always something to heal"...........to which you replied "(if you think not doing hc empress means that you haven't done most hc encounters"

At NO point did I say "haven't done most hc encounters" You are obviously reasonably progressed, to have got to Empress HC (which if you want to be an arse about it, I first killed a month ago)

3. I suggest you perform some extended log analysis.

4. If you do nothing you have no activity, right?

If you do something as disc, that will either be healing activity or damage activity, or sometimes both at the same time, right?

By definition using the two above if your total of healing activity and damage activity is below 100% then something is wrong, very wrong in fact. My point was no more than this, if you are unable to grasp this concept, well....

5. See above, and perhaps try to actually comprehend the point.

And sure, I may have chosen an arbitrary number, feel free to choose a different one if yours is 'better'

Based on the OP's request, he is either: Not overly familiar with WoL analysis, or how Disc operates or both. Giving him a simple, no fills, arbitrary number may not exactly be an esoteric methodology, it is however a starting point.

All this silly back and forth because of your lack of comprehension. Anyway, I'll reply no further in this thread, unless the OP provides some actual logs and requests some analysis.

[Deleted]

I don't have any qualms with what you're saying, but I thought i'd answer this question.
Stone Guard Heroic
Will of the Emperor Heroic
Garalon Heroic
Empress Heroic
Tsulong Heroic

Glad to hear that you agree with the main point, I'll try to clarify this a bit more.

Stone guard varies heavily and when the fight is under control you don't need all the healers to heal (that you have unlimited mana and might as well keep spamming to avoid silly deaths is a different matter).
WotE hc. While the tanks are dancing one healer can easily handle the titan gas damage on their own, depending on your setup/if it's done properly you should have little damage apart from this. Considering the lenght of the fight and the amount of tank healing (=mana consuming) I can't even imagine it being possible to heal every single moment if you're geared properly (not overstacking spirit combined with the awful thing called spirit flask).
Garalon hc. Even if the healing required is quite high during the entire fight you obviously have less (no crush, low stack) and more intense (e.g. crush going out) parts of the fight, during the fights with low/medium intensity there's no need for every healer to spam to keep the raid up.
Empress hc. The only fight where I'd argue that you might need to heal constantly, even then the amount of healing you have to put out varies based on the phase (p3 def. doesn't seem to require 8 healers spamming to get through it, parts of p2 also seems less intense).
Tsulong hc. Dread shadow stacks vary and if they are low on most players all of you don't need to spamheal at that very moment. In day phase you don't 'need to' heal outside of breath/light, that you might as well due to the added regen is another matter.

What it all boils down to is that no fight in the game (well currently, blood-queen is a bit like that) has the exact same (high) healing requirements in every part/phase of the fight. For a fight you basically get as many healers as you need to cover the most intense part and in the other parts of the fight you obviously don't need all of them to spam heals constantly. Depending on the fight/healer they can either spend this time dpsing, regging mana or just pad the meters/spot heal to ensure that no retarded deaths happen. If you gear to ensure that you can cast at every single moment of the fight when no fights require you to you are simply trading output in the most intensive parts for something else (usually a bit of dps on the boss), this is rarely worth it. Replace a few spirit gems and learn to hold your casts for a global or two once in a while.

---------- Post added 2012-12-22 at 11:42 PM ----------

1. If you are not healing, you should be doing damage/building Evangelism. Unless of course you are on normals, then it doesn't matter a whole lot.

Building evengalism, yes, doing damage outside of evengalism, no. As I explained in the post above you will have gcds where you don't need to heal nor build evengalism in every fight (in some cases, few, that's true), if you chose to dps in these over simply regging your mana you are basically doing this at the expense of additional output in all the other parts of the fight (since you could sac the regen you needed for this dps for additional output stats).

2. Tsulong , heroic of course. There are others. I was careful in my wording of my reply, in attempt to not have you see my point as an 'attack' on you and your progress level. For complete clarity, I will quote myself, bolding the relevant section and then you can compare your answer to my quote.

See my previous post.

"(2) If you've yet to do Empress HC, then it's fairly likely you haven't done several other HC encounters, there are plenty where there is always something to heal"...........to which you replied "(if you think not doing hc empress means that you haven't done most hc encounters"

At NO point did I say "haven't done most hc encounters" You are obviously reasonably progressed, to have got to Empress HC (which if you want to be an arse about it, I first killed a month ago)

I doubt most people would interpretat that sentence in the way you intended, thanks for clarifying it.

3. I suggest you perform some extended log analysis.

Why? Clarify.

4. If you do nothing you have no activity, right?

Correct, and doing atonement dps for 50% of the fight and standing around dancing for 50% of the fight would result in a combined activity of 100%, while someone healing for 80% of the fight would get a combined activity of 80% (actually even less since WoL doesn't calculate activity properly), I know what I'd find more useful. Congratz though, you have concluded that having 0% in combined activity means that you aren't doing anything, that's about as far as analysing combined activity for disc goes.

If you do something as disc, that will either be healing activity or damage activity, or sometimes both at the same time, right?

By definition using the two above if your total of healing activity and damage activity is below 100% then something is wrong, very wrong in fact. My point was no more than this, if you are unable to grasp this concept, well....

1. You don't actually need to be doing anything 100% of the time in most fights. 2. WoL doesn't calculate activity properly. So no, you don't 'need' to have a combined activity of 100%. That any disc priest will have a way higher combined activity (while they could've been standing around sleeping for 40% of the fight) is another. The result is that your arbitary number has no value and telling him to draw any conclusions from it is silly.

5. See above, and perhaps try to actually comprehend the point.

And sure, I may have chosen an arbitrary number, feel free to choose a different one if yours is 'better'

Based on the OP's request, he is either: Not overly familiar with WoL analysis, or how Disc operates or both.him a simple, no fills, arbitrary number may not exactly be an esoteric methodology, it is however a starting point.

Giving someone information without basis, proof or reasoning behind it isn't helping someone in any way, shape or form. An aribitary number for activity is completely useless in any realistic scenario (unless he's worried about his discs priests sitting on facebook for the majority of the fight), so why should I provide one at all?

All this silly back and forth because of your lack of comprehension. Anyway, I'll reply no further in this thread, unless the OP provides some actual logs and requests some analysis.

Good.

[kouby]

Because of how WoL calculates active time, if your disc priest uses a lot of atonement healing he can get extremely low active time when still performing perfectly well.
Just check his graphs of spells used and if you see him multiple times using exclusively atonement for more than 10 seconds, this is your problem. If not then he's slacking.

[crakerjack]

Just make sure to not only check healing activity time, but damage activity too. Added together they should be pretty damn close to 100%. If they were at 65-85 for both combined, then I'd say you have a problem. The ABC of healing is ABC. Always Be Casting. Sure there may be times you end up cancelling a cast, but if you are doing heroics, they are few and far between.

That must be a new technique... I would have loved to see someone try and do this during TBC... they would be booted so quick from the raid hahahahah... Man, I can't recall how many mp5 gems I had on my resto sham.

[DailyBB]

Stone guard varies heavily and when the fight is under control you don't need all the healers to heal (that you have unlimited mana and might as well keep spamming to avoid silly deaths is a different matter).
WotE hc. While the tanks are dancing one healer can easily handle the titan gas damage on their own, depending on your setup/if it's done properly you should have little damage apart from this. Considering the lenght of the fight and the amount of tank healing (=mana consuming) I can't even imagine it being possible to heal every single moment if you're geared properly (not overstacking spirit combined with the awful thing called spirit flask).
Garalon hc. Even if the healing required is quite high during the entire fight you obviously have less (no crush, low stack) and more intense (e.g. crush going out) parts of the fight, during the fights with low/medium intensity there's no need for every healer to spam to keep the raid up.
Empress hc. The only fight where I'd argue that you might need to heal constantly, even then the amount of healing you have to put out varies based on the phase (p3 def. doesn't seem to require 8 healers spamming to get through it, parts of p2 also seems less intense).
Tsulong hc. Dread shadow stacks vary and if they are low on most players all of you don't need to spamheal at that very moment. In day phase you don't 'need to' heal outside of breath/light, that you might as well due to the added regen is another matter.

Oh, I assumed we were discussing 25m.

[Deleted]

While I'm not sure why that is, my healing activity % is also generally max 80-85%, and a lot of times lower. I assumed it has something to do with smiting, since otherwise I am always casting something (apart from when needing to move and even then I toss a shield/cascade/pom where needed). The Spirit Shell explanation seems reasonable too.

The activity figure also seems to reflect in usually a strange difference between ehps and hps - with hps being a fair bit higher than ehps, while I'm not doing that much overhealing (lower than all other healers usually). So, idd, wol might have a strange way of analyzing disc healing.

[Deleted]

Oh, I assumed we were discussing 25m.

I'm playing 10 man so I'll talk from that pov. The point: "no fight in the game has the exact same (high) healing requirements in every part/phase of the fight." still stands if you want to discuss 25 man.