Help Request: Healing CDs

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

Hello good folks,

I am a guildmaster of a semi-hardcore guild. We are 7/7M, 2/3M and 1/10 M. The biggest thing which is holding us back is my inability to come up with a good plan for effective usage of healing cooldowns. We either hold them - using em only once per 6 min fight is a waste, or we blow them up too quickly and then we have nothing in some important moments.

Is there any healing leader who could give me some advices on how to use cds in the most efficient way?

Thanks for all the answers.

Grïm

[OrcsRLame]

Look at the points where you're having people die. Assign CDs to those points until the deaths stop.

For the most part, it really is that simple if you just want to assign the big 3 minute CDs. If you want to micromanage literally every fucking CD that healers have, well, it's basically the same thing but you would need to go a lot more in depth with your analysis of what is killing you when and how much healing is enough.

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

What if those moments are comming like 2-3 minutes into the fight? I am watching a lot of streams/kill videos and most of the guilds seems to be using big cds while taking light/medium damage just to conserve mana - which is definitely worth it imo.

[Deleted]

What if those moments are comming like 2-3 minutes into the fight? I am watching a lot of streams/kill videos and most of the guilds seems to be using big cds while taking light/medium damage just to conserve mana - which is definitely worth it imo.

Reading logs is vital skill for raid leader. First you need to analyze why you didn't manage to kill the boss - what was the root cause?
Then address that.

If healing CDs can help - then:

Since you know your healing comp, you know which CD's you have available, what they do and what their CDs are - ok so you know what your possibilities are.

So look at your logs from your raid, see when there's damage going out, when people are dying and generally when "stuff goes wrong".
Assign healing CDs for these moments. See if anything improves.

If you're still wiping but for another reason (like healers running out of mana) - then move on to address that reason - maybe asssign CDs to preserve mana

Etc. etc. - being a good raidleader has a lot to do with being able to analyse your data and take decisions based on it. Sub optimizing things (like mana conservation) is not needed unless you actually have a problem with OOM'ing healers.

You might also consider promoting one of the healers to "healing lead" - and let them decide CD usage.

[OrcsRLame]

What if those moments are comming like 2-3 minutes into the fight? I am watching a lot of streams/kill videos and most of the guilds seems to be using big cds while taking light/medium damage just to conserve mana - which is definitely worth it imo.

That's simply a math problem. If you know that 3 minute CDs are needed 3:15 into a fight, then you have 15 seconds from the pull to use them in order to not waste a use.

Conserving mana is certainly nice, but if you're not confident in your logistical abilities, always error on the side of caution. It's way better to waste a bit of mana than to wipe because you didn't have CDs when you need them.

If you're not confident you can make these sorts of decisions on your own, promote your best healer to healing lead. At least get the input of someone that's experienced.

[Temp name]

If you're not a healer, let your healers decide amongst themselves. They likely have a better idea when they're needed than you do as a non-healer.

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

If you're not a healer, let your healers decide amongst themselves. They likely have a better idea when they're needed than you do as a non-healer.

We tried that and it did not work out. So I am trying to sort it for them.

[Deleted]

Isn't even 1 of your healers capable of taking on the responsibility to lead the healing team? It's almost impossible for a non-healer to know exactly when the CDs are needed for each fight, unless a healer tells you, and at that point shouldn't that healer be able to lead the healing team anyway?

[Emerald Archer]

Hello good folks,

I am a guildmaster of a semi-hardcore guild. We are 7/7M, 2/3M and 1/10 M. The biggest thing which is holding us back is my inability to come up with a good plan for effective usage of healing cooldowns. We either hold them - using em only once per 6 min fight is a waste, or we blow them up too quickly and then we have nothing in some important moments.

Is there any healing leader who could give me some advices on how to use cds in the most efficient way?

Thanks for all the answers.

Grïm

I go find 2-3 guilds that have killed the boss I'm looking to do up healing CDs for, i'll check the times when life threatening damage comes in, and assign 1-2 cds (depending on what's needed) to each lot of damage, after that I will go through and add in cds for medium damage moments wherever there are cds left.

If it's a fight where if someone misplays, large damage goes out, I'll have 1-2 cds held as "Oh-shit" cds incase of people messing up.

- - - Updated - - -

Isn't even 1 of your healers capable of taking on the responsibility to lead the healing team? It's almost impossible for a non-healer to know exactly when the CDs are needed for each fight, unless a healer tells you, and at that point shouldn't that healer be able to lead the healing team anyway?

It's very easy to pre-organise healing CDS, and put a note up in angry assignments/exorsus notes. You can get timers from warcraft logs, other guilds encounters etc.

[Alltat]

If you're not a healer, let your healers decide amongst themselves. They likely have a better idea when they're needed than you do as a non-healer.

Or better yet, pick a healer you trust and delegate the task to them. Part of leadership is not trying to do everything yourself.

[Deleted]

It's very easy to pre-organise healing CDS, and put a note up in angry assignments/exorsus notes. You can get timers from warcraft logs, other guilds encounters etc.

A lot of fights do not have pre-determined situations where you can assign CDs, some do, not all.

Even when you have situations where you know CDs will be needed, only the healers know when the CDs are needed. Take for instance Chronomatic Anomaly, when he channels overwhelming power, you will need CDs to heal through it at some point, but only the healers can really know exactly when during that channel the regular healing is not enough and a CD is warranted.

[Temp name]

We tried that and it did not work out. So I am trying to sort it for them.

In that case, just go along the fight and see where it's needed, then assign 1 CD there for the next attempt, and so on until you're either out of CD's, or the boss is dead. If you kill the boss with CD's left, tell the healers to feel free to use them whenever

[Cronovey]

If you really want to break it down, look at your logs. Don't worry about mana, damage done, all that jazz, just take a look at the damage taken graphs. Look for areas where it spikes up quite high first, and then break it down further. Did this damage spike high because people made mistakes or because the damage was something unavoidable?

In the event of the first, it's just mistakes or poor performance such as not hiding on Tichondrius or eating a Fel Beam on Krosus. In the second case, this is where you would look to use a cooldown. For example, on Star Augur in the ice phase at the beginning of the fight, there are going to be a couple periods where you'll have a large portion of the raid with the Icy Ejection debuff applied to them; this would be an optimal place to use a healing cooldown to reduce overhealing and try and get the most out of it. It really just comes down to the fight and the particular timing of events during them, as well as what kind of healing team you have at your disposal and their legendaries or talents. A resto druid with the Tranquility boots may see better usage of their cooldown when people are much lower than they would when they're all above 50% HP, and as long as people aren't going to die to anything in the meantime it's not a terrible thing to let the other healers conserve some mana knowing that a superpowered Tranquility will likely top off the entire raid for them, etc.

Keep in mind as well that some cooldowns are reduced by certain affects as well, such as monk Revival through a legendary they can use, so you really need to inspect your healers and see what they're using for items and talents as well to really make the best of their cooldowns.

[Emerald Archer]

A lot of fights do not have pre-determined situations where you can assign CDs, some do, not all.

Even when you have situations where you know CDs will be needed, only the healers know when the CDs are needed. Take for instance Chronomatic Anomaly, when he channels overwhelming power, you will need CDs to heal through it at some point, but only the healers can really know exactly when during that channel the regular healing is not enough and a CD is warranted.

On Chronomatic, you need 1 attempt and your healers should be able to say when they need a healing CD. There are waves of damage, but you can also quite easily assess what your team should be able to do based on other guilds, and if it doesn't work, just use the healing cd later/earlier. It's all about communication.

Some fights it's harder, like Elisande, best thing you can really do on things like that, is set up a healing cd order, then have your healers use when medium-high damage goes out, and call over voice chat when they used it, and if they don't have a mic, set a macro so the healing cd whispers the person next in order. (People can use Exorsus raid cds to track the other healers cds)

[Deleted]

Look at logs and find the most damaging parts of the fight. Usually finding places to put healing Cds isnt difficult if you understand the fight a bit.

For example lets take tichondrius. Look at the bosses casts he does 4 sets of 2 brands every 3mins ish. You can isolate this on logs very easily.
So you can do
1 - Tranq
2 - Tide
3 - Hymm
4 - Aura

but you need to look at a few things here too. A - Aura is not as strong as Tranq/Tide so you might want to put it at the start where there is less raid damage because of less plagues. 3/4 of those cds can be used while moving hymm cant. What if the person who needs to hymm gets brand? In the logs you can see brand 1 and brand 5 are not 3mins apart so you need something to cover the first brand after the night phase. I would put personals/rallying cry to cover then begin the rotation again.

The biggest tip is to work backwards!
For example krosus where the damage on the last platform is very high you want a healing cooldown for almost every slam/pitch and orb. So the way i would do it is look at those point on the logs assign healing Cds and then look 3mins earlier into the fight and see where you can use it. This way you can get the maximum uses out of the Cds while making sure its actually up for when you need it.

[Deleted]

On Chronomatic, you need 1 attempt and your healers should be able to say when they need a healing CD. There are waves of damage, but you can also quite easily assess what your team should be able to do based on other guilds, and if it doesn't work, just use the healing cd later/earlier. It's all about communication.

Some fights it's harder, like Elisande, best thing you can really do on things like that, is set up a healing cd order, then have your healers use when medium-high damage goes out, and call over voice chat when they used it, and if they don't have a mic, set a macro so the healing cd whispers the person next in order. (People can use Exorsus raid cds to track the other healers cds)

This is exactly my point, one or more healers should be able to communicate when CDs are needed. OP makes it sound like the healers in his team are clueless and he has to call for CDs while in the dark.

[Emerald Archer]

This is exactly my point, one or more healers should be able to communicate when CDs are needed. OP makes it sound like the healers in his team are clueless and he has to call for CDs while in the dark.

But they very well might be clueless. Or just unwilling to call CDs. Some people just want to heal without the extra pressure.

4/5 healers in my team don't want to make healing calls, up until last night I had to do it as a hunter. Which worked fine because I did my research beforehand and had it all set out, so I dont' have to make calls on the go 99% of the time. It's all written out beforehand.

[BrioWoW]

Most fights pretty much tell you when you should be using cds.

[Broccoliz]

You definitely want to be maxing healer CDs. You are forgetting a key reason to use them - yes it is to prevent dying during heavy damage, but it is also the most mana efficient plan in the world. If you aren't maxing CDs your healers are spamming unnecessarily. For example on mythic Odyn you should have something planned to recover from every single horn of valor and every single blast (after adds).

CDs are RARELY holy shit emergency!!! Buttons. They should be planned every single minute of every single fight (if you are serious about it).

To do this, make a list of all CDs available including things like commanding shout and know if they are 3 min, 2 min, etc.

Then watch a kill video. Mark the time of any raid aoe damage. Assign a CD. Ezpz.

For example (these are MADE UP NUMBERS) for Mythic Odyn -

00:30 - Horn - Revival
1:30 - Blast - Tranq
2:00 - Horn - Devo


Etc..... etc......

Use them all to your max. Do you need a CD for the first horn? Hell no healers could easily heal it. But assigning one allows all other healers to dps. It allows them all to save mana. And it allows CDs to start ticking so you never have 3 healers pushing their buttons at the same time. Force the stagger.

Hope this helps!

[Emerald Archer]

Then watch a kill video. Mark the time of any raid aoe damage. Assign a CD. Ezpz.

Don't do this, don't find the damage times from a kill video. Use warcraft logs, easier faster cleaner more accurate.