World of Metercraft (Healers)

[Amerrol]

The main problem was that the raid leader thought: "high on meters" = "good healer"; "lower on the meters" = "the one at fault".
Which is an oversimplification others will make every time if we support it some of the time, and in the example given it was misleading.

I remember that thread. That was simply a poorly ran guild, and most of the responses were telling the poster to just find a different guild. Stuff like that happens all the time unfortunatly. Good leaders know what to look for in a healer.

One of our Holy Paladins takes a huge hit to her hps by focusing 90% of her attention to the tanks, especially on fights with massive tank damage. Everone on our healing team understands the reasoning, as do our raid leaders. It allows the raid healers to focus on the raid, and not have to constantly worry about tanks not being looked after. Many "tank healers" just keep a modicum of their attention focused on the tanks they are supposed to be healing, and it just becomes various healers pitching in, but when the shit hits the fan no one is prepared. Dedicated tank healers with supplemental healing from the raid healers are where it's at, but some people would just not be willing to take that hit to hps. I include myself in that category as I would not be happy at all as a tank healer.

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Remember Wild Growth in FL? Holy Radiance in Dragon Soul? Spinning Crane Kick in MSV? Ye, so do I. With Renewing Mists continuing the trend in ToT. Since ever smart heals were implemented, healing requires very little, if any skill at all, and is currently by far the easiest raid role in the game.

On a personal skill level, I suppose I can agree with this. Being a DPS is not difficult. Being a DPS performing to max potential is difficult. Tanking in raids is also more about personal skill. Picking stuff up, switches, CD usage, etc. It is a bit more involved than dps as you have to pay attention to what is going on around you, as well as yourself, but in the end the current formula is akin to the DPS role in personal responsability.

Healing difficulty, on the other hand, is directly proportinal to not only personal skill, but also to the skill of everyone else in the raid. If everyone is performing perfectly, healing won't be much of a challange, unless you severly undergear an encounter. Now if people are messing up, your job just got a lot harder, and that is completely out of your control. Healing is either the easiest (and most boring) role, as evidenced on farm content, or the hardest because you have to adjust to every single mistake someone in the raid makes.

Don't get me wrong, there is overlap between the roles. You aren't in a vacuum in a raid setting. Everything has the potential to effect something else in a dozen ways. Healers just end up taking the brunt of those effects as their role is there to make sure everyone else can do theirs.

[MattCauthron]

I didn't realize anyone did anything on Tortos... Our entire raid just tries to pad the meters as high as possible. Healers try to reach that elusive 300k HPS mark and DPS AOE the bats on Tortos like crazy. Then again maybe meter padding doesn't work as well in 10 mans... In 25 mans meter padding is simply doing your job bar specific healer roles for the relatively few fights that need focused tank heals.

[Toxigen]

Healing meters and the e-peenery that follows is a huge detriment to the game as a whole.

If the boss dies and the raid lives, the healers did their job...plain and simple.

Back in the day it was understandable if the tank healer(s) had much lower healing done than raid healers in AoE-intensive fights. Most of us didn't pay any attention to the healing meters, anyway.

I still play my resto shaman. Sure, disc priests and holy pallies are killing me on meters. When "stacking" mastery to fit my playstyle, I'm the one landing those massive clutch heals that save people from dying...and in effect, save the raid from failing.

I don't need a meter to tell me I'm doing it right.

[Deleted]

If the boss dies and the raid lives, the healers did their job...plain and simple.

This is such a silly statement. Do you actually believe that shit or are you just trolling?

[Docta]

I don't really see a problem unless people are going OOM, and this just hasnt been the case forever. Overhealing used to be what we cared about back in the day, but managing mana is a thing of the past. What does it matter if you bring the minimum ammount of healers to get the job done? You seem to be concerned with people doing the best job they can; but why then do you think the problem must lie with the person ontop of the meters?

[Toxigen]

This is such a silly statement. Do you actually believe that shit or are you just trolling?

...and what makes it silly?

Sorry boss, I've been playing since day 1 and that's how we've always looked at healing. Its easy enough to figure out who drops the ball with their assignment...that's not the point. I never needed a healing meter to tell me the resto druid raid healing will do more effective healing than the tank healer(s).

[Amerrol]

Sorry boss, I've been playing since day 1 and that's how we've always looked at healing. Its easy enough to figure out who drops the ball with their assignment...that's not the point.

Please tell me how you can figure out which one of the four raid healers is under-performing without a meter. If one healer sucks, and the other three are good, the other three just end up covering for him. Unless you are specifically watching someone the whole fight, you can't really tell unless they die a lot or they fail to use CDs when they are supposed to. It is very rare to assign specific group to specific healers anymore.

With tank healers it is generally easier to tell, because if the tank died, the messed up. But what if none of the raid healers helped out in ways they are supposed to with Lifebloom, Earth Shield, PW:S, etc?

Comparing day one healing philosophy to the current one is beyond ridiculous. The game has changed.

I never needed a healing meter to tell me the resto druid raid healing will do more effective healing than the tank healer(s).

Grats? You know how basic healing principles and class composition work.

So what's the difference between the healer not caring about meters and doing his job correctly, and the healer who is trying to maximize his output on the meters but still doing his job? You are confusing healers who pad meters with healing that is benefiting the raid, with healers who will pad meters to the detriment of their raid. Are you complaining about spammers who run out of mana half way through the fight? Because those people will not be topping meters anyway if they cannot heal for 50% of the fight.

As long as I have mana for when I really need it, what does it matter that I am trying to mitigate or heal as much damage as possible? It even helps the reactive healers out as they don't have to spend as much mana. If the other healers are wasting mana to try to snipe me and have 50% overheal, that's not really my problem, and the fault lies on their end. That is something the raid leader and officers need to address, not me having to reign in my healing because they can't. The more hps I can pump out, the less chance there is of someone dying when they make a mistake.

[Mesima]

On a personal skill level, I suppose I can agree with this. Being a DPS is not difficult. Being a DPS performing to max potential is difficult. Tanking in raids is also more about personal skill. Picking stuff up, switches, CD usage, etc. It is a bit more involved than dps as you have to pay attention to what is going on around you, as well as yourself, but in the end the current formula is akin to the DPS role in personal responsibility.

Healing difficulty, on the other hand, is directly proportional to not only personal skill, but also to the skill of everyone else in the raid. If everyone is performing perfectly, healing won't be much of a challenge, unless you severely undergear an encounter. Now if people are messing up, your job just got a lot harder, and that is completely out of your control. Healing is either the easiest (and most boring) role, as evidenced on farm content, or the hardest because you have to adjust to every single mistake someone in the raid makes.

Don't get me wrong, there is overlap between the roles. You aren't in a vacuum in a raid setting. Everything has the potential to affect something else in a dozen ways. Healers just end up taking the brunt of those effects as their role is there to make sure everyone else can do theirs.

I agree with your sentiments completely.

I've never been top dps or heals but I don't care to be either...not to say that I don't care about my performance or cd usage but in a sense that isn't me saying "haha I have the highest HPS y'all es noobs". I'm sure others would agree (or disagree) but I get more excited seeing a DPS pull big numbers vs myself or any other healer pulling big numbers. As long as we are doing our jobs properly and using our cd's when we need to then all is well in my book.

[Anastacy]

I agree with your sentiments completely.

I've never been top dps or heals but I don't care to be either...not to say that I don't care about my performance or cd usage but in a sense that isn't me saying "haha I have the highest HPS y'all es noobs". I'm sure others would agree (or disagree) but I get more excited seeing a DPS pull big numbers vs myself or any other healer pulling big numbers. As long as we are doing our jobs properly and using our cd's when we need to then all is well in my book.

But you're just doing the same thing OP did; lumping in generalizations with other generalizations.

Not *ALL* healers that watch meters and try to improve their numbers are doing so with this supposed malicious intent ("hahaha n00bs"). We do so because it's fun for us, creates a healthy competitive attitude (competition isn't inherently toxic), and doesn't harm the raid one bit (actually helps sometimes) as long as we're not running out of mana and people aren't dying (which NOBODY HAS EVER ADVOCATED risking the raid).

[Amerrol]

But you're just doing the same thing OP did; lumping in generalizations with other generalizations.

Not *ALL* healers that watch meters and try to improve their numbers are doing so with this supposed malicious intent ("hahaha n00bs"). We do so because it's fun for us, creates a healthy competitive attitude (competition isn't inherently toxic), and doesn't harm the raid one bit (actually helps sometimes) as long as we're not running out of mana and people aren't dying (which NOBODY HAS EVER ADVOCATED risking the raid).

Yep. Never once have I rubbed it in one of my fellow healers faces that I outheal them pretty much every fight. I never even bring hps up. Do I feel good about beating them or ranking on a fight? Sure I do, but it is not malicious at all. Sometimes they do tell me how much they hate me and my shields, though.

[Mesima]

But you're just doing the same thing OP did; lumping in generalizations with other generalizations.

Not *ALL* healers that watch meters and try to improve their numbers are doing so with this supposed malicious intent ("hahaha n00bs"). We do so because it's fun for us, creates a healthy competitive attitude (competition isn't inherently toxic), and doesn't harm the raid one bit (actually helps sometimes) as long as we're not running out of mana and people aren't dying (which NOBODY HAS EVER ADVOCATED risking the raid).

Ah, that wasn't my intent. Guess I should have worded it better

[Pum]

There is basicly no challenge anymore for me as a healer these days and the raidversions I do now when you compare it to let's say vanilla. I find that if I focus on beating other healers I have the most fun, and that is what's raiding is about these days for me.
My behaviour basicly stems from TBC where, even in a top10 guild (still, it was what, 1/2 months behind Nihilum?), we healers made bets before the boss /100g and the winner of the healingmeter got the gold. This was implemented by the healingteam after we killed Illidan and realised we had to do it for another 6/7 months to have some fun. Throughout Sunwell and WotLK we basicly kept this emphasis on winning the healingmeter but still raged on someone spamhealing the shadowpriest' shadowword:death for example, I mean we didn't take it to the extreme like your Tortos Example. It's just hard to get that out of your system and I don't believe I should anymore, for me these days it's about seeing I am 'keeping up' with the healing, since imo it's a lot about spamming the shit out of it these days.

Oh please, there has never been any point in WoW where Healing hasn't been about spamming shit, I think MoP has been the first time that there has actually been a little differentiation in how a Healer plays out, consistently. Apart from a few select raids from earlier expansions, it has all been the same.

The only difference I'd say between MoP and all the other expansions is the magnitude of absorbs that are in the game. Which of course adds a huge layer of safety to raid mechanics, but don't act like healing has ever been different, because it hasn't.

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Healing meters and the e-peenery that follows is a huge detriment to the game as a whole.

If the boss dies and the raid lives, the healers did their job...plain and simple.

Back in the day it was understandable if the tank healer(s) had much lower healing done than raid healers in AoE-intensive fights. Most of us didn't pay any attention to the healing meters, anyway.

I still play my resto shaman. Sure, disc priests and holy pallies are killing me on meters. When "stacking" mastery to fit my playstyle, I'm the one landing those massive clutch heals that save people from dying...and in effect, save the raid from failing.

I don't need a meter to tell me I'm doing it right.

Fair enough, but if that Disc Priest and that Holy Pally are doing 40% of the healing each and you're doing 20% of healing.. No matter how many lives you're saving, you're pretty much dead weight as a healer, because as a healer it isn't just good enough to be the guy who saves all the lives.

Additionally, how do you have any idea that one of the other healers wasn't also throwing a player a life-saving heal, but were 0.01 seconds too late? That's going to show up as overhealing, and you're going to have a hard time knowing what they have just done. If there is 1 player on the brink of dying you can be rest assured that all the healers have targeted him and are smashing buttons to bring him back up and keep him alive.