Smart AoE Heals being wasted on temporary units?

[Aleksej89]

I gotta say i am hating these "smart heals" that prefer to target a Wild Imp (that despawns after a few seconds) at 55% HP instead of a player who is at 59% HP.

Spells like Wild Growth, Chain Heal, pretty much all Priest AoE Healing - they all tend to waste themselves healing very short lifespan creatures, like Wild Imps or Hunter's temporary beasts or Priest's Shadowfiend.

Instead of targeting actual wounded players, these "smart heals" will waste healing on (soon to be un-summoned) creatures just because they have a few % lower life than the actual valuable players.
Heals that actually target 4 or 5 or even more players end up healing like 2 or 3 players and rest wasted on irrelevant critters...

This ougta be changed.

[Aleksej89]

300 views and no replies

[Tziva]

Maybe it's dumb and ought to be changed, but I honestly don't feel like it's a big deal. There's never been an instance where someone important died because an imp sucked up a smart heal, and my actual effective healing on those mobs is so low on logs that its basically a negligible amount.



I mean, a tenth of a percent? All of them together are not even half a percent.

[Dreyo]

Looking at the overall log doesn't tell you the whole story.

If the tank dies because your smart heal hit the Ghost Iron Dragonling instead of the tank, then that tenth of a percent suddenly has rather enormous impact. This is why healing logs in general are far less useful than damage logs - the situational aspects of exactly when, who, and how healing happens is everything. And just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it never happens.

And yes, it is annoying. Particularly so in the case of the Ghost Iron Dragonling, because I get these big Immune messages popping up, which only adds insult to the injury.

[Deleted]

Looking at the overall log doesn't tell you the whole story.

If the tank dies because your smart heal hit the Ghost Iron Dragonling instead of the tank, then that tenth of a percent suddenly has rather enormous impact. This is why healing logs in general are far less useful than damage logs - the situational aspects of exactly when, who, and how healing happens is everything. And just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it never happens.

And yes, it is annoying. Particularly so in the case of the Ghost Iron Dragonling, because I get these big Immune messages popping up, which only adds insult to the injury.

Pretty much this.

[Leih]

Just be glad it's not as broken as Holy Prism was till 5.1 or so. For some reason, it preferred pets vs. players regardless of health state. The amount of times I used it when the whole raid was on ~50% hitpoints and it came back with "Holy Prism Healed: 0 [255k Overheal, 5 hits]" because it had hit 5 wild imps, even though the whole raid worth of players could have used the heal.

But yeah it still can be a bit annoying. I guess if they made it so smart heals couldn't target pets at all, someone would whine that they can't keep their friend's hunter pet alive because their smart heals are 'broken.'

[Deleted]

But yeah it still can be a bit annoying. I guess if they made it so smart heals couldn't target pets at all, someone would whine that they can't keep their friend's hunter pet alive because their smart heals are 'broken.'

Having the BM Hunter pet killed in a serious PvP enviroment might lose you the game. But I see the point. The thing is, temporary pets shouldn't be targeted (only if there are no other targets with <100% in the AoE, ofc). There wouldn't be any imaginable downsides as far as I can think atm.

[Tziva]

Looking at the overall log doesn't tell you the whole story.

If the tank dies because your smart heal hit the Ghost Iron Dragonling instead of the tank, then that tenth of a percent suddenly has rather enormous impact. This is why healing logs in general are far less useful than damage logs - the situational aspects of exactly when, who, and how healing happens is everything. And just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it never happens.

Of course it doesn't. I only posted that to show that the overall healing contribution was negligible, as I said in my post. The list is not valueless, though. It tells you one very important thing: it's not sucking heals off important targets very often and the amount of healing it is taking is trivial. That means the risk of your scenario happening very, very low.

On top of this, we have to acknowledge that most raids aren't keeping their tanks alive with smart heal bounces exclusively in part because of the unpredictability. Furthermore, even if they were - you're just as likely to lose a tank to a bounce to a DPS (in fact, much much much more likely) than to a shadowfiend. If the situation is that hairy, you're going to be casting direct heals on the tank, making the odds of such a situation occurring even lower.

On top of that, most temporary pets have inate resistances that prevent or limit the amount of damage they take, meaning they're usually at full health or dead and not even a desirable target for smart heals.

Finally, the healing meters may not tell you the whole picture looking at the healing by actor list I posted, but you certainly can tell the circumstances when a tank died because a heal went to someone else. The parse is there, right on the site. I raid lead, I look at death logs, and I can't say I've ever seen the case where we wiped because a trivial mob sucked up all the healing that needed to go to a critical player.

Sure, it's anecdotal. That's just one player's experience and one heal log. But it's enough for me to not feel the issue is one of concern. It might be dumb, but I think it's a little overdramatised if we're going to present it as an issue that is wiping raids.

[fengosa]

Looking at the overall log doesn't tell you the whole story.

If the tank dies because your smart heal hit the Ghost Iron Dragonling instead of the tank, then that tenth of a percent suddenly has rather enormous impact. This is why healing logs in general are far less useful than damage logs - the situational aspects of exactly when, who, and how healing happens is everything. And just because you've never seen it doesn't mean it never happens.

And yes, it is annoying. Particularly so in the case of the Ghost Iron Dragonling, because I get these big Immune messages popping up, which only adds insult to the injury.

If the tank is at risk of dying why are you casting an aoe heal over a ST heal?

[Aleksej89]

I just hate casting something like Wild Growth to heal up 3-4 party mates, only to realize that half of those players DID NOT receive the heal - so i have to cast some HoT or something, thus wasting even more mana...

[Tziva]

I just hate casting something like Wild Growth to heal up 3-4 party mates, only to realize that half of those players DID NOT receive the heal - so i have to cast some HoT or something, thus wasting even more mana...

Oh, I agree, it is definitely dumb. Smart heals should really prioritise target non-trivia entities (I would include a hunter's primary pets in this category fwiw) and if their low basehealth is inadvertently putting them higher priority than real players, reevaluating how priority is calculated isn't a bad idea.

My second reply was mainly just because it's really exaggeration for anyone to represent the issue as the kind of thing that is causing genuine problems by drawing extremely unlikely (for numerous reasons) hypothetical scenario where the tank died because a temporary mob stole his critical heal. That just will not ever happen and the healers would have be making a lot of stupid choices to create a scenario where it was even possible. The problem might be irritating and not a good design, but not at the end of the day, these mobs are only taking a miniscule amount of healing.

I don't think these kinds of units should be totally removed from the AoE heal table (since keeping them alive means more raid DPS and I'm sure as hell not going to waste direct heals on them), but they should always be behind players and long-term pets, even if those units are only down a few percentages and they're almost dead. If that's not the case, I'm not against Blizzard taking a look at it or anything.

[Deleted]

If the tank is at risk of dying why are you casting an aoe heal over a ST heal?

Replace "tank" with "dps" in aoe damage phase.

[Rivellana]

All I can say is try starting a thread on official forums about it. Seriously.

When mistweaver monks' renewing mist was suddenly targeting combat pets, non-combat pets, and golden bananas alike, someone made a thread on the official forums about it and Blizzard ended up fixing it so it would prioritize players. It can't hurt, right?

I play a discipline priest right now so I'm still mostly in the non-smart heal boat as far as relying on prayer of healing, but being that every single other class relies on smart heals now I completely understand.

[Aleksej89]

All I can say is try starting a thread on official forums about it. Seriously.

When mistweaver monks' renewing mist was suddenly targeting combat pets, non-combat pets, and golden bananas alike, someone made a thread on the official forums about it and Blizzard ended up fixing it so it would prioritize players. It can't hurt, right?

I play a discipline priest right now so I'm still mostly in the non-smart heal boat as far as relying on prayer of healing, but being that every single other class relies on smart heals now I completely understand.

Unfortunately i can not post on USA forums since i am from EU, but perhaps someone from here can?

Either way i am at least relieved to know that i am not the only person being bothered by this annoying pet-healing targeting mechanic.

[Rivellana]

Unfortunately i can not post on USA forums since i am from EU, but perhaps someone from here can?

Either way i am at least relieved to know that i am not the only person being bothered by this annoying pet-healing targeting mechanic.

Have you tried posting one on EU forums and leaving a link here?

I don't post on official forums but if you did I'm sure someone wouldn't mind copy/pasting your thread from EU forums to US forums. Either way, Blizzard would get to see it if it's there, no matter what region it's posted to.

[Wildtree]

I just hate casting something like Wild Growth to heal up 3-4 party mates, only to realize that half of those players DID NOT receive the heal - so i have to cast some HoT or something, thus wasting even more mana...

Here's my observation.
If I throw a WG, and my trigger target is the tank, I have noticed that it very often jumps on pets that are on the mob/boss as well. I agree, that I don't want that to happen all the time. I heal perma pets rather particularly and not broad.
What I try is to toss my WG onto players in range. The melee gets the Swiftmend circle.
If there isn't a lot of damage going on, it doesn't matter if temp pets, or even perma pets get a WG.
The tank has all spells I can provide him with on him at any time they are up, and NG/HT combo is sitting there waiting to get tossed out on unusual spike dmg.

When it comes to heals, I am one of the people who totally ignore meters and such.
My job is to heal, keeping people alive, and to do that properly and efficient. I may end up being the last healer on the meter, because some others went bat crazy.. But when there's nothing to heal, I don't cast anything else than LB on the tank, and making sure Harmony is up.
I may end up being on top, because I have to pick up some slack from others.. I really don't care, as long as I do my job reliable.