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  1. #1

    World of Metercraft (Healers)

    I wanted to share an observation with the healing community to help put an end to toxic behavior that is hindering our gameplay and those who would seek out a healer.

    A time ago back in vanilla healing was a different animal. We would rank down our heals, use what we thought was the right spell for the moment and our job above all else was for the good and health of the raid.

    Many years later in a environment that has seen days of gear score and item level, intro to parsing, we live in another world. In this world you are measured not by how well you respond to a situation. Not by how well you can recover the raid from a large burst or strain but by how man numbers you can generate over the course of a fight.

    This behavior has become toxic. It creates specs, geming/refroging errors, it makes players cast spells at the wrong times all to try to generate the most numbers. A lot of people live by their ability to beat out someone else as a healer by the numbers they can put out.

    Is it bad to put out the most healing? My answer to that is not if you are gemed/reforged, talented and casting the right spells at the right time and you can honestly say you are casting nothing extra than what is needed.

    An example:
    I when I was new to my guild I played along side another Holy priest, I Holy myself and we had a disc priest. They fight I want to bring up is Heroic Tortos. Thres priests might be a bit much but we were going to make it work and Tortos is a holy fight for the most part. So anyone who knows this fight, you have to cast a spell on a crystal to gain a shield buff and healing down to you after that grows this buff to it's cap. At this point in the fight there is not much damage going out and a few simple AOE spells would top the shields off. The shields are there to survive Quake stomp were the whole raid will die without the shield and dip low with it. Myself and the disc priest saved our Halo for quake stomp. It is the right time to use that powerful spell and when timed right is amazing at topping everyone off after that mechanic. The other Holy priest who had a toxic playstyle popped halo as soon as everyone was refreshing their shields. When you first get the shield as far as the meters are concerned you are almost dead. Any heal will count 100% as healing and not overhealing. So you can imagine this would make you look really good on the meters.

    Toxic play style is thinking of how to heal more than anyone else at the cost of healing at the right time with the right spell. You should think of how I can get people topped off from this mechanic.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Is your playstyle toxic? Lets find out

    If you ask
    when is there time to regen?
    How can I increase my burst for that mechanic?
    How can I increase my constant throughput for this fight?
    What talent would work best for that mechanic?
    Am I casting when I don't need to? Could I lower spirit to increase my burst?
    Do I have worked out with the other healers who is best to heal the tank and who the raid?


    These are non toxic questions that you should be asking

    If you ask
    If I pick up more spirit I could i spam heals the whole fight?
    If I use this spell then will I beat the other healers?
    If I heal the raid instead of the tank will my healing be higher?
    How can I roll more HoTs to get the heals first on those little bits of damage that go out?


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    These are toxic questions this play style will gimp your healing When it counts!
    There is a difference between being able to pump out the most numbers and being able to pump out the most numbers at the right time. In some fights it might be a pure long term throughput (garalon in HoF). In some cases the mechanics might be bursty and you need more haste, int or even some crit.

    I challenge you to think about why you are doing something, whether it be in your gear, talents or what you are casting and when. Are you doing it because it is good for the survival and health of the raid? or because you can beat the other healers with it?
    Last edited by Nightstorm; 2013-07-26 at 03:17 PM.

  2. #2
    The Insane apepi's Avatar
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    It is more like World Of Whack a Weasel.
    Time...line? Time isn't made out of lines. It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round. ~ Caboose

  3. #3
    It's more like wack a weasel on crack swinging before weasels pop up.

  4. #4
    Generally speaking, if you're topping meters, no one is dying, and you have the mana to sustain your playstyle...you're probably doing evrything right.

    And there's nothing wrong with figuring out how to heal more.

    I wound up having to solo heal early P2 and beyond of Twins this week (unfortunate series of events) after I was already BRezzed. Had I never worked out how to heal more, should I have just admitted defeat?

    Is it wrong to solo heal fights (Jin'rok)? What about solo tank for an insanely quick kill?

    You've lumped self improvement in with meter whoring at the expense of the raid.

  5. #5
    Is it wrong to solo heal fights? Not at all. In this case you would change your gear and play style to fit that roll. Are you going to play and itemize the same way as you would not solo healing?

    Am I going to stack nothing but mastery on fights that echo of light ends up being 80% overhealing? No, it sounds like this is a bursty fight i will go more haste.

    Would have stacked haste on Garalon? no I would stack mastery since the raid is never topped off.

    What you don't want to do is stack spirit and mastery so you can roll echo of light on topped off targets to snipe small amounts of damage. If you are doing that you are invested into to much spirit and mastery and will gimp your ability to respond with force to incoming burst.

    Grant it this philosophy is not for those with shallow pockets as changing gems and reforges gets expensive but has great advantage.
    Last edited by Nightstorm; 2013-07-26 at 06:19 PM.

  6. #6
    If you have two priests who are both going to use Halo on Quake Stomp, why not have the third use it at a different time? He may have felt that the healing for that specific need was covered and he was free to use it at another time when it could be useful.

  7. #7
    Topping off the shields is easy, Halo is to big of a CD to waste and is very range position based. Maximizing coverage with this spell would be ideal. When topping off the shields no one was in danger why use a healing CD?

  8. #8
    Field Marshal Castochi's Avatar
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    And the OP's post exemplifies why I reached the conclusion that I was not meant to heal in World of Warcraft. I am a highly competitive person, and the moment I started playing the game back in WotLK and I found there was such a thing as Recount, Skada and the like, I began pursuing the maximization of my class/spec with the goal of performing better than my peers.

    I started out as a healer. A Holy Priest to be exact. And I prided myself in topping the meters during Heroic Dungeons, but then I started entering the world of Normal Mode raiding more or less during the Argent Tournament patch. I discovered the concept of overhealing, and that represented a new challenge for me: Top the meters with the least amount of overhealing possible. I had a greater or lesser success, but that is not the point.

    As you may very well imagine, this is by all means an extremely toxic playstyle in which for example, if I noticed the tank was about dead, but casting an AoE heal would benefit my Healing Done score more, I would opt to cast the AoE heal, let the tank die, and not feel any guilt about it because after all, I'm first in Healing Done and last in Overhealing Done.

    Thankfully, I realized the error of my ways and at the same time concluded that I cannot change the kind of person I am. For me, meters matter. Sim DPS sheets and parses matter. I am now a proud Prot Paladin with perfect Hand usage, Active Mitigation and cooldown management, as well as a Heroic Raiding Shadow Priest (specs are Shadow/Shadow now, lol) who pumps out sick numbers while making as little rotation mistakes as possible, failing in as little mechanics as possible, and even contributing to the raid with life-saving Void Shifts and Leap of Faith, restoring healer mana with Hymn, and did I mention sick numbers?

    Healing is definitely not for everyone. If you find yourself playing for the meters instead of for the heals, it is my opinion that you should definitely consider a different role more adequate to your playstyle, but that's just me.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Thanks for this post, Nightstorm. Sometimes people tend to get out of focus.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Nightstorm View Post
    Is it wrong to solo heal fights? Not at all. In this case you would change your gear and play style to fit that roll. Are you going to play and itemize the same way as you would not solo healing?

    Am I going to stack nothing but mastery on fights that echo of light ends up being 80% overhealing? No, it sounds like this is a bursty fight i will go more haste.

    Would have stacked haste on Garalon? no I would stack mastery since the raid is never topped off.

    What you don't want to do is stack spirit and mastery so you can roll echo of light on topped off targets to snipe small amounts of damage. If you are doing that you are invested into to much spirit and mastery and will gimp your ability to respond with force to incoming burst.

    Grant it this philosophy is not for those with shallow pockets as changing gems and reforges gets expensive but has great advantage.
    Sorry I'm not going to go reforge for every freaking fight. Change up glyphs/talents is ok because it's a low cost item and quick and easy to do. When I'm Holy I stack Spirit and Mastery as it'll cover a good range of all fights/encounters in the raid. If something changes where the next tier favors Haste more often then I'll make sure I get Spirit and Haste and just make up for the few fights that would favor Mastery more.

    It's also about playing to your advantage and to your co-healers (dis)advantages. Sounds to me like he was doing it just fine if he wasn't OOM'ing.

  11. #11
    For most content your right. I agree that changing your itemization per fight is $$. I don't do it for farm content. Check this out, most guilds right now have about a 4-5 week average time of attempts on Heroic Lei Shen before downing him. I am not talking top guilds but guilds that have just made it to him in the past couple months. So when you have that kind of relationship with a boss you compromise to meet the requirements on the encounter. I can be a bit extreme and hold high expectations. I don't expect everyone to play on that level. The only thing I want people to take away from this post is focus on the encounter and not the meters. Meters will steer you wrong in a lot of cases. That is unless the only thing you want is to top meters, on farm content and your guild is cool with it by all means, go nuts!. Just don't get caught up in this top parses are top players nonsense and if you don't believe me look up some top guilds armory and compare them to the top parses you see on world of logs. It might surprise you.

  12. #12
    Stood in the Fire espoire's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nightstorm View Post
    Topping off the shields is easy, Halo is to big of a CD to waste and is very range position based. Maximizing coverage with this spell would be ideal. When topping off the shields no one was in danger why use a healing CD?
    Why use a healing CD? How about: it's more mana efficient than topping them slowly. Halo has amazingly good HPM if it's all effective.

  13. #13
    it wouldn't be more mana efficient, you are just cock blocking the other healers from helping top off shields and that CD is better used on quake stomp. Anyway not the point of the post. lol

  14. #14
    There's nothing inherently wrong with healers continually looking for ways to increase their output throughout a fight. In fact, the best healers I know are always doing this, just like the best DPS. It's the people that are willing to sacrifice something more important simply for the sake of bigger personal numbers that are doing it wrong. The healers that are easily content with doing the minimal amount necessary to keep people alive tend not to be that great in my experience. I prefer healers that push boundaries and constantly strive for more, so long as they don't lose sight on the primary goal of keeping the raid alive while doing that.

  15. #15
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Castochi View Post
    Thankfully, I realized the error of my ways and at the same time concluded that I cannot change the kind of person I am. For me, meters matter. Sim DPS sheets and parses matter. I am now a proud Prot Paladin with perfect Hand usage, Active Mitigation and cooldown management, as well as a Heroic Raiding Shadow Priest (specs are Shadow/Shadow now, lol) who pumps out sick numbers while making as little rotation mistakes as possible, failing in as little mechanics as possible, and even contributing to the raid with life-saving Void Shifts and Leap of Faith, restoring healer mana with Hymn, and did I mention sick numbers?
    Who the fuck are you?

  16. #16
    And here's the other side of the argument http://lifeingroup5.com/?p=2783.

  17. #17
    I didn't change my gear for solo healing...I kinda just did what I always did, since it died so fast.

    But by your logic, my guild and I are selfish bastards because we didn't have a second healer.

  18. #18
    Only issue with your post is that the other priest was doing it completly correct. If you already have 2x Halo's going out on every quake stomp, that'll cover ALL the damage that there is, if positioned correct. A third halo wouldn't make a dent. On the other hand, the shields are getting filled much faster with the third halo staggered, which is a win.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Dracodraco View Post
    Only issue with your post is that the other priest was doing it completly correct. If you already have 2x Halo's going out on every quake stomp, that'll cover ALL the damage that there is, if positioned correct. A third halo wouldn't make a dent. On the other hand, the shields are getting filled much faster with the third halo staggered, which is a win.
    ^^^^^

    Not to mention.. Not really sure why you'd 3 heal that fight anyways as it's easily 2 healable.

  20. #20
    The Lightbringer Aqua's Avatar
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    To be honest, I ask the 'toxic' questions to myself once I have the boss on farm and I want to make a sub game out of healing. Otherwise I just get bored.
    I use the tail end of raids to perfect my output and limits so that when the next raid comes I can carefully gauge myself once more but still be acutely aware of what I can 'get away with'. You should always be trying to do more, otherwise I find the next tier can come at you with the weight of a falling truck.


    Isn't that a little more typical of healers? At least I find.


    Guess the healers I heal with are just already set in the old ways, I haven't run into many 'MUST HEAL MORE THAN CHOO NUMBERZ GARRRRGH' idiots.

    But yes since I assume your example, this is progress for you? Tell the idiot to pull his/her head out of her ass, you can play 'HPS 1 Up games' after the boss dies reliably. (Can't you 2 heal it? S'real easy yo)
    And yeah I didn't think on it because I rarely priest this fight, but...2 Halo's should cover this more than...
    I have eaten all the popcorn, I left none for anyone else.

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