Matters with Meters; Do Meters Matter?

[Ohplotsa]

Well, your text was tl;dr.

I did read the first half though, and i have to agree that meters does not matter for healers. For DPS though, that's an entirely different matter.

Basically, a DPS will always have something to dps (in 99% of the cases anyway) which healers will not. It can be argued that certain players show up low on dps meters because they are doing a particular job (ex. kiting). Of course these players need to be ignored. However, on Anub this is a different matter. A good DPSer will push good dps while kiting the spikes perfectly. He will not do half-arsed on either.

As a healer myself i sometimes have a hard time with meters. People judge you just from how much HPS you do and not whom you did it to etc. For example, I'm healing a naxx10 pug. It's me and a priest. The priest is constantly running around, topping everyone up even though I already had a rejuv on them. This means I get HUGE overhealing and very little effective healing meaning I show up bad on meters. Did I do something wrong? No.
It would be an entirely different matter if I had a target that was always under 100% hp and my goal was to heal him as much as I could (like that fight in ICC). Then we could be talking meters but right now meters are just about who lands their heal first. For example, as a druid it is very hard to compete on meters when the raid isn't taking a ton of constant damage.

Overgearing and overhealing a 2 tier old 10 man raid is hardly a measure of any kind of healing done, hps, or ehps, and shouldn't even be considered as any of these things, so I don't see the point. I would imagine most healers in a naxx 10 would be dpsing most of the time anyway unless they were fresh 80.

In any kind of challenging content meters will show at the very least who is not pulling their weight. Meters will show who is healing whom, with what spell, how often, for how much, etc. If you have a holy priest pumping out 4khps and another rocking 1khps, and dispels and assignment is similar, this might go unnoticed if not for meters. With a good healer comp in our raids I notice most of the heals covering roughly the same % of the heals, usually around 2-3khps. When a healer has the opportunity to bust out 4-5k hps with little overheal, and I'm not talking about raid blanketing, I'm talking about reactive necessary healing, that means someone isn't pulling their weight.

Meters are absolutely useful, as I said, in any decently challenging content.

Log all your raids and upload to world of logs IMO. Dissecting a log can prove to be extremely useful.

Should HPS be the only thing you look at to determine whether a healer is good or not? Absolutely not. Should it be a small part of it? Yes.

[harky]

My bottom line...They aren't perfect and they aren't the end all be all of who's the best healer by looking at them, but they shouldn't be ignored completely either. Know what I mean harky?

Oh, I completely agree. What I disagree with is what a lot of people have spouted lately. I know you have your sig and come off as very anti-meter sometimes, but I've never seen you post something blatantly saying meters suck and are pointless. Just looking at the discussion spawned here and then some of the replies and that's where the problem is. People would rather say, "healing meters is fail[.]" That's exactly what gets raid leaders rolling their eyes. People don't understand even the raw healing meter and certainly don't seem able to produce a counter argument using associated meters which just hurts them, their argument and their raid.

Even in the case with Disc you can look at attempts and take note not of any 'guessed absorb' mod, which we all know will be inaccurate by very random amounts, but by looking at incoming damage. If you look at two encounters with and without a Disc Priest and show the incoming DPS difference what Disc really does becomes obvious. Being unwilling to make an argument, analyze data and evaluate performance really is going to hurt the community if it becomes popular opinion. Seeing a lot of the replies here I'm pretty happy though, the whining, trolling, denialist replies are in a lot shorter supply than I expected.

[Ohplotsa]

Meters do not matter.
Performance matters.

Nuff said.

When you have 2 heals assigned to a MT and he keeps dying, GG. "I think the healers are sufficient, but I'm not sure because meters do not matter."

[Healtuff]

better 'dps' by the definition of the word(acronym, w/e)? ... yeah, sure i guess

better player?... not necessarily

answer this. you have a mage that pulls 8k dps on most 25man fights but say on a fight like thaddius, he's a retard and NEVER crosses to the correct polarization and wipes the raid consistently. then you have mr boomkin who only manages 4k dps but knows the fights and isn't responsible for a single death during the entire raid.

who do you bring? l33t mage will rock the meters all night long, but i'd prefer someone who knows what they're doing... even if the fight takes a few moments longer, at least we'll all save on repair bills.

I see this happen a lot on twins. have dude topping out the meters but never switches auras during vortex and dies 2 minutes into the fight... fail.

dead dps = no dps.

another point would be that 'damage done' is WAY more important than strictly 'dps'. but do keep in mind, melee often have less uptime to do damage in fights these days, so don't rag on a melee just because a hunter is beating him. Or say on faction champs, you assign a dps to lock down the healer with CC and interrupts... oh no! his dps sucks! BOOT HIM NAO before he embarrasses himself further. /sigh

If the mage is killing others that means, yes he is the worse choice to bring.

If the mage is only killing himself, then I will have to disagree with you.

Lets say there was, for whatever reason, already another mage and boomkin in the raid providing the same buffs, so the death of either of these players does not change the dps of the raid, except by making the fight longer.

The mage does 8Kdps and only lasts half the fight. The boomkin does 4Kdps and lasts the whole fight.

Who's the better choice to bring?

The mage. Why? Because while they both suck, eventually the mage is going to stop dying on that fight (probably on the attempt that you down the boss). The boomkin is always going to be doing sub-par dps. Whether it be gear, or just him being bad; once a baddie always a baddie.

[Eletharin]

This guy .. does not play a disc priest.

Pre-shielding can reduce incomming damage but its usually easier to just heal through then prevent damage in advance? Seriously? Over half the damage mitigation of a good disc priest doesn't show up on meters at all. Even in non-disc examples, the majority of the time the raid has more healing then it has damage in, classes with faster heals get there faster and have greater representation on the meters. From a priest example (I'm holy often too) Prayer of Mending is almost a full heal with minimal overhealing because I can cast it before the damage is dealt meaning you can even beat a super hasted shammy's lesser wave. Does the fact I put up big number mean I'm better? No, I just got their first because my class is designed that way.

Are meters useful? Yes. Mostly for death logs, but sometimes spell use distribution and damage taken have their place. For DPS of course they are a lot more important, but again if you are assigned to CC, shoot down orbs, misidrect adds, or any number of other things you can be a MUCH better player while falling behind on the meters. For personal analysis they are invaluable, but the end numbers are really irrelevant if you keep the raid alive and complete the enounter.

[Ohplotsa]

Read the OP, not going to read all the replies...

While healing meters can be a good thing, and I use them a LOT while healing to try to assess how I did in any given run and see how I might do better next time. You have to know what to look for and how to read them, as well as how other healers work. When retards get Healing Meters, it turns into something Stupid, and people who are trying to inflate their numbers while failing at what actually needs to be healed get glorified with high numbers.

One example of VERY STUPID and BAD healing meter usage...

VoA-10 PUG, 3 healers.

Druid - Top of meters by far
Shaman - about half of the Druid's healing done
Disc Priest (me) - a little under Shaman

At the beginning of the run, we assigned MT, OT and designated that I'll be on the MT and the Shaman/Druid on the OT during Meteor Fists.
What happened, Every attempt, the OT would die. Neither the MT or OT was receiving healing from the Druid (other than WG). The Druid (which I saw on my meters) was basically keeping WG on constantly, while throwing out the occasional Rejuv.

Between me Shielding most of the raid before the big AoE, and the Druid keeping WG up constantly to heal the small amounts of damage people DID take, the Shaman had very little chance to actually heal anybody. The Druid's numbers got inflated, even though he failed horribly at assisting the shaman on keeping the OT up.

The Stupidity?
The Druid had healing meters too... The Druid saw that HE did FAR MORE healing than the other 2 healers, in fact, he did more healing than the other healers combined!!!
Before every pull, and after every wipe, he would bitch about how the other healers needed to pick up the healing, and that he was pulling our weight... He never healed the MT, nor healed the OT, Wild Growth does not count since it is AoE...
I kept my Tank alive every Meteor Fist (except after the OT died), The Shaman worked his ass off to keep the OT up on Meteor Fist, with no help from the Druid...


THAT is why people have problems with Healing Meters, THAT is why 'healing done' doesn't mean SHIT if you don't heal the right people at the right time...
I can inflate my healing numbers by taking PW:S off my action bar, and letting the tank die while I flash heal everyone as soon as they take damage, does my higher numbers mean I'm doing better? hell no! I'm being incredibly inefficient and failing at what my spec is made for...

1. If the druid did in fact "never heal the MT or the OT" then he wasn't following his assignment. Though if the OT was dying obviously the shaman wasn't either because it doesn't take more than one healer to keep a tank up through meteor fists.

2. WG is on a 6 second CD so there's almost 5 seconds where he is off the GCD and should be casting something in that fight; whether it be hotting pre-flaming spin or whatever, or putting up regrowth on the other tank. I would be surprised if all they did was hit WG every 6 seconds, and wait for it to come off CD, and still beat you both on meters.

3. The shaman didn't have a chance to heal anyone? How about the OT...

4. WG doesn't count as healing because it's AOE? LAWL. GG. (Is that just healer QQ?)

5. L2RecountGuessedAbsorbs or use parses. Everyone knows priest bubbles account for a large amount of their effective healing. Stop crying about not winning meters. Next time someone tries to dis you by posting meters make sure you post your guessedabsorbs meters if you're at all concerned with putting them in their place, or just ignore them.

[harky]

@Eletharin: This was not posted solely from a Disc Priest point of view and as such applying logic from that one single healing spec makes little sense. Let's take a look at the situation that was actually talked about though, which is flame patches on Gormok. Here you would be pre-shielding someone who will be taking less damage than a single bounce of PoM, two ticks of renew/rejuv, etc. If you read the context of that comment you'll also note that it was an example where clever mechanic use did not actually save a life. A person who gets a flame patch thrown on them is not in serious mortal danger, so what you did isn't to make anything easier, but again less 'scary.' Health didn't drop, or was brought up really quickly, so no one freaks out and things appear easier. The reality is that person would have done just as well with a HoT on them, or a Flash Heal once they were out, or PoM thrown at them. There are a lot of cases lately where people attempt to make the argument that meters don't measure these things and instead the real measure is how many lives you 'saved.' The reality is unless what you prevent was unhealable, healing could have done the job. Body and Soul is an example of literally saving lives. GS saves lives. PS saves lives. Pre-shielding someone on a low damage flame patch? Nope.

[Healtuff]

5. L2RecountGuessedAbsorbs or use parses. Everyone knows priest bubbles account for a large amount of their effective healing. Stop crying about not winning meters. Next time someone tries to dis you by posting meters make sure you post your guessedabsorbs meters if you're at all concerned with putting them in their place, or just ignore them.

Too bad it doesn't show Divine Sacrifice.

D:

Then everyone would lose.

[Danner]

My stance on this is that meters don't give enough of the truth. They certainly give hints, but it doesn't follow that higher position = better healer. Two healers rarely have the same assigned role, and sometimes it may be your job to dispel, sometimes it may be your job to never take your eyes off the tanking warlock, or even something outlandish like keeping that new player alive enough to give him a good impression of your guild. You may do less HPS, but that doesn't mean you aren't doing a vital job at a perfect aptitude. Heck, even two identical players at two identical jobs may simply be half a GCD out of sync with eachother, and suddenly one of the healers lands the big decisive heals 90% of the time forcing the other guy into overhealing.

I mean, I can play really really bad, force other healers into overheal and win most meters unless the fight is stacked against me. But it doesn't make me a good healer, and people will die as a result.

The meters give vital data, but it doesn't give the whole truth. The problem with the meters is that there are no qualitative data opposing their limited truth. It took many months before discpriests got generally accepted, but all it took was a plugin to recount, showing EPHS from mitigation, which showed just what a discpriest offered. Before this revised truth was available, many guilds believed disc sucked. The priests playing them knew that wasn't true, but it was a very hard uphill battle where you had to convince your raidleader that even if you healed 1/5th of what the paladin did, you still did better than him somehow.

Players playing holypriests now know that holy doesn't suck, even though we consistently lie below druids on all current fights. I find it an awesome specc, challenging yet rewarding, and very very deep. It is probably the specc with the most potential for turning a bad situation in the game, and one of the few remaining ways where a single player can singlehandedly do a massive impact on the game. But how to show this to the world is the question. There is no meter for "lives saved" or "bad situations turned" or "people healed very fast". I don't think adding one will solve anything either.

[Rhaenis]

Harky, just one thing you haven't addressed (as we both pretty much agree that meters can give a lot of useful information, though parses are better):

My very first response to your title sentence of:

Recently there has been a large push from healers to ignore healing meters.

which was:

Sorry to say, but that's just the way people are. They don't want to hear about qualifiers and context and whatnot. They want a simple answer so they don't have to think dynamically.

If your argument is "Hardcore raiders in top guilds are pushing people to ignore healing meters", then I think maybe you're either confused or having a problem with a very specific (and I think limited) number of guilds. Most hardcore guilds/raids *do* use meters...all kinds. They hold their raiders accountable for DPS, healing, threat, deaths, failures, etc.

So naturally I read your statement as "A lot of raiders *in general* are pushing people to ignore healing meters".

That's where the argument gets totally different. Why? Because "in general", raiders are stupid people. Or at the very least, they are people who adhere to my quote above - they don't want to have to think dynamically.

This is why I say that (for *most* guilds/raids) healing meters *can* cause more harm than good. Simply because people don't know how to read them, and they don't care to *learn* how to read them. All they want is a simple program that tells them that they are awesome.

If you deny that, then you are out of touch with most people in this game, and likely you raid with people who share your understanding.

So my main point is...."who cares?"

There are only 4 groups of people out there:

1. People who agree with you and understand how to read meters
2. People who agree with you and don't understand how to read meters
3. People who don't agree with you and understand how to read meters
4. People who don't agree with you and don't understand how to read meters

And maybe a 5th group who just doesn't give a shit.

The people you're trying to reach are groups 3 and 4.

Group 3 already understands your point, but is not going to change their minds because they are heavily set in their opinion.

Group 4 will NEVER UNDERSTAND YOUR POINT. Nothing will ever get through to them.

I'm sorry to say, but the majority of players out there fall into Groups 2 and 4.

So back to my point....."who cares?"

As I said, I agree with you, and my raid uses meters/logs all the time to help improve our performance. Most raids, though (Group 2/4) simply can't handle having meters without being total douchetards about it.

[Pascal]

You spent a lot of time typing to say "Meters can be useful when analyzed by someone who's not retarded, but the majority of people are retarded and don't know how to read meters, seeing the person in first place as "the best" and ignoring other factors which contribute to the status of someone on the meters."

Every good raiding guild (should) have raid leaders/guild officers that are capable of understanding the subtleties to meters, but the general population of that raiding guild shouldn't have to post meters or point shit out unless there is a wiping problem or a very obvious problem (ranged are supposed to kill kobolds and this one mage has 2% of their total damage dealt to kobolds - obvious problem).

Of course meters are helpful. Anyone who's not an idiot knows that. The problem with meters is that the one stuck up kid in the guild will post the meters when he's on top in a fight that catered to his class' abilities, but he's never first otherwise, so some other spiteful, annoyed/annoying kid will post every other fight's meters where that original person was not first. Maybe the chain heal spamming shaman will post meters after twins, showing that he is miles ahead of everyone, when usually the healing meters are more averaged out than that. Maybe this one kid was being heckled by someone else, but on such and such fight, the heckled kid outdamaged the guy making fun of him, so he posts meters after the fight to gloat. All of these situations are annoying; I don't give a shit what the meters looked like after the boss died. If we WIPED and there is a discernible problem (as in, it's not just the disc priest on the bottom of the healing meter and everyone goes AMG DOOD THE PRIEST IS A BAD!) then yes of course meters are helpful for figuring out how to improve the fight.

My healing raid leader (i.e., guy in charge of healing assignments) in TBC was a paladin. I was a resto druid. This kid was not very keen on the mechanics of resto druids in TBC. Basically, think about the troubles disc priests have with idiots who don't understand disc mechanics today - that was what it was like to be a resto druid. You can only imagine how unbearable it was to have to answer to him every time when he says I'm not pulling my weight because I'm last on the healing meter. No shit I'm last, I'm a resto druid. Of course a fucking FoL spamming paladin doesn't understand how hots work and what a resto druid's purpose is in a raid. I was in the MT's group to increase everyone else's healing done, and I stacked hots and rolled LB on the tanks nonstop to buffer the big incoming hits - that doesn't make for first on the healing meters any day soon. Having to put up with a kid who doesn't understand meters but still attempts to dissect them is frustrating as hell. Not to mention he constantly gave me retarded healing assignments.

Raid leaders/guild officers (barring that they are not the retards in question) should be the only ones to post meters, and it should only occur when there is a glaring PROBLEM, not when everything's fine and the boss is dying, or the cause of a wipe was obvious. If the people in a guild are wondering what the meters look like, they should get recount, or make friends with someone who has it who will post it to them in whispers after each fight.

[masterprtzl]

Though i agree with OP on most aspects of this; one thing is that different classes consistently come up different on each fight, AOE dmg = priest druid (sometimes shammy) while pallys are left in the dirt. Then again on our Anub 10 heroic, our pally solo heals it pretty much until the end where the priest comes in with shields and renews. Our pallys up at like 7.5k HPS on anub. Doesnt make her much better than the priest; the priest just isnt needed- we have him grab the ice balls while we burn anub.

[Rhaenis]

Basically...what Pascal said.

Harky, your argument only works in a world full of intelligent raiders.

[Rhaenis]

And you want clear-cut examples of how dumb (lazy) people really are?

Just look at all the posts in this thread by people who obviously haven't read the thread, making arguments that have either already been stated or already been addressed.

Not to mention the ones who read only the subject line and then post one-liners.

[Amandil]

Meters obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt, but I think everyone in this thread already knows that. Saving of lives is good and all, but if people are just waiting for that situation rather than topping off someone at 75% health, then to me thats a bad thing.

I like it when I top meters, but the reason I play a healer is because I like the instant gratification of having kept someone alive. Thats a small victory, and I can have multiple in the same fight. As DPS I get that small win when a boss dies.



To me meters can show if someone is useing all of their skills or doing a playstyle that might be worse than they could do. I have seen so many pugs where druids never used a single swiftmend throughout an entire run(like naxx or ulduar, not talking about a 10 minute ony). For druids at least, there are many different playstyles that work. There are some that use WG a lot more than me, there are some that never throw out a single nourish. Some of those aren't bad depending on what their role is. However, if a class has an instant 10k+ heal and never uses it, that person is just bad.

Or like a pally that never uses beacon. Or a holy priest healing a tank in togc spamming flash heal.

[harky]

@Rhaenis and Pascal: I agree, the interwebz are srsbzns and most people treat them as such and probably most of what I was trying to say is completely lost on a large number of players. As far as who it was directed at, it's pretty much the healing and in this case mostly the Priest community as Shaman/Druid/Paladin typically don't have the same type of group advocating the whole 'meters are pointless' mentality. This actually comes up from a sort of reversed standpoint. That is I've been in a lot of situations lately where meters were legitimately brought up, both in raids and in forums only to have the healer in question simply reply 'meters don't matter'. If not in those specific words, at least with that exact meaning.

Obviously good raid leaders, guild leaders, etc understand this, but it was intended more for the healers themselves. It's really an outrageous argument to try and defend yourself by saying that certain data doesn't apply to you. It's actually not really an argument at all, but straight denial. Rather than objectively trying to explain the situation in question and come up with a good reason it becomes a quick excuse. If a Druid and a Priest are on raid heals and the Druid did 1m healing while the Priest did half that, is it really an okay argument to say, "I don't care if I did 500k less healing, meters don't matter." Of course not. If there is a good reason then you should argue that reason.

When I say that it hurts raids and the community is that new healers learn this behavior and pattern themselves after it. That in turn breeds worse healers who also don't understand how to analyze problems. My guild had a sort of epidemic of bad Disc Priests a while back with this mentality as well. The leaders knew how Disc impacts the raids, but whenever they were questioned they'd repeat the same canned lines that meters mean nothing as Disc. Most of them wound up being kicked because they didn't understand that what we were looking at was not who is in what position on a meter, but their specific output. One of them was assigned to heal group 2 during Frozen Blows for 10m Hodir. The result? Raid shield + renew. We asked, showed the numbers and wanted an explanation.He said he healed his assigned group and meters don't matter. The meter is what quickly showed us that he was healing very poorly. Anecdotal, I realize, but also exactly my problem with the mentality. It's not the leaders and guilds, it's the healers themselves.

..and yeah, in my own little bubble I like to think the world is made up of open minded competent individuals. Sadly, like a Paladin, the internetz keep casting mass dispel. :'(

[Nerolupo]

the only meters that matter are HPS for Disc priests imo ;P USE PENANCE MOAR!!!

(only kidding lol)

but really, the reliance on meters currently is disgusting. You can use meters if you knwo how to do so responsibly (ie knowing whose a healer or tank on the DPS meters /facepalm and what spec your healers are on the healometers). I, for one, believe DPS meters for the DPS toons should be used more than gear score or achievements. You can look at the dps meters and compare it to the player's gear. If they are trying (ie someone with 2k dps and a 5k gear score or someone with 5k dps and a 2k gear score, both specced the same) you can figure out who to boot. The current reliance on meters is disgusting, and should only be used responsibly, in my opinion.

[jontaxe]

Healing meters are useless, with the single and sole exception of telling you if a healer isn't sticking to their assignment.

First: In response to "he might be dispelling", that isn't healing meter. That is purge meter. That is not useless.

Class mechanics and raid healing assignments are too disparate to allow a single number, or even a set of numbers, to compare healers.

The only real way to evaluate a healers, unfortunately, is on failure. You look at the log for ~10-15 seconds before Raid Member X died, and you can see what happened and go from there. If no one dies due to lack of heals, there is no real way to divide credit up. Your healers might fail individually, but they succeed as a team.

[Offhand]

Ultimately promoting the idea that meters aren't of consequence hurts the healing community and can lead to dangerous situations for your raids.

Guess I'll gkick all the dis priests then.

[kilssii]

well... if you can keep your assigned target/targets alive what else do you need?
and nothing else matters...