Matters with Meters; Do Meters Matter?

[Maerad]

DPS Meters are ok on encounters with usual tank&spank and low dps movement. Best use for DPS meters is on a raidpuppet unbuffed so you get a hint, how well you can perform with dps only.

And it's a good way to see, if you do enough dmg for some bosses.

For the Healmeters, well ...

When I spam Healing Wave on you, I'll be on top with massive overheal. When I spam CH and Heal Totem, ill be even more on top. So Healmeter don't matter.

A Priest casting shield on tank > no dmg > no heal > bad for hps. You can't use hps meters for heals - it's nice to know how much you could do or how a new trinket benefits you, but it's just not usable for raids. Because theres movement, groupheal, manasaving, dispel etc.

On a high movement fight I (as a shaman) have big problems with my casting times, riptide is nice, but well - only one small hot :3

Druids just hot the hell out of the raid and would be on top :P

[Izenhart]

A Priest casting shield on tank > no dmg > no heal > bad for hps. You can't use hps meters for heals - it's nice to know how much you could do or how a new trinket benefits you, but it's just not usable for raids. Because theres movement, groupheal, manasaving, dispel etc.

World of Logs waves to you, so do I. /wave

[Kyrottas]

I read only first page, so I am sorry if this been said already, anyway I think meters are very good thing to use. Yes it is important to kill things but it is also very important to have some sort of competition amongst players. People likes to see how upgrades they looted improves their gear and meters are only way to prove it. Also if you join VoA pug and this guy over here is doing 8k, you can be pretty sure he has good gear and he is good player.

Players who says that meters doesn't matter are usually bads who needs to be carried with dps under or slightly above tank. Also disc priests whinning I shield, not heal, I am not bad. Sorry I don't believe your shields +1k HPS are equivalent of 5k HPS done by someone else. (I am not bashing all disc priests, this is only example of really bad one I met and he was using this as appologize after wipes)

Meters are here for motivation.

Meters aren't even good for calculating DPS increases through gear. Spread sheets do that for you. A meter should be read into to learn your mistakes in DPS rotation to better close in on spreadsheet totals. The most beneficial part of meters are the in depth charts of hit/miss/parry/crit damage per spell. That can help you improve.

In raids, DPS meters should only be posted to Raid Leaders to spot inadequacy and only on fights that require little to no movement. On Anub ToGC if Anub isn't dying fast enough, you don't look to the DPS meters... you tell your raid to better maximize their splash and AoE better. In guilds that have competent players meters mean little to nothing.

That being said, I pull 4,410 DPS (Average) unbuffed in my Enhance Gear in the proper spec (With partial resists on all my spells because of the dummy), which is about 50 lower than Enh Sim totals. In raids I pull about 6.1k in my mediocre Ulduar gear, but guess what I don't brag how well I did to the raid or do I insult others who did poorly, hell I barely view them in a raid environment.

[Digital]

DPS Meters are ok on encounters with usual tank&spank and low dps movement. Best use for DPS meters is on a raidpuppet unbuffed so you get a hint, how well you can perform with dps only.

And it's a good way to see, if you do enough dmg for some bosses.

For the Healmeters, well ...

When I spam Healing Wave on you, I'll be on top with massive overheal. When I spam CH and Heal Totem, ill be even more on top. So Healmeter don't matter.

A Priest casting shield on tank > no dmg > no heal > bad for hps. You can't use hps meters for heals - it's nice to know how much you could do or how a new trinket benefits you, but it's just not usable for raids. Because theres movement, groupheal, manasaving, dispel etc.

On a high movement fight I (as a shaman) have big problems with my casting times, riptide is nice, but well - only one small hot :3

Druids just hot the hell out of the raid and would be on top :P

Healing meters generally don't count overheals.

[Spikeychris]

healing meters matter a little bit but not as much as some people give them credit for.

For example I ran an OS a few months ago with me healing on shaman and a paladin healing. The paladin SPAMMED flash of light from start to finish. The tank was overgeared so didnt take much damage and other people didnt take much damage either.

So on the healing meter he had alot higher healing done than me but massively higher overheal. I always think overheal is the sign of a good or a bad healer because spamming a heal when its not needed is bad in my oppinion.

[Munk]

healing meters matter a little bit but not as much as some people give them credit for.

For example I ran an OS a few months ago with me healing on shaman and a paladin healing. The paladin SPAMMED flash of light from start to finish. The tank was overgeared so didnt take much damage and other people didnt take much damage either.

So on the healing meter he had alot higher healing done than me but massively higher overheal. I always think overheal is the sign of a good or a bad healer because spamming a heal when its not needed is bad in my oppinion.

Just out of curiosity, care to link your amory for your main?

Spam healing your biggest heal for the entirety of the fight is the only way to make it through many of the heroic and HM encounters. Holy Light may only take 1.4 seconds to cast but ive seen tanks go from 100% to dead in half that time, off a string of unlucky hits.

Yes better gear reduces this but it still happens.

So in short if your a tank healer spamming the heck out of your tank ISNT a bad thing. Overhealing ISNT a bad thing. People who cant get it into their heads that healing meters is exactly and ONLY the reality of what actually happens inside the raid. If your too dumb to only take into consider one facet of the "meters" then thats on you for being retarded. Dont get angry with people who actually do know how to use them and understand what they are for.

Ooh and again for people who like to say "but all my heals are overhealing because they landed just after x healers heal so it just makes me look bad" ... what makes you look bad is that you dont have your UI configured in a way to show incomming heals on a target so you would know before you even start to cast if its needed... if you were a better healer you would know this and wouldnt have wasted that heal its as simple as that.

[Myrdin]

Meters matter a lot, if people know how to use them. Sadly most don't.

[Ragnadriel]

Meters matter a lot, if people know how to use them. Sadly most don't.

Exactly this.

[yadomaru]

1. good healer know all his healing spells
2. good healer know when to use them to what kind of damage
3. good healer know it is importent to know how the boss fight works
4. experience

When you understand 1 and 2 then it is 3 that you need to work on to improve your peformence. Healingmeter will not help you to improve any of this step. To improve your own performance you dont need healingmeter.To coordinate(raid) diffrent healers I can see some use of healingmeters.

[DaveTheHunter]

healing meters matter a little bit but not as much as some people give them credit for.

For example I ran an OS a few months ago with me healing on shaman and a paladin healing. The paladin SPAMMED flash of light from start to finish. The tank was overgeared so didnt take much damage and other people didnt take much damage either.

So on the healing meter he had alot higher healing done than me but massively higher overheal. I always think overheal is the sign of a good or a bad healer because spamming a heal when its not needed is bad in my oppinion.

If that Pally didn't go OOM and kept people alive, the amount of overhealing is irrelevent. This isn't BC where mana was such a precious resource that every point of overhealing meant mana that could have been better spent otherwise. Current mana regen mechanics make it very hard for a well geared healer to go OOM, so it really doesn't matter if they are overhealing or not. The simple fact of the matter is that healing, just like every role in a raid, has been simplified in this expansion and you don't need the same level of skill as you did in the past.

[Azyoulike]

1. good healer know all his healing spells
2. good healer know when to use them to what kind of damage
3. good healer know it is importent to know how the boss fight works
4. experience

When you understand 1 and 2 then it is 3 that you need to work on to improve your peformence. Healingmeter will not help you to improve any of this step. To improve your own performance you dont need healingmeter.To coordinate(raid) diffrent healers I can see some use of healingmeters.

This is simply silly. In order to improve by means of experience you need a way of telling when you did something well, from when you did it badly. Deaths and boss kills aren't adequate to that because there are other healers - obviously this is particularly true in 25 man. Meters/Parses are the best tool available particularly parses.

[harky]

You're right if everything is going perfect, but I think shields are there to make sure someone doesn't die if something goes wrong. IMO, sometimes they save lives, usually they prevent deaths, if that makes sense lol.

The flame patch might not kill him, but if he takes 2 ticks of fire and then something else (random agro, range boss attack, move into another flame lol), he might not have survived to receive a heal like he would with the fire patch alone.

Okay, so in this situation pre-shielding saves stupid people. :P


I like a lot of the replies here. Not so much that I agree with a lot of them, but there's a lot of opinions. I will say this though, any manner of 'stacking' a meter can be found out on modern meters. They record who healed whom, include over-healing meters, etc. HoT sniping is one of the prime reasons some people are beginning to look down on Holy Priests. A Holy Priest can intentionally make a Druid look bad by following their HoTs with instant heals to increase the Druid's overheal. It's easy to see this sort of thing though and if you have someone doing this you assign them to different groups to prevent them from sniping, or replace them with a DPS due to having too many healers.

Things like trying to get higher healing numbers by using the 'wrong' spells, unless someone is dying, or others are having to work double-time to make up the slack if you're increasing your HPS you're doing something right. A Shaman on tank heals ought to be spamming LHW, with some CH and HW depending on spec and fight. One on raid heals should be rocking that CH spam. It really is about getting as high on that meter as possible. Raid HPS needs to equal incoming raid DPS, or in most fights people start dying. So having all your healers trying to do their top healing is a good thing. Cross healing, etc is another issue and needs to be dealt with case-to-case as I mentioned with heal sniping, but in general higher HPS is better. In Disc's case note that they make up slack by reducing incoming DPS, which has the same net effect.

[wolfwood888]

As a tank, and a raid leader, this is what I have to say about meters: If you have 5 dpsers, and encounter X requires each dpser to pull 4k to beat encounter X, as long as all 5 dpsers are pulling 4k or more there position on the meter doesn't matter. As a tank if my healer can keep me up and keeping his mana up, his position on the meter doesn't matter. If all the raid healers are doing comparable healing done on the meter, and no one dies, there position does not matter. As long as everyone pulls there weight in each and every encounter I see no use for posting meters and showing off, people use these meters as vanity meters to stroke there own e-peen. Not to say that the meters do not matter, they do, but as long as all 10 players are pulling there weight there is no need to post them, and show off, and the positions do not matter. Part of your job as a player, imo, is to have a meter to analyze what is going on, what your HPS/DPS/TPS is take this data and improve. It helps you, tells you if you fuck up, etc. I guess my point is this, meters are a tool to measure if everyone is doing what there suppose to, and help you as an individule improve, I personally see no reason to bring meters into raid chat if everyone is doing an acceptable job. Position on meters does not mater, the numbers do.

[Zeuq]

With regard to overhealing, a few people have corrected it, but it needs to be repeated. Overhealing does not matter UNLESS the healer is going OOM or people they're responsible for healing are dying due to lack of heals (as opposed to stupidity or bad luck). I don't understand comments on Paladins potentially being bad because they have 75% overheal. A Paladin having the mana to spam is a GOOD thing because in hardmodes you often don't have time to wait to see the damage on the tank and then start casting; often if that heal isn't already on the way, the tank stands a good chance of dying. Even if that Paladin has perfect reaction time and can reduce his overhealing, there's no effective difference in results between 20% overheal and 75% overheal in that case.

And in the second case, reall high overheal could mean people aren't sticking to their assignments, aren't watching incoming heals, or are clipping longer casts and HoTs with short casts and instants. However, this still doesn't matter unless people start to die from lack of heals. I could care less if a raid healer has 50% overheal if no one dies from lack of healing. So, in a PUG, perhaps overhealing might mean someone is bad if people are dying from a lack of healing because you don't know who is using what addons, but even then, is it the fault of the person with high overheal because they're slow to react, not watching incoming heals, and choose bad spells OR is it the fault of the person with low overheal because they're not sticking to their assignments and busy clipping other people's heals? However, in a raid with a good team of healers who stick to their assignments, watch incoming heals, and don't clip eachother, all overhealing is really useful for is to see if maybe we can spare some healing from one assignment to help on another one that is falling behind or not managing burst. Hell, usually, overhealing means we have too many healers and can spare to switch to DPS to help meet berserk timers or burn through easy stuff faster.



I'm also seeing people say meters don't matter if you kill the boss or if no one dies. Well... yeah, you're right, but you're missing the point. If you're linking your HPS on Kologarn when you've had it on farm for months, you're stroking your epeen and, yeah, meters mean nothing. But when you're working on ToGC and the boss isn't dying, well, there goes your premise. Meters do yield some useful information when you're working on progression content and trying to figure out how to keep everyone alive with the fewest healers possible so you get the maximum DPS output to meet berserk timers. In a lot of cases, I find that I intuitively know where the problem is and discussion with other healers about what they're seeing can usually fix it. Sometimes it's not something that is intuitive and seeing what people are doing and how they're performing can help diagnose and fix problems. So, sure, if the boss dies and people don't die, meters don't matter; but in cases where the boss isn't dying because people are dying, it can be a useful tool, and that is the point.

[harky]

Yes, overhealing can matter, but as Zeuq said it typically doesn't. Overhealing primarily matters when it comes via cross healing. You look at who someone overhealed and see if that was their assignment, then you look to see if anyone was off assignment, and you look at incoming DPS.

Incoming DPS might seem strange, but take Archavon as an example. The 10 man version has such low damage that healers, even undergeared ones, are outputting far more than his DPS on a raid by themselves. In a raid with a Disc Priest the fight will be 90% or more overhealing. There will be 0 AOE damage and the tanks are unlikely to take more than an entire health bar of damage. Blood DK tanks might actually keep themselves topped off. I realize Archavon is hardly considered progression for anyone, but it serves the point. When analyzing problems very high overhealing can mean something different than having 'bad' healer, it can mean that you have too many healers.

Another good example of this is Anub'arak. P1 has very, very low damage. P2 has similarly low damage. P3 has a massive amount of damage on everyone, some of which shouldn't be healed and then massive damage on the tanks. It's also a case where 'enrage timers' don't necessarily matter. Phase 3 is basically an enrage timer in its own right, once entering that stage the fight becomes very dangerous and bad things can happen very quickly. In that case healing and DPS meters can mean a great deal.

I think a lot of people tend to see meters in the wrong light. Meters are posted and people look not at the numbers, but the ranks. I don't believe there's anything wrong with posting meters on either a wipe, or a successful attempt. I don't think it's a good thing to spam raid chat with, just because spam is annoying. But if you have your own meter channel, that's great. Learning from mistakes is great, but people seem to look passed learning from successes. Good guilds put things on farm status very, very quickly. Bad guilds struggle, down things, then keep struggling.

The other thing is that people think posting meters causes drama. That isn't true. Poor performances cause drama. Probably 2/3rds of any raid you're involved in has meters. Maybe more depending on what kind of guild you're in. Posting of them is for the benefit of those who do not. The drama mongers will already be making fun of poor performances with each other far before any meter is posted and in fact even if one isn't posted. Officers channels will be discussing it, class leads will be discussing it, the raid lead will be discussing it. It's really a question of maturity level. Is your ego too large to accept that you may not have done your best? If so you should either work on that, or question if you have what it takes to raid serious content.

[getefix]

There's 2 ways to look at it. If everyone lives then there's no problems. If two healers are doing the same thing (raid healing, tank healing, whatever) and one of them is putting out a lot more than than the other then one of them isn't doing their job. Disc priests don't count. Ours only puts out 3k hps while holy priests, resto druids, and holy pallies pump out 4.5-6k hps.

My $0.02. Sorry for invading the priest forums.

[draticus]

Meters do not matter.
Performance matters.

Nuff said.

The "healing done" meter alone does not matter.
Performance matters.
You determine performance by understanding the fight and healing assignments and then looking at the healing done, who healed whom, over heal, dispels, and death meters.

Meters aren't the objective, but when used correctly they are a good measure of the objective.