Matters with Meters; Do Meters Matter?

[Munk]

This is what happens when you have healers that are only worried about the meters:

1) Healers clip each other (after all its about the meter so why should you work as a team when you can screw someone on the meters).
2) Healers ignore their assignments (after all if your assignment wasn't taking damage why wouldn't you heal the other persons target its all about the meters).
3) Healers start fighting with each other about their spot on the meter (dps is a competition and healing is a team sport).

In short, healers should be working as a team. Meters absolutely do not matter. If you can't keep your targets alive (assuming they don't do something stupid) then you are a bad healer. If you can keep them alive then it doesn't matter where you stand on the meters.

1) is only applicable if youre looking at raw combined healing
2) Only happens if you raid with kids
3) see no.2

Our healers regularly compete to see who can push the most effective HPS and I would have to say that they are some of the best healers ive ever had the pleasure of running with.
Competition has and always will breed excellence. If your healers are failing at doing there job while remaining competitive then you need to find a better guild.

[Rynx]

I'm very suprised at the comments posted, for once, it isn't TL;DR spam! (Almost) Everyone has written good posts, It's true HPS doesn't matter, but the meter can help alot more than that with, who healed who, who dispelled what, who did this who did that ect ect. People who spam raid chat with HPS/DPS are the vain ones and more often than not, the noobs. (See http://www.darklegacycomics.com/46.html :P)

[Rhaenis]

This is what happens when you have healers that are only worried about the meters:

1) Healers clip each other (after all its about the meter so why should you work as a team when you can screw someone on the meters).
2) Healers ignore their assignments (after all if your assignment wasn't taking damage why wouldn't you heal the other persons target its all about the meters).
3) Healers start fighting with each other about their spot on the meter (dps is a competition and healing is a team sport).

In short, healers should be working as a team. Meters absolutely do not matter. If you can't keep your targets alive (assuming they don't do something stupid) then you are a bad healer. If you can keep them alive then it doesn't matter where you stand on the meters.

An excellent point. Meters subconciously cause competition. While this is only good for DPS, it can often destroy healing sync and efficiency.

As a DPS, you can't nullify your neighbor's DPS by doing it faster/better. As a healer, you can (and will, especially as your raid gets more and more gear).

[harky]

@Rhaenis: Actually a lot of what I'm talking about is currently tracked by the most common meters right now (Skada and Recount). They show death logs, healed targets, damage taken, etc. They're actually very similar in raw data to a WWS/WMO/etc parse, though some of the other tools are missing. So those numbers actually are readily available assuming someone has their client set up to parse properly, which is what causes discrepancies between meters (they're not logging as large an area and miss things).

[Fahrudinovepapuce]

To OP...

That was the most stupid thing I've read in a long time..

[Rhaenis]

@Rhaenis: Actually a lot of what I'm talking about is currently tracked by the most common meters right now (Skada and Recount). They show death logs, healed targets, damage taken, etc. They're actually very similar in raw data to a WWS/WMO/etc parse, though some of the other tools are missing. So those numbers actually are readily available assuming someone has their client set up to parse properly, which is what causes discrepancies between meters (they're not logging as large an area and miss things).

I understand. What I meant was that meters give you raw collected numbers, while parses give you order of events.

I'm thinking of things like a Paladin MT healer, and Priest raid healer doing something like:

[00:00:00] Tank takes 8000 damage
[00:00:02] Paladin casts Flash of Light on raid member to full
[00:00:03] Priest casts Flash Heal on same raid member (overheal)
[00:00:05] Tank takes 8000 damage
[00:00:06] Paladin casts Flash of Light on raid member to full
[00:00:07] Priest casts Flash Heal on same raid member (overheal)
[00:00:08] Paladin casts Holy Light on Tank for 16000 crit (o.O)

At the end of the fight, the Priest gets asked why his overheal is so high and HPS so low, compared to awesome Paladin with pretty much no overheal and tons of HPS.

As far as I know, no meter will show this kind of thing, and could take hours of research to *prove* even though the Priest can *see* it happening or maybe even just "feel" it.

[harky]

Recount shows overhealing and on who and with what spells last I knew. It should be easy to compare incoming DPS on that tank to incoming HPS. If HPS exceeds incoming DPS the result is overhealing. So no, that sort of thing should be covered (and expected, really).

[SirLancelittle]

another huge pet peeve of mine is people posting meters after a wipe. if you wipe, being #1 dps doesn't mean shit, you died. l2win before you stroke your epeen.


cliffs: there is no reason to ever post meters publicly. if someone is having performance issues, a private message will suffice.

Interesting post. I certainly agree that meters can be a very useful tool. As so many people have stated, this becomes a problem when people start worrying more about the meter than the encounter. I think the best use of meters is to let the raid/class leaders look at the meters to help analyze performance. I think the easiest way as a guild to make sure meters are being used properly is simply not to let them be posted publicly.

I also agree with serif's pet peeves. I think the worst one that has happened to me in a PuG in VoA (right after Koralon was released) was a dps that posted healing meters after each wipe. Then when we got down a boss he would post the dps meter. It was like he was saying its the healers fault when we wipe and the dps' fault when we succeed.

[Gratzzz]

You should never post DPS logs, you should post total dmg made for boss logs. That way people who die end up where they are supposed to be, at the bottom!

[Funky303]

@ rhaenis:

this won't EVER happen in a bossfight, since in a regular fight you cast kinda 200 spells.

I read an interview of a paladin (that player feature they have) on worldofraids, and one of the things he said was:

a good healer knows other classes, knows the events and (here's the important thing) heals in advance or is simply good in predicting who will take damage the next second, so he can mostly start healing before the hp of his target is going down.

Since the last patches, paladins have changed a lot in the way they heal (we have hots and aoe too now^^). There is also an effective heal in all those tools.

From my point of view:

In our guild there are 4-5 healers who really know their stuff, we never compete with each other, although we sometimes compare our numbers, often to compare the fights for each classes.

And there are 3 other healers, who don't really care about their equipment. Their numbers in healing were low, we put up a log on worldofraids, and from there we learned that 2 of them cast half the casts ! in the same time as i do (we're both pallys) and one of them uses Beacon once at the start of the encounter, and then doesn't put it up again.

After two raids i talked to them, installed and configred a click-casting addon (vuhdo) with them via TS and since then their healing perfomance nearly doubled.

So there is definitively a good way to utilize dps/healmeters, but also a bad one when used to humiliate people in front of other people. (Same goes for those "fail announcers. They're nice in the officers chat, but don't belong in /raid or /s).

[Rhaenis]

Recount shows overhealing and on who and with what spells last I knew. It should be easy to compare incoming DPS on that tank to incoming HPS. If HPS exceeds incoming DPS the result is overhealing. So no, that sort of thing should be covered (and expected, really).

That's actually my point.

In my scenario, you've got an 8 second window of activity. Stats on recount (or whatever) are going to come out as:

DPS in:
Tank - (8000+8000=16000/8s= ) 2000

HPS in:
Tank - (16000/8s= ) 2000

So the Paladin did his job as MT healer, 0 overhealing. Perfect.

But the meters will also show raid healing as having the Paladin high, and the Priest low, with high overhealing.

-Was it because the Paladin is just a jerk who wants to pad his meters?
-Was it because the Priest was really just slacking?
-Was it because the Paladin had nothing else to do because the Tank was at full health?
-Was it because the Paladin just has better gear (more haste/SP) and was able to quickly fill more gaps than the Priest?

The meters won't answer any of these questions. A full parse might, if you catch something similar to the 8 second window as I laid it out, because it's clear there that the Paladin was lagging on MT heals in favor of throwing out raid heals (not his job), and then just getting lucky crits to cover his own slack.

However, it won't always be the case, and the case won't always be easy to prove.

[Rhaenis]

@ rhaenis:

this won't EVER happen in a bossfight, since in a regular fight you cast kinda 200 spells.

I read an interview of a paladin (that player feature they have) on worldofraids, and one of the things he said was:

a good healer knows other classes, knows the events and (here's the important thing) heals in advance or is simply good in predicting who will take damage the next second, so he can mostly start healing before the hp of his target is going down.

Since the last patches, paladins have changed a lot in the way they heal (we have hots and aoe too now^^). There is also an effective heal in all those tools.

From my point of view:

In our guild there are 4-5 healers who really know their stuff, we never compete with each other, although we sometimes compare our numbers, often to compare the fights for each classes.

And there are 3 other healers, who don't really care about their equipment. Their numbers in healing were low, we put up a log on worldofraids, and from there we learned that 2 of them cast half the casts ! in the same time as i do (we're both pallys) and one of them uses Beacon once at the start of the encounter, and then doesn't put it up again.

After two raids i talked to them, installed and configred a click-casting addon (vuhdo) with them via TS and since then their healing perfomance nearly doubled.

So there is definitively a good way to utilize dps/healmeters, but also a bad one when used to humiliate people in front of other people. (Same goes for those "fail announcers. They're nice in the officers chat, but don't belong in /raid or /s).

What you're saying about Paladins is absolutely true (though I only used Paladin as an example. In truth, it could be any class), but also illustrates the point I was making. If Paladins are "predicting" damage to make their heals land VERY shortly after the damage is taken, then what about other classes that *aren't* predicting, and casting reactively (because their mechanics are different)? They will see the health deficit, cast, but the health will be restored a fraction of a second before they finish the cast, most often causing overheal for the poor second healer.

That's my point.

What you say about logs and meters is all true and I agree, as I also explained in my previous posts.

[harky]

That's actually my point.

In my scenario, you've got an 8 second window of activity. Stats on recount (or whatever) are going to come out as:

DPS in:
Tank - (8000+8000=16000/8s= ) 2000

HPS in:
Tank - (16000/8s= ) 2000

The net HPS in was actually much higher than that, but as DPS was not high enough on the intake the overflow results in overhealing. The actual incoming heals accounted for (assuming general gear level implied by the 8k Holy Light) about 23k. So on a meter it would show up as 2k HPS and 875 overhealing per sec. Gets right back to what my OP was about, in this situation a healer could easily show that they were assigned to a tank and were healing that tank but because the incoming DPS was not high enough to support the amount of HPS put on the tank it spilled over to overhealing. As such you could use this type of result to show that you may have too much healing dedicated to a tank, allowing that Priest to be moved to perhaps just rolling a Renew on the MT and helping when they take spikes but otherwise raid healing. Those sort of changes being made on the fly based on the situation is exactly why meters do matter.

[talii]

what's wrong with epeen meters ? ???

that mentality is what is wrong with meters. if your only reason to run meters is to see how your dps/hps stacks against others i suggest you do one of two things.

1) take the time to explore all the various types of information your addon can record and display. you may find it quite valuable in honing your game play.

2) uninstall your addon.

meters are very useful and informative tools that can be used to enhance your gaming performance in many ways. however stroking your epeen in party/raid chat is incredibly unproductive and meaningless. if you're going to use meters please use them well and make the most of all they offer.

[craigjm]

There was no overhealing on the tank in that situation. The overhealing was done on the rest of the raid. The meters don't tell you why the overhealing was done, just that it was. They only show you that small portion of the picture. You have to look at the combat logs and/or talk to the healers involved to find out why the priest was overhealing the raid, like Rhaenis said earlier. Just because the overhealing showed up for the priest doesn't mean it's his fault. It could be the pally's for not sticking to his assignment and unnecessarily putting the tank(s) at risk.

Sure, the priest could start throwing heals on the tank since he can snipe them in before the pally, but he's assigned to raid heals, not tank heals. Telling healers to top the meters just encourages them to start healing more than their assigned targets and stop being team players.

Meters are just a small piece of evaluating a healer.

[Genshin]

WTFs with this wall of txt crap. This is the internet, brah. Watch me sum up ur whole point in a few short words...


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCC PPL WHO THINK METERS ARE EVERYTHING.

[Norcyz]

WTFs with this wall of txt crap. This is the internet, brah. Watch me sum up ur whole point in a few short words...

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCC PPL WHO THINK METERS ARE EVERYTHING.

It actually hurts my brain to read a reply like this.

Anyway, @OP: Nice. Spawned some nice discussion. Most people here seem to have decent POVs. I've enjoyed reading them.

[harky]

WTFs with this wall of txt crap. This is the internet, brah. Watch me sum up ur whole point in a few short words...


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCC PPL WHO THINK METERS ARE EVERYTHING.

Nice summary. That's exactly the opposite of what I was trying to say though, just an fyi. :P

[arg]

That leads back to the initial point: What healers need to do is not ignore meters, but to accept them. Accept that raw healing is in fact both a measure of power and skill.

That single statement is the biggest load of crap i've read today (and i read alot). Obviously, if you know how to read them, meters are a good tool to evaluate your fellow raidmembers, but judging healers mainly on their pure healing power is just stupid. Take IC hardmode for example. You have 2 resto druids in the raid, covering theraid with hot's.Theoreticaly they should do pretty much the same ammount of raw HPS (assuming their gear is similar). But put one resto shaman with them, chaining through melees, and the druid that is healing the melee grps will be lower on meters. Now, can you honestly say that the other oneis better because he did 1k hps more? Obviosly if there's a 5k difference, and you see that one of thedruids is throwing nourishes all over the raid instead of rjuvs, you know that you are dealing with a retard, but assuming that all your healers know how to play their classes raw HPS is a bad way to evaluate them.

[frostsomething]

Analyzing a WoL report will always be useful, even for healers. I think I disagree with the OP here in considering that "meters", however. In a sense it is, but when I usually hear "meters" it is people talking about either total damage done, dps, total effective healing done, or sometimes hps.

I can't go as far as to say they don't matter at all. If you're running 2 healers in a 10 man raid and one of them only did 20% of the total healing by the end of the night, there's something definitely wrong there and meters will show it. Maybe this is even a legitimate concern for PUGs when you simply don't know what you're getting.

But in short, as someone who doesn't PUG, I wouldn't even bother looking at effective healing or HPS meters as any sort of measure of skill. I do WoL and WMO every raid for my guild, and I used to absolutely love WWS's easy to use log browser which neither WMO or WoL still come close to matching. We've found so much stuff over the years through looking at our reports to help our raids. That said, I never look at the default effective healing tab unless it's just out of curiosity.

What is sort of damning for the issue, for me at least, is that on many fights I can intentionally change my healing so that it looks better on the meters, while actually helping the raid less. That would invalidate the whole concept right there. Sniping is a big way to accomplish this, but it's not the only way. Sniping can also be unintentional, so don't be so quick to say "I trust my guildies not to snipe". Even if your trust isn't misplaced, it can still happen. How many of your healers have their addons set up to show if someone has a hot on them, for example? I'll bet for most of you, it's very few.

Amusing anecdote: we nearly wiped on Kologarn about a month or two ago. He's old content, but he still can hit pretty hard even by today's standards. Reason why we wiped? Because he IS so easy our healers were on relax mode not really paying attention. Our holy paladin didn't switch beacon right away when our tanks swapped, so that didn't help, and at a key moment was healing a Shaman with a Holy Light. Our tank went from 100% to dead in 2 seconds flat with only a bunch of Druid hots and an imp lotp proc for heals during that 2 second span. So unless you want to blame all the healers for that (which means you want all the healers to either have a crystal ball, or you want all your healers spam healing the Kologarn tank whenever he's not at 100%) or you blame the tank healer for not following her job. Maybe you blame the raid/healer leader for only having one tank healer, too, but that's another story. :P

The point here is... where does an effective healing meter even enter into the above discussion? Sure, the Paladin would've had a Holy Light with little/no overhealing if she healed the tank instead of the Shaman... but that Holy Light she hit the Shaman with only overhealed for 835. Looked just peachy on the meters. This is just one of many possible scenarios in which "meters" do nothing.