Evaluating yourself and improving

[healsdude]

Hi,

I've been playing the game for a couple of years, I have tanked and DPS'd through quite a bit of content including some hardmode raiding on different characters. I've been in different raiding guilds including hardcore ones so I think I know the drill.

This is my first healing character, a holy priest. I tried disc but I don't like it so I'm not going to bother with it again. Holy seems to be my thing and I'm liking it the more I am playing it.

I've read all the guides out there at least several times over a timespan of months and adjusted my playstyle around what I felt was working right for me, which is pretty much the general consensus on forums and in guides as well. The few raids I've healed through I always check my performance against others. I know its not all about numbers but they help evaluate. My overhealing is almost always between 13-17%. From what I've seen this is quite low as I see most healers around 25%, sometimes even into >40%. As I geared up getting into heroics and ready to raid I struggled with mana immensely and this forced me to become more and more efficient - Basically, I don't use a spell unless I need it and I don't heal after Serenity unless I know a crit will fit. Exceptions aside of course, for instance when I know damage is incoming and I need the group close to full heath. I may switch to chakra:sanct and chuck out a couple of aoe heals, slap a sanctuary down if ppl can/are bunched up.

I've got a haste heavy spec as I feel it just works better for me, especially since I only raid 10-mans. I can imagine mastery getting more worth in 25-mans though but for now I think haste is king.

Now here's what is going on. I think I'm doing pretty good as a healer. I'm an experienced player and I think I know when I screw up and in which areas I need to improve. I have never played a character that was unable to move around to do his job properly (maybe I should have rolled a druid ) so I tend to get caught in bad stuff more than I used to (but still not as much as some others :P). This however is not the majority of the critisism I'm facing...

My guildies are polite but I just know from a few chats and hints that they think I can't heal certain fights. We all know how horrible pugs can be and I disregard most insults and critisism I get thrown at me, but I've been accused of buying my account on ebay or borrowing the account from my big brother. If you ask me, it's mostly everyone else that is failing but I'm not the kinda guy to have my head in my ass and if I get a few of those signals I question myself, even if its from jerks in pugs.

So how do you judge yourself?

The thing is, when I get in a group that works well, I finish any instance without a problem. When we wipe I look at Recount and if it says I chucked out 12K healing wearing half-blues with 13% overhealing, is that my bad that we wiped? If my CoH and PoH is unable to keep a group alive and I need to flash-flash-gheal everyone ... and eventually failing when I go OOM, is that my failure?

I sometimes think people expect too much of me and when I try to explain my side of things I feel they sometimes doubt what I say. I guess it's easier to think I'm doing something wrong rather than everyone else.

When I look at the stats after a succesful raid, I never come out on top but I'm never at the bottom either. I do always have the lowest overhealing done though, almost always below 20%, sometimes as low as 10% even.

So again, how do you do an honest evaluation of your own performance and what do you look at?

[Coldkil]

Actually an interesting post. I ask myself (as a rogue):

- Did i take avoidable damage? Did i use abilities that reduce incoming damage to me?

- Did i take aggro and "WHY IN THE HELL I CAN TAKE AGGRO AS ROGUE?"

- Am i using the correct abilities? Am i in the right position to damage the boss (splatters on ground, zone/cone attacks, etc).

After these aspects are done correctly (third one is pretty easy and should be always "yes"), then i start to maximize my damage. Often players don't know well their class, but if they follow boss mechanics correctly at least you can reason about the wipes. If you wipe constantly because of 1 guy failing at avouding "ultrawesome ray of death +5", there is no much room for discussion and improvement.

[Renowned]

You sound like you know enough to know if you could have done anything more (in execution, not building your character [although you probably know that too]) to save a wipe in a 5man. How often do you look at the positioning of other players? I find that, particularly in times when people are dying quickly, I get so focused on the raid frames that I'm not checking to see what people are dying of. Sure, knowing that somebody died from standing in a fire generally doesn't help win you any arguments since those sorts of players are so stubborn and ignorant that you can't ever beat them, but it will at least convince yourself that there was nothing more you could do.

I always find it helps to try every instance with a premade of people you trust at least once to get a feel for how easy they can be, and pay close attention to how often you need to use each of you big expensive abilities, how often you need to drink, how often people are unnecessarily taking damage, etc., so you can remember it and compare with it when you're pugging.

Edit: There are some pulls (particularly in Grim Batol) that can go either very smoothly or horribly painfully depending on the kill order, even if you don't CC. For example, the Azureborne Warlords are so devastating when they get Conjure Twisted Visage off, that they almost always kill a melee DPS. If you kill it first, you're more likely to interrupt it, and also more likely to just straight up kill it before it even gets a chance to cast it. Pay close attention to these sorts of things as well.

[Deleted]

My Evaluation is quite simple.

I'm always on the look of a total group picture. I have recount turned of 80% of the time, especially in fights (This counts for both raids and dungeons, for both my priest, warlock, death knight, .. . .).

When you think less of recount, you're healing another way. Atleast, so do I feel. When we wipe, I usually know WHY we wipe. Watch the groups, who's standing in the bad shit; can you help them (lifegrip, shield (for speed/dmg reduc)) etc.

When you're watching someone die, where as you could have provoked the guy dying, or when you're watching yourself die, where as you could have moved then I can tell myself "fml, I suck". Otherwise, you usually find a good reason to see what someone else is doing wrong.

[Deleted]

My Disc priest is my first healing class.

I do have holy as offspec for AoE fights, however I have found Disc to be a much more mana efficient spec. I raided for the very first time on my healer last night with my casual guild, and we got further than we have before, there were several other new healers trying it out too. So i found our progression was really good.

Personally, I like to have Crit and Mastery as my main secondary stats. Crit meaning that smaller heals can crit and heal for as much as large heals do, thus being more mana efficient and mastery counts towards the amount of damage that Power Word:shield absorbs etc. I find healing in boss fights that require a lot of movement difficult too, especially when in the middle of casting Greater heal on a tank thats taking lots of damage!

The way I evaluate how I have done in the raid is:
- The amount of over healing that was done by me, mine is normally around 18-19%
- The amount of mana that I have left over at the end of the fight (seeing as Cata is all about healers being more rational with their mana)
- What utility did I bring to the raid? Buffs, Cooldowns such as Hymn of Hope to help fellow guildies suffering from low mana and Lightwell is a useful utility.
- I don't tend to look at whether I'm top in the amount of healing done, because thats not always important, its the way you heal and how mana efficient you are in Cata. Im never bottom, but i'm not usually top either.

In the whole time that I have been levelling my Priest (which has been dungeon levelled) I can only count about 15 wipes which were possibly caused by my mistakes, which I'm pretty proud of.

On the whole, the way you learn is by making mistakes, so in my case, I need more haste because my heals take too long to cast, and by that time people are taking too much damage. Just make adjustments as you go.

[MoanaLisa]

As Shadow, I try and look back on moments when I didn't do something that I wanted to do and try and figure out what got in the way. For the longest time, I had problems when I had to switch out of damage mode to either try and save a situation or myself. My current issue is with an alt spriest I'm working up and because I don't have nearly as much haste at 43 as I do at 85, I am FOREVER trying to run MB before it's ready to go.

To me, that suggests I'm not really paying attention any longer but going on muscle memory. That's a tad on the side of being complacent so I'll have to do something about that.

Anyway, self-evaluation is a process. I spend a significant amount of time on training dummies working on reaction times and such.

One thing I don't really do is pay attention too much to meters. I know when I want to do something and accomplish it. I'm also painfully aware of when I come up short. I don't much need meters to tell me when I could have done a fight better.

And very important to me: Any time I draw aggro is a failure in some way.