It's not that it isn't competitive, it's that all you're doing is staring at little boxes and not engaged in the fight at all. I've played DPS/Tank and Healer in raids and healing is by far the most stressful and least enjoyable. I'm very curious about how the way Warhammer will be handling healing will play out, where you actually have to perform some offensive moves in order to build up the energy for your healing and buffing moves.

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Yup. Rogues/locks/hunter/warriors/mages have their damage meter, I have my healing meter.

You determine the best healer by looking at applied heals, and percentage of overhealing. It's a bit more complex then the highest number wins factor of DPS, but it's fun and gives us something to shoot for.

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There should be some sort of competition. After a wipe on Moroes earlier this week, I whispered the raid leader the overhealing stats as one of the pallys had run out of mana. He had been way overhealing and it wasn't because of overlapping assignments. Even if it isn't competitive, there needs to be people watching how healing is being handled at the very least.

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Although @1, it has turned almost entirely into watching the healing bars. I swear I've gone through instances where I haven't actually looked at any of the scenery, and it's a pain when I really have to monitor my placement.

But again, I need something to counter the incessant posting of DMG meters and the arguments that ensue.

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healers with crowd controlling abilities are more fun to play of course, but healing isn't an epeen contest, it takes way more finesse to heal the right amount than to overheal and get huge numbers.

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Healing meters are the same as dps meters. They're not completely accurate, but they will point out who the best healers are over a few reports.

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healing isnt competitive, its a royal pain in the butt.

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Healing meter's are not accurate. PoM for priest's don't show as there own healing. Plus Paladin's heal differently than priests, druids and shamans. A paladin can't be expected to heal the entire raid.

Although in my guild the healers try to cut in one someone's healing and make them over heal. Two of our healers out gear the raids we run, so it doesn't cause much risk.

Making the paladin geared for SSC overheal our tank on Moroes for 7k is fun for me. :)

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I've played both healer and DPS, and I must say that as a healer I never got to "see" the instance or encounters. Playing through BWL again as a mage was definitely an eye-opening experience.

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Success for a healer = their target doesn't die.

period!

Healing meters aren't accurate at ALL, nor are they a sign of successful healing. If you're healing a rogue every 10 seconds, you're going to throw more heals than a tank who's well geared and barely taking any damage. Double so, if you're healing all the DPS'ers who eat damage and there's just one dedicated healer on a tank. It's very dependent on other things that you can't control.

Conversely, DPS'ers can have that sort of compeititon because they're all focused on the same target (so their baseline is equal) and you can accurately measure who's not performing as well based on numbers. It just doesn't compare, and I'd feel really uncomfortable being with a group that tries to measure up healers with each other. (and I don't even want to get into the varying degrees of healing by classes...)

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It definitely seems like competitive healing based purely on the healing meter can be counterproductive in raids. The whole point of being a healer is to prolong the life of the raid, and especially to be able to save the raid when things inevitably go wrong.

For instance, my guild's Kara group usually includes 2 holy priests (me being one of them) and a holy pally. I have approximately 1800 bonus healing, with the next closest healer having 1500 bonus healing. I am consistently third on the healing meter, even though I feel I am healing almost all of the time.

I suppose I'm always last of the three healers because (1) I'm always trying to conserve mana when possible, in the event that extra group aggros and things get crazy, and (2)with my mods, I can tell when a target has a heal incoming from another healer. If the tank is down 1k health on a non-boss, and he has a heal incoming, I back off.

Last night, as an experiment, I decided to see if I could top the healing meter. I eventually did, but it took constant healing in unnecessary situations. And I found myself spending a lot more time drinking, which can slow up the raid.

I'm not saying the healing meter is pointless, or that healing shouldn't be competitive. But there are more factors that go into what makes a good healer than just who can spam flash heal faster. So it bugs me when someone tells me that our other priest is the "best healer" because the healing meter says so. I guess they didn't notice his overhealing was almost as much as my actual healing.

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@3, no there still shouldn't be. If you sneak heals in in front of mine before I have a chance to cancel, I'll go up on the overhealing. It's too easy for you to screw with my stats, especially if you're a class with faster (but possibly less efficient or otherwise useful) heals.

Examine things carefully, watch the healers to see how they do, but it's not a role where there should be competition. It's about keeping the team up, not competing within the team.

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Healing meters are not accurate at all, they're meaningless. On a fight like Void Reaver, I'm #1 by a mile.

Is it because I'm the greatest healer ever?

No. Its because I've got Circle of Healing, and my job is spamming heals on the melee DPS group after pounding. That means I do a ton of healing, but it doesn't make me better then the tank healers, who do less but more important healing. On another fight the melee might take less damage, and I'm now in fifth on the meters. I didn't suddenly become a worse healer, the situation demanded less healing.

The bottom line is that healing is cooperative. All the healers are a team, working together. Trying to make it competitive is counterproductive. Trying to make it competitive by using meters is flat out stupid.

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when i run 5 man instances (my priest is only 41), i always set DamageMeters to show Damage Taken

that way i always know who is most likely to actually NEED a heal throughout the instance

watching actual healing results is kind of a joke, and doesnt mean a whole lot

ive never raided, so im assuming it's quite a bit different with healing assignments, timing things right, etc.

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I agree with Tridus. Different healers have different strengths, which can shine in some encounters but be less evident in others.

Likewise with previous comments - Prayer of Mending gets credited to the player who is healed. However, most sane priests don't complain, because that player also receives the threat from that healing *grin* - making Prayer of Mending sensational for threat management.

I agree that any decent healer needs to learn about overhealing and appropriate downranking. However, the current meters are way too flawed to make analysis of healing stats constructive.

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Healing is very competitive, but in a different way as DPS. Mostly it's healing quality determining whether you get a raid spot, who you're healing, etc. If you get assigned to main-heal the main tank, you are obviously very reliable and on top of your game and your other healers, but if you're the 3rd healer on the main-tank, it may be because the raid leader doesn't trust you to a dedicated role.

Healing can't simply be judged by the healing meters, which only measures healing opportunities. There are a lot factors that go into determining a truly good healer and the metric is trust. I think you would have to do some heavy statistical analysis in the combat logs to really see a good healer's quality from numbers, but it can easily be felt.

1) Healing classes should use everything they can in their arsenal.
2) Raid healers should understand the concepts of downranking for endurance fights and focus macros.
3) Healers need to be acutely aware of healing aggro, which abilities and when they can use them without causing too much threat.
4) Healers should not be stingy with the mana pots and should drink them early so they can chain them later when they need it.
5) Healers should lead their long-cast heals when healing the main tank, interrupting them if no damage is taken.
6) Healers should decurse/cleanse/anything unless told not to for mana purposes or focus-healing. Be aware of unstable affliction. Call out to your backup if you die, etc.
7) Healers should use appropriate plugins like perfectraid, decurisve, KTM/omen.
8) Raid healers should be instance-specced with a proven spec, no soloing or pvp talents, please. Unless you're the bee's knees or your raid leader's best friend, don't go with cutesy talents, spec hardcore for your role.
9) When not needing to chain heal or lead heals on a friendly player, target the tank's mob and watch his target of target, assisting to heal when needed. Be aware of aggro changes and be ready to assist the mob to its new target and have a shield or a heal ready when it strikes.
10) Watch your squishies, they die quickly and you can't just watch the green bars and heal reactively. Squishies exist to test your proactive healing abilities.

There is plenty more to say, but if you have a good raid healer, he will look for these qualities in you and rank you accordingly in his own mind. That is your measure of healing.

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I just went through this a little while back. Healers cannot use healing meters.

A healers job is to keep people alive. In some cases healers are assigned to a person, in others it might be heal whoever. Regardless.. healers dont have a single target usually.

I was really big on the healing meters while our guild was attempting lurker. I realized that.. I was usually the last one to die, thus i either had alot more time to heal then the others.. or since i was healing just the MT for most of the fight.. that they had more targets to spam things on.

Also I noticed that certain classes over heal most of what they put out. As a druid I have small medium and large heals to throw. As a paladin they seem to only throw big heals. Thus there overhealing 50-70% of there total heals whereas i only overheal 20-40%.

So technically i'm the better healer because i'm conserving my mana and making better use of my heals then the pally spamming large heals? No.. you can't compete in healing because if someone dies.. you just failed. I mean.. its great you topped the healing meters in 1st place.. but your all dead and no phat lootz for you right?

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Healing meters mean something only if you set them up to show effective heals in combat.
The one I use is SW Stats.

Overhealing means nothing at all as far as I am concerned.
The real question is if you can afford that overhealing or not.

Healing competitive ? Mmmm
There are healers that blind heal the main tank no matters what.
Of course, the guy takes 80% of the damage so is a nice way to stuff you healing numbers.
But a healing priest with COH can't be only healing the tank.
Do you realize that COH heals for 4200 health every second? And you could spam it 4 or 5 times.
That's 21000 healed within 5 seconds!!

But a healer can not be limited to his healing assignment.
If no one is flexible and only heals his assignment then its a guaranteed wipe if one of the healer dies.
His death creates a domino effect in the raid and its over.

To evaluate a healer performance, I usually look at his healing breakdown and total effective healing.
How many people does he effectively care healing?
Where is he (the healer himself) in his own breakdown? (that reveals if he knows where to stand in the fight). The overhealing % could be interesting to check.
Also healing Karazhan and SSC (or TK) are 2 different things.
COH is pretty worthless in Kara but shines in 25 men raids.

From the comments I can read here, a lot of the people have no clue what healing really is.
Healing is more than just healing your assignment!
Healer A heals only Tank A.
Healer B heals only Tank B.
The boss is at 5%
Bad luck for healer B, an add cleaves and insta kills him. Tank B that was on that add is not healed as healer A does not want to heal tank B who is not his assignment... Its a domino effect and a wipe.
You have to be super flexible


To conclude, there is a difference to make about healing trash mobs kills and bosses kills.
Trash mobs favor fast healers. There is almost no mana management on trash.
Which is not the case on bosses.
I look at the complete raid numbers, as well as for each attempts.

BTW, the best of all meters is WWS:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/

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Nice post, vern. However, WWS can't be considered the best healing meter, for the simple fact that it *still* has trouble registering Prayer of Mending and Lifebloom. (It attributes them to the target instead of the caster.) I know Recount has fixed that issue and is counting things pretty accurately, so I've been relying on that addon. I don't know the situation with SWStats, but since it doesn't get updated as often, I'm sticking with Recount.

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healing is definitely competitive. if your group wipes, you lose. if you clear, you WIN!

and you're competing against death ITSELF. pretty stiff competition, eh...?

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