While many healers agree that healing meters are a poor judge of a healer’s performance, there needs to be some way to assess whether or not a healer is doing his or her job well, and like it or not, meters are probably the tool that’s used to do so. As a new recruit to a raiding guild, I’m very aware of how my performance as a healer is being judged.
Last night’s fresh 25-man Naxx made me feel like that judgment wouldn’t be too favorable. People were dying right and left. We wiped a lot The OT died on trash. And while I’m loathe to utter the “blame the healers” mantra, it really did feel like last night’s healing was weak. And if one looks at the meters, right or wrong, I was the weakest: seventh out of
seven in terms of overall healing done.
Of course, a Discipline healer will typically be low on the healing meters as these tools are not designed to calculate our talent-tree-defining abilities: Grace, Power Word: Shield, and Divine Aegis. During last night’s raid, for example, Grace hit about 800 times, but I get no credit for that reduction in damage. Divine Aegis hit about 470 times. If my heal crits averaged about 5000, that means Divine Aegis absorbed approximately 730,000 damage over the course of the night. But again, no credit on the reports. I cast Power Word: Shield over 300 times, shielding approximately 2 illion damage — again, uncredited. If I add these bubbles to my healing, I’m third for “healing.”
But I’m the one doing the math, and I really doubt anyone else is.
There is, of course, other information to be gleaned from a WWS report other than just “effective healing done.” My focus was the lowest, as a designated MT healer, that’s good, right? My overhealing was higher than I’d like (although admittedly, I’m not sure if overhealing is a good or a bad thing. I have no shortage of mana when raid-buffed, and casting Penance on the tank in order to get the three stacks of Grace seems worthwhile, even if he’s not particularly low on health). I know that I need to be casting Power Infusion more (I did finally make a macro that’d whisper my target to inform them they’d been infused). And I should cast Pain Suppression more as well, not just on the aggro-pulling DPS, but perhaps more frequently on the tanks themselves. And in general, I need to work on improving my spellpower, as I can see my PoMs healed for around 500-700 less than the other two Holy Priests. But other than this very general sense that I need to do better, and after pouring over the WWS reports for a good long while this morning, I’m not really sure if it’s a matter of “Disc — yer doin’ it wrong.”
Oh, and for the record, I fucking hate the Instructor Razuvious fight. WTF taunt? WTF melee? Blah.
healing meters are utterly useless, it didn’t take world of matticus to figure that out lol.
especially as disc where, as you eluded to, half of discs effectiveness is in damage mitigation through shields and grace stacks (which i’d argue is useless unless you’re on tank-duty… +healing for 8seconds, woot?)
Are you using the glyph of holy nova? I love myself some CoH but with the upcoming nerf will probably find myself low again on the AoE totem pole and, back when i was disc, this glyph can drop a nice aoe heal that’s as-competitive-as-it-gets with CoH (although with higher positioning requirements and mana cost).
and maybe drop more renews if you’re guild is pressuring you to “heal more.”
[…] to their raid leaders that they are indeed doing their jobs. Previous posts in the series: Self-Assessment, Pt 1: Assessing a (Discipline) Healer Self-Assessment, Pt 2: Discipline Priests and […]
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[…] How to asses Disc Healing […]
[…] How to asses Disc Healing […]
[…] How to asses Disc Healing […]
You have valid reasons but 8% heals 46% overheals is just not good. 46% is a lot of percent, generally I am for 10-20% over healing max (as holy). Basically from what I know as a priest (normally holy) as disc you should be MT / OT healer and another assigned to watch there bars and help but mainly you just healing mt or ot. You shouldnt be raid healing at all practically yet prayer of healing is 6%. PoH is terrible as disc im sure you could of flash healed those targets in pretty much same time with better crits and procs. Even though you have no shortage of mana over healing is a bad habit even if you can get away with it. In harder fights you will get oom and overheal is basically a complete waste of time as you didnt heal ANY hp. So you could have been healing others instead of over healing someone.
Just my thoughts.
Nax*
MT healer is your most preferred job dont try to raid heal. Since you have so much mana, awesome procs, good crits, fast heals your job is to heal tanks. And use PW:S as raid mitigation, if you know aoe is coming up and mage is on lower health, throw a PW:S and if someone is falling fast throw a bubble and let the raid healers sort them out.
@ dan
The overheals are dreadful — you’re right. A lot has changed for me since I wrote this post. (Gear, playstyle, guild, etc) This was probably from my first or second Naxx 25. I reglyphed away from PoH to HN — still not a good spell for me, but useful on the rare occasion. I rarely cast PoH now as Disc, except during Loatheb (and on the odd occasion when I do need to use it, I try to use Inner Focus to make it a freebie).
How embarrassing to have WoW Insider link this.
I wouldn’t worry too much about your PoM hitting for less than the Holy priests. They get some talents later in the tree that boost their spell power over Disc. Other than that, good article and doing the math.
I wouldn’t say the meter’s are useless, For example, I was looking at a WWS with 2 holy pally’s and 1 was doing half the healing the other one was…..there is something wrong with that, and you wouldn’t have known had you not looked at the meter, the other healers were carrying him…
Overheal, the General consensus, is 50% or less is nothing to be worried about at this time, over 50% is considered excessive, but again, if your not having mana problems, it’s not a big deal.
Elorenz of Silver Hand
I am glad WoWInsider linked it actually, it made me feel a bit better about myself as a disc priest. I recently “tried out” for a new guild but I was rejected as my heals were “too slow” which I translated as “you were bottom of the healing meters, n00b”. Now, I was actually fine with not getting in as I didnt like their play style (no healing assignments, and far too many holy pallys), but I was a bit worried about my reputation. I think I make a pretty decent disc priest as I understand the damage mitigation talents and use them pretty well (imho). I dont overheal very much, and this makes me even lower on the “healing done” meters. So I end up looking terrible to a guild leader who is just looking at the meters.
Ah well, I would rather have a guild leader that understood how crap healing meters are anyway 😛 Disc Priest, Looking for Guild….
Good post and I like your blog read it a lot 🙂
Just wanted to comment on the overheal that it’s nothing to worry about. I have been through all bc and wrath content as disc and holy and for one I have learned not to compare disc and holy on healing meters. When holy compare yourself with other raid healers (shamans, druids) and when disc only compare to other disc priests or pallies. Then you will see that your overheal is pretty good.
Also on many bosses you want to overheal, I often do 78% overheal on Patchwerk and being the only MT healer on Sarth3D I am really pleased if I manage 50% overheal(both on 10 and 25man).
The reason is that on those 2 fight you don’t want your tank health to drop, because if it drops on patchy one of your melee might get hateful strikes and if your tank goes low on sarth he will be one shot by flame breath.
So remember to check each boss fight individually for overheal as it can differ alot form one boss to another 🙂
Also keep in mind that dps who focus 100% on meter status have some issues too–sure, on some fights that works, but I’ve definitely seen fights go bad because dps were so focused on topping damage meters that they forgot to dispell/decurse, interrupt, kill adds, etc… so misunderstanding meters isn’t a healer-only problem. Didn’t Ghostcrawler say something to the effect that looking at damage/healing meters to see how your raid is doing is like looking at a thermometer to see what the weather is like? It tells you something, sure, but it’s never the whole story.
The overhealing thing, at least for me, also has a lot to do with your stage in raid progression. It’s hard -not- to overheal on some of the content currently when tanks are overgeared for it. I’d say keep an eye on it, especially in light of upcoming regen nerfs, but the percentages may very well change when you start Ulduar and people are getting hit hard again.
The overheals by themselves aren’t an issue. However having lots of overheals and people dying is.
@dan – In several fights, like Noth, Gothik and Gluth, if your ignoring PoH and trying to use Flash instead you will fail.
I am thinking of going Disc now for Ulduar when it comes out. Pretty soon I wont be worried when I throw a bubble on a warrior tank because what they are doing with Warrior rage.
checkout the new recount addon called Guesses Absorbs. it was just added to estimate absorbtion numbers , especially helpful for disc priest. After running it one day , just in some 5 man heroics, and 10man sapp and khel. The absorbtion amount on my disc priest are right around the same as my healing. 1 millioin healing with around 950k absorbtion, really great addon.