One thing that always seems to flare up both in-game and on various forums is the effect and accuracy of healing meters. Personally, I think they have their uses, but at the same time people need to be aware of the limitations, and that there are a couple of reasons why variations in healing meter results occur. There are also huge social issues to relying on healing meters, which quite frankly can seriously impact both the quality and even access of healers to your raid.
It’s pretty simple. Healing is not like DPS. You can’t judge it the same way. The reason for this, is that it’s a zero-sum game. Any extra healing that I do, is healing that the other healers are not able to do. Roughly speaking, the maximum amount of effective healing possible is equal to the amount of incoming damage. If the raid takes less damage, then less healing is possible. So as players become better in an encounter, or better geared, and take less damage then the numbers on the healing will actually go down.
I think for a lot of players who are used to the culture of Recount watching, this is a difficult, and sometimes impossible situation to get used to. In this way, they may find that healing simply isn’t satisfying and doesn’t show the necessary progress to keep them motivated. There’s another big problem, in that small variations in reaction time, class, or the damage pattern can have huge impacts on healing done in an encounter.
Why do I say reaction time, and not straight up skill? Because I don’t think the two things are equal. There are other things that can contribute to reaction time. Lag, computer speed, even UI and computer setup. Some of these things can be realistically overcome, some of these things can’t be. There is the issue of reaction time, but I’m not a believer that you should need an ultra-fast reaction time to be able to heal in World of Warcraft (or any game for that matter). But those who do have this advantage, might look “good” even though being that good isn’t really that necessary.
My opinion is that minor differences in these aspects, can actually result in major discrepancies in healing meters, because one person is simply getting to the damage first. This doesn’t mean that the other people suck, or are not doing their jobs. They probably are doing a really good job, and are perfectly capable of doing it without the high healer. It can mean that the person running up the healing meters is “sniping” heals, that is wasting mana in order to make sure that they are the ones that gets the effective heals off. It can also mean that a healer might not have the experience yet to deal with the content. There’s nothing wrong with this. It might be that they’ve never done it yet, so they don’t have the rhythms down, or they’re not used to the tools/UI or whatever.
But these things are not really things that can be troubleshot by simply looking at the healing meters. You might have to go into spell usage, or check to see if all the UI/Spells are set up and easy to use. But my rule is simply this. Was the encounter defeated, or given the rest of the raid a reasonable shot and defeating the encounter? Yes? Then the healing was good enough. If there are any problems with healing, it should be troubleshot not by numbers, but by feel. How did the healing feel. Were you taxed, or did it feel comfortable? How is the mana looking at the end of the encounter? These are the things that give you the information you need. I’ve healed with healers who do high HPS, and make the healing feel unmanageable, and I’ve healed with healers who do average HPS, and make me feel comfortable.
Because at the end of the day, healing is stressful enough as it is. It really is all about feel and comfort, which is ultimately about fun. And fun is what it is all about.
And speaking of comfort, over the last week my guild has beat both Putricide and the Blood Queen in 10 man. Putricide isn’t too bad to heal up until the very end, where it becomes a desperate race for survival. (On our kill I was actually in Boomkin form)
Blood Queen? She’s a desperate sprint for survival right off the get-go. And while the healing becomes easier as the fight goes on, right off the bat it feels like a kick in the groin and a punch to the head all at the same time. If you haven’t done this yet, don’t take it lightly.
May 4, 2010
karmakin
3 responses to “Healing Meters”
Saniel
May 4th, 2010 at 19:01
This has been somewhat of a hurdle for me to get over when I’m healing raids on Dal. I’m usually bringing up the rear of the HPS meters (among the healers). I never really feel like I’m not pulling my weight, though, so it was kinda confusing for me.
One of the things I’ve started checking when I feel bad about my spot on the HPS list is my spot on the Overhealing Done list. It’s also usually among the bottom (of the healers). This, at least, makes me feel efficient. Which, for an engineer, is almost the same thing as good.
Dinaer
May 7th, 2010 at 17:23
On my disc priest my presence on healing meters is especially low because my Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis don’t show up as heals. I always am far, far behind on the healing meters, for what they are worth.
I admit to having a Recount-centric way of seeing things from my years as dps. I installed RecountGuessedAbsorbs which estimates the amount of damage prevented by shields. When I add my shield damage prevention to my actual healing, it actually compares pretty well to the performance of the “real” healers in the guild.
But I still fret about the people who check Recount without my add-on, and how bad I look in comparison.
Cheres
May 18th, 2010 at 18:07
I don’t watch heal meters. If no one’s dead then yay I did something right. With druid nutty overhealing and paladin beacons its just not an efficient way to judge who’s pulling their weight and who isn’t. Like Din has mentioned, Disc priests fall off the meter because they’re more damage reduction than healing.