I remember having meters back in the MC days of Rank 4 HT all night with your 9-11-31 Innervate spec. I remember using a windows keypress emulator to autoheal the emergency monitor while I went to the grocery store to get more beer. Came back and I was 3rd on the monitor. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, meters are here to stay.

DPS is somewhat dependant on the other classes and the mobs being killed. If the mobs die really fast due to outgearing the instance or just low HP, classes that have higher rampup time on their dps abilities suffer on the meters. If a boss has unusually high or low armor it changes the position of the melee. If you dont have trauma debuff for instance, it lowers some of the rogue’s dps.

My complaint about the healing forum is people seeing raw numbers and then start jumping up and down.. “I want that.. I want that!”

Each class has their pros/cons. I’m sure blizzard can solve this problem by creation a “Healer” class and removing Resto from the game all together. Then we’d all be equal.

Frankly, I have no interest in being the heavy-handed tank healer. I’m very happy finding my place as a solid group healer. It has taken two-and-half months to find my rotations, glyphs, and talents. I can shift into the heavy-handed healing if I have to, but it is not what druids do best.

As for healing charts, I think as healers we need to change our way of thinking. Having the top healer do 60% of the healing and the rest doing 40% is a sign that the healers need to pow-wow and discuss healing assignments, gear, and rotation. Because if that top healer dies it will throw the rest of the healers into a panic.

I’d rather have the healing meters show heals almost equal over all healers (it will never be equal because you have to handle curses, rezes, and other utility services). Which is why I think a better game for healers to play is “How can we equalize out the healing among all of us?” If that game is played right and played effectively while everyone is doing their assigned healing. It will ensure that if a healer does go down there is more mana over all to pick up that healer’s tasks.

- Ben

Just remember there’s a finite amount of damage to be done as well.

Bottom line yes we like to be at the tops of meters regardless of our role, but we all need to step back and realize it won’t always be the case. Healers should quantify their roles based on other things.

i.e I’ll never outheal the druid healer as a pally, but damn I’ll kick his butt on the Instructor Raszuvious fight!!!

You have managed to nail, quite eloquently, the reason why I’ve wanted to strangle a priest in my guild.

I’m already bored-because there’s what, 1 or 2 fights in Naxx we can’t 2 heal, so we bring three, even though for the ENTIRE REST OF THE INSTANCE we’re bored? As a holy pally, I find myself flailing around when the holy priests are merrily AoEing their way up the meters. It was/is hell on my esteem and my raiding morale.

I’m going to post a link on our guild forums to this post. Perhaps pinpointing the issue will make it easier to bear for all of us.

Great post!

Another fantastic post!

I try to avoid blizz forum fights in general… How do you bring yourself to read it?

I think I feel kindly toward all the other healers in the guild. I totally agree about feeling like crap if not in the top three-ish.

And then when I’m NOT in the top three-ish I come up with these excuses like “It was assignments” or “This fight favors CoH”. Excuses make me feel better and I’m pretty open with myself that every other person could be doing the same thing! If every healer in your guild thought they are in the top half of the healers in your guild, don’t you think the world would be a better place?

nom nom nom… am chewing hard on this one.

Meters /sigh. I agree with this and it is worded well here. Healers can only heal a finite amount and when you compare this to dps mechanics – you really need to understand before concluding ‘That healer is low, they are a poor healer’. Personally the first thing I do is look how my spell rotation is working, how much impact passive abilities are having (living seed, glyphs, trinkets – and how I can increase/decrease those numbers) and overall how much impact I had.

However –

When looking at stats such as WWS, the healing is ranked on effective healing. If you consider the info here, if the healer with the highest effective healing didn’t heal, everyone elses effective healing would be higher. But would the rankings of effective healing output change? Probably not. Although our output is dependant on how much damage there is left to heal – the numbers we are dealing with are so high that averages will prevail. These numbers are not measuring qualtity but quantity. Reaction time is a major factor, if I can see someone creeping up a threat meter or look for visual clues as to when someone might take damage (eg. loose adds) – i will react much quicker than if I wait for grid to show someone has low health. Those who can get this damage repaired quicker if not instantly are always going to be higher. I will never raid thinking I am not in control of my effective heals.

Conversly, if my role is to solely focus my energy on the MT – there is no way I am worrying about the AOE dps pulling threat. I will focus on one target and one alone – and my effective healing is going to be very low compared to those watching everything else. In those situations we need to take a big bite of humble pie and just realise we did our job. And the outsiders looking in need to know the difference before giving a /poke.

A thought provoking one Keevs

I had never been introduced to healing meters until well after BC had launched, at the insistence of the guild I was currently raiding with. I wasn’t too bothered about it initially because I was very new and undergeared and expected to be low on the meters. Now, however, in my much smaller guild, meters matter more. I check to see how I am doing and am saddened that I am not in the top two – I can rationalize this as much as my knowledge of the healing mechanics of the other classes goes, but it’s not much, so I do wonder exactly how much I need to improve. (I guess that will be helped with research.)

But you’re right about the sniping when bored, though. I find I accidentally do this sometimes – which of course is bad. But where is the line of seeing big healing numbers from a druid, but seeing the tank’s health be incredibly low all the time? At which point am I being helpful or stealing heals? The numbers tell me she’s doing a good job, but his health bar consistently tells me otherwise.