There is much debate over how to measure a healer’s performance. Some utilize healing meters, some go by the old adage that “if no one dies the healer must be good,” some actually attempt to run prospective healers through trials and see how they fare, and some don’t even bother to think twice about it. Obviously there is not a clear, concise test that can objectively be applied to any healer and gauge their ability. How, then, can a healer be measured?

Step One: Forget About Healing Meters

Typically a druid or holy priest, and occasionally a shaman, will top the healing meters. This is due mostly to the nature of their abilities, and being able to quickly put out a lot of healing energy. While meters can be useful, and often encourage friendly competition among healers, they cannot provide an adequate idea of how a healer will perform.

As an example let’s examine a basic raid (25-man) with five or six healers. A druid could do nothing more than toss Lifebloom as much as possible in between Wild Growth cooldowns and easily be at or near the top of the healing meter. In fact, if their sole responsibility is raid healing this might even be the method used. Does this necessarily mean they are a good healer, or even that they adequately performed their duty? Not necessarily. Certainly they contributed a significant amount of healing to the raid, but at what expense? Were the other healers feeling pressure to heal as a result? The meter alone does not provide us with any answers.

Take the same scenario to a ten-man raid with two healers and the results may vary significantly. There is much less room for error, and a single lifebloom or wild growth may prove to not be anywhere near enough to heal the members of the raid.

Step Two: Don’t Forget the Value of Mitigation

Discipline Priests often get snubbed by those lesser-versed players who think meters matter most, or by most anyone who does not understand what the spec brings and then looks at healing meters. Fairly simplistic, but think about it in terms of damage absorbed equals healing done. Although it is not really a direct correlation, it gets the point across. On fights where large amounts of damage are being absorbed and healed through (think fights like Patchwerk) or fights where mana conservation is of the utmost importance (think fights like General Vezax), a discipline priest can make a significant impact on whether a group is able to complete the encounter smoothly by lessening the strain on the other healer(s).

Step Three: Situational Awareness. Situational Awareness. Situational Awareness. Situational Awareness.

I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. It is the same value that contributes to making good tanks and good damage-dealers. If a healer does not pay attention to their surroundings and stays in the “big circles of hurt” that are prominent in so many encounters then they are not a good healer.

I do want to mention an exception to this particular one, however. There is one trait that relatively few healers, or at least those I have been exposed to, possess: self-sacrifice for the survival of the group. If a healer dies to an environmental ability due to a decision to get that extra healing out to a party member in order to finish an encounter, knowing that they will not be able to escape the damaging ability in time and will subsequently die, I can support that decision. Sometimes it happens. However, if the healer constantly dies doing such an act they need to reevaluate their healing style and adjust to not be constantly in such a situation.

Step Four: Observe Reaction Time.

Any healer should be able to swap assignments on the fly in a raid situation. They may not be best suited for the change in assignment compared to someone else, but they should still be able to adjust quickly to the situation as it unfolds.

In <devnull> there have been numerous times where our healers have had to adjust, and even times when our tanks have had to pull off some pretty miraculous saves working in conjunction with our healers. That type of synergy will obviously not be present in random groups, but in groups that run content together often it is a wonderful thing to see, and it is directly a result of adaptation and reaction time.

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While there may not be a clear-cut method for measuring a healer’s performance, it is easy to see where simply the knowledge and application of some basic concepts will produce good healers. Over time those that apply that knowledge and adjust to find what works best for them will be the healers people remember.

Great healers are an entirely different story, and one that I’ll address soon… ish… probably… *grin*

There are numerous places for people to find mountains of semi-useful and useless information with regards to class mechanics, how-to guides on end-game playing, quick ways to level, and breakdowns of talents and spells. While the end-game is certainly an important aspect of play, especially given how quickly a determined player can reach the level cap, acquiring the skills to be effective at the end-game level is not always as simple a concept as reading the aforementioned material. I’m going to focus on developing a healer for this particular post, primarily because of the numerous times I’ve encountered people with questions or misunderstandings about the role as of late.

Step One: Deciding to Heal.

It sounds simple enough. The thought process may even be along the lines of “well, I’ve gathered this gear set and have this other spec I never use, I’m going to give it a whirl and see what happens” to the far more determined who research everything before they even create the character. The primary point is, quite simply, that you have to want to heal in order to be a good healer. Certainly being effective is important, but the mindset of a good healer will translate into the development of the skills to become a good healer.

Step Two: Heal an Encounter.

Whether successful or not, the man thing to remember is that nothing can prepare you for actually healing in-game. Stress will manifest itself in numerous ways, sometimes even on the part of other group members hurling insults toward you (or even potentially being replaced). This is where many people give up or develop a fear of healing again (it is worthwhile to note that new tanks are often subjected to the same experience).

While certainly it does not feel good to be ridiculed or replaced, everyone had to start somewhere. Some people show a natural propensity for certain roles (or bring comfort with similar roles in other games) to the table and seem to have no issue adapting. Others need assistance or guidance in figuring out the best way to progress. Regardless of where you fall, if you want to heal don’t stop at this step because of the idiotic tendencies of the general player (and if you’re that concerned feel free to look me up in-game).

Step Three: Objectively View Your Performance and Learn.

This is a never-ending process. You have to be able to step back and look at a situation that went wrong and know whether it truly was something that could have been avoided with some changes on your part or not, and yet at the same time you have to be able to assess a successful encounter and know whether you contributed to the success or just tagged along. There is a fine line within the scope of this debate that I want to address as an entirely different subject all-together (next post), so I won’t elaborate much on it here. Suffice to say, it is possible to be a healer in a 25-man raid with significant healing numbers without actually being anything other than a heal “spammer.”

Step Four: Understand Exterior Sources of Information and How to Use Them.

This one gets a lot of people in trouble. Certainly the WoW Community is very good at providing places to go for very detailed levels of understanding all things in the game. However, just because something is mathematically more efficient or effective does not mean it is the superior way to do things. The same concept applies to everything you read: authors of any type of material provide guidelines and thoughts that are applicable to their experiences in the game and/or are rooted in scientific/mathematic theory. Use them as places to get ideas and experiment with new processes, but never think of them as the only way to achieve something in-game.

/rant

Everyone seems to think their class is horribly broken and unplayable at the moment, and Paladins have started running around screaming at the top of their lungs that they are back to being absolutely useless. Come on people, get a grip.

Why does it have to be broken when you don’t even know how the hell you are going to perform in the expansion? IT ISN”T EVEN HERE YET!

Yes, we’re all concerned. Yes, we’ve all seen something happen we don’t like. Yes, a lot of us feel as though out 51 point talents are a little sub-par…

Have you stopped to just play the game and see how ridiculously overpowered everything feels at the moment?

If you stop and think, just briefly, about the implications of that statement then you might just realize that we have absolutely no idea how things are going to compare to what we think we are interpreting things as.

/end rant

On Restoration Druids (Yes, that means me too!):

Lifebloom was a wonderful spell. It made content easy actually, and I never even considered the possibility of running out of mana in a raid. It would be a rare occasion where things were going really, really bad for me to even innervate. Yes, I miss it… a lot. But I like not having that crutch too.

Don’t set me on fire yet, I promise I’m not a heretic!

I think Lifebloom was hit just a little too hard, but I’m more concerned that our mana efficiency might have been harder still. In content that we have routinely been through over the past few months I’m having a tough time finishing the fight with much mana at all, and this is on much, much shorter fights than they used to be.

Something to consider, and probably something that is much tougher to really get a feel for yet, is that I am pretty certain I am doing a LOT more healing than before also.

Let’s look at KZ as an example. I’m obviously well over-geared for it, even pre-patch. On a typical guild run we have two healers: myself and a Shaman. On our most recent run I did over seventy percent (70%) of the overall healing done.

Side note: This is intentional on the part of the Shammy, and not anything I’m unaware of. We’re sort of trying to see if I can solo heal it at this point, and were it not for some points where I just need more direct heals to keep up, or more people grouped together for Wild Growth to be effective, I’m pretty certain it would be easily doable.

In our most recent ZA run I noticed I was having to pop Innervate on every boss fight.

What does this mean? In all honesty, pretty much nothing. We cannot truly get a feel for where we stand at the moment because of how horrendously overpowered classes are, and because, to be fair, I’m not even paying attention to trying to be mana efficient.

So, what does this have to do with my rant above? Pretty simple actually: we do not, in any way, at all, have any idea how we are going to perform in Wrath. Those that might have some idea are playing on a Beta build. Let me repeat that, a BETA build. And we’ve seen firsthand how overpowered some classes are at the moment…

Let’s step back and look at the game honestly, and you tell me if I should run proclaim that the sky is falling, that the earth is slowly standing still, that hell has frozen over, and that three meteors are headed straight for us, destined to obliterate us exactly three minutes after we install Wrath.

Come on, I’m waiting.