3.1, mana regen, and overhealFollow

Overheal for me depends on who else I am healing with as well as which boss I am on. I healed Naxx 10 with a Holy Priest and Resto Druid the other day and my overheal was higher than normal (I'm Disc btw). After watching the animations on trash I realised why. The resto druid was mainly concentrating on himself and the chunk of dps but the Holy Priest was chucking COH around on the group containing her, me and the tanks as well as healing the offtank. This made for some nice healing as it kept us and tanks up in tough fights with less strain on the druid BUT it meant my overheal was higher than normal as if her COH hit as my penance was casting thats a big chunk of overheal right there.

I try to maintain a low overheal but really it can be very hard to control. Certain fights you have to pump the heals out regardless (patchwerk for instance) as just a second without can mean a dead tank. I just try and keep my target in mind and only heal someone else's if it look like they are struggling or they shout at me over vent lol. As a Disc priest I shield a lot and this is good practice anyway for all priest imo as it can help save other peoples targets (particularly dps) without healing therefore lessening someone else's chance of overheal. If you see a DPS going down fast a shield chucked on them can help save them giving the healer an extra second or two to get there heals off.

Really you just have to practice, everything will change soon and I think we will all have to relearn. It all comes in time and after the patch every class will have to rethink how they do there job. I don't think we can predict how to handle the changes until they go live and we can see what we have to work with. Enchants and Gems may help us tweak our skills to get the most out of our gear but time will tell how the changes affect us.

By the way I would say over 70% is definitely face palm. 19% is excellent in my book. I usually try to get under 30% but this isn't always possible depending on the fight. I have never really thought what others do. If I am under 50% I'm happy for the most part.



Edited, Mar 22nd 2009 8:34am by ysabellstohelit

Paladin overheal is down to Beacon I think as when Beacon is up any heals you cast also heal the beacon if they need it or not. I still stand by over 70% being a bit facepalm but I can understand huge overheal on some classes.

My only experience really is with my priest though so I can't really compare and comment on other classes. Being Disc I can control my healing much more as I use few AOE type heals (Usually I MT heal using renew, flash heal and penance for the most part with some shields chucked in for luck) but if you are chucking COH around it is going to overheal at least 1 person I would imagine.

If you can get your mana conservation right and your assignment stays alive you are good. I am BE and I have learnt now how to maximise the mana I get from Arcane Torrent. I always hit the first one as soon as I have used enough mana to make it ding me back to full and then hit that button everytime it is off cooldown. On a long fight this can be 2 or 3 times which can make a huge difference. Learning all the tricks you have is imperative. If you can regen mana easily you need to worry less about overheal.

Edited, Mar 23rd 2009 6:21am by ysabellstohelit

I respectfully disagree with the "keep your paws off my assignment" mentality. Healers more than any other role really need to work as a single unit. If someone is assigned to a target that isn't taking damage, I'd rather have them toss some heals around elsewhere than stand around with a thumb up their nose and a full mana bar.* Sure, everyone's main responsibility is always to their target, but IMO healing is also just a better-safe-than-sorry kind of thing and unless everyone's so disorganized that they're colliding with each other constantly and running out of mana because of it, I'm not inclined to complain about having too much of it.

I'm not suggesting Tulili does this by any means, but this is one of the reasons I'm not so crazy about healing meters. "I'm lower than I should be because he stoled my healses!" makes me sad. We're not rogues; we're all about peace and love and harmony and healiness, not competition.

That said, using frames that show incoming heals on all targets can be a great thing for avoiding overhealing. It's also very nice for Pallies if they can see one of your heals about to land on a target they're trying to use for a Bacon heal.



*Okay, I guess they could Smite...



edited for typos


Edited, Mar 23rd 2009 12:11pm by teacake

Do what I do, and spam HF and Smite whenever you're not healing. You won't get any better on the healing meter, but you'll be the top healer on the dps meter!

And after all, isn't that what really matters? No, probably not. But still, it's always nice.

Well.

There's no two-ways around it. If you wanna be efficient, do what you're currently doing. If you wanna top the healing meters, respec Holy and spam CoH. If you wanna top the healing meters while being efficient, then... roll a druid I suppose.

As Disc we have the most amazing ******* of tools to help others out ie huge shield and pain suppression. These have saved many dps without heals. I always use these first over heals although I do throw renew around.

I think in many ways for me the key to efficiency is having tools available to help me best assess any given situation and tailor my spells accordingly.

I use grid and I have all the information I ever need right in those little squares. Top left red dot, target has aggro (very useful to see if a dps will continue to take damage due to overaggro or similar or they just got unlucky with some aoe) Top right green dot (target has renew on them, don't cast it again) Bottom left green dot, incoming heals (instants don't show so I can never predict COH etc but at least I can predict a flash heal/greater heal or POM) Bottom right, blue dot rejuvenate/revitalize (druid hots so my right hand bar shows essentially who has some hots and who has none so I can prioritize accordingly)

I also have it set so the name fades if they go out of range (especially useful for buffs or fights involving much movement) The targets name ALWAYS displays and it also displays warnings for DEAD, F.D., OFFLINE so I am not healing someone who isn't there. The middle flashes an icon up if someone gets hit by something I can dispell.

The only thing I haven't figured out (and loads of praise and rate ups for anyone who can tell me how to do this) is how to exclude certain spells from doing this pop up thing on grid? I have an arcane mage in my raid group but it constantly comes up flashing when he casts something that increases his arcane damage for x time as it is magic. I have got used to what looks "bad" and what looks "good" but a way to make it ignore known friendly magic spells would be fabulous.


By the way huge overheal > dead dps...

On another side note I NEVER dps as a healer as I have my task bar (I use Blizz one, yeah I know but I can't hack the others they just confuse me) entirely full of heals(shield, penance, pain suppression as well as flash heal, POH, POM etc) I have a second task bar above but this is bound to f keys and contains things like inner focus, power infusion, dispel magic, mass dispel, cure disease, fade and resurrect as well as several "oh %$*!" macros and my shackle and mind control. I have no room for dps and I don't want to switch bars to my smite bar (less heals more smite/holy fire) as by the time I switch and start casting I'd have to switch back again. I don't want me pumping out a whole 1k dps only to nearly kill someone due to unexpected aoe or similar. I heal because that's what I want to do. If I want to DPS, I spec shadow. If you really want to dps, throw Holy Nova about a bit...



Edited, Mar 24th 2009 6:31am by ysabellstohelit

This is the main thing, a PUG is hugely different to heal than a guild run. I hate and detest pugs with all my heart. With my grid I can even see if someone put renew on my targets and you know what, who cares? If the raid stays alive that is always the first priority. Yes I try not to overheal too bad and yes I try to stick to my assignment but in a bind I do what I can. I think all healers need to find the best way to work together and THAT is what makes a good healing team.

Healing assignments are meant as the people you are suppose to focus on. If you have an exclusivity clause to go along with your healing assignment it is overkill.

There are very few fights in raids right now that are so healing intensive that require exclusive healing assignments(meaning you stick to your assignment only).

Exclusive healing assignments are there for cases when if you take a moment to heal another persons assignment, chances are high that your assignment might die from that.

Only fights that may require that are healing intensive fights like patchwork and sapphiron, or range issue fights like grobulus and sarth +D.

And yes a majority of your post does lead me to think to selfishness and epeeness. Whether you intended it or not is another story, but everything about all 3 of your posts indicates that you want to strive or die by your assignment. Meaning that regardless if the tank lives or dies, you want it to be your success or your failure, and yours alone(of course this is meant if you were on tank assignment).

And a side note: Even if your healers are jumping too other peoples assignments and assisting, you can still gauge what that player can or can't handle, doesn't take much. A little knowledge in how all healers work, take a look at the raids survivability(how many people died at the end of the fight), glance at the damage taken, overall effective healing, and over healing meters, and you can easily get a good idea of which healers are capable of handling more, and which healers aren't pulling their weight.

Edited, Mar 24th 2009 11:59am by SynnTastic

In fact, forget it.

I'm sorry i tried to join in on your little corner.

All i did was try to reply and help out the OP a little and i felt i got jumped on. Well i'm very contrite now, and apologetic, and see the error of my ways.

So sorry.

I'll leave you to it =)


Peace x

with regard to overhealing percentages:

Pallies will always top the OH meter. atm Sacred Shield is not ultra reliable. Beacon always causes OH, HL glyph causes lots of OH on melee, lack of downranking has caused OH to skyrocket. all this not even considering JoL on the boss. 70% OH is probably par for fights like Patch.

for my Disc Priest i rely heavily on Renew, PW:S, and PoM for raid heals. most healers dont look/know before they cast. so when i send a PW:S and a Renew, i'm expecting that to cover the splash dmg. however, another healer will see that target at 85% and launch a flash heal. now my renew is ticking fully at over 100% health. i would not consider this snipe healing as much as i would consider it neglectful, since someone else probably could have used that flash heal more than my target.

btw, Penance is the bomb for snipe healing. a simple stopcast and we control 1,2, or 3 bursts of instant healing. dont mess with us or we will shield your target til infinity >:D

Sigh... I didn't copy and paste after you deleted your post. I am at work, at times I start writing a post, I get interrupted by, work of all things, go figure. When I started the response to your post you hadn't edited it. Funny how that works.

Edit: and 2 minutes difference between the edit and my post isn't waaaay after it was deleted....

But since I have little to do, let's go over your posts shall we.



You wrote:



It reads:



Because god forbid another healer in your group attempt to help you make your job that much easier. Ya know, work as a team, help each other out, must be a foreign concept. Screams selfishness if you ask me.

You are under the impression that they are healing your targets because you can't handle it. Most healers I know are reactionary, they see someone lose health, they begin to heal them, regardless of assignment. It's called team effort. It's not, you guys only heal these targets, and I'll heal this guy. It's not about being uberhealer and wanting to heal everyone, it's about being a healer and just wanting to heal.

Like I said earlier, exclusivity assignments are overkill. And having those kind of assignments on 90% of the content is pointless. Everything about your posts scream selfishness, you want to strive or die on your own, not with the group.



Sniping your heals? Sounds like you are a little more concerned with your healing meter than your first post implies.

Basically what it comes down to is someone is trying to help you out, by making your job a little easier.

You take it as a personal attack on your healing skills. To go that far is a little extreme, and leads me to believe you care way to much about meters and not enough about whether the group actually achieves success.

Unless you are going out of mana due to someone else healing your target, the only issue is that it makes your meter numbers look bad.

To sum this up as simple as possible.

If you are crying about someone healing your target, run heroics, you won't have to worry about healing competition as you seem to think it is.

If your raid is suffering from an abundance of overhealing, bring less healers and you won't have to worry so much about it.

If you are complaining because your overhealing meter is looking bad because someone is healing your target, learn to /stopcasting.



Sarcasm doesn't translate well on a forum, but being a sarcastic SOB myself, I detect quite a bit in this post. But it's ok, throwing a hissy fit because some people disagree with your opinion is definately the way to go. Might I suggest posting here. You will find that many people do much the same.

Edited, Mar 24th 2009 3:03pm by SynnTastic

I did... I'm not as nice as you lol.

I call things how I see them. Yep, I'm an *** and I am pretty comfortable with that.