08-25-2007, 03:10 PM
We've got some folks who are relatively new to big raid healing and I've been asked to speak about it to help us all out.
There's one basic rule of healing and it never changes, regardless of if you are PvPing, 5 manning, soloing or raiding - keep key players alive while maintaining a balance between throughput (hitpoints per second - HPS), mana efficiency (how many hitpoints healed per mana expended), and threat. That's what we do as healers, right from the very first heal spell cast to the very last encounter you ever see. What changes is the individual pieces of the rule - go for HPS over mana efficiency at this stage, heal this player instead of that one, hold off healing because tank threat is at zero or pour it on because it needs to be done anyway and just healer-tank for a short time, how many other healers are around.
For normal five mans, generally you're the only healer in the group so you can heal exactly how you want to. If you manage to get a group that is at level appropriate (with both gearing and character level), you really see just what you can do as a healer. You learn all your tricks when things go wrong, you learn just what you're capable of because if you fail, it's completely obvious. There's no safety net. If any healing is going to be done, it's basically you (minus potions and bandages).
For heroics and 10 man raids, you will probably have some other kind of healing along (depending on the heroic of course). This is where you learn to share the healing duties. You learn new ways to apply the tricks you learned solo healing because there's healing coming in that you can't control. Is that other healer going to try to do it all himself? Are you going to try to do it all yourself? Or are you going to split healing duties so it's easier to keep everyone alive, despite the heavy incoming damage? If you agree that one of you will watch the tank and the other free for all heal (FFA heal), will both of you actually do what you are supposed to do? How much trust do you have in your fellow healers? How much trust do they have in you? It takes some adjusting at first, but generally discussing with the other healer present and just seeing how they prefer to heal makes the adjustment fairly simple. There's not a whole lot of assigning, not a whole lot of nitpicky crap to watch. It's pretty easy.
For the larger raids, you add in even more healers, which adds another layer of complications and requires a bit more structure. If everyone tries to heal the tank, but there's periodic damage to the raid, you're going to start losing DPSers. If everyone tries to FFA the raid, the tank dies. If everyone flips back and forth between both tank healing and FFA healing, there's a lot of mana and time wasted and you may or may not actually lose tanks or DPSers or even other healers. If you get surprise adds, do the collective healers actually have enough mana left to make it through or did they blow it all playing the whack-a-mole healing game? This is why we set up assignments and division of labor, according to class, spec, and the folks behind the keyboard - to try to cover every eventuality and make sure that the entire group is successful, even when things go wrong.
There are three main healing roles in the larger raids - main healer, backup healer, and FFA healer. Main healers are folks who have a specific tank to watch, whether it's an offtank, second tank or main tank. Backup healers generally help out the main healer on a specific tank. FFA healers generally watch the rest of the raid, who don't have specific healers assigned to them.
The five different classes of healers (yes, there are five - priest, shaman, paladin, tree druid, and healing touch druid) have different strengths and weaknesses that tend to favor one healing role over another. Priests are the masters of the "oh crap!" healing. Prayer of Mending, power word : Shield + renew, binding heal, flash heal, circle of healing (if they spec that deep in holy), spirit of redemption (aka improved death, if specced for it), and even lightwell (which you can cast while an angel as your absolute last heal and if you're specced for it). Priests absolutely shine when things go wrong. Too bad most of the time their skills are overshadowed because things don't go wrong. Shaman are very good at positional AoE healing thanks to chain heal, but lack HoTs. Lesser Healing wave is comparable to the priest flash heal, but Healing Wave isn't really a big enough heal to play with the main tanks. Earthshield is a great aggro generator for the tanks though. You don't have to be grouped with folks in order to heal up more than one person with just one cast and they don't have to be grouped with each other either; they just have to be standing close enough to each other for chain heal to bounce. Paladins have fantastic staying power for the long fights and also have great throughput, depending on what is more important during the fight. Their talents also encourage spamming heals. Tree druids also have fantastic regen, but it's spirit based so you don't want them constantly casting so they aren't as well suited for FFA healing as some of the other classes. They are fantastic main healers though. Healing touch druids have the really monstrous big heals that are so very helpful with the large hitpoint pools we're seeing on tanks. but again, aren't as well suited to the FFA role, but do great as main healer.
Main healers have the most visible healing job - everyone notices when a tank goes down. If you are assigned as a main healer, this is your priority. This is your job. We've got other folks to FFA heal. Trust them enough to let them handle what they are assigned to do. Every second taken away from watching your tank because you are healing someone else in the raid is a second where you can get behind on healing your tank and then someone else has to cover your butt on your tank. It doesn't matter if they got a lucky dodge-miss-parry streak and aren't taking much damage right at the moment. We've got enough other healers on most nights to take care of the raid. If you start FFAing because you're bored, how bored do you think the FFA healers are going to become? We're healers because we like to heal. If we've got one or two hotshots who want to pad their numbers or are just naturally hyperactive healers, you take away that enjoyment from the other healers. This isn't competition healing; we're supposed to be working as a team. If you don't like main healing, say so in the Preferred Raid Roles thread. We aren't going to force you to do something you don't want to, but you have to let us know what you do want.
Backup healers sometimes play as main healers and sometimes just as backup, depending on the fight and who is assigned main healer. "Backup" healing when the main healer is a tree druid is pretty much just casting a large heal after spikes. The HoTs do their wonderful things at maintaining a tank, but can get tricky playing catchup once NS heal is burned. As always, keep communication open between the backup healer and the main healer. In a case like this, generally, it's two main healers rather than one backup and one main. If a paladin is the main healer, try to stagger your heals around his if the incoming rate of damage is that high or (if you have HoTs), keep your HoTs up since they don't have any HoTs. With 2 second holy light (if talented) and the 1.5 second flash of light, it can be rough to time it so you don't have big overheal, but if the heals are staggered, then you don't have to worry as much about a huge damage spike on the tank. We've got 3.5 second big heals (untalented), 3 second big heals (both talented and untalented ones for different classes), 2.5 second big heals and 2 second big heals. With all those different casting times, things naturally get staggered out if you heal proactively rather than reactively. You know the tank is going to be taking damage so heals started before he gets hurt probably won't be wasted. Queue up a heal. If it's not going to be needed, cancel it by hitting the escape key, but most of the time, it's going to be needed anyway. If the main healer you are working with calls out for help, that's you.
FFA healers get the least amount of recognition, but it's just as important as main healing and backup healing. How are you going to kill the silly thing if the rest of the raid is dead? FFA healing can be horribly boring or horribly exciting and overwhelming or just plain old FUN. It just depends on what the flow of battle is like. The biggest things you need in a FFA healer are good reaction time, good awareness and knowing to leave alone those folks who do have healers assigned to them. If you're on FFA and you're healing folks who already have healers assigned to them, not only are you taking away from those other healers and possibly making things less fun for them, you are also not paying attention to your job and interfering with others trying to do their job. Let's say Healer A is main healing, Healer B is backup healing and Healer C is FFAing. Not a lot of folks in the raid are taking damage. Healer C gets bored and starts healing the tank because that's the only thing taking damage. Healer A and/or B are now bored and attention starts to slip a little bit. Something happens to cause the raid to take damage so healer C starts FFAing. Healers A and B are left alone on their tank again, but because Healer C isn't healing anymore, the damage rate coming in on the tank seems to have increased substantially. Couple this with an untimely crushing blow and all of a sudden the tank's health drops like a rock and there's a big scramble to get the tank back up to full health which may or may not work, but nonetheless has caused problems and possibly a wipe when things had been going well. If there's not a long for the FFA healer to do, go DPS. There can be too much healing. There can't be too much DPS (as long as the DPS doesn't pull aggro). Even though you may not do much DPS, it's better than just standing there twiddling your thumbs or interfering with other healers. You are still helping the group, you are still important. Just don't get too wrapped up in DPSing that you forget to FFA heal. :)
Really, what raid healing boils down to is trust your fellow healers to do their jobs and show them some respect by allowing them to do their jobs, practice their art, and they will show the same in return. Trust and communication are the biggest things when trying to work with multiple healers. For communication purposes, we use the custom chat channel lurkersheal to hand out assignments and discuss healy things. We expect everyone who might be called on to heal to be in that channel and we'll start mentioning it at the start of raids too to make sure everyone is aware. Please wait until assignments are handed out before asking questions or making comments. And please, if you aren't sure about something, ASK. We'd rather answer questions than wipe. Just wait until assignments are handed out to minimize confusion and to help avoid train of thought derailment for whomever is handing out the assignments.
There's one basic rule of healing and it never changes, regardless of if you are PvPing, 5 manning, soloing or raiding - keep key players alive while maintaining a balance between throughput (hitpoints per second - HPS), mana efficiency (how many hitpoints healed per mana expended), and threat. That's what we do as healers, right from the very first heal spell cast to the very last encounter you ever see. What changes is the individual pieces of the rule - go for HPS over mana efficiency at this stage, heal this player instead of that one, hold off healing because tank threat is at zero or pour it on because it needs to be done anyway and just healer-tank for a short time, how many other healers are around.
For normal five mans, generally you're the only healer in the group so you can heal exactly how you want to. If you manage to get a group that is at level appropriate (with both gearing and character level), you really see just what you can do as a healer. You learn all your tricks when things go wrong, you learn just what you're capable of because if you fail, it's completely obvious. There's no safety net. If any healing is going to be done, it's basically you (minus potions and bandages).
For heroics and 10 man raids, you will probably have some other kind of healing along (depending on the heroic of course). This is where you learn to share the healing duties. You learn new ways to apply the tricks you learned solo healing because there's healing coming in that you can't control. Is that other healer going to try to do it all himself? Are you going to try to do it all yourself? Or are you going to split healing duties so it's easier to keep everyone alive, despite the heavy incoming damage? If you agree that one of you will watch the tank and the other free for all heal (FFA heal), will both of you actually do what you are supposed to do? How much trust do you have in your fellow healers? How much trust do they have in you? It takes some adjusting at first, but generally discussing with the other healer present and just seeing how they prefer to heal makes the adjustment fairly simple. There's not a whole lot of assigning, not a whole lot of nitpicky crap to watch. It's pretty easy.
For the larger raids, you add in even more healers, which adds another layer of complications and requires a bit more structure. If everyone tries to heal the tank, but there's periodic damage to the raid, you're going to start losing DPSers. If everyone tries to FFA the raid, the tank dies. If everyone flips back and forth between both tank healing and FFA healing, there's a lot of mana and time wasted and you may or may not actually lose tanks or DPSers or even other healers. If you get surprise adds, do the collective healers actually have enough mana left to make it through or did they blow it all playing the whack-a-mole healing game? This is why we set up assignments and division of labor, according to class, spec, and the folks behind the keyboard - to try to cover every eventuality and make sure that the entire group is successful, even when things go wrong.
There are three main healing roles in the larger raids - main healer, backup healer, and FFA healer. Main healers are folks who have a specific tank to watch, whether it's an offtank, second tank or main tank. Backup healers generally help out the main healer on a specific tank. FFA healers generally watch the rest of the raid, who don't have specific healers assigned to them.
The five different classes of healers (yes, there are five - priest, shaman, paladin, tree druid, and healing touch druid) have different strengths and weaknesses that tend to favor one healing role over another. Priests are the masters of the "oh crap!" healing. Prayer of Mending, power word : Shield + renew, binding heal, flash heal, circle of healing (if they spec that deep in holy), spirit of redemption (aka improved death, if specced for it), and even lightwell (which you can cast while an angel as your absolute last heal and if you're specced for it). Priests absolutely shine when things go wrong. Too bad most of the time their skills are overshadowed because things don't go wrong. Shaman are very good at positional AoE healing thanks to chain heal, but lack HoTs. Lesser Healing wave is comparable to the priest flash heal, but Healing Wave isn't really a big enough heal to play with the main tanks. Earthshield is a great aggro generator for the tanks though. You don't have to be grouped with folks in order to heal up more than one person with just one cast and they don't have to be grouped with each other either; they just have to be standing close enough to each other for chain heal to bounce. Paladins have fantastic staying power for the long fights and also have great throughput, depending on what is more important during the fight. Their talents also encourage spamming heals. Tree druids also have fantastic regen, but it's spirit based so you don't want them constantly casting so they aren't as well suited for FFA healing as some of the other classes. They are fantastic main healers though. Healing touch druids have the really monstrous big heals that are so very helpful with the large hitpoint pools we're seeing on tanks. but again, aren't as well suited to the FFA role, but do great as main healer.
Main healers have the most visible healing job - everyone notices when a tank goes down. If you are assigned as a main healer, this is your priority. This is your job. We've got other folks to FFA heal. Trust them enough to let them handle what they are assigned to do. Every second taken away from watching your tank because you are healing someone else in the raid is a second where you can get behind on healing your tank and then someone else has to cover your butt on your tank. It doesn't matter if they got a lucky dodge-miss-parry streak and aren't taking much damage right at the moment. We've got enough other healers on most nights to take care of the raid. If you start FFAing because you're bored, how bored do you think the FFA healers are going to become? We're healers because we like to heal. If we've got one or two hotshots who want to pad their numbers or are just naturally hyperactive healers, you take away that enjoyment from the other healers. This isn't competition healing; we're supposed to be working as a team. If you don't like main healing, say so in the Preferred Raid Roles thread. We aren't going to force you to do something you don't want to, but you have to let us know what you do want.
Backup healers sometimes play as main healers and sometimes just as backup, depending on the fight and who is assigned main healer. "Backup" healing when the main healer is a tree druid is pretty much just casting a large heal after spikes. The HoTs do their wonderful things at maintaining a tank, but can get tricky playing catchup once NS heal is burned. As always, keep communication open between the backup healer and the main healer. In a case like this, generally, it's two main healers rather than one backup and one main. If a paladin is the main healer, try to stagger your heals around his if the incoming rate of damage is that high or (if you have HoTs), keep your HoTs up since they don't have any HoTs. With 2 second holy light (if talented) and the 1.5 second flash of light, it can be rough to time it so you don't have big overheal, but if the heals are staggered, then you don't have to worry as much about a huge damage spike on the tank. We've got 3.5 second big heals (untalented), 3 second big heals (both talented and untalented ones for different classes), 2.5 second big heals and 2 second big heals. With all those different casting times, things naturally get staggered out if you heal proactively rather than reactively. You know the tank is going to be taking damage so heals started before he gets hurt probably won't be wasted. Queue up a heal. If it's not going to be needed, cancel it by hitting the escape key, but most of the time, it's going to be needed anyway. If the main healer you are working with calls out for help, that's you.
FFA healers get the least amount of recognition, but it's just as important as main healing and backup healing. How are you going to kill the silly thing if the rest of the raid is dead? FFA healing can be horribly boring or horribly exciting and overwhelming or just plain old FUN. It just depends on what the flow of battle is like. The biggest things you need in a FFA healer are good reaction time, good awareness and knowing to leave alone those folks who do have healers assigned to them. If you're on FFA and you're healing folks who already have healers assigned to them, not only are you taking away from those other healers and possibly making things less fun for them, you are also not paying attention to your job and interfering with others trying to do their job. Let's say Healer A is main healing, Healer B is backup healing and Healer C is FFAing. Not a lot of folks in the raid are taking damage. Healer C gets bored and starts healing the tank because that's the only thing taking damage. Healer A and/or B are now bored and attention starts to slip a little bit. Something happens to cause the raid to take damage so healer C starts FFAing. Healers A and B are left alone on their tank again, but because Healer C isn't healing anymore, the damage rate coming in on the tank seems to have increased substantially. Couple this with an untimely crushing blow and all of a sudden the tank's health drops like a rock and there's a big scramble to get the tank back up to full health which may or may not work, but nonetheless has caused problems and possibly a wipe when things had been going well. If there's not a long for the FFA healer to do, go DPS. There can be too much healing. There can't be too much DPS (as long as the DPS doesn't pull aggro). Even though you may not do much DPS, it's better than just standing there twiddling your thumbs or interfering with other healers. You are still helping the group, you are still important. Just don't get too wrapped up in DPSing that you forget to FFA heal. :)
Really, what raid healing boils down to is trust your fellow healers to do their jobs and show them some respect by allowing them to do their jobs, practice their art, and they will show the same in return. Trust and communication are the biggest things when trying to work with multiple healers. For communication purposes, we use the custom chat channel lurkersheal to hand out assignments and discuss healy things. We expect everyone who might be called on to heal to be in that channel and we'll start mentioning it at the start of raids too to make sure everyone is aware. Please wait until assignments are handed out before asking questions or making comments. And please, if you aren't sure about something, ASK. We'd rather answer questions than wipe. Just wait until assignments are handed out to minimize confusion and to help avoid train of thought derailment for whomever is handing out the assignments.
Intolerant monkey.