I’ll lead this post off by saying: I acknowledge the fact that I have not pressed ‘end-game content’, as the forum nerds refer to it. With that said, healing meters are a dumb way to measure the value of healers.
- Raid healing and tank healing are completely seperate types of healing. The tank is constantly taking damage, the raid may not be taking damage. The potential amount of healing a raid healer can do depends on the encounter itself, and how smart/reactive the raid is to get out of trouble. If the raid moves fast and can avoid extra AoE damage, that’s less damage raid healers have to heal. If raid healers heal less, they show up lower on the meters.
- Especially in the case of Disc priests, there’s really isn’t a way to calculate the value of things like absorption from shields, Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, etc. Maybe the Disc priest didn’t top meters, but he laid a crucial PS+PW:S that kept the tank from dying and the raid from wiping.
- You’re working for a common goal. You’re supposed to be competing against the mobs in front of you, not one another. Healing meters seem to promote players spamming their big AoE heals in order to top the healer next to them, instead of the more mana-efficient/appropriate spell for that particular situation.
I get it. When you’re pressing new raids and every little bit counts, you’d like a way to measure the effectivness of one healer over another. But the better way to do that is this: Assign roles to your healers and if the healer can fullfill their role and the players their responsible for DON’T DIE, then they did fine. If the players their responsible for DID die then figure out why. Were they standing in fire? Was the healer out of position, not managing their mana? Go from there.
WoW has so many variables that you can’t say: “Ok, Zejus had only 29% of the healing while Banjos has 37% and Eriak had 34% of the healing. Since we wiped, it must be because Zejus isn’t pulling his load.” It doesn’t work that way. If Zejus was tank healing and the tank didn’t die, but Banjos was raid healing and 4 dps died which led to slow killing and Zejus OOM’ing then your problem is elsewhere regardless of what the meters say.
I think healing meters are stupid and if my wife divorced me and I was able to raid and was recruited by a guild who is THAT serious that I’d be removed if we wipe and my healing percentage was lower than the rest I’d leave that guild immediately.
Before anything else, WoW is a game. It’s meant to be fun. If your guild is wiping on a particular boss but you’re on Vent with good players, and friends, you make it work. You stick with it and figure it out. Kicking people just so that you can brag on the forums about your fake purple epics does not impress me.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I haven’t touched my Blood Elf Holy Priest in months and one of the reasons was a few within the guild seemed to think they are the be all to end all, thankfully our guild leader/raid leader knew there are other issues at play besides the healing meter. It can be a nice tool if used correctly but it doesn’t always tell the entire story.
I would like to also mention those few that were keeping to ‘rock the healing charts’ also did the most overhealing too. At times, since they wanted to Pew Pew the healing charts they took a lot of aggro too. I raid casually, in raiding my job was to keep my assigned DPS alive. Naturally, they did not take as much damage as the tanks, so therefore, they did not require as much healing. If I saw the tanks healers having difficulties keeping them up (It did not happen a lot, but occasionally it did happen) I definitely would toss in a heal so the tank would not die.
Excellent points…especially about overhealing. I think the pew-pew top-the-meter healers are just having a tough time finding satisfaction in doing our jobs: keeping people alive. It’s thankless sometimes. So the healing meters are another way to prove themselves.
You’re right, there’s ways the meters can be helpful…IE: there are 3-4 raid healers and half of the raid is dying…someone isn’t pulling their load, but the meters only scratch the surface.
Grins Yeah, you’re right that it can be thankless at times. I’m leveling another Holy Priest, Alliance this time. She’s 31 at the moment and has already been in several lowbie instances. Although it hasn’t happened *yet* with her, I’ve been in several Old world and Northrend instances with my Blood Elf Holy Priest where others were bragging about their ‘leet skills’ in downing a particular boss, or taking out massive amount of trash mobs. Well all their leet skills wouldn’t have mattered without someone to heal them.
It’s a team effort.
I have found that at times tanks and healers will usually be blamed for things that aren’t even their fault. Of course at times it is our fault (and I’ll admit when it’s my error) but we aren’t to blame all the time.