Ask WoW Insider: Should healing be competitive?
by Barb Dybwad 
Sep 7th 2007 at 4:30PM
Gather 'round the screen, orcs and gnomes, it's time for another edition of Ask WoW Insider. Last week we debated the post powerful character in Warcraft, and this week we return to contemplating game mechanics with a question from Valyre, healing lead of the Ascent guild on Scarlet Crusade (H): Is healing competitive? And should it be?What do you think, people -- are healers just as competitive as face-melters? How do you determine the "best" healer?
The fundamental mechanics of playing a dps class seem to encourage competition. Your target has an unlimited pool of health to act upon, so if you have the mana/rage/energy, you always have an outlet. Each ability you use to create damage stacks with the other fifteen people in the raid doing the same thing. You never hear "Your melee attack made my spell worthless." Some buffs will aid your party members, but for the most part it's individuals striving to do the most damage. And there are meters to chart your progress.
Healing mechanics tend to work against themselves. Your target may or may not have enough of a hp deficit at any given time for you to act on. Your abilities don't universally stack. If your heal tops off someone's health but beats out another healer's heal, you've just wasted their heal on a healthy person and threw their mana in the trash. To make things worse, "divide and conquer" assignments are more based on being able to heal through an encounter than to actually provide a level playing field for all healers. How many times do you see 3 healers on a tank that might take 30k damage, but 4 healers on the raid that takes well over 100k damage? At the end of the night, meters show love to the people with the highest damage assignments.
With this system, can you be competitive? Should you be competitive? If so, how?
WTB your questions! Send us what you want to know and we just may publish it next week. Send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
depa Sep 7th 2007 6:38PM
Nice post, vern. However, WWS can't be considered the best healing meter, for the simple fact that it *still* has trouble registering Prayer of Mending and Lifebloom. (It attributes them to the target instead of the caster.) I know Recount has fixed that issue and is counting things pretty accurately, so I've been relying on that addon. I don't know the situation with SWStats, but since it doesn't get updated as often, I'm sticking with Recount.
Nick S Sep 7th 2007 6:49PM
healing is definitely competitive. if your group wipes, you lose. if you clear, you WIN!
and you're competing against death ITSELF. pretty stiff competition, eh...?
Kamileon Sep 7th 2007 8:33PM
In order to use healing meters as a guide, you HAVE to take a lot of things into consideration, such as how a class' strengths or weaknesses are going to be affected by their healing assignment in a specific encounter, how much damage their assignment took, what types of heals they are using, and so on.
Should healing be competitive? I don't think so. The healers absolutely need to learn to work as a cohesive team, and doing so is the SINGLE BEST thing a healing lead can develop to increase healer morale, performance, and meter feeding and competition that will overall reduce performance.
Healer performance should be reviewed by a person with the right knowledge, but competition? No.
Var Sep 7th 2007 11:23PM
@18
I couldn't disagree more, you completely disregard mana conservation, which is what overhealing meters is all about, and is the only thing that should be considered unless someone dies.
If someone dies you gotta ask why, is the person assigned to heal him needing help, are the other healers not watching more then their assigned targets?
Assigning healing targets isn't a "you only heal this person no matter what" thing most of the time, it's saying who they look after predominantly and still watch for where healing is needed.
Basically healing meters are almost worthless, they do show some things, but generally worthless.
Jack Sep 7th 2007 11:52PM
I wouldn't say healing is competitive. For DPS classes, each has their own goal: to be the top DPSer (unless your talents are more aligned to increasing raid dps, for example.) For healers on the other hand, the goal is the same: for the raid to survive. Healers have to work together to keep everyone from dying.
Healing meters can show who's been spamming their heals with all their might and who's been half afk the whole time, but they can also just be showing who was assigned to healing the tank and who was assigned to healing the dps, or who was using prayer of mending or lifebloom a lot (both of those spells credit the healing done to the recipient.) And overhealing doesn't matter at all unless you run out of mana.
cplphotography Sep 8th 2007 12:14AM
Maybe no one else has noticed... but latency is a large determining factor of who's on top in the healing meters. Simply because whoever sees who needs healing first generally gets the first heal off, the others will tend to overheal.
Healing is competitive for me because I'm very competitive by nature. I WANT someone to heal better than me so I have someone to compete against. It pushes my game and inspires me to find a better way.
Unfortunately not all healers have this sense of competition and are content with mediocrity as long as the raid progresses. I think generally the people that don't give their all because they see others are doing better than they are (and believe they will pick up the slack) are the people that will never see the end of each expansion.
There is a secret to being an effective healer. You need to be able to adapt to many things around you and anticipate the incoming damage. To adapt you need to raid with you guildmates a lot to get a feel for how they heal. The key to topping the meters isn't getting the heal in before they do, forcing them to overheal - this works in some cases but can be overcome - but by knowing the other healers patterns of who they are going to heal first when the AOE dmg comes in. Downranking is for teamwork AND competition... not only will it conserve your other healers' mana pools by letting their heal land, but it also prevents your own overhealing. When you get #1 healing and #7-9 overhealing... you know you're a damn good healer.
P.S. Pallys don't give me that crap about needing to overheal, I've seen a couple pallys top the charts with less overhealing than the other classes. It's just an excuse to be lazy, NOT a strategy.
katyanna Sep 8th 2007 1:42AM
I personally enjoy healing. I don't really think it's competitive (which is why I don't mind playing my enhance shammy in dungeons) but I think healers don't get enough credit.
If you are in a PUG then chances are if you wipe, someone is going to try and blame it on the healer. However, when everything goes great, no one is thanking the healer, they are patting each on the back because of the damage they put out.
I haven't raided yet, so things may change, but for the time being I think healing is just as fun as anything else might be.
vern Sep 8th 2007 4:08AM
NO, overhealing does not mean anything, unless you can't heal someone assigned to you because of no mana. Then its a big problem as you burnt your mana away but you can stay just under that limit if you manage your mana well.
People gloating about how much mana they have left at the end of a boss fight are total idiots. That mana should have been used to keep people alive and not show up as a lost potential at the end of a boss fight. You need to heal just right. This is something you learn by experience. You are not going to heal SSC having the Black Temple in mind, like Karazhan healing is very different from 25 men SSC and TK. You need to know exactly what you can do and you produce the overhealing to remove the random crit factor. If you always want to heal exactly what is needed and not more then you must be a very slow healer. Also, don't forget that the T5 2 pieces bonus for priests rewards overhealing. You need to heal right under your OOM line until the end of the fight and this requires a lot of raiding experience and total knowledge of your gear. If you don't, then you are underperforming on purpose, shame on you.
Maybe meters only show the fastest healers. But then know your team and adapt. It would be ridiculous to ask the fastest healers to heal slower in order to reduce the global raid overhealing.
Xeph Sep 8th 2007 4:18AM
#24 "And overhealing doesn't matter at all unless you run out of mana."
Wrong. By over healing you are also wasting time, by not canceling those heals early (when no damage needs to be healed) and starting a fresh cast. Tanks can die like this.
#25's got it dead on. While healing doesn't revolve around the healing meters, it also promotes competition to be a better healer and strive to do as much as you can to keep the raid up.
"Unfortunately not all healers have this sense of competition and are content with mediocrity as long as the raid progresses." Sad but true. :-\
Geth Sep 8th 2007 4:51AM
totally agree with #13. Please also don't forget that in some cases, it's more important to quickly dispel someone's debuff than healing that 10% of health deficit. However, on a healing meter, the one who chooses to go for that 10% will get a higher ranking than the one who takes a sec to dispel the debuff.
Like some have already said it above: healing is cooperative. Trying to quickly finish a heal before another healer so he or she overheals is just totally retarded in my opinion.
And, to be honest, just having 1 target to heal (like: being assigned on the MT) is easier than crosshealing, where you have to decide who to heal first etc. While healing the MT is just keeping your HoTs on and keep casting your big heal and cancelling when it's not necessary..
My two cents ;)
vern Sep 8th 2007 4:51AM
All right, I have been a little rude with my precedent post, I admit it. Lets say that competitive healing means aggressive healing (usually fast healing). Pre-healing is needed only for a few bosses, by experience you know who they are, so the rest of the time you can raid heal while keeping an eye and giving the priority to your assignment(s).
Also, don't forget that healing is also dependent of how well a healer is prepared. Consumables (flasks/Elixir) often foretell you the full story about who will be topping the healing meter. Those are usually the competitive healers.
Shadowisp Sep 8th 2007 5:08AM
I like to play red light/green light... its a fun game.
You take it in turns, 1 minute rounds, trash fights only... see how low you can get your Main Tanks health too before healing them.
If the tank dies, you forfiet. :P
If the tank has 1 Hp... you immediatly declared Champion Healer of All Time.
-------------------------
Only other way I know to make it competitive and a challenge... the less you cast heals, the bigger your heals. If you spam heals you get lower returns.
On the counter side of it... the lower the tanks health, the stronger and tougher they get.
That would make it a challenge, that would be a competition :P
Depherios Sep 8th 2007 4:15PM
Healing Meters are highly inconclusive. If you go entirely by them, you might as well not use some of your more effective abilities.
(Druid's lifebloom's bloom, Priest's Prayer of Mending and Bubble, Shaman's Earth Shield, and the Pally Bubble and Judgment of Light, are all not counted as healing. At least not necessarily for the person who cast them.)
I still tend to consider healing something of a contest, but only in that I feel bad when I'm being entirely outdone by somebody. I still spam Prayer of Mending on my Priest, and bubble clothies and throw judgment of light on my Pally.
Although I do make it a goal to top healing meters in 5 mans with VE on my Shadowpriest ^_^
Burgdorn Sep 8th 2007 5:22PM
Ugh... I should have asked What button combination allows you to see health bars above your allies? That is what I should have said during the question for the holy paladins. This feature in WoW really allows you to have a involving role in PvE and PvP. Mainly it is a dynamic view of anyone on your screens life bar, given that they are within a certian range. This usualy allows say the melee healer to just watch the melee do their business while also maintaining the heals. It also is much better since you can only see a health bar that belongs to a player close enough to heal.
Paladins usually play in fight bandages so it is good to spread yourselves out if your not a MH for the tank.
As far as competitiveness, healers have their own gauge of healing competence to judge other healers by. Basically it is amount heal vs percentage overhealed. Now I know what your going to say "Yeah but what if someone heals my target before I do? They get the credit over me, UNCOOL!" Eeeeeh... no.
For one the one thing about healing in raids or PvP is to try and recognize certain situations. PvP heal the mage and also now your looking at the screen see if anyone else is casting spells you can overtime start getting really good at predicting who is healing what. In raids it is usually a stattic group and you and your healers will begin to form a clique of healing jobs and you overtime learn how to heal without stepping over someone, or even to cover someone's role.
When all is done though, healers look at who effectively predicted the tide of damage dealt to the raid and followed with good solid heals. It is fun, complicated, and intense enough to hold real healers in the game and with much fun to be had.
BenMS Sep 9th 2007 4:17AM
Shift-V will give you the life bars, in blue, for your party members.
Juliah Sep 10th 2007 6:48PM
I'm not interested in turning healing into a competition. I'm interested in it being a collaborative effort so that we all know what we're doing and our team stays alive.