Breakfast Topic: Do healers lag more than others?

by Robin Torres Nov 4th 2007 at 8:00AM

Geezer asked in the forums "Why is it always healers that lag?" and Blue poster Eyonix replied:

I'm sure that sometimes, lag is certainly just an excuse if the player is embarrassed to admit they had made a mistake. With that being said though, depending on the situation a second or two of lag when healing can be devastating and as a result more easily noticeable that, at the very least "something undesirable happened".

A dps class lagging for a second or two, in most cases will go unnoticed.

Others have suggested that spamming keys to heal can cause you to disconnect, but that doesn't explain why players who spam attacks much more quickly than heals don't disconnect too.

Personally, I like player Viniculus's response:

Blaming lag is more polite than telling you "no, I'm not going to heal your pet."

I agree with Eyonix, but what do you think? Do you think healers lag more often than the rest of the group? Is it just more noticeable because people die? Or is it just being used as an excuse?

Tags: breakfast-topic, eyonix, healer, healers, warcraft, world-of-warcraft, wow

Filed under: Breakfast topics, Forums

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Daneras Nov 4th 2007 8:13AM

in my case i only lag if my router is playing games with me and if a problem is serious with latency i let the group know before hand to avoid arguements. Lag can be annoying on encounters such as Gurtogg Bloodboil where healing needs to be constant.

There have been encounters in the past where i have felt maybe i could have been faster reacting and so on but i only have serious problems if i lag, and even in that case i let the party or raid know before hand so they can decide if they keep me in their group, personally i hate wiping coz a cast took 2 seconds longer than it should, rather the group get a new healer in my place than go through the frustration myself.

PNess Nov 4th 2007 8:31AM

healers tend to have MORE mods loaded, hell DPS only really needs boss mods and threat meter...

healer need sub 1 second updating 25 people health/mana, 25 bars bouncing around up and down, decursive bar, ect ect ect...

same computer same setup with only the mods you need the healer is going to have a performance hit unless their computer is uber

Verit Nov 4th 2007 8:35AM

I have a druid healer. I think the biggest difference is while dps/tanks are working on server created mobs (typically) healers are working on other players - if you think about it - basically that would mean more lag since your not only relying on your own net connection, but those of other players as well.

Thats why spike damage is such a serious problem - you may have thought you got all those heals off fast enough, but the player dies anyhow.

daniel Nov 4th 2007 8:54AM

@4 - not exactly true, the server is still keeping track of how much health a player has or if he/she is already dead, has nothing to do with that player's connection. however the addon theory is quite valid, i need to know everything going on in the raid while i'm healing which requires quite a few mods. but then again, we all lag more or less and since margins can be quite thin in raid healing sometimes, a little more lag means a greater risk of dying people.

Shadowisp Nov 4th 2007 9:22AM

And loot lag doesnt exist either... and Warlocks are able to hold thier soulstone channel as long as they wish to be dramatic.

Of course a Blue is not going to admit lag exists.

Healers blame lag, cause they cant say they "missed" :P

Ornament Nov 4th 2007 9:53AM

As a healer playing in Australia with +400 pings lag has a huge effect on healing. I know there have been times when the tank gets low so you fire up a big heal, it goes off takes my mana for the cast but the tank still dies because he didn't get the heal.

Akia Nov 4th 2007 10:09AM

I play a druid healer and a rogue. On my druid, I can easily tell anything above 300ms. On my rogue? Completely unnoticeable unless I have to time my kicks -- then I can tell. At 500+, it can take my instant heals a full second before they go off.

MajorBill Nov 4th 2007 10:11AM

I doubt that healers get lag "on purpose." They lag as much as the other classes, its just more evident when they they're lagging, especially when the tank is dead =P

@2 I usually don't have a lot of add-ons for that reason , so I just wing it and use the group bars, etc. That Blizzard has built in to reduce lag.

Matthew Rossi Nov 4th 2007 10:29AM

Yesterday in Kara I was trying to keep a warlock up on AoE pulls and I noticed that unless I switched to my fastest heals, he'd be dead before a heal could hit him. At the time I thought it was just because he was using Hellfire, but it might also have been that there were a ton of mobs right on top of us and my heals were having a hard time finishing their casts.

I'd never noticed the lag there before.

Sohanstag Nov 4th 2007 10:31AM

I would imagine that it's just as the blue said: it's either a convenient excuse or (I think this is more likely) more noticable because of the effect it has on the group.

I would point out, however, that in good five-man runs it shouldn't be the case that the healer gets blamed all the time. in 10- and 25-mans, "recap" tells the true story of healing problems and not individual pulls that result in a wipe.

Alysandir Nov 4th 2007 11:49AM

First, /agree with Blackrabbit. Healers take the blame for everything, particularly in PUGs (which is why I avoid them like the plague).

Second, lag hurts healing performance, with the effect becoming more pronounced with the number of targets to be healed. While you're lagged, people are still taking damage, and by the time you get an update, you may indeed be well-behind the healing curve for keeping everyone up. DPS lagging only gets noticed in DPS races, and tanking lag only gets noticed against mobs who drop their aggro tables or with tanks that do not establish solid aggro. But with healers, anything that stops the heals from coming gets noticed.

Daneras Nov 4th 2007 11:55AM

Just to add, yeah the * where is the healing ffs* happens alot in end gaming :P , its a rare case to say *we lack dps* or *tank get better aggro* tho the latter is beyond rare and has to be a very bad player mainly even with lag.

Jashin Nov 4th 2007 12:21PM

Like two said, most healers have extra mods to make healing less tedious and more organized. Wether it be gridz, bars or what ever. I know some people will say "i heal fine without mods"...would you like a chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie? I needed to use the or i was dumping my shaman. They make a boring and somewhat stressful job easier.

And it was also stated about server vs player connection. The game doesn't always update information as fast as you would like. Some of it goes beyond our control and has to do with the other connections. My connection is fine, all of a sudden the warrior looks like he just got one shotted. "wtf just happened?" Dunno...Sorry about that, rez inc.

the bode Nov 4th 2007 1:41PM

1. lag - your computer sucks.
2. latency - Blizzard's computer sucks.

those are two seperate issues. healers don't have any worse latency than anyone else, but as others mentioned, it does have a worse impact when an emergency heal gets delayed by high ping. I play a priest and I try to avoid last-second heals at all costs.

as to lag - get more ram, turn down your graphic settings, or get rid of unnecessary mods if you're having framerate issues. then you won't have an excuse for getting wiped. also - lag, latency, whatever, healers need to be adept with timing. there are plenty of talents and whatnot to help with this.

Trimble Epic Nov 4th 2007 3:03PM

There is another factor that I haven't seen mentioned here...

Healing involves reaction time. A healer reacts to information coming from the server, presses a button, and the information goes back to the server. So, you have to factor in the lag time FROM the server, plus the lag time BACK to the server, PLUS the reaction time of the healer to both click the right party member, then click the right heal button... (a good healers user interface combines these two actions into a single motion - See my blog wow-macro.blogspot.com)

The DPS, on the other hand, simply needs to spam an attack. They are reacting to a simple stimuli - 'is it dead yet?' Usually, the answer is - sometimes for several minutes - 'no, not yet'. The most a DPS'er needs to wait for is for the mana, rage, or energy to charge up, but unless they are trying to PEEL a mob off a healer, noone will die if their action is a few seconds late due to lag.

vern Nov 4th 2007 3:45PM

There are a few damage prediction techiques that help you to work out the healing lag. Set up the Main Tanks targets'targets (PITBULL!), preferably with class colors. Always keep an eye on those 4-5 health bares. Those folks will be the ones taking damage soon. Using the color, you can identify the emergencies (anything Blue or white use your faster heal and spam ;) ). You could keep the main tanks targets next to those 4-5 health bares to make sure they are well mobs and not friendlies (use the red color for hostiles).

This requires some practice and good analysis, but you could do some smart pre-healing and heal through the lag.

Also, use HOTs as often as possible if your class has some.

Argall Nov 4th 2007 5:11PM

Lag certainly is a bigger issue with healers and sometimes my UI can lag in accurately showing health because there's so much going on. Inevitably healers get the blame even though the 3 main groups - healers, DPS, and tanks - should get it evenly. A healer is only as good as the person he's healing and DPS is essentially at ending the fight fast or it doesn't matter how good the tank/healer is because the fight will go on too long.

I just want to know how someone accidentally hearths to Shat...

BlackRabbit Nov 4th 2007 8:47PM

Healers tend to get yelled at by everyone for everything - of course they're going to make up excuses to cull that type of behavior.

Depherios Nov 4th 2007 10:58PM

Honestly I'd never thought about it before, but a tiny bit of lag really is more upsetting on a healer.

As DPS, lag means you keep DPSing for white damage, or as a caster you just have lowered DPS for a moment.

As a Tank your threat production goes down a little bit, unless it's at a critical moment.

Healers lag, and people die. When I lag on my DPS, my DPS just goes down a bit. When I lag on my healer I pray to god nothing bad is happening.

When DPS's health bars aren't accurately updating due to latency or something, it's a tiny difference in when their target dies.

When a Healers health bars aren't accurately updating, they miss getting a heal off, and somebody dies.

Also, Latency can be a real problem with instacast things like BoP, Swiftmend, and NS. I often find I've burned a cooldown on my end just to have latency make it so it doesn't hit them in time to save them. And they die with it never hitting them.