Comments on: Why I Stopped Caring About Healing Meters

By: SYTYCB: The Top 7 Underbloggers and Competition Details : World of Matticus

SYTYCB: The Top 7 Underbloggers and Competition Details : World of Matticus — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:01:52 +0000

[...] both disagreed with each other on certain aspects of the game where we’d both pick a side and write a post presenting our [...]

By: kyrilean

kyrilean — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:45:39 +0000

Great post! Have a similar one about damage meters.

I used to watch my heal meters a lot, I admit it. I used to run Kara with a priest with +1800 heals at the time and I as a pally at +1400 heals back then would always outheal every run; in most cases I doubled the total heals.

I’ve never figured out why. Some in my group attributed it to a horrible priest player or that she was caught DPS’ing more than healing. It could have been because of her shackle assignments had her dividing her concentration. It could have been I generally top people off between pulls to keep the raid moving. As a clothie she sometimes died early in boss fights leaving me the only healer.

Initially I was worried that I was being inefficient. Didn’t appear to be, I was always overhealing less than her. Finally, I gave up trying to understand it and attribute it to some of all of the above and the difference between priest and pally healing.

Bottom line, we kept getting better and we survived and that’s all that counts.

By: Mithral

Mithral — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:36:16 +0000

While the overall ‘Amount Healed’ tells you very, very little, there is a huge amount of value in digging through a full WWS parse. With a little digging you can see who’s healing who, (are people following assignments properly), what spells players are using (Chain-casting flash-heal!), consumables, etc.

It is also an objective measurement, WWS doesn’t care that one of the Resto Droods is trying to hit on the GL’s wife. It reports what happened during the raid.

Lastly, the raw amount-healed does tell you if someone’s completely slacking, either during trash, or during the boss-fights.

That said, it is just as bad to have players try to top the healing meters as it is to try and top the damage meters.

By: Dynasor

Dynasor — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:10:47 +0000

Combat-log parsers (dmg/heal meters) can be very useful for evaluating what went wrong or right during a fight, how well the raid is working together, how well the group-stacking is benefiting the raid, whether individuals are maximizing their spell rotations and/or using their cool-downs effectively and timely (I’ve helped countless dps this way), how the damage taken is getting spread and whether the healers are assigned/positioned to be able to handle it, etc…

Notice no where in there do I say anything about dps/hps rankings or total damage/heal rankings. The rankings have their place, but only when taken into context.

And we don’t allow them to be posted either. Everyone in our raids know they can whisper me for any meter and I will send it to them. Although I will admit that for dps classes, we usually use the rankings as a motivational tool amongst ourselves (nothing like a little friendly competition to increase raid dps).

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:10:00 +0000

Recount = off during boss fight. Afterwards, If I dont top the meters I do the following:

1 check overheal (usually the case that my timing was marginally off and I just topped overhealing instead)

2 Did I OOM, was I even close? If yes, reevaluate restorative cooldown usage and improve. If no, I Definitely could have done more /facepalm

Aside from that, I use them to tell DPS they are slacking, especially when my HPS > their DPS.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:56:12 +0000

Absolutely – while meters are a tool that can be useful, they’re not the end-all, be-all of a good healer. I run a meter, and I enjoy looking at the webstats after a run. But my use of those tools is to determine my efficiency at doing what I was supposed to be doing – not at comparing myself to the other healers. Especially since I”m the only Resto shaman in the raid.

Well said Matt, as usual

By: Lilsheshe

Lilsheshe — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:33:17 +0000

I definitely agree with both of you. Even though I DO NOT have healing meters installed on my computer. Occasionally I do watch them when I get a new healer in. It helps me to get an overall to see how they are doing. As Matt said the meters do not do Pally’s any kind of justice so I really only use them to keep track of my new raid healers from time to time.

By: Dechion

Dechion — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:10:56 +0000

I could not have said it better myself. The only thing that matters is when the encounter is over the boss is dead and we are not. Period, end of story.
I don’t even have a meter installed in my system. It all boils down to who is still standing when the encounter is over. You win or wipe as a group.