Comments on: A Healer’s Most Important Skill

By: Matticus

Matticus — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:32:45 +0000

@Cadmoos: I think of it as a matter of foundation. If you’re not able to sit still and spam a player, how are you going to move and cast? Or dodge environmental effects and heal? You disagree, thats okay. But you’d be surprised how many players aren’t able to just spam a button while sitting there. Players have to start somewhere. You crawl before you walk.

By: Cadmoos

Cadmoos — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:02:16 +0000

I completely disagree. IF the argument was hey spam healing is important in some circumstances, then yeah 100% agree. However when he starts the Blog with “A healers most Important skill” and then implies that spam healing is the way ahead, then he is misguided at best, at worst leading new healers down a very rocky patch.

He should have said the most important skill is knowing which talent to use and when.

By: Duct Tape and a Prayer » Linktastic: 3/24/09

Duct Tape and a Prayer » Linktastic: 3/24/09 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:56:06 +0000

[...] A Healer’s Most Important Skill from World of Matticus, by Matt [...]

By: Zachary William

Zachary William — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:18:11 +0000

You guys are missing the point. The “spam healing” is when you think you think the main tank is going to die, and you just have to pray that you somehow get him back up before it’s over.

By: Aprime

Aprime — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:26:23 +0000

One example comes to mind :

Last night, we had a messy pull of 2 aoe knockback spaming giants from construct wing, an patrol and a invis shadow bolt spamming shadow ..thingy.

Most of the casters and healers got creamed by the first aoe slam + shadowbolt volley combo. This is where DG + HoS + Stacking on top of tank and HS+HL Spam kept the melees and tanks alive, turning a wipe to a messy pull.

Glyph of Light is actually quite good.

By: Tk

Tk — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:12:48 +0000

You’d think this would be obvious, but training new healers who’ve never raided 25s through Patchwerk requires at least one wipe every week. I say “He is going to take 20k hits. A lot of them. This is not like 10 man Naxx. All you need to do is stand here and spam heals on your target. Big heals. All in a row. Before you see the tank take damage, you need to be casting a big heal. Overheal does. not. matter. Pretend you’re a paladin just for these 4 minutes.”

And then the OT dies.

And the healer says “wow, he sure took a lot of damage?”

*sigh*

By: Matticus

Matticus — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:34:45 +0000

@apokteino: By all means, you’re right. You gotta use the right style of healing for the right job. There are times when you stand in place and heal like a mad man, there are other times when you’re in fire and forget mode.

By: apokteino

apokteino — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:22:21 +0000

while i appreciate you position (and understand why you say what you say) i think most healers have the opposite problem. all they do is spam. this mentality reminds me of one of our paladins who ended up getting gbooted. he was getting outhealed on KJ by our shadow priest b/c all he did was focus and spam the MT. brutalis- yes. kj-no. your healing style depends on the fight.

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:05:53 +0000

Casual raiding guild. We’re almost through through Naxx just to learn the fights, not to get the gear or farm the badges yet. We do Sarth 0 Drakes and are questioning when it is time to leave one up. So clearly we have space to rise.

But I know I can stand and heal. In fact I know that if it doesn’t occur to me I’m in trouble and the tank stays up when everything says he should be dead, that means I am doing the right thing even if it kills me. As long as the boss dies before my Spirit of Redmeption is over, I did it right.
You see, if I’m so heavily focused on the tank that I’m standing in a lavawave spamming binding heal and SoL heal to keep the tank up, but too busy to move, I’m doing it right. If I keep the tank up and the boss is down, but my last 3 heals are out of Spirit of Redemption, except for the one from Guardian Spirit after I died. I’m doing it right. And I’ve had that happen. Where as Arcavon drops the tank and turns to get the DPS, we drop him.

My trouble is that I always wonder if I didn’t get tunnel vision too early. If I don’t get it too often. How do I know that I shouldn’t have risked running from the lava wave?

By: Zusterke

Zusterke — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:38:29 +0000

“If the encounter called for you to stand in one place and mash a button or two, would you be able to do it?” – Of course. Perfect chaincasting and cutting off that lag-time and everything. (love Quartz)

“Sometimes you just have to unload.” – Point taken.