The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Raid Healing Roles : Part 1 : Introduction
by Vonya
Okay, this is turning into another Part 1, Part 2…thing. My apologies, I really didn’t think I’d get that involved. I was way wrong.
There is a shift, once you begin to raid heal. It’s more than just the fact that the number of people in the group is greater. It’s more than just the fact that the content is more difficult.
Your healing style, your healing goals, focus, everything…it all changes once you begin raiding.
Now, as we learned from EgoTank last week, that doesn’t mean you can respec holy the night you start Kara and expect to do as well as the healers who’ve been honing their skills in five-mans. There are a LOT of lessons that can be best learned in a five-man instance environment. Timing, the best use of your various skills and spells, positioning, panic buttons, prioritization…the list goes on and on. These should be learned in a five-man environment. Not only because they can be learned there, but because nine other people shouldn’t have to wipe on content because you couldn’t be bothered to do some five-mans to learn how to play your class/role first.
These skills are absolutely necessary, and do not change once you begin raid healing.
So what is this shift, you might be asking? If all those things are necessary for both five-man healing and raid healing, what’s the big deal?
Think of those skills as…knowing how to bake sugar cookies. You have to learn how to crack eggs, how to mix ingredients, how to use the oven, how to time when the cookies are done and pull them out before they burn around the edges. You can even learn how to decorate them, what sprinkles to use, and how to arrange them neatly on a plate.
If making sugar cookies is like healing five-man instances, then raid healing is like being able to make chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and pecan butterball cookies.
All of the basics of cookie making apply, but you’re using different ingredients than you did before. Mixing them in new ways, and learning new timing for when the cookies are done. And each of the three new kinds of cookies is different and has it’s own recipe.
In a five-man instance, you are the only healer (generally. We’re dealing in generalities here. If you run with a backup healer, then bully for you, though I’d recommend being able to heal non-heroic instances at least on your own). The health and well-being of everyone in your group is your responsibility. Everyone who takes damage belongs to you, and you have only yourself to depend on or blame.
In raid healing, you’ve got another healer. Maybe two. Maybe SIX. The dynamic has changed, drastically. Now, you aren’t the only healer, and you have to coordinate and TRUST the other healers you’re running with in order to get the job done.
This is somewhat unique to healers. You’ll have multiple tanks in raids, but their job is very much like living in a bubble. Each tank is given a target, and they aren’t allowed to pick up someone else’s slack. They CAN’T. If they do, they’ll take too much damage and die. They have to focus on the target or targets they’ve been given. DPS rarely has to depend on each other - sure, they all have to do their job, but if the rogue is slacking off, the hunter isn’t able to pick up his slack - he’s already doing his focused job. Depending on the encounter and the amount of slack, any of these situations can cause a raid wipe. But none of them require the same amount of teamwork that raid healing does. In general. There are specific fights where coordination between all members of the raid is key [Netherspite], there are fights where dps coordination is key [Aran], there are fights where tank coordination is key [Bear and Lynx bosses in ZA]. I’m speaking in generalities. With healing, EVERY fight requires coordination and teamwork and trust and communication between healers. I am NOT saying that tanks and dpsers get to slack off and have less important jobs, so please withhold your righteous indignation. I am in no way downplaying the importance or difficulty of those roles, I am trying to drive home the vital and crucial nature of healer teamwork in raids.
One healer cannot do all the raid healing. Karazhan can be completed with two healers, and is often completed with three. Gruul generally requires five to seven. If all of the healers are healing everyone, you are going to wipe. Everyone has to have a job, a main focus, as well as a secondary focus. There are tricks and tweaks and tools that can be used for each of the various healing roles, and there are classes that are better at some roles than others.
Some topics I hope to cover in following posts concerning raid healing, in no particular order :
1) Different Healing Classes and Where They are Most Useful.
2) The Four Major Raid Healing Roles and How to Excel at Them.
3) Tiered Healing - Primary and Secondary Healing Focuses.
4) Recipe for the Best Pecan Butterball Cookies You’ve Ever Eaten.
Okay, maybe not that last one. Unless you really want it. (they’re goooood)
I -think- I can keep the series down to just those topics. This is, however, ME that we’re talking about here…I’ll try to keep my tangents to a minimum. Cross my heart.
December 11th, 2007
It’s so weird. My guild didn’t really concern ourselves too much with healing assignments on anything but bosses until after we had started SSC and were working on the Void Reaver trash in TK.
Before that it was “everyone heals everyone” and very little if any discussion about specifics.
Interestingly, SSC and TK contain ho-hum trash that likes to damage the entire raid at once. All of a sudden healing assignments are important on trash. Hurm….
December 11th, 2007
Okay, withholding me righteous indignificationalizings. Healings all them peoples do sound complex, so I’s curious to see what there is to learn.
About them pecan butterballs - what kinda buff do they give?
December 11th, 2007
Bruthah, once you hit SSC/TK, you’re going to need some trash healing assignments. FFA healing’s too risky unless you’re healers are super smart =).
I definitely want some pecan butterball cookies.
…You don’t by chance have a cooking blog do you? :O
December 11th, 2007
YA! I like/hate raid healing.
Kara is fun but ZA was a reality check for me. I run with a paladin and shaman who out gear me so I was holding them back in ZA. I have had to retune my entire healing style for ZA compared to how I healed in Kara.
ZA is more of a 5SR be damned place.
December 11th, 2007
Interesting read, and I would love to see where you go with this. I know every guild’s healer base develops differently especially as some healers bring more talent to the table then others. Add in class variance from guild to guild and maybe throw some uneven gearing on top of that and your looking at some pretty different and crazy ways to skin the cat we all call “healing”. I know we tried a few things for a while then went to more formal assignments for two reasons: it seemed to focus our healing into the places where needed, and it gave us a better element of control to see where certain things were failing. Sometimes one or a few healers were spread over too much to keep up, or sometimes we found that the rest of hte raid was taking very unnecessary damage and could focus the attention where it needed to be.
But on a side note you made me hungry
Madmantwo
Undead PVE Priest
Reawaken Guild Staghlem Server
December 11th, 2007
Cooking FTW. I wrote about speccing and baking bread last week. Maybe cooking is the best metaphor for all things WoW. Or maybe for just those of us who can cook.
And about those cookies…please?
December 11th, 2007
Me want cookies! You should totally post that recipe.
Also… Go Pack!
I am way, way far away from healing (or entering) Raids. In fact, I just healed my first instance,* with my Paladin. It was Deadmines. However, my guild is about to attempt Kara this weekend. You should finish this series before then so they can read it!
* Technically that was the second… the re-leveling of old world instances messed with us a bit. Several guildies were ready for Uldaman, but then suddenly we were over-leveled for it over night. I had done all the darn pre-questing, so I wanted to go through it. So we ran it 4-man, off-spec. We had an enhancement shammy tank, another enhancement shammy playing as elemental, a resto druid doing kitty DPS and me, the feral druid, healing. We did pretty well, and only reverted to our natural roles for the last boss, which I bear-tanked. It was actually a lot of fun.
December 11th, 2007
I -think- I can keep the series down to just those topics. This is, however, ME that we’re talking about here…I’ll try to keep my tangents to a minimum. Cross my heart.
Pish posh! Let not the creative text be staunched, for mine entertainment does depend upon it.
December 11th, 2007
My healing classes are very, very far from healing raids. (I have healed instances on guild runs with my feral druid. There is some pressure for me to level a priest or holy paladin next…) But do take the series as long as it needs to go to get everything you want to say said.
Oh, and cooooookies! Do they have to be part the last? Sounds like they’d be great holiday cookies.
December 12th, 2007
Ohhh yes. I’m scared since we’ll be opening the doors of Karazhan next week!
I’ve had a sidekick in heroic instances and in normal ones (sometimes) when we didn’t have a proper tank. Or the shammy threw in a heal or two when things started going bad.
But it’ll be a whole different thing when we have 10 people in and share responsibilities with the healers. I’m so looking forward to it and hoping I can fill my priestly duty of keeping our paladin tank up. After all, I’ve been holy for 70 levels (had a leveling partner ^^;) and think I can share tips to the healadin who specced healing a week ago just for Kara.
Nevertheless.. Ego, you are being watched. And watched by a friend of mine who fell in love with your blog as well. And gazillion others who think you are their idol.
December 12th, 2007
@Sissa
But she is our idol
December 13th, 2007
Ok, I can’t resist….
I totally and wholehearthely disagree with the sentiment that you should do very strict assignments in a raid. In my mind that leads to tunnel vision and constricted behaviour aka passive players.
An excellent example is how guilds deal with trashpacks. Unless it is your very first time in SSC/TK you should know what the mobpacks do. You see the MT list on your screen, the mobs are marked by the raidleader. That is all the information you need, what is the problem?
I firmly believe that how further you promote reactive thinking and repsonsible acting in a raid, the more people will do so and it will benefit your guild greatly in the end. All a RL should have to do on a trashpack is mark the mobs and say ‘pulling’ on vent and that is it.
If for example an offtank dies to slacking heals, or some DPS die to some silly AOE effect the RL should berate. or even better ridicule, those responsible and move on.
Those responsible will pay be sharper next time and actually pay attention to what is happening around them.
The other side of the coin is organizing everything up and to the ‘run away’ ‘heal frank’ comments on vent and totally take away the need for the raidmembers to think for themselves of even keep an eye on their surroundings. That breeds passive players or tunnelvision and you don’t want those on the harder/longer bossfights where you need people able to react to unforeseen shifts in the fight or wipe.
On bosses do a very basic assignment of healers (no 2nd, 3th , 4th ect healing targets) and rely on your healers abilites to oversee the fight and react accordingly. You did promote that behaviour did you?
Cheer at that druid who leaves the healercamp on itself to start healing the maintank as soon as the assigned healer is cleaved to death. That’s the kind of attentive payer attitude that gets the bosses down. Not ‘over organization’.
/rant off
December 13th, 2007
@ Krill, you said:
“An excellent example is how guilds deal with trashpacks. Unless it is your very first time in SSC/TK you should know what the mobpacks do. You see the MT list on your screen, the mobs are marked by the raidleader. That is all the information you need, what is the problem?”
The problem is.. ok. Five healers, and all five start their long-cast spell (planning to interrupt-cast) on the MT. Meantime the OTs are taking hits, and the AoE casters are doing some damage to the rest of your party, and WHOOPS there goes a mage … But by Elune the main tank is still alive.
She is not saying (well, except for main tank in spike fights) “this, and nothing else” for assignments. It’s a distribution of effort so as to maximize both efficiency and effectiveness of the party’s heals. It’s expected that if the situation warrants you’ll adjust. But if it’s a freeforall, some people will die and your healers will have WAY too much “wasted mana” (overheals).
December 13th, 2007
I’m extremely interested in this series. My main is a hunter who I love to pieces…and I’m getting bored to tears of Kara. I want it to be fresh and new again, and my 61 priest is gunning towards going there (I figure I can handle a 10 man…but I think 25mans are beyond my reach). I’m trying to get her in as many instances as possible to practice, but there’s nothing better than reading practical experience from those who ARE the class, and not just playing around like me. (Have I mentioned while healing, I feel terribly guilty for not contributing to the boss dying faster, so I always pull the “OMG, health at 90% heal!!!” mistake. >.>)
December 13th, 2007
“the RL should berate. or even better ridicule, those responsible and move on.”
There’s a difference between being a demanding raid leader and being a demeaning raid leader. “You might be a demanding boss, but it doesn’t mean you have to be a demeaning and nasty one.” I hope you are not the raid leader in your guild with that attitude. Instead of providing constructive criticism to actually accomplish something, you are just killing morale and making it look like you are letting your emotions guide you on every turn. Rational judgment and keeping a cool head make for more solid leading. I’ve been in raids with raid leaders that had terrible tempers like this - it didn’t work. He succeeded in making people disillusioned, upset, or just plan angry, instead of succeeding in downing bosses. Consider also that mistakes are made for different reasons, people have different personality types, and sometimes it could be almost impossible for a raid leader to tell who actually made a mistake. If someone makes a mistake, they actually might not have been slacking - it happens. You deal with it. Some people are being lazy or not paying attention - this needs to be dealt with. With some people, yelling at them in both of these situations might actually work. With some people, it might have the opposite effect. Saying that people should be ridiculed for mistakes is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
Back to the subject at hand - it depends on the encounter, but in my experience, it seems to work best where the healing “roles” have some kind of definition but are also extremely flexible. Healer A and B might be primarily on the main tank, but don’t ignore the dps taking a bit of splash damage either. Conversely, a healer might need to pay special attention to general raid healing on a fight, but don’t ignore the tank either just because it’s not your “role”. On a fight like Maulgar, slightly more strict roles for phase 1 make sense. You effectively have 5 or 6 people tanking, non-tanks are generally not taking much splash damage, and you don’t want healers running all over the place to be in range and being susceptible to whirlwinds and Krosh’s thing. But don’t just ignore everyone else if you can help it.
Kirk made a good point about having absolutely no healing assignments. Allow me to offer an example of what happened with strict healing assignments (it actually wasn’t - the healer in question just thought she had some role that she didn’t). Back when we were trying to down Gruul for the first time, we had a certain shadow priest who had respecced holy. Our tanks were dying sooner than they should have - they just weren’t getting enough heals. Come to find out, the priest in question not only had full mana for most of the fight, but was actually WANDING. The tank is getting low on health, this priest has full mana, and instead of casting heals, she’s wanding?!?! Apparently she had got it in her head that her job was to keep up her group’s health - and she took it so strictly that she didn’t bother to heal anyone else. And the raid wiped. Needlessly to say, we didn’t let her come to raids as holy anymore.
So, in my opinion, you want something in between. Have loosely defined roles - more like designating something as a primary responsibility, among several - can help, but you need healers to be able to adapt to any situation as well.
December 14th, 2007
@ Esoth
Actually my example was meant to say the RL should keep it light hearthed. So not like shouting ‘FFS Pewpew get the $#$#$ out of that AOE you $%#head!’ but instead make a tongue in cheek comment like ‘Hey look guys that aoe damage effect only immobelizes our mages and kills them, I never knew that’ on vent when a few mages die to the poison aoe boglord thingy in SSC. People get a few laughs, the mage(s) are emberrased. Does wonders.
Also, your last alinea is excactly the opinion I was trying to vent. Quote;
“So, in my opinion, you want something in between. Have loosely defined roles - more like designating something as a primary responsibility, among several - can help, but you need healers to be able to adapt to any situation as well.”
And I believe you should cultivate that behaviour.
December 17th, 2007
@Krill
Ah ok, gotcha.
January 22nd, 2008
[...] what is happening in the raid, what data is recorded and how it is being recorded and attributed, who was assigned to what healing duty, but also a keen understanding on how the other classes perform and what their own performance [...]
January 29th, 2008
Apparently she had got it in her head that her job was to keep up her group’s health - and she took it so strictly that she didn’t bother to heal anyone else. And the raid wiped. Needlessly to say, we didn’t let her come to raids as holy anymore.
wouldnt that be the raid leaders fault for not assigning her correctly. i mean if your point is to tell everyone who to heal this would have not been her fault but the officers of the raid for not explaining to her better what she should do.
February 2nd, 2008
This discussion about “strictness” in healing assingments has me a little baffled. Yes, I came from a guild that did have somewhat strict ideas: Ale, heal MT, healer B, heal OT, renews on each others tanks, and healer C, watch the raid, BUT, this never once meant oh gosh, lets let the other 7 people DIE!
I then went to a raiding guild that, upon asking “what would you like me to do” I got a “*snicker* uh…. heal?” meaning… 25 health bars… no assignments, = some frustration. I agree with the previous posts that have loose assignments, these 2 healers on raid health bars, these 5 on the various tanks. It cuts down on the frustrations of having every greater heal finish when that toon’s health is already at full again. IMO, also would lead to a little better mana management… I use flash continuiously to top off, even tho I KNOW it’s not mana efficient, but it’s better than having 100% of my healing classified as “overheal.” (Binding and POM are almost as often used, as well.)
Blah, there’s not much of a point there, sorry… just agreeing that loose assignments for trash and somewhat stricter assignments for bosses is by far the least stressful way of assigning raid healz…
-Alessar, Frozen Blades, Eitrigg