The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Raid Healing Roles : Part 2 : Job Descriptions : Tank Healer
by Vonya
A continuation of the Raid Healing Roles series. Previously, I introduced the idea that healing in a raid is different than healing in a regular instance.
The source of these differences comes from having to coordinate your healing among multiple healers. In instances, your task is to heal everyone, regardless of role. In raid healing, there are four main “jobs” that a healer can be assigned to. I’ll cover one of them today, and the others in the following posts.
Tank Healer
You will have healers that are assigned to heal the tank. In any given encounter, the bulk of the damage should be coming on the tank - the guy best equipped to handle that damage.
As a tank healer, your job is to keep that tank alive. Tanks take spike damage. Even “uncrushable” tanks can take spike damage. A tank that’s toddling along comfortably, taking minimal damage and requiring only minor hots and infrequent greater heals will take two crits and a crushing blow, and all the sudden drop like a stone.
Repeat it with me, now. If the tank dies, your raid wipes. If the tank dies, your raid wipes. If the tank dies, your raid wipes.
Let’s say you’re in a mobile fight - Prince, for example, in Kara. The raid needs to move because there’s an infernal about to land RIGHT on top of you. What do you do, tank healer?
I’ll tell you what you don’t do - you don’t mill around with the rest of the raid, waiting for the raid leader to find a new safe place to stand, then calmly turn and start healing the tank again once you find yourself a nice comfy place (can’t have yourself standing on top of the warlock. And why oh why does the mage’s water elemental have to take up so much space!? How’s a priest supposed to think in a situation like this?). Guess what? While you were being a good little raider and following your raid leader, your tank died. You CANNOT shift your focus from your tanks. If they’re taking damage, they need heals. If that means you have to soak up a shot or two of the infernal’s AOE, then so be it. You don’t want to die yourself, mind you. Be prepared to bubble yourself and skedaddle once you’ve put a nice healing cushion under your tank. But if your tank dies, your raid wipes. You cannot afford to put him on the backburner while you polish your nails and admire your dress.
If your tank is mobile and taking damage, you need to be within healing distance of your tank. If the raid is taking damage from AOE, you may have to do something that feels like a betrayal of all that you know and hold dear. You may have to IGNORE the raid, and keep the tank alive. It’s hard. It’s more than hard, it’s painful to watch those health bars sink and to deliberately do nothing.
NOTE: You will not ALWAYS ignore EVERYONE if you are assigned to Tank healing. In some fights, you have to. You have to completely ignore all distractions and focus on the tank, cancel-healing in a desperate attempt to be ready for the enormous incoming damage that you know that fight produces. I will discuss tiered healing, and non-focused-focused healing later in this series. Please do not take this particular article as an advertisement for tunnel-vision healing as a constant healing strategy.
That being said, if your job is to heal the tank and you turn to heal someone else and the tank DIES while you are healing them, then it is your fault.
Sometimes it can’t be helped, it’s a huge surprise and utterly unexpected. There was nothing you could do, and any good healer in the world would have done the same thing you just did.
It’s still your fault. That’s okay. It’s okay for things to be your fault, to make a mistake - as long as you learn from it.
Some tricks for the tank healer :
- Cancel Healing. The five second rule kicks in after you spend mana. Not when you start casting a spell. Greater Heal, even with the reduction in cast speed from talents, is a VERY slow spell. It certainly crawls when the tank needs that heal RIGHT NOW, and you know that if he takes one more unlucky crit before your heal lands, he’s toast. Cancel healing is a great tool to use when the tank is taking spike damage, when he’s taking irregular, unexpected hits for a large amount of health. Cancel healing is simple, and you don’t need any addons or tools to do it. Start your heal, and let the casting reach about halfway. Does the tank need the full heal (or majority of the heal)? Do you think he’ll need it by the time your casting is done? No? Then step forward a step (or backwards, or sideways, or jump, or use a stopcasting macro…whatever floats your boat). Stop the heal, don’t let the casting finish, don’t spend mana. IMMEDIATELY start healing again. Repeat this, allowing heals that are needed to finish. The benefit of this is that you are almost always in the middle of a heal when the tank needs the heal - you’ve shaved time off of your casting time. The disadvantage is that if anyone OTHER than the tank needs heals, they’re out of luck. Theoretically, you’ve got your talented and trustworthy team of healers that can take care of that. This healing method should only (and always) be used in spike damage fights.
- Frisbee. (Or Prayer of Mending, however you like it). Frisbee gives healing aggro to the person being healed. As a tank healer, I will toss this puppy on my tank near the beginning of every fight, and possibly multiple times throughout the fight as well. I have tested this - you can toss the frisbee after the tank pulls but before he’s touched the mobs and still not get aggro. HOWEVER, the tank only gets the aggro for the amount he gets healed - tossing the frisbee before a pull doesn’t guarantee a nice aggro pillow. If you wait till he’s taken a hit or two before sending in the frisbee, he’ll get the full aggro and heal effect. It’s also a great tool because you help out your fellow healers if there’s AOE damage (I love cast-and-forget heals) with no extra effort on your part.
- Renew. Don’t forget your hots, tank healers! HoTs aren’t just for dps-healers - they can drastically smooth out incoming damage on a tank, and they give you the breathing room you need so that you can dance with the five second rule. Cast it and forget it!
There are at least two other tips and tricks that are hovering in the back of my mind, mocking me and refusing to come out of the shadows. I’ll add to the list as they fall into the traps I’ve laid for them.
Also…I’d intended this post to cover all four Raid Healing Jobs - not just one of them. I promise that if the others are short enough, I’ll do multiples in a single post! I’m not TRYING to tease, I swear.
December 13th, 2007
I love my frisbee. I use it religiously. Also it has the added amusement of looking like I just smacked the tank upside the head with something. “hey tank, how bout a little healing love…right upside your head!” At this point with most of our tanks, It’s PoM, renew, Flash Flash, repeat. It’s a relief to read this and see I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Also to avoid any “why didn’t you heal me” conversations, on boss fights where I have tobe mobile (I hate Vorpil), or do something besides heal the tank (shackle in moroes room…dear lord make undead sheepable!) I clearly state that to the group. It’s like this “ok guys, all my attention will be on the tank this fight, use your pots, bandages (first aid ftw), and heres a lightwell (ranged and caster only please)” And they all understand that. And for the love of Elune do not use that darned healing emote!!
December 13th, 2007
We love our healers. =)
Part of a tank’s job is to notice when healing appears to be getting stressful, and blow any “oh crap” abilities/items he may have at that point so that the healer can catch up.
In longer fights we ought to use 2m trinkets which increases armor/dodge fairly frequently to lighten the healing load so that our healers can conserve mana somewhat.
December 13th, 2007
I kind of like how specific healing types shine a bit better for different encounters, but not too specialized that you can’t work around it without X class.
In most cases a Tree of Life Druid + one other, like a Priest or Pally who knows how to cancel/queue long heals, works wonders for Main Tank healing on hard hitting bosses.
Obviously Resto Shaman can spam Chain Heal all day, making them suited for taking care of Melee groups to sustain them easier if the boss has lots of AE splash/cleaves/whirlwinds (we also stick a Shadow Priest in with 4 melee to get extra help from VE).
And finally, a general duty Pally or Priest is good for “raid spot healing” (aka whackamole), as well as healing other healers who are focusing on their duties (as a Pally, try not to heal yourself as self heals don’t proc Spiritual Attunement) with quick 1.5 sec flashes of healing.
All this adds up to is some great methods of how to tackle healing duties!
December 13th, 2007
Very good read!
One thing that may be worth mentioning as a drawback to precasting or cancel healing is pull backs on heals can lead to tank deaths. You dance a very fine line with stopcasting sometimes especially if the harmony of your healers is not totally in sync. I have seen everyone go to heal the same target and because it went from 50% health to 75% health, they all stop casting and in the 2 secs it takes to get the next heal off the tank is hit by a crushing blow, the boss parries someone else’s attack and gets a swing timer reset and then proceeds hit the tank again. This can effectively two shot a tank at 75% health. And there is really no way to predict these kinds of things. With the way the game is played unfortunate things do happen but our job as healers is to try and reduce the risk associated with these things and do our best to react quickly to them when they happen.
The easy solution for this is to have someone pouring a constant stream of down-ranked heals onto the target. So for a priest dropping a constant stream of Gheal rank 2s or a paladin dropping constant Flash of lights. This isnt always ideal as far as mana consumption, but when a heal is landed that is overheal the loss of mana is not as great and desire to pull back the heal is less becuase of it. The only time you need to worry about stop casting there is if the dmg priorities shift to another targert.
Keep it up, fun stuff to read.
Madmantwo
Undead PVE Priest
Reawaken Guild Staghelm Realm
December 13th, 2007
4. If you know there’s a big hit that’s about to come, drop PW: Shield on your tank. Who cares if its not efficient? You just saved 2000 health for your tank which might or might not have killed him.
5. Binding Heal: Low threat, 2 heals for less than the price of 2. Useful if you’ve taken some damage and the tank has taken some damage. A little more expensive than Flash Heal, but you’ve saved on the most precious commodity of all: Time.
December 13th, 2007
Okay, I think I have it. Check me on this, though: If the tank dies, the raid wipes.
Seriously, though–even for a non-raid healer such as myself, there is a LOT of wisdom in this (and the preceding) article: I can’t wait for the rest of the series!
And to add to what Matt said above: Binding Heal is one of my favorites, right after my Frisbee. If I’m even down just a bit (in a 5-man), I’ll look for an opportunity to Bind, even if it’s not necessarily the tank. Usually, it’s going to be my mage or my hunter; possibly my rogue (or fury warrior/retpally), since we probably took some AOE damage. Binding Heal gets us clothies closer to full, faster than Renew.
But before I heal anyone else, I take another peek at my tank, just to be sure (s)he’s going to be okay.
December 13th, 2007
This is fabulous. I’m called in to help heal SSC/TK by my progression team all the time because I use all of these. I have been trying to explain and teach my new raid healers. Thanks os much for putting it in easy to understand language. It’s probably good to mention that if you’re trying to keep on the top the charts in 25 mans, you can drop renews on the dps’ers that need frequent heals and pop mana pots on cool down to keep as much mana as posisble. between barrages and FSR ussage.
December 13th, 2007
Paladins are the most effective and mana effecient single target healers due to their ability to get mana back from crits. They have no instant cast heals, so leaving them on the MT for an entire fight is the best way. A shaman or priest can fullfil the role of main healer as well, they just require some hefty MP5.
December 13th, 2007
“It’s probably good to mention that if you’re trying to keep on the top the charts in 25 mans, you can drop renews on the dps’ers that need frequent heals and pop mana pots on cool down to keep as much mana as posisble. between barrages and FSR ussage.”
Or if, you know, you want to down the boss…
December 13th, 2007
For the canceling due to other heals problem, there may be help for that. I just haven’t been able to get anyone to test it for me…
Okay, so one of my addons is VisualHeal, which is great because the picture/bar version of how much I am healing someone is sometimes more helpful than the number (-3k health means more to me when the bar shows me that you only have 6k to start with.). I have been told that it is possible to that if other healers in your raid have VisualHeal and they are healing the same target you are _the healing amount bar (how much the target will be healed for) will show both of your heals together_! But, the other healers have to also have VisualHeal which is the stumbling block in my testing as I haven’t been able to convince anyone else in my guild to try it out yet even though the info on the addon says that you can have it active but not visible on your own screen.
December 13th, 2007
Looking forward to the next few (dozen) parts. I hope you mention bubbles on tanks somewhere.
BethDragon, I use VisualHeal too. It’s an addon I believe everyone should have as it lets you see your incoming heals so the tank knows when to expect a heal and the dps know that they might have to bandage.
December 13th, 2007
Why would you bubble in the Prince fight when you are getting hit with the AoE of an infernal? Maybe I am wrong, but isnt PW: S useful for mitigating just physical damage and doesn’t mitigate any spell damage?
December 13th, 2007
As a tank, reading this article, makes me uncomfortable whenever reading something like ‘when your tank takes a crit’.. generally, tanks that are in Kara/ZA/GL/SSC.. with 490+ defence will be immune to crit..(not immune to crush, mind you).. there’s a very tiny and slim chance that you might get crit even with 490+ def, which is very small to even consider.. so tanks mostly ignore that fact..
over all, that’s a great article, can’t wait to see the rest of the article..
you have a great blog there..
December 14th, 2007
@BG: No, PW:S blocks all incoming damage until it absorbs it’s limit. Spell, Physical, PW:S doesn’t care. =P
BoP from Pallies is only Physical, though.
@Ego: Thanks for taking me back man! I healed forever at 60 and reading these reminded me how fun it was to hold the raid’s well-being in your hands. =P Those are very good tips that any up-and-coming healer (and a few currently raiding ones) would be well to check up on.
I look forward to the “Raid Heals” post, I never found an efficient way to do that other than renews and ProM.
December 14th, 2007
But if your tank dies, your raid wipes. You cannot afford to put him on the backburner while you polish your nails and admire your dress.
*Snerk* Still chuckling at the mental imagification.
December 14th, 2007
This was a great article. The only things I would add is PoM should not be used before the pull on multiple-add boss fights. High King Maulgar is a good example. There’s a good chance that a PoM’d tank will get just enough aggro to end up with more than one mob on him. And you can’t usually heal through that.
Also, while the two-for-one casting time aspect of Binding Heal is nice, the real key is that it’s a very low aggro spell. For fights where the boss drops aggro, this is a key way to keep everyone alive, including yourself. An example would be Hydross where all the healers except priests have to stop healing during transitions, or risk pulling the boss.
@Beth Dragon - We used VisualHeal for a month or so. The problem is when two people both see that they’re about to overheal the same target, both would cancel their cast. And then the target would take a second hit and die. Because of this, we stopped using it.
December 14th, 2007
6. Let the tank know you are mainhealing him.
Doesn’t sound important does it? No fancy efficiency / timing thingy to discuss about. But it does wonders for the tank-healer communication, makes the meatshields feel safe and special. Do this, especially in a raidgroup where healing is shuffled a lot. Whisper ‘Frank the tank’ “hey mate, I am saving your ass this fight. :-)’ and see how popular you get with the tanks. Talk with him a bit about the upgoing fight and poke if he/she has special wishes. Some tanks hate POM/Shield/renews at pulls, that’s the chance for them to let you know. Ofc you can ignore it, its your speciality, but it’s good for them to feel they a have a say :-).
Also it makes them keep an eye on you a little more which is always helpfull in chaotic fights with adds flying around. You are their lifeline, they need you. It is not uncommon for tanks to run back and pick untanked adds of THEIR HEALER, if they know who that is
7. Don’t be too lazy to bandage yourself.
Counts for all roles really, but I have seen countless Tank healers just standing still at 50% health watching their HoT tick on the tank and decide to HoT / Binding Heal themselves. Why? Use a bandage on yourself if you feel it is safe, it’s your most mana efficient heal !
Also, since I like being an arse, I disagree with the statement ‘Ignore everything but the tank you heal.’ That might be true with beginning healers or massive spike fights, but if you have a little experience and you know the rhytm of the the fight. It wouldn’t hurt to throw a few renews around would it?
December 14th, 2007
The biggest things I have to tell the healers in my raids is to trust eachother. We always hand out healing assignments. If someone’s healing assignment dies then that is their fault. Healing meters don’t mean a thing if you can’t keep your assigned target alive. I’m sure Ego will cover this later but if you need to be the one healing the MT, you don’t EVER want to lose your focus. Seeing him at full health and then paying attention to something else puts you in this situation more often than not:
–Tankman is at full health—
Gruul misses Tankman.
Gruul’s attack is dodged by Tankman.
Gruul’s attack is dodged by Tankman.
–MT Healer decides to toss a few renews around to get a better spot on the healing meters…
Gruul hits Tankman for 6000. (500 blocked)
–MT Healer realises that the tank is going to need heals so he shifts back.
Gruul hits Tankman for 6000. (500 blocked)
–MT Healer is almost done casting his big heal…
Gruul hits Tankman for 9000. (Crushing)
Tankman dies.
–MT Healer: “Sorry Tankman, I couldn’t finish my heal in time.”
Healing meters have probably caused our MT to die in Gruul’s lair about 15-20 times now. He has a 20% survival rate for that fight. See why?
December 14th, 2007
I’ve finally got into 25 mans enough to give what I consider an informed opinion. If you are 1 of 5 healers assigned to the MT… there is a reason for it. Cancel your spell if he is at full health, but if he is down even 500HP let it land. In that next .5 seconds he could take 5000 or be healed up to full, better safe than sorry.
I have also reverted to cancel casting Rank 1 Gheal in this situation unless the tank is at 30-75% then I do full rank Gheal… if he is under 30% I PW:S, Flash Heal, pop Troll Beserking, and Spam max rank Gheal.
December 17th, 2007
People using healing and damagemeters in raids should be shot. Really. It adds nothing but peenstroking and distraction. At best it is a analyzing tool used AFTER a raid.
And I bothered less and less with downranking heals in TBC. What good is a gheal rank 1 after a damagespike, and the mana/heal ratio isn’t that great anymore which was the whole reason behind downranking. Instead I prefer to cast/cancel max heals. That makes me think …………..
8. Overheal doesn’t kill your tank. Spike damage does.
The WORST you can do as a tankhealer is let him/her die because you are ‘conserving mana’. Don’t take chances. In a fight like for example Maulgar the the spike damage can be imposing at first. You are not going to impress the raidleader by having half your manabar full and the tank reduced to a nasty greasy spot on the cave floor.
So keep that HoT on the tank at all times, spamcast/cancel that max gheal and be ready to PoM/FH/Shield in between when an emergency arises. Pot as soon as your are at 60% mana and keep on spamming. Don’t mind overhealing that much, pot for mana all you can and be ready to ask for an innervate when needed. Spam baby.
Who cares if you use 3 manapots and two innervates in one fight and the overhealing makes you cry? The tank lived, you killed the boss in the first try and everybody is happy.
December 17th, 2007
I gotta agree with Krill here. I remember leading some Kara raids, and one priest that would sometimes come (we were always short on healers) only brought like 5 mana pots! He was trying to do every fight without using mana pots, to save money or something. I wanted to smack him so hard. On my hunter I actually learned the necessity of popping a mana pot at about 70% (give or take, depending on your mana pool), and then popping another one whenever it’s up. So on a fight that’s ~10 min, I’m using 4 or 5 mana pots. I don’t see why a healer would be popping less if there are people to be healed.
@Aliah
I disagree. That’s the kind of tunnel visioned healing I disagreed with in the last post. Obviously if you need to be spamming gheals on the MT at the moment, or there are people out of los/range because of the layout of the room, it would be better to have another healer do something. But if someone else’s “assignment” dies and there was something you could have reasonably done about it, you should have done it. Also, in your example, you’re going to have other people on both the MT and the dps so that situation should be small, even if you are tossing out some hots to dps. If all of your dps are dead, it doesn’t matter that you did so well on keeping that tank alive. And on some fights, like half of ZA for example, you need to keep even the dps topped off or they are going to get slaughtered quickly. Take the lynx boss for example. Say your dps is well disciplined and they position themselves to minimize totem damage, and are on top of killing that totem. Well they can still get hit by a lightning bolt no matter how fast they take it down, and there’s nothing they can do to avoid flame shocks. So if you let a dpser get below 50% they could be dead in a matter of seconds with unlucky totem bolts and flame shocks. I realize that the boss is also hitting the tanks incredibly hard as well, but if you could have reasonably done something to keep that dpser alive…
December 20th, 2007
@ Esoth
I know exactly what you mean, but this is part of the problem. When I hand out healing assignments for Gruul. We generally go with one healer for the hateful strike tank, one healer for the raid(until later growths), five healers on the MT. Usually out of the MT healers I ask 1-2 of them to keep an eye one something else at the same time. Those other 3 need to be tunnel visioned on the MT because it is possible that a whole ton of damage is right around the corner.
Now, if we take those 3 healers that I ask to be ‘tunnel’ visioned and let’s say a nearby rogue ate a cave-in for 7k damage. The raid healer is already on his or her way to heal that rogue. It’s not an issue that the raid healer doesn’t know about it or doesn’t have any mana left, it’s an issue with not trusting your fellow healers to do their jobs. The biggest problem with tossing that one small HoT or quick heal on that person who looks like they need it is that is breaks your pre-healing cycle. This is getting a little complicated but I will use another example:
MT Healer 1 starts casting his long 2.5 second heal.
1 second goes by with no damage on the MT.
MT Healer 2 starts casting his long 2.5 second heal.
1 second goes by with no damage on the MT.
MT Healer 1 sees the tank won’t need his heal so he jumps out of it.
MT Healer 3 starts casting his long 2.5 second heal.
Gruul hits the MT for a 10,000 damage. MT has 7,000 hp remaining.
MT Healer 1 starts casting his fast 1.5 second heal after seeing the spike.
MT Healer 2 lets his long heal land on the MT for 4500 hp. MT has 11,500 hp remaining.
MT Healer 2 starts casting his fast 1.5 second heal after seeing the MT needs more heals.
Gruul hits the MT for 10,000 damage. MT has 1,500 hp remaining.
MT healer 3 lets his long heal land on the MT for 4500hp. MT has 6,000 hp remaining.
MT healer 1 lets his fast heal land on the MT for 2500hp. MT has 8,500 hp remaining.
MT healer 2 lets his fast heal land on the MT for 2500hp. MT has 11,000 hp remaining.
MT healers 1,2, and 3 pop trinkets and all cast fast 1.5 second heals on the MT.
1 second goes by with no damage to the MT.
MT healer 1,2 and 3’s fast heals land on the MT for a total of 9000hp. MT has 17,000 hp remaining.
All 3 healers breathe a sigh of relief and get back to their normal cycle.
Those healers just kept the tank up through 20,000 damage in 2 seconds, and still managed to heal him enough so he could have survived another 10,000 damage. If any of those 3 healers had decided to stop their pre-healing cycle to toss a HoT on a dps or top themselves off instead, the tank would have died. It’s a tricky and thankless job but when I put someone on the MT, it’s for a really good reason and if they wander off and try to do someone else’s job without being asked, they stand a chance of letting the tank die to a spike. That is the reason I don’t want my dedicated MT healers losing focus and tossing random heals around.