The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Tiered Healing
by Vonya
Going through the comments and entries lately, there’s been a lot of discussion and concern over “tunnel vision healing” and “healing whoever needs it”.
So today, I’m going to talk about “Tiered Healing”. No, that’s not the official term for it. As far as I know, there IS no official term for it. But it fits well enough, so by golly I’m gonna use it.
I’m not making this part of the Raid Healing series, because the base idea should be learned in five-mans. It’s not a concept that only exists in the raiding world – raiding simply throws it into sharp contrast.
So what IS Tiered Healing?
Tiered Healing
For something to be “tiered”, it has to have layers of different sizes. Skirts can be tiered, lecture hall seating can be tiered, wedding cakes, spice racks, fountains, chandeliers…all kinds of tiered things. All of them have different “layers” that are different sizes.
So how can healing be tiered?
You have to have different targets of different importance.
Consider each “type” of person who needs a heal to be on a tier. And then list each of the heal targets by importance, giving them a different “size”.
Imagine a five man instance as a wedding cake.
The bottom, base tier is your tank. If he dies, you’re in some serious trouble. Without that bottom layer, the cake falls over and makes a mess. It’s the anchor, the foundation for your entire group.
The next tier, slightly smaller than the first, is you, the healer. If YOU die, your group is in trouble.
The ranking of the next tiers will depend on your group. For me, the next tier contains everyone else in the group – the remaining three dpsers on the run.
So for five-man instances, I have a three-tiered healing strategy.
First and foremost, the tank. If the tank needs heals, then anyone else who might need a heal takes a backseat. Too bad, so sad, little AOE-happy mage. Sorry, can’t help you, Boomkin with three “lucky” crits in a row. If the tank needs heals, that is all that matters.
Next is myself. Thankfully, as a priest, I have Binding Heal, which allows me to heal someone else at the same time as I heal me. I actually get grumpy sometimes if I’m the only one who needs a heal – it seems wasteful to spend an entire heal on myself, when I could be healing two people at once.
After that come the dpsers. If the tank doesn’t need a heal, and I don’t need a heal, that’s when my dpser’s get the love. HoTs or downranked greater heals, depending on the situation (or in dire situations, flash heals).
And obviously, if more than three people need about a flash heal’s worth of healing (and the tank has established good aggro) – I’ll toss out a group heal.
But for the most part, being able to prioritize your heal targets is an important healing skill, and it completely depends on your group makeup. Sometimes you may need to prioritize your “best” dpser in a situation with crazy AOE. If you know you only have time to heal one out of the two people taking bad damage – might as well keep the person with the better dps alive. Or the person who is more likely to STAY alive in that situation.
As the healer, that is your call.
Those situations don’t happen often, mind you, but you should be prepared for them.
And you can’t be a tunnel vision healer. You absolutely can’t.
If you tell yourself, “Well, Ego said the tank is the most important person in the group, so I can’t let him die!” and then spend the entire run not healing anyone but the tank, you’re being just as horrid a healer as if you spend the entire run healing your best friend INSTEAD of the tank, and let the tank die.
You, as a healer, will usually have more than a single health bar to monitor. And in all likelihood, there will be some health bars that are more important than others.
You have to learn how to gauge the incoming damage and know when you have the tank padded well enough that you can heal someone else.
There will be situations where you don’t have a choice. Where the damage to the tank has the opportunity to be so devastating that he won’t live through you healing someone else.
Those situations are few and far between, however. MOST of the time you will be responsible for more than one person’s health. You have to learn to anticipate the damage from the various fights and mobs, you have to know your own capabilities and response times, and you have to know your TANK’s capabilities and gear levels.
The same run with a differently geared tank means that your healing style changes to compensate. It has to. Healing is a reactive sport – you have to be able to anticipate and be flexible.
Tiered Healing in Raiding
In raiding, the situations may change.
Karazhan, for example. There are times when you’ll have two healers, and two tanks that are occupied with targets. If your healers are ONLY focused on their tanks, then the dps may die. The healers have to know when it’s safe to turn aside and toss a heal or two to the dpsers, without dropping the ball when it comes to healing the tanks.
Both the tanks and the dpsers are heal targets.
There may be times when you HAVE to be focused-healing. When you have no options, when the tank needs your undivided attention and as many half-cooked heals as you can send his way.
The biggest change in raid healing, however, is from teamwork and learning to trust each other. Your tier and the tier of the healer next to you are probably not going to be the same, though they may overlap. You HAVE to trust them to keep up their tier, and you have to work out a system where you work together instead of constantly fighting each other in the name of some ridiculous healing meters.
Healing in raids is teamwork, pure and simple. The moment it becomes a situation where you’re trying to “cheat” the system and pad your healing by taking shortcuts or doing someone else’s job, then the healing is going to start affecting the raids negatively.
At the end of the day, healing isn’t about numbers. If you want to participate in an e-peen competition, go join the dps squad.
Raid healing requires even MORE flexibility than five man healing, because you have to flex WITH and AROUND your fellow healers.
Take VR, for example. His orbs are supposedly random, but I’ve had five of them chase me across the room before. Five. FIVE. I didn’t have time to toss a heal in to help out on the main tanks, and I was one of the healers assigned to that job. Did the other healers ignore the situation? No. The healers assigned to the melee group continued doing their job, like they were supposed to. The healers assigned to clean up raid damage helped out on the tanks when I called out that I was unavailable.
We pick up each other’s slack. I tossed out some raid HoTs while I was doing the Orb Hokey Pokey. When I got back in position, I called it out and everyone went back to their primary assignments.
Tiered healing. And flexible tiered healing, at that. The tiers changed for the raid healers mid-fight, and they were able to do what needed to be done without sacrificing efficiency OR raiders.
Summary
You can’t pidgeonhole healing into “tunnel vision” or “heal whoever needs healing”. Those aren’t strategies, those are two different ends of a scale. Your assignments and duties will change depending on your situation, but if your healing style falls into the “can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time” category, you (and those you play with) are in for a world of hurt and high enough repair bills to make Solomon blush.
Above all else, remember that your tiers have to be different sizes.
If your primary target (say, the tank) dies while you were off healing dpsers or (god forbid) healing someone ELSE’s primary target, then that IS YOUR FAULT.
If your secondary or tertiary target dies while your primary target didn’t need a heal, then that IS YOUR FAULT.
If your secondary or tertiary target dies while you were healing your primary target, then you’re in the clear.
As a healer, one of the most difficult lessons to learn is how to tell when something is your fault, actually admitting it to yourself and others, and then knowing what you should do to change your behavior so that it doesn’t happen again.
Everyone makes mistakes. Learning and growing from them is what makes a good healer.
February 21st, 2008
Healing stuff … blah blah … more healing stuff … blah blah blah … I’s should take notes fer when I’ve got me priest on … still more healing stuff … uh-huh …
Ooh!
What’s that Vonya’s got on this week? She looks all tribal-like.
February 21st, 2008
@Rat
*laughs* That’s the healy robes from Zul’Aman. =]
She’s been wearing it for a while now, I just don’t have a model viewer with it loaded. I do, however, have FRIENDS who have said model viewer. That’s what she actually looks like, all geared up. Prince mace and everything.
Too bad you can’t see the fish-head wand or the voodoo shaker offhand, they look positively wicked with the dress.
February 21st, 2008
I believe the “Official” term here would be Triage, from a medical perspective anyway. Your healing the target that needs it the most, usually the tank but if the tank isn’t going to die next hit then it is someone else. Triage does not mean the most injured either, it is a term to describe a method of prioratizing injured casualties to promote recovery with the highest priority being to treat those who can be saved and make comfortable those who cannot. In your example of the raid where the tanks require 100% of your heals the “comfort” you are going to give to your raid will be something like, “I am very sorry” because you must save the one who can be. If the tank requires 110% of your heals….well sucks to be your raid lol. In Triage it is understood that you may not be able to save everyone, so you can only concentrate on those you can.
February 21st, 2008
Triage is a good definition of what we do.
We are experiencing this in our guild. We have about 4 healers who ran alot of 10 man raids, with just 2 healers. You have to be very flexible and learn to prioritize your targets. This is actually the reason we didn’t have specific healing assignments until recently, the raid leaders just trusted us to heal the right people. We have picked up a few more healers now that we are trying to enter T6 and they suffer from tunnel vision. They heal 1 person and only that person, with little exception.
Really if someone isn’t aware of shifting their focus once in awhile, and knowing when to do it, there isn’t much hope for them. We are trying to teach people this but it’s hard. You can’t teach people to be aware of their surroundings or innate instinct. You can try, but if they just lack the ability to make those tough choices then you are SOL.
February 21st, 2008
@Underbridge
Aha! That’s a good, solid, medical term for it. There is, however, no mention of cake when talking about ‘triage’, and thus it is obviously inferior to “Tiered”.
*winks*
@Nobs
I’ve found that most of the “tunnel vision” healers solo’d their way to 70, or respecc’d once they got there. It’s hard to find groups leveling up these days, but most of the flexible healers are people who know the inside of Auchidoun like the back of their hand, yet get utterly lost when left alone in Terrokar.
Experience will do a lot. It’s only those who want a “free ride” who will refuse to learn, no matter how much experience they’re offered.
And tanks willing to teach said healers deserve LOTS of cookies.
February 21st, 2008
I completely agree with your tiered approach, however I put a tasty layer of jam in between layers 2 and 3. I call it regen. If the incoming damage is fairly predictable and both me and my tank are topped off, I will choose sitting still and letting my FSR work for me. My usual threshold to come out is if the tank or I are taking ANY damage; or if any individual dps drops below 75%. It takes some work, but usually if the dps knows that they get hit for 25% of their hit points, they will either pull back on their dps rocketship or they will start carrying more bandages.
This is a very simplistic view of what is actually going on, but that 5 man cake tastes so much better with jam.
February 21st, 2008
@Nuair
I approve of the use of jam in healing. *winks*
February 22nd, 2008
I remember back in MC and BWL we had so many healers in a raid, tiered healing was rarely necessary, of even recommended.
However, the 25 player model turned quite a few things upside down, healing on top of it, I would say. If you do a lot of dungeons runs, you get used to it pretty quickly.
I would just suggest to do Netherspite with those healers that suffer from tunnel vision. That fight really involves a lot of switching between tiers. *grins*
February 22nd, 2008
I like tiered healing.
And cake.
And jam.
damn, I like all of this post
@Nobs: Not sure I completely agree with not being able to teach someone. There is some ring of truth to it I’ll admit, but it really depends on if said person thinks he or she is the bees knees or not. Generally, if they boast that they are a good healer, they won’t change (aka: learn). For example, we have one newer priest type who, well…was just not very good when she apped. BUT, she seemed to really want to get there, and is always asking me and others tips and suggestions. This person is turning out to be quite a good healer. The improvement is obvious, and even to the non healing classes (and make no mistake, the non-healing classes do know good healers from the ones who aren’t). Contrast this to a person we had a while ago who used to tell everyone how good he was. This is the same guy who was always sitting at 60% overheal, oom or dead 2 mins into a fight, bottom of the meters on the dispell list, and couldn’t find his fortitude or spirit buff button if his life depended on it. Needless to say, this guy never improved and as a result was the raid waiting list very often.
but I like tiered jam and cake!
February 22nd, 2008
I want a Raspberry cake now… I hate you…
February 22nd, 2008
‘Healing is a reactive sport – you have to be able to anticipate”
I would replace the word “reactive” with “proactive.” I always preach this to my healers. I tell them all the time that they have to stop being reactive healers, and start being proactive healers. What I mean by this is that in many situations, if you don’t start healing until someone starts taking damage, many times, it is already too late and they will die before your heal lands. If you are proactive about healing through, you’re cast-cancelling Greater Healing, using a mod that highlights your raid frames based on who has aggro, and you’re viewing “target of target of target.” You need to be swapping healing targets as soon as they get aggro, not after they take damage. You want that big heal landing as soon as possible. If you can start casting as soon as you can “anticipate” a dps taking damage, then often times, thats enough to save their life and prevent a wipe. If the tank ends up taunting the mob back, thats great. If you have enough time to see that, then cancel your heal. If you waste a few mana on overhealing the dps that got saved by taunt, then that’s better than saving mana, yet losing your dps.
February 23rd, 2008
I am a healer thats just starting out, and I was one of those priests that solo’d to level. The tunnel vision thing has never been an issue with me thanks to being thrown into Kara as a clean up healer almost right at 70. I was intimidated as heck, but I think the best thing I did for myself was being hard on myself. I am at 1500+ healing as of now and relied upon as the secondary healer more and more often (resto shaman decided to join us in Kara now and still needs some gear) Anyway, enough about my story – I have to thank this site as well as a few of my guildmates for teaching me and guiding me. Perhaps I should thank myself for going into holy spec with an openmind as well. When I first started healing I had a priest tell me that I should be using “Heal Rank 4″, I did my research and found out he was old school Pre BC healing. (He still is to this day and wont change) I started using downranked Gheals, POM, Renew and now, in concert with a pally healy – our tank on prince doesn’t hit 75% unless some damn infernal causes dmg to the melee dps and there are a few heals goin to them (i just hit renew on em and let the pally ro shaman smack em with a heal if they’re gonna)
This has been a heap of steaming rambling, yet, the bottomline is this tiered healing is so very nessesary. Now that I have shifted into the number 2 spot, I can say that with certainty. Now, with that being said – in my opinion – healing the raid is far more difficult than just healin’ a single target – so perhaps tunnelvision wouldn’t be the right word – laziness would be closer to the mark.
February 25th, 2008
This is something i still struggle with. On many occasions I’ve seen tanks take 20k damage in 4 seconds, I’ve lost the tank a few times just though bad luck picking the wrong time to heal someone else. This is even though the tank is at 100% and another healer is assigned and I’m /stopcasting half my heals. I guess once our tanks become uncrittable it might be easier? (I don’t mean obvious times like when bosses are in some enrage or similar phase, where I can’t afford to stop chain ghealing even if the tank looks healthy)
Ragarding what nobs wrote, I’m finding that going on the farm runs so I can get geared is really hurting my learning. I’m often paired with healers to outgear me and healing is pretty easy compared to when they were first learning. Thus I don’t learn when to make decisions like that at all on farm runs.
I don’t think soloing or grouping has anything to do with this particular issue. I mean I levelled 65-70 pretty much grouping, and raid healing is so completely different than 5 man healing. There is no massive damage like that in 5mans. And the few heroics I’ve healed also taught me it’s completely different than raids. The skills don’t cross all that much.
February 26th, 2008
^ That’s exactly what I experienced which motivated my original post on the other thread. Maybe it’s just a case of our tanks not shield walling properly or otherwise failing in some way.
February 26th, 2008
Couple things I want to add. First I say that some people can’t learn. I know this is a fact because we have one healer in our guild who constinetly wipes us because he doesn’t pay attention to the encounters. Running the wrong way when fighting the giant Bog lords in SSC, not running away on Solarian, not running away from orbs on Loot Reaver, dying to fire orbs over and over again on Dragonhawk. He simply can not be taught. Trust me we’ve tried.
I actually learned how to raid heal in Kara when my guild had it on farm. I never really had to put much effort into healing, and to be honest since I was the only Holy Priest no one knew I was a bad healer at the time.
Fast forward to the week ZA came out. What an eye opener. We got Zul’jin the 3rd he was out in all Kara gear, but dear lord it was an eye opener. I completly retuned my healing method. Now that I’m in 25 man content I have to retune it again.
Healing a heroic is different from a 10 man which is different from a 25 man. It takes practice.
February 26th, 2008
@Rakel
That’s interesting – I agree, the 25 man model puts more pressure on the healers. But that also equals more fun. =]
And I think Netherspite, Prince, and Nightbane are crutial to teach the entire raid how to think on their feet. =]
Netherspite was my most hated encounter for so long. And then we all “got” it, and now it’s the most fun. Give me a strategy-based fight ANY day. *grins happily*
@Hildi
mmm…cake.
Also, the ability of someone to be taught depends on their willingness to admit they have something to learn. Some people, as you noted, just think they’re the bee’s knees and refuse to listen. Others don’t care enough to pay attention, and still others just can’t focus on anything long enough to remember they’re supposed to be healing through the entire fight, not just through the commercial break in the tv show they’re watching.
@Birkin
Good point – I think it’s both. If you’re a tank healer, it’s definitely proactive. If you’re a raid healer, it’s reactive.
And it’s best if you’re good at both kinds. =]
@Skok
*laughs* That’s a -great- story! Kara’s certainly a great place to learn the ins and outs of different kinds of healing, as long as the team’s not just dragging you through and slapping all the unwanted loot on you. For a healer who has to actually HEAL, it’s like boot camp. =]
@Yunk
It’s definitely not easy. I have lost the tank to this before as well, and it’s HARD to look at the situation and say “yup, I screwed up” – and luck has just enough to do with it that I doubt I’ll ever completely stop doing it. It becomes less “lucky” once your tank gets some serious gear though. =]
As to your second paragraph, that is SO true. And speaking from the PoV of the supergeared healer helping a new healer learn and gear up, it’s hard to let the raid wipe on content you know you could pick up just so the other healer learns that they have to be able to move and heal, and know where trouble spots are, and soforth. It’s worth it, though. Tossing a nub healer into 25 man raids is overwhelming for the healer and can be bad news for the raid. It’s unfair to everyone.
The types of healing are very different, but the core concepts are learned from each one. I wouldn’t trust a 25 man raid healer who’d never run a five man or a heroic without constantly wiping the group, for example.
All of the skills cross – it’s just that you have to distribute the skills that a single healer needs in five mans across 6 different healers sometimes. =]
@Nobs
Some people refuse to learn. And that’s very sad, but I have seen my fair share of people who are all “I’m a healer, so I’ll do whatever I want”. As if simply being a paladin means they don’t have to try (for example). Totally untrue, and a shameful shameful thing to do to the other 9 or 24 people depending on you.
Love the story, Nobs – I’d like to hear more about the things you learned in the situations – what misconceptions you had, what things you didn’t realize until it was too late. =] If you felt like sharing, that is.
February 26th, 2008
…just spec Discipline so no one expects much from you … never realizing you save the whole raid at least one per week ;p
February 27th, 2008
[...] Priest has a great post on ‘tiered healing’ which can also be thought of as triage for healers. Deciding who to heal when and with which heal [...]
February 27th, 2008
Would you like those stories in reply or email form :p
February 28th, 2008
@Nobs
Email. Then I can use them as a post.
*winks*
February 28th, 2008
Having all of your healers work as a team instead of competing with eachothers is one of the keys to getting through T5 content. Every time we would learn a new encounter, there would be small problems here and there. Usually the biggest problem is having the raid disorganized at first. Players are running all over the place, they aren’t sure what they are supposed to do, you are losing people left right and center from Spout/Whirlwind/Flame Patches/Bombs/Orbs that all these new shiny bosses are throwing at you.
It usually takes a few tries (or days lol) to get past the basic stuff. Then comes the raid organization. You realize you need X tanks for this, Y healers for this, Z dps on this target. I find that once we get to that point, I can set up healing assignments for each phase of the fight. Our raiders generally trust and follow those assignments because they make sense after we have wiped a few times learning the basics. Some fights are easy to do assignments for since you do the same job the whole fight. Some are harder where each phase your job changes to something different.
The big thing and I like that you mentioned it is: You HAVE to trust your other healers to do their jobs. This isn’t the T4 stuff where 1 or 2 good healers can pretty much carry most of the raid. There’s WAY too much going on to try and play Super Healer. Trust me, I’ve tried
. Magtheridon is a really good introduction into splitting up the healing jobs. You’ve got 4-5 different tanks to heal, and you’ve got raid damage all over the place. It’s probably one of the best fights out there to introduce your raid to the concept of why you need to stick to your job.
I never fault my healers for not topping the meters. In fact, I make it very clear when they join that I don’t care about the healing meters at all. I care that you are able to do your job and keep your assignment alive. Whether it’s spamming heals on the tank, or playing whack-a-mole on the raid. If they can do that, they are already ahead of the game in my books. Nice post!
February 28th, 2008
@Aliah
And an excellent comment – our guild has only recently been able to muster a solid 25-man raiding team to start into the larger raiding content – information like that is invaluable, and I was hoping the healing would get more…”specialized” isn’t really the word…”interesting” will perhaps do the trick.
I was hoping the healing would get more “interesting”. =]
March 15th, 2008
[...] wrote an excellent piece a little over a month ago on a concept she referred to as tiered healing. It’s a great read and it offers a bit more of a detailed process in regards to prioritizing [...]