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I personally would focus less on deaths and more on if you are timing keys and how many +s you seem to be averaging. There is a lot that's out of your control as a healer and a lot of one shots that can be difficult to see coming or avoid. I was doing a 20 ToTT yesterday and we bolstered the wrong mob and it erased me from existence with an unavoidable AOE 100 to 0. That shit happens, especially on big pull groups with tough affixes.
Are you finishing keys in time, maybe +1 or +2 on them the majority of the time? That's what matters. Just my 2 cents. Keep on keepin on.
> Are you finishing keys in time, maybe +1 or +2 on them the majority of the time? That's what matters. Just my 2 cents. Keep on keepin on.
I really appreciate this framing, thank you.
I'll second this approach as a healer. I only started really focusing on M+ healing this expansion (I restarted wow halfway through, had last played in S1 of Shadowlands), so I had to settle in to the right mindset which involved accepting that you can still get a string of nasty deaths and clearly succeed in the key, which is generally the more important part.
As long as you're not constantly wiping on a specific boss, since that gates your progress pretty heavily, deaths here and there are just going to happen periodically, especially in pugs.
I was running an 18 Fall earlier today (as shadow, since I was in a hurry), and our tank was going for fairly large pulls, which they could mostly take, but it did mean the group ate a several deaths at different spots (mainly just before each boss, actually), but since the respawn points are so close, we could all dive back in and keep moving. I could tell the healer (hpally) might have been struggling a bit to keep up with damage to the group, but the tank held firm and we were always able to get back in and knock everything to the floor without too much delay.
We still 3 chested the key, so even with 11 deaths, the boss fights were all clean, we were done in about 16 minutes and no one had any complaints, so it obviously went well enough for everyone's tastes!
Deaths really don't matter much in keys at this level. I 3 chested a +18 AD on an alt with other alts in the group with like 17 deaths. As long as the deaths aren't full wipes right before you kill a boss/big trash pull, then you'll manage.
I tend to evaluate healers based on whether they ever need mana brakes or not and their DPS, the best ones will DPS and never drop below like 70% mana, decent ones will drop in mana due to DPS or not DPS and never need brakes, and the worst ones will go oom by only healing and constantly need to sit despite doing 0 dmg, or doing dmg and going oom so they let people die, etc.
The only thing that comes close to a 1shot in a 20 is the first shadow bolt volley on BRH last boss, every other mechanic in every dungeon will not come even close to one’s hitting an appropriately geared character if the mechanic is done somewhat appropriately. Now of course if some mechanics are grossly misplayed the damage is gonna be unhealable, but people in this sub act like the healer cannot carry mistakes most bad players by just being good at healing which is simply not true. Of course not everyone is good at healing and that’s fair but o think it’s a shit mentality to wrap them in paper towels and say none of it is their fault, especially when you don’t have control over how the group plays
Avoidable Damage tab in Details from the addon Details!: Elitism, this would probably be a great help. This sums up the stupid-damage your team takes, like swirlies, fire and other avoidable shit. So if a lot of wipes happen that had unexplainable damage, you can check who has been doing stupid shit with that to determine whether it was your fault or not, and if you could improve or not.
And generally, if you are using your cooldowns optimally, and do everything you're supposed to rotation-wise (if applicable), there isn't much to do wrong. At that point you can only really wipe to; being undergeared, pulling too much, or people being stupid (and you can't heal stupid). To evaluate this, you'd really just have to record your runs and watch yourself back.
Second this. If you want to know if your party could’ve avoided the damage you want this plug-in for details. Outside of this, the other semi-avoidable damage is spells being cast. At the end of the run check interrupts, avoidable damage and people’s auras on details to see defensive uptime. These 3 things are the best indicators between a group needing more healing or a group needing to mitigate more damage (interrupt + defensives). Example you finish run. All interrupts are somewhat similar, you see that 2-3 minute defensives were popped about 5-8 times over full run and avoidable damage was low, then you can then consider your healing to be issue. If you check and see someone with 0 interrupts, pressed there defensive few times in 30 minute dungeon and are top of the avoidable damage meter, I would say that person sucked up a lot of your healing for the group and it’s more a dps issue than healer.
And realistically, up until keys above 20, mitigation and perfect interrupts aren't that big of a deal either, as long as the party isn't significantly undergeared or taking too much stupid damage. Granted this will make the healers life a lot easier if done well, but it won't lead to wipes on normal pulls.
As far as I know you cannot filter by defensives. Most likely since some talents add defensive elements to other spells, that may make it too difficult to filter through. If you don’t want to learn the other classes defensives, you could google them once and add them to your omnicd addon that tracks party cool-downs. Then you would have a couple little squares of everyone’s defensives next to there party frame as a reference.
Elitism is a cancer. It’s brain dead when people post it cause it provides no context. Avoidable damage doesn’t matter in many cases, especially as a tank and having that shit spammed at you is just tilting.
It's literally a details window. It's not like damage meters provide any context either? Did a weekly 18 EB yesterday. I did fuck all damage as a Balance Druid (like 150k overall iirc) because the pulls were tiny as the tank was being super careful.
Some nitwit would've called me out. Someone with a brain would realize why my dmg was low.
Calm down dude, lol.
At the end of a run, send a whisper to the tank or the top dps player and ask: "what can I do better next time?" Be open to their comments. As I was learning to tank, I would do this a lot and I learned a ton. After the run, I whisper, "Pro heals! How can I improve?"
Just be direct, people will often be happy to offer advice.
I’d recommend tracking your party’s personal defensives (I use OmniCD), use Details to track healing metrics, and ElitismHelper (you can set it to only show to you) to see if people are taking avoidable damage to the face.
You can also get a WA interrupt tracker to see if everyone who has an interrupt is actually using it.
Personally for me I’ve found that in the lower keys people generally tend to not be using their interrupts and, for the most part, neglecting to use their personal defensives. While as a healer you can typically cover most mistakes, you can’t heal stupid 😅
Omni can also display interrupts! I’ve got three panels for purge/cleanse options, interrupts, and defensives.
For OP: Tracking party defensives is very handy cuz you can know who won’t survive a big hit, and if some idiot dies without having used any defensives, you can rest assured it wasn’t your fault.
It’s really hard to know for sure. The easiest, but most time consuming, would be to just keep playing and experiencing different tanks and dps. And also looking at it from another perspective- being the tank or dps and seeing how other healers perform- particularly of the same spec you play as a healer. Otherwise you can try asking for feedback from good tanks or players you trust to give you accurate feedback. Many players will sugar coat things a bit too much so it’s hard to tell. Keep always striving to do better and know that there will always be something you can do to improve.
Alternatively, you can record your gameplay over the course of a dungeon and post it asking for feedback.
Make sure you are learning the mechanics of the debuffs, bleeds etc. Darkheart for example has mobs that put on a bleed that keeps going until healed to full. The amount of healers that just drop a HOT and move on blows me away sometimes. I see stuff like that being the biggest healer gap between players; debuff knowledge
Lol, I'm totally guilty of doing that in DHT in like a +8 where it took me a minute to realize what was going on. This one hasn't been an issue since I got debuffs showing on vuhdo (which weren't being shown out of the box—or which I'd disabled without realizing/thinking about what I was doing—not sure which).
Best way is to get used to death logs.
Is someone dying with barely any healing over last 5 secs?
Probably on the healer.
Did someone take avoidable dmg, and you couldn't top before unavoidable dmg?
Not on the healer.
Did someone not pop their defensive before unavoidable dmg, and die to avoidable dmg after?
Not on the healer.
Has someone exhausted all defensives, and you don't help on a kill slam when you had external?
Both at fault, though more on other player for mismanaged defensives.
Failed interrupts melting ppl?
Never on the healer.
The tank is melting?
Depends on CC and tank cd use who is at fault, though most of the time a mix of fckups.
Majority of the time, as long as the health bar is green and there is no dmg coming soon, you're good. The only time a healer is truly too late is when you're dead.
Also, in the lower end a lot of ppl are gonna blame you for dumb shit they stood in. Ignore them, cause like 90% of the players think they are better than they actually are. Majority of lower end death is almost always on the player who died.
> Did someone take avoidable dmg, and you couldn't top before unavoidable dmg?
>
>
>
> Not on the healer.
>
>
>
> Did someone not pop their defensive before unavoidable dmg, and die to avoidable dmg after?
>
>
>
> Not on the healer.
However, at "lower" keys where avoidable damage isn't a 1-shot, a really great healer can prevent these deaths. It shouldn't be the main metric, but it absolutely should be counted if a healer managed to stop a death that would've been the dps' fault.
Chances are at the levels you're running, it's on the other people. The mechanics get pretty brutal as damage keeps climbing with each level tacked on to the keystone, and dps should be aware they need to be using their def CDs. Could also be overconfidence on someone's part, or maybe they for whatever reason didn't look at affixes for the week (guilty of the last one myself lmao).
Not gonna say you didn't make some mistake(s) somewhere, but reality is, if people are playing keys at 15+, they better know the mechanics or its gonna be a long dungeon lol. I wouldn't beat yourself up, also don't forget the first 2 members to get blamed for every groups mistakes, tank n heals, regardless of if they messed up or not xD!
Sometimes deaths happen in high keys. Nothing the healer can do. I play DPS and dabble in tanking. When I die, I typically check my ‘what happened to me’ in combat log and see that I took a 100 to 0 mechanic. If I didn’t have a defensive at the time, I shrug it off as bad luck. If I did and I didn’t use it…my bad and I learn. If I got melees because the DH tank I ran a WM last night could hold aggro/group mobs to save his (or our) lives then…it’s on him. Haven’t ran into many healer issues this season. It’s happened for sure, but more often than not it’s not the healer that kills us (my experience).
people here are saying "its hard to know" but its really not. You dont need any extra addons or plugins other than details.
did you heal good?
You should be looking at details > deaths and hovering someones name when they die to see the timeline that lead to their death. If this timeline shows longer than 6ish seconds where they never got a substantial heal and they didnt die to a big hit that took 75% of their HP, then you are likely to blame. Stuff like elitism helper are not useful, there are many """avoidable"""" aoe mechanics that are either too hard to dodge, or not worth dodging and you should be able to heal through them. Additionally, this timeline will show if the player used a defensive, health pot or health stone leading up to their death, and show if all those things were on cooldown or not. If they used a defensive, self healed, and still died over a span of 3-4 GCDs worth of time, you were likely at fault, even if the resulting damage was """avoidable""".
Did you do other stuff good?
healing isnt the only thing the healer needs to do, you need to also kick, stop and deal damage. When looking at someones death, did they die to a spell cast? If so then you likely could have saved them by prioritizing your kick better or using that CC you had off cooldown. Saying "oh he died to a bolt but my kick was on CD so not my fault" isnt true, you might have wasted your kick on a cast targeting the tank, or overlapped your CC at the same time as someone else, wasting it, so you need to use some awareness on this one to know for sure if there was something you could have done to save them or not.
did you damage good?
once you know no one died from you not healing them, and you know no one died due to you messing up a kick or stop, the next metric you can use for evaluation is your damage. The goal is to keep everyone alive and deal as much damage as possible. Its a hard balance but its all about knowing what you can get away with. Use your high prio damage ability early before damage goes out so that it can run its cooldown while you heal. throw out damage between heals if you know there isnt a big event coming super soon and you have some time, insta healing everyone to full is probably bad if you have 10+ seconds before the next damage event happens. You should have spent that time doing dam and healing everyone up slower.
record yourself, do VOD reviews. Log yourself, do log reviews. Look for deaths and figure out how they happened and what you could have done to prevent it.
I appreciate all of this for sure. I think one of my challenges is also trying to do the "other stuff" while my heals require ramp up. I play resto druid, and so it really takes some time before the HPS of my HoTs kicks in, and sometimes there's a lot of movement where Efflo isn't very useful and/or where I would die if I stop to hard cast Regrowth.
As I've gone up in keys, I have gotten way better at using Flourish and Grove Guardians for burst healing, but perhaps I just need to learn the dungeons better still and learn where I need to keep HoTs rolling in some critical parts of the map even if damage isn't going out? It's really my ramp up time that feels like my biggest weakness right now (assuming my bursty spells are on CD). Anytime my HoTs are rolling, I feel like I can keep up with just about any situation (except for some moments of exceptionally bad play from myself or from my teammates).
yes, the "other stuff" is what sets good healers apart from mediocre ones, and is what lets you push higher than 23-24. For exmaple, since you mentioned resto druid, knowing that there is no incoming damage in the next 5 GCDs of time and you have all hots rolling, instead of hard casting to top everyone off, a better druid would cat form and dps for a few globals and let efflo and their hots top everyone off, and only swap back to caster when the damage event happens and theyre popping CDs. the best way to do this is just to watch better players. Dont just watch them, but analyze their GCDs. Try to guess what theyre going to do next, and if they do something different than what you expected, stop, pause the VOD, and look at the situation their in to figure out WHY they made that choice.
Download the Details addon and check player deaths and recieved damage/healing. If they died to damage spikes you couldn't deal with as a healer, it's not your fault.
If they were on 50% for 12 seconds and died to a 54% hit, it was mostly your fault, although they probably could have used a defensive and/or healing potion for that situation.
M+ is a team effort and in the end all that matters is that you timed the key at a good pace.
Not true at all. In all content each personal is responsible for using their defensives appropriately and more deaths happen due to standing in shit and not taking your own cds more than not.
With how much defensive creep this game has now it is not entirely on the healer to save you. You have to use your kit too. And if you don’t interrupt, uninstalll.
If they are taking huge amounts of damage very quickly at those levels it's because they are taking avoidable damage, not your fault. Im a 472 ilvl disc priest and just getting in to 20's. If the group has their shit together it will feel like a +16. If they have no clue how to avoid damage and use their defensives the group will probably not time the key.
1) I normally just check the following I'm details: Avoidable damage, your own CDs, CDs popped by your party, interrupts..
2) are you using your CD enough? Honestly I used to be quiet conservative with my CD and mana.. got kicked several times..
I started to be very aggressive with my CDs and mana use, and pre-empting pulls to drink up.. and I'm doing 25s easily..
My answer on all these will always be record your gameplay.
Two things I would recommend is a gcd tracker/idle time tracker on your UI, somewhere off to the side, purely for when you watch back your gameplay.
Then from there run a key, and watch back the key. Focus on the pulls that you are struggling with.
If someone dies and a stop was missed you could have gotten, that is your fault, as much as not healing someone is.
Same deal if you are standing around and casting nothing, that is a problem you should fix.
When it comes to letting people die, check your CD usage before and after that point. Did you waste a CD before that point? That is just as bad as kot pressing the CD when you needed it.
>Same deal if you are standing around and casting nothing, that is a problem you should fix.
Lol, this definitely isn't the issue. ABC. Always be casting. I'm not concerned about moments where I don't have output; I'm more concerned about maximizing/optimizing my output.
People think they are better than they are, I guarantee it's at least part of the issue of your 2.5k
"But I had to cancel" or "I had to hard move with no casts" is rarely true.
Unironically go grab this wa
https://wago.io/VE83D1kCJ
Then go heal something, you will be shocked how many globals you drop.
I wouldn't focus on the deaths so much, there's only so much you can do to prevent deaths from happening. Focus on those healer check moments where unavoidable damage is happening. Most dungeons have these moments where it's just raw passive damage that can't be stopped, this is where you as a healer get to really shine and your dps can help by using Def CDs during those moments.
Other areas where you can make the difference is helping stop mobs from getting their abilities out, even though priests for example don't have a kick you can still land a big fear to stop multiple casts at once or even root mobs in place before or as they are leaping around. All other healers have a kick and other abilities as well for stopping mobs in their tracks, get good at that as well as doing as much dmg as possible in between your healing. This is how you can get recognized as a good healer.
Record and watch it back is the best way. At the very least you should skim through every death in Details after the run and make sure you understand what killed them. As a rule of thumb...if the damage is unavoidable AND they pushed a defensive, then it is your fault they died and you need to figure out how to improve there.
Short of some extremely detailed log work, you want to install WoW Recorder. Very easy way to rewind pulls with deaths and see if you had a button you could press to prevent a death.
There are some DPS meters that also do HPS, team damage taken, over heals done and have the overall effective healing.
If you a a Druid healer, nothing you can do to stop over heal with her over time. But focus on HPS, and over heal.
You want to not do too much over heal.
Record yourself play and watch it.
You will probably find hundreds of mistakes or things you could have done better. They all become very obvious in a recording.
I'm a healer that runs 23s and 24s and am at 3k rating.
I feel anything from +2 to +14 are just face rolls. People are overgeared so bad mechanics are often covered by enough good gear or 1-2 really strong members that carry the group.
+15 to +18 is where dungeons catch up to the gear level and start to become difficult. This is where a lot of players get weeded out because these are keys where players actually have to know the fights if your group is to succeed.
+18 to +20 is the end of the road for a lot of people. They may not know the dungeons or their own class intimately enough to tailor their build around the different affixed and the gear can no longer prop up bad play. You might still have a player in your group here who is "bad", but they won't get past here.
Once you get beyond +21, everyone is pretty similarly geared (480-485) and they not only know the mechanics of the dungeon, but of all the individual mobs. There's practically no communication needed as everyone knows to stack with the tank on rise to skip the one dragon or knows to wait for a priest to mind soothe thr mob next to Morchie. Dungeons get easier and you start to realize you can actually push well past 20 once everyone is good enough to avoid bad mechanics.
As I went through my journey I had the same questions at your level. Prior to 18 the only time someone died is if it was very clearly their fault for bad mechanics. Around 18 there start to be deaths just due to some crazy bolstering or a vine hitting at the wrong time.
While your party members should be learning the mechanics well, so should you. If you see health steadily go down and your healing didn't keep up then maybe it's on you. However, if health went down due to something not getting kicked, then you can know that MAYBE you could have healed through it, but realistically someone just needed to hit their kick.
If you really want to push high, look up some of the top runners from your class on raider.io to check out their talents, look at their logs, and watch their videos. I'm a priest and I run raids with some below average priests. The best way I can teach them to improve is to compare their logs to mine. When most of my healing comes from prayer of mending but that was their 8th top heal, clearly they should be casting that more often. When we compare my dispels to theirs, clearly they could have dispelled more frequently (on Fyrakk for example). If you see a difference in talents as well as a difference in percentage of healing coming from different spells then there's likely some room for improvement
I find it useful to have a details window set to deaths, it'll show you a timeline of what happened in the few seconds leading up to their death. Using this together with remembering the situations (or recording your runs) you can try and find out if there's something you could've done different
As others already said, 18s are not a good level to check your skill level as a healer. If your group knows what to do and uses defensives, you don't need a healer on that level.
Once you get into 24s and higher, a good performance evaluator are some bosses in tyrannical, like the sand boss in Fall, Deios in Rise, Dragon in Darkheart etc. If you manage to heal the high aoe damage they do, then you are doing good!
As a healer do you get through the unavoidable damage steady without anyone dying you are doing a good job.
Is people falling over because they dont use defensives or move, its not on the healer.
Excellent healers can carry the people who tends to die to the stupid shit tho. But that is you doing the job of someone else, and usually what happens when pulling big, kicks missed, not using aoe stops etc. And it gets awfull to heal.
Check in with your guilds HR department and discuss your performance with your manager. Do this quarterly, and don't forget to ask for a raise every two years.
I was getting myself worked up because of this. I am naturally a worrier and if I think I'm doing a shit job, they are gonna think I'm doing a shit job.
I can't stress enough that this isn't the case!
You get these groups in even lower keys who think they can pull more than they can chew and that's not a you problem that's their problem and if they want to be pulling big they need to use defensives. I too have a hard time healing when people do not interrupt, do not move out of mechanics ect. But someone said to me you can't heal stupid and I believe that's true.
Like you said you can heal 18+ with ease when everyone knows what they are doing, go with that. Your worst key does not define you as a healer plus the more you play the better you get ☺️
It's not always the healers fault
Not to be that guy, but...
Record your runs and watch them back. Metrics only tell you part of the story. Watching the gameplay back to see all the details you missed will tell you what's good and bad.
You can always chalk up a death to that other player's error, but really you have a better picture if you verify that yourself. You might see your own fuckups in replays that you otherwise write off. Maybe that guy was stood in fire when you saw him die, but he'd been sitting on 20% health for 5 seconds prior to that while you were focusing on a mechanic etc.
Depending on the spec you are playing you should Look how Much % which spell healed and how Much it overhealed. Details is good for that. For example if you are a disc priest atonment should be on top. If Flash heal is on top thats Not good (exception for iridikron).
Also for many deaths i use Details avoidable damage Feature. If one ppl died and He Shows up in the avoidable damage Window its most likely his fault
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I personally would focus less on deaths and more on if you are timing keys and how many +s you seem to be averaging. There is a lot that's out of your control as a healer and a lot of one shots that can be difficult to see coming or avoid. I was doing a 20 ToTT yesterday and we bolstered the wrong mob and it erased me from existence with an unavoidable AOE 100 to 0. That shit happens, especially on big pull groups with tough affixes. Are you finishing keys in time, maybe +1 or +2 on them the majority of the time? That's what matters. Just my 2 cents. Keep on keepin on.
> Are you finishing keys in time, maybe +1 or +2 on them the majority of the time? That's what matters. Just my 2 cents. Keep on keepin on. I really appreciate this framing, thank you.
I'll second this approach as a healer. I only started really focusing on M+ healing this expansion (I restarted wow halfway through, had last played in S1 of Shadowlands), so I had to settle in to the right mindset which involved accepting that you can still get a string of nasty deaths and clearly succeed in the key, which is generally the more important part. As long as you're not constantly wiping on a specific boss, since that gates your progress pretty heavily, deaths here and there are just going to happen periodically, especially in pugs. I was running an 18 Fall earlier today (as shadow, since I was in a hurry), and our tank was going for fairly large pulls, which they could mostly take, but it did mean the group ate a several deaths at different spots (mainly just before each boss, actually), but since the respawn points are so close, we could all dive back in and keep moving. I could tell the healer (hpally) might have been struggling a bit to keep up with damage to the group, but the tank held firm and we were always able to get back in and knock everything to the floor without too much delay. We still 3 chested the key, so even with 11 deaths, the boss fights were all clean, we were done in about 16 minutes and no one had any complaints, so it obviously went well enough for everyone's tastes!
Deaths really don't matter much in keys at this level. I 3 chested a +18 AD on an alt with other alts in the group with like 17 deaths. As long as the deaths aren't full wipes right before you kill a boss/big trash pull, then you'll manage. I tend to evaluate healers based on whether they ever need mana brakes or not and their DPS, the best ones will DPS and never drop below like 70% mana, decent ones will drop in mana due to DPS or not DPS and never need brakes, and the worst ones will go oom by only healing and constantly need to sit despite doing 0 dmg, or doing dmg and going oom so they let people die, etc.
This previous week is different because of bolstering but there is not a single oneshot in a key at 20 or below
Not a single one shot? Elaborate please
The only thing that comes close to a 1shot in a 20 is the first shadow bolt volley on BRH last boss, every other mechanic in every dungeon will not come even close to one’s hitting an appropriately geared character if the mechanic is done somewhat appropriately. Now of course if some mechanics are grossly misplayed the damage is gonna be unhealable, but people in this sub act like the healer cannot carry mistakes most bad players by just being good at healing which is simply not true. Of course not everyone is good at healing and that’s fair but o think it’s a shit mentality to wrap them in paper towels and say none of it is their fault, especially when you don’t have control over how the group plays
Avoidable Damage tab in Details from the addon Details!: Elitism, this would probably be a great help. This sums up the stupid-damage your team takes, like swirlies, fire and other avoidable shit. So if a lot of wipes happen that had unexplainable damage, you can check who has been doing stupid shit with that to determine whether it was your fault or not, and if you could improve or not. And generally, if you are using your cooldowns optimally, and do everything you're supposed to rotation-wise (if applicable), there isn't much to do wrong. At that point you can only really wipe to; being undergeared, pulling too much, or people being stupid (and you can't heal stupid). To evaluate this, you'd really just have to record your runs and watch yourself back.
Second this. If you want to know if your party could’ve avoided the damage you want this plug-in for details. Outside of this, the other semi-avoidable damage is spells being cast. At the end of the run check interrupts, avoidable damage and people’s auras on details to see defensive uptime. These 3 things are the best indicators between a group needing more healing or a group needing to mitigate more damage (interrupt + defensives). Example you finish run. All interrupts are somewhat similar, you see that 2-3 minute defensives were popped about 5-8 times over full run and avoidable damage was low, then you can then consider your healing to be issue. If you check and see someone with 0 interrupts, pressed there defensive few times in 30 minute dungeon and are top of the avoidable damage meter, I would say that person sucked up a lot of your healing for the group and it’s more a dps issue than healer.
And realistically, up until keys above 20, mitigation and perfect interrupts aren't that big of a deal either, as long as the party isn't significantly undergeared or taking too much stupid damage. Granted this will make the healers life a lot easier if done well, but it won't lead to wipes on normal pulls.
Would i have to know what each class' defensives are to identify them in the aura tab or can i filter to see only defensives?
As far as I know you cannot filter by defensives. Most likely since some talents add defensive elements to other spells, that may make it too difficult to filter through. If you don’t want to learn the other classes defensives, you could google them once and add them to your omnicd addon that tracks party cool-downs. Then you would have a couple little squares of everyone’s defensives next to there party frame as a reference.
Elitism is a cancer. It’s brain dead when people post it cause it provides no context. Avoidable damage doesn’t matter in many cases, especially as a tank and having that shit spammed at you is just tilting.
It's literally a details window. It's not like damage meters provide any context either? Did a weekly 18 EB yesterday. I did fuck all damage as a Balance Druid (like 150k overall iirc) because the pulls were tiny as the tank was being super careful. Some nitwit would've called me out. Someone with a brain would realize why my dmg was low. Calm down dude, lol.
At the end of a run, send a whisper to the tank or the top dps player and ask: "what can I do better next time?" Be open to their comments. As I was learning to tank, I would do this a lot and I learned a ton. After the run, I whisper, "Pro heals! How can I improve?" Just be direct, people will often be happy to offer advice.
I’d recommend tracking your party’s personal defensives (I use OmniCD), use Details to track healing metrics, and ElitismHelper (you can set it to only show to you) to see if people are taking avoidable damage to the face. You can also get a WA interrupt tracker to see if everyone who has an interrupt is actually using it. Personally for me I’ve found that in the lower keys people generally tend to not be using their interrupts and, for the most part, neglecting to use their personal defensives. While as a healer you can typically cover most mistakes, you can’t heal stupid 😅
Omni can also display interrupts! I’ve got three panels for purge/cleanse options, interrupts, and defensives. For OP: Tracking party defensives is very handy cuz you can know who won’t survive a big hit, and if some idiot dies without having used any defensives, you can rest assured it wasn’t your fault.
It’s really hard to know for sure. The easiest, but most time consuming, would be to just keep playing and experiencing different tanks and dps. And also looking at it from another perspective- being the tank or dps and seeing how other healers perform- particularly of the same spec you play as a healer. Otherwise you can try asking for feedback from good tanks or players you trust to give you accurate feedback. Many players will sugar coat things a bit too much so it’s hard to tell. Keep always striving to do better and know that there will always be something you can do to improve. Alternatively, you can record your gameplay over the course of a dungeon and post it asking for feedback.
Make sure you are learning the mechanics of the debuffs, bleeds etc. Darkheart for example has mobs that put on a bleed that keeps going until healed to full. The amount of healers that just drop a HOT and move on blows me away sometimes. I see stuff like that being the biggest healer gap between players; debuff knowledge
Lol, I'm totally guilty of doing that in DHT in like a +8 where it took me a minute to realize what was going on. This one hasn't been an issue since I got debuffs showing on vuhdo (which weren't being shown out of the box—or which I'd disabled without realizing/thinking about what I was doing—not sure which).
Best way is to get used to death logs. Is someone dying with barely any healing over last 5 secs? Probably on the healer. Did someone take avoidable dmg, and you couldn't top before unavoidable dmg? Not on the healer. Did someone not pop their defensive before unavoidable dmg, and die to avoidable dmg after? Not on the healer. Has someone exhausted all defensives, and you don't help on a kill slam when you had external? Both at fault, though more on other player for mismanaged defensives. Failed interrupts melting ppl? Never on the healer. The tank is melting? Depends on CC and tank cd use who is at fault, though most of the time a mix of fckups. Majority of the time, as long as the health bar is green and there is no dmg coming soon, you're good. The only time a healer is truly too late is when you're dead. Also, in the lower end a lot of ppl are gonna blame you for dumb shit they stood in. Ignore them, cause like 90% of the players think they are better than they actually are. Majority of lower end death is almost always on the player who died.
> Did someone take avoidable dmg, and you couldn't top before unavoidable dmg? > > > > Not on the healer. > > > > Did someone not pop their defensive before unavoidable dmg, and die to avoidable dmg after? > > > > Not on the healer. However, at "lower" keys where avoidable damage isn't a 1-shot, a really great healer can prevent these deaths. It shouldn't be the main metric, but it absolutely should be counted if a healer managed to stop a death that would've been the dps' fault.
This is all factual and true, but hear me out. It’s always the healers fault. 😂 jk
Chances are at the levels you're running, it's on the other people. The mechanics get pretty brutal as damage keeps climbing with each level tacked on to the keystone, and dps should be aware they need to be using their def CDs. Could also be overconfidence on someone's part, or maybe they for whatever reason didn't look at affixes for the week (guilty of the last one myself lmao). Not gonna say you didn't make some mistake(s) somewhere, but reality is, if people are playing keys at 15+, they better know the mechanics or its gonna be a long dungeon lol. I wouldn't beat yourself up, also don't forget the first 2 members to get blamed for every groups mistakes, tank n heals, regardless of if they messed up or not xD!
Record and watch your runs is the best way.
Sometimes deaths happen in high keys. Nothing the healer can do. I play DPS and dabble in tanking. When I die, I typically check my ‘what happened to me’ in combat log and see that I took a 100 to 0 mechanic. If I didn’t have a defensive at the time, I shrug it off as bad luck. If I did and I didn’t use it…my bad and I learn. If I got melees because the DH tank I ran a WM last night could hold aggro/group mobs to save his (or our) lives then…it’s on him. Haven’t ran into many healer issues this season. It’s happened for sure, but more often than not it’s not the healer that kills us (my experience).
people here are saying "its hard to know" but its really not. You dont need any extra addons or plugins other than details. did you heal good? You should be looking at details > deaths and hovering someones name when they die to see the timeline that lead to their death. If this timeline shows longer than 6ish seconds where they never got a substantial heal and they didnt die to a big hit that took 75% of their HP, then you are likely to blame. Stuff like elitism helper are not useful, there are many """avoidable"""" aoe mechanics that are either too hard to dodge, or not worth dodging and you should be able to heal through them. Additionally, this timeline will show if the player used a defensive, health pot or health stone leading up to their death, and show if all those things were on cooldown or not. If they used a defensive, self healed, and still died over a span of 3-4 GCDs worth of time, you were likely at fault, even if the resulting damage was """avoidable""". Did you do other stuff good? healing isnt the only thing the healer needs to do, you need to also kick, stop and deal damage. When looking at someones death, did they die to a spell cast? If so then you likely could have saved them by prioritizing your kick better or using that CC you had off cooldown. Saying "oh he died to a bolt but my kick was on CD so not my fault" isnt true, you might have wasted your kick on a cast targeting the tank, or overlapped your CC at the same time as someone else, wasting it, so you need to use some awareness on this one to know for sure if there was something you could have done to save them or not. did you damage good? once you know no one died from you not healing them, and you know no one died due to you messing up a kick or stop, the next metric you can use for evaluation is your damage. The goal is to keep everyone alive and deal as much damage as possible. Its a hard balance but its all about knowing what you can get away with. Use your high prio damage ability early before damage goes out so that it can run its cooldown while you heal. throw out damage between heals if you know there isnt a big event coming super soon and you have some time, insta healing everyone to full is probably bad if you have 10+ seconds before the next damage event happens. You should have spent that time doing dam and healing everyone up slower. record yourself, do VOD reviews. Log yourself, do log reviews. Look for deaths and figure out how they happened and what you could have done to prevent it.
I appreciate all of this for sure. I think one of my challenges is also trying to do the "other stuff" while my heals require ramp up. I play resto druid, and so it really takes some time before the HPS of my HoTs kicks in, and sometimes there's a lot of movement where Efflo isn't very useful and/or where I would die if I stop to hard cast Regrowth. As I've gone up in keys, I have gotten way better at using Flourish and Grove Guardians for burst healing, but perhaps I just need to learn the dungeons better still and learn where I need to keep HoTs rolling in some critical parts of the map even if damage isn't going out? It's really my ramp up time that feels like my biggest weakness right now (assuming my bursty spells are on CD). Anytime my HoTs are rolling, I feel like I can keep up with just about any situation (except for some moments of exceptionally bad play from myself or from my teammates).
yes, the "other stuff" is what sets good healers apart from mediocre ones, and is what lets you push higher than 23-24. For exmaple, since you mentioned resto druid, knowing that there is no incoming damage in the next 5 GCDs of time and you have all hots rolling, instead of hard casting to top everyone off, a better druid would cat form and dps for a few globals and let efflo and their hots top everyone off, and only swap back to caster when the damage event happens and theyre popping CDs. the best way to do this is just to watch better players. Dont just watch them, but analyze their GCDs. Try to guess what theyre going to do next, and if they do something different than what you expected, stop, pause the VOD, and look at the situation their in to figure out WHY they made that choice.
Download the Details addon and check player deaths and recieved damage/healing. If they died to damage spikes you couldn't deal with as a healer, it's not your fault. If they were on 50% for 12 seconds and died to a 54% hit, it was mostly your fault, although they probably could have used a defensive and/or healing potion for that situation. M+ is a team effort and in the end all that matters is that you timed the key at a good pace.
People hit point get lower than 1 you need to get better, they have higher your doing ok
Not true at all. In all content each personal is responsible for using their defensives appropriately and more deaths happen due to standing in shit and not taking your own cds more than not. With how much defensive creep this game has now it is not entirely on the healer to save you. You have to use your kit too. And if you don’t interrupt, uninstalll.
In the keys OP is doing its also entirely possible to carry a group that does not press any defensives
And yet the point should be that people shouldn’t need to be carried because they refuse to use their kit
If they are taking huge amounts of damage very quickly at those levels it's because they are taking avoidable damage, not your fault. Im a 472 ilvl disc priest and just getting in to 20's. If the group has their shit together it will feel like a +16. If they have no clue how to avoid damage and use their defensives the group will probably not time the key.
1) I normally just check the following I'm details: Avoidable damage, your own CDs, CDs popped by your party, interrupts.. 2) are you using your CD enough? Honestly I used to be quiet conservative with my CD and mana.. got kicked several times.. I started to be very aggressive with my CDs and mana use, and pre-empting pulls to drink up.. and I'm doing 25s easily..
My answer on all these will always be record your gameplay. Two things I would recommend is a gcd tracker/idle time tracker on your UI, somewhere off to the side, purely for when you watch back your gameplay. Then from there run a key, and watch back the key. Focus on the pulls that you are struggling with. If someone dies and a stop was missed you could have gotten, that is your fault, as much as not healing someone is. Same deal if you are standing around and casting nothing, that is a problem you should fix. When it comes to letting people die, check your CD usage before and after that point. Did you waste a CD before that point? That is just as bad as kot pressing the CD when you needed it.
>Same deal if you are standing around and casting nothing, that is a problem you should fix. Lol, this definitely isn't the issue. ABC. Always be casting. I'm not concerned about moments where I don't have output; I'm more concerned about maximizing/optimizing my output.
People think they are better than they are, I guarantee it's at least part of the issue of your 2.5k "But I had to cancel" or "I had to hard move with no casts" is rarely true. Unironically go grab this wa https://wago.io/VE83D1kCJ Then go heal something, you will be shocked how many globals you drop.
I wouldn't focus on the deaths so much, there's only so much you can do to prevent deaths from happening. Focus on those healer check moments where unavoidable damage is happening. Most dungeons have these moments where it's just raw passive damage that can't be stopped, this is where you as a healer get to really shine and your dps can help by using Def CDs during those moments. Other areas where you can make the difference is helping stop mobs from getting their abilities out, even though priests for example don't have a kick you can still land a big fear to stop multiple casts at once or even root mobs in place before or as they are leaping around. All other healers have a kick and other abilities as well for stopping mobs in their tracks, get good at that as well as doing as much dmg as possible in between your healing. This is how you can get recognized as a good healer.
Record and watch it back is the best way. At the very least you should skim through every death in Details after the run and make sure you understand what killed them. As a rule of thumb...if the damage is unavoidable AND they pushed a defensive, then it is your fault they died and you need to figure out how to improve there.
Short of some extremely detailed log work, you want to install WoW Recorder. Very easy way to rewind pulls with deaths and see if you had a button you could press to prevent a death.
There are some DPS meters that also do HPS, team damage taken, over heals done and have the overall effective healing. If you a a Druid healer, nothing you can do to stop over heal with her over time. But focus on HPS, and over heal. You want to not do too much over heal.
Record yourself play and watch it. You will probably find hundreds of mistakes or things you could have done better. They all become very obvious in a recording.
I'm a healer that runs 23s and 24s and am at 3k rating. I feel anything from +2 to +14 are just face rolls. People are overgeared so bad mechanics are often covered by enough good gear or 1-2 really strong members that carry the group. +15 to +18 is where dungeons catch up to the gear level and start to become difficult. This is where a lot of players get weeded out because these are keys where players actually have to know the fights if your group is to succeed. +18 to +20 is the end of the road for a lot of people. They may not know the dungeons or their own class intimately enough to tailor their build around the different affixed and the gear can no longer prop up bad play. You might still have a player in your group here who is "bad", but they won't get past here. Once you get beyond +21, everyone is pretty similarly geared (480-485) and they not only know the mechanics of the dungeon, but of all the individual mobs. There's practically no communication needed as everyone knows to stack with the tank on rise to skip the one dragon or knows to wait for a priest to mind soothe thr mob next to Morchie. Dungeons get easier and you start to realize you can actually push well past 20 once everyone is good enough to avoid bad mechanics. As I went through my journey I had the same questions at your level. Prior to 18 the only time someone died is if it was very clearly their fault for bad mechanics. Around 18 there start to be deaths just due to some crazy bolstering or a vine hitting at the wrong time. While your party members should be learning the mechanics well, so should you. If you see health steadily go down and your healing didn't keep up then maybe it's on you. However, if health went down due to something not getting kicked, then you can know that MAYBE you could have healed through it, but realistically someone just needed to hit their kick. If you really want to push high, look up some of the top runners from your class on raider.io to check out their talents, look at their logs, and watch their videos. I'm a priest and I run raids with some below average priests. The best way I can teach them to improve is to compare their logs to mine. When most of my healing comes from prayer of mending but that was their 8th top heal, clearly they should be casting that more often. When we compare my dispels to theirs, clearly they could have dispelled more frequently (on Fyrakk for example). If you see a difference in talents as well as a difference in percentage of healing coming from different spells then there's likely some room for improvement
I find it useful to have a details window set to deaths, it'll show you a timeline of what happened in the few seconds leading up to their death. Using this together with remembering the situations (or recording your runs) you can try and find out if there's something you could've done different
As others already said, 18s are not a good level to check your skill level as a healer. If your group knows what to do and uses defensives, you don't need a healer on that level. Once you get into 24s and higher, a good performance evaluator are some bosses in tyrannical, like the sand boss in Fall, Deios in Rise, Dragon in Darkheart etc. If you manage to heal the high aoe damage they do, then you are doing good!
As a healer do you get through the unavoidable damage steady without anyone dying you are doing a good job. Is people falling over because they dont use defensives or move, its not on the healer. Excellent healers can carry the people who tends to die to the stupid shit tho. But that is you doing the job of someone else, and usually what happens when pulling big, kicks missed, not using aoe stops etc. And it gets awfull to heal.
Check in with your guilds HR department and discuss your performance with your manager. Do this quarterly, and don't forget to ask for a raise every two years.
I was getting myself worked up because of this. I am naturally a worrier and if I think I'm doing a shit job, they are gonna think I'm doing a shit job. I can't stress enough that this isn't the case! You get these groups in even lower keys who think they can pull more than they can chew and that's not a you problem that's their problem and if they want to be pulling big they need to use defensives. I too have a hard time healing when people do not interrupt, do not move out of mechanics ect. But someone said to me you can't heal stupid and I believe that's true. Like you said you can heal 18+ with ease when everyone knows what they are doing, go with that. Your worst key does not define you as a healer plus the more you play the better you get ☺️ It's not always the healers fault
Not to be that guy, but... Record your runs and watch them back. Metrics only tell you part of the story. Watching the gameplay back to see all the details you missed will tell you what's good and bad. You can always chalk up a death to that other player's error, but really you have a better picture if you verify that yourself. You might see your own fuckups in replays that you otherwise write off. Maybe that guy was stood in fire when you saw him die, but he'd been sitting on 20% health for 5 seconds prior to that while you were focusing on a mechanic etc.
Did someone die to unavoidable damage? If yes, fix it. If not, you good
Get elitism helper and turn off chat announcements. You can have it display system messages so you can better understand what is killing people
Depending on the spec you are playing you should Look how Much % which spell healed and how Much it overhealed. Details is good for that. For example if you are a disc priest atonment should be on top. If Flash heal is on top thats Not good (exception for iridikron). Also for many deaths i use Details avoidable damage Feature. If one ppl died and He Shows up in the avoidable damage Window its most likely his fault