"Healers, what happened?" We've all said or heard those words before, either to ourselves, or actually to our healers. It's a common question when something goes wrong. One by one, little by little, your raiders are dropping. It just seems like your healers can't keep up. You have the proper amount of healers, they are all properly geared, specced, and enchanted. They are all skilled players. Your just at a loss of what to do. How DO you improve your guilds healing? Well, fear not citizens, for I have 7 sure fire ways to improve your guilds healing.
1) Reduce cross healing. What is cross healing you say? Well, cross healing happens when two people are healing the same targets at the same time. This is the way it goes down. Raider A and raider B take damage. Two healers heal raider A. Raider B dies. This happens with tanks, groups, and random raid members. Raider A gets twice as many heals as he needs, and raider B gets none. Happens all the time. So, how do you eliminate this? With better healing assignments. And people actually sticking to them. When setting up healing assignments you need to ensure that everyone in the raid has someone that is responsible for their health. As in, if raider B dies, there is a specific person that was responsible for healing them. If there is a lot of aoe damage, make sure your healers are assigned specific parts of the raid. A good healer will know when to heal off of their assignment, but for the most part healers should stick with their assignments. Too much cross healing is inefficient and can lead to player deaths and wipes.
2) Reduce overhealing. This goes hand in hand with reducing your cross healing. Whenever you have a lot of cross healing going on, you also have a lot of overhealing. When both of these are happening, bad things happen. Not only is a ton of mana being wasted, but people are also dying. This can fool you into thinking that you need more healers. In reality however, you don't need more healers. The best way to reduce overhealing is to not take too many healers. Aside from this however, there are a few good things to do.
Firstly, your healers need to know and understand the mechanics of the fight. Does this raider need healing now? Or later? Does this raider need healed up quickly? Or can he be healed up more slowly? Healing is an art, and you're healers need to know the rhythm of the damage going out. When to use big heals, and when more efficient spells would work just as well.
Secondly, your healers need to not be meter whores. Healing numbers lie. While they do have some use, they don't tell you who your best healer is. They just told you who did the most healing. Not who did the best healing. An example, a random raid member takes 20k damage, and is in no danger of dying or taking more damage for a while. The healer assigned to heal him, throws a hot on him that will fully heal the damage. A healer not assigned to him, throws a flash heal on the player, fulling healing him. Which player did more healing? Which healer is the better healer? While, we can't rightly say who is better based on this example, we can see that the flash healer sniped the hot, and did more healing. To someone who just looks at healing numbers, it will seem like the flash healer is better. And the hot healer, just wasted the mana from his hot that all went to overhealing.
Thirdly, setup better healing assignments, and enforce them. Most healers don't like to waste their own mana. They're not going to throw out a 30k heal, when a 6k is all that is necessary on their targets. But they very well may throw out a 30k heal on someone who only needs a 6k heal on someone elses. A raider with a hot on them, gets a 30k heal from them, when the hot would have just left a 6k deficit.
And lastly, let hots and passive heals do their jobs. If you raid with druids and holy priests, you need to know who has hots on them. And, if the hots will be sufficient, let them tick. Heal someone else. Regen some mana. Throw out some dps. Run in circles. Take a Noggenfogger's Elixir. Get a drink. Make some nachos. Just do something besides healing the person that already has sufficient heals spent on them. Also, let the passive heals do their jobs. If the aoe damage part is over, and it's not coming again for a while, let some of these heals do the work. At this point, you don't have to worry about getting all the green bars absolutely full. They just need to be full enough that the passive heals will finish them off. If the group is at 90% health, with a healing rain and healing stream totem down, and no more damage is eminent, just let these things do their jobs. This will both save you mana, and reduce overhealing. Things like this could, in fact, save you a ton of mana. So much so, that you can drop some spirit for more throughput stats, like haste, crit, and mastery.
3) Use cooldowns for large spikes of damage. If there is a lot of damage, use a cooldown rotation. Damage not taken is just as good as damage healed. Maybe not on the meters, but in reality it is. In fact, it's even better. Damage not taken is damage that doesn't need to be healed. Which not only increases your chances of survival, but also increases your healers effective mana. Which means your healers will spend less mana, thus having more to spend. Which means your healers will be able to sacrifice some regen for more healing throughput. If there is a large burst of damage coming, be it single target, or aoe, line up a cooldown for it if at all possible.
4) Stay out of the fire. Pretty simple really, just avoid as much avoidable damage as possible. Depending on the skill level of your group, this may be easier said than done. But that does not mean that every effort should not be made to do it. Just like the previous point, damage not taken is just like damage healed. Avoiding as much of the avoidable damage as you can, will help to increase your healers throughput during the portions of unavoidable damage. A good dps not only does high dps, but also has low damage taken. One of the best ways you can improve your guilds healing, is to simply not require so much damned healing in the first place. It ain't rocket surgery.
5) Do good dps. I've always said this, and I'll say it again now. The best mana regen is good dps. Just like the previous point, killing the boss more quickly will reduce the amount of healing needed, and is one of the best ways to improve your guilds healing. Firstly, it reduces the total amount of mana being spent by your healers. Which, once again, means they can sacrifice some regen for more throughput. Secondly, it reduces the number of opportunities for your raiders to make mistakes. And lastly, it's just plain faster, giving you more time to do something else.
6) Organize your raid grouping, positioning, and strategy to maximize your healers strengths. For example, raiders you assign a priest to heal, should all be in the same group. Also, they should all be on the same side of the room. As in, as best as possible, within a 40 yard radius of one another. Prayer of healing is group wide. And, it's far better if it hits all the people in the group. So, if the priest is assigned to heal groups 3 and 4, and the raid needs to be spread out, then group 3 needs to spread out in one place, and group 4 in another place, but all within range of aoe heals. Shaman are at their best when people are clumped up. Druids are the most mobile, and it doesn't hurt them as much if people are clumped or spread. But if you assign a druid to certain groups, just like the priests (or shaman for that matter) you need to ensure that all of their healing targets are in the same general area as much as possible.
7) And lastly, communicate. Communicate with your healers. If the tank is going to unexpectedly run off into bfe, then he needs to make sure his healer knows. During a hectic fight, I'm doing good to know where the boss is. I know what's going on in my general area, and I know who's dying, who has what debuff, but I can't be responsible for knowing the position of everyone in the raid. There's a lot of crap going on on my screen. A lot of data to intake, analyze, and then deal with. So, help your healers out, and and let them know what's going on. Healers, communicate amongst yourselves. Call out for help if you need it. Call out for help if you're unsure if you need it. If, for some reason you can't heal your assignment, you get behind, or your assignments are just taking more damage than expected, let people know. Get some help. Don't be too proud to say you need some help. Boss has some ability that hits random players? And as luck would have it, they're all YOUR players? Call it out. Best thing about healers is that we tend to be a helpful bunch.
And, there it is. Follow these tips, and you'll be well on your way to more successful raiding. That's it for now. This is Eek, signing off.
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