Raiding - Healing Leads

[enveri]

My guild has gone through some raiding shuffling, separating into multiple 10 man teams. I have been asked to be healing lead for my team

Comments

[caixarelato]

Keep an eye on Healing Done and Overhealing - if one or the other is unusually low or unusually high compared across all the healers, need to have a chat with the healer(s) in question and see how they heal, if they're using the right spells for the right situations, etc. (obviously, low overhealing is a good thing, blanket generalization statement is whee XD).

Also, on a fight where you may be cleansing/decursing a lot, see to it that it's not ONE person doing it all unless that's that one person's job.

Oh. And make sure your healers run DBM, or some other addon with timers that warns you when Big Bad Attacks of Doom are about to come - it'll help them be aware of when spike damage, or raid-wide damage, is about to hit.

[troll_huntress]

Overhealing is only ever something I'll look at if we're wiping because healers are going OOM before the boss is dead, and in that situation I'm also going to be looking at the performance of the DPS.

DBM is personal preference, IMO. There are good warnings for literally every high-damage ability in current content, and I would only say a healer needs DBM or equivalent if they feel that they do.

[caixarelato]

Well, I know my healers (and me, when I do heal) like DBM because of the timers. They can see exactly when something is coming up, and use their timers to keep track of when CDs will be most useful and when to pop them.

I do like how Blizz has put in raid-emote warnings, however.

[siadea]

Make sure that you have an addon that tracks damage absorbed, not just healing done, overhealing, etc. Disc priest heals are best measured by the damage absorbed, not the healing done! I had to teach a raid leader that once, and it was not pretty.

[enveri]

Ah, good point. I don't put -too- much stack in meters; I know a couple of healers that overheal like crazy and run oom mid fight just to make themselves look better on the meters.

And I myself never perform -great- on meters, but my targets don't die unless the excrement majorly hits the fan and I very very rarely end fights oom. It's a good thing to keep an eye on though!

(This is all very new to me and I've already explained to part of the healing team that I'm fumbling in the dark, and that they should understand that when I sit down to talk to them, it's as much me learning their style and class as it is looking for ways to improve)

[yisca]

Meters, pff. I'd rather have my raid alive.

I guess you don't need that much "leading" for a 10 men group, do you? Just the 3 of you can make a separate healer chat or something to discuss what you're going to take care of. Some people/classes are better/have preference at/for tankhealing, others raid. Having some sort of cooldown rotation might be nice too. I don't know, I'm going through my list of stuff to do in my head, but everytime I keep thinking: "nah, probably not needed in 10". All I keep thinking is: just keep your communication open so you get feedback and can adapt tactics.

I guess most importantly is reading up on the fight up front and knowing the healing related highlights, which big bad attack you need to pop cooldowns for or ramp up heals for.

/crawls back to her 25 men raid.

Perhaps I should leave it to the 10-manners :)

[enveri]

You'd -think- a 10 man doesn't need a healing lead, and the guild I raided with in wrath, we really didn't. But the two healers I ran with in Wrath were excellent, communicated well, and we'd all healed together enough that things were second nature. Our 10 man team might be like that in a few months, but right now there are disparate personalities, some think they're better healers than they really are, and our raid leader thought having one person organizing things would make things a little better

[icanbeurbestbet]

http://totemforest.com/2011/05/20/the-healing-leads-cheat-sheet/

She does 25s but I sent this to my raid leader (we do 10s) and he liked it.

[pinkelephant42]

This is awesome. :D

When healing, I look for other healer's strengths and weaknesses as players. I know what the classes should be capable of, but there's people behind the toons and using those people's strengths to the raid's advantage can be more important sometimes than sticking to what a class should be good at. I know a druid who, for five-plus years, has been an excellent tank healer and a disc priest who I can always trust on raid because of his calm personality and precise style of healing.

[enveri]

That's part of my problem. Except for 1 person (who I raided with in another role; they didn't heal), my entire healing team is unknowns. I want to be an effective lead without tromping on them and making them feel criticized or judged, because in my experience.. anxiety leads to lower effectiveness, not higher.

[enveri]

oh FANTASTIC! from a shaman's point of view, even!

Thank you so much! :D

[troll_huntress]

There's a lot of cross-assignment healing in 10s, so be aware of that. We 3-heal everything except Cho'gall, and basically we have our anchors* assigned to a specific tank and the healer whose anchor that is is principally responsible for that tank, but the raid healer (and the other tank healer!) are expected to help out on that tank if possible, and the tank healers are expected to help with the raid. It's just a question of how much healing everyone does on any specific target

[troll_huntress]

*Oh right, "anchors". These are things like eartshield, lifebloom, and beacon of light that a healer places on a certain target and generally maintains it there throughout the encounter.

[enveri]

Thank you! I kinda feel like I've been tossed in the deep end, but at the same time... I think this sort of challenge will be what gets me through the wipes. :D

That's an excellent suggestion on Recount, I currently use Skada; I'll have to poke through that and see if it has something similar, and figure out how to most effectively (and quickly) view the information.