After leveling my paladin to level 82 with my girlfriend's mage, we decided to queue for some random dungeons. We managed to get Vortex Pinnacle four times, in a row, but it definitely gave me an idea of what to expect for healing in cataclysm in this expansion.
First off, just about every tank had 80 thousand health points or more, and everyone else has about 45k health points. So right away the health pools are much larger. With those larger health pools comes larger amounts of damage to be dealt. I was constantly casting something, and often times I was choosing between the cheap heal and the big heal. If someone was below half I would cast the big heal, and if not I went with the cheap heal.
Overall my overhealing was almost non existent, and I did find running out of mana an issue at all. I am looking forward to trying out more of the dungeons, and eventually the 85 dungeons and heroics. It seems like healing in this expansion will be more about making the right decisions, where WotLK was more about having one choice and casting it as fast as possible.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
How I use the Healing Meter
For a while now I have been using Recount as my damage/healing meter addon thingy. When I used to raid, I would use the healing meter to tell me how much healing I did and compared that to the other healers in our raid. When we began working on and finally killing the Lich King, I used it to also see how much overhealing I was doing compared to the other healers. And since then I have stuck with Recount to show my how much overhealing I do in the heroic 5 mans that I run.
Now you might ask why would I care about overhealing, those heroics are easy. You're right, they are very easy, and that is exactly why I am looking at what percentage of my spells are overhealing. I know that the amount of overhealing I do does't really matter because the instances are easy and I am no where near running out of mana. But the reason that I am doing this is to try to hone my skills. I need something to keep the trivial instances from feeling trivial.
Now how do I do this? Well, I start by just healing. I don't avoid overheals, and I won't not heal someone just because I think it will overheal. I try to make good decisions when choosing my heals. At the end of an instance if I made good enough decisions throughout then my overhealing should be relatively low. For me I measure relatively low as being around 20 and 30% overheal.
With that said, there is a big difference between my priest having 30% overheal and my paladin having 30% overheal, and to tell what the difference is Recount comes in handy. On my paladin, for example, I have three main heals that are going to overheal almost all the time. Protector of the Innocent, Beacon of Light, and Enlightened Judgment. All of these are mana free heals (I have the glyph of Beacon of Light so it is free), and Enlightened Judgments is actually giving me mana because I Judge with Seal of Insight and gain about 400 net mana. Knowing that these three abilities account for more than 60% of my total overhealing lets me know that when the meter says that I did 50% overhealing, I actually only had about 20% overhealing (just throwing numbers out there). Which tells me that I made good decisions the majority of the time.
As far as my priest is concerned, he does not have as many free heals that are going to overheal. My mastery often overheals, and my Althor's Abacus are really the only two sources of free and often overhealing spells. so when the meter says that I did 50% overhealing, I know that I was not making good decisions picking spells.
Now I know that in a five man I do not have to worry about other healers. Making decisions is very easy because I do not have to account for incoming heals, but I figure that if I am able to get more used to making good decisions when choosing the right heal in a five man once I am able to factor in other healers I'll be in pretty good shape.
I have essentially gone from never worrying about overhealing, to using it as a gauge of my awesomeness :)
Now you might ask why would I care about overhealing, those heroics are easy. You're right, they are very easy, and that is exactly why I am looking at what percentage of my spells are overhealing. I know that the amount of overhealing I do does't really matter because the instances are easy and I am no where near running out of mana. But the reason that I am doing this is to try to hone my skills. I need something to keep the trivial instances from feeling trivial.
Now how do I do this? Well, I start by just healing. I don't avoid overheals, and I won't not heal someone just because I think it will overheal. I try to make good decisions when choosing my heals. At the end of an instance if I made good enough decisions throughout then my overhealing should be relatively low. For me I measure relatively low as being around 20 and 30% overheal.
With that said, there is a big difference between my priest having 30% overheal and my paladin having 30% overheal, and to tell what the difference is Recount comes in handy. On my paladin, for example, I have three main heals that are going to overheal almost all the time. Protector of the Innocent, Beacon of Light, and Enlightened Judgment. All of these are mana free heals (I have the glyph of Beacon of Light so it is free), and Enlightened Judgments is actually giving me mana because I Judge with Seal of Insight and gain about 400 net mana. Knowing that these three abilities account for more than 60% of my total overhealing lets me know that when the meter says that I did 50% overhealing, I actually only had about 20% overhealing (just throwing numbers out there). Which tells me that I made good decisions the majority of the time.
As far as my priest is concerned, he does not have as many free heals that are going to overheal. My mastery often overheals, and my Althor's Abacus are really the only two sources of free and often overhealing spells. so when the meter says that I did 50% overhealing, I know that I was not making good decisions picking spells.
Now I know that in a five man I do not have to worry about other healers. Making decisions is very easy because I do not have to account for incoming heals, but I figure that if I am able to get more used to making good decisions when choosing the right heal in a five man once I am able to factor in other healers I'll be in pretty good shape.
I have essentially gone from never worrying about overhealing, to using it as a gauge of my awesomeness :)
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