The impact of overhealing

Plankeye

Plankeye

New Member
First off, what is overhealing? It is any healing that is lost once your target is at full health. For instance your full health target takes 1,000 damage. You flash heal for 1400. You have over healed 400 points of damage.

Is overhealing bad? To a point the answer is no. Many encounters in raids require healers to be proactive with their heals and not reactive. So all healers will have some amount of overhealing. The point it becomes a problem is that overhealing will lower your Heal per Mana and your effective healing numbers. Wasting mana on long boss encounters can become a big issue.

I am going to show an example of a recent Mount Hyjal raid to show the impact of overhealing. Now Mount Hyjal is unique in that the trash and the boss tends to generate a lot of raid damage where the tanks are not the only ones receiving damage. So there tends to be a lot of overhealing across the board with the healers. Most encounters you probably want to aim for under 30% of your healing to be over heals. That means you are typically using the closest healing spell for the damage being done.

First up is the overhealing done:

effectivehealingoverheal.jpg


I have blurred out the names to protect the innocent. What you will notice looking at the numbers is the pally in slot 1 and the priest in slot 5 had a high amount of overhealing compared to the others. Druids will typically be the lowest followed by Priests as HOTs do not tick once a target is at full health. Otherwise both would be a lot higher on Recount. Don't mistake that though. Both classes can still waste mana on HOTS that provide no effective healing. The priest in this case gets off the hook as that is the Shadowpriest overhealing from Vampiric Embrace.

Now lets look at the Healing Done report:

effectivehealingdone.jpg


What is significant is that the Paladin in slot 7 of the healing done is the paladin identified in slot 1 of the overhealing meter. If you look at the numbers, that pally generated 1,606,282 total points of healing. Generating 300,000 points more healing then what I would consider the most effective pally who was in slot 1 on healing and slot 6 on overhealing and generating 1,293,992 total points of healing. You can quickly see that the pally in slot 1 had almost double the effective healing of the pally in slot 7 yet healed 300,000 points less.

Lets analyze one additional thing and wrap up with some suggestions for combatting overhealing.

effectivehealingoverhealspe.jpg


This is the recount breakdown of spells used by the overhealing pally. What I see is a heavy use of Holy Light, most likely max rank, on targets that didn't need it. Some things this pally should look at is making sure Light's grace is always active by using down ranked Holy Lights. The purpose is taking that .5 seconds off the cast time means you have a better chance of getting a max ranked Holy Light off before other healers get their slow cast heals off. I would suggest that this pally cancel more of their heals. I personally look for any opportunity to cancel max rank spells if the target no longer needs the health because someone beat me to it. More use of Flash of Light to limit the impact of overhealing and save the mana and the big heals for the uh oh times.

Hopefully we can get some more ideas from a couple of the other seasoned healers in here on how to combat overhealing and maybe some insight on the challenges the non pally healers face with overhealing.
 
Healing assignments and using a group cast bar. I can't remember what its called, but it shows you if other heals are incoming if you are healing the same target
 
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Sandric, this is an excellent writeup. It is practical and easy to understand. It is logical and shows exactly how someone could make massive improvement to their raiding game.

Man o man I hope the pallys in question make it to the forums to read it. I would consider straight up asking specific people to visit this site (in whispers) as it is very important and benefits 25 ppl.

Thanks for your efforts in helping others learn how to improve. You rock, Sandman!
 
Priests and overhealing

I think the best way to deal with this and to train new healers is to have a online healing camp, maybe

There are a couple of things at issue.

1. Click healing. It does not work in raids, its too slow. If you click the icon of the person needing a heal and then move the mouse all the way to your action bar to click on the required heal, you will be the late person to the heal, generating huge overheal amounts and very little effective healing. My heal bar is set up like this:

1. Flash heal, 2. Binding heal, 3. Down ranked GHeal (based on the needs of the fight) 4. Renew 5. Circle of Healing, 6. Prayer of Mending, 7. Max rank GHeal, 8 Prayer of Healing, 9. Sheild 0. Dispel, - Wand, = Shadow word Pain \ Starshard macro, Backspace: Shadow word death.

I click on the icon of the person needing a heal and press the appropriate button for the I feel is needed. Essentially, I can do it fast enough its all one step. Long before I have clicked the persons icon, I've determined the heal I'm using. I only have to move the mouse as far as the next person needing a heal.

2. Not cancelling un-needed heals. In a proactive healing enviroment (ie a tank on a boss). If the tank does not need the heal, move forward or backward to cancel the heal. You have to be very experienced at doing this and be able to wiegh the risk of cancelling a needed heal and having the tank die versus the risk letting an un-needed heal go through and wasting mana so you don't have the needed mana at the end of a fight. I don't know how to teach people this because of so many random factors such as how many people are assisting you healing the tank and their own skill level, what boss are we talking about, and maybe some bosses do magical versus physical damage.

Basically this dance looks like this:

1. Start casting a heal.
2. Watch tanks health like a hawk.
3. Watch what the tank is doing (are they parrying, blocking, dodging every attack?)
4. Determine right before the heal goes through: is the heal is needed or not?
5. Cancel the heal by moving a step forward or backwards OR let the heal go through.
6. Start casting the next heal right away and restart step 2.

3. Direct heals versus HOTs versus sheild versus group heals. This is hard battle to fight because pallies and shammies don't have HOTs, all have direct heals, Druids, Priests and Shammies have some form of group heals and priests and pallies have different types of sheilds.

And to top all that off, very few people know exactly what other people are going to do. I personally, tend to rely on HOTs on dps to heal them, especially if they take damage that they will not likely take again. But a palladin, without HOTs, never learns to rely on a HOT to do its job. They are quite used to healing damage taken as that is their only option.

Take for example the Bear boss in ZA. In human form, he charges a random ranged person and does a few thousand damage at most to them. The question is, how is that person to be healed?

Assuming experienced players:
Priest : Renew
Druid : Instant HOT
Pally : Ignore them
Shaman : Ignore them
If no HOTter in the group, that person should bandage.

That is the proper way to heal that damage. How does that differ from how you heal that specific damage when you do that boss? Are you a Pally that takes their attention away from the boss to heal them full up or are you a DPSer who doesn't notice there is no HOTter in the group and doesn't bandage? Are you a HOTter that will flash heal them? The attention required by the healers for that person should be minimal as they are not taking any more damage and are not going to be taking any more damage.

This is just the tip of this debates iceburg. What about sheilds? Prayer of Mendings, Lightwell (if available) and blessings of protection, what about group healing?

I've been healing for almots 4 years (I levelled to 60 as shadow), Avesther has more days played at 70 then all my alts combined for total played. The experience I have gained is hard to impart via typed media.
 
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Great post Sandric and Avesther. (Thank you for not embarrassing me on the chart.) :)


On the point of click healing, I use a modified addon (healbot) which puts the healing onto each persons bar so that you can setup your mouse to do the work. left click is flash heal, right click HL. You can also change it up so shift+clicking on a person is a downgraded heal for the rotation and alt+click is for cleanse. It works out pretty handy for me, I'd love to hear about other success stories.
 
I have a question... What if a said priest can chain cast GHeal for 10 min with out running out of mana?

If it wasting mana is said healing can regen said mana?
 
Mordos said:
I have a question... What if a said priest can chain cast GHeal for 10 min with out running out of mana?

If it wasting mana is said healing can regen said mana?
Click to expand...

at the very least, i wouldn't get in the habit of it....kaz'goral is a good example of why saving mana is good!
 
Mordos said:
I have a question... What if a said priest can chain cast GHeal for 10 min with out running out of mana?

If it wasting mana is said healing can regen said mana?
Click to expand...

Your first sentence really isn't a question so I am responding to the second sentence. I would say no it is not wasting mana at that point. The issue I would see is that said healer is locking them self into a 3-4 second cast sequence (depending on talents and spell haste) which does not give them a lot of flexibility as a priest to bust out the HOT, instant cast and group healing abilities.
 
Mordos said:
I have a question... What if a said priest can chain cast GHeal for 10 min with out running out of mana?

If it wasting mana is said healing can regen said mana?
Click to expand...

Good question, I'll assume it rhetorical because there is really no answer other then a platform for more questions.

1. Is the priest #1 in healing done, bottom of the over healing yet the the tank they are assigned to heal always the first to die?

2. Is the priest #1 in overhealing, last on effective healing but healing the same person over and over again?

3. Is the preist assigned to healing the raid, yet all the dps keeps dieing anyway?

4. Is the priest assigned to healing the raid, yet is number one in over healing?

5. Is the priest always dieing from pulling threat?

6. Is the priest always excusing a raid members death with "Man if I only had an extra second, that heal would've landed."

7. Are AoE ers always dieing or having certain spells pushed back into oblivion?

8. Are other healers always complaining about feeling like they are having to do all the work?

9. Is the tank complaining that the incoming heals from the priest are slow and significantly smaller then the incomeing damage?

10. Is the priest always mentioning how they seem to not be able to keep up with the damage?
 
Oh, so I see...

Lets' rephase this all and sum it up.

Learn to play your class


There are forums after forums, after forums that will help you learn the in and out's of the class/spec you play. Read them.

Or maybey the spec you have is not for you... Let's take Goblit:
When affiction her dmg was questionable...but now she is AWESOME, why? her play style fits her new spec. (Hope it was ok using you Gobby, love ya)
 
Personally I Take a look at the meters and see what is happening when the raid is having issues. Main reason is I want to know do I have a person not Healer or over healing too much or missing there assignment. It comes down to play your class look at how you are healing but if the raid survives and we down the boss I am not going to care how much overhealing happened on that boss. I am going to care if we keep wiping and we could have been more efficient in how he healing was done. But personally I believe over healing should be less that 25% and goal of 20%. Paladins can be a little higher because of Crit to heal for mana regen they can get a little bursty on Healing.
 
Something I'd like to see as this is being discussed...

Personal Feedback - Maybe keep it private, but keeping silent seems bad. If someone is failing, they need to know it right away from their class lead (or raid leader) and some tips on how to fix it. I have yet to hear any feedback except generalizations which leads to a sort of schizophrenia (are u talking to me? do i suck? i do suck. gosh, etc). The flip side is the positive approach as well to let people know (class leads?) that they did a great job tonight not in a general "good job everyone. we wiped like 50 times, but seriously good job", but specific to (maybe private) the individuals, good job on your dps tonight, make sure you keep curse of tongues up. good work ,etc.
 
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Mordos said:
Or maybey the spec you have is not for you... Let's take Goblit:
When affiction her dmg was questionable...but now she is AWESOME, why? her play style fits her new spec. (Hope it was ok using you Gobby, love ya)
Click to expand...

I found a similar thing with my hunter. I respec'd to marks only to find out that my damage actually went down. I respec'd back to BM with a few little changes and some new gear and I was usually the 2nd in DPS for the raid.
 
Unlike DPS, healers need to manage mana as over healing leads to wasted mana. The best way to explain this is by example:

DPS, the only way the really can waste mana is to cast a spell that is resisted. They can reduce the chance of resist by increasing +spell hit. They can cap it out and they'll never, in theory, see more then 1% wasted mana.

Healers, waste mana via overhealing. There is no stat in gear that they can stack to reduce this. Once the mana is spent on overhealing, that mana is gone and can not be used for effective healing.

One of the questions in the back of every healers mind should be "how can I improve" and this is one of those ways they can. Keeping your overhealing in check will always ensure you have mana available for effective heals, especially at the end of a fight when a 1% wipe may be based on whether or not you can top everybody up or not.

Some portion of over healing is unavoidable. You heal a target for 5,000 when they only need 4,000 healing, bang you have 20% over healing on the first heal. Or worse yet, you crit heal for 8,000 when the target only need 4,000 and now you have 50% over healing.

One strat that comes to mind to help reduce Overhealing is assigned healing assignments from the get go in an instance. Healer A on Tank A, Healer B on Tank B and Healer C on tank C, all other healers top up who ever is low and help out on tanks if needed. Then specifically assign based on the needs of the bosses.

Another strat for specific people who do overheal alot and generally find themselves at the bottom of effective healing, is to stop click healing. That is, using the mouse pointer to select a heal target and then using the mouse pointer to select a heal. You know who you are and I know who you are as well because when I need a heal, I always get 5 other people healing me and there is always one or two people who are last by about 1.5 seconds. Come have a chat with me in private if you think you are one of those people.

And a third is really practicing stoping a heal. If at the end of a cast, the target you are healing no longer needs the heal (ie...dps is at 90%), stop the heal and move on.

Here is a little video from last nights Kara run that has a stop heal:

1. Notice that I have the tank targeted and in the raid frames, the tanks frame is red indicating the mob has him targeted (the tank has threat).
2. I start healing him with a Greater heal
3. While healing Mordos, I've selected Terascan, his health is low
4. As soon as the Gheal lands on Mordos, I renew Terascan and reselect Mordos. (this means the tank is never outside of my attention for longer then it takes to select somebody else).
5. Why did I only renew Terascan and not fully heal him? Reason: His raid window is not red, he is not tanking, he is not taking damage. Knowledge of the fight suggests also, there is no splash damage. Knowledge of Shadow priests tells me that nearly all a SPriests damage taken is a result of Shadow Word Death, one of their own damage spells, so they can never take that damage more then once every 12 seconds. A renew lasts for 15, I'm happy. I didn't think all this at the moment, I simply knew, thats experience kicking in.

6. You'll notice I keep Gheal spam up on Mordos and keep a renew up on him, until he is topped up and has not taken any damage. You'll note that I do just stand there a moment note casting. Which is two fold, nobody needs to be healed and secondly, if I can get out of the 5 second rule, I'll regen more mana, which I probably don't need anyway but it is good practice. You don't always need to be doing something and even though I'm doing nothing, I'm scanning the raid for something to do.
7. You should also notice that the raid frames keep randomly highlighting, as if a mouse is moving over them. Thats me, monitoring the health of the raid just moving the mouse as I move my eyes so if something odd happens, I'm quick to react but my target never leaves the tank. My attention never leaves that quarter of the screen during a fight and the cast bar is just inside my peripherial vision.
8. You'll notice that I select Terascan again, his life is getting low and I start casting Gheal.
9. Now pay attention, did you see it. I cancelled the heal by moving backwards, then I threw up a new renew. I cancelled the heal about .3 seconds before it landed because I notice my old renew was keeping up. I also knew the fight was near the end, and keeping the renew up was satisfactory to me as the alternative, incase he did another SW:D at the end. Again, that is simply experience kicking in.

Note: Another thing to notice, watch it again because its easy to miss, the first heal on Mordos starts off as a pre-heal. That is, I started healing before the incoming damage hits Mordos. If you watch my selected target window, you can see that he is dodging and Parrying quite a bit but (and again this is experience kicking in) because I choose to select Terascan for the recipient of my next heal, I did allow the heal to land, which in this case was the right decision because Mordos did take damage. Now, it should be noted that if I choose not to select Terascan and keep my attention on Mordos, I would've watched those parries and dodges to the last second and if he had not taken damage, that would've been a cancelled heal, or if he did take damage, I would've let the heal go through. At this time I reckoned the risk of wasting mana and letting an un-needed heal land and not having the mana for the end of the fight was significantly lower then cancelling a needed heal and having a tank die. I think I mentioned this risk assessment earlier, this is it in a practical working model.

If you watch the fight, you'll notice that only 1 heal went through as overheal and that my mana bar is nearly full. Gear helps alot but this is also a result of good mana management and effective, strategic healing. I do use alot of downranked greater heals. I know I'm over geared for this fight and so is the tank but I think it gives a nice 20 second overview of how smooth things can go and what a good goal to strive for looks like.
 
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LOL, that was fun... I was producing so much threat that I could stop tanking 10 sec before the mob died to pull the next one and not loose agro.
 
Some good stuff Ave. I personally use grid to click target and have my secondary button bar bound with heals from keys 1-5. So my mouse stays over Grid (and close to my decursive frames right below it). Here is a screen shot:

GridAndDecursiveSetup.jpg


The green highlighted area is my Grid area with the show mana plugin. The pink highlighted area is my Decursive frame and the little squares only light up when someone needs to be cleansed. I use this as my point and click heal/decurse interface. My button bars are no where near this frame as I use my keyboard to cast heals.

As far as cancelling heals. I mentioned that in my original post, Aves has mentioned it twice in two seperate posts in this thread. Cancelling heals is huge in cutting down over healing and conserving mana. By far one of the harder skills to develop as how often do you cancel channeled spells as a DPSer?

Although the mod no longer works, CTRaidAssist use to have a damage frame you could use. You could even bind a target key. During our MC days I had two keys bound to the least health target and the 2nd least health target. I could then spam FoL all night long with only 2 keys and I was a very effective healer as I would favor the 2nd in damage target because I knew most folks were targetting the primary damage target. But the idea behind it still is applicable today. For those that are not assigned primary heal targets, go after those who are taking secondary damage and heal them.
 
out of curiosity is there any reason not to /stopcasting your spells rather than moving?

as far as dps goes...macros - make use of the [nochanneling] or whatever it is macro and again, revert to /stopcasting to automatically cease at key times. at the very least this should be prepended to decurse, counterspell and probably fireball (so that you'll stop a scorch in progress once 5 have gone up)
 
This is another question that deals with healing...as a new healer I may have a lot in the future, so bear with me please :)


What is the best way to manage threat while healing? How much threat should a tank have before you heal? Is it better to spam more lower threat heals or use the bigger heals that usually have more threat less often?

Oh and Plankeye...what is the grid mod called that you are using there?
 
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