The impact of overhealing

Razilena said:
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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Never not heal tank but watch out for landing heal before they even have threat. Thats a good way to die :p If a tank can not generate enough threat by the time you need to heal them, you need a new tank.

Druids don't have a threat reducing ability so to compensate, be sure to max out the threat reduction talent you have and at least get the subtlety enchant (-2% threat) on your cloak and work towards getting the healing meta gem with another -2% threat reduction.

Generally speaking, you should not be able to ever pull threat off a tank simply by healing. Heals are alreay at 50% threat reduction, and you only generate threat based on the amount you heal for, that is overhealing generates no threat.

You can easily pull threat if the tank is attempting to keep threat on mulitple mobs if your threat generation from heals is greater then the tanks threat generation on one of the adds.
 
The only time you should have to worry about pulling aggro with heals is when the tank isn't really a tank, like a DPS warrior trying to tank or a ret pally, etc which happens a lot in PUGs heh. I remember levelling Wheretoo up as Prot and being asked to heal instances only to find myself healing DPS warriors that couldn't hold aggro
 
speaking of that, we tried to do ring of blood with a hunter pet tanking. The hunter said his pet could tank it, and then showed up with a cat pet. So that didn't work. Then my holy/ret pallie wife tried tanking it (in dps gear, never tanked before) with a druid healing, and the hunter kept pulling agro, plus Lumynara (my wife) had not a point in prot. Thank goodness that a 70 warrior and 70 shammy both showed up and handled it for us. It was almost a disaster. We wiped about 5 times before they showed up.
 
Wow after reading all of this ... I dont quite know what to say... there are many things that can lead to over heals that an idvidual doesnt take into effect. One thing (and I am totally not saying this is the leading factor) is Crit % and some trinkets.. Void reavers Piston is a trinket when it procs enough can show up as overheal... Raid buffed and a good raid group set up.. (ie druid with the Omkin aura) can get my Crit % to almost 45% which means that things procs almost every other time... or a little over 500 ~600 HOT every other cast that I do not take into account... Not alot but it does add up over long Boss fights and if people are looking at the Whole Raid (healing done for the Whole Raid start to finish) that too is alot considering there are 24 others getting healed.

Another thing is that in some instances if we (healers in general) aren't spamming heals on the tank (and Sandric knows this from Hyjal) the tank Dies.... so if we are not "Overhealing" we get to hear the Whines of tanks and Raid leaders alike on "Why is the tank dieing"......

My personal thing is Renews and other "HOTs" Are too slow... Sorry to the HOT casters but if I see damage I heal it... If you would rather I not I have absolutley no problem leaving it there... but no complaints when deaths are involved... besides I personally do not wait and watch every healer to see what they are casting and on who to decide what I am going to cast. Personally I would rather see over heals than death... but, I do see an importance for those with low mana regen and mana to use it efficiently.
 
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-Jad- said:
My personal thing is Renews and other "HOTs" Are too slow... Sorry to the HOT casters but if I see damage I heal it...
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Hence the idea of possibly assigning healers to duties on trash. Taking your attention off the tank to heal a dps still risks the tank. I've seen tanks die when all of a sudden all the healers become obsesed with healing dps (a recent Magtheridon comes to mind), granted thats a boss and not trash, but the risk is the same. You and I have set that up on a few ten man runs Jad (especially ZA), sadly after a tank dies, but we know it works.

Maybe as healers, we just assign a healer to each tank on trash and if you don't get an assignment or if your tank isn't given a tanking assignment, you are on raid duty. Most of the overhealing is on trash anyway and if we aren't waiting on healers to drink after a trash pull, trash can go faster.

I was reading on Elitest Jerks that the average priest since TBC can expect between 30 and 50% overhealing. I seem to run betweeen 25 and 35%
 
Gods_Peon said:
Hence the idea of possibly assigning healers to duties on trash. Taking your attention off the tank to heal a dps still risks the tank. I've seen tanks die when all of a sudden all the healers become obsesed with healing dps (a recent Magtheridon comes to mind), granted thats a boss and not trash, but the risk is the same. You and I have set that up on a few ten man runs Jad (especially ZA), sadly after a tank dies, but we know it works.

Maybe as healers, we just assign a healer to each tank on trash and if you don't get an assignment or if your tank isn't given a tanking assignment, you are on raid duty. Most of the overhealing is on trash anyway and if we aren't waiting on healers to drink after a trash pull, trash can go faster.

I was reading on Elitest Jerks that the average priest since TBC can expect between 30 and 50% overhealing. I seem to run betweeen 25 and 35%
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Don't get me wrong though... I love HOTS... they fill in the gaps between heals... and save us when there are AOE silences... like the bear boss...Makes places like ZA alot better... And yes I like the interaction/Team work us healers do in these raids makes a huge difference..
So in short (because I can never prevey what I want without sounding like a jerkin these forums) I think we just need to see like in the case the number 7 healer was number one on Overheals... maybe more of a timing issue.. and to allof the healers as of late who have been soooo concerned with overheals.... don't they arent neccissarly that bad as long as you aren't OOM durring fights or your tanks are dieing because your are spam healing the wrong targets..
 
-Jad- said:
Don't get me wrong though... I love HOTS... they fill in the gaps between heals... and save us when there are AOE silences... like the bear boss...Makes places like ZA alot better... And yes I like the interaction/Team work us healers do in these raids makes a huge difference..
So in short (because I can never prevey what I want without sounding like a jerkin these forums) I think we just need to see like in the case the number 7 healer was number one on Overheals... maybe more of a timing issue.. and to allof the healers as of late who have been soooo concerned with overheals.... don't they arent neccissarly that bad as long as you aren't OOM durring fights or your tanks are dieing because your are spam healing the wrong targets..
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i like it. function over form. as long as nobody is dieing (esp. tanks) and noone is going OOM, overheal to your hearts content. :)
 
i think the point is that overhealing leads to bad habits and it is best to form good habits early on. Therefor learning how not to overheal can be really beneficial later on in the game.
 
BluBarry said:
i think the point is that overhealing leads to bad habits and it is best to form good habits early on. Therefor learning how not to overheal can be really beneficial later on in the game.
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Plankeye said:
qft
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A: there will never be a fight where there is no overheal...

B: I think that you should be specific in saying that there is good over heal... because there is....
But there is bad overhealing and that is for those healers who don't have a large mana pool, don't have the mana regen, and are getting overheals because of Bad timing on there heals.... or they are healing Unnecessarily.
 
Last night I was at 29% over healing, 1.75M effective healing, 715k overhealing, average effective HPS of 993 over the course of the night (One fight I pushed out over 1600hps). You'll never get rid of overhealing. You can minimize and control it. You can learn good healing techniques early because that will help you in the later stages of content.
 
Plankeye said:
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.
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Jad, I quoted the second paragraph of my original post for you.
 
Grid has a plugin that shows estimated incoming heals on each targets. It helps a ton to see "Hey, Treehouse is down 5,000hp, but he's got a 4,500hp heal coming, so i won't waste my time. It may actually be built in to grid now, not sure. Helps with the /stopcasts and deciding who needs healin.
 
treebranch said:
Grid has a plugin that shows estimated incoming heals on each targets. It helps a ton to see "Hey, Treehouse is down 5,000hp, but he's got a 4,500hp heal coming, so i won't waste my time. It may actually be built in to grid now, not sure. Helps with the /stopcasts and deciding who needs healin.
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I love that Mod... I have it and Use it!!!! should be a must have for healers.... jk i know Aves doesnt like many mods...:)
 
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