Bronze 1-2 player here, and I play mostly tanks and healers.
I’m trying to slowly rank up, and I’d like to know if there is a quick and easy way to know if I’m playing well.
Lately, I haven’t been picked as end MVP or the other 4 contributor at the end of the game, and XP contribution has been around 3rd in my team.
I do wonder if it’s because I actually am doing poorly, or because of roles I play.
Tanks and healers usually won’t have the best wave clear, and heroes I like to play focuses more on CC, damage reduction, and utility, not raw healing and damage soaked. ETC, Uther, Rehgar, etc.
In this case, is there a way to measure my overall performance, preferably with numbers?
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It is not so very uncommon for tanks and healers to be selected for consideration by the computer because of % damage soaked/healed – either team fight damage, or overall damage. Healers can also be selected for ‘n clutch heals’.
If you are consistently not getting up on the board in either role, then yeah you might be under-performing.
However, even assuming you have a theoretically good composition that plays well to the map, and are a decent player, you might be totally screwed by potato team mates who do not understand how to play with your healer/tank. It is therefore usually a mistake to focus on the numbers, obvious red flags notwithstanding (e.g., more than 10 deaths).
I wouldn’t worry too much. The very fact that you are choosing to play these roles and are intent on improving already sets you apart from most of the herd.
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Ultimately no stat as healer matters more than your win ratio.
Not raw healing numbers (not comparable between heroes like Lucio and Uther), not Clutch Heals (irrelevant if they didn’t lead to won teamfights), not exp contribution (not really even a healers job to lane and be top exp unless you pick up slack from weaker teammates).
As long as you have +50% win rate on the healer you play, you are doing something right. If you drop somewhere close to 30-40%, you may want to view guides on YouTube or Reddit before playing again (at least in Ranked).
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You need to waveclear and do camps on the right times. You can ask your allies for help
Post replays and have the all wise forum users judge.
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Thank you I am pretty wise
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Eh, I’ll dare to disagree with that. Clutch heals means healing the damage that would otherwise kill your ally. Having 20+ of them means something and I consider this stat to be one of few worth looking at. Other that winrate
It does feel nice to get that “12 clutch heals” in the mvp screen, but it feels diminished by a stomp loss by 2-3 levels. (Though this is not just the healers fault but the teams)
Same as KDA ratio: A high one is nice to have, but if it leads to 38% win ratio over a thousand games, the healer is still doing something wrong, like not being with their team at crucial moments.
edit - I never liked receiving awards in losing games, they feel like consolation prizes. The most extreme one; being MVP on the losing team (which just shows the match was very unbalanced).
When you get MVP with tank build garrosh you know you played with the dregs of the ranks.
Though true, at these levels, raw healing is a good indicator, especially if you can parse out the differences in healing between the heroes. The times where I’m matched against a low rated healer in a brawl or QM, I can easily double or triple the healing of the enemy healer.
That’s why I say it’s utter BS when people say you can’t carry at bronze. When you’re just healing that much, you just slowly power through regardless of how awful your allies are.
All true, but answering OPs question - If you see XX clutch heals, I think its ok to feel bit better about yourself and not take all the blame. Assuming the loss doesnt happen 20 games in a row :’ Nobody in his right mind think he played like **** after every loss.
I think low deaths yourself is one indicator of if you’re at least positioning or understanding the limits of your hero (and not being reckless).
This won’t show up in the stats necessarily, but pay attention to team fights you win and lose. As a tank, did you control the heroes you needed to? Was someone diving the back line that you didn’t stop? And as a healer did you keep someone up long enough to contribute just enough to win the fight? Even if they die, that brief moment of having 5v4 can be enough. Did someone die because you were hesitant to ult?
it is hard to tell by numbers alone
for example, lucio/BW have passive healing
so they can heal a lot without being really helpful during the game
unlike uther, who can heal a lot less in comparison, but all heals are clutch, and save mate from death, not to mention that divine shield saves are not taken in consideration
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I don’t find that to be the case with Lt. Morales. When her energy runs out and you try your best to keep your team alive and they still die, she is one of the worst heroes in the game. She can’t fight anyone. Her lane clearing sucks. She sucks at taking camps and doing pretty much every task in the game.
Though take someone like Kharazim with Iron Fist or Rehgar and that’s a whole different story. They can even kill heroes far beefier than themselves and win objective fights 1v1.
I can’t count how many games I lost with Malfurion or Lt. Morales with 2-3x more healing than the enemy healer just because our damage dealers sucked (and I used every cooldown and ability in my control to keep them alive).
I don’t know what to tell you, I usually don’t lose if I’m healing 2-3x more healing than the enemy. It just doesn’t happen almost at all. It’s upsetting when it does, but it’s so rare.
The thing with Morales is, people often don’t understand how to maximize energy generation, or how to cycle her other abilities to give a buffer to utilize the most of that time. Malf is different in that if you’re able to heal that much in the first place, that probably also means you’re landing your moon fires too. Having that much raw numbers in your favor makes it INCREDIBLY difficult for your allies to not take advantage of. It can still happen obviously, but they just have to suck that much more. All you really need are some well placed entangles to secure kills, and you’re pretty much good to go.
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It’s bronze so stats may be very deceiving. Still, if you are a main healer whose primary job is to land fat heals then you possessing superior healing stat to the enemy can help you. Basically treat it like your average time when you go out jogging. If your “run time” is superior then you are making decent use of your abilities. This is far from an ultimate metric but at least it can inspire you to do better.
What tells you’re a good healer? It’s hard to say. Although at Bronze I think it’s a bit simpler. If you can prevent a lots of deaths and keep your team alive better than your enemy then you are doing well. That’s the general guideline. If your team died less, suffered less ganks and outlasted more teamfights then they should partially thank your efforts.
As others said it often results in higher winrate. Although we talk about Bronze League so you can never be sure what aspect your teammates are poor at. So I wouldn’t be angsting over that. Speaking of which, winrate is only worth anything if it has great deal of matches behind it. Anything before triple digits can be considered a “rookie phase” and your ability to learn playing a hero will never stop. Having 20 matches and sub-40% WR only means one thing: you need more practice.
Now onto what a decent healer does, even if in very broad strokes. A healer has the most value if they are present while your allies take damage. This means you’ll roam quite a lot more often than you’d think. In an ideal world you get pings to help you but this isn’t an ideal world. If you see your solo laner at half health? Mount up and patch them up! Your 3-man is doing fine and decently topped off? Rush to the other 2-man split push and heal them to keep them in top shape. Your frontline engaged but your mage is on half health? Don’t neglect them because that’s low enough for a diver to exploit. Somebody overextended? Take a deep breath and count your loses. Don’t add another body to the pile.
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Healer sometimes is about numbers. If you havw top healing by a good margin you know youre doing well. Deaths are another thing. As healer (except maybe uther) you are the worst person to die. Without a tank a bruiser can take a few hits, 1 assassin gone wont end your team, but without a healer your team cannot stay in fight. Most healers come with cc that are important in fights. You should be landing them to followup tanks when they go in.
I end up playing a lot of both tanks and healers in ranked and you can usually answer your performance in a game with the same 2 questions;
- How many teammates did I save? (or at least let them live long enough to do something significant)
- How many enemies died because of my presence?
So for example, if you showed up to help a teammate while they were losing a 1v1 and you help him kill the guy, that’s a part where you made a difference. So being in those situations and securing/preventing kills consistently means you are doing well.
But healing/tanking is also a role that relies on your team to not be stupid, in order for you to make a difference. Doesn’t matter if you land a 5 man mosh if your Jaina/KT/whatever mage runs away while at full health. Doesn’t matter if you land a clutch ancestral heal if the dude turns right around and dies immediately.
Sometimes, you just can’t heal or tank anything because your team doesn’t let you. Can’t heal or tank for a team that’s always dead.
So in all honesty, the best advice I can give is:
- stay with your team even if you think they are wrong (if it’s something like a bad boss call, ping retreat and hope they listen, but if they don’t, you probably want to go with anyways. You being there might prevent more deaths, even if you still fail boss. At very least as a tank you can watch out for enemies approaching, and cover a retreat)
- Don’t try and be an assassin. I see too many tanks that run in and pretend to be zeratul (especially muradins and Mal’Ganis). Usually when they do this their backline gets dives and killed. I also see healers that get too caught up in damage that they or a teammate die. Worst offenders are usually Auriel, Reghar, Anduin (aa) build and Ana (stacking quest at 1).
But really, they only way you can tell is your winrate sadly…
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This is all that matters, numbers be damned. Obviously you strive for as much healing as you can on any given healer, but not all healers toss fat heals non-stop. Others require different finesse but can still completely sabotage the enemy team’s efforts to kill yours.
As a tank, MVP is the least of your concerns. The best way to improve your tanking is to watch your replays, as cringy as it may feel some times. You are mostly looking for basic things, such as your positioning, being with your team when they need you, whether or not you are getting value out of your abilities, heroic usage, and when you did die, what killed you and did you have any way you could have prevented it (positioning, CC, and the like).
One reason I never worry about MVP as a tank is one of the factors that carry the most weight in the MVP calculation is time spent dead. While it is true you don’t want to just run in and suicide repeatedly, dying as a tank isn’t always a bad thing. What you need to do is make every single death meaningful. If you die, but 3 of the enemy team goes down with you, it may very well have been worth it. If you die but the other 4 escape, you did do your job. Ideally, all 5 of you will live and all 5 of your foes will die, but a tank that is too scared to die is likely an ineffective one. Sometimes you just have to take the opportunity when you see it, as if you wait too long, it is guaranteed one of your team mates will get an itchy trigger finger, and start a fight on their terms, not yours.
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