Question for all my healer friends out there.
I always make assignments but 2 healers told me they don’t matter.
They said they just heal whoever is low and they have an addon to see who is healing who so they dont overheal.
I’ve never been in a raid that doesn’t assign healers.
I prefer just healing whoever needs healing honestly, but having a loose idea of who is focusing on tanks can help, especially on something like High King Maulgar where there are multiple tanks
If none of your healers run out of mana that’s cool. But the problem without assignments, especially if pushing content, is that healers will snipe heals to top the charts and waste mana. It probably doesn’t matter with TBC Classic, but in the original TBC a good way to find yourself on the bench, as a healer, was to snipe heals or even worse, consistently overheal
Yeah, with a good Raid frame addon I can see the incoming heals on a target so assignments aren’t needed anymore outside of making sure someone is baby sitting Tanks and anyone hit with a bad Raid Debuff.
Depends on the encounter but a good general rule of thumb is:
Tank healers: holy paladin and disc priest
Raid healers: shaman and holy priest
Situational: resto druids should look to keep the tank fully hotter at all times and spare globals to lifebloom the raid when they can. Shamans should look to chain heal off the tank when they can.
With this set up as long as everyone’s doing their job nobody should die from encounter damage only failed mechanics or potentially bad rng
The only time you really need assignments is when you have multiple tanks healing multiple spread out mobs. For example Mulgar and Mag adds. If you dont have someone dedicated to certain tasks those tanks might go down before someone can switch to them.
“They have an addon to see who is healing who” its actually something that is a part of most healing addons (Healbot/Vuhdo etc…). It’s called healcoms and it shows us all incoming healing for each person in the raid, it just shows their current health and what it will be when an incoming heal lands. It helps prevent overlap and should be required in any raiding guild, it existed back in the day too.
Free for all healing works for farm content and stuff that isn’t too challenging. Healing assignments not only become important with more high damage/technical fights, but with proper healing assignments, you can reduce the number of healers who are in the raid for more DPS - which may or may not be what holds the raid back.
A good healer follows healing assignments and knows why they exist.
A great healer follows healing assignments and knows when to break them.
Healing assignments have a vary key and clear role they make fights easier. They reduce snipe healing and makes sure in multi mob and target fights esp like mags people are all covered with a healer. They also make sure in the event of a situation of two people being near death the odds of both living goes up a ton as healers are able to more quickly predict the actions of other healers just seeing that there is a heal comming in on a target dosent do this as you and another healer might both have a instant heal if you both cast on same target one is wasted that could of been spread out to save both for example.
Not giving healing assignments is a mistake and a sign of a bad heal lead. Healers saying they are not needed is a sign of a bad healer. A great healer would of been thanking you for the healing assignments and making a note if you are being to detailed with the assignments as super detailed assignments are not needed but simple assignments like x tank healer is on x tank and x raid healer prio x group or area goes a long way to keeping people alive and killing the boss. Eg gruul having all 6 healers stacked on top of each other at 1 only for everyone at 7 on the clock to die from no healz is not a good setup. While having everyone go around freely and in turn having 2 healers not in range of totems due to that is also a waste. While knowing that though there is an assignment that dosent mean you are only healing your assignment only that they are your focus and you Can and should be healing others when it’s not a question of pick between two.
I haven’t healed since the original TBC. My guild had assignments. Paladins were usually the tank healer(s). Druids frequently took care of the raid. Priests could do either.
Not sure how it is now, tough. Probably depends on the guild and the content.
There’s some advantages to each. While I don’t spend time trying to “win” the healing meters, there can be a push to go faster when healing trash and everyone’s trying to land their heal. There’s some motivation to be more aware and quicker.
Also, there are times when there’s burst damage in one area and not in others. You’re limiting your hps output with healing assignments.
Best, is to have everyone track the other healers cast bars and make the best decision for the raid based on that. Take healing meters with a grain of salt.
The only number that matters in healing is the number of people that went < 0 health, and maybe a guesstimate of the % chance that could happen.
Ran Mag and Gruul’s for the first time last night… with healing assignments and all was good… bosses went down.
I don’t mind healing assignments at all… I’m good with tank or raid healing… or both. What I find most annoying is bringing too many healers to a raid… like Kara the other night. Once geared 3 healers just isn’t needed for every single boss… next week running with 2… with a druid ready to offheal if needed on end bosses.
Yep… been healing since vanilla and the only thing I care about is players not dying.
Healing meters? LOL… complete garbage. They let you know if someone is AFK but don’t indicate ability at all. So many variables… heals getting sniped… etc…
“Healing whomever is low” is reactive healing and for some encounters you need to be proactive i.e. pre casting your big heals before damage happens. You need assignments then.
People pursuing parses is fine until your MT on Mag dies because healers were busy keeping locks and cube clickers at full HP. So even on a fairly easy healing encounter you need some direction.
I would say that right now they don’t matter. But in T5, they will. Also, make a habit of making assignments.
You need to know who’s pulling their weight, and who’s not. For example, if you’re assigning someone to MT heal, and they have tons of heals on other targets - they’re sniping. Not a big deal now, but later if the tank dies you know why.
Additionally, if healers are not needing to consume, if they’re ending a fight with 50%+ mana left, drop a healer, bring another dps, or have a healer go DPS for now.
People are pre-occupied with parses. I’m at a 99.7 overall and one of the op healers on my server (top 4 range). I get whispers a couple times a week from off server for recruitment. People erroneously think these parses matter. They don’t.
TL;DR - healing assignments do matter, because when people start dying you need data to look at the links for who isn’t paying attention to their assignment.