I am trying to get KSM before 9.1 hits as a healer, and my HPS varies a lot between keys. Sometimes I do 3k and other times, I do about 5k. When I’m doing 3k, people sometimes die, which is my fault. Other times, when I do 5k, people die anyway. What gives? How do I tell whether it’s someone else’s mess up or whether I’m not crapping out enough healing?
Sorry, rant over. But I want to be a good healer!
HPS isn’t going to tell you anything meaningful in itself. Are people using their interrupts? Are they taking avoidable damage? Is the tank overpulling? Are appropriate defensive cds being used in the proper fashion. Probably a few more, but those are the basics.
If people are playing well and dying, likely your fault. If they are not, their fault.
Healing has it’s ups and down. I’m just guessing but figure you are kind of new, so I’m going to say keep practicing and keep your chin up. Once you have enough experience you will without a doubt know exactly why people died.
Too many variables to just give you a clear answer.
Get details and look at the misc>>>deaths tab. It’ll tell you exactly what people’s hp was like in the seconds before they died.
If they slowly ticked downed in health to an unavoidable mechanic…you’re fault. If they went to 100% to 0% in a nanosecond to an avoidable mechanic than it’s their fault.
If you have an addon like details to track DPS and HPS, there’s also a section in there for deaths. When someone dies, you can click on their bar and see what damage they took that led to them dying. Won’t tell you everything, but if your tank died and you see they just took a bunch of hits without getting any heals, that might be an area for you to improve. If they took an ability to the face that’s basically a 1 shot and can be interrupted… not much for you to do there!
HPS by itself won’t tell you a ton. A group with a tank using their defensives and all interrupts going off will require a lot less healing throughout.
There’s an addon called: ElitismHelper that shows when players take avoidable damage and provides a total at the end of a dungeon.
HPS isn’t a good indicator of your skill as a healer b/c that can vary widely solely based on the weekly affixes. It took me a solid month coming from a Hpal in BFA to really learn rsham where I know what I’m going to do for every pull and situation. I averaged at least one M10+ / day during that time learning the dungeons and honing my skill.
It really depends on the weekly affixes and what mechanics are going on at the time of deaths. Like other posters said, if you have your group getting hit by mechanics because they either don’t see them or are trying to cheese dps then that is their fault and as a healer there is only so much you can do. If people are dieing to regular ticking damage or are at 30% HP for 5sec without getting a heal, then it maybe your fault.
Also, HPS is a poor indicator of your healing in M+. This is just based on my own experience but on good runs where a group just blows through a dungeon I tend to heal for ~3.5k overall. If a group I’m running with has issues with mechanics or is tight on the timer or even misses it, my healing tends to be higher ~5k+.
According to DPS, it’s always the healer’s fault even if their interrupt is sitting there off cool down and hasn’t been touched all fight, or while the fire or acid still licks away at their unmoving corpses.
As a more serious note, people in this thread have given good advice. Details is my go to because yeah, HPS doesn’t really tell you much other than how much damage is going out and how much you’ve managed to handle that. Whether that damage is due to an affix/mechanic or a failure on the DPS/tank for managing a mechanic, that comes down to familiarity of the dungeon as well as checking the death logs. If there’s 7+ stacks of bursting because the DPS didn’t slow their roll, or if someone decided to give a shade a big old hug, that’ll make your job hard.
You need to know the dungeon, tbh. There is more to it than interrupts.
Are people stunning the uninterruptible casts?
Are people dying to tantrums or rage that could be soothed?
It’s good to know these things so you can help your group get through them. Also, there are some healer checks - know where they are, have a plan for dealing with them.
If you know all the pulls in the dungeon, you’ll know if it’s a you problem, and can work on improving, if necessary.
You should also pick up OmniCD, which will tell you if and when your party members are interrupting and using their CDs.
Well Said +1
If you aren’t prepared for important pulls and people die, it’s your fault. If someone gets hit by a cleaver, it’s their fault. If you blow your cooldown while the tank has his cooldown running, and then a big mechanic or adds show up, it’s your fault.
Dungeon healing specifically isn’t something you’re going to tell much from hps. Your job is to know the dungeon inside and out, and know when people should be able to avoid the damage and when they can’t.
There are always going to be things that go sideways. But being prepared with a plan for how the pulls and bosses are going to go is the most important thing. To be a better healer is partly about gear, but mostly about preparation and execution of a plan.
You usually get a feeling if it’s your fault or not. HPS isn’t a great indicator. A few examples (these are my opinion):
The bugs (flying ones) in mists after mistcaller:
If someone has 1 stack and I don’t heal them and they die, my fault. 2 stacks, same thing. 3 stacks, iffy and depends on key level. 4 stacks, if they didn’t pop a defensive and die with me spam healing, that’s all on them.
First boss plaguefall: did they die to stomp dot damage? If yes, usually my fault.
Did they die to slime wave? If yes, absolutely 100% their fault.
As a healer it’s our job to keep people alive but it’s not only our responsibility. You have to check when someone dies to see if they tried to mitigate it in any form. Potions, personal defenses, stunning the mob, etc.
The difference between an average dps and a great dps is a great dps will go out of their way to help the healer or tank, even if it means losing some overall damage.
/cracks fingers:
Stop reading your HPS like it’s DPS. That is not how that works and has never been how that works.
If you are doing everything in your power to keep people alive (popping cooldowns, helping with CC’s when needed, dispelling) and people are still dying: that’s probably not your fault.
Also, mechanics does have a bigger impact on your healing. As does the tank: is he not moving the mobs out of the bad stuff and thus melee dies? Are your ranged paying attention to what THEY’RE standing in?
My advice: turn off your healing meter for a day or two. You’re paying too much attention to it.
Just trust me on this one. Turn off your meter for a day and quit worrying so much about your HPS.
100% the healers fault
If anyone dies at anytime, it’s the healers fault
Even if they run off a cliff, it’s the healers fault
Had a tank tell a holy priest in LFR that disc was better before sludgefist. He life gripped him during a pillar charge and killed everyone. Turns out when they say don’t make your healer mad, they mean it lol
See?
Entirely the healers fault
It’s mostly about learning the encounters, knowing what damage is unavoidable, and developing enough situational awareness to watch what other players are doing. When a lot of damage is going out, healers tend to go into “healer panic” and lose track of the situation outside of the health bars and their own feet. As you get more experience, you’ll learn to take in more information about what’s happening to everyone in the party and why all the health bars suddenly took a nosedive.
For example, if you’re running out of avoidable damage and a ranged DPS loses health, they probably messed it up. Ranged players generally shouldn’t take more damage than you do unless they are specifically targeted by an unavoidable boss ability. Did Dodgeball go off and someone got chunked? They failed the idiot check. Melee have it harder some weeks like spiteful and storming and you’ll probably have to heal them more than ranged.
You also need to be aware of how the affixes interact. Last week with tyrannical, bolstering, and necrotic some fights got very hard to heal. Tanks needed to manage stacks, which is easier for some classes than others, and DPS to avoid bolstered trash by killing things close to the same time. Melee boss fights could be a really hard DPS check for certain tank and healer combos.
Healing checks tend to unavoidable, and typically designed with enough time to get the party topped off before the next round of damage goes out. Things like the disease on the last boss in Plaugefall that most parties can’t 100% dispel, or the falling damage from the traps in Xy’exa are healer checks. If the party dies to unavoidable damage, that’s the point at which you’re not cranking out enough healing.
HPS doesn’t have much value in dungeons, doesn’t mean anything really.
Well… if the tank is dying, it’s 95% of the time their fault.
If a dps is dying, did they stand in stuff or not interupt? it’s their fault.
If people are dying to things other than that, I would try to improve.
It’s incredibly depressing when I watch myself slowly die and say “There is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent this”