Raid Rx: Analyzing your healers Part 2
Raid Rx is designed to encapsulate and cure the shock and horror that is 25-man raid healing. Ok, so it's mostly horror... Anyways, if you're a big fan of X-TREME Whack-A-Mole (or are being forced into it against your will) this is the column for you. Interweb friends, I am sorry I've been MIA so long. It was an accident, I swear! I have missed you. /sniff
Last time, creatively called Part 1, we went over healing analysis philosophy and all the tools you'll need to be sure you're seeing the whole picture. This time? My little whelps, we are going to start in on the big one: WWS healorz style. Grab a snack and join me after the break as I cover exactly what you should have in your grubby little hands before even pretending to know what's going on in WWS.
Many moons ago my guild had a forum spy. Joe Guildmember was sharing his account with someone in a rival guild. The spy's goal? To glean our WWS reports, analyze what we were doing, and generally stroke their epeens over it, satisfied known they were superior to us in every way. Or, as I liked to call it "One boss ahead." After the spy was busted and I brought down the ban hammer (forum admin ftw), they were even kind enough to send me a lengthy message about exactly how I sucked, including details on my poor spell selection and moronic choice of healing style. The overwhelming love in their hearts inspired them to copy all the other officers on said note.
Always the one for improving my game play, I proceeded to go over what they believed I was doing wrong. Immediately it dawned on me. Without knowing critical raid background information, they were assuming and guessing at scenarios that didn't actually exist. For one, they thought I had a libram that hadn't dropped for us yet.
Don't let yourself fall into the same trap! Before you step foot in WWS, you'll need the following information if you hope to perform a fair and unbiased analysis:
1. Healing Assignments for trash and every boss fight
2. The raid experience of every healer
3. Each healers' gear level vs content
4. Every healers' talent selection
This may seem like a ton of work to do, but resist the urge to just jump into data unawares. Healing assignments are critical when it comes to evaluating how well that person handled the assignment, from how much they cross-heal, to seeing if their task was even a good fit for their class. Your goal is to use the data to see how well they perform, not try to piece together the goal of their performance. Don't reverse engineer your healers!
Raid experience, gear level, and talent selection will all impact what each individual healer is capable of. The better a healer knows a fight, the more comfortable they'll be jumping in to cross heal in a sticky situation, for example. Gear affects the raw healing numbers, bottom line. Talent differences can be as significant as CoH vs imp spi, or as subtle as a tank loosing Devotion Aura because his paladin doesn't have Aura Mastery. Know what your healers are running with, including the benefits and limitations of each.
Join me on Monday as we look at screenies and really get into the nuts and bolts of WWS. That's right. Monday. Shorter posts moar often. That's just how my rl schedule rolls now.
Marcie Knox is a long time lover of cheese. She prefers Colby but will chomp some Cheddar if the moon is in the right phase. She also does some healing lead stuff and her guild's currently eyeing Felmyst suspiciously. You can always email her your cool healing screenies at marcie[dot]knox[at]weblogsinc[dot]com.
