Raid Rx: Analyzing you healers Part 3

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. A lot of times when I'm sifting through data on WWS, I feel like I need Sherlock Holmes' hat and magnifying glass. Today is no exception.

If you're just joining the series for the first time, here's a link to get you caught up. The rest of you should recall that we left things on the cusp of actually going through WWS. Today we will rectify that and get into the nuts and bolts of WWS healing analysis. See you healing sleuths after the break!

First things first... If you're going to talk about WWS, you should have some example data to go along with it. I give you Anonymous Report, which will be good until 2 weeks from today. Otherwise, feel free to follow along with the posted pictures. Each one is a link to a larger version for easy eye balling. Also, keep comments on-topic. We're not here to compare the length of our dps or how much cooler your tanks are.

The first thing you run across by clicking the Heals tab is the total healing for the duration of the report. In this case, it is for the first 7 bosses in Black Temple, including various wipes. Here's the background info you need to know before you start analyzing.

The first 9 healers are healers. The paladin, Gemini, left after the second boss. Rain and Aquarius are new to the guild, working to gear up from T4/T5 content. They're not familiar with the bosses in BT and don't have the SR gear to do Mother. Calliope is a shadow priest. Taurus came in for the last 2 bosses. Polyhymnia is an imp spi priest. Typically druids, priests, and paladins are assigned to tanks. Shamans are on raid healing. But we'll break those down by fight.

So what do you actually get out of looking at total healing? Not a whole heck of a lot when you have people swapping in and out. Resist the urge to compare one class to another. Part 1 will give you a recap if you forget why it's a bad thing.

That pretty much leaves us with comparing Hwesta to Harma. The rule of thumb here is if people of the same class have about the same assignments, gear, talents, and experience, and they're within 5% total healing of each other, they're doing fine. That 5% normally absorbs random things like afks for cats on fire, bio breaks, and phone calls. If I see the difference approaching 10%, I'll immediately check out their spell selection and hits/ticks.

Overhealing is actually complex enough to have its own post, which you can find here. There you'll find much more in-depth info on what's good and bad OH. For our exercise here with T6 content, 40-60% doesn't really phase me at all since it's the cost of being proactive.

So let's pretend one Shaman was significantly lower than the other. The easiest way to compare players of the same class is to click the drop down menu next to Browse and select Raids & Mobs. From there it's as just pick out the class you want to compare. For us, this means clicking on "5 Shaman". The table that pops up contains every spell all 5 shamans used or experienced during the entire evening. Scroll down to the blue healing section. Under Harma for Chain Heal you're going to see a light grey 2442 and 14%. This color indicates are the average amount per cast and the chance to crit. The light purple 2991 is the number of times someone was hit with that spell, while the 95% is the percentage amount they use the spell (number of that spell's hits/total of all spell hits). For shamans, I'd expect to see a lot of Chain Heals, just like we see here.

Average amount of healing per tick is a good reflection of gear, buffs, and on use +healing trinkets. This is because those directly influence healing per cast output. If you're not sure how undergeared a new healer is, this is the place to look. What you should see over time is new guildies getting closer and closer to your veteran players. It can also explain seemingly random gear discrepancies between players. For example, if a certain healadin forgets to take off their resist gear after Mother, you're going to see some sad numbers between there and Council. Not that it's happened... /shady eyes Little differences add up over a raid night.

Crit only matters to Shaman and Paladins. A while time ago I covered good bench marks for crit. You can find them here.

The number of hits or ticks, depending on the spell, are a good litmus test for how engaged a healer is. In a lot of T5 content and most of T6, you need proactive healers who are always looking for the next bit of damage. You don't want to see someone that's waiting around for damage, or worse, trying to save mana by having others heal their assignments. In our example, both Shamans are very close to each other with respects to number of hits, although Hwesta does come out slightly ahead. What you don't want to see here is something like half the hits compared to another of the same class (remember, we're talking about people that were present in the raid for the same amount of time.) In that past, something like that indicated low trash healing participation.

On Wednesday we're going to cover how to break down an individual fight and how to tell who's healing on trash and who's watching tv. Busted! Hope to see you then!

Marcie Knox continues to be the healing lead for her guild and wishes more people hated Summer. That way they'd show up for raids instead of going to mysterious things called "BBQ's". Don't forget she's always looking for nifty healing screenies (marcie[dot]knox[at]weblogsinc[dot]com).