Atkins
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Shamans and Raid Healing Strategy - 2006/05/10 00:32
Shamans and Raid Healing Strategy | 5/9/2006 5:06:10 PM PDT
Shamans have an important role in an organized healing plan. It is all about healing efficiently by being organized and heal stacking. Heal stacking means planning healing rolss with different classes and healers in different roles to avoid overheals and healing conflicts (and wasted mana) while avoiding underhealing and deaths because people wasted mana overhealing the wrong person or didn't know who they were supposed to heal.
A statement in the raidhealer channel or comms by some Priest who takes charge that "you heal tank 1, I'll heal tank 2, everyone else spot heal" is a recipe for confusion, overhealing, needless deaths and OOM. Calls on voice comms of "Heal Jojoba!" and such probably get 10KHP of healing on Jojoba but divert heals from others who may need it. Shamans in particular are asked to backup heal without any meeting of the minds with the main healers on what that means, and often complaints that "you are wasting my mana!" when you get in a heal just before someone else's heal lands. Next time you let the other healer heal, but he doesn't and now a death is your fault.
Given the care often taken on pulling and staging raid fights, not paying rudimentary attention to a healing plan is just dumb and needless deaths and wipes are, well, needless.
Ironically, Shamans usually seem to understand the value of a healing plan more than some Priests who are so used to "owning" everyone's health bars that they don't think about a backup healer except as someone to help keep the Priest alive and fill in once they go OOM or die from pulling healing aggro. In parties, good Shamans notice the healing situation and step in as needed to heal, offtank and DPS. Kudos to the good ones.
Rather than standing around trying to avoid stepping on main healer heals or uncertain about what to do, Shamans can have some very valuable and specific roles in a good healing plan.
A healing plan means assigning players and classes in their most effective roles to keep the tanks alive, obtain the optimal healing coverage for different classes, and conserve mana to last the fight with room for contingencies. One goal is to keep the main healers from going OOM so they are able to use their array of skills to deal with emergenices, rather than having them burn their mana and have Shamans pick up the pieces. So one key concept is to spread healing threat by having Shamans healing throughout the fight, and another that it is better for a Shaman to go OOM than a Priest to go OOM.
You can triage heals into 3 tiers. Maintenance heals are intended to stabilize or top off someone for moderate or low damage. Primary heals are large, relatively slow, and intended to restore large chunks of health efficiently. Emergency heals are intended to prevent death. FLash heals (including LHW), instant heals and PW:Shield fall in this category. The problem with emergency healing is that when OMG someone is low then you can have 6 healers all landing heals on that person at the same time when one or two would do and there are other people who also need healing. No one has time to wait to see what other healers will do - how much better is it if you know who is responsible for that health bar at that time?
I don't want to go on forever so I'll give you some bullet points.
1. Maintenace heals for damage in a range topping at 700-1200 are best done using midrank HOTs from high +Heal Priests or Druids. If you see the HOT on the CTRaid health bar, you know it is taken care of - no conflicts.
2. The big heals have been shortened in duration enough to be usable now, even more so in the context of a healing plan. Main healers can focus on big heals and get in some regen in between if possible, knowing that maintenance is taken care of (or they can also do maintenance if that is the plan).
3. If someone's health bar drops below 50%, the main healer can start winding up a big heal because there are emergency healers already laying on flash or instant heals and perhaps PWS. The emergency heals are intended to buffer further damage and stabilize health long enough for the big heals to land rather than having the main healer spam emergency flashes.
4. Heal planning is often best by individual main tanks and otherwise by classes because the needed healing profile within a class is more consistent than for a mixed group. Fortunately CTRaid Emergency Monitor lets you select particular classes, groups, or both to cover.
5. Example: ancestral healing Shaman has only Warriors on EM with a 50% health setting. Anytime someone pops up on the EM, he LHWs once, while someone else is winding up a big heal. Everyone knows this is the plan - other EM healers don't cover the Warriors at this level.
6. However, you can stack EM heals also - e.g., a Shaman with a setting of 45% and a Druid on a mid level Regrowth with a setting of 30%. If it gets bad, both kick in. If the health bar stays at 31% or more, then the LHW stabilizes and a main healer takes it from there. Once the health bar is near full then a maintenance heal might be added.
7. I like having mid to high level Renew and Rejuv on the main tanks at all times. With good gear, this absorbs several hundred damage per second. Paladins can also spam efficient low level Flash of Light continuously so that works kind of like a HOT, but Shamans can't do this without going OOM much sooner.
8. This all means healing threat and mana usage is spread around so that peoplle don't go OOM so quickly. It also works fine with a healing rotation, if that should be necessary.
9. Low level chain heals on Warriors out of party to proc ancestral healing - discuss with your raid.
10. On AOE pulls AOEers can all take a lot of damage, so don't make the Mages and Warlocks the responsibility of the same EM healer.
11. A pitch for topping off Warlocks so they can life tap for more mana = more damage. 1 healer mana translates to 3-6 Warlock mana depending on the heal. I usually heal near death OOM Warlocks before near death OOM mages for this reason.
12. Heal planning reduces cmopetitive healing meter B$ and means proper credit and respect for Shamans because people know you know your job and are focusing on keeping them from dying. If you are adding DPS because no one is showing up on your EM, you are doing your job and everyone knows it.
13. One final word - when lots of people die things tend to fall apart and become confused, and a healing plan will only help to avoid that problem and even out healing aggro and mana usage to that point. Improvise.
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KALPOTHYZ
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Re:Shamans and Raid Healing Strategy - 2006/05/10 18:09
Many good points here. I would like to say sorry that you have played with so many poor priests!! 
We have a healer channel for our guild, the person with the most + healing get to do renewing and the most + crit gear chance is MT healer. Have druids keep rejuvinate and then assign other tanks a healer. Shamans and kept for times when the priest wants some regeneration time. I.E cover a priest when he is being innervated. They are also used to heal rogues using chain heals and save their instant heal for if the tank looks to be in real trouble.
It might not be perfect but it has worked so far.
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Atkins
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Re:Shamans and Raid Healing Strategy - 2006/05/10 18:41
A healer channel is very good -if you can keep the riffraff out. Class channels are also useful, but having all healers together pluss the MT and the raid leader in one channel is valuable. We have someone who does a macro of healing assignments for raid chat so everyone knows.
It's not a matter of playing with POOR Priests, but many Priests tend to get proprietary about healing and assume that since they are the most effective healing class overall they should run things (except my very modest Priest, of course). There are also those who care more about gross healing meter totals than effective and efficient healing and just burn through mana unnecessarily.
Since healing with a Priest is effective and easy, this also encourages a casual attitude and less interest in planning. As a Shaman main healer, you have to plan, think ahead, and pay attention, can't just react to what happens. I'm not dissing Priests - when I heal with a Priest I too can confidently relax more knowing I have a full set of tools at my disposal - likewise as a Druid I have a good set of tools and as a Paladin I need to be on my toes but don't worry about running out of mana or pulling aggro and dying. As a Shaman.I have to think about everything.
When you are #2, you try harder, and get smarter.
My point about EM is that it provides more safety margin and spreads threat around, as well as stretching main healer mana. Healing rotations are fine, but the trick is to get those rotating out to hand over healing when they are at 20% rather than OOM - I never want a main healer to OOM himself if there is someone who can pick it u and don't want someone sitting at full mana without doing something to take advantage of regen (e.g., a few spot heals or HOTs)
I started an article all about ways of raid healing people use but it is still mostly notes. Thanks for the comments.
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KALPOTHYZ
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Re:Shamans and Raid Healing Strategy - 2006/05/12 22:08
In some fights the stratigy we employ is for me as MT healer to burn my mana fast with other healers helping out a bit, others take over while i get an innervate then i take back over again. In a long fight i can easily get 2 or 3 innervates and other healers are mana efficent. This way we always know who is dealing with the MT and the others can concentrate on other needs. I normally take a druid as back up MT healer. This works well as a general rule but there are certain bosses different tactics are needed. This makes full use of innervate so my mana regens at 400% so i have a full mana bar when it finishes. If there are multiple mobs then we have others who a tank healers. A shaman plays an important role mainly keeping the healers alive and saving there instant casts to save the tank.
When it comes to sorting out healing, it is the person who knows most what they are talking about that sorts it out  doesn't matter what healing class they are.
When it comes to healing meters, i hate them and threaten to kick people that post them from the raid. The person top of the healing meter is often the one that is wasting the most mana in overhealing. DPS meter i don't care about either way. If the DPS classes want to compare dick sizes, that is their choice, funnily enough we have a DPS warrior that out DPS's rogues and hunters!
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