The Background
I am a guild officer, and the de facto healing lead for our 25-man runs. (Well, I’m also the healing lead on 10-mans I’m in, which aren’t many lately.) As such, I make the healing assignments, and try to assess the performance of the healers, both individually, and as a team.
We have a holy paladin who is a very dedicated raider. I have to confess when it came time to select raid mains, the choice of Healadin over Mage or Hunter surprised me. However, Healadin (let’s use this name to protect the innocent, shall we?) is almost always available for raids, does homework, comes prepared.
Unfortunately, Healadin wasn’t performing at anything near the level of other holy pallies in the raid. Just as I’d gotten to know each of two other regular holy paladins we had, and asked them, in turn, to coach/mentor Healadin, they left the guild. No drama; strictly legitimate personal reasons, but my high-performing Holy Paladins were gone.
To complicate matters, I was not as familiar with how a holy pally does his job as I could have been, so my ability to coach Healadin was pretty much non-existent.
The Process
Somewhat at a loss on Friday, I decided to turn to my fellow bloggers in BA Chat for their insight. First up was Siha from Banana Shoulders, a holy paladin and healing coordinator in her guild. I explained some of the situation to her, as well as I understood it. She helped me to comprehend how a healadin should use his spells, both for single-target and raid healing. She also clued me in to at least one glyph Healadin should be using. Already, I felt ahead of the game. I had some simple suggestions (yes, I took notes!) for things Healadin could employ to improve performance.
Later that afternoon, Anna from TooManyAnnas (her opinion; one I don’t share) logged into BA chat. I asked her if by chance one of her girls was a holy paladin. Gold mine: She’s currently playing one as her raiding main! So I pointed her to a WWS report I had posted, since my chat with Siha. It was from a few days previous, but she was able to gain some insights. She was also able to give me a few more suggestions, some fairly specific.
One of the problems Healadin ran into was going out of mana halfway through heroic Patchwerk. That’s clearly not acceptable. So Anna’s suggestions included using Divine Plea every time the spell was available. Anna recommended liberal applications of Divine Illumination, and to be sure a Glyph of Holy Light was employed. (Since the WWS report didn’t show the glyph proccing, it was easy to deduce Healadin didn’t have one.)
So I logged in early on Kestrel, my Scribe, and made said glyph. I mailed it to Healadin with a note that I’d talked with some experienced friends, who said the glyph could add at least 25 percent to a pally’s overall effective healing.
A short time later, Healadin logged on and we chatted a bit. Turns out there had been some coaching from our former holy paladins before they left, so Glyph of Holy Light was already applied, and the tips regarding Divine Plea and Divine Illumination were already understood. So far, so good! (I should also mention, in all fairness, that Healadin is extremely receptive to coaching and feedback, and had in fact sought me out before for advice.)
Of course, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding…
The Result
To put it bluntly, I couldn’t have been happier. In clearing the Construct Wing Friday night, Healadin showed a huge improvement! Looking at the WWS report, Glyph of Holy Light was as much as 33 percent of Healadin’s effective healing…w00t! Throughput was considerably higher, hps was higher, and in fact, Healadin topped Recount for a couple fights, with reasonable over-healing. Contrast that with earlier results: lowest healing total, highest over-healing.
This wasn’t just a fluke, either: Saturday, we headed upstairs to Sapphiron’s lair, and once again, Healadin was a fully contributing member of the guild-first kill. (Although it should be noted Sapph is a horrible fight in which to assess anything, other than “kill or wipe?”) In truth, the whole healing team was pretty awesome all weekend, but it sure didn’t hurt a bit that Healadin is now pulling a fair share of the healing load.
The Takeaway
As bloggers (and even as non-bloggers), we have access to a vast array of resources, some of which aren’t available to just anyone. More than just a social chat room, BA Chat is a working environment of people helping people. The same can be said for resources such as PlusHeal. Don’t limit yourself when trying to resolve issues: Use whoever and whatever you can to be successful.
Thank you, Siha and Anna, and to the dozens of other bloggers, chatters, and forum-goers who help all of us, every day.
My old guild had a policy of not naming names during post raid analysis, which left (and still leaves) it very hard to know who needed to work on their game.
One of the junior officers broke this policy to try out a more useful analysis. He was flamed heavily by a number of members of the raid, who personally I think were afraid they’d be named next for poor performance, but the ‘lowest DPS’ was a fury warrior. He welcomed the information that he wasn’t doing as good as he could (he wasn’t really a “watch the meters” guy, more just to enjoy). In amongst the flaming of the original poster, some of us linked things like the EJ forums and a few blogs, and from reports I’ve gotten now, he’s actually one of the highest DPS in the guild. Yet the GM/RL still refuse to change the analysis policy.
We don’t do as much post-raid analysis as I’d like. I’m starting to change that by linking WWS reports that I log and upload. Mostly, we rely on Recount, but for healing, it really isn’t sufficient. Of course the links I provide the guild have actual character names, but as is evident above, I’ve disguised both the name and gender of the paladin in question.
At any rate, our RL is more than willing to call out under-performers. I don’t always agree with HOW he does it, but if we want to progress, we can’t coddle raiders.
Excellent news, Kes! I’m glad your healadin has improved – paladins are awesome, after all
And glad I could help out.
Siha last blogged about One (More) Good Reason To Play The Lunar Festival, Again
Most of what I have learned on how to play my chars have been from different blogs, not by asking personally but by reading their posts and their opinions and trying it out for myself.
Sometimes it worked for me, sometimes it didn’t but I am sure of one thing – I would not have had the time or even the inspiration to figure everything out for myself.
So thanks to all bloggers out there sharing their tricks and tips and opinions
Tessy last blogged about Vareesa’s Copper Coin
Why thank you, Tessy! I know I speak for every one of my fellow bloggers when I say that words like yours are the best possible tonic any of us could ask for. /bow
I think helping each other out, and entertaining are the main reasons most of us blog. I may be book-marking this, and coming back to it in about 3 months, when I actually get around to playing a palaidn again.
Tzia last blogged about Hello World.
It’s awesome when you can help someone. I love receiving emails or comments that say that my blog helped in some way =D
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