New Policies & Procedures for Raid Heals

Attn: All healers please read!!

First, I want to thank all our healers for putting in the effort to improve their gear, response time, and multitarget healing skills. We've come a long way in the past couple months because y'all have been so willing to do what is necessary to rise to the challege. I feel like we are all on par and I have complete confidence in all our healers' abilty to get the job done.

It's time to take our healing to the next level by improving our efficiency. Specifically, I want to improve our efficiency in mana usage, casting time, and targets healed by decreasing our overhealing done and by overhealing, I mean both the excessive healing of one target and the healing of unassigned targets. The best way I can see to improve our efficiency is to minimize our healing of unassigned targets by having more confidence in each other. Every progression raid healer has the gear and the skill to get the job done.

Here's what I've noticed the last few weeks in raids and I should preface this by saying that I don't live and die by the healing meters, but I do check them to see who is doing what. These numbers are approximate and generalized. Most healers have overhealing of 30-50% and most healers are healing unassigned targets at least 25% of the time. I think the high overhealing percentage is largely a factor of our collective eagerness to get everyone topped off asap and essentially many fights quickly degrade into free for all healing. That needs to stop. I know it is going against healer nature to not heal everyone at once, but we've come this far and I'm sure we can collectively learn to resist the temptation to spam heal unassigned targets. Healing assignments are given for a reason and that reason is to maximize healing efficiency.

To help with this, I will be giving out much more specific healing assignments. I want us to make the leap of faith that unassigned targets will be healed by the appropriate healer. That being said, I don't want everyone getting so rigid and focussed on efficiency that we start wiping. Use your judgment as to whether the assigned healer is healing their targets or whether you need to step in to help. I am asking that y'all delay the response time to healing unassigned targets to give the assigned healer an opportunity to do their job. What I will need from y'all is your input, especially after boss fights, on how the assignments worked out and what could be done to improve them.

And of course there is one more thing, working as a team requires us to factor out our individual egos. I never want to see another healing meter posted before, during, or after raid ever again. The desire to be on top of that meter motivates entirely too many healers to heal unassigned targets and it demoralizes those that aren't dominating the meter. It is not an accurate representation of how we are working as a team and the data can be easily manipulated to make one healer appear to be the best or even to make another healer appear to fail. Every assignment is necessary and every assignment has a different amount of healing required and every healer class has different applications. It doesn't matter how much overall healing you are doing if you aren't healing your assigned target to the extent needed. The healing data that matters most is who healed what target and that cannot be posted in raid, nor should it be. I encourage everyone to use a meter during raid (I use recount) because the data recorded is very useful in improving indivdual performance. Keep the report to yourself. So to repeat: NO MORE POSTING HEALING METERS.

In re innervates: We haven't stated a specific policy on the use of innervates, but we have generally saved them for dire need circumstances. So I'll clear up any confusion by stating an official policy. Innervates are not first come, first serve. In a boss fight situation, an innervate is available to a critical function healer when the boss is below 40%. I will call out in vent who needs an innervate. We usually run with 2-3 druids, so innervates are not super-plentiful and I would rather conserve them for the later half of a boss fight. A healer should never rely on the expectation of receiving an innervate. Part of healing is effective mana management. If you find that you are frequently running low on mana, then you should re-evaluate your healing strategy or ask for a different assignment.

Miscellaneous healing stuff:
- In vent, chatter is fine during trash, but we need to keep vent clear during bosses. Please be respectful and use common courtesy, i.e. no excessive foul language, insults, etc.
- Let's also focus on keeping the pace during raids by minimizing afk's and doing quick rebuffs after deaths. Please type in raid chat if you're going afk and an approximate eta.
- Bring plenty of flasks, elixirs, mana/wizard oil, buff food, reagents to raids with you.
- When multiple targets have died, call out in vent who you are rezzing if we're under time pressure (i.e. hyjal).
- I've heard something like this said before a few times in vent and I never want to hear it again: "you died because I was busy doing something silly irl and I'm not at all sorry about it nor do I feel remotely bad about it." Oh please people! For the love, wait until after the pull is completed before you take a drink or scratch your ass or whatever. Dumb stuff like that causes wipes and results in unnecessary repair bills.

Please feel free to make comments or suggestions. I would like your input!