I dont know what im doing wrong.

[Taladril]

Zanbanka, very fair assessment. I agree that looking at meters like this is the most accurate way to get real information. I try to get that sense when looking at our stats.
The bottom line for healer success though is deaths. Now we can't stop someone from doing something dumb but if a tank dies and you were assigned to them that's a problem. If melee or others are dying then healers are probably slacking. Generally that's how it works, though each needs to be looked at in the right context.
For me I would look less favorably on those with high numbers on fights where I know they should be decursing. Gehannas, Shazz, etc. If your healing isn't in the dirt then you aren't decursing enough. There's 2 other classes that can heal but they can't remove curses. Druids that top meters for fights like these care more about their stats than about what's best for the raid.

[Armilus]

Tools

Use Luna for raid bars and ideally, convince everyone else in your guild to do the same. Luna will show incoming heals which is a HUGE benefit for the entire raid because all healers can see where heals are already being cast and target those who don't have incoming heals.

Note: I still like grid way better but on this server it just isn't as functional as Luna.

Once you are using Luna, cast all your healing spells with this macro:
/lunamo Healing Touch(rank x)

This macro causes your spell you cast on whatever target your mouse is currently hovering over as soon as you press the button. Instead of having to push the button, then click, you now just push the button. This will help you start casting before anyone else in the raid.

The last thing you want is an addon called ClassicSnowfall, this addon causes your spell to start casting as soon as you push a button DOWN. The normal behavior is for spells to start casting after you let the button pop back up. It doesn't sound like it's a big deal but trust me, it helps a lot.

Advise

If you are horde then healing as a druid isn't too bad. If you are alliance it's a lot harder because paladins spam flash heal like mad. In either case, you have the slowest heals out of everyone so you have to heal smart. If everyone in your raid is using Luna you can see when heals are already being cast on a target. Never start casting on a target that already has heals coming in, unless you are spamming heals on a tank.

When you look at raidstats, don't just look at efficient healing. Look at efficient, raw and overhealing (in that order).

If you have the lowest overhealing to raw healing ratio of everyone in the raid but are at the bottom of efficient healing, you need to stop caring about overhealing so much. Just cast more heals and let more heals land. Your overhealing to raw healing ratio will get worse but your efficient healing will also go up. If you aren't going OOM 2s after the fight ends, you should be throwing out more heals.

Try to anticipate damage. Use raid addons like bigwigs for the boss ability timers and try to time bigger heals to land right after the tank is hit by a nuke.

In most raids someone will top off your HoT targets before rejuv can tick. If a couple people randomly take some damage, don't bother with a HoT. In fights where damage is consistent and predictable, throw out hots on everyone that you know will be getting hit (for example, melee on golemag).

[Aslan]

Such a beautiful post, suggesting luna, mouseovers, anticipating dmg taken to land big heals to prevent the tank from being nuked. Id also add forecast here, but same as for luna-healcomm, everyone in your raid needs it in order for it to be of any use. I personally couldnt imagine healing in a team without forecast, just look at the huge amount of cast time you can save by being able to interrupt earlier.
...
And then this below

If you have the lowest overhealing to raw healing ratio of everyone in the raid but are at the bottom of efficient healing, you need to stop caring about overhealing so much. Just cast more heals and let more heals land. Your overhealing to raw healing ratio will get worse but your efficient healing will also go up. If you aren't going OOM 2s after the fight ends, you should be throwing out more heals.

Why do you do this! Your task is to not let the player(s): X, Y, Z die. With your leftover ressources (assuming your assignements arent perfectly distributed) you can help out others. Everything beyond that hurts the raids speed. Being oom right when the fight ends is the most ridiculous and hurtful mythu crousing around out there. The whole god damn raid is one fight, after Ebenroc comes Flamegore, not after Ebenroc there is 30 seconds drinking time and then Flamegore comes. After 1 trash pack there is the next trash pack, not half a minute to drink...
Like you maybe went oom back in april in green gear after every pull, if that still happens your healing team has huge dick issues because they are gimping their own efficiency by their desire to be top meters when in fact you could run through the whole dungeon without a single "healer specific downtime" if youd just heal the most efficient way that still guarantees no deaths.

But dont get me wrong, you seem like an experienced healer and surely got it right when it comes to how to handle the class, I completely disagree with the attitude of what it means to be an efficient healing team though.

[Armilus]

If you have the lowest overhealing to raw healing ratio of everyone in the raid but are at the bottom of efficient healing, you need to stop caring about overhealing so much. Just cast more heals and let more heals land. Your overhealing to raw healing ratio will get worse but your efficient healing will also go up. If you aren't going OOM 2s after the fight ends, you should be throwing out more heals.

Why do you do this! Your task is to not let the player(s): X, Y, Z die. With your leftover ressources (assuming your assignements arent perfectly distributed) you can help out others. Everything beyond that hurts the raids speed. Being oom right when the fight ends is the most ridiculous and hurtful mythu crousing around out there. The whole god damn raid is one fight, after Ebenroc comes Flamegore, not after Ebenroc there is 30 seconds drinking time and then Flamegore comes. After 1 trash pack there is the next trash pack, not half a minute to drink...
Like you maybe went oom back in april in green gear after every pull, if that still happens your healing team has huge dick issues because they are gimping their own efficiency by their desire to be top meters when in fact you could run through the whole dungeon without a single "healer specific downtime" if youd just heal the most efficient way that still guarantees no deaths.

But dont get me wrong, you seem like an experienced healer and surely got it right when it comes to how to handle the class, I completely disagree with the attitude of what it means to be an efficient healing team though.

Maybe I should have said "Unless you are going OOM 2s after the fight ends, you COULD be throwing out more heals."

Point is, if you are at 80% mana after a boss fight and were spamming R5 HT, you could have easily been spamming r6 or r7. Or throwing rejuvs out or using regrowth to save someone even though it costs a lot of mana.

On raidstats the ONLY stat you can look at and say "this person is slacking" is raw healing. If someone is way below the other healers in raw healing, they are definitely slacking.

If someone is at the top of raw healing, bottom of effective healing, very few deaths during the raid and their assigned tank never died, then hey great job.

[Aslan]

Yeah in extreme cases these are good indicators. Including that into your thinking when (trying) to judge healers individually is good, but since its a "number", something you can hold on to and point at, there is by far too much focus on it. Sometimes you might be ditching one of your best healers and judge him worse than others even though he is an as essential part of the healing team as the other guy who does high raw heal.
Like... not everyone can do high raw heal (everyone should be able to, skill-wise, but not everyone is supposed to have it on all of their meters.

Few exemples:
-Personally if a healer is at 80% mana at the end of a bossfight with 0 deaths and no close situations I had preferred him to throw out some wraths or lightningbolts, smites whatever . Or have the leadership pick dps alts over main healers.
-The priest who shields low hp raiders > casters on cooldown to save them and give them time to freecast.
-Being a smart hotter, but having your targets topped up by selfish healers or healers without hot-tracker on their frames.
-Having been the one guy that saved the most people from acute death but not having been efficient. Its arguable if its possible to focus on 2 different things, 1) on max output, watching for where to place your next heal by considering heal deficit and 2) still having the full capability to react for a target that is about to drop low (not already low), these things require 2 different views on the matter.

But after all for most cases you can probably rely on what you read out from the extreme cases on the meters you listed, since the above mentionned exemples are in my opinion advanced behaviours and you should notice if a healer is experienced aside from the meters anyway .


This discussion is getting way too deep for a beginners question about how to heal^^

[Hammersplat]

Maybe I should have said "Unless you are going OOM 2s after the fight ends, you COULD be throwing out more heals."

Point is, if you are at 80% mana after a boss fight and were spamming R5 HT, you could have easily been spamming r6 or r7. Or throwing rejuvs out or using regrowth to save someone even though it costs a lot of mana.

On raidstats the ONLY stat you can look at and say "this person is slacking" is raw healing. If someone is way below the other healers in raw healing, they are definitely slacking.

If someone is at the top of raw healing, bottom of effective healing, very few deaths during the raid and their assigned tank never died, then hey great job.

/agree, if you are a druid saving all your mana every fight you should learn to live a little and heal more aggressively. Use some hots or low rank regrowth or rejuv and innervate yourself.

Aslan, if you are a responsible little petal and bubbling people etc you are probably not a druid but a priest.

Even on alliance side druids can top the meters on some fights, not all (if you get stuck decursing or raid healing a fight where no-one takes damage), but actually druids can be the best healer on a fight depending on the circumstances.

lastly you can't really judge a druid on overheal when they are using hots since they don't count here. I'm always using regrowth4 and at the bottom of overheal, but in reality i would be off the charts.

[Imbaslap]

moonglow&NG HT build makes it impossible to even go OOM. (IE start using high healing power trinkets and ZG trinket for spike high heals with literally no mana cost.

druids by far have the most unique specs for healing, giving strengths and weaknesses in different scenarios. Druids are the best healers hands down imo.


judging a healer based on his mana pool is a misperception in itself. different builds require different mana costs, and different spells.

learn the 4 healing druid specs and their strengths/weaknesses before judging the druid's potential in your raid. also make sure the druids in your raid are not all 51 resto or some gimmick spec, gimping eachother's potential healing throughput, and forcing your priests/pallies to cover raid healing slack.
pallies/priests should be prio on tanks as they are the strongest ST healers with the most tools. you only need 1 51 resto to cover hots/swiftmend on 2-3 tanks. any other druid is pure raid healing/tank assist when needed.


TLDR, learn the 3 healing classes, their strengths/weakness, don't judge it based on pure raw healing/overhealing. focus on the RAID not dying, tanks not dying, nonhealers dodging rain of fire and bringing consumables to ensure there OWN survival as well.

everyone has to pull their weight in a raid, regardless of your class. Healing in WoW and other MMO's like it are not as linear as posters are making it seem(higher numbers does not mean they are good/doing their job). high HPS = raiders taking lots of excess damage/healer doing TOO much work and healing. check out Blacklisted's raid stats and you will see all of our healers are tightly close to eachother on raw heal/overheal/efficient heal. then look at TOTAL efficient healing done. that judges the entire healing core's ability and how they function as a team.
also start looking at your raid's death counter on bosses and trash. if you have a rogue dying about 8 times or more on trash, the problem is the rogue, not the healers healing him.

[Zanbaka]

moonglow&NG HT build makes it impossible to even go OOM. (IE start using high healing power trinkets and ZG trinket for spike high heals with literally no mana cost.

druids by far have the most unique specs for healing, giving strengths and weaknesses in different scenarios. Druids are the best healers hands down imo.


judging a healer based on his mana pool is a misperception in itself. different builds require different mana costs, and different spells.

learn the 4 healing druid specs and their strengths/weaknesses before judging the druid's potential in your raid. also make sure the druids in your raid are not all 51 resto or some gimmick spec, gimping eachother's potential healing throughput, and forcing your priests/pallies to cover raid healing slack.
pallies/priests should be prio on tanks as they are the strongest ST healers with the most tools. you only need 1 51 resto to cover hots/swiftmend on 2-3 tanks. any other druid is pure raid healing/tank assist when needed.


TLDR, learn the 3 healing classes, their strengths/weakness, don't judge it based on pure raw healing/overhealing. focus on the RAID not dying, tanks not dying, nonhealers dodging rain of fire and bringing consumables to ensure there OWN survival as well.

everyone has to pull their weight in a raid, regardless of your class. Healing in WoW and other MMO's like it are not as linear as posters are making it seem(higher numbers does not mean they are good/doing their job). high HPS = raiders taking lots of excess damage/healer doing TOO much work and healing. check out Blacklisted's raid stats and you will see all of our healers are tightly close to eachother on raw heal/overheal/efficient heal. then look at TOTAL efficient healing done. that judges the entire healing core's ability and how they function as a team.
also start looking at your raid's death counter on bosses and trash. if you have a rogue dying about 8 times or more on trash, the problem is the rogue, not the healers healing him.

Well since you (and the others) clearly have a lot of experience in healing, how do you usually assign raid healing / assignments? I can also imagine that the healing dynamics are different between alliance and horde, since pallies and shamans differ a lot from each other. Also per faction, what do you think would be the ideal healing composition?

[Lorilay]

Here's what I tend to do on each boss fight (we use 1-2 resto druids in our typical raid comp):

Lucifron: heal a tank for a few seconds and then decurse
Magmadar: spam rejuv on melee (sometimes one is assigned to main tank heal).
Gehennas: decurse, rejuv raid in between
Garr: Tank healing
Geddon: spam rejuv on melee so they can stay in
Shazzrah: spam rejuv on melee and decurse melee
Sulfuron: tank healing and leveling unarmed skill
Golemagg: spam rejuv on melee
Majordomo: tank healing
Ragnaros: tank healing
Onyxia: level unarmed skill
Razorgore: tank healing / spam rejuv on raid
Vaelastraz: Spam regrowth and top the meterz
Broodlord: tank healing
Firemaw: spam rejuv on melee/tank healing
Ebonroc: level unarmed skill
Flamegor: tank healing, light raid healing if hunters are bitches
Chromaggus: decurse and heal dumb melee / tank healing
Nefarian: decurse tank / tank healing

[Armilus]

Yeah in extreme cases these are good indicators. Including that into your thinking when (trying) to judge healers individually is good, but since its a "number", something you can hold on to and point at, there is by far too much focus on it. Sometimes you might be ditching one of your best healers and judge him worse than others even though he is an as essential part of the healing team as the other guy who does high raw heal.
Like... not everyone can do high raw heal (everyone should be able to, skill-wise, but not everyone is supposed to have it on all of their meters.

Few exemples:
-Personally if a healer is at 80% mana at the end of a bossfight with 0 deaths and no close situations I had preferred him to throw out some wraths or lightningbolts, smites whatever . Or have the leadership pick dps alts over main healers.
-The priest who shields low hp raiders > casters on cooldown to save them and give them time to freecast.
-Being a smart hotter, but having your targets topped up by selfish healers or healers without hot-tracker on their frames.
-Having been the one guy that saved the most people from acute death but not having been efficient. Its arguable if its possible to focus on 2 different things, 1) on max output, watching for where to place your next heal by considering heal deficit and 2) still having the full capability to react for a target that is about to drop low (not already low), these things require 2 different views on the matter.

But after all for most cases you can probably rely on what you read out from the extreme cases on the meters you listed, since the above mentionned exemples are in my opinion advanced behaviours and you should notice if a healer is experienced aside from the meters anyway .


This discussion is getting way too deep for a beginners question about how to heal^^

Please keep in mind that my comments are specifically in the context of this thread. AKA, Someone is asking "I am always at the bottom of healing on realm players, how can I do better?"