carrying unskilled healers..

in my own pug experience there are so many unskilled healers out there that need carrying from skilled healers...
it would be nice to give better skilled healers more recognition, but how? what parser stats would be better for evaluation?

there is no such thing as better skilled healers in the sense of a parser trackable stat. The only thing that matters is that the healer doesn't let anyone die and keeps the parties debuffs cleared as well. Healers with higher skill can continue to perform that function while doing some dps and making the run go faster or by maintaining those criteria on large pulls during speed runs.

During 8 man content it can sometimes be hard to tell which healer is stronger if the weaker one is having his slack picked up by the better healer but its usually not too hard to tell who is performing better. WHM should be maintaining nearly 100% uptime on regen on the tank and getting medica II up for things like stomps or splumes and scholar should not have their fairy die by having it in the wrong location and should be getting succor up before aoe damage or maybe dropping a sacred soil. If you are familiar enough with the things healers are doing to make the run easier, then it becomes very easy to spot them when they are not there and identify the weaker healer. This is a great opportunity to coach them and let them know how they can make their own life easier.

A parser wouldn't be effective, but the healer that had to work harder to make up for the other healer's faults would obviously be the one to receive most recognition.

(inb4 a certain infamous WHM on this forum appears in this thread to offer poor insight)

MP remaining can be a bad sign, one full and one empty means something's not working right.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

MP remaining can be a bad sign, one full and one empty means something's not working right.

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Not necessarily.

I would argue that the one ending with no MP is doing something wrong.

No mp in larger than 4 man groups just means they are the main healer. Works just like the main tanks. Can be even more boring than normal, which is why you will often see one healer in cleric stance.

The real problem with trying to use a measurable metric rather than using your best judgement and recognizing the healer on your own is that the metrics aren't stable. For example

MP remaining depends on what the healers are doing. When you are super comfortable with a fight you will likely find yourself wanting to do some dps as well as heal, so you will be burning mana on that or maybe just throwing some extra stoneskins to keep you busy. Also a weak healer using inefficient heals will run out of mana just the same as the good healer having to burn more heals to make up for the weaker one. The reverse is true for staying at full mana. A good healer being efficient is at full, the same as the weak healer basically doing no healing.

Also just because you healed a dps from 25% to full doesn't mean that you healed the right dps to full because they were more likely to take damage next.

Trying to measure amount of healing done is irrelevant unless you can isolate the target that received the healing as well as remove the overhealing so you can verify the healers were putting the healing where it needed to go and weren't overhealing, but even then that still doesn't cover my last point which is why ultimately you have to recognize the healers on your own by knowing the things to look for during a fight.

Best ways to tell if a healer is fulfilling their role properly is to simply pay attention to the state of the tank and party's health and to track what they are casting which is very easy to see with the cast bar near their name in the party list.

Major signs of a bad or lazy healer from my experience.

- "Reactive Healing": A healer that doesn't anticipate damage that will be coming and only waits until after the tank has taken considerable damage before starting to cast a heal. While short, the time between starting to cast a heal and when it goes off can mean the difference between a live tank and a dead tank. Anticipate the attacks and start the cast a little ahead of time so that the actual heal goes off when the damage is taken.

- "Minimalist Healing":A healer that only does the minimum required of them and only heals and as little as possible. If they really need to conserve mp, that is fine but when they sit with a full mp bar and do pretty much nothing, then there is a problem. If the tank is good or over geared and not much healing is required, then the healer should help out and do some dps.

-"I'm a DPS Healing": A healer that doesn't pay attention to the tank or party's health and is more focused on trying to dps than anything else. If not much healing is required, then fine help out some with dps but a healer's role first and foremost is to heal.

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Originally Posted by Merryl

No mp in larger than 4 man groups just means they are the main healer.

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Or that they're severely overhealing.

Healers should have zero problems sustaining their MP assuming no deaths.

A parser for healing also wouldn't be fair at all to Scholars. WHM would always win for healing out, because it doesn't take Galvanize, Sacred Soil, Eye for an Eye, or enhanced virus into account which is significantly reducing damage taken to everybody in the group. Being a good healer isn't always about who can heal the most HP.