We have had it before sort of, but I'd like to discuss it more in depth.

Healing. How do you choose when to heal and when not to?

Here is why I ask:

After being a dedicated casual player for years (casual by play style, not by time played), I have now joined a raiding guild. I am absolutely loving it. Its more fun than I ever imagined. That process is another story though.

Ok Nature's Infusion is a great spell with high aggro, this is not news to anyone here. So, I die a lot. Maybe I die more now than I did 3 months ago simply because I am more comfortable with the process. However, I am not sure. So, I asked some more raid-experienced druids in my guild. I was told never be the first to land a heal, always always wait. Tanks don't have to med, they can be rezzed and be gtg with buffs. I thought about that answer. It didn't sit well with me.

So, now I bring the question to a wider audience for opinions.

Thanks in advance.

Yah, don't listen to those guys. The job of a healing druid at a raid is to be the first person to land a heal on the tank. Your job is going to almost always be spotting with NI. The most critical part is the opening 10 seconds, since that is how long it takes for the first heal to land (CH chain). If you are going to be a healing druid, you are going to heal sometimes KNOWING you are druidsplat. But you also will get better with timing and such to be able to minimize the healing some, but you will always die in a healing situation with multiple mobs ;) Well, ok, almost always.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>How do you choose when to heal and when not to?[/quote]
I typically assess each situation and make sort of a mental list of who in my group HAS to be kept alive in order to succeed at whatever it is we're attempting (i.e. prioritizing). If I'm the only healer, then I'm near the top of that list ;) If an encounter relies heavily on CC, then I make darn sure our Chanter stays up. If we have several melee I may let one go in order to keep one up and so on.

I'm not sure there are any hard and fast rules because there are so many variables, but the bottom line is success. If that means that I switch to burn mode in order to finish off a mob in a close encounter and a melee dies as a result, then so be it.

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Times have changed a lot in the healing world and I very much try to avoid landing the first heal because with no DA/DB we're outta the raid and a full mana bar is wasted. Many mobs get done with SR chains rather than CH now so find out beforehand from the clerics which is happening.

For intitial impact a pally will often be assigned to LoH, sometimes several pallys. HoT heals should be on the tank BEFORE the mob is in aggro range whenever its possible, find out what stacks and which are being used.

Most importantly if you really, really have to land the first heal and you expect to get aggro then stand next to the tank to do it. On an AE mob with safespots if you pull him into the healers in the first 5 secs you won't be very popular.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Most importantly if you really, really have to land the first heal and you expect to get aggro then stand next to the tank to do it. On an AE mob with safespots if you pull him into the healers in the first 5 secs you won't be very popular. [/quote]

Excellent point. If you get summoned from a heal, don't back away, because you may end up killing the raid if he follows you over to them.

I don't like landing that first heal, but it seems too many people are afraid of it. I'd rather succeed and die, then to live (for a while) and fail.

Accretion brings up very good points. There are always priorities. If that same wizzy got aggro AGAIN, and you don't have the mana or time to stop and heal him safely, then bye bye wizzy. I make decisions on the fly. Generally my group healer/backup healer is on constant healing if he gets aggro. That is someone I need to live for the duration of the fight in many cases, or I die :D

We do use SR "chains" a lot of the time. We druid are generally instructed to help with this initially and then spot heal the MA as well as any rampage tanks or add tanks. I guess it would be rare for my heal to land first, because it is slow and I do try to wait. But sometimes, even if I am not the first, if the MA dies, I am the next to go.

This is often dependent on how many cleric are present that evening. Maybe I am just making something out of nothing, but I feel like I don't yet have a full understanding of my role here. I hate that feeling.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Maybe I am just making something out of nothing, but I feel like I don't yet have a full understanding of my role here. I hate that feeling[/quote]

There's nothing wrong with feeling that way, especially when raiding. I'm not sure you mentioned what level your raiding at but remember that the higher you get the less you know what to expect, most guilds aren't overly keen to post spoilers and strats. At the top 2 or 3 layers you'll often be going in to an event "blind" and playing it by ear.

You have to prioritize but don't be afraid to get that initial heal on the MT. In fact I try to time it so it hits just as he first gets hit. I don't get aggro too often doing that but mileage may vary.

If there's a choice between healing the MT and some INT caster in your group then bye bye caster. I do try to get everyone and I hate when people in my group get killed but sometimes you have to make hard choices like that for the good of the raid.

I also put everyone ahead of myself. That's not to say I don't heal myself at all because a lot of times I am the only healer in a group on raids but if there's a choice between me and someone else 9 times out of 10 I heal the other person. That's what I'm there to do after all.

There's actually some strategy to healing. Choosing who to heal first, when to heal, what kind of heal, etc. Like anything else it's something you learn with practice. Learn your heals and who your healing and that will go a long way towards keeping people alive.

After spending a lot of my Everquest life nuking I really like the healing role. It can be a lot of fun. I pride myself on being a good one and enjoy being able to keep people up and running and having fun. :)

I expect to go splat many times on a raid from using NI. Of course, most of our clerics also expect it too, so usually watch my health and are quick to toss me a heal when I get aggro. It's a nice joke among them "Seri, I saw your crit heal, and laughed"

Well, another point to consider, if you've been casual a long time, and are just now joining a raid guild, your AC and HP are significantly lower than the more senior druid members. When I first joined my guild, aggro meant death, now, I can survive a round while the slows are going, MOST of the time.

if the tank dies, heal more, if you die, heal less, if you're both dying, uh-oh.

I only tend to notice problems if I don’t allow sufficient time for the tank to build up agro before I heal. If you are healing the MT and dying to the mob he is tanking I’m going to guess that you might be healing a tic too soon. If you are dying to add mobs with agro transfer from heal agro then your CC teams might not be sharp on that particular fight. Lastly, there is probably too much agro tagged to our heals, especially since we don’t have the AC, HPS or aura abilities that Clerics have.

I read on Graff’s where the Wizards were discussing agro issues with mobs. As one Wizard put it:
<em> I don’t have an agro problem. The tanks do. </em>

I find during raids where multiple mobs will be in the camp that all will be tanked at the same time using F8 + assist to heal whoever is getting the spank on works well.

Assist Heal > all

And, just remember when deciding whether to keep yourself or a group member alive, consider whether or not there is another healer to keep the group alive. If you are the sole healer in your group, then choose yourself. 1 of any class dying (short of a cleric or MA) is better than your whole group dying because they have no healer in group. We use heal me hotkeys to help with this.

Heal tactics usually vary with group makeup as well as types of pulls.

If you're in the pull group (monks, mage and druid), you NEED be careful about your heals. I usually start a CH and spam the monk if it's clear. If it isn't, I'll duck out of the complete heal and let the monk die. I usually stick to CH's in monk groups since they can shed aggro easily (applies to rogues too).

If you're in a knight group (aggro tanking for enchanters), then I will usually start CH before mobs are in camp. You're knights are usually targetting and aggro casting on incomming mobs so they will get a round of two of damage before your enchanters can lock their mobs down. If you can time CH to land about 4 secs after the knight gets hit, you'll be golden.

If you're in a caster group ... Ummm, nuke. When casters get aggro, they will die. There's no way you can predict when they decide it's time to chaincast magic based nukes with stun components. Don't even try. If they survive the first round, cast NI and if they are still alive, start CH. Using CH is your way of letting them know that they've been bad and need a 10 sec timeout.

Speaking of Nature's Infusion, let's get into advanced raid healing. NI is your cross-heal spell. You can use reactive cross-healing by assisting a mob and healing whoever is getting hit (usually a knight or shaman ... or druid who likes to debuff). You can also look for "You will not evade me Soandso" and /tar Soa and hope you don't have a Soandso, Soantius and a Soarly in the raid.

In summary. Your CH spells are proactive heals while your NI spell is for reactive healing. You need to learn how your groupmates tend to play and adjust healing to match.

P.S.
You might also be expected to chainspam the MT after defensive is gone on boss mob encounters. No need to worry about aggro here. The MT has had 3 mins of EB procs and damage to hold solid aggro. You, your shammies and fellow druids are all prolly chainspamming fast heals at this point. In this case, you let your groupmates die if they take damage. I'll usually /g "Spamming MT, you guys are on your own." and leave them to their own devices.

We always spread initial healing out, everyone who can heals, shamans, beastlords, rangers, paladins and druids all pump chloroblasts. Once clerics have things under control I'd assist heal with whatever depending on the length of the fight.

Generally if something has lots of adds like Bert ring or whatever I've usually let the clerics deal with the main healing and I watch clerics, slowers and CC and try to keep them up. NI isn't a bad heal exactly but it's much slower normally than a cleric heal anyway, probably the most important focus effect you can get if you're raiding is spell haste of some sort for it so you can land a NI before the cleric buys it. They'll probably buy it anyway really, but at least you can point out that you DID heal them! :)

As you say though, if your're short clerics, well. Dying time! Land early, land often, and and hotkey "/tell cleric_01 Rez moi!; /tell enchanter_00 Quellious stp!; /tell beastlord_00 Vive le Spiritual!"

Yes, yes, I understand assist healing very well, this is my entire job through the night. I get to nuke sometimes, but mostly not, it depends on what we are doing. I suppose I am really talking about the first few seconds when starting to kill that boss. I will give you a made up example. Agnarr. When you click into the room where he is and the MA rushes for him and starts attacking, his health is dropping pretty quick in those first seconds. You see the rate that its dropping, you see the clerics not starting SRs, you know how long it will take for NI, you have to make a decision. What do I do? I always heal. Does it always save the MA? Nope. Do I get pounded for it if the MA dies anyhow? You bet, of course. Me and like 2 other clerics before it gets under control. Is this bad? No idea. Do I wish I didn't have to make this choice? Heck yeah.

Question is, should I bother trying, or let him go down and the SA step up til the clerics catch up with what is going on? That's what I'm talking about. These sorts of situations are always when I get smacked. I spoke with the lead cleric. He said he didn't notice me dying more than he thought I should. Its me. I just feel like I don't have the mastery of raid healing that I do of other things. I was evocation and nonraid for almost all my playing time until the last 2-3 months.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Times have changed a lot in the healing world and I very much try to avoid landing the first heal because with no DA/DB we're outta the raid and a full mana bar is wasted. [/quote]

It took some time, but I've been able to sway several 'old-school' folks to this realization. Good riddance to the days when druids were considered the most expendable in a raid.

Now the question is: Who does more good, druid_A who tosses a single heal and goes splat, or druid_B who provides ~40kHP worth of healing throughout the fight <span style="text-decoration:underline">plus</span> thousands of HP in manaless healing with MGB'd SoTW <span style="text-decoration:underline">plus</span> thousands of damage points to the mob?

Clerics can prep with DI and have DA ready; druids have no such tools to avoid initial heal aggro.

Sure, sometimes we're going to die and that just comes with the healer territory ... but any raid leader who'd pursosely use their druids as a 'one-shot heal' is outdated and should be replaced. ;)

~Firemynd

I heal first, and worry about living later.

Especially with robies like chanters.

You might get laughed at by some druids...but you'll be the druid with VoQ for free when not raiding =P

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Question is, should I bother trying, or let him go down and the SA step up til the clerics catch up with what is going on? That's what I'm talking about.[/quote]

I would heal him 9 times out of 10. I don't like early tank switches, they set the tone for the whole fight. Then again, I can survive a few boss mob hits prior to the elemental planes. I'll die 1 out of 10 times when I am the first healer to land a heal. To me that's a good ratio since the tank will die 9 times out of 10 if that heal didn't land.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Sure, sometimes we're going to die and that just comes with the healer territory ... but any raid leader who'd pursosely use their druids as a 'one-shot heal' is outdated and should be replaced.[/quote]

I'll agree whole-heartedly here. I find that our leaders leave it up to me to define my role. If I like to nuke, they don't discourage me (unless we are short on healers), but I generally take on the role of a spot healer since most of our other druids prefer the nuking role :)

Druids are great raid additions, just do your best and contribute in any way you can. With experience, you'll feel more comfortable about when to heal, who to heal, how to heal and general raiding druid techniques. It's a huge learning curve, but very rewarding as you seem the marked improvements.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Question is, should I bother trying, or let him go down and the SA step up til the clerics catch up with what is going on? That's what I'm talking about. These sorts of situations are always when I get smacked.[/quote]

Always spot heal early especially if it looks like the tank is going down. If you die, you just tell them you took one for the team! Keeping the MT up is the most important!

...first, I am often called an exploding halfling. I don't take dmg well...at all. So if I get agro, I die. Rare that I survive agro at all.

Knowing that, it makes healing much more challenging. From my experience so far...

* Some zones are worse than others. In Tactics, for instance, NI seems to draw more agro than in other zones. Not sure if it is the relative level of the mobs, or how fast they get people down to the point of needing a heal.

* Other zones like VT it is not so terrible to get heal agro. I can generally survive and even "offtank" a slowed VT mob without trouble.

* I go into each raid knowing that at some point I will have to cast a suicide heal. It makes it easier...knowing you will die for sure.

* For mobs in Tactics, I wait as long as I reasonably can. Lower health on my heal target adds to their agro from the mob, which makes it less likely I will pull it off them (and they will ahve more time tobuild agro normally).

* I have healed the people I heal long enough to have a sense of how long I can wait. Generally in my guild, druids are healing offtanking paladins. That works out pretty well cuz they can chain stunn if theyget in trouble, and LOH themselves if it gets urgent. They also hold agro well. Chanters are harder to deal with and often you can't even get off a heal fast enough to save them.

* Beware off the impact of new Foci. When I got my legs, I was not really ready for the impact faster NI's had on my agro. I knew it would happen but I still died a few times getting used to the faster heal.

* I used to chain cast CB in tactics, but the truth is it heals so little you basically make no impact with it. You basically reduce the mob's dmg output slightly while you chain the cast. Very safe for agro purposes, but you are not really helping anyone.

* The one I most often forget is make sure you are not that close the mob that is hitting your target when you NI them. Proximity agro plus heal agro usually puts me over the top. I agroed 7 mobs that way on an RZ run the other day. No, no I didn't survive.

* The most challenging thing can be dealing with NI agro while healing someone during a boss mob kill. It is critical taht you not pull agro, and yet you still have to fire off those heals. Best way to handle this we have found is clear communication in our druid chat channel...see someone else's NI message you take a break and try to keep your agro down.

how do i choose to heal and when not to?

if it's necessary, i heal. the question should be: how do you choose if it's necessary to heal?

if the chanter is getting eaten.
if the fight is just beginning.
if the target after /assisting mob x should not be getting hit.
if there is a rotation for blast heals or TR/KR.
if the clerics sucked an ae interupt.
if the a mt goes down.
if anyone announces they have rampage.
if you have an assigned person(s) (chanter, cleric, melee, shaman, your group, etc...) to keep alive.

basically, you know when you should be healing. you may die. you may not. that can be altered slightly, depending on your aa's. defensive aa's help you live after overagroing on blast heals. healing aa help you make a less powerful heal (chloroblast) more raid-effective.

if it's your job to spot heal, or watch a shaman, or whatever, then you die doing your job....
....which is by far the better choice than 'choosing' to not heal, for fear you may get hit, watching shaman get eaten, the chanter crumple to unslowed adds, the tanks attempt to recover, the mt going down, and then you die anyway...

alyn cross
forces unknown

Its so interesting to get insight on how people think when they make these decisions and what factors they look at as the most important.

Thanks so much.

here's a suggestion i just thought of. i do it, but never considered it anything more than a friendship; but it helps to learn how things work, too:

get tight with a cleric, a chanter, a shaman, and a tank. spend some time learning what they do, how they do it. this will help you understand how it all comes together resulting in a dead god, and understanding what you need to do to help them.

and i wholeheartedly believe that a dead druid who's only down 1000 mana from a pair of blast heals is better than any of the other options. usually, you're called upon to keep people up, and in the first 10 seconds of a battle, if one of the key tanks, debuffers, or healers goes down it's very hard to recover before it's a lost cause. a dead secondary healer, however is not as big a loss. mebbie i'm too accustomed to our army of druids, though. we often field 10 or so druids in a single battle.

alyn cross
forces unknown

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>and i wholeheartedly believe that a dead druid who's only down 1000 mana from a pair of blast heals is better than any of the other options. usually, you're called upon to keep people up, and in the first 10 seconds of a battle, if one of the key tanks, debuffers, or healers goes down it's very hard to recover before it's a lost cause. a dead secondary healer, however is not as big a loss. mebbie i'm too accustomed to our army of druids, though. we often field 10 or so druids in a single battle.[/quote]

Dead on in my opinion. Well said. The first 10 seconds of the battle is my specialty, imho. People notice when you crit a heal in the first 10 seconds and they see that you save the tank. People watch me die to save the tank, and it actually lands me a ton of exp groups, hehe.

soandso tells you, 'Come to PoE, need a healer!'

And that NEVER happened before, afterall, I AM a druid lol

In my guild we have a running joke... you heal those that tipped you ahead of time. ;)

I seem to have a knack for landing my patch heals just as the tank's about to bite it. This has been especially true lately. Kind of fun to do although I'm not sure anyone has noticed and I'm not going to toot my own horn. Whoops, guess I just did, hehe. :mad: :p

1st of all on just about any givin raid. Your clerics are alot more important then you are. There's no way any CH's should land b4 you have pumped out at least 1 NI and are on the 2nd or 2 have hit. If somone's gonna get gibed, I want that to be me and not the MT or a CH cleric, I matter in the fight but alot less then either of those 2. I can usually take at least 1 round of melee unless they have an amazing round or proc on me. Worst case scenerio you get a rez and be back ready to go 1/2 way throgh the fight.
As far as the healing/nuking rampage/group thing, well I /assist back and forth all the time on alot of mobs. Some I don't like the ones who can 1 round just about any tank. But I usually /assist MT check mob /assist mob check MT if everything seems to be ok in healing I'll head back to the mob and throw a few nukes and always check who's on Ramp.
Other then that I try to get summoned with the mob at 0% that means I gave it all I could =P

heal the MT ...

dont even hesitate...

send me a tell on AB if you want some other tips = )

Actually if you're dying regularly in a raid because you're healing, then something is very wrong with you raid's healers setup.

When handling trash yard mobs, I find that there are two roles that healers need to fill in a raid, the tank healer and the priest/caster healer. Clerics and druids can fulfill either one role. The key thing to remember is not to do both roles simultaneously or the aggro generated will result in a flattened cleric or druid, I guarantee it.

<strong>Tank Healer</strong>
As a tank healer your job is, well, to keep the tanks alive. In raids where multiple incoming mobs are common, there should be a few tank healers, roughly one tank healer for each incoming mob would be good. When I am in the tank healer role, I have a set of /target ??? macros hotkeyed (where ??? is the name of the tank I am watching). This way, I can quickly target and monitor the several tank's hp.

The tank healer is the one who will get the mobs' attention, turning to whack them instead of the tank as they are usually the first to land a heal. In these situations, there are 3 cardinal rules for a tank healer to remember.

1. Do not panic and run about. Running about is about the worst thing you can ever do when a mob is on you.
2. Have a "The mob is on me!" hotkey and spam it until you get healed. Have faith that the priest/caster healer is doing their job. Usually, you shouldn't die if the priest/caster healer is doing their jobs.
3. Try not to heal yourself as it generates even more aggro, causing the mob to stay on you longer. In fact, simply don't create more aggro until the mob is off you.

<strong>Priest & Caster Healer</strong>
Also called the assist healer, this healer's job is to assist off mobs and spam quick heals on priest or caster members who somehow happen to get the mob's attention. Usually, the people you heal are the tank healers, slowers, crowd controllers and debuffers although sometimes it can be an over nuking wizard or two (this should be rare if your raiders are experienced).

Ideally there should be many many assist healers in a raid. The idea here is threefold -
1. to have 2-3 assist healers patch healing one person.
2. to spread the heal aggro. Ideally, assist healers should grab aggro only rarely.
3. to ease the mana usage as these quick heals (like NI) can be very mana intensive.

Assist healers should also be spread thruout the raid area so that they can assist off different mobs. Most important thing for an assist healer to remember is do not heal the tanks unless their health bar is very low. If you're tied up healing a tank (that a tank healer is supposed to be healing), you might not be able to switch to patch heal a caster or priest who can't withstand the beating like a tank class can.

There has been alot of very very good raid healing advice in this thread and I'll just reiterate what some others have said for the most part.

On a boss mob where its just the boss and no adds I think those who said that EVERYONE rangers, pallies, druids, everyone who can heal should toss a small heal at the MA while you are getting the mob debuffed. I am starting to use chloroblast as my first heal on some bosses now and then follow that with a NI depending upon how many additional healers our on the raid. HOWEVER, if either other folks arent helping to heal to start or just arent alot of additional spot healers then I'll toss out a natures infusion off the bat, and try to be as FAR away as I possibly can be when I do it. Early tank switches are bad bad bad bad news if you have to die but your heals mean no tank switch you did about the most important thing you could do.

A far more dangerous situation happens when you are fighting trash say doing the RZ script or a trial in earth or fighting content in say air or water and a bunch of adds come in at once. When this situation happens generally in my guild the tank healers are clerics and are grouped with their tanks usually 2 clerics and 2 tanks in this group. This is really helpful because it allows your clerics to use divine arbitration to effectively heal during the first few seconds without generating any heal aggro. What I do in those situations is assist heal off the mobs and cast spot heals on the shamans/enchanters/clerics/other druids who are getting beat on while your crowd control team works to get things mezzed and slowed. If you have multiple people spread around the raid each assisting different mobs you can really keep your casualties to a minimum. If you heal too early though before anything is slowed you often get heal aggro from multiple unslowed mobs and your dead =) I find that I am ducking off heals now more than ever before as I target someone who might be getting hit then see there health not dropping much wait a alil longer to heal them to lessen heal aggro that or I am using chloro more now as my first heal spell cast.

Heres some advice for agnarr to help you avoid heal aggro on him. Agnarr can be snared and rooted. In fact your raid can send in a debuff team plus some snare/rooters and keep his ass locked off in a corner of the room for abit while everyone else charges in disintegrates the portals and then come back to agnarr who is standing tashed/snared/rooted in a corner and COMPLETELY debuff him then send your tank in against a totally slowed/debuffed agnarr, AE taunt and blammo he has aggro for the rest of the fight. IN FACT if I'm keeping agnarr snared I will often chain cast snare/root for awhile during the portal destruction time and so as soon as the tank gets a taunt off his aggro is SOO high you never have to worry about him aggroing casters the rest of the fight.

That was a made up situation that sort of encapsulated the type of problem I was encountering. I guess what I have learned here is that I am pretty much doing what is expected and I could maybe wait a tick more and see what happens.

Thanks all.