Question for tanks/GM's about healers.

[Ikken]

I run disc in raids so my playstyle isnt what im going to be talking about.

First question is if you have 2 coh priests in the raid. One has a normal CoH spec and is semi-under geared, but is more efficient with his mana, and heals more, and then you have the next CoH priest who has better gear, but a gimped spec, is missing out on 2 or 3 essential mana gain / +healing talents, runs out of mana and asks for innervate before phase 1 every fight. Do you neccessarily care whether or not the priest with the worse spec hasnt read up on what he needs to be doing to better himself as long as the fight goes down? Or would you want him to actually progress in personal efficiency so fights are just that much easier?

And if it would be the latter, how would you want someone in the guild who see's this problem to come tell them what they need to do, or tell you what you see going on, without making anyone mad or going on the defensive?

[qygibo]

If a priest with a gimped spec yet great gear is being outhealed by someone who is in lower gear yet a proper spec, I'd want to have a serious sit down with the first priest. To me I would see the priest with great gear as someone who is just being carried along for the ride, and that's unfair to the other healers who have to do the extra work.

In fact, I would probably sit down with the nicely geared priest and tell them just that. A healer who isn't specced properly and who is being outhealed by someone lesser geared is being lazy, and you can't have a lazy healer keep those habits, especially if you want to progress. Point them in the direction of good resources to use, have them look at specs that seem a bit more ideal for what you feel is necessary for your raid/guild, have some gear suggestions handy or know someone who knows that, etc. And hey, if you have to be mean, sometimes being mean is the only way people will see that they need to shape up.

[orcstar]

If you're the same role in raid and even better, the same class, then be up front but nice.

Yeah some people are carried along, but often they want to improve but don't know where to start. Key here is te keep being constructive.

Also the nicely geared priest might have been in guild longer and while being carried, be more reliable then the worse geared priest. Even more of a reason to educate people.

[NewfieDave]

Rather than flat out accusing him (which will just put him on the defensive) I recommend getting one of the Priests to ask him some questions about his spec and start up a discussion. Something along the lines of "I was thinking of respeccing and was looking at the talents you picked. What do you think of your spec?" It could go one of two ways: the discussion leads to the poorly-spec'd Priest trying out some different talents (or at least explaining why he specs the way he does), or there is no discussion. If there is no discussion, there is probably a problem with the player that goes beyond spec issues.

I had to deal with a player of the second type when I used to play my Lock in BC. Anybody who played a Lock during that era knows that there were quite a few useful Lock talents that became redundant if more than one Lock had them. Most Locks in my guild were easy to coordinate specs with, but one in particular refused to acknowledge that anything about his spec was bad. Any suggestions made to him were ignored, and if you questioned his decisions he would make meaningless comments like, "I do plenty of damage the way I am." Plenty is swell and all but when you're trying to make progress through new content it's better to do plenty + X. The guy just wasn't a team player and only cared about getting "his" loot. Guess who didn't get a ginvite when our guild disbanded and the core raiders reformed?

[Lizana]

I have a simple set up in my raids.

I tell you what to do, you do it. You dont do it, you fail repeatedly at doing it, or you just suck so bad you cant do it, you dont come to my raids, ever again. I will bench people that are just sucking, and then make them run a heroic run. I will point out in said heroic run when they should be doing other things. I will even go so far to post out exact specs and key binds that they are to use in raids.

They problem i have with "starting a conversation" is that if his spec is bad , 0/61/0 for example, there is no discussion of hey why did you do this. I honestly dont care. Theres 24 other people in the raid i have to lead as well. Asking some one ""I was thinking of respeccing and was looking at the talents you picked. What do you think of your spec?" denotes that the person is intelligent and has a good spec in the first place. If they have a couple points in a bad spot, then thats a valid way to address it, but if they are crap spec, and dont seem to grasp the basics of the class, they dont need a discussion they need to be sat down and told how to play.

Think of healing like learning to drive. When your learning, did your instructor/parents ask you why you decided to run the red light, or take a turn too fast, or did they tell you you did it wrong and told you the right way to do it. In both driving a car and healing, if you do it wrong you kill someone.

[NewfieDave]

If a Priest is spec'd 0/61/0 or any other terrible spec it has to be for a reason. Maybe they just respec'd from shadow and have never healed before. Maybe they don't understand the importance of Meditation for mana regen. Maybe they're 7 years old. Whatever the reason, a friendly discussion is a non-hostile way to get to the root of the issue. If they have two ears and half a brain they should be able to listen to your advice (which should be rooted in sound logic) and decide on their own to respec to someting more suitable.

I take my WoW pretty seriously because I enjoy raiding and the feeling of making progress as a team, but taking WoW seriously doesn't mean being a serious dick to people who aren't "pro". It's been my experience that raiding or any other social aspect of WoW is much more efficient and enjoyable when everybody is having fun. Getting yelled at by Mr. Anonymus on the other side of the Internet kills fun.

If more good players treated underacheivers with respect and actually tried to pass on some of their knowledge instead of saying, "you suck. /ignore" then the whole game would benefit. A bad player is not a player with low DPS, or who lets his tank die when there's a lot of raid damage, or who has a terrible spec. Those guys are just a work in progress. A bad player is somebody who can't follow direction, is anti-social in behaviour, or shows no willingness to perform at a reasonable level. Those are problems that can't be fixed, but there are many that can. You can take a noob to water, but you can't make a noob drink. The people who refuse to drink are the ones to /ignore.

Think of healing like learning to drive. When your learning, did your instructor/parents ask you why you decided to run the red light, or take a turn too fast, or did they tell you you did it wrong and told you the right way to do it. In both driving a car and healing, if you do it wrong you kill someone.

Except you can't respawn at the graveyard in RL.

[Ikken]

Its just... The priest I'm talking about completely negates mana regen, and focuses purely on numbers. We confronted him and he said "I dont know what you guys are talking about, the only other person beating me in the meters is "insert random CoHer here" so I dont see the problem"

/sigh

[Ceravantes]

Its just... The priest I'm talking about completely negates mana regen, and focuses purely on numbers. We confronted him and he said "I dont know what you guys are talking about, the only other person beating me in the meters is "insert random CoHer here" so I dont see the problem"

/sigh

Stop giving him the innervates, then show him the meters

[Kelstet]

I have an achilles heel of turning out good raiders, some of the guys that ran with me in the 40 man days in my guild went on to heal/dps/tank for some of the worlds best guilds. If you are noticing a player is struggling and perhaps missing out on some things that would be defined as 'essential' for their role you might find them responsive just to ask if you can share some advice. I've noticed in the past when I and my ex-wife were the main healers for our guild, I on my resto druid at that time, she on her holy/disc priest most players are receptive to help because let's face it, in this game you don't come across many people that are willing to help others in a serious fashion other than l2p or some other such bullshit.

My advice be courteous about how you are offering to give help, and be ready sometimes to prove your point via meters/wws so that you can visually show them where they are struggling. Give it a shot, you might be pleasantly surprised. Now I know this doesn't sound the case but I'm also a believer that spec does not make the player. I threw on my healing gear on a gruuls one time and was one of the top three healers for the fight with little to no OH being done so...

Just my two cents.

Kel

[Lizana]

Heres a better idea, Stop using meters. Healing meters are flawed systems at best, total fabrications for information at worst. Assign each COH priest to a different group, Chain pull the instance, No invenerates or anything for the crap priest. Everytime you have to stop becuase they are out of mana, just make a raid announcement, "Sorry Guys, PlayerX has run out of mana, we need to stop so they can catch up on their mana, Good job playerY for keeping your mana pool up."

[NewfieDave]

Healing meters are flawed systems at best, total fabrications for information at worst.

So true.

Healing meters describe one aspect of how you heal. I still use recount on my Priest, but it's to analyze my own data. Comparing healing meters doesn't usually offer much insight. Usually the guy with the biggest, fastest heals who gets to use them the most often wins the meters. Razuvious you can't compete with a Paladin. Maly or Saph you can't beat a CoH Priest. Winning the meters doesn't mean anything if you go oom in the process.

[kolben]

If your guild doesn't already have a culture where people bring up areas for improvement, then it's a good time to start. Personally as a guild leader I'd set the tone as being non-personal, somewhat detached, and present it to the group as "let's get this solved". People with very thin skin may still be offended, but you can't let problems just run you over because nobody wants to acknowledge it.

Generally I have addressed the problem directly not the people behind the problem, as in "The ranged DPS needs to get out of the fire", not "Joe Blow needs to get out of the fire".

It's tough, important thing is to develop a relationship where people don't feel like they are being called out or slandered. Which is all about approach.