Heal sniping = mana inefficiency & overheal

[_gynx]

I've been on both sides of this. When I formed my guild I was primarily healing as a Disc Priest, but would toss out heals on raid as well. I guess it was partially due to a lack of trust in the raid healer, though he was an amazing healer sometimes those big heals just seemed so slow. When I was able to relax though and just let him heal he quit the game, so we had to find another healer. Our new healer ended up being a Holy Pally, so I switched to Holy (always had it as my secondary spec anyway). Now though I'm feeling the burn! I get too far into my heal to be able to cancel but my targets are going up. I wouldn't care if it wasn't screwing up my mana efficiency so much, healing targets who don't need healed, and if I wasn't covering the tanks quite a bit. The overheal wouldn't even bother me as much, knowing where it was coming from.

How do you handle heal sniping? Is it one of those things that we just gotta put up with, or is there a better system to help prevent it? So far it's not really caused any major issues, I'm just a bit worried that it might.

[KnThrak]

Most people will tell you to just bring less healers so each healer is sweating doing their own role.
This works, but is a risky endeavour. If you misjudge how many healers - or what healers - you need you end up constructing a situation where the healing is 'just barely' enough. Slightest misstep of anyone, and it's a wipe.

You don't want that. In fact I'd say we 6-healer Festergut, we could 5-healer it if the stars align - but we'd never be stupid enough to plan for that. Things never work out like they should, anyways. :P

So the easiest way to assign in more detail. If you have a Resto Shaman and a Holy Paladin on the tanks, have the Paladin heal both tanks via Beacon of Light and the Shaman heal the active tank. This works out nicely with the lingering damage effect bosses like Gormok or the cleaving bosses like Marrowgar. Alternatively have the Holy Paladin heal the current tank (if there's no split), and the Shaman CH over the tank to help heal the melee.

For raidhealing assigning certain spells can often work nicely. Resto Druid carpet bombs the raid with HoTs, Holy Priest uses CH whenever the timered raidspike happens, followed by PoH (prestacked Serendipidy!) on an assigned group, then flashhealing the remaining spikes. This reduces overhealing to the FH-spam at the end.

It's a lot about assigning healers according to the fight mechanics. If you know you're 3 healers, and for abiltiy X each has a specific assignment, you know what the others will be doing. If they aren't ,getting twitchy, crosshealing - talk to them. Especially Priests and Shamans can easily invest more mana&time into applied DoTs or the odd nuke, and every little bit whittled off the boss helps. These two classes should never truly run into boredom once their own targets are healed.

[Chamenas]

I wouldn't worry about it unless said healer starts going OOM or their assigned targets (presumably the tanks) begin to drop when they shouldn't. It may not be the most mana-efficient thing, and it can make your heals look like crap, but as long as people are getting healed sooner, there's no issue with that. If the other healer starts talking crap about your healing on the meters, then there would be an issue too. Otherwise, meh. In Cataclysm it might be more of an issue. In WotLK it's not a big deal.

[_gynx]

I'd not have as much of an issue with it if I wasn't having to step in to cover her assignment while she's playing with mine =p Some fights mana is more of an issue too so I'm getting slightly annoyed at times. I'll just talk to her and tell her to beacon the tanks and worry about them more. As I get more used to Holy mana efficiency isn't such a problem. I noticed a big difference even just last night, so yay.

We've been 2healing most things, 'cause we're a smaller guild running 10mans. Some more heal intensive fights we've had our boomkin healing, but he's in boomkin gear as a tree so it's not much helpful. I do believe we have a shammy coming who is going to switch back and forth between dps and heals though so I'm looking forward to that =)

[Rakirne]

Just as tanks need to communicate so do the healers in any raid. If your running 2 raid heals then you should discuss with the other healer who has the priority of the tanks and who the raid. Chances are if you two heal most thing (depending on gear) your focus is not going to deviate from your assignment. Fights like Festergut will almost certainly lock you into raid healing or tank healing...

For 25 mans I usually coordinate healing splitting it up into groups.. One healer will take tanks and the other heals will be assigned to a specific group (usually based on healing type) for instance I would never assign a chain healing shaman to scattered ranged dps thats not effective. But I dont see a problem with a tank healer helping on the raid if the tanks dont require constant attention.

Playing with a person constantly will get you into a groove. You both will come to understand how each other plays and then anticipate what the other will do in various situations. Then heals magicly click and amazing heals and saves come..

My suggestion is keep talking with your other healer to tweak the healing to make it more effective and less of a hassle on mana.. Once you get past the "Im better than you little kid crap" you can progress a little further.. Show boating doesnt help raids... Just doing your job does.

[NewfieDave]

Overhealing and mana inefficiency are only bad if you go OOM, which is rare these days.

The true cost of heal sniping is the opportunity cost: you could have spent that global cooldown healing somebody else. If you're running with two healers, and you each have a knack for targeting the same person all the time, your heals will not be distributed smoothly across the raid. You can do three things to remedy this:

1) Use raid frames that show incoming heals. I know Grid has the capability to do this, and I'm sure other mods have it as well.

2) Communicate with the other healer(s) to let them know what their "assignments" are. These days assignments are kind of muddied, but still serve as useful guidelines. If you're running with Holy Pally + Holy Priest, his assignment will vary based on the number of tanks. One tank tanking at a time, he can Beacon the tank and heal the raid. Two tanks tanking at a time, he can Beacon one tank and heal the other. Your job should be to make use of the HoTs and group heals that the Paladin lacks, but don't be afraid to contribute to healing the tanks as well. Overhealing on a tank is preferable to a dead tank.

3) Wait for Cataclysm to come out, Leap of Faith the Holy Paladin into the fire, then let him die and do all the healing yourself.

[Errvalunia]

Using a healing mod that tracks incoming heals (I think the different ones communicate through LibCommHeal or something like that) is essential. Grid, Healbot, and VuhDo all TALK to eachother so that even if your paladin is using Grid and you use VuhDo you should still be able to see where heals are incoming--and THEY should be able to see where they're incoming as well. If they're "sniping" your heals and not taking care of their own assignment, yell at them to do their own job.

Heal sniping is only really a problem if you're running OOM, or if some people are getting overhealed while others die. OR, if you're QQing because they're higher on the meters than you. The whole point of assignments, in my raid, is not to eliminate/reduce overhealing--it's to eliminate both tank healers healing the paladin tank while the warrior tank dies to the cleave effect.

Overhealing really, truly, isn't a big deal. But if they're letting their own assignment fall by the wayside, you definitely have a problem.