What do you expect of a healer?

[MCaliban]

This is for warzones.

 

If you're a tank and you slap a guard on them, what do you expect will happen?

 

If you mainly DPS, when do you expect to get a heal?

 

What's the difference in your mind between an average healer, a good one, and a great one?

[masih_ad_dajjal]

in regs WZ with a tank I prob average 900-1.1 mil..

Without a tank it's prob closer to 750-950...

 

This of course is very situational and dependent on many factors...such as which map it is, other heals...they take away your heals... if 2 it's normal in regs but more than that 1mil is more difficult to achieve, how well the other team tgt's me and tries to shut me down, how well our team is organized and play together...can only heal 30m away, how good the other teams dps is...if they are not doing much dmg then there is less to heal...been on really good teams vs. really bad teams and did only around 300k heals because we just crushed them. Prob some more I'm forgetting.

 

I would say those are good baselines..and I play all 3 heal classes...broad but a decent starting point for what to expect from a good healer, at least as far as raw numbers.

 

EDIT: just a caveat...

-great healers I've seen can get 1.3-1.7 mil heals i never quite got there yet.

-average is 500k -700k

-bad heals is anything under 400k.

but all those are situational like in my example...so I wouldn't judge based on only 1 WZ.

Edited May 29, 2014 by masih_ad_dajjal

[HaoZhao]

What's the difference in your mind between an average healer, a good one, and a great one?

 

The answer is usually key bindings. You can tell who is clicking when those heals are coming in way slower than what could be considered acceptable. Healing requires more effort from the player than any other role in PVP. If you don't have all of your important abilities bound to comfortable keys, the scoreboard is going to reflect that when you fail to break 350K healing in every match.

 

Alternative answer: Great healers are the ones who rolled scoundrel/operative.

[NotAnyOldName]

HPS is what I look at, when people struggle to get 1k HPS in a good game it's a little worrying especially if I am healing in the same game and manage 2k HPS.

[masih_ad_dajjal]

The answer is usually key bindings. You can tell who is clicking when those heals are coming in way slower than what could be considered acceptable. Healing requires more effort from the player than any other role in PVP. If you don't have all of your important abilities bound to comfortable keys, the scoreboard is going to reflect that when you fail to break 350K healing in every match.

 

Alternative answer: Great healers are the ones who rolled scoundrel/operative.

 

yep...naga only way i roll lol

[MCaliban]

I'm a bit surprised that people only want big numbers.

[masih_ad_dajjal]

I'm a bit surprised that people only want big numbers.

 

I was only attempting to provide a baseline for numbers...

 

of course good and great healers do more than that such as using knockback ...to root/slow...stun, mez to get people out of range-protect a cap attempt, etc. or always knowing where the player guarding you is is another one...understand the maps and know when to stay or move to other door/turret...etc. even without calls... using your surroundings to gain LOS but not too much LOS...and watching where low health players are running too when they are LOSing your heals so you can cover down on them in a timely manner... saving burst heals for proper time same with dcd's.

 

Those are some examples.

Edited May 29, 2014 by masih_ad_dajjal

[csant]

I main a OP healer and I have cracked 1.2m healing before. Usually im around 500K+ because it depends on the team, if they are good then I will go all out heals... if they suck then I will probably try to ninja nodes, get some dps in or guard a node.

 

So for me it depends on the team if they are worth healing... I'll heal. If not, then I will worry about other things. =)

Edited May 29, 2014 by csant

[sauerkraut]

What I expect from them is, to stop been a cry baby and keep asking BW for special treatment, because they are healers. They act like they do a world a favor and we have to reward them for been a healer.

[masih_ad_dajjal]

What I expect from them is, to stop been a cry baby and keep asking BW for special treatment, because they are healers. They act like they do a world a favor and we have to reward them for been a healer.

 

True...but i expect dps to know how to play with healers too and stop telling them they suck cause you got globaled in 4 sec...and I also expect dps to know how to beat healers pretty easy and stop complaining they are too op...and with a tank/heal team they are unbeatable QQ... whan whan.

[LanceCorporalDan]

This is for warzones.

 

If you're a tank and you slap a guard on them, what do you expect will happen?

 

If you mainly DPS, when do you expect to get a heal?

 

What's the difference in your mind between an average healer, a good one, and a great one?

 

I can only really speak from a DPS perspective: So other than the obvious "healz meh pl0x" I expect a healer to keep good situational awareness as any decent PvP should have. Know when to stun, knockback, snare, etc. for caps or game changing tactics. Not just stand there as a stationary medcenter, kite the enemy when being focused, make their job and mine easier.

 

I don't expect them to go out of their way to save my stupid *** for accidently overextending if their attention is needed on other players. It is of course always nice to have a guardian angel so to speak haha.

 

I can't really say what makes the difference in my mind between average, good, and great healers; seeing as this is the first MMO I really stuck with a healer in PvP with and I'm still very much in the L2P state for him . However when names of notable healers pop into my head I notice they are durable, can kite well, and keep themselves up as well as surrounding teammates even whilst under heavy pressure.

 

Just my /2cents.

[masih_ad_dajjal]

Good heals will always go out of their way to save your dumb *** of course unless it's really dumb and those actually still trying to help need it more

[LanceCorporalDan]

Good heals will always go out of their way to save your dumb *** of course unless it's really dumb and those actually still trying to help need it more

 

Right, which is why I appreciate it when they are able to take the time to give me an extra life haha. It at least lets me finish what I started... which is normally harassing the enemy heals which gets the enemy team's attention quite quickly.

[avinoamb]

the difference for me consist of 3 things HPS is not one of them.

a great healer will cleanse the right thing in the right time,how rarely do i see ppl who cleanse things like a mez and just try to pump out heals when a simple gcd can save them 10K+ worth of heals and mess up someone burst.

a average healer will utilize cleanses sometimes and not necessarily "the right thing in the right time" and a bad one will not utilize them at all.

the 2nd thing is cc more specifically hard cc,a well timed stun/mez or even a knockback can save someone from dying alot more then just pumping heals on him.

a great healer will mez/stun targets to stop a burst or help score a kill or even knockback someone off the fight for a good amount of time to make a window to top ppl off.an average and bad ones same as above.

the 3rd and for me the most important one is positioning,a great healer will position himself in a way that makes it that much harder to cc/dmg him be it pillar humping or sit in the backline so anyone that want to melee you will need to pass a row of allies to get to you.and knowing when to break position to help your team is just as important.

a great healer is one that can do its job with little interruption because he made the cost of going for him bigger than the benefit.a average healer will be taken out of position easily and a bad one is one that dont even get the concept of positioning.

 

this game is very one dimensional when it comes to healing someone get low you Q a heal you get attacked you pop a cd ect... ect.no need to really Juke things lots of hots and instant casts,and no big game changing healing cd`s to throw on targets so in reality the 3 things i listed are the one that left to separate good healers and bad healers.

[Xtremophile]

There was also this: As a Tank, what do you expect from healers?

[MidichIorian]

I've had several games today in which one guy, usually heavily undergeared too, thought that I was his personal pocket heals. Not only am I not able to heal him through the onslaught of seven when he decides to stray from the group or plant himself in the most obvious of places but it also limits mehealing to him only. It's quite astonishing how some people manage to attract as much damage as they do.

Here's one example from today, I was healing in the 2K hps range and I'm probably not exaggerating if I say that 80 % of it was on a sniper that consistently placed himself next to the node at mid CW. That is the last place you want to be as ranged, especially when you have sniper range. The other team had two snipers, placed on the balconies, so he was constantly in crossfire. Despite all the heals he managed to die 12 times, the rest of the team had 0 to 2 deaths.

 

Another classic is when one knight or warrior decides that that it's a good idea to take on 8 when you've pushed them out of AHG mid. If you do stupid crap like that you're on your own. I'm not going to follow and potentially die too.

 

So people should really ask themselves how they can avoid incoming damage instead.

 

That said, there is an obvious priority order, I'm never going to prioritize a sorc/sage unless it's one of the two per server who actually knows what they are doing, the rest are high maintenance and simply not worth the trouble if you can keep a jugg or other class alive instead. Tanks and other healers obviously take priority over everyone els, assuming they havent proven to be completely worthless.

Edited May 29, 2014 by MidichIorian

[SilverMagnum]

I'll try and answer this from all three perspectives:

 

First, when I'm healing, here's what I expect from myself (I have an operative healer)

 

Good - We win the warzone / arena. I may let some of the DPS die on occasion, the tank might have died once, but we clearly controlled the pace of play.

 

Better - Again, team victory. At most 1 or 2 deaths in my 'area of influence' (meaning if I'm say at mid in civil war, people who die at snow aren't exactly on me). Again, we clearly controlled the pace of play.

 

Best - Once again, team victory. I was on my game, everyone who was in my area of influence lived throughout the entire WZ. I was able to keep everyone's health up, allowing them to preserve DCDs. I played with situational awareness, working cleanses, CCs and even the occasional bit of damage in as well.

 

 

 

As a tank (I have a vanguard tank)

 

Good - The healer (whether another guildie or a PUG) worked well in tandem. He / She kept us both alive for most of the game (we both may have died a couple of times) and we were able to defend our node(s) well enough to win.

 

Better - The healer and I once again worked well in tandem. However this time the healer was also able to do an excellent job of keeping the DPS up. As the tank, I may have died once at most.

 

Best - The healer and I were a wrecking ball, often holding off assaults of three, four, five opponents by ourselves or only with one DPS helping out. Neither me or the healer died at all.

 

 

Now lastly as a DPS (I play nearly every AC in a DPS capacity)

 

 

Good - I recognize that even when I'm the top DPS on our team (which is about half the time), I am the third / fourth priority in terms of heals (tanks / other healer will usually come first), so if I die a couple of times (especially if I know I'm playing riskier than I should be), I don't hold this against the healer as much as I did in the above cases. However I do expect the healer to keep total party deaths as low as possible, especially those of the tanks and healers.

 

Better - The healer was able to keep me consistently healed, especially when I'm playing a melee DPS. I was able to confidently wade into the fray, knowing my healer would keep me alive most of the time.

 

Best - Complete annihilation. What I mean by this is that I was able to spend the majority of the match in combat without fearing for my own life. At most, one or two deaths the entire warzone and I was able to clean up in terms of damage.

 

 

 

Now, I don't expect every healer to fit into the good, better, best paradigm obviously. To me, good is just that, good (as in above average), meaning that under 50% of healers fit into that description. Better would be probably 15-20% and best would be 5-10%

 

What I expect from the average healer is to do their best to keep our team alive and in the fight as much as possible in order to give us a chance to win. In the end if the healer does enough in order for the team to win, nine times out of ten the healer did their job.

[NotAnyOldName]

I've had several games today in which one guy, usually heavily undergeared too, thought that I was his personal pocket heals. Not only am I not able to heal him through the onslaught of seven when he decides to stray from the group or plant himself in the most obvious of places but it also limits mehealing to him only. It's quite astonishing how some people manage to attract as much damage as they do.

Here's one example from today, I was healing in the 2K hps range and I'm probably not exaggerating if I say that 80 % of it was on a sniper that consistently placed himself next to the node at mid CW. That is the last place you want to be as ranged, especially when you have sniper range. The other team had two snipers, placed on the balconies, so he was constantly in crossfire. Despite all the heals he managed to die 12 times, the rest of the team had 0 to 2 deaths.

 

Another classic is when one knight or warrior decides that that it's a good idea to take on 8 when you've pushed them out of AHG mid. If you do stupid crap like that you're on your own. I'm not going to follow and potentially die too.

 

So people should really ask themselves how they can avoid incoming damage instead.

 

That said, there is an obvious priority order, I'm never going to prioritize a sorc/sage unless it's one of the two per server who actually knows what they are doing, the rest are high maintenance and simply not worth the trouble if you can keep a jugg or other class alive instead. Tanks and other healers obviously take priority over everyone els, assuming they havent proven to be completely worthless.

 

THIS SO MUCH! What I expect from DPS when I am healing is to not be a ranged caster and be standing in the open with 5 DPS pounding on you and expecting "overpowered scoundrel heals" to save you because there is no way I can out heal that much incoming damage ESPECIALLY if you make no effort to save yourself by popping CD's, kiting, and LOS'ing. Same goes for MDPS who go super tunnel mode and overextend to the point that I would essentially be in the oppositions back line if I were to try and save you.

[Sappharan]

This is for warzones.

 

If you're a tank and you slap a guard on them, what do you expect will happen?

 

If you mainly DPS, when do you expect to get a heal?

 

What's the difference in your mind between an average healer, a good one, and a great one?

 

The only thing I expect of a healer is effort. I am grateful for people who play healers and I do not blame a healer when I die. Sometimes I feel badly when a healer goes to huge lengths to keep me alive and I end up dying anyway. As long as I occasionally see green over my avatar's head, I am happy. I don't expect miracles from healers, I just hope for the best he or she can do.

[Adaliaya]

The answer is usually key bindings. You can tell who is clicking when those heals are coming in way slower than what could be considered acceptable. Healing requires more effort from the player than any other role in PVP. If you don't have all of your important abilities bound to comfortable keys, the scoreboard is going to reflect that when you fail to break 350K healing in every match.

 

Alternative answer: Great healers are the ones who rolled scoundrel/operative.

 

What about us who rolled them all Bio changes class balance so often so better have them all to always play OP class;)

[truchaos]

Right, which is why I appreciate it when they are able to take the time to give me an extra life haha. It at least lets me finish what I started... which is normally harassing the enemy heals which gets the enemy team's attention quite quickly.

 

Oh come now Neves, I thought you enjoyed chasing me all around the warzones...

 

As a healer I try to watch the tank that slaps his bubble on me, but if he goes charging off in a random direction chasing some enemy healer and leaving me out of guard range with the enemy dps not even giving me the decency of screaming 'Surprise!' first then he is not going to be high on my list of getting heals. On the other hand, if he actively peels, taunts, ensures to his best abilities that i'm not being drug off into some dark alley by enemy dps, and guard swaps when i'm not under fire to another team member who is... he then gets special treatment including his immortality.

 

If it is a dps that go charging headlong into the sea of red- you get one chance. I'll pull your derp tunneling backside out of the fray once. If you leap back in instead of losing the enemy and letting me get your health back to an acceptable level... you are on your own.

 

To me, an average healer is someone who realizes they have green abilities and they know that they should use them on allies. They try to do their job, but may not have the positioning and timing down perfectly. For the most part, they can keep people topped off and heal their team up against equal odds with light pressure with heavy support.

 

A good healer is someone who has good situation awareness in regards to where they are, where the other team is, and the objectives of the match. They can keep their team up against slightly outnumbered odds under relatively decent pressure with light support. Understands some basic tactics of their class beyond 'I heal you!'

 

A great healer can somehow keep their team up under dogged pressure with very little support as well as completing objectives, interrupting key enemy abilities, cc'ing enemy healers, predicting the flow of dps focus before a friendly target is within risk, understands both their class abilities and those classes around them- working with those abilities and not against them.

[Lalainnia]

the difference for me consist of 3 things HPS is not one of them.

a great healer will cleanse the right thing in the right time,how rarely do i see ppl who cleanse things like a mez and just try to pump out heals when a simple gcd can save them 10K+ worth of heals and mess up someone burst.

a average healer will utilize cleanses sometimes and not necessarily "the right thing in the right time" and a bad one will not utilize them at all.

the 2nd thing is cc more specifically hard cc,a well timed stun/mez or even a knockback can save someone from dying alot more then just pumping heals on him.

a great healer will mez/stun targets to stop a burst or help score a kill or even knockback someone off the fight for a good amount of time to make a window to top ppl off.an average and bad ones same as above.

the 3rd and for me the most important one is positioning,a great healer will position himself in a way that makes it that much harder to cc/dmg him be it pillar humping or sit in the backline so anyone that want to melee you will need to pass a row of allies to get to you.and knowing when to break position to help your team is just as important.

a great healer is one that can do its job with little interruption because he made the cost of going for him bigger than the benefit.a average healer will be taken out of position easily and a bad one is one that dont even get the concept of positioning.

 

this game is very one dimensional when it comes to healing someone get low you Q a heal you get attacked you pop a cd ect... ect.no need to really Juke things lots of hots and instant casts,and no big game changing healing cd`s to throw on targets so in reality the 3 things i listed are the one that left to separate good healers and bad healers.

 

This^

[Shadowsentinel]

I remember fighting on arena when teams had 1 healer each: our healer did her job and healed us, enemy healer tried to dps and didn't survive the assault. I think that's what a good healer should do: do their job and not try to do anything else.

[Flintfire]

I remember fighting on arena when teams had 1 healer each: our healer did her job and healed us, enemy healer tried to dps and didn't survive the assault. I think that's what a good healer should do: do their job and not try to do anything else.

 

To an extent......

 

Firstly, a healer who thinks they are a dps is a big nono. their attacks, when not in the right trees, are just not viable.

However, there are plenty of situations (with me as an op healer) that can merit attacking. For example, i use shiv combined with hit and run on the skill tree as a defense mechanism. it gives me a free tactical advantage for a surgical probe, plus increased speed to get away. Also healers, as other people have said, have valuable stuns, knockbacks, roots, cc's etc, that shouldn't be wasted. a healer that stuns the other team's best dps to throw in a few heals knows what they are doing.

and usually healers have one or two attacks that always hit hard, like explosive probe and death from above, so those are fine if they just want to throw a little helping dps in quickly against one player.

[Meskel]

A healer should keep people alive. I know that stupid can rarely be out healed and some players will just die.

 

Any good healer will have more healing done than damage taken. Those that don't are just poor tanks without guard/taunt/dcds.

 

A good tank enables a good healer to keep most everyone in range alive, allowing the tank/Dps play the objectives better (or win the TDM if a match degenerates to that point).

 

A great healer/tank team are immortal and make opponents rage quit