Showing posts with label healer survey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healer survey. Show all posts
A Healer's Thesis
Well, for those of you who are linked via Circle of Healers, you may have noticed an increase in your traffic this weekend, due to WoW.com's post about the DPS survey version that I am pretending doesn't exist, and absolutely refuse to link to.

DONT CLICK ME OR YOU SUPPORT MAGES

Pssst Hinen, how are you liking trying to keep up with all the responses?

Mike Schramm, who wrote the article, also noted: "it'd be good to see this put into a spreadsheet or graph, and maybe give us a more quantified look at what people think of their class."

That actually made me feel really bad, though I know that was not the intention. The schoolgirl side of me kicked in, and I've been spending most of the weekend assembling the data, which is a lot more involved than you might suspect.

I will no longer be adding responses to the list, though if you do respond, feel free to continue adding a comment with a link to your response! At some point I have to demarcate an end to the responses so that I can try to put everything together. I currently have over 100 survey responses I am translating from text (copied and pasted from websites, emails, and comments) into a spreadsheet format - and that does not necessarily include the people who made responses for several different healers in one survey, as that will require a bit more effort. I even tried to include people who had provided their survey responses in comments on OTHER people's posts.

19 Holy Priests.
18 Disc Priests.
19 Resto Shammies.
30 Resto Druids.
20 Holy Pallies.


That's a rough estimate of the number of responses for each class. I COULD be working on my thesis, eh? Yet, here I am, trying to figure out ways to convert anecdotal and multi-faceted answers into something that can be quantified. As much as part of me feels guilty for procrastinating assembling all this information, there is another part of me that is glad I didn't put it together earlier. As a person who deals with this kind of data quite a bit in real life, it is very easy for people to look at the graphs and charts put together at the end, and completely disregard the surveys themselves, which provide a LOT more information than the combined results ever will. The assembled final data will not be able to capture the myriad of different anecdotes given by players regarding the different things they love about their class, their habits, the things they hate, etc. I basically have to attempt to water everything down into the most easily quantifiable answers, which means I may misrepresent some people's intentions - especially since there were two questions on my survey that were poorly written, and I am still trying to figure out how to translate the answers to those questions.

Despite the fact that one person did offer to help me (thank you Saunder!), I have decided to put it all together myself in an effort to keep the methogology clean and consistent through all the questions and answers. There are approximately 300 pages spread through 6 different word documents full of responses. I have my work cut out for me!



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Healing Survey Update
So, the healing survey is still growing. In case you thought I just posted the questions, and let people go to town on their own blogs, I thought I would make a little post to let you know what I'm doing with mah baby.

Though I stated repeatedly that I would only include people on the list if they left me a comment... well, I'm a little too OCD to actually follow through on that. While it definitely HELPS if people leave a comment, I have been expending a lot of effort in tracking down any responses I can find to it, and linking to them. Obviously, if the responses are on a guild forum, this isn't something I can easily do - especially since about 2/3 of the guild forums that link to Circle of Healers are in a foreign language (why doesn't anyone post in Latin? Oh that's right, because I wasted 7 years of my life learning it!).

Llyra over at Healing Way finally posted her own response to the questions, and noted at the end of the survey that she suspected there were lots of foreign translations as well. This is absolutely true. I have linked to two foreign translations on the list (Finnish and French), but if there are other translations, I am still in the process of tracking them down. (I also just noticed that the French Proprieter over at wowfrostmage has linked to several French responses for me... merci beaucoup! ::did i spell that right?::)

There is also an interesting little IP that has been going through all the responses from a nice little place in California called Irvine. Read into that what you will.

So what do I intend to DO with all these responses? After all, didn't I promise to "analyze teh dataz"?

This has proven to be a lot more difficult and tedious than I originally hoped (also, when I posted it, I had no idea it would get to be so big), but rest assured, I AM trying to assemble all the information. In a spreadsheet. Nomnomnom <3 spreadsheets. Sans the foreign language versions, sadly. :(

After Bobturkey returned from vacation and made his response (which I had been gleefully waiting for, since I knew his responses would be very interesting), I finally began assembling the answers. I have not even finished with Holy Priests yet, it is just that time consuming. Lest you think that everyone and their great grandchildren has completed the survey by now, I still have a handful of people respond every day - and it's gone outside of the WoW blogging sphere, and into Livejournal, and even a blogger from a newspaper - which confused me a bit, but I'm just gonna go with it.

How have I been tracking responses?

  • Through comments directly left on my blog.
  • Through direct emails (to those of you who have emailed me, I did not respond via email, but I am including them)
  • Through traffic coming from the blogs who posted the responses and linked back to my page
  • When someone is tagged, I've been monitoring their blog to see if and when they respond.
  • Through comments left on other people's responses on their own blogs
And so on and so forth. As you can see, I've been keeping myself pretty busy trying to keep track of all the responses! Only about half of the survey responses are directly linked on my Circle of Healers page, because a lot of the responses had no way I could link to them. In addition, there were likely quite a few responses made from people in the days immediately following the WoW Insider link that did not leave comments for me - Sadly, I'm afraid I may not be able to find those responses unless those folks generate traffic back to my site, because the WoW.com traffic flooded my logs!

In essence, I have no idea when I will be able to post the results. I will continue working on it, and posting about any significant progress, but it may be awhile. Truth be told, however, diffusing all the survey responses down to something that can be mathematically analyzed will strip a lot of the awesomeness from the responses. For instance, here are some gems from Tamarind at Righteous Orbs's responses that wouldn't show up in the charts and graphs that will result from the survey, and definitely deserve notice:

"It’s the good kind of pressure, like a slightly over-weight cat purring on your chest."
regarding Divine Hymn:
"Also it’s just got a rubbish name. This is a fucking battle, no time for singing!"
regarding MT healing:
"It’s not even proper whack-a-mole, it’s simply a direct transfer of the contents of your blue bar into their diminishing green bar, like you’re some kind of perpetual human health funnel. "

I mean, c'mon. Beat that. THIS IS NO TIME FOR BLOODY SINGING
Power Word: Survey
A big thanks to everyone who responded to the no-seriously-this-is-not-a-meme healing survey! I hope that those of you who are linked on the page will benefit from the extra traffic, and be encouraged to post more useful information! It probably goes without saying, but the survey became vastly larger than I expected, and despite my best efforts, I just can't keep up with finding everyone who has responded and linked to the post, unless you left a comment for me - too many WoW.com hits have flooded by statcounter log. Not that I'm complaining... it was like having a big weekend party at my house. I will try to continue posting links to blogs that responded as long as you leave a comment, however.

I'm still trying to work my way through all the responses... I've been trying to copy and paste them all into a word document, but after crashing word a few times, I gave up for awhile. I do fully intend to finish reading through them though, and I am pleased that all the new material will hopefully help everyone who reads them become a better healer.

So far, one of the best things I've seen to come out of it is a post over at MoarHPS. Noting how few people really understood how the stats that come from meters work, Moar posted a really informative guide explaining how all those measurements work, and what they are good for. I think the point is that while meters are not the end-all, be-all for healers, they can definitely be used to help you figure out where your strengths are, and where you need to tweak - as long as you understand what they mean. I'm exceedingly grateful to Moar for the post, because I wasn't willing to admit how poor my understanding of those stats was >.>

On a slightly less happy note, there was a pretty nasty comment over at WoW.com referring to my own answers to the survey that I wanted to respond to here. Had I known the survey would become so big, and so many people would be looking at my own answers with such a critical eye, I might have explained my answers better. So, from the perspective of this holy priest, I'm going to respond to the criticisms leveled at my answers - because it's my site and I'll do what I want to, even though I know that some people just want to rip others apart, even though they may have no better answers themselves. So there. Suck it.

Lack of Burst Healing for Holy Priests

One of the questions on the survey I wrote was "what is the biggest weakness of your class?" Some of you might have found this very difficult to answer! I know that I did, because the thing about Holy Priests is that we can do a little bit of everything, and quite well. We can fit into any healing role. But, as with every jack of all trades, there are none for which we are truly the master. One thing that I have desperately craved since the days of Kel'Thuzad is a solid single target instant burst heal. The critic in question insisted we have plenty of burst heal options, and for each spell they mentioned as an example, I will respond accordingly:
  • Power Word: Shield - This is NOT instant burst heal, and to say that it is is so ridiculously silly that it barely warrants response. This will reduce the next incoming damage of course, but I'm talking about green-bar-go-up type mechanics when I say burst healing. Is it something that can be used in an emergency scenario to keep the target from dying from the NEXT hit? Of course it is - but that was not what i was talking about.
  • Prayer of Mending - First of all, as Matticus discussed in a post that all Disc Priests should definitely read, Prayer of Mending doesn't go off if the damage is absorbed from a shield instead. Prayer of Mending needs to be cast BEFORE the damage hits in order to heal. The target CAN die from the damage before benefitting from the PoM heal, if I understand the mechanics of this spell correctly (if this is not the case, please correct me). Therefore, this is NOT instant burst healing that makes the green bar go up immediately - it is a response to the next bout of damage. I am talking about the desire for something to respond to a massive damage input that has already happened.
  • Surge of Light - Sorry, I don't always have a surge of light proc sitting in my pocket. It's great when it procs, but because it is a proc, and because it is based on crit, which in and of itself is based on chance, you cannot rely on a surge of light to be there when you need it.
  • Circle of Healing - This is a viable answer - and this, in addition to Empowered Renew, is what I currently use when an individual needs an immediate burst of healing. With any luck, I can CoH, Renew, and have a SoL proc - but all of those are subject to global cooldown, and do NOT aggregate into a single target instant burst heal. And yes, this works quite well, but I suppose it really grates on me to use an AoE spell to respond to single target damage.
That was the biggest criticism the commenter made that I felt warranted a response, but in answer to the other comments he/she made, yes, I realize Divine Hymn is a very powerful spell, and that I should use it more. Obviously, that's why I listed not using it as my worst healing habit (eyeroll). I love having druids and their innervates and b-rezes and HoTs around not because I expect a druid to give me an innervate or B-rez - but because when it is needed by someone in the party, I appreciate knowing that those options are there, since aside from Hymn of Hope, I don't have a way to return mana to my fellow raiders - and IMO, Hymn of Hope is somewhat weak unless coordinated very well with others. The final criticism was in regards to my insistence that Holy Priests CAN do main tank healing, despite it not being optimal. I've already discussed that topic ad nauseam, however, so I feel no need to delve further into the topic.

I will be the first to admit that I am far too sensitive to criticism, but despite that, this comment reminded me of the same thing that always annoys me about so many players - that the vast amount of wow players are not in the upper echelon of raiding. Why do I rarely use Divine Hymn? Because I'm serious when I say that I'm rarely in a situation in which that powerful of a healing spell is needed - usually a CoH or a Serendipity-hasted Prayer of Healing will more than suffice. Were I currently working on TotGC 25 man hard mode, I'm sure my answer would be different. But I'm not. I am probably one of those average WoW players, really. I do 10 man raids regularly, I do 25 mans on occasion, and I do a lot of 5 mans. I like to think that were I interested in participating in hard core raids that I would perform fairly well, but the truth is, I just don't want to make the commitment that requires.

There are a lot of new subscribers to my blog, so it probably bears repeating here that while my focus is on Holy Priests, and to a lesser extent Disc Priests, I do discuss a lot of the issues relevant to assembling a strong healing team for raiding, as well as some officeering topics. However, I am not solely interested in raiding - if you prefer 5 man content, I always try to consider that aspect as well when discussing Priest mechanics. I see too many people give advice to priests that completely ignores the differences between a 5 man scenario, and a 10 man or 25 man scenario. Healing a 5 man all by yourself is actually quite different than healing in a raid. I do try to always keep that in mind when I dish out Medicinal Wisdom :)

NB: For those of you wondering, part of the reason why I'm not using pictures so much in my posts these days is due to the covert way in which I am forced to blog at my current job. Pictures of WoW related things seem to be a bit of a red flag on google reader when my boss walks by. I would apologize for the walls of text, but I feel apologies should carry an intention of stopping the crime with them, and since I have no intention of stopping... well, you see the dilemma.
Circle of Healers
If you are participating in the non-memey Healer Questionnaire, you may want to bookmark this post, as this is where I will be keeping track of people who have responded and posted their own answers. Consider it like a Chain Heal... it started with me and went to someone else who will hopefully send it to someone else, and so forth. My hope is that no matter how far out that chain heal extends, I can maintain a list of all the responders here! (See what I did there Zigi? That was for you!) Hopefully the survey will experience some Wild Growth. Ha ha I'm so full of funny. Okay, bad puns aside....

If you know of someone who has responded who is not included on this list, please let me know via comment! Also, if you do post a questionnaire response, it would be great if you linked back to this post so that others can also see who all has answered.

Once this post was linked from WoW Insider, the amount of traffic quickly surpassed my ability to keep up with all the responses (not that I'm complaining!). That having been said, I will continue to try and keep track of the people who have responded on their blogs, as long as you comment and leave me a link! There are also a lot of people who have left their responses in the comments section below, so be sure to check it out.

ETA: Hey look! Koriel at What is Boom started a Circle of Tanks!

ETA: If you are looking for responses in French, pop on over to wowfrostmage, where the generous proprietor has assembled a list - merci!

Holy Priests (Most of us roll Bubbly on occasion):


Disc Priests:

Resto Shammies:

Resto Druids:


Holy Paladin

Overachievers who have too many healers:
Fire Mage: Wait, what? Oh you silly gnomes. First you think you can tank, and then you think you can heal! There's a resto shammy in there somewhere too, but that gnome is stealing all the limelight.

Some time this weekend I am going to totally geek out and... /cue dramatic music.. ANALYZE TEH DATAZ

Stay tuned! I'm trying to keep this updated as quickly as possible! If you notice someone is missing, and it's been more than 24 hours since they posted, please shoot me an email to let me know -> elimeny at gmail dot com.

Thanks!
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