Good HPS?

[Artist]

<p>I have always been concerned by the surviveability of my goup. That is why I love playing a healier. I don't care about dps. If encounter is extreame easy and needs no healing, I can live with “slucker” status of my several hundred dps. However every time MT takes a hard named, over-agro, attack stanse with 2-handler, or another “sh*t happens” I must be sure that I am using 100% of my potential.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> The measure for damage classes is dps. Out measure is HPS — healing per second. HPS is capped by incoming damage, since we can't heal over max life.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> Assuming the encounter has big enough damage to heal, what HPS is good for us?</p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p>HPS is even more irrelevant that DPS. In order of importance:</p><ol><li>Did tank die?</li><li>Did any of the rest of the group die?</li><li>Were cures timely?</li><li>There is no 4.</li></ol><p>There are just too many variables - stun/stifle/daze/interrupt/mezz/swipe/debuffs all reduce incoming damage and therefore HPS.  How much dps the group is doing (and therefore how long the fights are), how well is aggro being held (and therefore how much retargeting / patch healing is neede), how well was the tank buffed ? (ie how often/hard were they being hit), What type of tank? How well geared? What stance was the tank in? What con were the mobs? What other heals were involved (eg crusader tanking), What type of mobs ....</p><p><span >"If encounter is extreame easy and needs no healing" whip out your 2-hander, cast Yaup etc and go to town.  At 80 </span><span >"my several hundred dps" isn't high,  unless the rest of the group kills the mobs before you can get a swing or 2 in.</span></p><p>A better measurement is "Will the group want me back" <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Lord Hackenslash]

<p><cite>Antryg Mistrose wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>HPS is even more irrelevant that DPS. In order of importance:</p><ol><li>Did tank die?</li><li>Did any of the rest of the group die?</li><li>Were cures timely?</li><li>There is no 4.</li></ol><p>There are just too many variables - stun/stifle/daze/interrupt/mezz/swipe/debuffs all reduce incoming damage and therefore HPS.  How much dps the group is doing (and therefore how long the fights are), how well is aggro being held (and therefore how much retargeting / patch healing is neede), how well was the tank buffed ? (ie how often/hard were they being hit), What type of tank? How well geared? What stance was the tank in? What con were the mobs? What other heals were involved (eg crusader tanking), What type of mobs ....</p><p><span>"If encounter is extreame easy and needs no healing" whip out your 2-hander, cast Yaup etc and go to town.  At 80 </span><span>"my several hundred dps" isn't high,  unless the rest of the group kills the mobs before you can get a swing or 2 in.</span></p><p>A better measurement is "Will the group want me back" <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>Great post, I wish more healers understood this. I play a mystic and am often on top of the heal parse when I am in the main tank group and its hard for other healers to understand that I am not a better healer, I just have the advantage of the right tools and the right group setup. I know that without everyone else doing thier jobs I can heal like mad but we aren't gonna come out alive. </p>

[Artist]

<p> Sure thing. If a tank is alive who cares about healing? If a mob is dead who cares about DPS?</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" >If the tank is dead and the mob is alive was it my fault? Why not to use such a perfect tool as a parser?</p>

[Tenchisama]

<p>as a templar HPS is even harder to measure because it is so skewed</p><p>Wardens/Furies - all their heals tick regardless of actual amount healed it always ticks</p><p>Mystic/Defiler - all their wards are either used in full or used til they expire</p><p>Templar/Inq - our reactives only proc if the person is hit - may only heal for a portion if the hit is lower than our reactive per tick amount - will not proc if ward absorbs - is often wasted at the end</p><p>our big heals land very well and are our saving grace</p><p>but in all honesty - HPS is not a good measure of effectiveness</p><p>effective healing as stated earlier keeps peeps alive, knows who to focus on - ie - who is most important to save, knows how to manage power - and cures as fast as feasible.</p><p>I have had people tell me my HPS sucks during a raid and they have no clue that when healers are in other groups on some raids than the MT group they really have little to do and are focusing on healing outside of their group (usually the MT) depending on the raid of course - in that particular raid my group was barely taking any damage to the point that even casting reactives on them was pointless and my heals going out to the MT and spot heals barely made any HPS - however - my cures within and outside of my group prevented bad things from happening =P</p><p>some people are just slaves to ACT which is a usefull tool but only a tool and not the perfect tool either =P</p>

[Sirenta]

<p>Now this finally is a post which every player who tries "ACT"'ing should understand.</p> <p>While DPS interpretation is quite obvious and measureable, HPS is only a vague indicator.</p> <p>To repeat Antryg</p> <ol><li>Did tank die? </li> <li>Did any of the rest of the group die? </li> <li>Were cures timely? </li> <li>There is no 4</li> </ol> <p>There are different mechanics to judge and enhance healing...</p> <ol><li>Damage Reduction - Max out Shield Ally, get a good shield, get Stoneskin Master </li> <li>Side-HPS - If fights usally endure, our Procheal-Debuffs truly shine nowadays</li> <li>Groupfights - Back to 1. Daze and stun... won't push hps but surely reduces incoming damage</li> </ol> <p>In Raids remember, only the first lottoheal landed will be credited.</p> <p>As long as you don't whipe, you are good, if noone dies during fight you are perfectly fine.</p>

[Uilamin]

<p>While HPS is not the primary criterion for healer effectiveness it is measured against the other factors people listed to usually 'rate' the healer.</p><p>If a healer has group members dying left right and center with a low HPS usually that is a bad sign for the healer, however, if their HPS is extremely high at the same time it usually indicates that there are other factors present in why the group is dying either than the healer being unable to keep up.</p>

[StaboCA]

<p>I agree with most everything that's been said previously. but I will stipulate that raid healing is somewhat different that group healing. In a group situation HPS is irrelevant. In my experience it's not how much you heal over the course of the various encounters because our goal as a group healer is to see the mob dead with as little damage taken by the MT & group as is possible. In those situations our stuns, dazes, debuffs, stoneskin, etc. all contribute to lessening the need for healing, and thereby lower our HPS parse. We're doing our job, but the parse will not necessarily reflect it.</p><p>What seems to determine how valuable people see me as a healer are those "oh shiiit" moments. You know the ones when you get swarmed by a few unexpected adds and you immediately sit up and take notice. We earn our spurs in those short bursts of frenetic activity. Can you keep that mage up who caught the add's aggro, while keeping the tank up who's juggling two other groups who added simultaneiously? Sometimes it seems as though I'm frantically hitting buttons, but it's the order and knowing when to pull the trigger on our special stuff that seems to make the difference between a win and a fail. It's at the end of those long fights, the fights where no one is expecting to come out alive and toons are wavering back and forth in the yellow, red, and purple, and you just finally, just barely pull off the win that us healers get our due. Think about it,  at the end of those insane fights that you just manage to survive. you don't hear people congratulating the MT, scouts or mages - it's the healer who gets the praise. That's when you know you've done a good job. In my opinion the rest of the time, in a good group, we really don't have to work all that hard.</p><p>Now, as for raiding, where you are in a raid will dramatically affect your HPS parse. And while everyone above is correct in that you can make a lot of difference in a raid and still not parse HPS very high, most raiding guilds will use HPS as a tool to measure performance. When I joined a raid guild I was advised that I should be parsing over 500+ HPS consistently across most Kunark named fights. Of course the target, the type of fight and the healer classes & debuffers present will cause this to vary considerably. When I first joined my guild and started raiding consistenly that 500 mark seemed a stretch, now with better gear and more experience on casting order, etc. it's pretty easy mark to consistently hit.  Last night on a longer TSO raid mob fight 6 of our healers all parsed over 1100 each, that's rare, but fun to see.</p><p>Hope this helps and best of luck!</p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p>I'd assert the HPS is still largely irrelveant in raids.</p><p>I've tried to come up with a better measure</p><p>- heals cast  - lotto heals win as  each looks like a separate cast</p><p>- percentage of total heals each priest put out - still depends very heavily on whether aggro was maintained, how much rezzing was required, what group you are in, how many/bad the AoEs are, who cast Mark & Involuntary first .....</p><p>Parses don't show cures, reverence, divine arbitration, timely death protects, timely use of sanctuary, personal aoe avoid, ...</p><p>A 1k heal on the MT when they are at 1% should also be worth more than a 1k heal when they are at 90% too imo.</p><p>The only time anyone is going to even look at a parser for priest performance is if your group was wiping and others weren't /shrug.</p><p>Same for individual DPS figures actually - I've tried to get only the total raid dps posted, so people don't skip on debuffs, but its a losing battle. I'd swear some people spend more time looking at ACT than they do EQ2.</p>

[Artist]

<p>The question is what damage we can heal and what damage is over our capabilities.</p>

[Tash 1]

<p>I am sorry but the HPS is truly something I never ever will bother about. I know it can be tempting to try and have  HPS contest just as the DPS classes try and compare DPS. But will just not give a very good picture of the fight.</p><p>It is not a good thing for a group that a healer have a high HPS. Its just an indication that the tank take way to much damage.</p><p>If you want to have high HPS as a templar. - Do not buff your group.- Do not use stoneskin or Shield alley.- Never cure anything.- Never ever use your Stun or dazel.- Make sure that the mob can make maximum damage to the tank.</p><p>See the issue?</p><p>If you instead use Shield alley Stoneskin. Have maxed out your buffs, cure before damage is dealt and stun and dazze the mob. … Well the group will survive better but the HPS will be poor.</p><p>As a healer its our primary job to keep the tank and group alive. not to score high on any HPS parser.</p><p>This on the other hand is not saying that you not should use the ACT. I always use it. I evaluate my game play every day. I compare different equipments AAs compare myself to all other healers I can find and always doing my best to improve.</p><p>I just say HPS is not the way.</p><p>/Hugs Tash</p>