SP Management - what am I doing wrong?

[DToNE]

Well, I'm not the best healer in the game, but I'm one of the best SP conserving Clerics in my guild. I can give you some advice based on experience.

Timing and Anticipation is a very important factor in conserving SP. The right heal at the right time will produce the most optimal result with the least amount of effort used. There are many times you don't even have to heal at all, such as knowing that there's a long wait between battles; this is when your Healing Aura alone should suffice even for extremely large heals. If many are wounded lightly-moderately and they're near you, throw out a Heal Burst even if it's mid-battle. Heal Bursts are limited in their range, so you should use it every opportunity that comes up because you never know when it is no longer possible to use it in a given situation. Mass Heal should come as a second to last resort, as it is slow but the results are stable. Cure Wound Mass should be an absolute last resort if people are dying way too fast and there isn't time to throw out a Mass Heal before someone dies.

Buffs and Saves plays a very important factor in high level content. Against spells, saves is play a very important factor, even against harmful ones. Even a slight boost in saves, such as Recitation and Holy Aura, reduces the damage the party takes as a whole as it allows evasion types to avoid damage and non-evasion types only take half damage; taking half damage from a spell reduces the amount of damage needed to be recovered in a certain time frame. Against physical attacks, anything you can do to reduce physical damage is a great asset. Spells such as Displacement or blinding enemies with Holy Aura reduces the damage taken by the party, thus making heals with only your Healing Aura or Burst possible.

Participation leads to lowering SP costs. Anything you can add without exhausting yourself helps. Even if it's a 1d3-1 fist you're throwing out, it's still an extra 1d3-1 bonus to the overall numbers. The faster something dies the faster it can no longer do damage. If you can vorpal, vorpal; if you can paralyze, paralyze; if you can hamstring, hamstring. Participation has risks, but if you can overcome those risks then this will become one of the biggest benefactors to your healing career.

Communication will save the world and it will save you. If you do not speak up, then you will not be heard. If you don't ask, you shall not receive. Basically, if you want or need anything, speak up as you are a member of a team. If you want a monk SP discount for buffing, ask for it. If you want the Rogue to stay back for a little while, say so. If you want someone to have Heavy Fortification, tell them. If you think someone does not have sufficient HP, tell them (in private if required). If you think the group should gather around you for a heal, say so. The less you say, the harder it will be for you. It makes no sense to be anti-social in a team environment.

Versatility helps in reducing the amount of SP required in many things. If you can disarm traps, it reduces buffs and healing required. If you can stun, it reduces damage the party is taking and increase the damage you're giving. If you can crowd control, you can turn things in your favor and reduce the damage the party takes. If you can hamstring, do so and you will conserve SP. Anything you can add to the party is always a welcome addition, even if it's not the best, even if it is just Divine Intervention.

Levelheadedness is something that should be cherished. A person only has so much energy and endurance both physically and mentally. The less levelheaded you are, the more mental energy you will consume and the more rash decisions or inattentiveness you will produce. Try not to excite yourself and think things through, this way it allows you to calculate and time things more accurately. The more mentally exhausted you are, the more mistakes you will make and mistakes cost either your SP or the party members so keep that in mind.

Party Morale is very important. The more you joke around and create a light/relaxing atmosphere for those around you, the easier it is to both communicate and remain levelheaded. Throw jokes if you can, talk about things you're interested in, talk about subjects outside the game, anything you can do to take people's minds off potential troubling matters will only help you in the long run. If you can crack a joke while giving important instructions, people will appreciate it more and not take it extremely heavily at heart. Remember that well done tasks are usually done when people are happiest; a world class masterpiece is not something made with anger and frustration. So, if you can keep the mood up, do it; even if it makes you a weird person (better to be remembered a weird person than a frustrating person).

Well, these things won't make you the best healer, but it'll definitely make you better known, respected, and appreciated healer.

[voodoogroves]

As a cleric, if you're not casting BB / Cometfall you should turn off Maximize and Empower. A Radiant Servant gets such a boost out of Empowered Healing and you probably have reduced costs to it as well - that should be plenty.

I leave on Extend, Quicken, Empowered Healing. Maximize if I need to do spell DPS. This is rare though at cap, to the point where on characters that heal and beat-face more than offensive cast I'm considering dropping it.




Your bigger problem will be the two ends of the spectrum ... and that's something you can't manage well in any pick up gruop. First is the low HP dude who goes down quickly. Mass healing on them way overheals everyone else. The second is the low-amp, possibly high-HP aggro magnet who's bar doens't fill like everyone elses. Pushing your heals to top him off is also going to drain your SP. In a group with both - something is going to give - either the low end, the high end or you and a stack of pots.


The only time I spam heals really is epic DQ. My first time in some content I'm not familiar with may have spammy moments as I'm trying to prevent a wipe due to my own inexperience (I've not "healed" many epic quests yet - raids yes, quests no - so the boss fights often have a wrench in them for me). I'll drink pots if I'm still learning the pacing of a quest or I really really want to compete. I will try to instead focus on the problem areas and cycle in scrolls or single-target spells if I can to try to keep the balance right.

[The_Great_Samulas]

It sounds like your two major problems are the overuse of metas and your ability to time your healing to coincide with actual damage levels. I know most people are overly infatuated with the mass heal spell, but it has been my experience that mass cure critical wounds is more mana efficient in the end. Analysis is here. For instance, you say you throw mass heal when the group is at 75%, this is too high. They should be at 50%, if you are using mass cures they can be lower.

The core problem in healing groups is being able to anticipate damage levels for the group and timing your healing appropriately. Most healers are fairly poor at this skill, and instead rely upon just "spamming" a mass. Before mass heal, they would cycle through their masses regardless of the actual damage the group was taking. Now, these same healers are overjoyed at the efficiency of Mass heal but don't actually realize that the reason it is more efficient for them is because of a defect in their playstyle. The core problem remains, the long timer on mass heal and long casting time just prevents the level of spamming they would normally do. They STILL haven't learned how to throw masses appropriately. I can last at least 3 rounds in the shroud without a pot.

Here is an excerpt from my Path to Enlightenment thread that may be of help:

One major hurtle in advancing as a cleric is the rationing of mana such that you feel more free to use it offensively. I believe that one thing that can cause a revelation in play that can strike this change is having unused mana. I put together this post to assist cleric advancement because of this. Mana efficiency is also important for doing more advanced raiding on a regular basis, such as elite Shrouds, VoDs, and ToDs. This post is written mainly from an endgame perspective, but the rules are largely appliable to leveling (except the first major factor). The major healing at endgame is mass healing, so this post will concentrate on that. On page seven there is some material on efficiencies of mass healing spells, and a comparison of mass healing to spot healing.

The basics of healing efficiency are your enhancements. Most will know this, but you may be unaware of some of the nuances, so I list them for completeness. You should have all four tiers of life magic amplification, either tier 3 or 4 in wand/scroll amplification, and possibly the first or second tier of critical chance amplification for healing. I listed them in order of importance. Using your highest action point enhancements to base healing is important, with critical healing enhancements to efficiency somewhat useful but largely not (you can get criticals on hard to heal targets such as poorly built WF, which can save you a spot heal), and the enhancements to reduce empower healing are good. Getting wand and scroll mastery to 3 or 4 will conserve mana by making mana free healing more effective and thus require less healing through mana. The radiant servant package is also very important to efficiency. The turning related abilities are very nice, but the +25% to empowered healing is extremely potent.

After the basics, there are four major things that affect efficiency of healing:

The first is the mana efficiency of spell you are using. The higher the level of the spell the more efficient it is when dealing with mass healing (with the important caveat below). Metas all increase the base efficiency of spells (overhealing, being problematic with thier use). The Radiant servant package with just empower healing enabled is usually the best choice for metas.

The second is the amount of over-healing inherent in the spell you are using. Once a target is at 100% health, all mana put into them is wasted. Thus, it is optimal to target 95% health levels. This is the main reason mass heal is not as efficient as mass cure critical wounds in most situations. The hp of your targets is a factor here. In general, shooting for 150-250 hp of healing is the optimal range to keep targets alive, at a decent level of hp to avoid deaths, and to prevent wasted healing by overhealing. The level you target is dependent upon the overall hp of the targets, healing amplification/penalties, and the third factor below.

The third is your ability to anticipate healing need based upon both your experience at the given quest/raid and your ability to gauge the resistance to the damage your targets have. This is greatly enhanced in groups that are used to working together such as guild groups and is very problematic in PUGs. One thing that can greatly enhance your efficiency here is letting a weak link die or spot healing them with mana free healing.

The fourth is gear. You should use the Amarath belt clickies from the two belts available there (superior ardor VIII) on your mass cures (it won't help with mass heals). There are several peices of gear from the abbot that also help (Staff of the Petitioner and Noxious Embers). You can get improved empower healing to lower your mana useage with empower healing on several pieces of gear (hound necklace, DT armor, epic bejewelled letter opener).

Well, hope I remembered everything. Good luck.