Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Pouring over the logs - where I can improve

I like using World of Logs reporting to analyze a fight and do a post-game analysis. So we're all working off the same info, here's a link to our most current log - WoL.

Now, looking at just the pure e-peen screen, I could head off to the corner and stroke myself into giddyness. 7622 HPS - more than 1500 over the next healer. Over 50 million more healing than our Druid as well. Hang on, I'm going to make the O face now. I'll let it slide that I was 15% higher in Overhealing. Cause I'm AWESOME (obviously).

Of course, this screen doesn't mean diddly. It's the overall healing done on the night, and is about as useful a tool as a rock for a hammer. Sure, it tells me something, but nothing really useful. Even looking at the overall healing done for a boss kill doesn't tell me anything beyond pure output. Great for epeen, useless for improving play.

My first real stop

One of the first places I stop when I'm looking for information is the individual Buffs Gained screen. This is generally where I can find the most information that will help me become a better healer, and boy does this log show how bad I really am.

First, I thought my mana management was fine. I never had to call for an innervate, I thought I was using my mana CDs appropriately, etc. Well, the log doesn't lie. Let's look at what really happened on the kill fight.

Innervate - This happened not once, but twice - restoring a total of 42,146 mana.
Judging - 18 judgements - and a total of 74,483 mana returned. This means 63,234 from the judgements and 11,249 from melee swings. In a six minute fight, with an eight second cooldown - This is unacceptable. In the words of the Emporor to Lorgar - Son, I am dissapoint. Judging on CD I should be getting 7 off per minute. That would return 158,000 mana in 6 minutes. At the very least I should be getting off one every 15 seconds. This is an area to work on.
Detonate Mana - This is the buff that shows up in WoL when you use Tyrande's Favorite Doll. I hit it three times, which is perfect for a 6 min fght. Well done.
Arcane Torrent - I hit this twice, probably because I was staggering it with the Doll. I could have eeked out another one for an extra 6k mana.
Divine Plea - I only used this once, because the 50% healing debuff scares me. There are probably more opportunities to use this, especially with a /cancelaura macro.

So in total, my self return of mana can use some improvements. Judge a little more, and that will really help. If I could have gotten six extra judgements in, plus another torrent, that would be 26,876 mana extra - equivalent to an innervate.

Self Buffs and CDs

This is an area where I am a giant pile of fail. I have three healing boost CDs, Lay on Hands, and two damage reducing CDs. Guess how many I used? If you guessed zero, you'd be right. Avenging Wrath? Zero. Divine Favor? Nope. Hand of Sacrifice or Aura Mastery? Again - no. I didn't even use Lay on Hands, even if it was only for the mana return.

In short, this shows me where I have a mASSive area for self improvement, and things I can really work on for future raids. If this log was included in a Holy Paladin app, these are the first things I'd zero in on.

Other things to zero in on

First, Tower of Radiance. This three point talent resulted in me getting a whopping 4 Holy Power in the six minute fight. Four. Now, maybe I'm leaning on Holy Light too much for the work. Maybe I'm leaning on BoL to do too much of my healing. Out of 14 Divine Lights, and 12 Flash of Lights - only 4 of those were on my beaconed target (the only tank in this instance).

Now, maybe I'm leaning on Holy Light too much, that is certainly possible. I had 55 Holy Lights, and 47 Holy Shocks. My Holy Lights were spread fairly even around the raid, so were my Holy Shocks - but only 17 Word of Glory? A 6 minute fight should give me closer to 60 Holy Shocks - and that's assuming I don't get any Daybreak procs. 60 Holy Shocks is 20 Words of Glory, and again, that assumes no Eternal Glory procs. Since WoL tells me I got 18 Daybreak procs - 47 Holy Shocks just isn't enough. Since I'm only showing 6 Holy Power from Eternal Glory, I guess that wasn't too bad.

The last dig

Finally, I can look at some of the other buffs and procs to see just how effective they are.

Giant Wave - from my Darkmoon card, this had a 99% uptime. That's a bonus of 400 spirit for the entire fight.

Heartsong - My weapon enchant, this was up for 59% of the time, with 16 procs. This means I had a bonus of 200 Spirit for 4 minutes of a 6:23 encounter. That's certainly nothing to sneeze at, especially given the cost.

Conviction - 96% uptime. This means I have enough crit to keep the buff up, and don't need to worry about stacking more - I can focus on Spirt and Haste instead.

Infusion of Light - only 12 procs out of 47 Holy Shocks. Maybe I do need more crit after all.

Healing by spell % - So even though it looked like my numbers were way off above, my overall healing breakdown looked like this.
Holy Light - 55 casts, 14% overall, 12% OH
Divine Light - 14 casts, 10.5% overall, 11% OH
Holy Shock - 47 casts, 9.7% overall, 8.1% OH
Flash of Light - 12 casts, 6.8% overall, 0% OH
WoG - 17 casts, 5.1% overall, 8.5% OH

Holy Radiance - 6 casts, 9.5% overall, 36% OH (ouch)
Light of Dawn - Tough to call, WoL counts each person hit as a cast - so 28 people hit overall, for 3.5% of the healing and 17% OH

Conclusion

My spell selection is fine. I need to work on using my CDs a lot more, judge a little more, and use Holy Shock a touch more. This week CD usage will definitely be my focus, and this gives me some clear goals to work on. After all, it's tough to know if you're getting better, if the only guide you have to go by is "did we win?".

In short, I'm bad, and I should feel bad too.

This tells me I'm casting a wide mix of spells, not using FoL on the wrong person, and probably have a fairly solid healing rotation and grasp of what heal to use when.

4 comments:

  1. Nice analysis! I went through my guild's first raid last night and discovered some huge fail on my part: avoidable damage taken. Sure, everyone did it. But I was up there more fights than not. >_>

    I don't want to talk about my misadventure with HoSac.

    Though I don't know how hard to be on myself regarding judgements. On one hand, casting on cooldown IS more mana, but it's also a GCD not healing. I usually start the fight judging as often as I can but as things get hairier I can't manage to squeeze it in. I think 4 a minute is a good goal. :)

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  2. Don't forget about Enlightened Judgements. With that healing being transferred to your Beaconed target, it is technically still a GCD spent healing - though it may not be the two people who need heals (you and your BoL target).

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  3. This tells me that all holy pallys, myself absolutely included, could learn a lot more from examining their logs much more frequently :)

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  4. This is great, gives me lots of things to look for when examining holy paladin logs. Paladin is the one healing class I've never had at max level, so I've been a little lost.

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