Holy Paladin Healing Simulations — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3

Simulation programs such as Raid Bots are incredibly useful programs for World of Warcraft players. They can suggest to you what talents to use, what gear you have is best for you, or what stats you should prioritize. With the addition of Titanforging on gear, "simming" has become more and more widespread throughout the WoW community.

Does this work for Healers? The short answer is no. Simulations work for DPS players because the simulations use what is called an "Action Priority List" (APL). The programs take the settings you give them regarding your character, how many targets you have, how long the fight lasts, how much movement you are required to do, among other things, and execute the APL perfectly. The result will be your simulated DPS.

Healing, however, is never simply executing a priority list perfectly. Therefore, the way that DPS use simulations simply does not work for healers. But healers still have the same questions as DPS players do about stat weights, talents, and gear. So how do healers find the answers to these questions? We use two primary tools: spreadsheets and Combat Logs.

Spreadsheets, such as the Holy Paladin one for Legion here, do a large number of mathematical calculations to help answer questions for individual players. They do the best they can to imitate how the game functions in practice and allow you to alter a multitude of settings and observe the results. If configured properly spreadsheets can be a very useful guide, for healers, to all the questions typically answered by simulations for DPS players. However, there are some limitations to what spreadsheets can do. Furthermore, if your spreadsheet's settings do not match your play in the game it can give you incorrect results. To help avoid inaccuracies we turn to combat logs.

Combat Logs are a recording of all actions in a dungeon or raid which are then formatted in an easy to read way. Websites such as Warcraft Logs serve as a directory where you can upload your own logs, or examine those of other players. You can use logs of yourself, or others of your class and specialization, to help improve your play.

WoW Analyzer is an exceptionally powerful and easy to use tool for analyzing a combat log. Even if you are inexperienced with combat logs, WoW Analyzer will quickly provide a wide variety of suggestions to improve your play, including stat weights.

Additionally, combat logs can help you to improve the accuracy of a spreadsheet's suggestions by giving you actual in-game results to use in your estimation of settings like overhealing, spells cast, time not spent healing, etc. To get the best results we recommend using spreadsheets, combat logs, and programs like WoW Analyzer together to make the best choices for talents and gear.