World of Warcraft: What Is EHPS?

Healing

• Certain classes of character in "World of Warcraft" have the ability to heal themselves or other players, usually through some form of spell. Characters with the most powerful healing spells, including priests and shamans, will find that healing consistently and efficiently becomes their most important role when teaming up with groups of other players to battle powerful enemies.

HPS

• Characters whose principal duty is dealing damage to the enemy must concern themselves with their "DPS," or Damage Per Second, healing classes must work to maximize their HPS. The higher a character's HPS, the more hit points he is restoring to himself or others in a single second. As the challenges characters face become more difficult and the enemies they fight more powerful, higher and higher HPS statistics are required from the group's healers.

EHPS

• While HPS stands for "healing per second," EHPS stands for "effective healing per second." It is a measurement of healing that discards "overhealing" -- that is, if a character casts a spell that heals 10,000 hit points of damage, but the target of the spell is only 5,000 hit points below their maximum number, EHPS would discard the excess 5,000 as ineffective healing.

Improving EHPS

• All healer characters can improve both their HPS and EHPS by learning more powerful spells and by playing more efficiently. The latter is particularly relevant to EHPS, as an efficient healer will avoid casting powerful healing spells on characters who are close to their maximum health; nevertheless, a certain amount of overhealing is inevitable and acceptable.