Healer Striking Dummies?

This is just a random thought I had. But with the Stone, Sky, Sea (and variants) Striking Dummies you can easily go and check your damage output relative to the content to determine roughly how well you’ll perform. But this only applies to DPS .

With all the talk of how healers are struggling and doing so bad recently, I think a ‘healer version’ would actually solve a lot of problems. Like imagine a dummy that takes scaling damage based on the difficulty level, and the healer is required to find ways to heal that meet the HPS requirements before the dummy is destroyed. Maybe success could be based on whether the dummy survives the entire duration.

Something like this would finally give healers a way to measure and modify their healing, as well as giving them ways to explore how healing skills and abilities interact relative to damage output, managing MP and cool downs, when to use which skill, etc. Maybe there could also be a minor dps check to force healers to balance between maximising healing output whilst still maintaining high dps

Naturally due to the nature of ‘Striking Dummy’ fights it wouldn’t be anything close to real content ( but then, neither is the dps one lol). But with all the complaints about healers not having a clue how to heal, I think something like this would be a great benefit for both new and veteran healers

It'd be funny for players to react to how small the actual outgoing damage actually is

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

It'd be funny for players to react to how small the actual outgoing damage actually is

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It definitely would be interesting to see casual players trying out a ‘savage’ healing dummy lol; maybe it’d be a lot easier than they think…

Though as an additional advantage to this; wouldn’t it make healing more approachable for ‘newer’/‘casual’ players if there was a way they could actually ‘practice healing’ in a setting that’s more engaging than just spamming heals on yourself to see what’s happens lol, but without having to jump straight into a dungeon. Maybe?

Maybe they could make achievements for beating certain ‘healing challenges’? Like ‘complete healing dummy ultimate version in [specific amount of time]’ or maybe ‘in less than X ability uses’ or something

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Originally Posted by Connor

It definitely would be interesting to see casual players trying out a ‘savage’ healing dummy lol; maybe it’d be a lot easier than they think…

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So, this is the first time I've tried to prog a savage tier when it was actually current.

Based on my (limited) experience so far, I'd say: Healing savage mechanics isn't actually the hard part. It's learning the art of triage so that you can keep a pull ("prog") going.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

So, this is the first time I've tried to prog a savage tier when it was actually current.

Based on my (limited) experience so far, I'd say: Healing savage mechanics isn't actually the hard part. It's learning the art of triage so that you can keep a pull ("prog") going.

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Yeah, I haven’t done savage in a while myself but I can see why people would struggle with triage coming to the content, simply because it’s so scarcely present in normal content. I mean, obviously they can’t make normal content deal as much as savage, but at the same time it does mean that newer healers going into savage are going to have to learn completely new skills to adjust, whereas for dps it’s mostly just a more complex version of what was happening in normals. Honestly I’m not sure how it applies to EX content either (whether it’s more of a thing there).

That said, I think having a ‘healer dummy’ type thing would give newer healers opportunities to try managing those sort of things by themselves as opposed to jumping straight in. I mean, it’s weird that dps get to practice by themselves by healers don’t. Though I guess you could argue the same for tanks with defensives/mitigations

I think the hardest part of healing is that what becomes the most effect approach to a fight can change drastically based on what your party does. White Mage has the least amount of optimization as the healer with the simplest kit but even still there are a ton of ways to conserve MP or manipulate resources that can make the difference between a wipe or clear. Being able to pass a heal check is not difficult without the outside pressure of low MP from party rezzes or recently being revived or a dead cohealer. Experience with recovery from failure is more important than practice spamming Cure 3 and it's hard to create that in a controlled environment.

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

It'd be funny for players to react to how small the actual outgoing damage actually is

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"Congratulations! You were only attacking 68% of the time, missing 32% total damage. However, due to current bad healer balance that costs your groups so little damage that it makes no difference at all, you pass with 100/100 points!"

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

I think the hardest part of healing is that what becomes the most effect approach to a fight can change drastically based on what your party does. White Mage has the least amount of optimization as the healer with the simplest kit but even still there are a ton of ways to conserve MP or manipulate resources that can make the difference between a wipe or clear. Being able to pass a heal check is not difficult without the outside pressure of low MP from party rezzes or recently being revived or a dead cohealer. Experience with recovery from failure is more important than practice spamming Cure 3 and it's hard to create that in a controlled environment.

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That literally applies 1:1 to DPS dummies though but nobody ever says they shouldn’t exist lol

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Originally Posted by Connor

That literally applies 1:1 to DPS dummies though but nobody ever says they shouldn’t exist lol

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It literally doesn't apply. The only "recovery from failure" tanks and DPS have to deal with is:

• Do I have any hope of keeping my burst aligned?
• (Tanks) Can I shuffle my mitigation plan to make up for X and Y being dead and thus unable to provide any mitigation/shields?

Meanwhile, with a damage rotation that's more complex than 111111, there is some value in being able to practice and to build up muscle memory without also having to deal with mechanics at the same time.

So healing is so easy nobody need any form of practice or means of understanding it, yet somehow people are constantly complaining about ‘bad healers’. Which is it? Is it so easy anyone can do it thus there’s no need for anyone to get a better understanding of healing relative to damage output, or is it something people might actually not understand and that’s why they’re doing bad?

Why not having something such as tree dummies that start at 5% hp and have to go to 100%? Each represent a teammate.
The tank takes more damage, the melee is close to the tank and the distant/caster is far from the tank.
All of them take random damages (the tank one takes more). The randomization represents the failed strats done by your teammates. If they all drop to 0%, you failed.

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Originally Posted by Jidka

Why not having something such as tree dummies that start at 5% hp and have to go to 100%? Each represent a teammate.
The tank takes more damage, the melee is close to the tank and the distant/caster is far from the tank.
All of them take random damages (the tank one takes more). The randomization represents the failed strats done by your teammates. If they all drop to 0%, you failed.

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Yeah, I think that’d be a good way to try and represent ‘healing in certain content’. ‘Keep the dummies/npcs/mammets/w/e’ alive for X amount of time. They could maybe add an ‘enemy dummy’ too if they wanted to have something for the healer to practice weaving gcd attacks and ogcd heals, plus it would mean Sage’s wouldn’t have to go without Kardia

I can see that happening in the future after giving healers a better design -> which probably won't happen lol

I mean this effectively is supposed to be extreme trials but birdy ironically has more healing output then m1-2-4s

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Originally Posted by Connor

So healing is so easy nobody need any form of practice or means of understanding it, yet somehow people are constantly complaining about ‘bad healers’. Which is it? Is it so easy anyone can do it thus there’s no need for anyone to get a better understanding of healing relative to damage output, or is it something people might actually not understand and that’s why they’re doing bad?

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Here are the things I've seen that might cause one to consider a healer "bad":

1. They get one shot by a mechanic.
2. They spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out what to do for a mechanic and neglect to do anything else in the meantime.
3. They freeze up as mechanics start hitting people and HP bars stop dropping. (See also: 2.)
4. They forget to heal themselves before the next raid wide hits.
5. Their last 10 dungeon runs featured immortal tanks and DPS who avoided every AoE. They didn't expect that this run was going to be the clown car.

(1) isn't fixable with a striking dummy; (2-4) are less that the healer hits the wrong heal and more that that the healer fails to hit any heal at all; and (5) is all about trying to stay awake.

Given how relatively infrequent damage is in this game, there's not much to be learned from healing a bunch of striking dummies. You've got all the time in the world to pick a button.

It's the pressure and chaos of actual combat that's the hard part, the "well, you had 10 seconds to get a heal out, but you spent 4 of them trying to figure out where in the arena the DRG died, then the next cast bar started up, so you spent another 4 trying to figure out how to resolve the mechanic, and the final 2 running to safety (and not quite making it)."