Healer Striking Dummies?

[Connor]

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

[OliviaLugria]

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

[Carighan]

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

"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!"

[Connor]

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

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

[AmiableApkallu]

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…

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.

[Connor]

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.

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

[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.

[Connor]

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.

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

[AmiableApkallu]

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

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.

[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?