grenade yourself and with your expertise bonus you will pretty much negate the 20% mortal strike from sents/mars, also 18 secs of uninterrupted healing with my shield helps keep me up in a pinch. I do find healing a bit boring and tired of not getting more than 5 medals.
I use the beam to charge up, I am playing on a small server with only about ~35 republic 50s and about double that on imp side so regardless of me using the beam or not they are going to try and gun me down.