Crit to 40% Surge to 250-300 ~75% Then max as much power as possible

I absolutely can't wait to see the results of this. My guess is there will be slight variations with gear and player skill, but I hope your tests are done in a way the results are as un-skewed and accurate as possible.

Jarg & Sorno: In my opinion this is the hardest fight in the game. Some suggestions I'll reiterate that others have mentioned: Get them both to around 45%, then max burn on Jarg. The only people still on sorno should be 1 tank + 1melee dps to help with interrupts I know its hard, but healers should clense off the fire DoT from your raid members. It ticks for substational damage and its much easier and efficient to remove it than heal through. Alternate sniper shields during the rail shot phases and have your raid members ready with personal cooldowns. If available, also try to have your sorcs bubble as many people as possible. Get good DPS - This fight is worlds different with good DPS in your raid. You won't notice a difference until Jarg & Sorno hit 40% and you really need to start burning Jarg down as fast as possible. Good DPS will make this happen quicker = less chance of dying from rail shot Karagga: This is going to be painful to hear, but I think this is arguably the worst fight for melee DPS. If you can bring range DPS, bring as many as possible. I know it sucks, but this entire encounter is infiniately more difficult when you start having a majority of melee DPS. GET A GOOD TANK - A skilled tank can be the sole reason for a kill. Positioning is everything and if your tank constantly positions the boss such that raid damage is minimized to the absolute limit, a kill is almost a near guarantee if you have a competent group. Spread out your healers - Try to have it so all your healers aren't near each other such that they are all sucked into a vortex out of range of the tank. While this happens, the tank often takes a pretty sizable nuke to his HP and unless he was topped off or has another healer in range, death is very possible - and likely. Kill droids quickly - If you have snipers, have them alternate OS for the mouse droids. BHs can use death from above, etc etc. The quicker the droids are dead, the less chance they do damage and the more damage you can put on the boss.

Some stuff I've done: Give 100k+ credits to a several non-guildies Bring players with me as I solo daily heroics so they can earn the commendations Give away the Q22 armoring and mods from dailies to several players Give away unused biochem mats Helped a lot of people with leveling quests - too many to remember Helped other random healing operatives with gear/itemization suggestions and instructions

Here is a highlight I made right before the servers went down of a healing operative soloing the heroic 2+ daily poisonous strategy on Ilum for those who are interested. http://www.justin.tv/sang29/b/311756030

Going to stream some PvE dailies before beginning PvP today. Here is a highlight from last night of another civil war game where I was focused heavily. Unfortunately I screwed up my cooldowns a few times so I could have probably died less than 3 times. CW focused part 1: http://www.twitch.tv/sang29/b/311748289 CW focused part 2: http://www.twitch.tv/sang29/b/311748436

BiS on for medic gear. I never bothered spec'ing or getting dps gear after they nerfed operatives.

bump...streaming some pvp games tonight

I'll try to go through some of my old games to find some matches where I get targeted quite a bit so you guys can see. I currently have this other CW match highlighted. In part 1 below there is a good minute plus where I am getting owned by two republic players without any assistance from my team. Part 1: http://www.twitch.tv/sang29/b/311465245 Part 2: http://www.twitch.tv/sang29/b/311465370 Also, I rarely use stealth when actually fighting, something you would have noticed if you watched my stream or VoDs.

bump, streaming bit tonight. Here is a vod from earlier today for those interested: http://www.twitch.tv/sang29/b/311499473

I've decided to start streaming some of my PvP games to potentially help some of you who are struggling. I am in no way saying healing operatives are fine, we in fact, quite underpowered against other classes (something I will probably repeatedly mention on stream). That being said, if played correctly, a healing operative can definitely make a difference in a WZ. Feel free to ask my any questions about operatives, sorcerers (my other 50), healing, raids, PvP or anything else SWTOR related. I only have one monitor, but I'll do my best to answer your questions. Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/sang29

This is total win.

Ok perhaps I could have been a bit more clear. Some clarification with diagrams: http://i.imgur.com/2E455.jpg If the healer casts KC/RN on the tank (at 30m), the tank will inherit the KC/RN healing effect. Since, however, there is no other players within 10m of the tank, KC/RN will effectively only heal 1 player. New scenario: http://i.imgur.com/zcC1W.jpg In the updated diagram, the healer casts KC/RN on the tank (at 30m). Because there are two dps within 10m of the tank, they both also inherit the effects of KC/RN. Because the healer is not within 10m of the tank, he does not receive the effect, and thus KC/RN will effect only 3 players. Based on the different fights and situations (operations and flashpoints), I'm sure you can see the limitations of this mechanic. Thus, target casting KC/RN (especially on a tank during a fight) must be extremely situational. I see your point about keeping the numbers fair. Just as an aside though, on nightmare (and sometimes hard mode depending on your group), hiding behind the pillars during the missiles decreases your dps which will cause the droid to enrage. Thus, especially in 16 man, you need to stay out and keep dps'ing through this damage. Situations like this is where it really helps to have sorc/sage rings + sniper/scoundrel shields.

Amazing thread as always RuQu, but I have two suggestion/question/nit-pick with regard to AoE healing: KC/RN has a range of 10m. It can, however, be single target casted at a range of up to 30m from my experience/testing. If KC/RN is target casted, the 10m radius is centered around the initial target of the cast. As a result, there is often times KC/RN does not hit it's maximum of 4 players healed, and I assume KB/KM also has situations where it does not hit the maximum number of players. I'm not sure if there is a way to represent this missed/limited range of healing through numbers other than breaking down heal per player, which you already did. Finally, not to beat a dead horse too much more (with regard to sorc/sage healing), I feel you should also include some type of time duration or HPS into the AoE section. THe 30s interval does paint a decent picture, but what about something shorter (and perhaps a bit more realistic) like a 10s window? (Akin to maybe what you would get between 1st/2nd and 2nd/3rd stage of Soa). I think we all know what the numbers will show, but I'd guess sorc/sage AoE healing would be even stronger given the shorter time period. Once again, thanks for all your hard work!

I geared my operative in full BiS (rakata) including mod/enhancement slotting and I still felt like I was vastly inferior to sorcs so I just rerolled. Right now my Sorc is about half columi and half rakata and its crazy how much better I am able to heal on my sorc than my full BiS operative.

So is this one random occurrence then or has this happened to someone else?

A developer REALLY needs to respond to this ASAP. I totally wanted to buy two of these for both my 50s, but after seeing this thread, I'm just going to hold off until we hear more.

In this weeks Q&A (found here), Bioware confirmed it is their intention to make crit crafted custom gear best in slot (BiS) when you insert the highest possible item modifications into them. (Currently that would be Q58 mods found in Rakata/BM gear.) As someone who cares about having BiS, I would like to be prepared for when 1.2 does go live. Thus, I was wondering can you currently crit craft custom gear with augment slots? This way, once 1.2 does go live, I can start moving over my Q58 mods into this gear.

I received the same response to my ticket as well. It's not that the HoTs don't work, because they still do heal and proc TA, but with no animation or party/raid frame icons there is no way to track them. Thus, yes, our HoT heals are effectively non-existent in some warzones, flashpoints, and operations. It's an absolute travesty what they have done and are continually unable to do with this class. First it takes two months to fix a talent and now, once they have "fixed" it, they create another problem. How does bioware expect operatives to raid now if this bug persists? My operative healer is in full rakata and full battlemaster, but fortunately I have a sorc healer I'm switching to that I was already bringing to raid last night. My guess is there are many operatives who are getting completely screwed by this bug.

How is putting 16m at the same difficulty as 8man good either? 16man content (specifically nightmare) is the only real decent challenge in the game. If you scale it so that 16m normal = 8man normal, 16m hard = 8m hard, etc, you are drastically reducing the skill ceiling. =/

From this weeks Q&A: http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-feb-17th-2012 Someone please tell me this is a mistake or something. In no universe should 8man be harder than 16man. Furthermore, 16man should drop more/better loot. If the intended design is that 16man is indeed easier than 8man I honestly don't see how endgame PvE will survive in SWTOR.

Please tell me this is a mistake. In what universe should 16m be easier than 8man? This makes absolutely no sense. If anything, 16m should be harder and offer better rewards.

I'm valor rank 71 in full battlemaster PvP gear. I'm also in full rakata PvE gear except for my columi bracers and have cleared all 8 and 16man nightmare content. With that on the table here is what you need to know: HM FPs will not be a problem. HM FPs are mostly tank+spank with a few fight mechanics you need to know to reduce damage taken by your party. Even without the best gear columi+ a smart and decently skilled operative can heal a HM FP without much trouble. 8 Operations will also be fairly straightforward when everyone understands the different fight mechanics. While they will require a bigger gear check and more skill/attention, all 8man content can be cleared with an operative healer + another healer. Sorc + operative is obviously the best combination for you in 8man, followed by BH+op and then op+op. That's not say op+op cannot be done, its that it will simply require more gear and skill than say sorc+operative. 16man content is where operative healers start to see themselves being stretched thin. Depending on whether your group brings 4 or 5 healers and what their classes and gear are, 16man operatives can be difficult. The tank in 16man will take considerable more damage, requiring constant attention and the raid will also be taking more damage to more members. It is here where operative healers really start to be stretched. If you have not kept your energy up, KP stacked on the tank, etc. you will find yourself burning energy as you KI->SP the raid and tank at the same time. Furthermore, any need of aoe healing such as the annihilation droid, soa, jarg+sorno, etc. will be doubly tough. PvP is all about managing your cooldowns effectively. Without going into too much detail, the trick to being successful as an operative healer in PvP is knowing when, and more importantly when not, to use your cooldowns (shield probe, evasion, cloaking screen, medpacks, flashbang, debilitate).

As others have stated, you really can't talk with conviction about a class PvE or PvP till you hit 50. I'm valor rank 71 in full battlemaster gear and 1 bracer away from full rakata and I can tell you operatives (both heal and dps specs) are noticably lacking compared to the aforementioned classes (sorcs/assassions/mercs etc). Does that mean operatives are complete garbage? No, absolutely not. I constantly top warzones in healing and total medals and probably am only out-healed by 1 of our sorcs during our 16man raids(2 sorcs, 2ops, 1 merc healers). The real problem, as others have stated numerous times, is that other classes can do exactly the same things we can significantly better. I have a 46 sorc I'm leveling/gearing during our off-raid nights, and it is ridiculous how well their abilities flow compared to healing operatives. Also: KDR means absolutely nothing. I top KDR a ton as a healing operative on Civil War and sometimes voidstar. It's called orbital strike...

This will 100% not work in nightmare mode. The assassins will absolutely dominate a non-healer before you can kill them. The solution to this is to put the sentinel/maruader in his own raid group. He will then be able to take advantage of things like inspiration/bloodthirst without effecting the rest of the raid.