i'm actually too stunned for words were people complaining about bodyguards/combat medics were they trivialising content were they stopping people bringing other healers i don't understand why their heat and healing had to be curbed so incredibly thoughly never mind the fact that sorcs have WAAAAY more utility than every other healer (i feel like pretty dead wait not having force speed or pull in pvp compared to a sorc).... i just don't understand what the purpose of this was? if i'd known there was only one healing class in the game, i woudl have leveled it. but i didn't want to play the most played class to begin with. my bad... honestly, they could have reduced the number of targets kolto bomb hits... is it even worth casting now?

Why the hurry? We still have passive regen from endurance, one time use quest items, and displaced WoW characters with max rank first aid. Ops can wait their turn.

Couple of PVP changes coming in 1.1.5 that'll be great for healers. "Healers in Warzones now receive kill credit when a healed player kills an enemy." This is an issue i mentioned a few pages ago. I believe this already works in Illum, but not 100% sure. The second change is that medal rewards are doubled, but cap at 4 medals. this, coupled with the previous change are for healers. earning 4, 5 medals, as a healer, is quite easy (2.5 in a single heal, 75k healed being the two easiest). however, after getting credit for kill assists, it should be simple enough to cap out medal gain each match, meaning we'll be on even footing with everyone else. this can only get better when they add the objective based medals (in 1.2 i believe). tl;dr we should now get the same kills and medals as everyone

Did you put a point in Combat Shield? it's works wonders against interrupts (though not knock backs). Also, what about your own CC? throwing out stuns and mezzes lets you heal a bit easier. Watch your resolve bar. It'll fill up quickly, and don't use your tenacity until the resolve bar is full. if you want and then tenacity, you'll have pretty long uninterrupted healing. As for heals, stick your trauma probe on the ball carrier, or whomever. toss out kolto bombs if you need to be running. bacta infusion is pretty good, and the cooldown is short enough that you can toss it out. you also, at 50, get a 'next spell instant' ability that'll help. health potions, and a self heal over time should mean you are reasonably hard to kill. the key thing is, unlike some other MMOs, it takes a reasonable amount of time to kill a player. if you wait out CC, and toss out your own cc, at some point you should be able to get off a few rounds of AMP/MP. end of the day though, you have heavy armor, and a few surviabilty cooldowns. if you have a tank protecthing you, you should be able to 'heal tank' a lot of their team. that's, at least, how i play BH (which should be basically the same thing)

for my BH merc. i keybind everything, with the exception of quick travel and emergency fleet pass my movement keys are bound to 'esdf' (with all turning done by mouse) essentially, the number keys (1-6) are heals shift+1-6 are single target attacks a,q,w are heat managment or modifiers on heals. e,r,t,c,v,g are all self heals, CC, or ememergncy buttons shift q,w,e are all AOE attacks shift,t,c,etc are generally analogs to their non-shift component (i.e. stun is T. mes is shift+t. health pot is c. self heal over time is shift c) 1 - kolto shell 2 - kolto missle 3 - healing scan 4 - rapid scan 5 - rapid shots 6- emergency scan shift 1 - uppercut shift 2 - power shot shift 3 - unload shift 4 - rail shot shift 5 - dart shift 6 - missle a - SGC shift a - vent heat q - next ability is instant shift q - death from above w - cure shift w - the aoe to 5 targets r - shield shift r - fussion missle t - stun shift - t concussive missle g - break crowd control shift g - next ability costs 0 heat c - potion shift c - heal 15% life over time z - adrenal shift z - relic v - jet boost b - pass the hutt ball ctrl + 1 - class buff ctrl + 2 - stim ctrl + 4 - vehicle. tab - next enemy ` - next ally mouse 4 is for vent. and mouse 5 is for 'autorun' (i.e. i want to type now)

totally depends on format, setting, and personality. some people really just enjoy tweaking and optimizing. also, while some people are really good brewers, most people who are just avoiding 'netdecks' ... are not. and that's fine. it's just wierd when 'iwishmonoblackwasgood.dec' shows up at a PTQ, and is suprised when his bad deck isn't good simply because it's different. people who are 'different because it's different' are as closed minded, or more so, than people who default to a net deck, and they do worse. someone who considers the netdecks, and thinks he can beat them... is a different story. wishing the formats best deck didn't exist so your homebrew would stand a chance... that's the real issue. it's 'scrub' play. you want everyone else to compete on a set of standards you decide, and only you know. people complaining about things being 'cheap' rather than observing if they are actually good is a problem. it's arguably why ops dps spec got nerfed. wether or not ops can heal isn't really a debate. tehy clearly can. they have heals. can they do a good job at it? it seems to eb, compared to other classes, no. however, some people take that fact as a personal attack. you know... sorcs don't have to get multiple tier 2 headslot items to rip mods out of to be viable... why is that an acceptable gearing guide?

just the opposite. who wants to be obsolete.

if alacrity was 'free' this might be true. but, unless they are dieing faster than your fastest heal, you would be better served having bigger heals than faster ones. the stats you give up for the alacrity normally aren't worth it. there's more of an argument for alacrity in pvp, where you want to spend less time 'casting.' but in pve, you really just chain cast spells. any breaks, mean alacrity was wasted.

having extra abilities with subtle nuances does, in no way, make a class more challenging than one without those extra abilities. it just raises the potential gain you can get from skill, without negatively effecting the base line : P

but the bounty hunter story is pretty good, so there yah go

To try give you the unbiased answer: Sorc/Sage is very much like a priest in WoW, primarily because of shield. Currently, they are the best healer, by a large margine, for 3 reasons 1. they have the best AOE heal (by a large margin), and AOE damage is very common in high level swtor fights. 2. their shield is very good. 3. they have the best non-heailing utility of the healer classes. BH/Commandon are actually in a decent place, I feel. They do have some problems (as can be seen on the healer request/compilation), but they have some pretty cool mechanics, as far as a healing class goes. they basically get a 'super healing mode' they can activate repeatedly through a fight. they are excellent single target healers. they do need to stand and cast spells a bit, which would be a problem in PVP, but their energy shield (with talents), and heavy armor means you can 'heal tank' a bit in PVP. they get compared to paladins a lot, which is not unfair. it's also worth noting that they provide several buffs to a tank, making bringing one very useful, but the second and third probably aren't as good. this is only really a concern in 16 man operations, where you have more healers. also you get to shoot your allies. and bomb them. endless hours of fun on your fleet. their primary concern is their AOE heal is a little lackluster, hitting only 3 targets, and hitting those 3 randomly, sometimes missing the tank entirely (which really hurts if you wanted to give the buff it provides to him). Ops/scoundrel are maybe supposed to be a HoT based healer, but currently a lot of their spells are underwhelming to the point where some actually are not even worth putting on your hotbar. on paper, they seem quite cool, but the concepts still need ironing out. they juggle a second resource, called tactical advantage, but you really, from what i gather, spend 90% of a fight alternating between 2 buttons, and refreshing your long lasting hot, and energy restoration abilities. i'd compare them to a pre-burning crusade shaman. i.e. pretty bad at healing, but what else can they do in a raid group. all their other specs are terrible for PVE. hopefully their heal over times get buffed to the point of usability. also... the cover system was completely neglected on them. why even give it before level 10 if it's useless on operatives. in terms of power ranking, it's pretty clearly sorc/sage > bh/command > op/smuggler, for both PVE and PVP (though the gap is closer between BH and OP in PVP). but, this is always going to be a moving target, so if you only level one char ever (like i do), and it takes a long time, maybe put your efforts into the style you like, rather than the ranking. TL;DR - BH/Commandos, while not over powered, are fine and worth runng.

Actually, druids were revisited a number of times prior to BC. The first initial rework happened while I was leveling my druid to 60. The feral and balance trees were the most heavily affected (anyone remember the original druid feral 31 pointer. extra energy off of pounce? sweet. who needs moonkin, we got huricane!), though the healing tree was not untouched (many 5 points talents dropped in cost). Then, about half way between the time Naxx and AQ were released, swiftmend was added! Also, there were a lot of extra It's really hard being on the gamer side of things, because it's hard to tell what is, and isn't being worked on. coming to old republic, from LoL, I can say that one of the best aspects of that game was the transparency behind the ongoing projects. Things still take forever, but you know what's going on. but the LoL team, compared to tOR, is much smaller, and the employees are encouraged to interact with the community. I am not ready to say die yet. we still haven't seen much of the next major content patch (1.2), and it seems unrealistic to expect anything but band aid fixes in the minor patches (the operative nerf was surprisingly heavy handed for a minor patch). i think what's most likely is: bug fixes and quality of life fixes in minor patches (such as the minor fix coming in 1.1.4). Larger sweeping changes (hopefully), in 1.2. An extensive class rework, that changes the functionality of abilties, seems unlikely before at least 1.3 (whenver that will be). For now, it'll probably be number tweaking (and number of players hit by an AoE is a number...) pardon my train of thought. i realise it was all over the place...

since when? also the tooltip, strangely, says 'increases healing' so something is out of date on these very strange adrenals

out of curiosity, can you list your cunning, power, tech power, surge, and crit rating. it should be easy enough using RuQus calculator to get the same numbers for Commando/Merc (swapping cunning for aim) One thing to note is merc's 4 piece set bonus might alter their healing efficient slightly, as it lowers the cooldown on healing scan. Healing scan, without 4 piece bonus is a 9 second cooldown, and with it goes down to 7.5 seconds. also, the increased length of time on our SCG state is going to have an effect as well.

well, the big problem is it's possible the 'displayed numbers' are just roundings of what is actually happening, and there is no discrepancy. can't do much until we know.