My main qualm with merc/mando heals at the moment is the inability to increase dissipation/ammo regen while vent/recharge is on cooldown. Compared to other healers we don't really have a solid rotation for managing our heat. Sorcs can consume and go "force positive" in their rotation at any time, maintaining relatively high HPS while regenerating resource. Operatives can Diagnostic Scan during downtime to keep their resource high in additional to their adrenaline probe. Merc/mandos need another way to regen. All we can do is spam RS/HS when we go over 60/40, which really hampers our HPS. We either need a small regen attached to a no cooldown ability or a moderate regen attached to a moderate cooldown ability. I think attaching a small regen to rapid shots would be ok or possibly adding a regen component to thermal sensor overrides would be somewhat effective. I would prefer an active solution rather than just adding another cooldown to manage, but either way we need another way to get us back down to where we need to be quickly while not causing a major loss in HPS. I hate feeling helpless as a healer knowing that if $&!@ hits the fan while my vent heat is cooling down, there will be no way for me to help recover because I can't risk going over on resource with no way to get back. As a secondary concern, I feel that overall despite our heavy armor, mercs/mandos are the least survivable out of the 3 healer classes in pvp. We have less ability to escape/mitigate than others, and while it is better than it used to be, we still need some improvements in the pvp utility department.

Actually I brought up that strat long before anyone saw 7stuck doing it on their stream. Before I transferred and I joined SuckaFish we used to run that strat sometimes in Tempest on Pot5 just for $&!#$ and giggles during our HM runs. That strat is old news and we didnt have to "steal" it from anyone. It's been around for months.

Signed

Lolz

Well story modes are designed specifically for Pug raids that don't really have the time to commit to 5 hour+ raids. From my experience, you would be hard pressed to find a pug that didn't lose at least one player over the course of a 3-4 hour period...

The problem is that your average guilds do take 2-3 nights to clear a 7 boss encounter like Scum & Villainy. Only the most elite guilds on the servers clear them in a single night, at least on a consistent basis.

There really is no easy answer, is there? You can't really have it both ways. Either we police it or no one does and we rely on judgement of the individual to decide. I completely agree with you though, on all counts.

The thread you're looking for is here. There is a google document in the first post of that thread that tracks the progression of the current guilds competing. You can find that document here.

Well we could go on and speculate all day about what is intended and what is not in that list but we will never really know. I personally feel that using a specific class ability or to lessen the load on a raid such as shroud/reflect/barrier are perfectly acceptable. Where I feel the line is drawn is not in specific single mechanics being eliminated. Some of that could even be intended. But I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that turning dash-roode into a tank and spank by standing behind a rock is not ok. That's what I mean by using common sense. If its debatable then chances are its not necessarily an exploit, but people basically skipping entire fights or phases by doing sneaky things isn't up for debate, really. There isn't a leg to stand on there. I will concede that maybe some people might draw the line in different places so in those cases it's up to us as the community to set the bar. There are going to be bugs in any MMO that you play. It's up to the players to decide how and when they should be policed.

All it takes is a little common sense to see where that line is. It doesn't have to be drawn IMO. Those three examples you gave aren't exploits, and I don't think anyone considers them to be. Using a certain class comp in order to make a fight easier is just smart, and is a staple of MMO raiding. There is nothing expoitative about that, but when a guild basically renders a a fight's mechanics null by using some weird unintended positioning, hack, etc., I think most agree that is an exploit. Either way the issue lies with Bioware. Stuff like this shouldn't exist in the first place and they need to fix it before it goes live or at the bare minimum at least very shortly after it is discovered.

Very nice. It took us half a night of wipes to figure it out. >.<

This is a quote from one of their guild representatives. The hypocrisy abounds! LOL

That isn't the point. We could have easily cleared the entire instance last night if we had chosen to skip as they had, the last 3 bosses are a joke. Instead they took the easy way out by skipping the hardest encounter in the instance and discredited themselves in the process. Why should every other guild be punished for clearing the instance in the correct and obviously intended order. If they wanted the Dread Guards to be the last fight to be cleared, they would have put it at the end.

Agreed.

Except no one is counting it as progression except for your guild. Nice try though.

Except it's not overtuned, and the "community" jumped the gun after 5 hours of trying. Our best attempt was down to 32% and there is still plenty of room for improvement on the fight. Suckafish had it down to 10% tonight. No one is congratulating any of you. You guys were too eager and probably to terrible too beat the fight with 72 gear so you skipped it. We get it.

We aren't being petty or butt hurt. Actually it's quite the opposite. We as a guild were looking forward to competing with guilds like D&T for server firsts.... One less guild for us to race against. You have completely discredited your guild for this progression tier. Fine by me.

Actually you skip the hard bosses and kill the easy ones.... It's cool we get why you did it.

I Hope you and your guild enjoy the very little respect anyone had for D&T in the raiding community now being completely gone. That is all I have to say on the matter.

Skipping DGs is equivalent to giving up on the fight. That isn't raid progression. There are many guilds on the forums here that are competing for Server/World First. For D&T to roll through and skip content that they feel is too difficult for them to complete as a guild, and then come onto the forums claiming server/world firsts on the rest of the bosses because they wussed out on the hardest fight in the place, is disrespectful to everyone here trying to down the raid in a legitimate fashion. And BTW... Suckafish got Kel'sara down to 10% tonight, I saw the attempt on their livestream. The fight is more than possible for a solid group of raiders who play it to perfection. I wager that we will see a kill before the end of the week.

It's not that I can't get the job done, it has more to do with class perception. Sorcs have better AOE healing and are just thought to be better healers by the vast majority. I have healed through both NM and HM operations on my merc but nerfing us isn't going to help player perception of our class. It's going to hurt our case. I had to convince my guild that my merc healer could get the job done. The real kicker was when I solo healed through 2nd NM EV boss (Lava boss) after our other sorc healer ate it early. I don't want to have to convince my friends that I can get the job done all over again once the nerf bat screws up their perceptions again. I think we are in a pretty good spot currently on live, but I just don't see any real justification for making our heat twice as hard to manage. We aren't too efficient. There are many fights where we need every bit of that efficiency to keep up with a sorc, and now it's just going to be impossible.

I have a hard enough time getting my guild to take me over a sorc healer for operations before 1.2 goes live. Merc heals need a buff not a nerf. After 1.2 I am pretty sure I will have to shelve my Merc and go roll an operative or a sorc in order to heal. What a joke. They have effectively almost doubled our heat costs with these changes. I just don't understand why they would NERF our already gimped class. It's so incompetent and it's absolutely unreal. All I can say is that I can't wait for GW2 because I will be moving on if this kind of complete idiocy continues from the dev team.

I dunno why all the hate and arguments are flying around here. As long as you have the Set Bonuses from the combat medic set and you are not a complete moron about managing your heat, you are going to succeed. Raiding in this game is ridiculously easy. It's much more casual than many other MMOs. You cant really go wrong. If you want to stack Crit/Power/Alacrity/Surge/Whatever go right ahead. It's not going to make or break your heals. Do which one appeals to you more and you can still win as long as you have your Aim high and your spec ironed out.

I do pretty well in PvP as 33 pt bodyguard. This is the Spec I Use: PvP Heal Spec It is very similar to the PvE spec listed here, I just drop Cure Mind and Integrated Systems to obtain Power Shield and Protective Field which are preferable in PvP due to focus on healers. I rarely have a sorc out heal me and I frequently top 400k heals in warzones. With this spec I become a self healing tank of sorts. My focus is to draw as much of the other team's fire as possible so that their DPS is wasted on me. I just self heal through it and when it gets too intense I pop Energy Shield and an Adrenal and heal myself like crazy. I rarely die and when I do the enemy has wasted many many resources to bring me down. The only downside to healing in WZs is the lack of medals obtained while doing so... I usually only get about 5-6 medals where I would probably get 8-9 on average if I went into arsenal. Keeping people alive is the best way to win warzones and I believe we are better suited to it than any other healer because IMO we are tougher to kill than Ops/Sorcs. Sorcs are better suited to Operation healing due to their unlimited target AOE heal circle, but I truly feel that Mercs are a different sort of healer, we are Heal Tanks (a Paladin of sorts) We can crank out the heals and take a beating while doing so. I really enjoy tanking 4+ members of their group as the other 7 members of my group melt face around me. It is very satisfying to me being next to unkillable (even if it takes forever to kill others) The problem is that they can't ignore me like they can ignore a tank because I will keep my group alive with heals so they have to go for me first, and that can prove a very challenging feat many times.

From what I have seen Merc healing is very largely based on energy management, yes. My heals still hit almost as hard when I am full Arsenal spec. I would say that the most useful ability for turning us into main healers is Critical Efficiency. It is a talent that reduces our heat costs by a very large margin on our biggest spot heal (Rapid Scan) when our smaller faster heal (Healing Scan) is cast first. The only talent that actually increases our healing magnitude by a significant margin is Warden which increases our critical heals by 15% when fully talented. It seems like the main focus within the bodyguard tree is to allow us to use our heals more often via reduced heat and Supercharged Gas. The latter being an ability that removes the cool down on our smaller heal that in turn allows us to spam our big heal more often. The two talents combo very well to give us very large bursts of healing whenever we need it. It all comes down to managing the heat costs on our Rapid Scan (big heal). We have a few things that help in small ways like Kolto Shell, Kolto Missile and Proactive Medicine/Armor, but they are minuscule effects when you compare them to the raw outhealing gained by the heat management talents in the tree. As to your second thought, I very much feel like a very effective off-tank when I am hybrid spec. There have been many fights where I DPS almost the entire fight and when the tank dies I am first to grab aggro, pop my bubble and self heal like crazy until the boss dies or tank gets rezzed. I don't think I could see a Sorc doing that quite so well as we do it. (I could be wrong) IMO from what I have seen Merc healer self survivability is much greater than Sorc, even though sorc is a much better healer when they don't have aggro. My personal opinion is that we are sort of a tankier healer (Paladin of sorts) and we can take more of a beating since we have the heavy armor proficiency. Although, this largely remains guesswork based on personal observations since we don't have a combat log to get some real figures...