A healer preference style. In SWTOR, you have to target someone, then press the ability, and it starts to cast on them. If no one is targeted, it assumes self-target and starts to cast on you. Some people prefer to press the ability key, then click on a target. So if no target is selected, or the target is hostile, you can press "1" to select "Medical Probe" and nothing will happen until you click on a portrait in the raid frame, and then the heal will start casting. It's a change in the order of the command (ability -> target instead of target -> ability), but it opens up options, like pressing the ability and hovering over the raid frame waiting for who needs it, or keeping the enemy targeted so you can DPS and then tossing out a heal as needed without swapping target or accidentally self-healing. It was requested that it add some healing synergy, some reason to use cover in operations, beyond preventing some range closing abilities. I know, right? Good to see that they have been busy this past year. At least they got that cash shop working. Priorities, right?

Disappointing, but not surprising. The lack of smart healing a year after launch seems absurd, though. A genre standard since what, 2004?, and sort of important for a 4-capped AoE in 8-16 person settings...

For all classes. Back around launch we had a long, long list of recommendations and requests (some definitely better than others). I haven't maintained it since I left after 1.2, and was wondering on if we have seen any progress and what our new problems were. Here's the link to the old list Some highlights: Have they addressed animation delays? Any improvement to some of the crappiest animations? Kolto Fart? Underworld Medicine? Does Alacrity change the GCD for instant abilities now? Does it scale the ability price, affect regen, or increase HoT tick rate or duration? Improvements to the UI for tracking buffs, procs, CC time remaining, and HoT/buff duration remaining? AoE target circles accurately reflecting radius? Can buffs be moved independently of the character panel? Can auto-self cast be disabled so you can press the ability and then select a target? Are companions in the raid frames now? Do health bars show incoming heals? ie a shaded area on a damaged health bar to show that a heal is targeted on them that will take them from 50% to 75% What's the player limit on the AoE abilities now? Still 8/4/4? Do AoE's smart heal (preferentially target the most injured) or is it still based on distance from center of the ability? Have they done anything to address CM/Merc regen issues? Does TP still cost 2 Ammo? Any improvement after the Field Trauma nerf to AP/MP combos? Any improvement post-SCC nerf? Have they made any changes to Sc/Op mechanics? Increased synergies, changing dependencies, just in general making a more interesting mechanic? Improvements to UH/TA generation and tracking? Have they added any cool short cooldowns to Op or Sage, comparable to SCC for CM? Have they fixed the Ammo/Heat imbalance issue? Have they made cover useful for Sc/Op? Do any Sc/Op heals add a utility buff like the run speed from FA or the armor from AP? Have they made Kolto Pack useful?

Well, I've always been a PVE guy, so those concerns, while a problem for the class, aren't a problem for me. To be clear, was that a yes to smart healing?

The early flashpoints highlight one of BW's biggest failures with the class design/balance. It shows up in particular for healers and tanks. The different classes that fill the roles were all designed to be (poorly) balanced at 50, with no consideration at all lower down. So some tanks have an AoE early. My Shadow didn't get one until around level 27. Likewise healing, the Commando just doesn't have enough tools early on to manage the punishing resource well. It gets better.

Just returning to the game after about 10 months. What's the state of the CM? Is KB at least smart healing now? Any significant changes to our ammo management and priorities? Any changes in demand for CMs in groups? What are our major problems these days?

This alacrity argument is ancient. It existed in debates over the value of haste stats in earlier MMOs, and it has raged since launch in this one, compounded by the Scoundrel/Commando regen mechanic. It's almost amusing to come back to the game after 10 months and see the exact same argument still raging. Like you, I was an early and vocal opponent of Alacrity for Commandos, and you can see that I mention the negatives in my guide at the top: I'm not back up to speed yet with the state of the game since 1.2, but the largest issue you are overlooking is that healing is not a 100% up-time activity like DPS. Healing is reactive (even pre-heals, like TP and Force Armor). You don't have to heal non-stop, you only have to heal the damage that comes in. The cost of MP takes roughly 3.5 seconds to regen (3.33 as someone mentioned above). So long as you take 3.33 seconds per MP, it doesn't matter if that MP has a 3.5s cast time or a 1s cast time followed by 2.5s of dancing...except to the player who died at the 2s mark. If your surge is hitting DR, feel free to stack Alacrity with your spare item budget. Just make sure you use the extra free time it buys you to stand around regenning ammo, and don't make the mistake of thinking you are a Sage and can immediately follow that faster heal with another.

He wasn't wrong at the time. That's the problem with raising dead threads from a year ago. At launch, only Agents/Smugglers had a battle-rez, and KM hit only 3 targets for a very, very long time.

Simply put, has anything changed in the past 10 months? Any of our long-standing problems been resolved? Healing any more interesting? Mechanics improvements? AoE healing balance? What's the state of the healer game?

I've just come back to the game after leaving the game in April 2012. I'll start running some flashpoints on my Commando and try and get back up to speed on the state of the class to put out a 1.7 update.

24 days left on my account, but no one I know plays anymore, and none of the recent changes have addressed any of the reasons all of us left. I did see that GZ is gone, but any changes to come from that are likely to be too late to bring any of us back, especially with GW2 coming out soon. I didn't think I'd care for that much, but the most recent beta really impressed me.

That's certainly possible, I haven't actually played this game in 2 months now, and I'm not up on the latest encounters. It seems strange to design the fights around burst while doing everything they can to remove burst capability, but I long ago gave up on expecting a lot of planning or foresight from this Dev team.

When they nerf Operatives again, just know that you brought it on yourselves... and then cry because it was more fun to troll the Devs than to play...

As dipstik said, it is easy to get too much Surge. Surge got nerfed pretty hard early on in their constant efforts to eliminate burst from the game, so there is a very steep diminishing return on Surge. Anything over 300 will show negligible results. You can gain some benefit from Alacrity, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind with it. If you cast faster, the regen you generate while casting will decrease, which means the effective cost of the ability increases. ie: Medical Probe costs 3 Ammo, takes 2s to cast, and you regen 0.8 Ammo per second while casting. Let's look at this with 0% Alacrity and 50% Alacrity (impossible, but easy to demonstrate the effect): 0% Effective Cost = 3 - 2*0.8 = 1.4 Ammo 50% Effective Cost = 3 - 1*0.8 = 2.2 Ammo However, if you have 50% alacrity and cast MP then pause 1s, you are at the same place total. This means that while you can spam abilities faster, you can't actually use any more of them in the same time. It gives you increased burst, but not increased total HPS over the same time. You need to Burst - Pause -Burst - Pause. However, there is one more problem that rears its head, which is especially bad for Commandos but also applies to a lesser degree to Sc/Op/Merc. This is that chain spam can drop you into a lower regen window when the same number of casts without Alacrity would not have done so. As a result, a Burst-Pause-Burst-Pause cycle can, if used frequently, actually result in lower DPS over the course of a fight. This is because spamming Ammo using abilities and following them with HS requires more total HS casts and more time to get back to 10+ Ammo than weaving HS in with the Ammo using abilities. These problems were made more extreme by the reduced efficiency that came with 1.2, and most of the Alacrity fans have abandoned that style of play. You simply can't afford to cast enough heals in a row anymore to make it worth the trade-off. So, in short, yes you should take Alacrity, but only because they made high levels of Surge worthless and you don't have any options. However, once you are forced to take Alacrity, be more aware of your Ammo and take time to pause as needed or weave in more HS to keep from dropping too low using your old rotation.

I'm pretty sure this is in line with what their standard thinking: I think our PvP DPS based Dev team has forgotten that they should only be trying to kill healers in WZs, and not literally make them extinct in the game....

I've made this argument since Launch. Early on Op/Sc players claimed DS was useless, but they have always failed to admit the great strengths it also had. True, you can't cast it while moving, and true it does 1/2 the HPS of Rapid Shots. However, it is also the only return ability that scales with gear, and it only got stronger in 1.2 with the reduced cast time talent. Our old equivalent was SCC/SCG. SCC had the option that it was really easy to use, while a 3s cast of DS took a lot of time not moving, even with the excessive Alacrity on gear. This meant that while DS was mathematically better, in practice it was rarely used, and even the most amazing ability is worthless if you can never actually use it. Post 1.2, DS is now great. It is far faster, and Alacrity continues to benefit it. It scales your return with both crit and alacrity, which is pretty awesome. In contrast, SCC never scales with anything except a minor benefit from alacrity boosted Medical Probe (Rapid Scan iirc). SCC also got sliced in half, so the return is far less worthwhile, and it has an innate cooldown due to a minimum of 15s build up time (10x Rapid Shots). DS has no cooldown, and can be used more often and with more crits as you gear up. You are, of course, absolutely correct on your other main points as well. Playstyle is subjective, and personally I liked it, but the changes in 1.2 greatly reduced the enjoyability of that style. Being a spamming turret of healing glory is only a fun style if your decisions matter. If the rotation is too simple, it becomes way too obvious that your are just in a fancy Skinner Box. The style centers on using abilities in rapid succession, so there should be reward for choosing the right combo and punishment for choosing the wrong combo, but to do that requires that there be more than one actual combo possible. Pre-1.2, with the "high pressure" time constraint of trying to maximize SCC, this was the case. If you could land an opening and ending KM you could get 100% uptime on a 10% DR, plus maximize HPS between those two casts. With the nerfed KM and more expensive HS/RS combo, there is far less reward for doing it right and more punishment for over-reaching, so the decisions go away. In it's current state BG healing is barely better than a slot machine in terms of complexity and enjoyment. Which brings us to your other key point, our Core Mechanic. As mentioned above, the changes fundamentally undermine the entire class. They reduce decisions, reduce reward for good play, and increase punishment for poor play. This combines into more static gameplay, which makes all encounters blur together since our response to all situations and mechanics is the same. I keep watching the Patch Notes, but I've yet to see any indication that they even think healing needs fixing, let alone any intention to do so.

Yeah, I've never said that Operatives have good burst, it was just an example of swapping out a rotation change to produce higher HPS that wasn't sustainable. The actual design (cost/power/cast time) of KInf was a burst ability is bad enough that it was a core complaint of pre-1.2, and we expected them to improve Sc/Op to actually give them decent burst in 1.2. Instead they nerfed the burst of the other two. So now we are in a post-1.2 world of trying to discuss burst where two classes have had their burst ability severely nerfed, and the only remaining burst option was bad to begin with.

I just addressed this in the other thread where you said the same, so I'll give a shorter response here. The rotation you describe for that 13k in 2.8 isn't burst healing. All of those abilities are part of your core rotation, and BI has a 21s cooldown and is not available on demand as it should, generally, always be on CD. Those 3 (AP/MP/BI) will align on occasion leading to a spike in HPS compared to when BI falls between HS casts, but that is a spike, not a burst. Burst means the ability to change what you do for higher HPS, traditionally at the cost of unsustainable resource consumption. Commandos used to have this with the pre-nerf SCC and Field Triage, but it is gone now. For an example of what burst is, look at the option of an Operative replacing Surgical Probe (weak but only costs 1 TA stack and no energy) with Kolto Infusion (higher HPS, but costs 1 TA + 20 Energy). Their HPS will increase, but they will burn energy very fast, so fast that some Operatives still consider KInf useless even with the post-1.2 extra TA stack and the set bonus for extra crit.

The problem is that this is not "Burst Healing." What abilities did you use? AP/MP/BI+relics Now let's look at the abilities you use in a basic healing rotation (assuming healing is needed), in order of priority: BI on cooldown if not 12 Ammo AP on cooldown MP HS to maintain Ammo levels You might not be picky about the 12 Ammo limitation on BI, but if you are at 12 it is better to spend Ammo and then BI instead of using BI at 12. That's splitting hairs though. The two main points here are: 1) BI is likely on cooldown since it is a core part of your healing rotation for Ammo conservation. If you are saving it, you are gimping yourself in the long run. 2) AP/MP/BI is your standard rotation. That it can heal for a large amount when chained without HS spacers isn't the point. We lost our real burst when SCC and Field Triage were nerfed into the ground. Pre-1.2, our burst meant dropping BI and HS, casting AP/MP/SCC/AP/MP/AP/MP/AP/MP/KB then BI/HS to recover Ammo. That capability is now gone due to the 33% higher cost of AP/MP and the 50% reduction in returned Ammo from SCC usage, and the weaker SCC healing buff. All of this combined to require free filler during a SCC phase, and the weaker buff made doing so barely better than doing so outside of SCC. In short, "Burst Healing" isn't the same as "I can do big numbers!" Burst Healing means an on-demand capability to change how you heal to produce larger than normal numbers, but at unsustainable rates. If you can "Burst Heal" for 5 minutes straight, that isn't burst, it's high sustained HPS. If your burst healing relies upon a 21s cooldown that is part of your core rotation, then that isn't burst, it is a spike in your HPS meter when that 21s interval aligns with the rest of the high HPS portion of your rotation (ie AP/MP/BI/HS/HS instead of AP/MP/HS/BI/HS). Relics are used during burst healing, but "same rotation + relics" is not burst healing capability.

30 Charges take 15 seconds to generate. (10*Hammer Shot @ 1.5s per). Therefore 60 charges take 30 seconds to generate. SCC lasts 10 seconds, 13s with set bonus. Currently that is a max of 46% up-time. With 60 Charges needed, it falls to 30% up-time. To cut the up-time in half, to 23% requires that we set 0.23 = 13 / (13+x), and solve for x, where x is the time it takes to generate the charges. Doing so finds x = 43.5s, which is 2.9 times the current level, or 87 Charges. For nice numbers, we can say 90 Charges. So depending on the goal, we can use 60 charges to make it take twice as long to use SCC, or 90 charges for 50% of SCC's old effect over the duration of the fight, while still preserving the power of SCC. Either way is a pretty obvious alternative to the implementation they went with during 1.2, and an obvious change that would be in-line with the quote about fixing/avoiding usability nerfs.

Did you mean to post this back in December and just found the document you wrote it up in lost in a folder somewhere as you were cleaning your hard drive? Lots of people made this sort of suggestion back then. While some of your claims are very weak, bordering on outright wrong, others were (past tense) quite strong. There was definite merit to the idea, and many people had great success using this concept as guidance. Let's look at your suggestion in more depth. At this point, 6 months after launch, we are all quite familiar with the game. There is very little that makes this game any different from previous titles. The two main exceptions are 1) Story, and 2) simplified mechanics. Trust me, modeling most roles in this game is pretty trivial, especially compared to the extreme complexity of modeling WoW. I don't think we see this game the same way, as the classes don't seem vastly different to me, or many others. The resource mechanics are very similar: Rage for Sith Warriors is a lot like...Rage for WoW Warriors, Energy for Agents/Smugglers is a lot like...Energy for Rogues, Ammo/Heat are essentially renamed Energy, Force is just mana. WoW now has a max cap on Mana (apparently, I haven't played in quite some time), just like the fixed pool on Force. The primary difference in the hit table is that in SWTOR, crits trump everything else so crit-immunity is impossible. Classes rely entirely on RNG for hit, avoidance, and crit. Targeting is locked on with little to no positional requirement. Scoundrels and Operatives have stealth and bonuses to attack from behind, just like a Rogue. There was an image somewhere that lined up most of the Sith Warrior abilities next to identical WoW Warrior abilities, and some even had the same or similar names. You're being a bit condescending, and acting like you just made a profound argument, when all you have done is state your thesis. You've done nothing to support it, and rereading it does nothing to make an unsupported claim seem any stronger. Threat comes from damage, with a % modifier. If a tank doesn't pull their own weight in dps, then they will lose threat. 1.3 is making this easier, by increasing their stance buff from 50% to 100%, thus making a tank need to do less DPS to hold the same mobs. The only DPS with taunts are DPS specced tanks, and they are generally very squishy without their tank stance on. DPS taunting will confuse and frustrate your tanks, likely get you killed, possibly kill anyone near you if the DPS are clustered and the mob cleaves, and drive your healer insane/oom. Do not taunt if you are DPS. As for off-heals, you should certainly toss one if you see the need / opening. However, enrage timers are the primary mechanic of every single fight in this game, so any time you can be doing DPS, you absolutely must be doing so, and pausing to throw out a slow heal (and without a hybrid spec and the lost DPS from doing so, your heals will take an extra 0.5s) will actually do more harm than good unless it prevents a death, which is unlikely considering how slow your heals are. Most DPS is also resource-limited in how much they can do, so it isn't just the need for a free GCD. Tossing out a Medical Probe as a Gunnery Commando will delay your next Grav Round or Full Auto, which means a delay in CoF procs and a general loss of DPS over your entire rotation. Here is where your theory was (past tense) strongest. There were many builds designed to enhance the power of Healer DPS. Once they had sufficient Power/Cirt/Surge for their level of content, Combat Medics could stack Alacrity like mad. They couldn't afford any extra heals, but they could spam them out faster, leaving more time for Hammer Shot, and, during SCC phases, they could slam out a huge burst of DPS from fast Charged Bolts. Burn most of their Ammo, pop SCC, then free Charged Bolt spam until their Ammo regens. However, none of that style exists anymore. The changes in 1.2 destroyed SCC, and resource management in general. The spare resources are not there anymore to afford to do DPS. Healing flexibility is gone, and reduced to fairly static healing only rotations, any deviation from which will lead to a loss in throughput which you likely can no longer afford. The classes have great versatility, the specs do not. A Commando can heal, or DPS, and do either well. A Trooper can tank, dps, or heal, although not in the same AC. However, a Gunnery Commando is a terrible, terrible healer, and a Combat Medic is no longer capable of doing any notable DPS in content that they don't vastly outgear. The Devs actively snuff out hybrid builds. I think all of this has been covered in my responses above. [sarcasm] Correction: Healing doesn't work in this game. [/sarcasm] A summary in response to your summary. This game is out of its infancy, it is 6 months old. WoW is 8.5 years old or so, which means if WoW is middle aged (40), then SWTOR is solidly a toddler (2.35 years old). It should be up and walking by now. Even that is generous. At 6 months with a second major content patch coming, they should be up to stride by now, with a growing subscriber base and positive press. They have the opposite. We approach SWTOR like WoW because all of the mechanics are identical to mechanics from early WoW (circa 2007). At the current state of the game, it is not possible to act as you suggest. DPS heals are too weak, and enrage timers are too tight, that off-heals should be used only rarely, and only if they don't take away from DPS time. Healer resources management is such that they generally cannot afford to be doing DPS, and healing was slowed down so much that even otherwise free DPS (like SCC CB spam) is non-optimal. It was their extreme burst capability that gave them the free time to afford CB spam, and that burst is completely gone now. DPS should not be taunting off of tanks unless they want to be dead DPS, kill those near them, and cause a wipe. Tank DPS is essential to making enrage timers, but it is also baked into their rotations. Only 1 Shadow ability in their standard tanking rotation is a non-DPS ability, Kinetic Ward. Finally, you say healing mechanics changes are coming. Again, this feels like you wrote it months ago, pre-1.2 when they said we were getting healing changes. Patch 1.3 has no changes to healing, except nerfs to Shadow/Assassin tank self-heals. Patch 1.2 did change healers considerably, but the changes were heavy-handed, poorly thought out, and even more poorly implemented. They showed a keen lack of understanding of the classes, a lack of design vision, and the completely undermined the playstyle you are advocating. Nice idea, if unoriginal and about 6 months after people proposed it when it still made sense. I applaud you attempting to view the game from an angle that makes it seem like the Developers might have any idea what they are doing. This was possibly true around launch, but now it is clearly visible that this isn't the case.

In other words: "The game is fine, it's the players that are broken." Luckily, they are well on their way to fixing that problem. Roughly 70 days until all the "broken" players are shaken out of the system.

71 remaining, but I haven't logged in for over 37 days now, and I don't feel particularly drawn to end that streak. The patch notes certainly don't do anything to bring me back. No healer changes. No healer requested UI changes. No smart-healing (despite adding smart-aoe-dps for tanks) Nerf to the DPS adrenal to stop healers from using it (admittedly while making the DPS penalty on the healer intended adrenal less punishing). Nerfs to Shadow self-healing and survivability (my other level 50 class). Continued use of large changes instead of minor adjustments in their balance attempts. They lost me in the fallout from 1.2. My initial 6 month sub + free time gives them a window to win me back...but it looks pretty clear that 1.3 isn't going to be the patch to do that.

I think part of the problem is starting to become clear. Note the underlined sections. Self-healing was "a bit" too good when combined with their passive survivability, and they didn't want to nerf either self-healing or passive DR "too hard" so the chose to nerf them by "a much smaller amount." Now let's look at how small that "much smaller amount" is: Passive self healing was nerfed 50%. Active self-healing was nerfed 33%. Armor DR was nerfed by 23.3% (39.4% nerf of their light armor compensation bonus)* * These large percentage nerfs are what they call "much smaller" adjustments. What were the original options? Remove self-healing entirely? Remove the light armor offset bonus to tanking stance entirely? I think one of the basic issues we see is that these Devs are incapable of small adjustments. Their smallest hammer is an 8lb sledge.

This has been gone over so many times I will keep this version short. The current system of AoE dumb-healing does not promote skill. It is based on the closest people to the center, and there is no practical way to control that as the healer. Yes, you can sometimes change placement to get 4 wounded people closest to the center when they could otherwise have been in the radius but further than a full-health person. However, there are other times when you simply cannot. Someone at high health is directly next to a low health person, and between two low health people such that to hit both requires actually centering the AoE on or near the high health person. For example, say you are trying to AoE heal some melee DPS and the other healer already topped the tank. The 4 melee DPS are standing near the tank, with the tank between them. You could ask one pair of them to move, but that is DPS time on target lost. Perhaps they should have both been on the same side, perhaps the mechanics encourages spreading out a little more and they shouldn't have been. Either way, smart healing would let you heal those 4 melee DPS without healing the already topped off tank. Dumb-healing would only heal 3, since you would be aiming the center near the tank who would not benefit much or at all. And that is just a static example. Now make it a fight where people are moving...or something like Soa platforms where you have little control over placement during rapid movement with damage. Now consider an example where people cluster up, such as a phase change or hiding behind a pillar for AoE. A Sage/Sorc can do AoE during that period and be confident of not wasting it. Other healer AoE is useless, as the odds are high that it will hit the wrong targets. Smart-healing still requires you choose where to place it so people are in the radius, but it allows you to be confident that the intended targets will be healed and not some random person who didn't need it. It also, and this is key, makes target limited AoE healing useful during phases explicitly designed for AoE healing, when people can stack up and stand still, which are phases where non-Sage/Sorc AoE is actually currently nearly worthless.