I played all those classes in PvP (all with BM gear) and PvE (2 of them with full rakata level). Here is my insight : - Scoundrels : Great for PvP if you like the gameplay, not worth it at all for PvE. They have less DPS and ask for a lot more effort for it (especially dirty fighting). Just pass. - Guardians : Underrated class, especially as PvE DPS. There DPS is easy to pull and consistent (and good). They also have heavy armor, taunts and a reliable energy management system that let them burst well even with vigilence. For PvP, it's not as bright IMO. About everyone use soresu form and they are right to do so IMO. - Shadows : For PvE, madness/balance is a bit more tricky. It is proc reliant, positional reliant and use light armor. That said, they can have very good damage numbers if played well. IMO it has a higher skill cap than guardians but I haven't played it enough at high end PvE to be sure how viable they are (but the damage is not going to be the issue there). For PvP, all 3 trees are good and fulfill a role (that's pretty rare actually) especially after the tank spec get his nerf. I still think that scoundrels may ask for a bit more skillcap and may be a bit better but that's debatable.

1/ Veng or Rage? It depends what you are planning to do. If you are talking about raiding veng >> rage. Basically, single target DPS is nearly the only thing that matters for raiding because the real fights are boss fights. Vengeance give you a far better DPS. Even in fights that needs burst phases vengeance performs very well (because they last at least 10s and that's largely enough to pull out a good rotation with all your damaging skills and low duration DoTs upfront). 2/ Acc and surge : These secondary stats should be looked together. Because gear always give accuracy or surge (some crafted gear give both but they become irrelevent for endgame). The basic rule then is to get at least 100% accuracy and then everything else on surge. You will have a ton of surge with the 3% accuracy bonus but you don't have to worry about that. 3/ Crit or Power : Another pair of secondary stat that compete together. Basically, crit gives you more at low level but have a true DR that power don't have. So you want to stack crit until you get to a point where the DR is too important. As far as I know, the turning point is around 200 crit rating. As far as you have a crit rating between 180 and 250 you are good. Everything else on power obviously. In theory, the more strength you have the lower the turning point is but it's not as simple as a crit % works well. So just keep it around 200. 4/ Power or Stength : That's actually only important for augments. Since you have +6% strength, strength is better than power ... always.

Well as I said, it was a special stalemate game (maybe 2 doors got open) with too many healers so it was non stop fighting. CC is always useful but there is only so much a chilling scream can do in those situations. That said I'm usually a bit above 300k damage done when the game last a bit. Damage has never been my priority either but you are limited by your CD on most of your CC moves anyway ... that and putting pressure on the guy attacking your healer/the one you protect can make them panick. When you don't die much and fight nearly non stop you will do damage no matter what.

That's the build I use with sonic barrier : http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101GrhkzzMZsMrMrhdz.1 It's mainly a swap between barrier and defeaning defense. Sonic barrier gives you better mitigation against slow/sustain damage output whereas defeaning defense is better against burst phases (especially with enraged defense and a healer backing you). Since I find that I have enough tools for those situations I prefer sonic barrier but both are viable really. As far as metrics, I find that the damage done to you is another good one (especially if you have low deaths). Your damage output is far from being bad so they can't ignore you. Your job is both making your team take less damage (from taunts and CC) and make the other team target you instead of your teamates. Last game (in BM gear) I got 423k damage, 200k protection, 307k damage received with 2 deaths (actually I'm not that happy about this one because 4 guys on my team were between 300 and 350k damage received, but I'm not sure I could do anything about that), and 67k healing (sonic barrier does give you easily 30-40k healing). This one was clearly a special stalemate game but I can get 300k damage done, 100k protection and 250K damage received frequently.

Kolto probe is prone to overhealing but no where near 50% and a lot less if you don't abuse KI. You maintain KP because it is cost effective, both for UH/TA procs and heals. It does heal more than KI overall (even factoring about 25% more overheal). You are right though that both the bubble and KS are both more effective. On the other end, KP asks for more time investment (about twice more and you really don't want to miss one) and heals for more per second (but not per cast). It is not really about how good the ability is, it is more about the output you get from it (a bit more than 300 HPS per second). Personally I do prefer the other 2 abilities though. P.S : I won't call SP, rapid shot or the sorceror's HoT hard casting but I get your point. That said I really believe the 3 classes have original tools/mechanics associated to them.

well as I said earlier, you should not expect to have more than one proc every 10s because you won't get more. So, you are highly unlikely to be able to do that rotation and certainly not with two stacks remaining. You should not build a rotation around a random proc. A more likely rotation would be 3 KI/SP, 1 KP/SP, 1 RN and either one DS or one SP depending on your luck. Sometimes you replace a KI with another KP for small raid heals but that is basically how it looks like on a perfect 17s rotation.

. Kolto probe is out least effective heal for raid heal but the most effective one for tank heal. That is because one cast refresh both stacks. Kolto probe is far from being negligeable even id you use it only on the tank ... far less than Kolto infusion. Otherwise I totally agree with you.

As far as PvE is concern the <30% health talent is not something you should abuse. If it does not crit you are healing for less than 1K/s ... and that's when your target really needs healing ... Secondly, the HoT procs are every 6s at best but you are happy with one every 9-12s since they are never reliable (and you don't spam HoTs on other targets than the tanks since it is inefficient). That's more like 5s BTW (yeah because you still have one second without healing after that). You get about 2k if you have both stacks of HoTs up (and they will fall pretty randomly if you find yourself in a phase when you need healing). That's between 8.3k-10.3k healing done. Do you know what a rotation of Healing Scan, Rapid Scan and Bacta Infusion would have given? That's about 10.5k healing with : 1/ a 10% armor buff 2/ 2 more hits on proactive medicine running on 3/ Oh and I forgot your 2 hits from Kolto shell obviously (hey you counted kolto probe so why not) so it's more like 11.8k Fun part? This rotation is faster but does cost a bit more (8 heat or one ammo to be precise) but it clearly beats the first one in healing. And That's not counting SCG. Now if I had used rapid shot instead of Bacta infusion the overall healing number would have been a lot closer (if you don't consider the HoT/KS in the rotation otherwise the OP is slightly ahead on numbers) but you would still have a 10% armor buff differencial. You sure used a bit more ressource but you have way more ways to get higher than that while your op also needed an additional TA proc to spare (which are usually longer to get than a healing scan and a lot less reliable). So basically, what I mean by that is that those numbers (both of them) don't prove anything. Both classes can get a 2K/s rotation without using CDs/adrenals/stims in circumstances that happens a lot in a fight.

Look at 16 man HM EC ... oh some mercs/commandos! These are far less of them to begin with anyway (and yeah mercs should not have as big numbers as an op). Honestly, I don't know what to do with those datas. We clearly can't say anything with just those numbers.

Thanks but no thanks. Our rage pool is tight in our enrage phase but not tight enough for us to benefit a lot about this (especially since that phase is so quick). The 4 piece bonus gives us a boost to our rage generation for the whole fight. That's the only reason why you don't have to use assault even once on most boss fights.

The scoundrel/operatives sustain healing on single target is on par (or even a tiny bit above) with the mercs/commandos. That said, they only provide numbers no actual small bonuses like the mercs/commandos (armor buff, healing buff and DR buff sometimes). That and the fact that their healing rotation is tighter (making them worst burst healers) and with less tools to try to adapt to the situation makes them worse tank healers than mercs/commandos. All healers are very good at something and have a weakness elsewhere. Numbers don't show that but succesful healing is more about knowing your forces and weaknesses and how to assess a situation then pure numbers (otherwise sages/sorcs would be the best healers).

Very good and consistent damage output (no positional requirement, no heavy reliance on DoTs or AoE moves, the only weakness is that you need to stick to melee range a lot), provides an sunder armor stack, resilient in a reliable way for healers, really jugg DPS are very solid. They also provides something that is overlooked a lot but still an asset for a group (especially on EC) : a DPS with a taunt (and yeah, you can go in tank stance instantly if needed but that's less important). The one thing juggernaughts don't provide to a group is good CC, but as annoying as trash mobs are they are a lot less important than boss fights.

The enrage bonus is crap for sure ... the reduced range on saber throw on the other hand ... I personally prefer to keep that one. Sure there are some fights with enough AoE damage for you to not need the rage of saber throw that much (but you would still miss an ability to use with everything on CD), but that's not every fight. You really don't want to get at 10m range to use it mid fight and force charge again when you are rage starved. See it as a safety card to be sure you are able to use your optimal rotation without rage issues.

This. That said, you need 100% accuracy since about 60% of your damage output is dodgeable otherwise (depends on the boss fight but that's a good approximation). With the 3% accuracy buff, and the diminishing return on surge, that means you should have 4 piece with accuracy and everything else with surge. At one point, you will even be able to get one less point in the accuracy bonus (but using only 3 piece of gear is not worth it).

It's not that simple IMO. First, it should depend on if you have an adrenal or not (well if you are biochem or not I mean). If you don't have one, I would get the Relic of Boundless Ages every day. You need at least one hotkey to enable burst heal. If you already have one, it is a matter of choice. Personally, I would get the proc heal one but I understand why people don't like it (no control on the proc).

I read that and it clearly is not wrong just not emphasazing the problem caused by CD enough for their burst phase. And yeah, I don't know a single sorc/sage who would want to use 4 NS in those fights, but that's clearly another problem. Shield -> Healing Trance -> Rejuv -> Benevolance until they get a CD back seems like the way to go. Rejuv and mainly Benevolance are the poor link in their rotation. Deliverance does not cut the job. I really think you are overestimating DS in there but you are right on the choices an operative has, just that casting more than one Kinf is not an option because you are already screwed on the energy department and DS is not a tool you should spam (the HPS is lower than rapid shot after all and you still need to get those KP on a recovery phase). You described exactly why the operative have no burst healing. And as I said, the AP/MP combo is more efficient in every way to the KI/Kinf so how can you say that mercs don't have an edge there? Actually it was a case of very poor reading comprehension on my part, for some reason I read KP instead of SP (that's why I compared it to Kolto shell). So it's completely my bad there, sorry for that part, you have better reasons to be pissed off than me ^^ As for for SP than, it is far more reasonable but it's not a rotation you can keep up. Your KP procs have a 6s CD and unless you keep your stacks (which should not be a priority on a burst phase because the healing is too diffused) you will get two proc max. On a side note, KI/Kinj/SP still costs 45 energy while regenerating 30 or probably less if you get under 60 after the Kinj cast. All 3 have options but BG/CM do have the best ones. Both operatives and sorcs have to use really inefficient tools (sorcs really only have their bubble and their channel that are efficient). Sure they can get all out and decide they won't be healing for a while after those 9s but you really rarely are in this situation. For PvE, the design is clearly for tanks to use CDs and not for healers to go in god mode now. BG/CM just seems to me to be the ones that can get out of their sustain line in the most effective way. That's the only thing I'm arguing about and the reason I think they have better burst healing.

And you just lost all credibility to me. You clearly have no idea how other classes work. I don't want to be mean so I'll keep it simple. The KInj/K.Inf spam heals for less and costs a lot more ressource (45 instead of 33 even if operatives regenerate 1 more energy per second than merc vents heat that is huge) than the HS/RS (or AP/MP) spam and that's not counting the armor buff. And yeah, talking about using SP in a burst situation is like talking about using Kolto Shell ... best idea ever. For sorcs they are limited by their CD, the flash heal (and the long heal) is the only one that does not have one and the average heal on it is ridiculously low (even with the crit bonus) for high force usage. They do have a large pool but no regeneration ... so yeah they might a tiny bit longer but the HPS would be far less and the sustainibility far less too. I can assure you that when a sorceror has to use his dark heal, he does not want to spam it. I think your last post described well your point of view. It has nothing to do with Healing role distinctions, rather to changes and the range of what a healer can and can not do. We may discuss about what combat medic lost with 1.2 for pages but that has never been the point of this topic. This topic is about the forces and weaknesses of the healing classes between one and another.

1/ Actually you are right 6k is not for BI (which should not go over 5k) but the "two min CD instant ability that is 2 ability off-CD" (and yeah I knew that). And yeah, that example was poorly chosen because it was more about spike healing than burst healing (both of which commandos are perfectly capable). 2/ And again you are only comparing to how it was before and not the other classes. No other healing class can beat the burst of a Healing Scan/Rapid Scan/Emergency scan (or the 2min CD)/Healing Scan (which should cost you 15 heat or a bit less than 2 ammo). The fact that the AP/MP combo is not as good as before does not make it worse than what other have right now. No other healer can get close to a merc under SCG for burst phase. Sure you can't sustain it as long but better is still better. 3/ SP does 60% of the healing of BI. Most operatives still use it in during burst phases. But yeah, it is not a burst heal and I hate when people tell me I can burst heal someone under 30% because of it. 4/ Yes I know, you should use BI and supercharge cell mainly for ressource management now. Both those skills are still more of "on demand" than "on CD". I also said that mercs needed quality of life buffs remember. @Xaearth : Actually kolto bomb should still be used for the DR buff sometimes ... that said the healing bonus should not be tied with it IMO because as you said you use it mostly as an AoE heal now and need tools that help that (like a HoT). That's why I said they should change it in my post just before. @Kaltti : and I'm sure I will too once I finish levelling my merc (well not immediately because I will want the shield and being able to spam healing scan has its use) . It is a shame and a fail as a design (not as big as Kolto infusion though). That does not mean that you don't have the option to use it often.

Having your edges slashed does not mean that they do not exist anymore. KB still has a healing buff and a DR shield and brings unique utility because of that, mercs are still the only class that have access to an instant heal that can heal for 6k+ (and actually 2 of them) ... even if the sorc shield is great is that area too. Combat medic burst healing is still better than the one you have on an operative healer or a sorc healer. The only thing you proved is that mercs got nerfed in all those departments but I never denied that, all I said is that it's still an edge they have over other healing classes. And yeah, I know that Mercs have a lot less flexibility than before but you still have several tools to boost your healing output if needed (I mean other tools than a relic/adrenal). They do need small quality of life boosts IMO (like operative healers got) but they can still get the job done well. They clearly don't bring the insane AoE heal of a sorc or the sustain healing of an operative but they bring everything else. People looks too much at numbers IMO.

I'm an Op healer and I wish my HoT or my Kolto Injection had the armor boost you have on preventive medicine. I wish I had Bacta Infusion (or even your tech-override/reserve-cell/MP combo). I wish my AoE heal had a healing bonus on it (the damage reduction too even if it would not make sense). Numbers are just numbers. Mercs have a ton of buffs and are capable of big instant heals, 2 things any op healer will always envy you. Who would ever want to use kolto infusion honestly? The fact that a Merc/Merc combo is the worst healer combos does not mean mercs are bad. I honestly think that a merc complement a sorc/operative better than another sorc/operative. Homogenisation would be a bad thing IMO. I still think they need a small buff (SCC, real AoE healing) but they seem perfectly capable to me. And yes, I know their numbers aren't as good but numbers don't account for all the utility and flexibility they bring (aka they are still the best burst healers).

Power/surge enhancements are found on columi enforcer hangear (and headgear but they cost more). Just take the enhancements out.

Here are the reasons : 1/ Impale average damage (counting crits with a classical crit rating) is pretty similar to force scream (so no significant damage advantage) 2/ Rampage procs give you 2 rage which makes the average cost of impale 0.6 rage less than a force scream. 3/ Rampage procs are a significant DPS increase since you get about 1k more damage from a clipped ravage than sunder throw or smash. And yeah that rotation is pretty tight on rage and no force scream can't replace shatter. The thing is, since 1.2, force scream is a lot less important for juggernaughts (and getting out of melee to force charge and use battle cry is also a DPS decrease btw compared to using a lot of full ravage channels ... but then again that's before that phase).

Actually, as soon as you are able to use Vicious Throw you should not use force scream anymore (and yeah it is a shame but it brings less than shatter and impale). You have 2 ways of doing it. 1/ Easy rotation : Sunder / Shatter / Vicious Throw Sunder / Impale / Ravage or sundering throw or smash (priority order depending on what's up or not). With the procs and enrage you should not have rage issues with that rotation. The second is on a priority list : 1/ Always use sunder when off-cooldown 2/ Use vicious throw if sunder is on cooldown and you have the savagery buff 3/ Keep using Ravage or sundering throw or smash on every 9s rotation for rage management 4/ Use shatter and impale as fillers, shatter being higher priority. Basically, it's a bit like the same as before with one less shatter and one less impale for two more vicious throw and more getting used to it. Edit : Oh and when I tell you to use ravage I'm thinking about a clipped ravage here (full ravage only makes sense pre vicious throw).

I'm actually planning to switch to 18/23/0 after 1.2 so this is good news. My question is, since you deal mainly single target damage are those two points in decimate (or ravager or malice I guess) really better than sonic barrier? I know the barrier is not much but it's still a good sustain mitigation for PvP ... or you could get deafening defense I guess (but I still prefer the barrier for mitigation).

Get DPS gear (and actually set bonuses ... it is better since you don't have instant choke), use a rage spec avoiding every shi-cho talent and use soresu form ... than profit from the stupid damage. Now if you want to keep some of immortal utilities that's another story (but you probably won't deal enough damage to matter anyway). 1.2 will help though.