Scoundrel healers were actually nerfed overall this patch. I do about 200k less healing per warzone, run out of energy much faster, and generally speaking can't keep people up (that's not healing related perse, but well its my job to keep people up). Since the other two specs ate nerf, are survival abilities just stand out more relatively speaking.

For the 50th time. Its not about healing! Our healing output is fine. I neither feel overpowered or underpowered at this point. For the most part, I think our healing per second is close to where it should be (maybe a percent or two here and there) What is overpowered, is the TTK of certain (not all) dps classes against any other class (not just healers, but for instance dps on a tank). It's not ok for Maruaders to output 18k in 4 global cool downs. It's not ok for Mercs to hit 8-9k grav rounds. Its not ok that my healer's ranged white damage is on the order of 1.8k. This is the problem! Not what a healer can or can't do!

It actually only takes one person who knows what he's doing.

No that's not the case. For the most part, our heals still do the same burst. Eg I can still crit for 6k or 7k heals (with relic+adrenal)+ 3k emps. There is absolutely nothing different (maybe a percent here or there) relative to prepatch. The difference is in the wz burst that people can output. Mara/Sentinels/Juggs/PTs/Mercs and Snipers can hit for outrageous crits and drop people faster than a healer could ever respond too. This is broken, and needs to be fixed. The same bs was happening back in January with mixed wzs, where you had relic+adrenal crits in the 8 or 9k territory that would drop players in 2 GCDs. It removed all skill from the game, and ultimately makes for a boring experience.

Outside of Huttball, i've never understood the QQ about tankassins. Give me a bunch of Marauders/Juggs/PTs in my assist train anyday of the week. Yea sure, it sucks to deal with a tankasin and say an op healer destealthing in Alderaan, but then that's on your team leader to recognize that. The name of the game in current wzs is who kills targets faster. Games are won or loss on whether a player drops in 5 seconds, or 3 seconds. And the warrior classes do that best.

So I was noticing this as well. SF is not hitting for very much in WZ play (full BM + 2 WH). The rest seems more or less the same. What's really interesting is that our white damage seems to have gone up significantly, which is why we see roughly the same type of net dps numbers.

The downside to this, is you lose out on 2 augment slots. Unless someone sees a way around it.

The medal system is fine as is and should reward winning, rather than everyone getting nearly the identical amount of participation points for sucking. Eg the ratio should stay as is.

I was having this issue on my Sawbones, and was wondering what was doing it.. Did they up the energy cost for rolling HOTs or triage? What about the grenade? It just seems like my energy consumption has gone through the roof for no apparent reason (and I rarely use backblast)

Damage mitigation vs damage done does NOT cancel out, and currently it might be bugged. This has nothing to do with healing perse.. Ask any PvE spec tank what their experience has been in WZs and they will all confirm that they die much faster than they did pre 1.2. This despite the fact that most popular DPS specs ate nerfs. I watched our servers best PvE spec Guardian in full BM + custom gear waltz through pre 1.2 Huttball matches, dragging 5 or 6 players without getting healed and shrugging off their damage like it was nothing. That same person falls to two Marauders in mere seconds now. For the most part, as a healer, it seems like I can do almost the same healing/sec to myself (say if I start from 20% and heal to full uninterupted). The major problem is less that, but actually keeping people alive, since they drop so fast.

If it was an 8-8 fight and not split into subfights, team A beats team B (4 players focusing 1 healer each = healer dies without healing once). Team B beats Team C most likely. The hard one to predict is team A vs team C, and a lot would depend on cooldowns, peeling and CC.

So, it has nothing to do with healers and everything to do with the dps on your team. If your team can drop their team fast, your healers don't really have much work to do. I've been in several wzs now, where almost no one on my team died, yet my total healing done was like 200k tops. The problem arises when the other team has decent dps, and it has nothing to do with raw healing numbers (i've hit 680k healing several times yesterday), but rather the inability to heal through focus fire burst. In that voidstar where I hit that number, I think half my team ate 6 or 7 deaths each. I simply couldn't keep them up. The tanks that were helping guard me were dying way too fast, and so forth. Anyway, atm classes with cooldowns (eg Marauders) are kings, simply b/c they can prolong their life considerably longer than other dps classes can without needing a healer.

The real problem, was that a bunch of terrible players who don't know how healers worked, complained very loudly about the state of the game. It seemed to them that a good healer could tank 3 or 4 of them at once, and of course it must be overpowered. What they didn't know, was that a good dps duo working together could easily neutralize even the best healers on the server, it just required knowing how healers function (typical example, people stupidly filling a smugglers resolve bar before he hits 30% health) Bioware listened, and the result is the terrible state of affairs that is 1.2 (where if anything, the required skill level has dropped to an alltime low). Its pathetic really, but rest assured it won't last when it becomes apparent to the terribads that the better teams on the server can now drop their entire group in like 10 seconds (you think I am exagerating.. I am not).

Well, the state of healing is a major problem right now. Its almost impossible to keep a focused target up (even with adrenal+powerup+relic+full bm gear + guard), and 50s in new gear die so fast that my UI doesn't even track the health change. Predictably, Marauders are facerolling people, but I mean, its more than that.

It's definitely true that Maras put up more sustained dps on a single target than Juggs, and it's also true that Juggs 700k dps isn't equivalent to a Maras 500. However what you fail to realize is that the Juggs dps is far more burst oriented and that can't be neglected. I can tell you as a healer, I much prefer a Mara on a target or me than anticipating the 40% health swings on multiple targets when smash criticals. IMO they are both amongst the best 3 or 4 specs in the game.

This. Melee assist trains are the hardest thing to counter in this game when done properly. The only real counter is to mirror them. So heavy melee vs heavy melee typically comes down to guard and taunt, which is why 3 maras are not ideal. Ideally you have 1 mara for the debuff, and 2 or 3 pyro PTs or rage Juggs for the burst and for guard.

That's b/c people shouldn't be basing their QQ off log numbers. Hybrid sorcerors can put up a lot of damage (against pugs and bad players), but its mostly dot and aoe based. Almost no burst to speak off. As a healer, I have no trouble dealing with that type of dps, especially if its only 1 or 2 (if you stack 4 together, the aoes start becoming a real problem). I worry far more about the guy who only does 300k bursty damage (on an important single target), than the 600k aoe types.

DPS sorcerers are woefully underpowered at BM gear level against BM competition. Healing Sorcerers are underpowered at BM gear level, except in huttball (where they are great). 1-49 sorcerers are definitely overpowered. In general (contrary to the QQ on the forums) ranged classes do great against newbs, and undergeared players, but are horrible against good competition. Melee is hard when you don't have a healer and protection, but once you pair them with a good team, they are inescapably better than ranged.

The flip side is, once you get full BM gear, Guardians/Juggernaughts are probably the best class in the game. Incredibly, they are completely underrated by the QQ train on the forums (probably b/c very few people have seen what good ones can do) Defensive tank Juggernaughts are Huttball MvPs (a good one canl win it by himself). Rage spec Juggernaughts are second only to powertechs as the class most feared by healers, due to the burst ability and their ability to lock down a healer.

Operatives if they use the bug + all CDs. pyro PTs otherwise. Sniper + BM are ok but not in the discussion, even if the opposing player is retarded and doesn't kite or Los. Rage Juggs can also drop you fast. Especially if they start full.

You would be wrong. I've seen this before many times, and the heal team dies rapidly (unless its all troopers). Invariably the other team smarts up and starts focusing. 4 or 5 players focusing a single target drops that target before they can be healed. Much harder to take down would be a heavy tank + healer team (say 4 tanks + 4 trooper healers), where its ridiculously hard to seperate the tank from the healer, and find the non guarded target. In particular the 8 man sorcerer teams that occur so often, is almost a guarenteed loss and my nomination for worst team. They are just too squishy. A couple focus guardians and hybrid Vanguards will roll them without even breaking a sweat. What ends up happening is they get pushed further and further back, looking for range and the front of their lines can't hold up.

The biggest problem you will have is 1-1 against tank classes. Powertechs, Tanksins and Rage Juggernaughts in particular. (Marauders are easier b/c they can be kited, and don't have the burst to break your 30% barrier and you can triage the dots) You can't quite heal through the damage those classes do, you can't kite them effectively, and you don't do enough damage b/c you don't have an armor debuff. You can take them down to 65% before the fight starts, but from that point on, its very one sided. At the end you won't be able to do any dps, b/c you will be constantly trying to heal yourself. If you blow all your cooldowns, and get some lucky crits, you might win once in awhile, but all things being equal (eg full bm vs full bm) its a losing proposition most of the time.

I have seen it several times, by several different classes. They all have one thing in common, namely that they are going up against heal heavy teams, take almost no deaths, and are benefiting from massive amounts of aes. I've seen a Guardian, Trooper and Sorcerror all top 1mil before. Several Marauders and Powertechs get close as well.

Assassins are pretty balanced, except for Huttball (but then thats more a case of other classes being chronically underpowered). The QQ on the forums about tank spec assassins is very silly. They don't put out enough damage or enough burst to really compete with Mara/Juggs/PT Pyro's for a spot in a melee assist train, and while they have more survivability, they aren't really ideal as pure PvP tanks either due to lack of interupts. In fact, they are kinda stuck in that never never land where they don't really have a well defined role that another class doesn't do better. Yea fine, they rock in 1-1. Who cares.

It's easy, although less efficient than a dps build. Once you get Risha, it goes much quicker.