Some good questions and information in this thread, so thank you all for contribution. To answer some of the questions put to me by previous posters: As for my rotation, it depends entirely on how much damage is being sustained by the tank/DPS, but: I do generally keep the tank buffed with kolto shell, but I will swap it to myself or the DPS if I know the tank is just sucking and someone else is taking some damage that shell will help me out with. Mild damage: prebuff with shell, KM --> R shots X3 --> KM. If this fails to keep the tank above 75-80% then: KM -->HS --> R shots x2, lather rinse repeat If this fails to keep the tank above 75-80% (or if I pre-emptively judge that it is unlikely to do so), then: KM --> HS --> R Scan --> (if necessary, TSO + another rapid scan) --> KM If all this fails to keep the tank above 50%, or if I know that a lot of damage is coming on the upcoming pull: Supercharge gas + relic/adrenal --> KM --> HS --> R Scan --> H Scan --> KM (repeat as necessary) --> vent heat when heat reaches 75ish (possibly use R scan, followed by TSO/PS + R scan to get a instant, free burst heal). of course this is all highly flexible and subject to a lot of factors including how long I judge the spike damage is likely to continue. As far as the poster who asked which mobs the tank is attacking: As far as I can tell, almost always in these situations the tank is one one mob, usually the gold or silver one in the pull. I don't know enough of tanking in this game to ascertain whether or not they are using any aoe taunts or damage abilities.

Excellent. Thanks for the input, I will give this a shot and see what happens

I'm a relatively fresh 55 merc healer and I have been having a somewhat common experience running 55 HM flashpoints. The experience is as follows: 1.) We come across a relatively large trash pull, 5-ish mobs, sometimes more, sometimes with strong or better mobs. 2.) as the tank proceeds into the fray, I use my supercharge cylinder and fire off both my relic and triage adrenal, knowing that the tank is about to take some massive damage. 3.) as expected, the tank starts gettng hit hard so I heal him with everything I have, first casting kolto missile, immediately followed by healing scan, rapid scan, and if necessary either emergency scan or another healing scan 4.) within a second or two, multiple mobs are now attacking me and the punishment is pretty severe. I use my energy shield and medpac to preserve my own life, LOS them if I can, use my threat dump if I can spare the GCD - whatever I can do to preserve both my own life and the tank's 5.) my efforts at keeping the group up fail horribly, either the tank dies or I do (usually both), followed shortly by the dps 6.) the tank either ragequits or initiates a vote to have me kicked from the group. Now I should mention that neither I nor the tank is undergeared in these encounters, I myself am wearing gear which has, with but 1 or 2 exceptions, 69 level mods in all slots, with reflex augment 28's in all slots. The tanks are always geared as well, often better than am I. I should also mention that this does not happen every single time, but often enough that it is extremely frustrating, both to myself and to the other members of the group. There are at least as many times where the overwhelming majority of the damage is on the tank, and a manageable amount spills over onto myself/dps. At first, I just thought this was bad tanking, that there's no way I should be drawing this much threat only healing, even though healing does generate a high amount of threat. But then I had this exact same thing happen with a tank in my guild, a tank whom I have seen in action and know that he is not a bad tank. This of course leads me to conclude, given that the only common denominator in all these failures is myself, that the failure is in fact my own. Is there something that I am doing horribly wrong in the above scenario? And if so, any helpful advice would by much appreciated.

Pretty much what the poster above said. 1.) You need to have your CS cylinder up to 30 charges before walking into a boss fight. When the damage to your team starts to get a little out of hand, or when you expect that it will, use your supercharge - The damage shield that KM applies while supercharge is active really helps in clutch situations, not to mention the fact that healing scan has no cooldown while supercharged, so you can spam it. 2.) Clutch healing situations rarely last a long time unless you are teamed with total idiots, so you need to make strategic use of your vent heat ability. In a roughhealing situation, fire off your supercharge, spam the crap out of KM, RS and HS until you hit around 75-80 heat, then vent and resume healing if necessary. 3.) Triage adrenals and relics - I know a lot of people think you can get by without using these while leveling, and maybe you can. But I have found that firing these off in a tight situation has made the difference between a wipe and a successful but very close boss fight (especially in a team of players who are either undergeared or just plain bad). Get them and use them. 4.) Maximize your passive healing - As BH we get a fair amount of passive healing with the HoT applied by missile/scan/kolto shell so make sure you are making good use of it. This means you need to be aiming your kolto missile so that it hits everyone in the group as much as possible. In tough healing situations, use healing scan on anyone taking damage for the HoT/armor bonus and don't be afraid to swap shell to a dps who is taking damage so that you can focus your active healing on the tank. 5.) Defensive cooldowns. Leveling up, you are going to run FPS with more bad tanks than good ones and you are going to draw a lot of aggro just by virtue of doing your job of healing. Kolto overload and energy shield are going to save your *** in conjunction with your medpac so don't be afraid to use them.

The one thing I would most like to see is the ability to use keystrokes to target any member of an Ops group. Its extremely irritating and frustrating to have to point and click someones name in order to heal them in a 16 man or 8 man Ops group and I can say that there are plenty of times where that split second lost between point/click and a simple keystroke meant the difference between life and death for a party member. Give us the ability to target anyone in the ops group via keybinds