You will have less then 70% surge if you are to keep optimal alacrity levels. Mine is currently at 333 rating which puts me at 68.24% in a mix of mostly ressurected gear with a few bits of revinite. Dont be afraid to get more then 25% crit. While I wouldnt go overboard, a couple % over will not hinder you. Augments are a matter of taste, if picking between skill or power augs. Power augs give slighty more bonus healing, skill augs slighty more crit rating. My preference is with skill, since the crit you gain from your mainstat is not a subject to diminishing returns like the one you get from gear.

Smugger has a companion with +5 crit to armstech, so it is a decent profession to take to crit more stuff like barrels and augments, if you plan on crafting things to sell. That said, you can pick any profession you like, and I would advise to just load up gathering professions like bioanalysis, scavanging and archeology, or slicing and just gather nodes as you level and sell the raw materials on GTN. That will yield you a lot of money for very little effort, since with conquest there is is usually a decent demand for the crafting materials to make war supplies. As for getting yourself equipped: Get yourself an organge shell blaster/offhand (they are moddable with insertable barrel/mod/enhancement). You get a moddable main hand finishing your story on coruscant, around lvl 10. Moddable offhand have a chance to be dropped in esseless or any other flashpoints, OR you can purchace one from Nar Shadaa equipment vendor on the Fleet for basic commodations around lvl 23. That supply section on the fleet is filled with commondation vendors, named Taris equipment modification vendor, Correlia modfication vendor etc. They each trade the components for basic commodation tokens you get as you complete story quests on the planets and flashpoints. They each carry same stuff, appropriate for various levels. So Taris vendor will trade things around lvl 12-17, other vendors sell higher level stuff. Just buy appropriate barrel/mod/enhancement form them, barrel costs 7commodations, mod/enh costs 2. That generally takes a lot less effort and time than crafting yourself anything/worrying about reverse engineering correct stats when you craft. And you receive enough commodations from quests to keep yourslef and a companion of chocie relatevly well geared, if you upgrade your gear every 5-7 levels. It goes not only for weapons, but armor, by the way.

Hang in there As for gearing, I found my optinal set up to be: power/alacrity ear and implants 4 other pieces of gear with alacrity and 3 with surge, out of which 3 have crit, rest power. If you are wearing different ear/implants, just make sure you get 7 pieces of alacrity gear, and mix in some crit with the power, dont just tunnel vision power, some crit has its place. The reasoning behind that much alacrity is that it shaves off .2 seconds off underworld medicine, and you get faster gcd, dot ticks, channel and cooldowns. You should never wear any accuracy gear as a healer.

As a scoundrel who have healed through this, I only have one advice: get used to the fact that tank will die at least once during the encounter on jos. It is near impossible to burst through a certain phase once both of them down together, even with all the hots running, and pugnacity popping at the right time. I done it a few times when our tank timed their cds just right (still dropping to under 1K hps with all that!). But more often then not, tank will die, get ressed and you get on with it. It is significantly easier to heal that fight on a merc/commando. Not certain about sage, havent taken mine through it yet.

A friend of mine spent 3 and a half hours doing nothing, but farming the pirates. No tank. I honestly wouldn't bother.

In all the honesty, even if they made it easier to aim and actually hit the target it supposed to, the tactical udvantage/upper hand cost makes still does not make justifiable to use, minus as you said unstealthing the enemy purpose purposes in pvp. But they will never take away the TA/UH cost, they like screwing our class over too much.

Since we are going off topic, I will pop a vein next time someone suggests scoundrels burst heal -just fine-. You call 7-18K in 2 seconds a burst? Check your facts better. Look what other healer classes can achive with 0 cast time in 1-2 global cooldowns only. Scoundrels are fine and dandy for story modes. Anything beyond, we are FAR, far from fine. Capable of completing the content? Sure. But we tax out co-healer to their limit, whereas any other combo of classes does not.

Gotta agree, on a mercenary medshot is a stright copy paste animation from the operative healing ability and it looks very poor on a class that uses two guns. All IMPORTANT things aside, the old way of healing by shooting an ally with my guns inbetween the big heals, made me feel cool. I just want that old animation back, I dont care about gaining a redundant ability. Funny thing, the commandos have retained their green beam animation, unless I am mistaken, so no change there.

Revanite/Resurrected gear has the same bonus. Revanite is just a step up in stats. ----- The real value of 192 token gear is not the set bonus (it is utter garbage for operative healers, save for maybe the fist 2 piece), it's the enhancements. 198 comms gear enhancements have high endurance low secondary stat, so you gain a LOT of extra bonus healing and crit swapping those out for 192 token with their lower endurance and higher power and crit. 192 token mods are also marginally better than 198 comms ones when it comes to healing power and crit, but not as much as the enhancements, because with mods 198 higher primary stat almost makes up for lower secondaries. And arguably, when the difference is that small, extra endurance from 198 comms mods is nice. So, to squeeze the most out of the gear available, if you are in a position to get 186 old 2 set from NiM dread ops, do that, use it and love it. Even 180 one, actually. (only armorings, obviously). Otherwise, I would highly recommend to get enough 192 tokens to get your enhancements sorted on top of the gear you have now. Tip: nobody usually wants to pick up/roll for the sm ravagers offhand, But! if you trade that token to a scoundrel/op vendor, you get your best 192 power/surge enchancement, with a bonus of high power 192 cunning mod. Or, trade it to trooper /bh vendor to get the best 192 power/alacrity enchancement (the aim mod is obviously wasted). Note that scoundrel/op healer itemization on full ressurected/revinite leaves us a bit short on ideal alacrity values (one alacrity piece short to be exact), even if you pick both implants and ear with alacrity, so that enhacement is always very nice to get.

Hey, I am currently transitioning from SM to HM progression too. My usual co-healer is a sage, so we do face some situations in HMs where if I am not completely on top of my game and always have our tanks hotted in everything in the right time, and have pugnacity available, they die to burst if I am even a second too slow, or caught in a middle of gcd refreshing hots on a dps. Also have issues with some dps dying to raid wide damage through 2 stacks of slow release medpack, if I have to focus on a tank for longer then refreshing the hots. So if my co-healer doesnt catch the dps in time, dps dies, if they do catch them in time, more often then not a tank dies instead, because while the sage is busy elsewhere, my healing isn't bursty enough to keep the tank up through a heavy burst damage phase. Lastly, since the fight mechanics require your raid to spread out, our new heal kolto cloud is very rarely useful to top off dps (underlurker sees the use of it, and well, first boss tos ofc.) So to recap, what I absolutely hate about playing my scoundrel in hard modes: a) Lack of burst/oh sh*t! healing ability. b)That kolto cloud is only useful in a handful of fights because in majority fights we have done so far in hard mode(bulo/working on torque, and sword squad/working on lurker), people are usually far too spread out to even consider casting it. I use it primeraly to dose a tank with it for healing buff (45 second lasting one, if memory serves) and very ocassionally to top off people if we run melee heavy group. Consider this: sorcerers and mercenaries use their new healing ability on cooldown. We never do. c)That my 6 piece bonus is absolute garbage in storymode already, and doubly so in hardmode. I am wearing my old 2 piece. Maybe some later fights will require more frequent use of kolto cloud, but I am not seeing it so far. d)Never being able to use stealth rez anymore. The amount of outgoing damage is too great in HMs to stop healing and stealth out and rez someone, nevermind that you will almost never get a chance to do so due to extra mechanics, anyway. ---- That said, I also have a similarly geared mercenary healer imperial side, who is tackling the same content in sister guild. And let me tell you this: SWITCH, switch NOW, and never look back. The amount of bust healing available to the class is amazing. you can do 2 gcds of instants (each for amount greater than your underworld medicine cast), 3 gcds of instants if you save a cooldown, and 4 gcds of instants if you take an utility (if you dont need the mobility on successive treatment for a particular encounter). That problem of people dying to bust damage through scoundrel hots while you are casting your long *** underworld medicine or kolto pack? Its GONE on a mercenary. Not there. Not present anymore. Our imperial runs are usually either Merc/Sorc or Merc/Merc depending on signs ups and they always go smoother than our republic ones where i play a scoundrel. And thats with me maining a scoundrel for majority of my healing career. ------- I know you have asked for a list of challanges AND perks for the operative in hms, so I apologize for not listing any perks because in my experience, there aren't any.

Gear out Torian. A lot of folks advise to use tank as a companion when you heal, but in my humble opinion that is flat out wrong tactic. The fact is, neither you nor your tank companion will be doing any damage, prolonging the fights and pushing you to dps yourself, overheat, and wipe. A dps companion will provide a constant stream of dps, with the attached requirement of you actually playing a healer spec, instead of dpsing yourself. So gear out a dps, preferably a melee one (they do more aoe), so Torian it is for you. Put him in a dot stance, let him do the damage, and just make sure to heal him and maybe interrupt some big attacks, drop occasional death from above on the adds, and electronet/railshot on the boss, but do not go overboard dpsing yourself. You will eventually pull aggro by healing, and end up tanking, so you will switch to healing yourself, while Torian will make short work of remaining hps of the enemy. Make sure you make use of your cooldowns: namely your shield and your kolto overload if things get tough. Always have kolto shell on, superchage whenever it is available to manage your heat better. Have fun! Speaking from experience here, btw. I levelled in a bodyguard spec from start to finish back in a day . Having mako as first companion was painful, but things improved with gault, and later Torian. Never had any success with tank comps, during brief time I tried them, but then I was happy running with a dps in the first place.

To be honest, if the raid is wiping on sm ravagers first boss ( sparky), you are not the only one doing something wrong. That encounter is solo healable in crap pre-3.0 gear. Also, it is near impossible for a sorc to benchmark 9K hps, even with shields on that fight, so your co-healer was full of it. Even if he did 4K hps, and half of that effective hps, your raid wouldnt die. The outgoing damage is simply not that high. Unless your whole raid is wearing lvl 50 greens or something ridiculous like that. If you really did do less hps then your co-healer however, you do need to take a look at your equipment (lots of advice in this thread already) and at your healing rotation (there is a basic guilde on dulfy). By design, scoundrels/operatives overheal because of inherent need to keep up the hots on people to do our thing, so our raw hps are always higher then any other healer, even if they are just fluff numbers that mean very little in the big picture. (no fluff overhealing can counter heavy burst).

Nothing to add to the discussion about the mechanics, but as a fellow smuggler healer, I would advise you to take a better look at your surge/alacrity split: drop down to just 3 pieces of surge, and rest alacrity, that way you shave off extra .1 second from your underworld medicine (kolto injection). Faster gcds are also more noticeble (faster response time) and faster dots/channel ticks are always welcome. I was dubious about letting my surge drop below 70 before, but now that I did I would never go to lower alacrity again. (I keep 68.24% surge with just 3 pieces of 192 ressurected token enhancements btw.)

Current raid mechanics favor heavy burst healing along with healer mobility, and the unfortunate truth is that scoundrels/operatives have no burst healing potential at all, and are not the most mobile of the three healers anymore, if we are to utilize our abilities to their full potential. Simply put, we are the worst pick out of the three healer classes to bring to a raid. Guilds do not recruit operative/smuggler healers simply because prior to 3.0 we were outperforming most of the other healers, and a lot of people favored the class, so now there are quite a few of us around in the guilds already, and raid leads are looking to diversify. Before, bringing 2 scoundrels to 8 man, or more than 2 to 16 man was perfectly okay, now it is just plain stupid. Moreover, If the guild is looking to progress with hard mode kills, scoundrel healer makes that progress much harder, as any other combination of healers is better at combating heavy incoming burst damage mechanics while they stay alive (yes, even sage/sage). However, in story modes it does not matter at all, so some people are just being elitist jerks if they kicking you because of your class. Some things you can do to help your case: read up on mechanics on dulfy, get used to be mobile while healing, and next time you try to tell the pug raid leader that you are new, add that you know the mechanics, willing to follow any and all instructions, and capable of not standing in crap on the ground Also, try to get full 186 rating basic comms armor at the very least. Fully augment it with new grade skill or power augments (36), and buy or crat new crafted ear/implants/relics, and also augment them. Put 186 rating crafted purple barrel in your mainhand/offhand. It may be you were getting kicked because pug raid leader considered your undergeared for the encounter. Best of luck out there!

Heya, just wanted to get some insighs what you guys use to help push dps in certain boss encounters now that there is no longer an option to powershot under superchaged gas with 3.0. Do you keep railshot on cd and death from above with occasional powershot/rocket blast? Is there any kind of combination of dps abiliteis that gives the most bang for their buck while not completely murdering our heat management?

+1 I agree. I have wanted this armor ever since launchign swtor back in 2012 and watching the imperial intro cinematic. Now I have it and the jetpack is bugged. Almost makes me consider dressing in my old heartless pursuer again :mad:

2 set piece bonus: 15% chance to grant a buff that makes next kolto pack or underworld medicine a crit. 4 piece bonus: kolto pack costs 18 instead of 20 energy 6 piece bonus: 1 sec cd reduction on kolto waves ------ Ok, I will take the 2 set piece, a guaranteed crit once in a while is good. But otherwise? 4 piece: If I am sinking on my energy management in the burst phase, -2 cost on kolto pack will not help me. Non burst phase healing? It have not noticed any significant benefit since then there are very little energy issues. 6 piece: It is a joke. I have not found a single encounter where I had to, or even want to, use kolto waves on cooldown. I am debating if I just should get 198 armorings and and keep 192 2 piece until I can get full 198 set (lets face it ultimate comms enhancements suck), or keep 2 old 186 set, 2 new set. Is there any sawbones scoundrel/operative here that is going through hardmode ops content who can covince me that our new 4/6 piece is not absolute trash?

Aplogies if this was discussed before, but I have skimmed the last few pages and havent found a clear answer: As a healer scoundrel/operative, which combination of barrel/mod/ench should I go for my mh/oh? I read that brutalizer mh/oh is fine for tech power purposes, but I would rather spend my ranked comms on other pieces first. I am in position to use arkanian MH/OH(69/69/69), or should I go get underworld barrel and go for 72/66/58 combination, if my main concern is with tech power while keeping respectable expertise? If I understand correctly using 180 barrels is bad? As I have mentioned earlier, I am in the process of working towards my brutalizer pieces, but I want to keep a 2 piece pve bonus, so once again, would arkanian (69 across the board) keep the best bolster or should I look for another specific combination of armoring/mod/enh? Thanks in advance!

It is missing Republic side also. I have asked around, nobody can find that one ;(

I'd say play it as you feel it. If you are worried about your light/dark meter, that thing is fixable by flashpoint re-runs if you put your mind to it later. Or even earlier on with just mindless black talon runs. You won't gimp your character if you suddenly decide that making that dark-side colored choice is more appropriate to the situation.

1. unSub

In all the honesty, ops needed the buff, I'm happy for the guys. From pure theorycraft perspective, sorcs will take a small hit to sustained healing, but it's nowhere as crippling as what is going to be done to us. I fail to see how a mercenary healer is going to be anything other than a liability in any operation group and pvp.

From the upcoming 1.2 changes thread: here I am sorry, but HAHAHAHAHAH! "We've been heard?" 1 extra kolto missle target, no smart heal mechanic, in exchange for insanely crippling efficiency nerf. YEY, have fun healing hm ops and up, guys. And my heart goes out for the poor bodyguards just getting to 50 and going into hm flashpoint gear grind. I'll leave pvp side of things alone, I'm utterly disgusted as is.

Oof, the opposing team must love you big time. Nothing is easier to bring down than 'that guy without expertise'. Combine it with healing debuff and smart opponents who focus healers, and yeah.... one can maybe pull it off if your team constantly protects you, but from personal experience full pve set up in pvp is one giant liability for the team.

I'll wait and see how they'll scale kolto missle, hoping for the best. It just galls how much easier and smoother hm ops are with a sorcerer + any other healer. 2 mercenary healers on a hm op is equivalent to smashing your face against the wall a few times before calling it quits and rotating a different healer for one of them :/.