Thanks! I was hoping it would be good for new people and veterans alike

I believe the new link is better, free and visible to all. If not, I'll change it again

Ah ***** I thought that link would host it free, I'll get something better for it.

I took the trouble to write this for my guild and thought it would be a good idea to share it with more people. I understand that we have a guide stickied already but I thought it would be good to get another guide up that is PvP focused. http://www.pdf-archive.com/2015/03/30/sawbones-healer-guide-pdf/preview/page/1/ If you like the content and format, I am open to making another guide for PvP engineering spec. Also, I'll have the Operative Nomenclature in an update at some point; hope this helps! EDIT: bad link. Made it possible to read the article

Personally, its more than just silly, its a pain and a distraction because to take full advantage of it you don't get to choose when you enter and leave cover, you have to constantly time it right. In the thick of it, or when you really gotta move, you can't use this ability to the fullest. For that reason, not only do I think the other way is easier, I think it will do more damage reduction over all.

That was something I was concerned about; 30% is an awful lot to have up all the time. I just don't tank so I had no idea how it goes. Would something like every 3 seconds at 20% be fine? Or perhaps keep it 1.5 seconds for 10%. Basically I just want to use ballistic dampeners and still be in control of when and why I get out of cover.

Ok so as a dedicated sawbones pre and post 3.0 I have this opinion; our spec is harder to play in 3.0, but when played right 'feels' about the same; in fact I think it feels better. Before 3.0 the name of the game was to dash around like a madman, anticipate damage and lay out Slow-release medpack, and spam Emergency Medpack like you where a junky. When things got really hairy, you would lay out Kolto pack, Underworld medicine if you where desperate. If you where using UW medicine, you messed up somewhere because your hots and insta heals should have been keeping people up. In my opinion, what went wrong was we where given an AoE version of UM (Kolto waves), our healing was reduced overall, energy was made harder to manage, and single-target burst dps became even better. Understand that we deserved some nerfs, for as long as I can remember sawbones was the op pvp spec. saying this, I think our nerfs to energy and healing where justified. We got buffs in other ways, like how we can now spend all stacks of upper hand without reducing healing (making resource management easier) And it is much easier to refresh SRM because of the changes to EM refreshing it. The second biggest problem was Kolto waves completely kills momentum for us. We have to sit still and cast for three seconds; that's three seconds we could have been refreshing our hots and three seconds we are sitting still for interrupts. If it wasn't such a good heal I would hate casting it; but often its the difference between life and death for a group. The biggest problem is the burst. Where before we cash UW when someone was in deep and we had run out of options (KC/KP on cooldown, no upper hand), Now we absolutely cannot afford to tiptoe around our biggest single-target heal. EVERY heal is an emergency, and you can't heal through the burst without spending most of your time on UW, EM, and KP. I said before that if you had to cast UW you messed up, and I think that's still true. Smuggler healers need to stack hots on people, its our job description. But 3.0 conspires to make us play bad; you can't cast hot because you have to deal with burst, but you can't sustain enough healing because you can't cast hots. The devs might think I'm crazy, but we need an easier way to group-cast HoTs. My opinion? Redesign Kolto Waves so that on the third and fourth ticks of the channel, all affected groupmates receive a stack of SRM. Here's how this works; Kolto waves becomes the most important skill to interrupt, because on top of being a solid heal in and of itself it makes healing easier on the whole group for 18 second (because now everyone had 2 stacks of SRM). Now we can run around healing with EM easier. Of course, its easier to counter because the long channel and the back-loaded HoT stacking means the sooner its interrupted, the better. So you can't say its OP. However, if interrupts are saved for KW, you have less to worry about when you need to ensure your single-target heals need to go off. The class playstyle stays the same because we don't have to sacrifice our hots for direct healing, and when we do we don't have to deal with as many interuptions, it doesn't completely rework any skills, and our basic playstyle is preserved

On the flip side, we are pretty well stacked as an anti-stealth class already. We can already see stealth classes coming a mile away with our increased stealth level in cover. Coming from an engineer perspective I hardly ever have too many issues because I can cover my back with plasma probe and my front is covered with an increase in perception. MAYBE they should increase spotter to 35 stacks just so we have an advantage over people using the 15 stealth level passive plus blackout skill, but then again I don't want snipers to become too overpowered and thus hit with the nerf bat. Snipers against melee is very polarizing in terms of match-up. If they open up on us, with stuns and the like, we go down like a sack of potatoes. But if we open up on them, we simply have such absolute control over them (Roots, stuns, hinders etc.) that its a little disgusting. I'm certain when people complain about to many hinders in a warzone, they are almost entirely talking about snipers. One last thing I forgot to mention that is engineer only; I think that hitting a target stunned with the EMP-PP combo should reduce shield probe's cooldown by 5 seconds, entrench by 10 seconds, evasion by 15 seconds, and Ballistic Shield by 30. Improves survivability, gives us a reason to use EMP-PP despite its situational effects, and makes engineering feel closer too its pre-3.0 iteration.

So i've been thinking that what we need isn't so much better cooldowns as we need improvements on defenses that work in cover. For example, ballistic dampeners is a nightmare to use because you have to pop in and out of cover like a crazy person every six seconds to get the full effect, but you cannot move in between that time because then you loose that bonus and can be leapt to, pulled, stunned or the like. I would much rather Ballistic dampeners work like this "gain a charge of ballistic dampeners every 1.5 second in cover. Each charge absorbs 30% of an enemy attack. This effect cannot occur more than once every every 1.5 seconds. Stacks 3 times and lasts 6 seconds." This still prioritizes staying in cover, but you don't have to worry about exiting cover causing a complete undoing of your defense as long as you get back in cover soon. The same thing would be great to see in spotter so you can position yourself around a node without loosing the ability too see stealth people for 30 seconds. With evasion used in cover and the ballistic dampeners, you can negate almost 100% damage for 3 seconds, good if you know when solid burst is coming. Additionally, you can pop ballistic shield for an 50% reduction over 20 seconds, pretty good too. I'll be honest, I don't know what Shield probe does. What is a "moderate" amount of damage absorbed, and how good is that? I always pop it in a fight, but I don't feel its effects like I do the other cooldowns. And finally, there are two utilities that I can't find any use for at all that could be improved to help with survivability; vital regulators and cover screen. Vital regulators is way too infrequent a heal to be a trusted defensive cooldown. Now if it was 3% every three seconds, than snipers who where really tied to cover would see a benefit from it. as is, 1% every three seconds it nuts underwhelming. The only thing worse is cover screen. Exactly how much of our damage is white damage in a tech/force dominated world? and how much of that is ranged? What percent is 20% of a moderate percent of a low percent? not worth the utility point is what it is. It looks like an ability meant to give cover bonus to a player while they find cover again; but if so why does it give the worst bonus? I can't say let it give all bonuses over the duration; being able to move around without being leapt to or pulled is too op. It just needs something, perhaps it can prevent the pulls at least so you can actually find cover. TLDR: I would be fine without a sniper panic button if our plethora of more moderate defensive abilities worked better and made more logical sense.

Take the one that reduces entrench cooldown, balistic dampeners, and everything that helps increase mobility or hinder enemy movement

Engineering is the Best for Team Ranked. No one agrees with me when I say this, but here is why I think its true. 1) best mobility. The major disadvantage snipers have is they can get pretty turrety. Indeed to take full advantage of your defenses under fire you still have to be still in cover. However if you are with a team who knows how to guard and knock-back, you can take advantage of that breathing room with the most mobile sniper spec. The only time you need to stand still it to unleash your major AoE DPS (Sitiuational) or cast Series of Shots (3 seconds down, 6 seconds moving). 2) Most control. Set up Plasma Probe in the right situations, in the right places, and you will never have to worry about being taken by surprise. Lay down Orbital strike and supressing fire, and you are threatening them with deadly AoE's until they move exactly where you want them. 3)Anti-healer burst. Give a healer the healing debuff, Interrogation probe, corrosive dart, pop Laze and target acquired, Go through your explosive probe/ SoS burst, then follow up with Plasma probe, EMP (stun), grenade and finish with takedown. If you don't outright kill the healer, you'll at least force them to pop every cooldown they have. 4) AoE's. People group up way more than you would expect; especially if they have more than one Melee DPS. Even if they don't, its easy to make them do so if your ream is strategic. This is where the sniper engineer spec shines. Snipers themselves have trouble in Ranked, especially solo ranked, no matter what spec you choose. however, for group utility Engineer is my favorite, and needs the least amount of group hand-holding.

I am in the same boat, but I played engineering pre-2.0. Here is how I would describe it. The overall 'feel' is the same, but we have been gutted as we have been streamlined. That is, the Rotation is now intuitive, but a lot of what we could do is gone. Our defenses are no longer reset on emp, our emp stun is a ***** to try to use, and we are so easy to lock down and destroy. On the plus side, unimpeaded we have great dps, amazing burst, and absolute control over the situation (with plasma probe/roots/hinders/stuns)

yeah, while this rotation seems to maximize DPS, I still end up saying F-all and hitting anything not on cooldown.

So I have seen a few guides up for 3.0 PvE dps but haven't seen any for PvP. So I spent some time dicking around with the rotation to see how I can translate it. Here is my current set up Utilities: Ballistic Dampeners (Because it is necessary for survival) Reestablish range (Because I like to have as much control of my and my opponents position as possible) Cover Screen (More survivability out of cover, because other utilities at this tier seem useless) Seek Cover (because I love to move around and I hate slows, plus its a neat little sustained dash if used right) Pillbox Sniper (Because entrench is the skill I want the most out of, because stuns kick my butt) Hold Your Ground (More defensive utilities which help control the area. i'v been debating taking Debilitating shots or Siege bunker instead) Series of Snares Really good control, especially for how much engineer relies on SoS Rotation: I built this to do my best to keep people as locked into place as possible, and to keep SoS, all the probes, and EMP on cooldown and a constant Electrified Railgun Frag Grenade-Explosive Probe-[interrogation Probe-SoS-Plasma probe-EMP]-Frag-(*Filler*)-SoS-Plasma Repeat Frag grenade refreshes Rail turret, so that's 100% uptime. The skills between [ ] all slow the target. its a 30% slow then an 80%, which is pretty slow. I can than center plasma probe very easily for maximum plasma damage, plus another 70% slow. This means they either blow a cooldown to break slows or I get a lot of free damage. Furthermore, it makes it really easy to apply EMP. The filler skill is situational. I usually put corrosive dart for the marked damage debuff, but I also use the healing debuff here on healers. Almost always this rotation breaks down for me, because I'm a scrub, and I take a few seconds to re-orientate myself. However, I think I am doing alright, Just wanted to get second opinions to be absolutely sure I was designing myself around the right philosophy for pvp.

So when downloading 2.10 my progress bar pretty quickly filled up to 97.94% complete. It has since stopped moving for the past 30 minutes. Patches do take some time, but I haven't seen something quite like this. Is there a work around, is this a visual glitch of the progress bar, or should I just give it some more time?

While you're at it, please add the option to give custom names to strongholds. I would like mine to say "(Name) medical Center" as I am making it a doctor's office theme.

I appear to be able to walk through the "arrangement: Basic lounge" as if it is not there, which looks very strange" I don't see this as a know issue and thought you aught to know.

As a healer, I get stunned a lot. However, I have no issue with resolve. Any time where I die in the max time people can keep me stunned, I know I either used my root poorly or got stupid and presented myself to too many enemies at once. That said, it might be more forgiving if the cooldown of CC breakers was resent upon death, as strategic use in a fight might let people feel like they have more control.

OK thanks good to know. The only thing I need now is an explanation of how random boxes make more money for bioware than just having the items available to us. I mean, sure do the packs to, but if you put all the items up as well for more money wouldn't that be better?

I came back after a long hiatus, like before the game was free to play/ cartel market. I have plenty of experience with real world currency in markets for other games, but this market has thrown me for a loop. I desperately want to believe that some of these things are mistakes on my part So I was recently on a site looking at different outfits from the cartel market shipments. I saw one outfit I loved (the skimpy one, don't judge) but couldn't find it on the market anywhere. After playing around with the market and researching on the internet, the best I could come up with on how the market operates is; Packs are only available a limited time The items you get from the packs are random There is no way to by any individual item from packs that you want You can only earn said items in game by buying (with game currency) other player-bought items There is no in-game way to earn cartel coins (save subscription and security key) I am withholding judgement on the assumption that it is my skewed and/or ignorant perception entirely misrepresenting the cartel market. But if my perceptions are correct, then the cartel market packs gives SWTOR a pokemon minigame, where gear is the pokemon, all pokemon are limited event pokemon, every pokeball costs real world money to throw, and all trades cost poke (pokemon game money) to preform. Even from a purely greedy bussiness standpoint, that seems a terrible way to do things; because you miss out on all the money you could have gotten from offering individual items at more expensive prices. It boggles me so much that I really want to know what i'm doing wrong.

Guys, keep a little perspective on PvP updates. You guys get tweaks and updates all the time. Heck, you have even gotten new warzones and arenas, plus an additional huttball map that was so requested on the forums when I left.. Compare that to say, The secret world PvP, which hasn't even had a single new map. After playing TSW and having been waiting for an AFK mechanic SINCE LAUNCH I find all opinions about the slowness of other games' updates laughable. Still, not having Ranked 8-man queing has got to be one of the stupidest things I have heard about in any MMO. Isn't the whole point being who is the best team? Before I left (i just got back by the way) I had a blast with my guild (which has now disintegrated, i'v been away a long time). I feel this was such a stupid move, there has to be something genius that I am missing; so I need some context. Why was this even removed in the first place?

I have a great deal of respect for the players who know the strongest combinations for their roles, especially in a PvP environment; which is so hyper-competitive. I have a great deal more respect for the players who look at the discarded, discredited, or unused specs and looks at the hidden possibilities. Players like you are the people who probably get the least amount of sympathy, and probably no small amount of hate, for not preforming at optimal levels. Yet its people like you who find the new play-styles and the new techniques a class is capable of. Today you are writing amusing anecdotes about an unused spec. perhaps a year from now, you will be writing 'The Zap Witch Guide to PvP.' Not to say you might be the chosen one or anything. Perhaps Squirrelcorpse's destiny is just to be amusing. Either way, you provide the sort of vibes I like to see on a form. /hat_tip

Hey people I do not play a sage myself but I have spent considerable time helping my poor noob father learn to play his healer sage. After tinkering with it a little I found that complaints about survivability are not unfounded. So my Idea was that the devs could buff that force bubble ya'll have considerably and at the same time make healing uninteruptable while it is up, that way sages don't feel so locked out of a battle. What do the sages think?

How to kill a smuggler healer. 1. interupt Underworld Medicine 2. burn down to 30 % 3. stun 4. **** them up If you follow these rules all we can do is pop our stealth or run away and pray. However, if you are in a WZ with three healers, no mattter what class, the cross heals will keep us up no matter what, so sorry.

It depends on the hardmode. If you did a tier 2 hardmode then unless you have some of the colomni/rakatta gear then you might have trouble. You can't survive on moded basic 50 stuff alone. Full BM might work too. If your heals are not hitting hard enough that is your problem.