To be honest, I'm not going off of the stat curves if they've changed since 3.0 (as you might guess I'm only around sparingly), but I've been using mostly stock gear thus far. For critical rating I'm aiming for 25%, because a few of your abilities have internal +5% critical chances from abilities and Disciplines, namely Trauma Probe (unlocked at Level 59), and Advanced Medical Probe and Bacta Infusion (with the Target Lock passive). For surge rating, I'm aiming for about 65% surge rating or so, which can be tinkered between Alacrity and Surge as you like. I personally prefer Surge for bigger heals; but Alacrity is worth experimenting with since it does so much nowadays. But for the explanation of why to aim for 65%, or ideally 70% if you want to go that much into Surge -- you can get your surge rating up to 95% thanks to passive effects. Potent Medicine (Level 52) increases your surge rating on critical heals by 15%. Target Lock increases it for an additional 10%, so long as you can keep it rolling. So with all of those running, your effective surge rating is at least 90%. The best way to keep Target Lock rolling is your group healing -- Successive Treatment, Trauma Probe, and Kolto Bomb. Chances are good that at least one of them is going to crit, since they all carry multple chances.

I personally take - Paralytic Combat Stims, Heavy Trooper, and Charged Barrier in Tier I; - Med Zone and Combat Shield in Tier II; - Shock Absorbers and Reflexive Shield in Tier III. I do this because I really enjoy having a tanky healer that can take a lot of damage while still healing like a turret. That's my preference. I feel Med Zone and Combat Shield in Tier II are pretty much mandatory for me -- they've been part of my build since the start and when taken together (with Reflexive Shield in Tier III) you are very hard to kill while shielded. And since Reactive Shields effective cooldown falls to about 50 seconds with Reflexive Shield (assuming you're taking damage constantly), I find it to be a very potent combination. Of the utilities you mention, the only one I wouldn't recommend, and can't see really working well, is Kolto Wave. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea behind it. More healing tools are always good, but in this case the healing is it does is really weak in my opinion (especially for its position in Tier III). I don't think its worth it in its current state, and there are other things on Tier III that are more interesting. For instance, I can see some potential for building a more mobile (but perhaps less potent) Combat Medic that takes Advance the Line for more mobility and then something like Overclock or Forced March that also give you more mobility depending on what abilities you're using. Comes down to what you want to do.

That I have done, no. However, I am playing my Mercenary as my main now, so I actually had to look up most of the new ability/utility/skill names because I hadn't even leveled my Commando to Level 60. Fortunately, Commando and Mercenary share the same forum now (when I first made this guide they were separate), so I can look into adding the Mercenary "translations" along side the Commando names. It might take a week or so considering my work schedule, but it should be doable. For PVP, I always found Bodyguard/Combat Medic healing really unforgiving in the lower and middle PVP brackets. Mostly because of ammo/heat management. I think it's still going to be harsh, at least until Field Triage at Level 40. But to be honest, I haven't gone through the leveling curve as a Bodyguard or Combat Medic since Patch 2.5 (except from Level 55 to 60, obviously), so it may be easier with the changes in the Discipline. I don't know for sure because I haven't done it. I will say that while leveling between 55 to 60, though, I definitely noticed the cost of Kolto Bomb/Missile. That was one of my most used heals, and now its cost is the same as Advanced Medical Probe/Healing Scan and Medical Probe/Rapid Scan by default. Successive Treatment/Scan takes the edge off, but I still felt the relief when Kolto Bomb/Missile had its cost reduced by 5 at Level 59.

Howdy all, For anyone still scampering around this thread for PVP help for Combat Medics, I plan on updating this guide over the coming weeks to account for all the major changes to Commando healing in Update 3.0.

I'd be surprised if there's more coming for us (in 2.7). The funny thing is I was just having this conversation about leaving the game, and then they nerf Scoundrel healers (and Smashers). It's almost like they're listening, but they only have one guy working on changes...oh yeah, that's right...

That functionality is changing in 2.6. From what I've seen on the PTS, you can only have one Trauma Probe per target. If a second Combat Medic attempts to put a Trauma Probe on a target that already has it, it either refreshes or replaces the stack (couldn't tell which). If it refreshes the stacks it would promote teamwork, while if it replaces it you may see some pointless competition. If it's the latter, it will only be a problem in 8v8 warzones when two or more Combat Medics are more preoccupied with padding their numbers than cooperating and doing their job. It may also happen in a pug operation, but that's something both healers need to coordinate (if one is just trolling, boot 'em and find someone else). In any other situation (arenas, flashpoints, operations) there should be enough organization and awareness to prevent any such competition. EDIT: I'd prefer two stacks of Trauma Probe to a debuff limit, however. If two Commandos die/run out of ammo because they spent all of their time trying to put Trauma Probe on the same target, they are both bad and should feel bad. Just putting that out there.

Man, this is actually shaping up to be a pretty good update for Combat Medic. Trauma Probe got a few nice buffs and one painless nerf: There are now fewer charges (9 when fully spec'd instead of 13), but that is more than made up for the fact that the cost is now 10 (instead of 16) and it heals for a bit more. The biggest change, however, is that as far as I can tell, it doesn't have a player limit. Which means, yes, you can put it on all 16 players in your raid. It also means that Combat Medics will have a comparable, if not better HoT, than Scoundrels with essentially the same duration, cost, and about the same output. As for the skill tree, I like what they did with it. Frontline Medic still requires Trauma Probe, but its off to the side now so you can skip it and just take Probe Medic if you want. While you'll probably still skip over Frontline Medic if you're in PVE, in PVP I think its becoming more valuable. Since its rate limit can now be improved with Probe Medic, you can get it so your Trauma Probe heals you twice every 2 seconds assuming you take damage and use Hammer Shot at the same instant. It's good for about 2.2k heal no crit, which is pretty respectable considering the cost is only 10. The danger is that Frontline Medic will drain your Trauma Probe faster (twice as fast to be exact), but it may be worth it for that extra healing while repositioning. Last but not least is the change to Hammershot, which is mostly QoL. It won't change much in the way of output, but it may help out with keeping a low profile considering the neon beam doesn't show up. I haven't checked the new animation on the Mercenary, but it doesn't seem that any of our gun-touting healers will be shooting themselves in the foot with healing bullets any time soon.

Well if you're bleeding that much...a band-aid won't save you. As usual though, I'm going to reserve judgement until the patch notes are out next week. I'm happy to see they're making two quality changes of life for Combat Medics, one of which (to Trauma Probe), should help a lot. But I've also bought that before and wasn't happy about it. Before 1.2 they did the same thing with Kolto Bomb: they said they were increasing its player cap. They did -- by increasing it from 3 to 4. Is it a change? Yes. But its the kind of change with no other purpose than to say "look, we did something for you". (Especially considering every other ability got nerfed in that update). I've also seen Bioware say they're doing a preview of upcoming changes, implying there were others not shown, and yet there were no other changes. After leaving Commando/Mercenary in the dark for almost an entire year, its good to see them showing some changes in good faith. I hope they keep it up, because there's still a lot of work to do.

Curious to see what other changes they've got in store for healers. I think the change to pushback for the DPS Commandos is a band-aid fix, though. If they are overhauling the pushback/interrupt system, then that change is going to be obsolete presumably.

One related suggestion I've seen a lot before (but I don't remember seeing in this thread -- there's 30+ pages so I may very well have missed it) that could help is adding an additional function to Diversion/Chaff Flare that, when activated, you cannot be targeted by any enemy players for ~5 seconds. Basically, that's a fancy way of saying that when you tab-target through possible targets, a Commando/Mercenary that used Diversion/Chaff Flare will not be on that "list" for ~5 seconds. (Clicking on the Commando/Mercenary manually would not target them, either). It rules out all single-target attacks, but leaves them vulnerable to AoE attacks which have no target requirements. Any single-target attack in progress, such as a Master Strike/Ravage, should also be cancelled. Adding something like this would give Commandos and Mercenaries a way of countering high burst damage in an emergency like Smuggler's stealth or Sage's Force Barrier. Because enemies also cannot single-target attack you, they theoretically won't be able to single-target CC or interrupt you. Something like this would also probably be pretty helpful for Vanguards/Powertechs, who could also use some love. The only issue with this is that it kind of defeats the purpose of traits in the DPS trees that buff Diversion/Chaff Flare (both would probably need a redesign). I also think the cooldown is somewhat too short at 45 seconds, but since it has an important purpose in PVE, it's risky to increase it too much. Tied to this is the implementation problem it may pose in PVE since if this additional effect also applied there, Commandos and Mercenaries would be able to avoid perhaps too much damage if they cannot be targeted by the boss.

Considering its a two minute cooldown, I don't think it could be overpowered. It just means don't get into a battle with a Commando after the cooldown ends In all seriousness though I really like the controlled detonation aspect of it if that does get implemented because it grants some much needed freedom in your choices. The only thing that comes to mind as possibly complicating this is what happens if you change stance? Like it may be worth it as a healer to swap over to Armor Piercing just to throw this -- it'll drop their accuracy, deal something like 20-25% of their HP in damage, and that's not to mention that Armor Piercing Cell has a passive boost to alacrity that is welcome in a pinch. Obviously this would high risk since Troopers can be interrupted while changing stance, but it is definitely something to think about. Personally as a healer, the two minute cooldown on it would make it only effective in an emergency, but it would inherent the same problem as Tech Override/Reserve Powercell -- the long cooldown makes you wait for the perfect situation to use it even if it never comes. In other words, you probably won't have it when you need it, and if you do, there's probably going to be a situation down the road where you'll need it more.

Well the very first thing that has to be done to Trauma Probe is something has to be done about Frontline Medic. If it is going to be a requirement for taking Probe Medic, its effect has got to be better than what it is now. As it stands, it is marginally helpful in some situations in PVP and utterly worthless in PVE. Increasing the number of Trauma Probes with that talent seems to have been a consensus. I think if Trauma Probe could be put on say 3 people (it should not be more than 4 people), Trauma Probe would warrant a cost increase to around 20 ammo/heat. So this change doesn't punish the ammo any more than it already does, Supercharge should also have an additional Supercharged effect that lowers the cost of Trauma Probe by 50% (to 10 ammo/heat). Since Trauma Probe must be refreshed around every 26 seconds and Supercharge is available on roughly the same interval, it seems reasonable to have this ammo/heat discount during Supercharge.

Seems like something could put into a set bonus, no? I think a few other specs already have similar ones and I'd love to see more options with set-bonuses than there are now. 250 I think way too high, but it would be fun to test

I'll assume this is directed at me, and I'll say that I never said I wasn't biased. With that said, the majority of my time is spent in regular warzones and I do spend plenty of time queuing on my own or grouping outside my "well-oiled group". As a matter of fact, I've been guildless for about half a year now, I'm just too lazy to change my signature. One of my favorite things to do when I'm not healing is hop on my tank and guard healers in regular warzones and lot of my ideas come from them and what is troubling them. So you're right that most people play in PUGs, you are wrong about your generalization of me. For instance, I don't have many troubles with ammo because I stack power very high. But if you check my post history (or read the guide I wrote on the spec), you'd know that I've always felt the system is too unforgiving and I'm also well aware that a single underheal can really stress your ammo if you don't land a crit (which is why I stack power in the first place). The learning curve is very steep -- the steepest of the healers I'd say. There's a very specific rotation you need to follow to stay ammo neutral as a Combat Medic, and you're just not going to be able to follow it in a warzone. There needs to be a little more flexibility in the system. I've made suggestions, as have others. But I'm also aware that the ammo is intended to be a limit so we cannot heal indefinitely, so its got to be small trial-and-error changes here and there rather than sweeping changes to every ability. Interrupts do give me trouble, but I can usually find a way around it unless the opposing team is spot-on with locking me out of my casts. There is no disputing that there is a bottleneck in the system. I gave my solution for how to alleviate in a way that also helps improve more ammo regeneration (two birds, one stone). Removing pushback or at least overhauling, which the devs are considering, would also be welcome for all of the specs and should really benefit all of the healers. But I don't think its a good idea to have a high up-time on interrupt immunities mostly because I'm thinking for the attacker's perspective -- how fair is it that your biggest heals cannot be stopped more often than not (its one of the problems with Smugglers right now)? That's why Reactive Shield's interrupt immunity is fair to me -- it has only a 10% up-time. Could you experiment with other times, maybe after a Bacta Infusion? Sure. I'd really love there to be a relic that has a 30% chance to proc that makes you immune to interrupts for 4 seconds with a 40 second cooldown or something like that. And so on. You can all it hostility or spin, but I'm working out a compromise. I love reading ideas in these kinds of threads because there are usually some really great ideas in there (ie. i forget who posted it but someone suggested allow you to tackle teammates like a reverse Rescue -- you have no idea how awesome this would be lol). But I like to be the devil's advocate and argue against things that are probably too potent, especially when two rather innocent changes synergize to become to powerful. Like these two: These changes in of themselves are great. But the combination makes it really powerful, and probably too powerful. Output would go up a lot because AMP is no longer gated by a 7.5 second cooldown, and that means the AMP --MP bread-and-butter combination can be used outside of Supercharge. You'd even be able to have your Preventive Medicine/Armor Screen HOT rolling on multiple people at once, which you can't presently do outside of Supercharge. What's even better about it is that it would remove the bottleneck in the toolset almost entirely with that change alone. But its the second change that pushes it too far, in my opinion. It cuts the amount of time required to build a Supercharge which means its going to be up more or less every 10 seconds instead of every 20 seconds. The output isn't so significant as the ammo regeneration increase that synergizes with the additional energy regeneration that comes from Medical Probe's lower effective cost (with Field Triage it would now be only slightly cheaper than Kolto Bomb). You'd be able to heal indefinitely, and the devs have said they don't want that. It's why I'm taking the stance I am. Basically, I want to see the spec get buffed because it has been struggling for a year and a half. It's pretty much universally considered the worst healer in both PVP and PVE, and that's not a completely false statement either. But I also don't want to see the spec get buffed so much that it gets gutted, because that's exactly what happened last time. I'm also quick to argue against changes that make ammo as efficient as the Smuggler system because it seems likely that system is about to get nerfed (if not, Sages/Commandos will be getting buffed to their level, in which case its a win-win for us anyway). [/Essay]

Not sure if this is directed at me, but I'm not trying to be rude. I'm just trying to be practical and think of what is and isn't balanced. So hopefully no one takes any offense at my critiques. Predominately PVP healing. I've been doing ranked since its launch as a Combat Medic (300+ matches) and now I'm healing in Ranked Arenas. Although I prefer to do ranked, more often than not I'm healing in regular warzones. The main problem I see with healing is the fact that there is a bottleneck in the toolset -- a single interrupt on Medical Probe when all other abilities are on cooldown (which occurs fairly frequently) and less than 27 stacks of charge can effectively shutdown the Combat Medic until a cooldown finishes or they can get Medical Probe/Supercharged. I still think the best way of addressing this is making Supercharge build faster by some means. The more often Supercharge is up, the more often the bottleneck is alleviated (you have 2 heals without a cooldown instead of 1). Because of the nerfs Supercharge received in 1.2, Supercharge is used almost exclusively for the purpose of ending the cooldown on Advanced Medical Probe and to a lesser extent for the ammo regeneration (this is because of the nerfs in 1.2 -- the reduced healing output while Supercharged has made it so the difference between using it whenever available and never using it at all [by staying at 30 stacks] is insignificant to output). Ammo management is tight and I don't expect them to make it easier anytime soon, at least not in light over their recent responses. A more likely result is that the efficiency of other specs will be brought closer in line with us, namely Scoundrel healers (who can presently heal indefinitely, which breaks this design). It could be made easier with some procs, but the changes should not be sweeping (ie. lowering the cost to the point of enabling spamming of critical abilities). Utilities have always needed address because of their long cooldowns and limited effects. This horse has been beaten for so long that I really hope its not in vain. There are many suggestions of how to do this that in this thread and plenty of others. Output is fine where it is -- you can get 15k+ in a single GCD if you follow Medical Probe with Bacta Infusion and both crit -- the problem just tends to be getting it out, but resolving this can be addressed through utility changes or addressing the bottleneck (both discussed above). I also generally ignore claims about the output needing a buff (ie. people that advocate increasing the healing of each ability by 1000+) purely because the numbers they cite are often considerably lower than the stats I observe on my own Combat Medic after bolster, and I'm wearing stock (augmented) Conqueror gear with maximum expertise. In other words, something is amiss -- either my gear is lying to me, or the numbers they give are wrong. Last but not least is survivability, I will stubbornly say doesn't need changing. I'm not sure how many of you have been playing since 1.2, but trust me when I say, Combat Medics cooldowns are more than enough. Their other weaknesses make these defensives look weaker than they are. As someone whose been around since launch -- I know how powerful they really are. Improve the class' with QoL changes and address the bottleneck in some way and you will see how truly effective the defensives are. Improving the defensives is great while they're up, but they are relatively short and do not help address the problems the spec has the other 90% of the time when these defensives aren't active. EDIT: There is no better feeling that just shrugging off a DPS that expects any easy kill

Reactive Shield is god mode if you are a healer and use it wisely (ie. at full resolve, in combination with an adrenal/medpack, with Hold the Line, etc). The only time you should ever be killed while Reactive Shield is active is: - You use it way too late (ie. less than 20% HP) - You are vastly outnumbered because you are alone/no one is assisting or a combination of the two. Obviously for DPS, this is a different story. Besides that, the changes you suggest to ammo, for the healers at least, won't happen. It will be overpowered. Why? Because the efficiency you suggest would dwarf the efficiency the spec had before 1.2 (aka a time when Combat Medics were overpowered). The over-efficiency is the whole reason the spec got nerfed into the state its been in for 1.5 years, and the devs have explicitly said the reason ammo is so hard to manage is BECAUSE ITS A LIMIT TO COMBAT MEDICS. So while perhaps the other specs could use some improvement in that department -- I'll defer to someone who has more experience with them -- for healers its not going to happen, at least not to the extent you are advocating. A change to how much ammo Supercharged Cells returns, or a reduction in Medical Probe's cost while Field Triage is up, make a lot of sense and seems reasonable -- lowering the cost of everything to the point of being able to spam them indefinitely just won't happen. EDIT: I'd also say that there is one suggestion in there that is kind of buried under everything that is very intriguing though, which is removing the cooldown on Advanced Medical Probe entirely. That alone would be interesting to test, because it removes the bottleneck that can shutdown a Combat Medic in PVP and expands group-healing because its HOT can be kept on multiple players simultaneously. Its the kind of subtle change that is what the class really needs, not an overhauling.

That poster was probably referring to the fact that most of all of the other suggestions you quoted, other than that one, would not have been "remotely balanced". Also, while that specified change would essentially be 6 seconds of easy-mode immunity, that change alone would do nothing for the people who already have trouble with the other 110 seconds when Reactive Shield is not available. Reactive Shield already is god-mode for people who know how to use it properly (the healers that is -- DPS is a different story).

I've seen a few people suggest this, and of course this is a brainstorming thread, but I don't think its going to happen. The devs suggested they might, but they also casually made it clear that the ammo regen Scoundrels/Operatives have may very well be something they're going to review as a possible cause of over-performance: To be honest, other than playing with the cooldown to Reserve Powercell to make it available more frequently, there should be a regeneration mechanic somewhere on a modest cooldown (namely, a cooldown that prevents it from being spammed). There is already one such mechanic: Supercharge Cells. You can only Supercharge once every 20 seconds or so, so getting through your rotation to that point could reward maybe 10 ammo instead of 6. Another prime option is Bacta Infusion which has a similar cooldown (18 seconds). Tighten up its RNG range, trim its cooldown to 15s (with the set bonus), and enable it to regenerate 8 ammo when it is used. Mechanically, this would be somewhat similar to the Vanguard tank's Energy Blast, which serves a similar purpose. And yet another alternative could be to allow Field Triage to stack twice, with each stack reducing the cost of Medical Probe by 8. Since this could only reasonably be done during Supercharges -- you'd otherwise have to go without casting Medical Probe for 7.5 seconds due to AMP's cooldown -- this is gated at roughly a 20-second interval and still requires you to have an effective rotation. The reason I'm focusing on these longer cooldowns, though, is that I think lowering the cost of Medical Probe too significantly, or making Hammershot regenerate ammo whenever it is used without some kind of gate will make it too efficient, and Bioware has also explicitly said they don't want Combat Medics healing indefinitely: Basically, it's a Catch 22 for Combat Medics: we want the system to be easier, but the reason the system is so complex is because its by design a limit to Combat Medic's effectiveness. I think this is acceptable, but I also think the system can be very unforgiving especially when you mentioned underhealing. Basically, there are situations where if you heal less than you should have because of bad RNG, you are in danger of running out of ammo very quickly because of how expensive it is. Focusing on these non-spammable abilities (ie. NOT Hammershot) will encourage better rotations, reward more, and still serve to limit the effectiveness as intended.

My only complaint about a change like this is that it wouldn't be able to dodge interrupts the way you presently can (ie. moving your character slightly to cancel the cast). Not only does this make you more vulnerable, it also takes some of the skill out of it. Maybe the extra mobility will offset it, but it is a design oversight.

[Laughs maniacally.] Do it. I dare you.

For PVP healing (and I think these would also benefit PVE): Tech Override's cooldown should be lowered to 60 seconds, perhaps additionally having two-stacks baseline (although I don't think the 2-stack is necessary for Combat Medics). This will really help with some much needed utility for all Commandos and give them a lot more in the way of options during a fight. Considering that most of the abilities it can effect are limited by their cooldowns and/or ammo cost, it pretty much balances itself. Field Medicine OR Steady Hands (pick one). I know the devs said they may explore allowing Hammershot to target oneself, but if they opt instead to keep it as it presently is, they could add a mechanic to either of the aforementioned skills to allow Hammershot healing on an ally to have a 100% chance to heal yourself for 25%/50% of your tech bonus healing stat. Both skill points are low enough in the tree to benefit Combat Medics who are leveling and since you may only heal an ally while in Combat Support Cell, it is implicitly tied to the stance. It can also be a compromise to the suggestion the devs had in the Mercenary thread where they were considering allowing you to heal yourself directly with Hammershot (100% of your tech bonus healing presumably) but it would not build 3 charges; my suggestion would cut the self-healing (to 50% of the tech bonus healing) in exchange for the 3 charges of Supercharge. This would have less of a negative impact on your rotation, since Hammershot is used to pace yourself and build charge. Fix the bug with Efficient Conversions. If it's not a bug, this is a helpful QoL change that resolves a problem that affects Reserve Powercell. Basically, if Reserve Powercell is active when you use Concussive Charge, Concussive Force, or Cyro Grenade (all of which are made free of cost by training into Efficient Conversions), the Reserve Powercell proc is consumed despite the fact that all of the abilities are FREE. This wastes a 2-minute cooldown. Kolto Residue: Include Kolto Wave (Concussive Charge) as an ability that applies Kolto Residue to affected allies. This would help add incentive to taking Kolto Wave while giving extra utility to the class. Kolto Pods. In addition to its present effects, the 50% slow from Kolto Residue is refreshed on affected enemies with each tick of Kolto Pods. Presently, Kolto Pods applies/refreshes Kolto Residue's healing buff and Charged Screen (when Supercharged) with each tick of Kolto Residue to all affected allies without a player limit. This change would help bring the slow up to speed with the other effects, but the 5-player limit should be enforced for the slow (or lowered to a 4-player limit to compensate). Preventive Medicine: Increased duration to 12 seconds (up from 9 seconds). This change is mostly for PVE, where there is a 1-GCD window to cast Advanced Medical Probe on the target due to its cooldown (the HOT lasts 9 seconds, the cooldown of AMP is 7.5 seconds). Increasing its duration by 3 seconds (1 additional tick) would make this window more reasonable and less restrictive. Kolto Wave: Damage no longer wakes sleeping targets, but still generates resolve (if applicable). A small QoL change to make Kolto Wave more feasible in PVE and PVP situations where you cannot afford to be breaking CCs. Switch the positions of Probe Medic and Frontline Medic in the skill tree. Keep them as three and two point skills, respectively. Probe Medic would require Trauma Probe, but Frontline Medic would have no prerequisites. This is mostly because Frontline Medic is currently a waste of a talent in PVE (it has zero benefit for them) and is only occasionally useful in PVP in small skirmishes/duels. Making Frontline Medic more valuable may warrant its position in the tree. Change Frontline Medic's effect to the following: Increases the number of Trauma Probes which may be active at one time by 1/2 and lowers Bacta Infusion's cooldown by 1.5/3.0 seconds. This would allow up to 3 Trauma Probes to be active and trims Bacta Infusion's cooldown somewhat. Another option here could be to add some sort of synergy between Bacta Infusion and the rest of the skill tree (probably to Trauma Probe) because there is absolutely no synergy high in the Combat Medic tree. Supercharged Cells: There are a few changes to make here under "Supercharged effects": 1. Move the Supercharged effects of Full Auto and Charged Bolts to the same line in the tooltip (their effects do not change). 2. Include Kolto Wave on the line for Kolto Bomb, allowing both abilities to apply a 5% damage reduction shield to affected allies while Supercharged. 3. Add a new effect: Trauma Probe's ammo cost is reduced by 50%. Most of these are quality of life changes, and #3 has been included because Trauma Probe can now be applied to multiple allies (see changes to Frontline Medic). This change could also compensate for Trauma Probe if its ammo cost is increased because of its expanded number of targets (which may be necessary). Med Zone OR Treated Wound Dressings (pick one). In addition to its present effects, you generate 1 stack of charge per second for every second that you are stunned, knocked down, or otherwise incapacitated (basically if an effect generates resolve, it would generate charge). Roots, slows, and non-CC (true) interrupts would NOT generate charge. The generation of charge ceases as soon as the controlling effect expires. My rational for this recommendation is that in PVP the main weakness to a Combat Medic is that a single interrupt can shut them down if they have less than 30 charges and all of their heals are on cooldown (and this WILL and DOES happen in PVP). Supercharges free up Advanced Medical Probe for use on demand, which makes it more difficult to shut down the spec (since there are 2 abilities without cooldowns instead of the one). Combat Medics have two ways of building Supercharge, both of which can be problematic under pressure: Hammershot is always an option but if you need to build an entire Supercharge purely with Hammershot, chances are someone is going to die; and Medical Probe is costly and highly vulnerable to interruptions. Making stuns/knockdowns/etc generate charge would allow more regular Supercharges and makes it harder to shut us down, but does so in a way that is at the mercy of the opposition (we can't stun ourselves). It adds a good dosage of strategy to fighting a Combat Medic since Supercharges are more rewarding and incentivizes the killing of a Combat Medic BEFORE Supercharging and controlling them DURING Supercharge. (Although this change is mainly aimed for PVP, the extra Supercharge generation during boss battles with controlling effects will also benefit PVE Combat Medics).

I've never seen a hybrid build for Commando be effective at end-game. You just miss out on too much and don't gain enough in return. The builds may look good on paper, but they don't work well in reality. But if you really want to do support I have a few comments for you: - Based on the build, I'm going to make 2 assumptions. First is that you are going to be in Combat Support Cell (since you have Supercharge Cells and Treated Wound Dressings taken) and that your priority is going to be dealing damage (because you took Steadied Aim instead of Steady Hands). - So assuming that you are in Combat Support Cell, you are going to have to drop Cell Charger. The effect of that skill only applies if you are in Armor-Piercing Cell, which you aren't. If you are in Armor-Piercing Cell, then Treated Wound Dressings and Supercharged Cells need to be dropped for the same reason. The only other possibility is if you are switching between stances and that's not really intuitive or effective on a Commando. - Combat Shield is a wasted skill point. There are very very few enemies in the game who have interrupts in PVE, so its just not worth taking. Most interrupts you see in PVE are from stuns and physical effects, and Combat Shield does not prevent those kinds of interrupts (since they are crowd controls or CCs). - You're going to want to drop Cover Fire. Most enemies that will give you a challenge are immune to Cover Fire's slow (in addition to other CCs). The slow is really only going to be helpful on Weak, Normal, and Strong enemies, and enemies of those strengths should be easy to kill without a slow. - Drop the two points in Overclock and put them into Curtain of Fire. With your build, the heart of your damage is going to hinge on Full Auto, so you really can't afford to miss this proc. In that same vein, try to find a way to put a third point in Target Lock. Both the accuracy increase and the additional armor pen will make your Full Auto (as well as other ranged attacks) better. - Also, putting 1 point in Kolto Residue is okay, but you're going to miss applying the buff 50% of the time. Either put a second point here, put one in Kolto Pods (which gives you four chances to apply it), or drop it entirely. - Lastly, for healing, I'd avoid Medical Probe in your build. It is really costly, you don't have Field Triage to reduce it, and without Steady Hands its channel time is going to be really problematic. Advanced Medical Probe is probably going to be your main heal, since three of your talents improve it (First Responder/Supercharged Cells/Charged Barrier). Kolto Bomb will be available more often and you're going to want to use that too.

So what you're saying is that a 1.2-era nerf is coming to Scoundrels where every single one of their healing abilities get nerfed? This jaded Combat Medic is going to go buy popcorn for this! And EA will never go bankrupt. #TBTF It will be interesting to see what the consequences of the cover nerf for Scoundrel healers are. The good ones have always made use of cover purely because it was effectively a passive way of completely avoiding most gap closers in the game, while the other two healers had to burn active cooldowns of at least 20s to do the same for a limited period of time. Obviously Scoundrels should be on the move and have less to cast, but no longer being able to avoid gap closers should give melee DPS an edge against Scoundrel healers now. Interestingly, most of the classes who had gap closers that were countered by Cover were melee DPS (Guardian, Sentinel, Vanguard). Correlation may not equal causation, but that's a noteworthy coincidence right there.

The thing that's amusing is that in the 15 months you've been gone, the status quo of class balance has not changed significantly since 1.2 (which was about 15 months ago). But I agree that most specs in the game are viable and that balance -- considering its done by literally one person -- has been pretty good albeit dreadfully slow on tweaking. The only two classes that are still overperforming are Smash and Sawbones, and they are both getting survivability nerfs based on what's been posted in the dev blog. Time will tell if these changes are enough.

The single minor change I'd make to your tree would be to take 1 point from either Kolto Residue, First Responder, or Efficient Conversions and drop it into Psych Aid. With all the cleanses that are necessary in later-game content now, the extra healing Psych Aid provides for Field Aid is actually pretty good. I've seen it hit around 1.5k on a crit (and I'm no where near fully geared) which makes life a little easier when there is a hard-hitting DoT mechanic in a fight. Kolto Residue only needs one point assuming you use it on cooldown and take Kolto Pods (since Kolto Pods refreshes Kolto Residue with each tick so there are four chances to apply the buff), and if you've got ~30% crit chance or so First Responder will almost always be up anyway with 1 point. The only use for Efficient Conversions that I see is for a free Kolto Wave/Concussive Charge, but that's an encounter-specific choice (there are some fights where an additional AOE is helpful, there are others where you'll be cleansing way more often than every 30s with Kolto Wave).