I have not tested that yet, but i guess it is additive, like most other boni in this game. Thus the actual increase in cast time would be the same with first responder, no matter if your alacrity is at 0 or not. (If i remember correctly, it also shaved off like 0.05 seconds of cast time, even when i had 0 alacrity. So i guess it will do the same now. ) No guarantees on anything here. I fully agree that with "normal" gear, the alacrity skills are not worth the skillpoints. I guess you're better of reading RuQus analysis. (According to his analysis, i'd still be below the level where alacrity indeed is beneficial, and that's for the stat, not the skills. But i run with alacrity since replacing all the mods requires me to earn my PvP armours a second time, which will still take a while, considering my casual PvP-ing. )

Yea! Comedy at its best!

Hmm, yea. Field Triage, which you can have at 3/3 earliest at lv. 27, is the very reason why i say, the Commando only is a healer lv. 27+. Before that, ammo handling issues make you the weakest of all healers around.

Some stuff to correct here: This is only true if you either never take damage when using FA, or put 3 points into Steadied Aim. The currently still existing problem is that the BH dishes out the damage of the ability, even when under fire while the Trooper looses the last of the three ticks of damage, thus the ability is at -33% when under fire. This does not happen any more with Steadied Aim specced for 3 skillpoints, but the BH can dish out the full damage without having to sacrifice 3 valuable skillpoints for it. Supposedly this problem will really get fixed in 1.2. I guess you don't PvP? In PvE the difference is small, indeed, the last hit of the BHs DFA lands like a quarter of a second faster than the last one of the troopers MV. But the timing for the _first_ hit is very different. The moment you initiate the ability, a marker is on the ground, and players are well trained to run out of such markers. As BH, you can target your DFA into enemies in PvP and are sure to hit them with the first missile and the slow ones also with the second one. With the troopers MV, your first grenade only still hits the slow ones, everyone else already left your area of effect, if somebody still is hit by the second grenade you just found fighting vegetables. Just like FA, this issue supposedly will be fixed in 1.2. On this i agree. Appearing is one thing. According to player tests, the area of effect is the same on both abilities. Currently all differences of the classes work in favour of the BH. Supposedly, all of them will be fixed in 1.2. We'll see.

I run almost exactly the same build, i only use Med Zone instead of Treated Wound dressings. Though, i lately consider dropping Kolto Residue in favour of First Responder. /sign It boosts damage and healing, no reason ever to skip it. Especially since Advanced Tech is very lacking. I agree on all of those. This is the only point where i slowly start to change my mind. As long as i ran with "of the mill" gear, the influence of Alacrity indeed was insignificant, but on my higher level gear now it starts being useful. If speccing into it makes any difference now, i can't tell yet, but i think i will try.

Assault relies on the plasma cell, while any good healer uses the combat support cell to fuel his supercharge cells. Thus assault and combat medic are very hard to combine. You're better advised to combine combat medic with gunnery. Consider that muzzle fluting reduces charged bolts ammo cost by 1 and ssc reduces it by 2, you can use ssc to dish out charged bolts for free. You actually even recover ammo while spamming charged bolts when supercharged, use it to your advantage. You still don't have the ammo efficiency of a real gunnery build since you'll have to recover charges in between and you don't have the mobility of an assault setup, but at least those two skill trees work together. Assault and gunnery can be combined, but assault and combat medic don't really match. (I am sorry, i also wish i could have more mobile damage while being healing specced. )

Let's talk again when you encounter your first boss which is immune to many effects, which includes the cryo grenade. Also as a "sidenote" on the team planing and a group with too many commandos being a coicidence: there are trooper-only guilds around. The whole concept of the game indicates that a trooper-only group could do well and, indeed, up to high level flashpoints that's true. Then you suddenly are in trouble: you leveled your trooper, along with your friends. Cryo grenade, concussive force, concussive round and (when skilled gunnery) stock strike were your interrupts and you did well, both in PvE and PvP. Then you find yourself against a boss mob with hard hitting (one-shot-kill) ability and immunity to all effects which would move him around or incapacitate him. Thus only an official interrupt ability would do the job, which you don't have. Sorry, the game gives the impression that an all-trooper group could do the job (just like an all-jedi group can do anything) and then turns things around at the very top end. This is just bad design. Which btw also can be found in other aspects, it's just (mostly due to UI shortages) not as obvious to most players. Would the game actually show us what kind of effect different debuffs are, the abilities to cleanse effects would be in greater focus. Currently Sages can not remove tech effects, but they are the only healers who can cleanse away force effects. So i guess to be on the save side, we should always have both a Sage and another healer in our group? Up to now, debuff cleansing is of limited importance in this game, so people don't complain about that yet. The tooltip of debuffs doesn't tell you if it's tech, force, physical or mental and some apparently are not removeable at all. Thus by now, if your cleanse doesn't remove a debuff, you guess that it can't be removed at all. With new content on the way, i am rather sure that the game will also discriminate against either Sages or non-Sages pretty soon. When significant debuffs start to decimate groups and only cleansing can save them, people will figure out if Sages or Non-Sages can clean them and the other kind of healer won't be welcome in the corresponding flashpoints any more. Time will tell, if developers realize that the games where they copied this /fail from remedied the problem a few years ago, or if they manage to fix it before creating a mess with the debuff problematic, too. Up to then, we'll be stuck with this bad design. Anyways, currently the interrupt topic needs to be fixed. Most people here would like to have a dedicated interrupt ability. This is reasonable from a PvE perspective, but would make us one of the few classes with "complete" offensive toolset in PvP. Thus perhaps the more reasonable fix would be to actually change the "immune to any CC" buff of the boss mobs in question. Simply allow a freeze to actually affect those mobs, albeit only for like a tenth of a second. This should break the cast of the insta-death ability but wouldn't affect other mobility or damage output of the boss in any significant way.

In both specs, there are two points in advanced tech, but only one in ironsights. Unfortunately those +2% of healing done and another 2% of healing received can not stand up to the +6% aim, which affects both damage and healing output. Thus i'd recommend to drop advanced tech in favour of full iron sights. Next to that, it's an interesting setup. With relying on AP cell it sacrifices the healers best friend supercharge, but with field triage you can still deliver cost efficient healing spikes. The value of Kolto Bomb very much is limited, no SCC means no damage reduction, but it still can be used as a self-heal while moving, so i see some reason for it. And if the info that supercharged barrel currently is bugged and does nothing is true, it very well can be dumped at the moment. Anyways, too bad that this setup by no means allows to get curtain of fire. Full Auto is boosted in several ways, curtain of fire would allow to make really good use of these boosts. So, this setup won't excel either at damage nor at healing, but i agree that it might do well enough in both aspects.

For those missing the reason behind it: the auto-targeting works when performing a purely offensive ability. If you hit full auto, the game knows that you want to hurt something and if you enabled the "too lazy to pick targets" option, it picks a target for you at random. Hammer Shot is dual use, though. It can be used to harm enemies, but with CSC enabled, it can also be used to heal. The game can't read your mind, though. If you hit HS with no target selected, it doesn't know if you now want to hurt an enemy or wanted to heal the guy next to you. Anyways, in my book the proper fix is: remove that auto-targeting completely. I've seen too many wipes just because some lazy / incompetent DD had auto-targeting enabled and just kept spamming damage and thus the game made him shoot at a stunned target or even at enemies which the group was not even fighting yet. Thus i feel no sympathy for this option or its users.

It's very much a "killing is my business" setup. Don't bet on the heals, you don't have any ammo management for your heals, so you'll run dry very soon. Instead, i'd suggest: 1. Absolutely grab Concussive Force. The sith who just fell of that ledge can't carve you with his flashlight. The enemy who just fell to his death at the bridge on the voidstar won't hurt you any more. And you can bet that the enemy team will be very pissed at you when you single-handedly just stopped them at the last meters at hutball. I did that just a few days ago. 4 enemies, ballcarrier included, run towards the finishing line, i just came out of respawn, all alone. Luckily, my concussive charge dropped 3 of them into the pit. The ball was thrown up to the one who was just kicked to the ledge, but not down into the pit, but i was able to stockstrike him down there, too. Lucky me, that none of them considered me enough of a threat to stun me... Such a curiosity as my little story might be scarce, but the defensive value of having a higher knockback range and a second knockback at hand is high. 2. Consider Cover Fire. Yes, it's only a two seconds snare, but if you just threw the enemy down the platform on Aldaraan the first time and manage to hit him with full auto repeatedly thanks to Curtain of Fire, it can make a difference. No guarantees on that, though, a friend of mine loves Cover Fire, the limited time i had a gunnery spec, it did not convince me too much, but that might also be an issue of playstyle. 3. To get Concussive Force, you might be tempted to pull points out of the combat medic tree. While this is an option, i wouldn't do it. Advanced Tech would be my very first sacrifice on your setup since it's benefits are very small. (On a heal setup, secrificing heavy trooper would also be an option, but in this setup, the +6% of received healing can actually matter. ) And with this all being said, i dare to repeat: this is an offensive setup. While it can deliver short healing spikes, albeit at terrible ammo cost, it aims at killing the enemy before he kills you. Outlasting or even outhealing an enemy is not feasible with this setup.

Both your builds go without full field triage? I am sorry, but that's so much /fail that all the rest of your posting is not worth accounting for any more. Your setup can work for emergency spike healing, but for any real healing, you need reliable energy management. SSC, which you skilled, gives you a lot of that, due to its synergy with field triage. As you left field triage at 1/3, you lack this reliable energy management. Sorry, but anybody reading that post, drop advanced tech, cell capaciator, weapon calibration or first responder. Or basically anything, really! Get 3 points in field triage or be the laughing stock of any experienced healer. The answers to this, from my point of view. I run with Psych Aid, but i consider it mostly a PvP tool. It's not that there are no PvE applications, but due to the UI being utter crap in this aspect it's very hard to cleanse properly. Not only are the symbols hard to see (it's like 3x3 pixels in the raid frame), even if you bother, the tooltips lack essential information. I can't see the type of the debuff and thus don't know if i can remove it or not. Still there are some PvE uses. As an example, most debuffs of Frostclaw can be cleansed away, and while i don't know if any of them was psychic and thus would not have been cleansable without it skilled, i know that the reduced ammo costs helped me a lot there. Only after i started cleaning the tank again and again, i was able to keep him alive. There are other PvE situations where it would be useful, would the UI just provide the necessary information. Since it doesn't, you'll often have to counter debufs with more raw healing instead of going the more ressource efficient way. On efficient conversions, again, i do use it, but mostly from a PvP point of view. I might need to apply a stun in PvE once in a while, but that's usually at the start of a fight, so i can spare the ammo. If i need to do more CC during a fight it more often that not means that somebody else in the group is not doing his job. Froma PvP point of view, though, these tools are livesavers which i often need to use exactly when i am in trouble, thus when i might already be low on ammo. That's when efficient conversions shines the most. Last not least, first responder, some people love it a lot, i am unsure if it's worth it. For total healing, in good conditions, there clearly are better options available. The same is true for alacricy and other stats, which actually improve your healing (and damage). When dancing between ground effects from a boss, on the other hand, you will curse the 1.5 seconds of cast time for your healing, just like when just getting somebody into healing range and having to watch him die a quarter of a second before your healing lands. This being said, i still go without alacricy or first responder. I'd have to sacrifice way too much to get them high enough to be barely noticeable and even more to make them significant in any way. Proper positioning goes a long way, both in PvP and PvE, and if somebody in PvP overextends all the time then i grant him his wish to die and rather care for those who can work in a team.

Info for all imperial players: exactly this. The setups and playes are just bad, so you should ignore and never bother to attack them. I personally run 25/16/0 and while i'm seeing myself mostly as a healer, this setup also allows me to burn down one or another enemy when the need arises. Ammo handling might be a bit trickier than on other setups, but when using SCC and charged bolts properly you can dish out the hurting quite longer than most people would expect you to do.

And as a "bonus", you don't see the health of the companions any more, so you have an excuse to let them die right away? (Haven't tested raidframes since end of December, i have to admit, but at that time, companions were not included in the raidframe, making it quite useless when healing in a group of less then 4 players. )

WTT: My current shotgun for a sawed off Mad Max style shotgun! [And allow me to wear it at the hip. ] {The dog is fully optional, but could make a good next companion... *g* }

Actually it is because there is no combat log. So people mostly "see" the grav round and conclude that it killed them. They are unable to recognize the demolition round, can't distinguish between full auto (quite useful since last patch) and hammer shot and barely ever notice the high impact bolt. Thus they think that it was all grav round killing them. Oh, and of course, there is an outdated video always going around, where a lv. 50 Merc in good PvP gear kills plenty of low levels who don't have equipment with expertise yet. Most people just see "only tracer missile on the toolbar" and "kills a lot". All the other information is lost on them, neither have they noticed those essential information, nor would they be willing or able to process the information, as it would just stop their beloved hating.

Do you have any source / evidence for that? I'd be interested in reading that. Without backing it up, your statement is an educated guess, but not good enough for a final conclusion. (Sorry for my scepticism, but i've been through several games and saw things work both ways already. ) Thus, if there's a reliable source, it would save me the trouble to testing myself. (Which i find cumbersome, since there is no combat log to just grab, parse and evaluate. )

Check if you are really at the correct ship. The destination "Tavus ship" is twice on the map, but only one is the Justice.

I guess that tastes differ, or rather i'd say, the "burst" of bacta infusion is vey much limited. Yet, it's insta-cast, which brings two advantages: - it can be cast on the move. - it can not be interrupted. But it still uses a GCD. So in terms of healing within one cooldown, i get the same, no matter if i use BI or MP, as long a i am not being interrupted. Indeed i can have a small "spike" by casting MP, immediately followed by BI, but this only makes a difference if the fight is then won within the next 1.5 seconds. If the fight goes on for any longer, any other heal would've also done the same job. So, yes, BI has the two mentioned advantages, and even further, it's free of ammo cost. But the 21 seconds of cooldown reduce its value a lot and thus i consider the alternatives to be more desireable. And on the point with surge and the next patch: why? Will surge be nerfed again in another patch? I thought that already happened. Anyways, potent medicine just reads as "adds some surge" to me. When i played around with it, about three weeks ago, PM and surge were quite equivalent. By now it would be interesting, if the crit-heal bonus of PM is applied seperately to surge, or if it's added up and then processed. (Which means, if PM is affected by DM or not. ) If it's calculated seperately, then PM definitely gained some value, but i yet have to see some numbercrunching results pointing one way or another and even then i guess i'd only put 4 points into it, so i can at least keep concussive force.

If you don't use any ammo, you don't actually need any regeneration skills. I run a quite similar build myself: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800bfRoRzfdkZMIkbRo.1 Ammo can be handled well with this build by using SSC. When you need to dish out some hurting, burn your ammo at leisure and activate SSC when being almost out of ammo. Not only do you recover 2 ammo immediately but you can also spam charged bolts for zero(!) ammo costs. This allows you to maintain your offense while at the same time recovering your ammo. (So, grav round is for "normal" damage mode, but while SSC is active, charged bolts is your damage ability of choice. ) If you had a little bit of ammo left when activating SSC and thus had acceptable regeneration, you'll be at full ammo or at least very close to it when the SSC duration ends. So you can dish out some more hurting even then, before having to care for your ammo situation again. Next to that, i find it very interesting that people come to a build similar to mine when approaching from a DD side. I personally see myself as healer with improved survivability and additional damage capabilities. I found bacta infusion just not worth the skill points. It's only "selling point" is that it can be cast on the move, but one insta-heal every 21 seconds is just not cutting it in my book. In PvE i usually can plan ahead for that 1.5 seconds, in PvP i usually can compensate for the lack of insta-heal by properly positioning myself. The only one suffering from this decission are those DDs who regularily overextend, and one heal every 21 seconds wouldn't save those, either. So, by giving up Bacta Infusion and a bit of crit healing bonus (which i can compensate for by packing some more surge) i gain a lot more {PvP} survivability by packing tenacious defense (only 1 point, unfortunately, but i'm not ready to give up any more in the combat healing tree) and concussive force. Charged barrier also helps my survivability if i find the time to deliver some damage, so it's a situational but quite welcome advantage. The rest of gunnery helps my damage, but even some of the remaining skills also help my healing. It might not be the one and only best PvE build, but it's very versatile, can be brought to good use in PvE and allows me to do more in PvP than all those pure combat medic setups. Dead healers don't heal and damage not happening since the hostile DD is dead is quite an effective way of healing, too. The only real drawback of this setup is that its versatility can tempt you to stick too much to being a damage dealer. You have to keep your eye on the team and the situation and don't get caught in the "my target and me" mindset, which way too many DDs seem to have. So, an overview of the situation and the discipline to break out of damage-mode and healing your team when the need arises is key to make the most of this setup. So, anybody who finds himself quite often in "i do damage" berserk mode in this setup should better go back to a pure healing setup. But, hey, if you read all this long text of mine, i doubt you're one of those guys, so enjoy.

True. But the same barrel results in a different min and max damage, depening if you install it in a blaster rifle or an assault cannon. (Just like the same armour mod results in different armour values when installing it in different kinds of armour. ) So, yes, a better barrel definitely helps your healing, but you can use the better barrel with any kind of weapon. Anyways, for any _real_ healing ability, the damage propery of your weapon indeed does nothing, only Hammer Shot might be influenced. The damage done by Hammer Shot changes, depending on your weapon (same barrel and mods assumed), i did not check if it affects healing, too. Different people in this thread explain different opinions on this, no idea yet, who is right or wrong. Anyways, i'd still advise to use an assault cannon, giving up Charged Bolts and Hail of Bolts is a bad move.

The "=/= healing" means: "when not healing". For pure healing purposes, a blaster rifle does the job. It might be (i didn't check) that it reduces the healing done by hammer shot, but that's it. You sacrifice some damage by using the blaster rifle, though, and you give up the ability to use hail of bolts and charged bolts, which i both find very useful when not being 100% busy healing people.

Not so much for me, but for the Sages i asked. I don't play one, i only looked around here to also learn about the "better" healer class, on their point of view. And this thread just caught my attention because, according to the info i had, it was wrong.

If that's true for your character, you should write a ticket. Or better, several of them. Not only does every other character classes damage scale with the primary attribute, it also does so for any Sage i asked. If it does not for you, you must have a very unique bug.

On this, my question would be: are we speaking of PvE or PvP? In PvP, if your are guarded and your tank is rather mediocre and doesn't understand the priorities and principle of guard switching, staying within his range makes sense. (Which is like 95% of all tanks in this game. ) I know, my words are harsh, but i've been in Warhammer Online for 2 1/2 years and the PvP functionality of guarding in TOR is directly transfered from WAR. (No big surprice, Mythic, which produced WAR, was integrated into Bioware during the development of TOR. ) So, i think i have a little more experience on good guard-tanks in PvP than most players here. I am rather sure that tanks here will learn how to use guarding properly, currently those who know this mechanic from other games are well advised to give some pointers to the many tanks here, who are not yet familiar with this mechanic. Anyways, if your tank is competent, you're better off finding yourself a good position. This means: - behind your team. - either with good field of vision on your team and a way to get into cover quickly. - or some good cover with field of vision on important parts of your team, and quick routes to get line of sight on the remainder of your team. (*) - if possible, keep an eye on the tank who guards. When you get under attack, running next to him might save your life. If you are on voice communication and can quickly tell him where you are when trouble strikes you, even better. (Your mobility is severely limited when you are busy healing yourself just to stay alive. ) (*) This statement is a generalisation, in more detail it is: - On the voidstar it is hard work but possible to have all your team (8 persons) within healing range while just having to run for like five seconds to switch position occasionally. Though, you have to be good at positioning, must be able to keep an overview over the position and probable movement of your team in the next time and also need to be aware of the enemies movement, as you're quite exposed and vulnerable if you make a mistake while playing that game. - On the Aldaraan battlefield your team normally splits into several sub-groups. Stick to one, keep them alive, hope the other sub-groups do well at their objectives. There's no way you can sensibly support people on two of the three mission objectives at the same time, you need to have faith in the rest of your team. Just when you see that your sub-group has good healing and another repeatedly gets wiped, consider running with the underhealed sub-group instead. - In Hutball, healing is a very much chaotic game. Any "classic healer positioning" there is hard to do. The traps, knockbacks from other players and the need to stay on the move just are too many variables to give any clear advice. Stay flexible and if you end up at the ball carrier, pass it on to somebody more suitable (and closer to the goal) than yourself, as soon as possible. Healing commandos are very bad ball carriers, after all. In PvE, i fully agree with advice of Guurzak if you are in a two man group. If guarded in such a group as healing commando, stay within his guard range. On the other hand, if your group has more than two people and he's guarding you, stop for a moment and talk with him, since he's doing it wrong. (Though, expect a hard fight to educate tanks on this. It took us several months to beat the wrongness of the "guard the healer" concept out of PvE tanks in WAR. And PvE in TOR is even more forgiving, so it'll be even harder to teach them how to do it correctly. ) Due to how agro works, the tank in PvE wants to guard the one creating the most agro within his guard range. Which makes the healer the least desireable guard target, for two reasons: - Unless the behaviour of a boss dictates it, the healer doesn't want to be inside guard range of the tank. (Some bosses force you to be closer together, but they are the exception. ) - Healing creates less agro in this game than damage. (Some numbercrunchers figured it out, 1 point of damage inflicted creates as much agro as 2 points of healing done. ) Thus a DD is way more likely to outagro the tank than a healer. (If the healer draws agro, the group has more serious issues... ) The premium PvE guard target is the melee DD, since that one has a lower threshold before the drawing agro. That being said, the premium position of the healer in PvE again is: - behind the team. - Far enough away to stay outside of any aura effects of the boss. - Close enough to be able to heal everybody, even if somebody for whichever reason (tactical maneuver, throw ability of the boss, whatever) ends up on the other side of the boss. (Generally speaking. Bosses throwing people around can result in this being impossible, unless standing too close to the boss and thus taking unnecessary damage yourself. In this case, the player thrown around is responsible for getting into healing range again. ) - With a good field of vision on your complete team. - With the ability to run into cover quickly. Some NPCs have random attacks, even random AOE attacks and the likes, which deal a lot of damage. Most of them can be avoided by running into cover. I basically agree with Guurzak on this one, but better first communicate with the team. Clarify who stays on the boss and who deals with the adds. If the tank is dedicated to stick to the boss and your primary DD is assigned to quickly drop adds, assisting either of them might make sense for you. Anyways, using Hammer Shot when no healing is needed always is a good idea, it build up charges for your Supercharge Cells ability, which is essential for your ressource management.

Force Lift works in PvP in theory. Of course, unless you run with a premade on voice communication, you better make sure that no teammate is within 50 meters range. For some reason it seems like one of the highest goals of teammates in PvP is to break a stun on an enemy immediately by applying minimal damage to them. On the detaunt, untargeting is no good. Manipulating another players user interface is not a desireable game mechanic. My suggestion would be to duplicate the mechanic from WAR. (Hey, Mythic was integrated into Bioware, so why did they forget to add their former solution? ) The mechanic in WAR is quite simple: enemies affected by the detaunt deal reduced damage to the target. (Unless the detaunter attacked the target again, which immediately removed the detaunt effect. ) The -50% damage of a detaunt WAR is quite strong, but even a damage reduction of 30% or 25% would make it desireable in PvP.