Operative/Scoundrel Healing Concerns

[Michieltjuh]

@Ahebish; Clearly you've never ever raided a bossfight with an actual enrage timer. Edited January 5, 2012 by Michieltjuh

[OldSwab]

Bear in mind I'm still leveling and I originally built my agent 100% conceal. I respec'd a week ago to try to main heal Cademimu for a couple of folks in the guild (my first time as a healer) and have not gone back to concealment yet. I've continued to do the newer flashpoints as they pop up with the same group, in fact.

 

It is a bit finnicky, but I've found that as long as I keep my gear current and the tank does the same, I don't run into a ton of problems healing. Thus far, we've only wiped once as a group in several flashpoints going from 29 to 37 and that was because we didn't know the mechanic for the fight.

 

I basically run down the portraits spamming kolto probe and fire a kolto injection at the tank when I get back around to him, or give him an extra shot with a TA skill (I forget their names, Infusion and something else) when he needs it. Everyone always has 2 kolto probes on slightly different timers--that way if I have to focus heals, nobody is left with their "cheese in the wind" with no heals. The aoes, if uninterrupted, are eventual killers but are USUALLY just a minor inconvenience when I stack overlapping kolto probes on everyone.

 

Of course, I will have to find out at 50 if I can keep up

[MarshmellowNinja]

I'm sorry but it seems like 90% of you guys in here have never healed a HM or Raid. I agree with the OP in the fact that our energy mechanic seems to be more tedious than that of the sorc's or merc's also in oh **** situations SP doesn't always cut it god forbid if you get the guys your healing above 30 percent and heal again and lose your TA. In that moment alone youve cost yourself at least 1.3 secs in which your party/raid has either had to clean up your mess or you have lost at least 2 people. Healing is easy throughout the whole game up till you walk into your first HM/Raid and try to keep your probes up while trying to keep the tank alive and realize oh **** im out of energy and are desperately grasping for your DS to get what little energy you can whilst your probes are ticking and hoping one of those procs a TA.

[Smilyfun]

I do agree with the view of those talking about endgame.

 

I leveled as a healer, i have been healing in MMO's for years. I understand what NEEDS to happen for the class/spec i play to function properly and throughout all of my leveling i told myself when i got nanotech it would somehow make up for the issues the class had. When it came the sudden realization that our sh*t was f*cked was very apparent.

 

The way i see it, we have 2 casted heals which are decent and pretty terrible in terms of cost/HPS and our 2 HoT's which are alright and awful and then our instant which is a joke in endgame.

 

DIRECT:

Kinj is good, maybe a higher HPS but otherwise fine since it has utility which is essential to our class/spec

 

Kinf is NOT good for what it is worth, there is NO reason to cast this with the amount of alacrity on our gear, Kinj is better in every way. If it healed for MORE than Kinj then sure, i can see how it would be useful, and not more as in Kinj is 2500 and Kinf is 2600, I'm talking 3kish.

 

HOT:

KP is good, i am satisfied, 1 stack would be nice but whatever, the healing on it could be bumped,but hey, what heal couldn't?

 

Nanotech is just. . .ugh, i hate it. Melee are currently AWFUL in almost every fight and you are punished in most fights for having them, this is a heal that is meant for the melee group (sorcs do it better, whatever). This has some place in the Soa fight when jumping from platform to platform, but then a bigger issue arises. Why is our 31 point talent SO underused and only beneficial in an EXTREMELY small section of one encounter in one Op? That is infuriating, which is why i would be SOMEWHAT happy if they added a direct heal to it, like, 1K direct on top of the HoT, not detracting from the total hot. This would at least make it SOMEWHAT worth the energy as an OHSH*T button when you don't have a TA, but really i don't know any way to fix this outside of increasing range, making the HoT heal for a TON or adding a direct heal portion to it for a substantive 1.5k-2k.

 

STUPID INSTANT PIECE OF SH*T

SP is dumb, i hate it, it's like that one guy you just want to punch in the face because he had so much potential. Like a Mensa member who does nothing but work at pizza hut.

 

An instant heal? Alright! Only costs a TA? Fine, KP/KInj can help out with that. Heals for like, 1.2k? 1.5kish with good gear? Wait, what? Tanks have like 20k+ HP, what will 1.5k do? Crits for like 2.somethingbutwhocares. This needs a buff, make it worthwhile instead of something we have to hit yet still get little to no benefit from it.

 

As a side note, talent that makes it regain TA at 30% or lower? AMAZING, so when a guy dips to 10% you can heal him up to 15% before he dies . . .

 

I have an issue with the HPS, sure you can say it is the energy but really it's the fact that we can't get the numbers required from our current heals to make them really stand up on their own. We might be able to be really good Tank healers and that is it.

 

With enough alacrity you can get your DS GCD capped and get slightly better regen, but in a 16 man, ESPECIALLY in NM, 3 healers is all you can afford, in later content 2 tanks will probably be required, so that means you solo healing 2 tanks while the other 2 guys take on the other 14 members. This just screams like it will cause serious issues for Op/Smug healers down the line.

 

TLDR: Our heals have good concepts behind them but the raw numbers are unsatisfactory and will make Op/Smug healers a hindrance in later tier content.

[klaywolf]

During our EV runs we'd run with one of each healing class to see what suits best with what, including times of increased crisis and heavy use of resource management. From experience, even in other MMO's, the idea of keeping everyone at 100% at all times of the operation was so taxing on everyone, we would wipe. So, instead, we tried the option of keeping everyone with enough health to survive some raid wide damage and a hit or two from the boss. (A rough estimate of between 40-70% of the HP) By doing this, I being the IA healer, never had problems with resource management. I think a lot of people are bring bad habits from other games into this one and forgetting that healers are supposed to keep people alive instead of fully healed every second of the fight. I've also found out that for every fight, our single target ability works so much better than working as raid healers. Of course we have an AoE hot, but its nothing compared to a Sorc's shield stacking or a Merc's ability to spread it evenly. As such, I'd recommended every IA healer to allow their guild to be the Tank Healer on these fights. I've never experienced an energy shortage sticking to two targets and keeping them from just dieing, instead of keeping them at 100%.

[dargor-]

It's simple, they need change the way regen works (making it scale with gear possibly) or (the lazy solution) buff it.

 

As for all the Sorc hate, b**ching about the one class Bioware didn't manage to screw up isn't gonna get yours anywhere.

Edited January 11, 2012 by dargor-

[Skaer]

During our EV runs we'd run with one of each healing class to see what suits best with what, including times of increased crisis and heavy use of resource management. From experience, even in other MMO's, the idea of keeping everyone at 100% at all times of the operation was so taxing on everyone, we would wipe. So, instead, we tried the option of keeping everyone with enough health to survive some raid wide damage and a hit or two from the boss. (A rough estimate of between 40-70% of the HP) By doing this, I being the IA healer, never had problems with resource management. I think a lot of people are bring bad habits from other games into this one and forgetting that healers are supposed to keep people alive instead of fully healed every second of the fight. I've also found out that for every fight, our single target ability works so much better than working as raid healers. Of course we have an AoE hot, but its nothing compared to a Sorc's shield stacking or a Merc's ability to spread it evenly. As such, I'd recommended every IA healer to allow their guild to be the Tank Healer on these fights. I've never experienced an energy shortage sticking to two targets and keeping them from just dieing, instead of keeping them at 100%.

 

Play hard mode EV then come back. You need to keep people topped off.

 

I'm going to level both a merc and sorcerer healer so I can better outline the differences. At level 12 I already feel like the Sorcerer will be a far more competent than my IA Op.

[Greyscout]

I chose to play op because of the ability to heal, but so far I am a bit disappointed of the results. Although some of the problems arise from my own inefficence in how I play, there are others that don't. Proactive healing can never equal reactive in efficiency and as most agree op is not so good in reactive healing. Some of the problems I see are:

 

-Casting times (specially kolto injection). They are slow and do a rather moderate amount of heal. A healer should be mobile to avoid opponents since tanks don't have skills that bind aggro on them (at least I don't know any). Standing for 2-3 seconds to cast healing skills makes you a perfect target.

-I agree with another poster's position regarding HoT's: they should heal more (in total) and cost less than direct heals, since their effect is over time.

-Player tabs are too small to correctly identify the status of a player. Maybe I need to get used to them, but my guess is that I am not the only one.

 

In general, I can manage healing one target but when damage is spread I can do little to help.

[Falkenherz]

I reached level 50 and did quite some fp, but due to lag and delay issues, the problem is even amplified for me. Simply put:

 

If I maintain my rotation, my group dies with me being at full energy.

 

If I drop my rotation, my tank survives until adrenaline probe is on cd or KP/RN runs out.

 

Why:

 

This does not apply to the bread and butter situations during regular mob cleanup. Those are easy going and provides for a steady stream of energy regeneration.

 

But, in boss fights and when the group does mistakes, there are huge damage spikes.

 

Imagine you in a standard rotation of 2 KP, throwing in the occasional SP on a second proc´d TA. Suddenly the damage spike comes in.

 

- You have to drop your KP rotation and switch to constant KI, which provides together with the still going KPs for the highest heal per second. Then KP runs out, but you did not have the time to refresh, because in tight situations, one or two 1,5 CD waited on KP would be too much to sustain the tank. But, without KP, chained KI is not enough anymore to counter the spike damage. In WoW, the Druids heal would refresh the hot. This is missing here.

 

- Similar if you don´t chain KI but alternate between KI and SP on the second TA. The healing is less and is sometimes not enough to keep the tank up for, say, precious 10 seconds.

 

Either way, I see myself abandoning KP/SP rotation, trying to squeeze out KI heals which is either too late or suffocates my energy too quickly.

 

The 1,5 gcd is too much of a hinderance to maintain those base-sutaining hot while trying to compensate for damage spikes. The WoW druid has for such situations a reduced gcd and an instant full heal and a partheal/hot. This is very much missing here!

 

At least some kind of "oh ****" instant full heal on a similar cd as adrenaline probe would really be helpful. Also a slightly more lasting KP and a more lasting/stronger RN would be really helpful, or a reduced gcd for the hot.

 

Edit: Other than that, after a while of KP cycling, it really really gets boring. And annoying, having to stare at some tiny little KP icons and judge whether and when they are going to run out. Some bigger icons or symbols on the avatars could help to surveil your ongoing KP better.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Falkenherz

[Pharmz]

I tend to agree with the op. Levelled as a healer and doing hm as a healer and there is something not quite right with the setup.

 

First off, saying that you cannot compare with other healing classes in the game is fine, but when a group is looking for a healer and sorc is superior then it will become a prefered class when forming a group, leaving the op healer at a disadvantage.

 

I really like the energy mechanic, and hope it remains, I believe it is the skills that need tweaking.

 

First off KInj and Kinf - two similar cast heals that do similar things, but Kinf needs ta and costs slightly less energy.slightly faster cast time ( 5 energy less and 0.4 of a sec). I see what the designers were trying to do - make it achoice between a bigger cast heal Kinf or a smaller instant heal with surgical probe. Trouble is, the difference between inj and inf is too small, and as traited Kinj gives a 100% chance of a ta, then Kinf becomes somewhat redundant. It needs to be longer cast and larger heal than Kinj to make it worth using.

 

KP - 18 secs is a peculiar time for the probe. At 15 energy it costs 30 energy to pop a double probe on a tank or 60 to pop one on each team member - nice as a top off hot, but once healing starts in earnest then it is impossible to keep them up. I personnaly think that as it is only a small hot then it should be traitable such that if ta is up when they expire then the propes 18s is refreshed. Not as easy as it sounds as it would make healers keep a ta up at all times or risk losing it.

 

And yeah, recoup nanotech. Skill is fine but energy cost needs to drop to 20 or 25 max.

 

I also agree op healer is a more proactive healer than other classes/mmos, but i enjoy the challenge. In an ideal world I would like :

1. A tweak to instant healing.

2. The addition of some form of reflect probe applied to other players with same timer as KP. This would give the op healer the choice of KP to heal a player or reflect/damage buff probe enabling indirect dps.

3. Heather Graham as a companion

[Pagy]

Well I'm starting to eat a lot of my words the more 4man hard-modes I do.

 

When everything goes fine, I'm okay to heal it. I think this probably applies to most if not all players.

 

Where I find we suffer, are when things dont go well... i feel like a fight is determined long in advance since there is no way to recover.

 

To be completely honest, the GCD is really really restrictive.

 

I've dumped RN in favour of combat stims... i really want to try revitalisers as well. RN is just way too weak and the 10m range is way too small. for a spell that weak it may as well be 30m, i mean it's just something that helps a group, its not a game changer.

 

I've tried the diagnostic scan talents... i really thing they need work to become more useful. i understand the concept but during a boss fight, i really dont have time for that crap.

 

i wish SP healed more. the 30% free heal was nice while levelling, you could really play with fate with it during flashpoints but once the hard mode bosses start hitting you, getting a free 1.5-2.5k heal is really meaningless.

[Daize]

During our EV runs we'd run with one of each healing class to see what suits best with what, including times of increased crisis and heavy use of resource management. From experience, even in other MMO's, the idea of keeping everyone at 100% at all times of the operation was so taxing on everyone, we would wipe. So, instead, we tried the option of keeping everyone with enough health to survive some raid wide damage and a hit or two from the boss. (A rough estimate of between 40-70% of the HP) By doing this, I being the IA healer, never had problems with resource management. I think a lot of people are bring bad habits from other games into this one and forgetting that healers are supposed to keep people alive instead of fully healed every second of the fight. I've also found out that for every fight, our single target ability works so much better than working as raid healers. Of course we have an AoE hot, but its nothing compared to a Sorc's shield stacking or a Merc's ability to spread it evenly. As such, I'd recommended every IA healer to allow their guild to be the Tank Healer on these fights. I've never experienced an energy shortage sticking to two targets and keeping them from just dieing, instead of keeping them at 100%.

 

QFT x2 !

I have very much found this to be the case. Unlike my WoW Druid (have played resto since beta) where I basically could keep everyone I was assigned to at 100% all the time, healing in SWTOR is very different and more exciting. There is just no way to keep everyone/tank at 100% so there are more decisions to be made. The idea is not 100% health bars, but that everyone survives the fight if possible.

[Daize]

i wish SP healed more. the 30% free heal was nice while levelling, you could really play with fate with it during flashpoints but once the hard mode bosses start hitting you, getting a free 1.5-2.5k heal is really meaningless.

 

IMHO, that is NOT best practice on SP. You should be using it regardless of the health level of your target so long as you have 2 TA up which you should most of the time. If the target is below 30, well then you get a bonus and can cast it again.

[CrimsonV]

I tend to agree with the OP, but that's probably because I just downed Boarding Party's last boss in Hard Mode and required back up healing from a Sorc to keep up. And I have a headache.

 

But yes, anything above hard mode BT becomes slightly annoying to downright painful to heal. Sure, challenge is exciting and all that, but it's not really fun when you realize that your class is not balanced with other healers.

 

This is because of several reasons that have been already posted here, together with the fact that Alacrity gets thrown at us in almost every piece of equipment, whilst high amounts of it do more harm than anything else. Even if I've already replaced a lot of Alacrity with crit/surge, the 13% activation time bonus I get makes the Kinj+SP combo not spammable due to its higher speed and thus higher energy requirement.

 

This means that I'll either have to use Diagnostic Scan more often, which is sadly not viable during intense fights, or actually delay a little before casting the next Kinj+SP, giving me an additional detail to think about, together with the slightly overly demanding KPs that need to be refreshed.

 

Yeah it's... hard.

[zootzoot]

I beg to differ....

 

Operative healing is insanely powerful if used correctly.....

 

In PvP matches I heal for roughly 200k each match... I'm only level 30, and out healing many sorcs/mercenaries who are only Healing. I'm also DPSing too.

 

 

I have a mercenary healer as well, and I believe that the Operative heals better than the Mercenary. Merc is good for a 'main tank' kind of healer. But that's it. As the Operative, I can do the main tank, or even 2-3 tanks. Kolto Probe is fantastic. As well as the talents for Diagnostic Scan to regen energy faster...

 

 

 

Tab Target ally = your best friend.

 

I set my key to the ~ key. Press ~, and it will cycle to the next person. ~ Kolto Probe. ~ Probe. ~ Probe. ~Probe. Then use Injection, infusion, SP, and diagnostic as you see fit.

 

PVE is very different. In PVP you can roll HoT's on multiple people and use SP with TA procs a lot. It tops meters but doesn't really save anyone.

 

I agree with the above posters who say that KP needs a Buff. I'd suggest the duration can be increased to make it more efficient and easier to maintain stacks. We're like WOW Druids. We're great at buffering the Raid but the Energy breakpoints make it painful when the crap hits the fan.

[Skurkanas]

We're extremely weak at crisis management. In raids you can let your 600 resource pool sorcerer/republic equivalent with higher regen/second (and no penalty for being low) deal with that as they lose nothing spamming heals a few times.

 

Too bad they can also deal with AoE healing 10x better because their 31 point talent isn't utterly worthless.

 

It's easy to say we don't need to keep everyone topped off, but in most situations beyond your average normal flashpoint boss, you unfortunately do.

 

Not to mention that our setbonusses are awful, they either buff our broken 31 point talent (2set PvP, 2set PvE) and the 4set PvE buffs the one heal we (should) never, ever use due to it's inefficiency.

 

In PvP on the other hand I find myself being rather unkillable and doing too high damage.

 

My idea? Fix Recuperative Nanotech and make Diagnostic Scan not take a year to regen your energy and require you to be stationary and spam it (otherwise it won't tick until 1 second into the cast on each new channel). At the same time ensure it remains balanced, but I'm fairly sure that's where they should be poking around.

 

Temporary help? Get a sick alacrity (haste) relic, pop it and spam that scan. :-)

This pretty much sums up my experience.

 

I am wasting people in PvP with 4k hidden strikes, or do the "run-away-laughing-while-spamming-surgical-probe"-thing, but I'm fairly certain that isn't where a full heal specc should shine.

And as soon as you're trying to keep someone alive who's being focussed by 2-3 people, you'll run into the same problems that are crippling us in PvE.

 

I wasn't aware of how glaring our problems were up until I tried to do Heroic Boarding Party. We are utterly incapable of dealing with huge, uncontrollable damage peaks.

 

HOTs just arent feasible when people are loosing 30% of their hp per attack. You can keep some on the tank to ease the healing, but keeping them on the whole group is costly - both energy and timewise.

 

While I see the idea behind Kolto Infusion (a cheaper, faster Kolto Injection) its just not worth it in the end.

Ironically, it nullifies it's own benefits. Cheaper? Yes, but it spends 20 energy in the time that we would reg the additional 5 that are needed for Kolto Injection - you end up draining your energy pool faster than if you'd just spam Injection.

I'd rather spend my surplus Tactical Advantage on a quick Surgical Probe, which costs nothing

 

And Diagnostic Scan? Can barely be called a heal, ticks way too slowly and really shouldn't be something we have to stand still for.

 

As for Nanotech? Wouldn't hurt to double the heal on that one. Even then it would be considered mediocre by some.

[Aedgyth]

I have played a WoW - Druid, Priest and Paladin, a WaR - Rune priest, a Aion Chanter and a Rift Cleric and playing all these classes never have I felt as useless as playing TORs Operative.

 

I would like to see some changes =

 

Nanotechs costs to come down, or ideally remove the energy requirement completely and let us cast it with TAx2 - also increase it's range to 20m (currently on boss fights the melee are rarely within 10 metres of each other, especially whilst tyring to avoid fight mechanics.

 

Make K-inf cast time 3 seconds, same costs but refreshes any TAs on the target

 

 

Make stim boost a passive buff (sorry if a buff is needed 100% of the time to make your class viable it should be a hour long buff).

 

Get rid of Diagnostic scan completely, a ability that needs 4 talent points spent into it to leave a still lack lustre ability only used because we have no other option is just poor.... change those 4 talent points into something different, a aoe tech shield or something

Edited January 15, 2012 by Aedgyth

[KorbinnVeraci]

There are lots of great suggestions on ways to improve IA healing. Let's keep up the conversation to let the dev's know we aren't taking this laying down! Healing Ops need a buff Bioware... let's make it happen!

[OldSwab]

tl;dr

Groups that are used to Op healers tend to do well with Op healers and understand a little bit about the energy/time issues. It's often critical to figure out how to work in a bit of DPS with Orbital and Dart. WTB: a skill on a long cooldown that multiples our healing for a few seconds.

___________________

I healed Karagga's Palace Op last night as a guest in a different guild's group. It worked out to be really simple--I healed the bottom 5 people inc. imyself, the other Operative healer took care of the tank, himself, and 1 more dps'er.

 

We wiped about 4 times and reset it another 4 probably on the second to last boss. Two wipes were within 10% of the kill. The time we killed it, both ops were dropping orbital strikes and darts on the boss each time they were available.

 

The last boss was a little bit hairy (no spoilers) but we killed it the first time. We had more problems with the "trash" moving from the second-to-last to last boss encounter, in fact.

 

The healing was never a problem. It is important to work in some dps on some of these bosses, though.

 

I'm still using the nanotech aoe fairly often. It's a decent one to pop on Ilum versus unfocused AoE's and in Voidstar, but I have to admit that since I'm colorblind, it's a cheap way for me to get some extra healing (it's hard to see the tiny red health bar on a black background) in between fishing out the right name to click on for a standard heal rotation. I have the two-set champ bonus that increases the magnitude of the RN heal, and I'm on the prowl for the PvE 2-piece that reduces its cost, at least until I'm running full champ/battlemaster armor.

 

The problem I run (actually ran) into is when I hop into a pub group with, say...mix up of bounty hunters/mercs. Take last week, I tried to heal them in BT HM, and they would not pause/stop/wait for anything. They were (probably) used to a Sorc healing and doing the tank-bubbled roflstomp dps watoosie. I could not keep up; it did not end well.

 

oh, edit: I will say we have to work comparatively hard to be successful healers. I'd like to get a skill ("Time of Need") on a 3-5 minute cooldown that applies some sort of healing multiplier for 5 or so seconds and reduces the induction of KI. That's about all we'd need for an "Oh _______" moment or maybe two.

Edited February 4, 2012 by OldSwab