Trooper combat medic - what am I doing wrong

[mblaxter]

I got my commando to l50 with 31 points in combat medic, as I had mostly planned him to be a healer.

 

After getting some upgrades etc all my armor bits were 120+ rating, mostly porple mods/enhancements going for crit/surge, so when I was asked to heal through a 'hard mode' flashpoint, I thought I would be minimally prepared.

 

What occurred for the entirety of the flashpoint was I just had to resort to clicking through various members and frantically single target healing everyone who needed healing(even when there was ae damage). I soent my entire time spamming spamming advanced/medical proble practically , and the other 20sec cd instant heal... 3 abilities

 

The 'Kolta Bomb' group heal was healing for less than 1k for each group memeber (on a 6 sec cooldown). It would crit for just over 1k. Surely, this cant be right? Group members have well over 10k hp, so 1k or less heal is almost a waste of time. I was using 126 barrel so AIM and tech power werent an issue.

 

Anyway, The trooper combat medic has to be one of the worst healing class implementations I have ever seen in MMO's, Unless i was doing something drastically wrong. Spending entire flashpoints watching everyones HP bar and clicking them individually to single target heal is just not fun, especially when t here is any kind of ae

Edited January 6, 2012 by mblaxter

[Dmorg]

I'm not sure what to tell you... I have played various healing classes for years now, and monitoring each person's health bar and using individual heals is fairly par for the course. Group heals are generally inefficient and really only useful in specific situations, for specific encounters. I haven't made it that far along in this game yet, but my real hope for kolto bomb was that it would be a nice group heal to mix in in a warzone when you have a group of people around a contested point. I have it, but haven't really used it in any 4 man groups I've healed so far, and didn't really feel it was necessary.

[Mutious]

It's hard. I am not going to lie. I am a level 50 Combat Medic myself, I've done the Hardmode Flashploints, solo healed Bonethrasher, and am currently 4/5 EV on Hardmode.

 

Sages heal better than we do in every measurable vector. They annihilate our AoE heals. Crush our utility. They even land single target heals large than we do. I have had less experience running alongside Scoundrels, but my limited experience healing with them in operations seems to put them ahead.

 

But honestly, this game's content is not heal limited. We still progress with me and a Sage healer for 8 mans, so I am not too broken up about it. I can only hope for a fix.

 

That's the truth. As for tips: Learn the charge system. Work in those hammershots to balance your ammo drain to build the charge you need to cycle Supercharged cell as often as possible. Split your MVP and VP during high group damage instances, with the AVP on the less hurt, MP on the more hurt. Bacta on cooldown. I generally avoid Kolto in favor of HS for charge. Trauma probe is bugged and the charges are consumed faster than the 3 second proc limitation, so keep an eye on it.

 

Above all: You just have to tough it out and hope BW is half decent at class balance.

[Umbrasa]

Isn't the kolto bomb healing buff worth something though? When I do throw it around, it's not for the minimal healing, but the probe healing will improve on those hit afterwards

[Mutious]

5% for 15 seconds I don't think adds up to the heals you can extract from a Medical Probe for the low low cost of 1 additional ammo. Also, you can put medical probe on a target who needs it most, whereas Kolto bomb randomly chooses 3 targets within its range some of which may even be full health. Additionally, talented MP's grant 6 charge and so it puts you 20% closer to your next supercharge.

 

I guess my point is that, over all, Kolto Bomb is extremely circumstantial and under powered. Perhaps if it generated charge or applied large buffs, or had no ammo cost like Bacta, it would be worth considering.

[RocktimusPryme]

I semi agree. I tell team-mates going in that they have to be more strict about aggro. I heal very well as long as the tank is holding aggro and I can focus on him, then just keep my eye on everyone else. But as soon as the whole team starts taking damage at once we are in trouble.

 

But the game has been out for less than a month. In my experience there will probably be some major buffs and nerfs coming for many classes in the near future. So I wouldnt get super bent out of shape about it.

[Behrit]

I could easily see them buffing us a bit, as we are pretty underpowered as a healer. I am in the pro-Kolto bomb camp due to the buff you get from it. It is a minimal cost if you are managing your charge correctly. It really is all about learning when to blow all of your charge at the right time. It is a pretty good feeling when you get to the end of a prolonged fight, and you run out of charge at that moment. It may be underpowered, but I love the challenge of it.

[Mutious]

I could easily see them buffing us a bit, as we are pretty underpowered as a healer. I am in the pro-Kolto bomb camp due to the buff you get from it. It is a minimal cost if you are managing your charge correctly. It really is all about learning when to blow all of your charge at the right time. It is a pretty good feeling when you get to the end of a prolonged fight, and you run out of charge at that moment. It may be underpowered, but I love the challenge of it.

 

I think you're mixing up charge and ammo. Otherwise that paragraph doesn't make any sense.

[Behrit]

I think you're mixing up charge and ammo. Otherwise that paragraph doesn't make any sense.

 

Yes I was, sorry about that lol.

[dotriche]

Coming from a WoW healing background, stacking crit/surge sounds like your problem. You want strong, predictable healing, not spikey throughput that can be wasted at high health and insufficient at low health due to RNG.

 

Swap your crit/surge mods out for aim/power mods and see if that helps.

 

Bear in mind I am not 50 yet so I don't know if healing works differently in this game.

[RainerKon]

Kolto bomb has it's uses if you perk it, not to mention that the super charge cell gives it the ability to add a shield to your allies.

 

If i'm in a 4 man or flashpoint and i'm combat medic for it i'll use kolto shield then spam advanced droid.

[Mokilok]

You should be stacking power over crit. I stack power and my lvl 30 combat medic heals for greater than 1k. Power is what you need.

[Mutious]

It doesn't really work that way with the end game items.

 

You essentially never make a choice between Aim/power and crit/surge. Aim and power are generally fixed attributes on a family of items, which will then have crit/surge/alacrity as secondary stats and you choose between those.

 

Sure, you get an augment slot, get an Aim augment. But you rarely get to make that choice. You do however have to choose between crit/surge and alacrity much more regularly.

 

I assumed it went without saying that you want as much Aim and power as you can get.

[Ellie_]

Power and alacrity are the thing.

 

Crit and surge stacking works, but it's risky, and doesnt offer much for clutch healing situations, and often those 6k+ crits will go to waste because the person is already close to being topped off.

 

You wont be spam healing enough for ammo efficiency to matter one bit, so you will want predictable heals and the ability to heal faster when you really need to do it.

 

Even in operations, as a tank healer, you will have a lot of moments where you will end up dropping heals on random people just because the tank isnt taking enough damage to be worth healing.

 

Then you will have moments where you need to push out heals exactly half a second faster to prevent a raid wipe.

 

Especially getting your MP down to 1.5 seconds is important because it's the GCD for instant cast abilities and the 4p set bonus lowers your AMP CD by 1.5 seconds and bacta infusion by 3 seconds.

 

It also makes clutch healing much easier than with a 2 second MP.

 

Somebody else also posted the math on the forums that hints of crit becoming more valuable than power once you approach 100% surge with 400+ healing bonus, but I doubt it changes the value of alacrity also because of more abstract things like clutch healing.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Ellie_

[Shrikestalker]

I got my commando to l50 with 31 points in combat medic, as I had mostly planned him to be a healer.

 

After getting some upgrades etc all my armor bits were 120+ rating, mostly porple mods/enhancements going for crit/surge, so when I was asked to heal through a 'hard mode' flashpoint, I thought I would be minimally prepared.

 

The only thing I will say which you didn't touch upon much was:

 

1. How well geared are the people you are healing? You may think your tanks have good gear but you probably don't know since youre a healer. I've been in plenty of Flashes where I've had to pour the juice on some tanks simply because they personally are specced wrongly, just thinking a ton of Endurance or DPS (for their Pvping) is what wins.

 

2. How well do your tanks use their mitigating abilities?

 

3. How well are your CC people.. CC'ing? This is by far the biggest problem I've had as a PvE healer with people simply too lazy to CC because they think it's WOTLK and the tank can sit there and soak up tons of AoE because there are Mages hitting AoE. Lazy/Bad dps who don't know how to CC or are breaking it (biggest problem) are the reason tanks take 'extra' damage and healers can't keep up.

 

You seem like a competent healer otherwise so I won't comment on your healing priorities or rotations which I know plenty of bad healers just panic and heal the wrong people and fall behind.

 

The obvious thing I see with your description is "mostly planned" as a combat medic, which may mean to me you are probably sacrificing some key healing bonuses in your tree trading for more dps in the other ones. Since you didnt show your spec, we don't know what youre doing in that regard and armor class ratings doesn't tell as much as the wrong skills chosen.

 

PvE healing as Commando is pretty easy; PvP healing as Commando is suckage.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Shrikestalker

[Mutious]

On the issue of Alacrity, hitting that 1.50 MP isn't very tough. I am still only half geared to my liking, and I am at 1.58. I can't see a point to stacking alacrity after a 1.5 second MP as none of your abilities are longer than the GCD at that point.

 

After that, because you can't really find power laying around your only choice is between more alacrity which is wasted, or crit/surge. So naturally, crit/surge wins.