Combat Medic PvE Guide (Updated for 1.2)

[RangerBeo]

This a great post/thread...invaluable information for new Commando healers...thank you!

[RuQu]

Added an upgrade calculator that shows your Net Gain/Loss of HPS if you enter in the change in stats from a new piece of gear.

[Sheridyn]

Nice work on the spreadsheet. You've put a lot more time into yours than mine (which was just some quick and dirty calculations). Threw my stats into your grinder to see how things would come out. My gear is mostly Rakata with 2-3 Columi pieces. It's modded heavily though to trade as much crit as possible for power and some alacrity for surge.

 

Base stats:

Cunning - 136

Aim - 1750 (1646 + 104 stim)

Crit - 136

Surge - 187

Alacrity - 326

Power - 1593 (1210 Tech + 340 Power + 43 stim)

Level 50

 

HPS for 1 additional point of the following:

Aim - 0.319681275

Cunning - 0.06184947

Crit Rating - 0.290282079

Surge - 0.372806657

Alacrity - 0.189154005

Power - 0.295142328

 

This is pretty interesting actually. I've dropped over 200 points of Crit Rating (think I had 343 when I started) and Power is -still- more valuable. As you correctly pointed out earlier, my neglection of base healing values on spells was an oversight that devalued crit, so I wanted to see if I'd screwed myself over by dropping so much. Apparently not!

 

Surge is still incredibly valuable, which is what I thought.

 

My reason for raising the issue of TP procs is that I think when multiple charges are consumed at the same time, only 1 healing proc occurs. Without a combat log it's really hard to tell though. I need to do some careful testing - if anyone else can shed light on this it would be much appreciated.

[RuQu]

A combat log would be nice. It would certainly let people post logs to support bugs like the TP one. I observed multiple stacks dropping at once last night, but didn't catch how many heals it applied.

 

I created a separate topic on the Healer forum about the over-poweredness of Power, since it makes gearing a bit boring. On the plus side, pure Power items are rare/nonexistant, so there is always the question of what other stat to get. Of course, it looks like that answer is consistently Surge.

[Sheridyn]

Yeah, I've been replacing a lot of my gear with mods/enhancements from other items. Most notably, Smuggler Columi head/gloves/offhand have some nice Power/Surge enhancements if you're able to get your hands on those. If you get the offhand you can also rip out the +41 Power crystal (since our Columi mainhand is full crit, and Rakata one has less Tech Power than the Columi). Alternatively, run Kaon HM until a weapon drops with the Power crystal.

 

It's just a bit of a pain that our standard gear sets are so terribly itemised for Crit/Alacrity when you really want Power/Surge.

[RuQu]

Yeah, I've been replacing a lot of my gear with mods/enhancements from other items. Most notably, Smuggler Columi head/gloves/offhand have some nice Power/Surge enhancements if you're able to get your hands on those. If you get the offhand you can also rip out the +41 Power crystal (since our Columi mainhand is full crit, and Rakata one has less Tech Power than the Columi). Alternatively, run Kaon HM until a weapon drops with the Power crystal.

 

It's just a bit of a pain that our standard gear sets are so terribly itemised for Crit/Alacrity when you really want Power/Surge.

 

Gotta wonder what the plan was there. Possibly they didn't know any better. Possibly giving us reason to run content again or craft//farm better mods.

[Ellie_]

Gotta wonder what the plan was there. Possibly they didn't know any better. Possibly giving us reason to run content again or craft//farm better mods.

 

Most likely yes, they simply didn't have a clue.

 

I cant even begin to fathom the brainfart behind some of the enhancements on Rakata gear either, replacing a stronger stat(power) for endurance and a weaker stat(alacrity).

 

Alacrity. When every other gear piece already has alacrity. When it isn't even a very good stat after a certain point. When you can talent up to 9% of it. When it doesn't make you regenerate ammo faster. When it doesn't benefit hammer shot, bacta infusion and kolto bomb, offers marginal benefits for AMP and only slightly better clutch healing potential with MP.

 

Which isnt really a necessity so far in hard-mode operations anyway.

 

Even when we did hard-mode Soa and had people intentionally soaking their thunderballs to get them out of the way, it wasn't even a stretch getting them back up quickly.

 

It's not particularly useful for hard-mode Bonetrasher either because the time between the ground stomp thingies is very long and you can easily top up the raid even if youre picking your nose with your other hand, so what alacrity you just happen to get with talents is enough for clutch healing and too much for actual HP/s.

 

Either they screwed up with the concept of alacrity, or they simply dont have any understanding of what stats are desirable for operations with the current game mechanics, and in what numbers.

 

There is just way too much of it everywhere and not enough of the other stats.

 

I even stripped the 58 enhancements off my Rakata gear and put in the 50 Adept ones instead because they give more power, and surge instead of alacrity. Except for two of them, where I put in the 50 Quick Savant ones instead.

 

 

 

Update: the numbers here were obsolete and there is newer, more accurate information further down the thread, so I removed the wall of numbers here to avoid confusion. Sorry for the inconvenience

Edited January 24, 2012 by Ellie_

[RuQu]

Ellie, the cause of the alacrity changes in either direction decreasing HPS was a bug in my code. Someone in another thread pointed out my HPS cells were dividing by the Bacta Infusion timer and not the Elapsed Time. I've fixed it, so that effect should be gone.

 

I tried plugging in your values and I don't get the same number for HPS. Are you including Tech Power with the Power field (you should be)?

 

Interestingly, I was just playing around and wondered "What if I use MP whenever I have 9 Ammo or more, instead of 10?"

 

The answer, the HPS for a set of stats I had plugged in dropped from 826 to 769.

 

This was assuming all else was equal: AP/MP combos every 9 seconds, BI whenever it is off cooldown and Im not actively doing an AP/MP cast. The only change was MP at 9 instead of 10, and therefore HS to fill in until one of the above was met. This did factor in the differing regen rates, because I coded those originally.

 

I guess the moral is...don't do that.

 

*edit* Decided to see what would happen if we waited until 11 or 12 Ammo to use MP unbuffed, and they are both 849HPS for that set. So:

 

12 Ammo = 11 Ammo = 849 HPS

10 Ammo = 826 HPS (loss of 23 HPS)

9 Ammo = 769 HPS (loss of 57 HPS)

8 Ammo = 757 HPS (loss of 12 HPS)

7 Ammo = 734 HPS (loss of 23 HPS)

6 Ammo = 722 HPS (loss of 12 HPS)

5 Ammo = 722 HPS (loss of 0 HPS)

4 Ammo = 710 HPS (loss of 12 HPS) 15% reduction in HPS total for this rotation. I stopped here since I didn't feel like coding in the casting of HS if I lacked the Ammo for AP.

Edited January 24, 2012 by RuQu

[Ellie_]

Ellie, the cause of the alacrity changes in either direction decreasing HPS was a bug in my code. Someone in another thread pointed out my HPS cells were dividing by the Bacta Infusion timer and not the Elapsed Time. I've fixed it, so that effect should be gone.

 

I tried plugging in your values and I don't get the same number for HPS. Are you including Tech Power with the Power field (you should be)?

 

Interestingly, I was just playing around and wondered "What if I use MP whenever I have 9 Ammo or more, instead of 10?"

 

The answer, the HPS for a set of stats I had plugged in dropped from 826 to 769.

 

This was assuming all else was equal: AP/MP combos every 9 seconds, BI whenever it is off cooldown and Im not actively doing an AP/MP cast. The only change was MP at 9 instead of 10, and therefore HS to fill in until one of the above was met. This did factor in the differing regen rates, because I coded those originally.

 

I guess the moral is...don't do that.

 

Nope on the tech power. My actual tech power as shown in game is 1161. I don't know what are the implications of this fact.

 

Then there is 1698 aim and 360 power rating.

 

By the way I was using the old version of your calculator where the power field didnt include tech power to begin with, just upgrading now and doing new numbers

 

Update: with the new spreadsheet the HP/s value is ~1213 with all alacrity talents, 1169 with only 2% from talents, changing my old post shortly

 

I'll post better numbers tomorrow after I've re-re-refixed my gear

Edited January 24, 2012 by Ellie_

[RuQu]

I need to check in game, but I'm pretty sure the Aim value shown includes talents, so I may need to change the calculator to request the bonus from Sage buff only, as the 9% should be prefactored into your total. Surge/Crit/Alacrity are additive, though, so they are fine.

[RuQu]

Nope on the tech power. My actual tech power as shown in game is 1161. I don't know what are the implications of this fact.

 

Then there is 1698 aim and 360 power rating.

 

By the way I was using the old version of your calculator where the power field didnt include tech power to begin with, just upgrading now and doing new numbers

 

Update: with the new spreadsheet the HP/s value is ~1213 with all alacrity talents, 1169 with only 2% from talents, changing my old post shortly

 

I'll post better numbers tomorrow after I've re-re-refixed my gear

 

Yeah, Power on my sheet is Power + Tech Power. It factors in Aim later for bonus to healing and crit.

 

It's strange, I plug in the values you gave earlier plus your Tech Power and get different outputs:

 

• Cunning 100
  
• Aim 1698
  
• Crit 184
  
• Surge 259
  
• Alacrity 177
  
• Power 1521
  
• Level 50
  
• Crit from Skills 9
  
• Alacrity from Skills 9
  
• Surge from Skills 15
  
• Aim from Skills 9
  

 

Yields 1155 not 1213. Are those the same values you used? Worried I introduced a bug when I was correcting some other issues earlier (wrong time, etc).

[Ellie_]

Yeah, Power on my sheet is Power + Tech Power. It factors in Aim later for bonus to healing and crit.

 

It's strange, I plug in the values you gave earlier plus your Tech Power and get different outputs:

 

• Cunning 100
  
• Aim 1698
  
• Crit 184
  
• Surge 259
  
• Alacrity 177
  
• Power 1521
  
• Level 50
  
• Crit from Skills 9
  
• Alacrity from Skills 9
  
• Surge from Skills 15
  
• Aim from Skills 9
  

 

Yields 1155 not 1213. Are those the same values you used? Worried I introduced a bug when I was correcting some other issues earlier (wrong time, etc).

 

Yep. You have them to the letter. This is with the version that was just available for download like 10 minutes ago from google docs.

 

Let's test something else.

 

 

Cunning 100

Aim 1698

Crit 191

Surge 346

Alacrity 99

Power 1521

 

And all possible talents, should give 1217,16858, or does in this version

 

If I move 54 power to crit rating it gives 1216,042674.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Ellie_

[RuQu]

Yep. You have them to the letter. This is with the version that was just available for download like 10 minutes ago from google docs.

 

Let's test something else.

 

 

Cunning 100

Aim 1698

Crit 191

Surge 346

Alacrity 99

Power 1521

 

And all possible talents, should give 1217,16858, or does in this version

 

If I move 54 power to crit rating it gives 1216,042674.

 

Got it. You said all talents/skills, so I wasn't including the buffs from other classes. Once I bump the bonuses to 14/9/15/14 instead of 9/9/15/9 we match.

 

Whew, I was worried there for a few.

Edited January 24, 2012 by RuQu

[Ellie_]

Sorry for the confusion.

 

I managed to scrape together some more suitable enhancements and using this newest spreadsheet, I get 1217 healing per second with:

 

Cunning 100

Aim 1698

Crit 218

Surge 307

Alacrity 138

Power 1494

 

And here are the weights:

 

Power 0,26797438

Aim 0,292474352

Cunning 0,0590054

Crit 0,242369301

Surge 0,205556002

Alacrity 0,20378197

 

So at 138 alacrity rating and 9% from talents, it's already overshadowed by both critical rating and surge rating at the Rakata-equivalent gear level.

 

Exchanging even 108 surge rating for 108 alacrity rating at this point doesn't reach any sort of a "sweetspot", so it seems safe to assume that it simply is vastly overitemized and isn't nearly as good as the alternatives.

 

Very disappointing that you have to rip out the 58 enhancements from Rakata gear if you really want to be optimal.

 

If you had these stats:

 

Cunning 100

Aim 1698

Crit 218

Surge 145

Alacrity 300

Power 1494

 

You would have 1199,877272 healing per second and the value of alacrity would sink so low that surge is almost 3 times as valuable, and 300 alacrity rating is easy to hit with the default enhancements on Rakata set pieces.

 

Power 0,264037789

Aim 0,283257392

Cunning 0,051038884

Crit 0,209646211

Surge 0,4055256

Alacrity 0,168618503

 

It is getting very late here so hopefully I am not too incoherent, and I hope this illustrates how bad alacrity really is for HP/s even with the best gear available in-game.

 

I think this is something bioware should look into because frankly it doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

 

PS. Surge and Alacrity were exchanged with each other for comparisons because it's what Adept and Quick Savant enhancements come with and Power rating has such a hegemony it's probably not worth reducing for any purpose, while Power-Crit enhancements simply do not exist.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Ellie_

[RuQu]

Yeah, everyone assumes that Alacrity is great for healers because it was so powerful in WoW, but they forget that you had to offset it with either higher regen or higher resource pools and that it effected the GCD for all abilities and increased the tick rate of HoTs.

 

Unless they make Alacrity speed up our instant abilities it will remain pretty terrible. If it doesn't do something about Ammo at the very least or also interact with cooldowns, then it will stay pretty terrible for us even with an effect on instants as every Hammer Shot drops our average lower and lower and we already cast AP/MP about as fast as cooldowns and ammo allow.

 

I'm glad to see that at your gear level crit is finally coming back into the picture. 0.24 to Power's 0.26.

 

Should hit 42 tonight...maybe 43 if I get home early enough.

[Ellie_]

Yeah, everyone assumes that Alacrity is great for healers because it was so powerful in WoW, but they forget that you had to offset it with either higher regen or higher resource pools and that it effected the GCD for all abilities and increased the tick rate of HoTs.

 

Unless they make Alacrity speed up our instant abilities it will remain pretty terrible. If it doesn't do something about Ammo at the very least or also interact with cooldowns, then it will stay pretty terrible for us even with an effect on instants as every Hammer Shot drops our average lower and lower and we already cast AP/MP about as fast as cooldowns and ammo allow.

 

I'm glad to see that at your gear level crit is finally coming back into the picture. 0.24 to Power's 0.26.

 

Should hit 42 tonight...maybe 43 if I get home early enough.

 

Yep, even with the blue prototype reflex stim the picture doesnt change, post 138 rating alacrity is and stays the worst stat and only gets worse the more you stack of it.

 

The best enhancement for my exact gear level that is relatively easy to obtain seems to be that Advanced Battle Enhancement 24 you can rip off some Columi items. It offsets the lack of power by having more crit and more surge than the Adept 22 enhancement.

 

It could become worse as you reach higher numbers and crit presumably drops in value, though.

 

So the stat priority order for 136-140 gear levels seems to be:

 

Aim >> Power >> Crit(until ~200 rating) >> Surge(until ~270 rating) >> Crit >> Alacrity(until ~138 rating) >> Surge >> Alacrity

 

 

Or simplified:

 

Aim >> Power >> Crit >> Surge >> Alacrity

Edited January 24, 2012 by Ellie_

[Sheridyn]

I've replaced most of my Columi enhancements with Power ones from Smuggler gear. I'm not sure on the name of the enhancements exactly, but the best one is from the Smuggler offhand pistol, with the following stats:

 

+23 Endurance

+34 Power

+48 Surge

 

That pistol also has the +41 Power crystal, so quite valuable if you can get your hands on one. There's also a Rakata (rating 58) version of that mod which drops from Hard/Nightmare modes, but tends to be in high demand (at least in my guild).

 

Otherwise, just replace all mods with Crit for those with Power, and all Crit enhancements with their Power equivalents. I've done this and I've still got 208 Crit (character sheet lied to me earlier today - thanks Bioware).

[Bwbah]

How the heck is Cunning repeatedly being valued at around 20% of Aim? Since we're only talking about healing here, and all heals count as Tech abilities, and Cunning does everything that Aim does for Tech... both power and crit, and at the same rate. It should certainly be valued lower than Aim, at least if you take the +9% Aim talent (and Aim is more important still if you factor in any actual ranged abilities). But Cunning being valued that low suggests something wrong with your model.

 

Unless I'm terribly confused, it should be worth ~ 92% of Aim. (Cunning is worth just over 92% of Aim with the Consular buff, just under without.) Remove Ironsights and they should be dead even, as far as healing is concerned.

 

You still won't want to stack any Cunning if you can help it, because Aim is more valuable (between Ironsights and the sporadic bouts of actually shooting stuff) and generally displaces Cunning on gear.

[RuQu]

How the heck is Cunning repeatedly being valued at around 20% of Aim? Since we're only talking about healing here, and all heals count as Tech abilities, and Cunning does everything that Aim does for Tech... both power and crit, and at the same rate. It should certainly be valued lower than Aim, at least if you take the +9% Aim talent (and Aim is more important still if you factor in any actual ranged abilities). But Cunning being valued that low suggests something wrong with your model.

 

Unless I'm terribly confused, it should be worth ~ 92% of Aim. (Cunning is worth just over 92% of Aim with the Consular buff, just under without.) Remove Ironsights and they should be dead even, as far as healing is concerned.

 

You still won't want to stack any Cunning if you can help it, because Aim is more valuable (between Ironsights and the sporadic bouts of actually shooting stuff) and generally displaces Cunning on gear.

 

I'll look into it.

 

*edit* Just checked values in-game. Cunning adds +0.2 Tech Damage, and it increases Tech Critical Chance with diminishing returns. The crit is already included in the calculator.

 

It does not contribute in any way to Tech Healing. Mousing over the Tech Healing field lists only Aim, Power, and Tech Power. I then summed all of my sources of Power and Tech Power to ensure that they matched, and they did.

 

If you are used to healing with a Scoundrel, they get Tech Healing from Cunning, and only ranged damage from Aim. That might be the source of your confusion.

 

So, in short, no, Cunning provides no Bonus Healing and should generally be avoided like the plague. It is only in the calculator at all since you will have some naturally and that effects the total Critical Chance.

Edited January 25, 2012 by RuQu

[Ellie_]

I've replaced most of my Columi enhancements with Power ones from Smuggler gear. I'm not sure on the name of the enhancements exactly, but the best one is from the Smuggler offhand pistol, with the following stats:

 

+23 Endurance

+34 Power

+48 Surge

 

That pistol also has the +41 Power crystal, so quite valuable if you can get your hands on one. There's also a Rakata (rating 58) version of that mod which drops from Hard/Nightmare modes, but tends to be in high demand (at least in my guild).

 

Otherwise, just replace all mods with Crit for those with Power, and all Crit enhancements with their Power equivalents. I've done this and I've still got 208 Crit (character sheet lied to me earlier today - thanks Bioware).

 

That enhancement is probably the best then. I just havent stumbled upon spare smuggler gear, having 2-3 others in the groups so it hasn't occurred to me before, but that is definitely the way to go.

[RuQu]

Was comparing some upgrades earlier and got annoyed at having to enter them in a row and then remember the values, so I added a comparison tool for comparing the HPS gain for two items.

[Ashtael]

Or does accuracy rating only effect our DPS, not our HPS?

Thanks, and I have learned so much from this thread.

[RuQu]

Or does accuracy rating only effect our DPS, not our HPS?

Thanks, and I have learned so much from this thread.

 

Accuracy only effects dps abilities. Healing abilities always land.

 

Base accuracy is also fairly high, with 100% base accuracy for all attacks except Hammer Shot (which is 90%, but calculated separately for each of its 3 shots) against mobs of the same level. Bosses have a base 10% miss chance, but since our dps is only gravy and healing is our main job, you shouldn't ever be sacrificing vital healing stats for accuracy.

[Ashtael]

Thanks for the quick response:)

[RuQu]

Thanks for the quick response:)

 

You're welcome.