Trouble healing HMs, is it just me or ... ?

[perato]

Let me preface this by saying that i do okay at pvp healing, notching up 300k heals in pugs a reasonable amount, having only re-specced to sawbones from scrapper a few days ago for something different.

 

however, getting bored with constant WZs (sick of getting 3 medals and 0 or 1 mvp for top healing...), and ilum being the joke that it is, i have been trying some HMs for a bit more of a challenge. I feel kind of underwhelmed with my limited experiences of PvE healing thus far, so i would like some opinions from sawbones' who are doing them successfully.

 

I have half champion pvp gear and half maxed out oranges (rating 124 or something) and top end crafted gear with augment slots, about 15k HP unbuffed, and i am finding it a struggle to heal hard modes. Granted that is not the best gear for pve, but it isn't bad, and I feel like i should be doing better.

 

i have attempted 3 now: taral v twice, first one went smoothly but we skipped bonus boss and then today we couldn't finish bonus boss after 4 attempts. the tank wasn't bad so i don't think it was his fault, although the boss did enrage once so maybe the dps was too low (a dps scoundrel in the group had 13k hp ...) the problem was that he kept pulling us in and taking half my (and the dps') health in one go, despite me running out again. i made it clear that my aoe heals suck so i could only focus on the tank and myself, but i kept dying just after or before the dps, depsite just healing myself and the tank. Also the final boss enraged with no deaths up to that point in the fight, so the more i think about the more i think the dps was the weak link, but it's hard not to feel responsible for wipes as a healer.

 

The only other one i tried to heal was eselles, and we died repeatedly at the very first boss. now in this case i think the problem was the tank, as it was me who was dying first when the waves of adds came out, so i feel like he should have been picking up the aggro quicker. he had never done a HM and his HP was really low so i am guessing his gear sucked.

 

anyway, i am kind of worried about trying any more because there is nothing worse than that sinking feeling of wiping repeatedly and the whole group silently thinking "it's the damn healer!"

 

my strategy is basically alternating between SRMP (making sure 2 stacks are on tank at all times) and UW, wjhich i crit for 5k about a third of the time. non crits seem to be <2k. crits on 2 stacks of srmp are about 1100 i think. i have pugnacity up at all times and if i run low on energy i will use diagnostic scan once which usually gets me back to 100. i feel like i have no trouble at all keeping the tank up, but when the dps and i inevitably start taking damage, that's when it starts getting hairy.

 

maybe my crit/surge is too high and i should be stacking power or alacrity more? it takes me 1.87s to cast UW. my champ gear is mostly field tech as i was more focused on dps spec before, but that is basically the same stats as medic armor, other than the set bonuses. i am now getting medic gear with the duplicate stuff. my tech stats are:

 

bonus dmg: 586

bonus healing: 421

crit: 35%

crit multiplier: 81%

activation speed: 6.7%

 

should i just try and gear up more with ilum/belsavis pve dailies before doing more HMs? i have read here that taral v is the easiest HM, so the idea of stuff like kaon and battle of ilum is kind of daunting. should i do normal modes first? i almost never see people recruiting groups for NM, it's always HM.

 

thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[thecoffeecup]

I won't advise you on endgame healing technicalities because I'm not doing it yet.

 

But as someone who has been an endgame healer for many years in a certain other game, I'll tell you one thing: You need thick skin to survive. This thing is going to happen even when you're very experienced. Not as much, but it will, and people will often blame you for the mistakes of others. That's just how it goes when you're a healer.

 

Do your best and try NOT to care! Also keep in mind that there are people out there who know it isn't always the healer's fault.

Edited January 29, 2012 by thecoffeecup

[nvmvoidrays]

i've only gotten to 35, but i've heard from other sawbone scoundrels that we struggle healing AoE/burst damage well because of how our energy mechanic works. optimal energy is staying above 60%. however, when healing big bursts, that's laughingly unrealistic.

 

i can't input more then that, so... idk. good luck. try different things, maybe?

[Insidiousenigma]

I have a sage healer and Scoundrel healer- Both are at 50 and are in full Columi + gear, I have seen and completed all Normal and hardmode operations and am working towards nightmare at current.

 

First and formost when healing heroics I find the most efficient way to heal through trash is to cycle your Sllow release medpack on each party member (4), just as its about to expire refresh the stack to bring it to two and maintain it indefinatly, this will grant fairly insane AoE heals and will keep any damage people take to a minimum- there is about 2-6 seconds of time inbetween refreshes to apply additional heals during this rotation to counter burst.

 

Secondly try and fit in Diagnostic scan wherever you can when below 70% energy, even if its 1 tick before a hot refresh do it, its free and can net you 2 energy.

 

It goes without saying that Pugnacity should be kept active at all times, and that you should maintain a minimum of 1 stack of Upperhand for the healing increase. On a side note, you can preload Pugnacity out of combat by casting an Underworld medicine for the UH proc.

 

Your AoE heal, its fairly horrid, I tend to avoid this unless I have an excess of energy, I dont use it unless there is 3+ people that will be effected by it and they will all benefit, its simply too costly.

 

Emergency medpack is amazing, use it always (but never go under 1 stack of UH) it costs no energy, so its worth using even when the target is above 30%, I use it all the time for topups midfight (a good way to time its use is by counting down from 4 each time your character laughs, with the amount of Slow release medpacks you should have up you have over an 80% chance to get an UH proc every 4.5 seconds so when you activate your emergency medpack you imediately get the UH back anyway)

 

Apart from that, I have to say knowing what the enemies will do and predicting the damage is the best way to approach scoundrel healing, I recomend picking up the - Accuracy after flashgrenade wears off, it helps mitigate some burst and its cheap to cast. With most other healers your reacting to damage, with the scoundrel you have to predict and react in equal mesure, if you do it right your unlimited resource pool will start to shine through.

 

Goodluck!

[perato]

Thanks, that's very helpful. i realise I wasn't using EMP nearly often enough. After reading this and also going back and re-reading the healing sticky (which i hadn't read since level 10!), i am embarrassed to admit i did not fully understand UH and was trying to keep two stacks up at all times, which is pointless when one provides the exact same benefit. So i was basically missing out on a free instant heal every rotation. i think this will make a world of difference. earlier i managed to heal risha and myself through 4 champion mobs (one at a time of course) in a h4 daily on belsavis because i couldn't get anyone else to do it, and i feel like we can keep a single target (even one as squishy as risha) up through almost anything. i'm looking forward to trying out a HM today with this new knowledge; hopefully i can throw in a EMP on the dps whenever i have 2 stacks of UH. it should also add a whole new dimension to my pvp healing, thanks again! Edited January 29, 2012 by perato

[Donnadarco]

My sugestion is Grind Belsavis Dailys by Stealthing the Heroic ones, and Do ilum Dailys also. Just run out and reset bosses and $$$$ is yours every time....

 

Step 2 is to get the - 2 part of Tier bonus .

 

2 pieces: Reduces the energy cost of Recuperative Nanotech and Kolto Cloud by 4.

 

 

http://knotor.com/item_sets/46

 

 

This will make Kolto cloud a Viable heal. And i can tell u it changes healing alot When u can start using Kolto Cloud everytime its out of Cooldown.

 

Before i got my 2 set bonus i didnt even have Kolto Cloud on my Actionbar because it Gimped my Energy Regen so Hard.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Donnadarco

[perato]

yeah some of those daily heroics seem easy for stealthers to solo. is that the bonus on the columni set? what do you spend the daily tokens on? so far i have only seen implants and earpieces, can you use them for armour/weapons? i have over a million credits and nothing to really spend them on, the crafted gear is sup par compared to champ/columni.

[elithrar]

You sound "geared enough". I don't think that's the problem.

 

The Taral V bonus boss wipes a lot of bad groups who don't move fast enough, and the first Esseles boss needs to be tanked facing away from the group to avoid his cone AoE. The tank can AoE taunt the adds as they come, but DPS should be able to use knockbacks and DPS can burn them down since they are only normals.

[DunsparrowSolo]

Taral V - I've never been hit by the boss's AOE. You're not running out fast enough. It helps if you're pretty close to begin with.

 

Esseles - This is not a great instance to run for new 50s, but they think it is, because it was the first instance they did while leveling. The second boss hits even harder than the first, and the final boss has a mechanic similar to the Taral V bonus boss that you have to run out of, although its a bit easier. Sounds like you had a bad tank.

 

Scoundrels are the worst healer, by far, but they are capable of healing all the content. You just have to work a lot harder and have good knowledge of all the fights.

[Civilix]

My healing pretty much consist of 3 spells: UM, EMP and Pugnacity...and that is it...

If needed i remove debuffs, but really many of them can just be healed over, sometimes i use kolto cloud for fun but really dont have any good reason to use it.

 

I am geared with champion field medic gear, using it for both pvp(warzones) and pve(hardmodes)...

 

It may be a very boring rotation, but to me any other healing spell looks like a waste of time and energy.

 

EDIT: using only those spells you dont run out of energy, even with 1.7 sec cast UM.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Civilix

[Trimanir]

Before this weekend i would have said :

I'm the only healer on my guild and have no problem healing hard flash points, i have all but my chest in columbi or battlemaster gear. I just keep regen on tank and burst UM+EMP on occasional burst on allies. Will use our Kolto Cloud after AOE. this work well with my melee crew.

 

After this weekend :

This weekend we got a sage healer that reach level 50. he's still in 106 gear, but tried a instance with the rest of my crew. (Trooper tank, sentinel and Shadow)

 

He did everything and they said they felft safer as hp on tank was always toped. and burst on allies where absorbed but ther Armor. Sage AOE is simply said about 3 time better than kolto cloud, (initial healing + 2x more tick of HOT, about the same healing. no limit of target) and that is with his green gear.

 

 

 

It feel strange in the bot. I'm mainly a PVE player, too bad i don't like they playstile of dirty fighter and Scrapper.

 

TL/DR : With the current implementation Sage>Sawbone for healing in SWTOR.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Trimanir

[leLoir]

Apart from min/maxing and comparing any balance problem, one of the easiest way to grind through hardmode is to know the efficient strategy. And I can only agree with the comment about flashbang, or any "thinking-out-of-the-box" way of using your skills. As a healer, you'll probably the only scoundrel around stacking alacrity. With not use XS once in a while to wipe those annoying adds? It is another way to mitigate damage. Use sap, use dispappearing act and your other defense skills in order to let the tank shield the melee dps.

 

And if you have hard time healing everyone, maybe some of your party members are simply taking too much damage they should smartly avoid.

[perato]

yeah i'm finding it just takes some practice and working out how certain fights work so one can be prepared. it also has a lot to do with group makeup and if running with pugs it can be really hard for healers because everybody dings 50 and wants to do HMs in half green gear with 12k HP, then blames the healer for them dying to the boss's melee aoe.

 

having said that i did maelstrom yesterday and it was super easy, even easier than taral v, so i guess i will keep running those 2 (no gear yet after 4 runs!) until i get a couple of columi pieces, and maybe look for groups doing EV on NM, of which there seem to be a few.

 

the fact it's hard actually makes it a fun challenge. i think i would much prefer this way than breezing through every piece of content, and i am focusing way more on pve now than pvp simply because it's so much more challenging. it's just a shame it's so much harder to get gear in pve than pvp.

 

one other thing, does anyone have a problem with their abilities just not going off sometimes? the last couple of days it has been happening at crucial times. i cast UM or SRMP, it triggers the activation/gcd, yet nothing happens. i have noticed that my character is locked in an animation (hands forward as if casting SRMP) when this is happening, and it can go on for 5-10 seconds, usually at the worst possible times! is this the ability lag they keep talking about?

Edited January 30, 2012 by perato