g-lok-ta Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 (edited) *Caveat that this is mostly from a PvP focus* So obviously Bioware estimated that Cloaking Screen would be a useful defensive tool for the Operative class. As far as I can tell they consider this to be our "oh crap" button and its existence is a reason why we weren't given many other major defensive tools. The problem that I am seeing though is that its only really useful most of the time if you are specced Concealment. It's a flee mechanism and if you wish it can also be a part of an attack rotation for popping Hidden strike. I haven't played Lethality so I cant speak to its use in that sort of build, but for Concealment its fair to say that its useful. For a healing spec however it seems like Cloaking Screen is only of dubious value in situations where you are either 1) getting jumped solo and just want to get away or 2) getting focused in a fight and sensing imminent death. The trouble with those scenarios is that in neither of them are you doing your job. You are probably healing yourself and you are already in a flee mode so you have been taken out of the fight..... but if you choose to use Cloaking Screen to survive you will take yourself even further out of the fight and suffer a healing penalty and ineffectiveness for another 10 seconds at least. So where's the value for the healer? The fight is more than likely over by the time you re-pop and cast another heal. In most cases it seems like you would be better off just going down healing as best possible and re-spawning. It's also a 50/50 proposition that you won't get dotted or popped out of stealth anyway. When healing in pvp I would say that in at least half of the situations I regret using cloaking screen as soon as I do it because of the healing debuff. The only times I find it useful is when I am solo and being chased all over the map by the opposing team but again in that situation I am not doing my job anyway so where's the value other than the lolz of getting away from someone? Its somewhat useful in voidstar and alderaan when preventing caps, but again this is not using it as a class defensive skill. My main point is that because of the heal casting debuff that comes from using Cloaking Screen its not really the major defensive tool that Bioware assumed that it would be, at least not for healing specs. I am not even sure why they think the debuff to casting heals is necessary. It seems like a penalty without a point. As a healing class kiting should be part of your defensive bag of tricks because it allows you to be defensive and remain somewhat effective in the fight, but Cloaking Screen is not a kiting tool as it penalizes you for saving your own life, which is basically anathema to the healing play style in a lot of ways. I can understand the point of the penalty to self healing to force you farther away if you are DPS, but this really makes it seem like when they built the trees of our class they only really conceived everything from the point of view of a Concealment spec. Bottom line is that they should allow healing specs to remove the heal casting debuff after using Cloaking Screen. Toss it in as part of the Evasive Imperative talent in the healing tree. If not that then give the healing tree some more effective defensive utility. Despite what Bioware may have thought when designing this class, the stealth bag of tricks are not all that useful... particularly to a healing build. Edited February 27, 2012 by g-lok-ta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lavrence Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 (edited) Bottom line is that they should allow healing specs to remove the heal casting debuff after using Cloaking Screen. Toss it in as part of the Evasive Imperative talent in the healing tree. Wrong they should get rid of it all together, then give concealment ops a damage boost to the next hidden strike after using it as a talent will refine this idea and add to my http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=323945thread lahandor darkleaf Edited February 26, 2012 by Lavrence Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g-lok-ta Posted February 26, 2012 Author Share Posted February 26, 2012 (edited) Wrong they should get rid of it all together, then give concealment ops a damage boost to the next hidden strike after using it as a talent will refine this idea and add to my Thoughs on operative thread lahandor darkleaf Yeah taking it out altogether would be just as good. In fact I think it would go a little ways to giving the Op class some unique healing play style advantages versus the sorc/sage. After all if Bioware is going to claim that stealth is our major advantage even as healers then they should damn well figure out a way we could actually use it. Most of the time as a medic I rarely use stealth as I am almost always in combat or I am rushing to aid my dps who are force leaping all over the map and stealth just slows me down. There have been many times where I have looked at my toolbar and noticed that stealth was up and I didn't really care because I was so used to being in combat or I was trying to remain mobile enough to do my job. If stealth is going to be useful to the medic in pvp at all then it needs to be something that they can 1) actually use in the middle of a fight without a penalty and 2) is available frequently enough that we don't simply give up on relying on it. Edited February 26, 2012 by g-lok-ta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lavrence Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 I have been trying to come up with fairly ballanced, thoughout changes that bioware can look out hopefull yhtey will start listening to players and stop lossing Subs lahandor darkleaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sangnz Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 Personally I would like to see them work more on the idea of a stealth healer. Remove the near useless med shield ability and replace it with: Shadow Healing Cloaking screen healing debuff is reduced by 50/100% After using cloaking screen you can continue to heal without breaking stealth for 5/10 seconds Sneak allows you to heal while stealthed for 4/8 seconds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lavrence Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 Personally I would like to see them work more on the idea of a stealth healer. Remove the near useless med shield ability and replace it with: Shadow Healing Cloaking screen healing debuff is reduced by 50/100% After using cloaking screen you can continue to heal without breaking stealth for 5/10 seconds Sneak allows you to heal while stealthed for 4/8 seconds. Problem with this will be ballance issues, healing while stealth will generate threat you then will have to add a threat redux to it,in PVP it wont really work as stealth in PvP requires talents to make it better, even then its not the best. Fixing it to be a threat redux, and a way out with maybe an innate speed boost or a damage shield would make it a viable healer ability while not becoming broken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g-lok-ta Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 Personally I would like to see them work more on the idea of a stealth healer. I think this is what they thought they might be achieving by simply tacking a healing tree onto a stealth class but it seems like they didn't spend any time at all thinking through how that might actually work in reality. The fact is that it doesn't. Yes, the operative can heal decently in this game but there is almost no part of that healing at all that benefits from our stealth core mechanic. For the healing tree I would argue that stealth is actually more of handicap than a help... unless it was actually designed to work with the healing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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