Skill Tree Synergy - Coming up with a build

[Acidictadpole]

Hey there,

 

I recently noticed a bunch of posts and the official forums asking for updated builds after 1.2. Fortunately some people already replied to these people in a much more polite way than I would have managed, essentially saying, “The patch has been out for a few hours and you’re already asking other people how you should play the game.”

 

It made me realize that there’s people out there who don’t care for understanding the builds they’re using, but would rather just get told what to put points in and how to play the game. It made me realize that some people don’t have as much fun as I do going through the talent tree picking out skills that work well together, or discussing skills with people.

 

That said, I’m going to attempt to walk through the process I went through creating this build for a PvP Operative/Scoundrel. I have done *some* investigation for builds, but have never come across this exact build (maybe for a reason), and although I’ve heard of some medicine/concealment hybrids, I came up with this on my own based on the following process (forgive me, it’s long):

 

Please note, this build hasn’t been playtested at 50. The point of this post is not providing you with the best Operative build, but rather showing you the process of creating one for playtesting yourself.

 

Step 1: Pick a main goal

 

This is the highest level of build you can get. Is it a DPS, tanking or healing build? What do you want to focus on with this character? When I first conceptualized this build, I decided to make it for healing. My focus was in the medicine tree, and the rest was built upon for utility.

 

Step 2: Pick the environment

 

Simply put, this is where you plan to be using this build. Is this going to be a PvP build, or is it for PvE? Many choices can be resolved by which you would prefer to do. Of course some builds try to encompass both, but if you can easily pick between the intended environments, you will find that you can resolve conflicts in your build pretty easily. I chose to apply my build to the Warzone environment in PvP. The result from this is that the utility I add to the medicine tree (from wherever, we haven’t gotten that far yet) need to apply to PvP. The implications of this mean we need to find out what healers have trouble with in PvP, and then get skills that help with that.

 

Step 3: Pick out your utility/secondary abilities.

 

When traversing vertically in a tree there are undoubtedly some abilities we’re going to avoid. They’re either total crap, or don’t fit our environment or playstyle. These leftover points will likely flow over to another tree, and therefore will have an entirely different theme. When deciding on your utility/secondary, you need to determine what someone in your position, in your environment, might be lacking. PvP healers will generally have trouble with survivability, and therefore my goal with this was to increase it in any way I could. There are quite a few ways to increase survivability, and I found the concealment tree offered up the best of them. Increased healing done and received, increased endurance, increased defense, and a health recovery ability added to stimboost/pugnacity.

 

Another concept to be aware of when considering survival is mobility. As a ranged class having more mobility than an opponent will be the difference between life and death. Sever Tendon has become an ability which I use all the time, and for good reason. This pretty much permanent reduction in speed for as long as you are within range, means that you can save yourself or a teammate, or even prevent a goal in huttball. The two-point skill “Pin Down” in the 4th tier of the concealment tree means that, on top of the 50% reduction in speed, the opponent gets rooted for 2 seconds immediately after application, with absolutely no addition to his resolve bar. To me this made this talent too good to pass up for any PvP build and I consequently started up the concealment tree first (even though it’s a healing spec). That said, let’s move on to sticking points in (For those of you following along for scoundrel, you’ll have to translate yourself, sorry):

 

Survival Training(3/3) is pretty obvious. It improves our healing AND our survivability. It fulfills both roles of our build, and is therefore a no brainer.

 

Concealed Attacks(2/2) is mostly filler. It’s alternative boosted Corrosive Dart and Acid Blade, and we’re not getting up to Acid Blade, so half the talent is wasted. The additional ~18% damage from Corrosive dart might be worth it for heavy users, but I found I used backstab a lot more, even as a healer.

 

Infiltrator (3/3) is helpful in that it increases our mobility while stealthed. It also makes it much easier to sneak around and get into a good healing position without being spotted.

 

Inclement Conditioning (2/2) is a small, but helpful boost to your HP. Compared to a 4% damage increase on shiv/backstab/overload, this is the better choice.

 

Scouting (2/2) complete filler, but the boost to defense is nice. If I could I would save the points, since defense is not very good, even for tanks. The stealth detection is pretty good for PvP though.

 

Flanking (1/1) is kind of a filler, and kind of not. There’s no point in thinking you’re never going to do damage, because you’ll be forced into situations where it’s impossible not to. Reducing backstabs energy cost here seems like the best choice of what’s available.

 

Laceration(1/1), I’d rather not put points into a damaging ability, but I can’t help but feel this would be more helpful than any of the alternatives. With the medicine tree you can build up Tactical Advantages pretty quickly, so if you’re forced into a position where you need to do damage, Laceration provides a constant outlet for the built up TAs.

 

Revitalizers(1/1) Adds a self-hot to stim-boost/pugnacity. You should have this ability up all the time, so it heavily increases your survivability.

 

Pin Down(2/2) The reason we’re here This ability is amazing already, and giving it a root makes it all the better.

 

Energy Screen(1/1) Dodging / Resisting attacks gives you 1 energy. This means that Evasion can become an energy regeneration ability, even if it’s pretty bad at doing it. It also removes the healing done/received penalty after using our Vanish. I will often use this after being ganged up on for a few seconds so people switch targets, and then come out and begin healing again. It also means any HoTs running on you will continue while stealthed.

 

This leaves us with 23 points to put into Medicine; we’re not going to get our 31 point talent (Recuperative Nanotech) with this, but I don’t think we’re losing much from this on a PvP build. I also won’t go through every choice for the Medicine tree. Since it’s our main tree it’s pretty much “Grab everything that heals”. I’ll cover unorthodox choices, and any clarification someone needs I’ll respond to in comments.

 

Precision Instruments(2/2) Debilitate and Sever Tendon are going to get a lot of use for us. Debilitate/Dirty Kick are an instant cast ability which will let us run away from melee characters, or hurt the ball carriers advancement. While the energy savings here isn’t significant, it’s still savings.

 

Chem-resistant Inlays(2/2) Flat 4% damage reduction across the board. Since we’re pushing survivability as our secondary, who could argue with flat damage reduction?

 

Evasive Imperative (2/2) Evasion is a really good ability for Operatives. We get a passive addition to it which removes all hostile removable effects upon its activation. I will usually throw this up right before vanishing, to get dots off, or in other situations. Having the speed bonus is some added **** ability which comes in handy.

 

Tox Screen (1/1) Adds a healing effect to Toxin Scan. With all the stuff that’s going on, removing dots from yourself or teammates can be very helpful. I try to use it whenever I notice debuffs on my teammates, and having that extra heal on it is great for a single talent point.

 

There are a few changes which I might consider after I’ve playtested this a bit. Getting Medical Therapy might be handy because of the really good bonus to healing. I might switch out the Tox Screen point, and one from somewhere else to grab both points in it.

 

 

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