Mercenary healing - First impressions

[Albinosmurf]

The only complaint i have when healing is we cant heal ourselfs without using heat or our 3min cd personal heal.

[Andreasus]

I have a question. How useful is HS ? How big is the heal after a hit of someone?

[Albinosmurf]

I have a question. How useful is HS ? How big is the heal after a hit of someone?

 

Im not completely sure of all the short hand but HS = Healing Scan? If so then its amazing if you get the talent that makes the next rapid scan cost 16 less heat. If you always rapid scan once after healing scan before you healing scan again then the heal is absolutely free. From when i was heal spec i don't remember exactly how big of a difference the heal was but im prettt sure healing scan only healed a little less than rapid scan. I just hate that its not super easy to watch your super charged gas buff because ill keep trying to healing scan sometimws forgetting its back on cd after not having a cd for several cast ;(

[Andreasus]

oh sorry I mean Kolto Shell. Sorry I am from the german forum.

 

How useful is kolto shell?

[Temig]

oh sorry I mean Kolto Shell. Sorry I am from the german forum.

 

How useful is kolto shell?

 

It's a free-to-cast reactive HoT. I don't think I need to say any more

[jawwafodder]

Can someone tell me if Merc healing is better or worse than Sorc healing

[Lazzerlo]

All I can say is from a PVP perspective, I have yet to lose in total healing to a non Mercenary. I am lvl 41 rank 30 valor. I see a lot of people thinking that Mercenaries are sucky healers but that just isn't true. They either haven't played one or can't manage their heat properly.

[Andreasus]

It's a free-to-cast reactive HoT. I don't think I need to say any more

 

you need to say more, because if I am in PvP and I got hits for 1000, then a free reactive hot which heals me 90hp does not help, if it heals 500 then it is helpful.

 

So how much does it heal in PvP if i compaer it to the normal heal?

[dende]

Can someone tell me if Merc healing is better or worse than Sorc healing

 

Different I have not played a Sorc so I do not have first hand information but from the information I was able to gather so far they seem very similar.

 

On first glance the Sorc seems to have more HoTs as their disposal while the Merc gets the Kolto Shield which seems to me that the Merc is designed to be be a single target/tank healer while the Sorc would be better suited to multi-target healing

 

I would never go as far as saying this class is better than that as healer it's simply different.

 

 

you need to say more, because if I am in PvP and I got hits for 1000, then a free reactive hot which heals me 90hp does not help, if it heals 500 then it is helpful.

 

So how much does it heal in PvP if i compaer it to the normal heal?

 

I have never paid attention to how much the Kolto Shell heals for in PVP but you can be certain that it heals for ~500 Hp.

 

I am currently level 37 the tool tip of the Kolto Shell states it heals from 180-195.

 

The healing coefficient is 0.481 (torhead data) this means you add about 48% of your healing power to the skill and that should be the amount it will heal for.

 

In my case, currently, I have 203.1 bonus healing.

 

203.1 x 0.481 = 97.6911 - unsure if the system rounds up or down in this case lets make it a round 97.

 

With my current stats it is 180 + 97 to 195 + 97 = 277 to 292 healed.

 

 

So on this level to have it heal for 500+ hp non-crit you would have to have about 700 healing power.

 

The base heal value of the Kolto SHell scaled with the health pool take a few items off and see the numbers on the tool tip change. That healing value seems to be 2.99% for min heal and 3.44% for the max heal.

 

From what I see in the war zones before 50 the health of everyone seems to be at around 12000.

 

The base heal of KS would be 358 to 372 I currently am unable to check how much bonus healing you get in the war zone but I feel confident when I say it will be more than enough to break the 500 heal.

 

There are rough calculation and might be off as I am currently at work and do not have access to my notes.

 

Hope this answers your question

Edited December 26, 2011 by dende

[Sturon]

Do your calculations include the 30% debuff for PVP healing?

 

But every bit of healing helps in PVP, I've seen several fights won with people at fractions of a health bar. How many time will kolto shell proc in a one on one? 3 times or more easily.

[dende]

The Kolto Shell can proc every 3 seconds.

 

The math does not include the 30% debuff but from the information have the math here is simple you just cut the heal by 30%.

 

Currently I do not have access to level 50 gear and stats to do all the calculations based on real stats.

 

I am afraid that I do not do much PVP and do not plan to however if you can provide a screen shot of a lvl 50 character with the tech stats I could do the math.

Edited December 26, 2011 by dende

[djinnerman]

The Kolto Shield can proc every 3 seconds

 

just remember that the Kolto Shell does not proc. Proc is essentially used as a term for "chance on hit or use" Instead, it had a base timer of 3 seconds before the next one can come into effect.

 

And I hope you mean Kolto Shell and not Shield since this is about healing right?

Edited December 25, 2011 by djinnerman

[djinnerman]

Redacted Edited December 27, 2011 by djinnerman
Double post Phone

[dende]

just remember that the Kolto Shell does not proc. Process is essentially used as a term for "chance on hit or use" Instead, it had a base timer of 3 seconds before the next one can come into effect.

 

And I hope you mean Kolto Shell and not Shield since this is about healing right?

 

Thanks for pointing that out changed to Shell.

 

It is still a proc for me since you need to be hit for it activate, from a math point of view it is a percent chance, even if it's 99%, for it to be activated since I will not activate on dodge, parry, deflect.

 

You could say it will activate on hit and has a cool down of 3 seconds between activations.

[metalfenix]

Definitely, being a mercenary healer is about heat management, I learned it the hard way, through the Athiss flashpoint final boss.

 

This boss is extremely demanding for a healer, and as far as I know, mercenary healers don't have any abilities that remove afflictions (...yet. Cure Mind is far away in the skill tree), so he cast some sort of affliction wich drains quickly the health from one member (the boss had a neat fixation with me and he casted 60% times that affliction over me). Of course, when I saw someone afflicted, I quickly went to use rapid scan (healing scan has a longer cooldown, so I don't like it too much). But the boss drains health so fast, that I had to cast rapid scan multiple times, wich lead me nearly in the edge of overheating ... it was so frustrating (I am lvl 22 BTW). I tried to alternate and space my rapid scans with rapidshots and vent, but the speed of the boss health drain was amazing.

 

I barely managed to solo heal that flashpoint, but I had a serious headache afterwards lol. First time I've ever overheated in a fight

Edited December 26, 2011 by metalfenix

[Omarax]

Definitely, being a mercenary healer is about heat management, I learned it the hard way, through the Athiss flashpoint final boss.

 

This boss is extremely demanding for a healer, and as far as I know, mercenary healers don't have any abilities that remove afflictions (...yet. Cure Mind is far away in the skill tree), so he cast some sort of affliction wich drains quickly the health from one member (the boss had a neat fixation with me and he casted 60% times that affliction over me). Of course, when I saw someone afflicted, I quickly went to use rapid scan (healing scan has a longer cooldown, so I don't like it too much). But the boss drains health so fast, that I had to cast rapid scan multiple times, wich lead me nearly in the edge of overheating ... it was so frustrating (I am lvl 22 BTW). I tried to alternate and space my rapid scans with rapidshots and vent, but the speed of the boss health drain was amazing.

 

I barely managed to solo heal that flashpoint, but I had a serious headache afterwards lol. First time I've ever overheated in a fight

 

Thats when you spend all your charges for Supercharged gas so that you can spam Healing Scan. Always make sure any damage luls you get that you are spamming the heck out of rapid shots (either on the boss or a friendly) to build up those charges, that CD is pretty vital to use during as many damage spikes as possible.

[metalfenix]

Thats when you spend all your charges for Supercharged gas so that you can spam Healing Scan. Always make sure any damage luls you get that you are spamming the heck out of rapid shots (either on the boss or a friendly) to build up those charges, that CD is pretty vital to use during as many damage spikes as possible.

 

Thanx for the tip, tested it today and now I see why everyone loves HS, it's a great healing tool. BTW, at lvl 24 I got finally a skill wich cleanse negative mind effects. Now I'll reconsider going back to athiss lol. Each day that passes, I'm loving more my mercenary healer

[dende]

Level 44 update.

 

 

 

New abilities.

 

Emergency Scan - 21 seconds cool down - Instant cast heal, very nice filler during rotation, heat free which means you actually get -5 heat ( if you keep below 40 heat ) due to the GCD.

 

All the essential skills are in place now, my current build

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300rfRoRzcdkqZr.1

 

As I PVP fairly often in the WZs I decided to keep Heat Damping and Power Shield until I find myself doing HC/Ops. Once at 50 those 2 point will to into Critial Reaction (CR) with about 30% crit and using RpS to heal one should be able to keep CR.

 

 

 

Rotations - my impression, advice

 

Healing is not DPSing there is no set rotation you have to be able to adjust see if you need a big heal/small heal do you need to heal on the move.

 

Regarding rotations there is not much change here, you start off with a HS than follow up with a RS which has reduced heat cost. Once you build 30 charges of CSC you pop SCG and this is where the change is. At level 29 you should have CE maxed out which means that every RS cast after a HS will have its heat cost reduced by 16. A HS costs 16 the reduced RS costs 9 in total you use 25 heat for 2 heals.

 

Therefore once you use SCG the rotation I am currently using is :

 

HS > RS > HS > RS > HS > RS

 

You should be able to squeeze the above into the 10 second window of the SCG.

 

A HS spam is still a viable options in an emergency as that .5 seconds might make all the difference. With no/very little alacrity you can cast HS 7 times in the 10 seconds if you keep the spam up.

 

 

Currently I am frequently running CWG and RR ( RR was fixed on the 27th and the last boss is a really nice encounter ) with people ranging from 38 to 46.

 

Obviously the higher the levels the easier it gets but with a smart group there is not much to heal and you can dps building up charges for the SCG. I relly look forward to HC FPs to see how demanding they become.

 

From my own experience most encounters are designed in a way that people should be able to avoid the unnecessary damage. TOR actually rewards it by giving the group another DPS source, be it low.

 

How will this change during HC FPs and Ops this is something too look forward to for me.

 

GEAR - First view

 

 

 

The 40+ gear seems to start to set a tendency for the secondary stats it seems that CRIT is emerging as the main secondary with a mix of alacrity and surge. I am currently using a mix of the level 40 PVP set and items from CWG and RR

 

 

As always questions, discussion, critic most welcome.

 

 

Glossary:

CSC - Combat Support Cylinder
CE - Critical Efficency
SCG - SuperCharged Gas
HS - Healing Scan
RS - Rapid Scan
CWG - Colicoid War Games Flashpoint
RR - The Red Reaper Flashpoint

[Iandayen]

Good luck at level 50 healing.

 

I have been 50 since 12/26 and was bodyguard spec to start.

 

A few things to note.

 

Sorcs Heals are bigger, faster casted, and more efficient.

 

Ops heals are just as bug, they have hots and are waaaay more efficient.

 

Mercenary healers have tons of trouble with burst damage and their heat efficiency.

 

As it is right now we are the worst of the 3 healing specs. We don't bring merc heals to raids because of this. 2 sorcs and an op are the norm.

[Waffletost]

Good luck at level 50 healing.

 

I have been 50 since 12/26 and was bodyguard spec to start.

 

A few things to note.

 

Sorcs Heals are bigger, faster casted, and more efficient.

 

Ops heals are just as bug, they have hots and are waaaay more efficient.

 

Mercenary healers have tons of trouble with burst damage and their heat efficiency.

 

As it is right now we are the worst of the 3 healing specs. We don't bring merc heals to raids because of this. 2 sorcs and an op are the norm.

 

Before I start I should say that I've only played merc, and I'm only lvl 43.

 

I think that for the most part the reason sorcs SEEM to heel bigger, faster, and more efficiently is because we've been looking to stack the wrong abilities.

 

Now I'm not a true theorycrafter and so I haven't crunched the numbers for these all the way past "every mod slot is giving this" so I don't know if ratios increase/decrease as you gain more in the attributel; but currently I'm noticing that aim only gives us bonus healing at ~7:1, power and tech power are both sitting at ~6:1. That being the case, and assuming that the ratios are static, wouldn't it be better to just take minimum of those from base stats on gear/mods and focus on mods that go into crit/surge?

 

From what I've seen, again not at end-game, our heals are focused ENTIRELY around casting within the SCG duration, at this point I can either spam my heals/top of party in FPs, or top off companion and use my cheaper Unload and Power Shot while questing.

 

To make the most of this feature which, may I remind you all, gives us 10% bonus healing done on top of our skill tree AND any Bonus Healing received on party I feel we should try to get our cast speed up, so that we have as little down time as possible while it is up, this means taking critical reaction and system calibration.

 

Since we're focusing on those alacrity buffs and JUST those, so as to not bring HS cast time too far under GCD (not sure if the 100% CDR removes it from the GCD or not) we should be trying to get as many crits as possible to trigger CR, and since we want crit heals, we may as well focus on the bonus to crit heals, as that will be more noticeable than a few points added to base from straight stacking the "primaries."

 

Having said all that, I haven't looked up if our heals have different ratios relating to the effectiveness of bonus healing, and I'm not saying disregard aim. I just think our stat focus is skewed.

 

Should be: Aim->crit(to 50%)->surge->power

 

As far as the skill tree, I'm using something like this:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#300rfRMR0cdkqZrcoZb.1

 

Thoughts?

Edited January 27, 2012 by Waffletost
Added personal recommendation on skill tree

[Svensy]

From what I've seen, again not at end-game, our heals are focused ENTIRELY around casting within the SCG duration, at this point I can either spam my heals/top of party in FPs, or top off companion and use my cheaper Unload and Power Shot while questing.

 

From healing as a merc on all current nightmare content experience, I can safely say that this is not the case.

You'll be casing almost all the time, and learning to manage heat while doing so (throwing about 2 rapid shots every rapid scan for example, when healing scan is off CD and you don't have the heat reducing buff on healing scan)

Also on healing intensive fights (Second boss/es in KP come to mind) you'll do well not to spam healing scan > rapid scan as you will overheat quickly even on SCG phase.

You'd want to reach SCG phase as soon as possible, obviously, but throwing the occasional healing scan will simply not do in operations, you'll be using it a lot outside SCG.

As for stat priority I do agree, we'll be focusing on crit much more than other stats (surge comes on the same mods as crit so they pretty much come together), you probably won't reach 50% buffed until you get fully modded rakata gear towards crit.

And regarding your talent build, you can switch out Imp. Vent Heat for Powered Insulators, and Integrated Systems for Custom Enviro Suit.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Svensy

[Waffletost]

From healing as a merc on all current nightmare content experience, I can safely say that this is not the case.

You'll be casing almost all the time, and learning to manage heat while doing so (throwing about 2 rapid shots every rapid scan for example, when healing scan is off CD and you don't have the heat reducing buff on healing scan)

Also on healing intensive fights (Second boss/es in KP come to mind) you'll do well not to spam healing scan > rapid scan as you will overheat quickly even on SCG phase.

You'd want to reach SCG phase as soon as possible, obviously, but throwing the occasional healing scan will simply not do in operations, you'll be using it a lot outside SCG.

As for stat priority I do agree, we'll be focusing on crit much more than other stats (surge comes on the same mods as crit so they pretty much come together), you probably won't reach 50% buffed until you get fully modded rakata gear towards crit.

And regarding your talent build, you can switch out Imp. Vent Heat for Powered Insulators, and Integrated Systems for Custom Enviro Suit.

 

Thanks for input. Not entirely sure where I pulled the "we only heal in SCG" from meant to say we have REALLY good burst healing because of it.

 

Regarding the skill swaps, are those due to Boss AoE?

[Aedn]

Darkkyn's spec is exactly what I'm using @ 50 and I love it. I'm sitting @ 30.65% crit @ 50 without much of anything specifically trying to get it and CR is up a large majority of the time. Crits from Kolto Shell, Rapid Shots and Kolto Missle heals will all trigger the effect greatly helping with the uptime. As for the benefit of the alacrity... I haven't been able to do much testing with it yet since I just hit 50 Sunday night, but I expect it to be a strong performer. It very well might not be apparent in low quantities but high-end PvP/raid/crafted gear seems to focus on it pretty heavily so getting up to noticeable levels shouldn't be much of an issue. Real-world tests will of course be the deciding factor but the overall balance the spec provides seems like it will be a strong build.

 

alcrity is very useful, for healers. the major aspect is that you can weave in rapid shots on allies for heals, while reducing heat, and still maintain a solid rotation of your two primary healing spells. however, i do not see the point in getting rapid scan to below 1.7 seconds, as you can cut off 2 seconds with critical reaction, which procs pretty often to be honest.

 

I play primarily in pvp, with a hybrid build, and i am really enjoying the 14% alcrity i can reach with critical reaction. to top it off, its also very nice for using with Unload and DFA to do some decent dps on top of healing if you have the heat to spare.

[Svensy]

Thanks for input. Not entirely sure where I pulled the "we only heal in SCG" from meant to say we have REALLY good burst healing because of it.

 

Regarding the skill swaps, are those due to Boss AoE?

I personally just find them much more useful than the 16 more heat vented on vent heat and 2% healing done.

4% less damage is very useful on some bosses (like lightning balls on the SOA fights), and at last in my opinion, the 6% increased healing on yourself with a bonus on endurance outweighs 2% increased healing overall.

[Urkanan]

[...]A few things to note.

 

Sorcs Heals are bigger, faster casted, and more efficient.

 

Ops heals are just as bug, they have hots and are waaaay more efficient.

 

Mercenary healers have tons of trouble with burst damage and their heat efficiency.

As it is right now we are the worst of the 3 healing specs. We don't bring merc heals to raids because of this. 2 sorcs and an op are the norm.

 

Is there real math behind all this? I don't mean to pick on you, but I am a BH healer and I don't feel that my healing is anywhere behind sorcs or agents at all, tbh. If it is something it is... more fun to play.

 

My $0.02:

 

1- Merc is a single target healer and a single target healer only. Don't assign them to off heal or raid heal.

 

1a- A careless i.e. melee dps taking enough damage to need attention from your BH will very likely result in a choked Merc at 80 heat that leads to an unbuffed tank that results in low heals and a dead operation team.

 

2- BH healing is 100% proactive, if you try to "catch up" as a BH... you are just not gonna make it. Know what will happen. Move before you need to. ErScan is not an "on cooldown" free heal. It is there for you to buy time and make up for the RS you won't cast because you will need to move in a bad moment, and you don't want it on cd by then.

 

2a- Among other things, this all requires you (and your tank) to know the fight and adjust your scg/vh pops, long term heat tolerance and tanking cooldowns usage accordingly.

 

3-

use SCG "on cooldown" because it ups your healing by a big amount

and

always stay under 40 heat for max throughput

are true but misleading statements and can not be taken as a norm for BH healing.

 

In a sense, you could see all this as "worse than Sorcs or Agents" and I could agree with you from the "viability" point of ciew. It is just easier for your raid to take someone more forgiving, it's an evident advantage. I however like to call it more demanding, and it's a nice change, tbh.

 

If your Mercs can:

 

-keep 100% uptime on Kolto Residue and Proactive Medicine (see what I did there?)

-weave RpS ON THE TANK (why do some people keep RpSing the boss instead?)

-manage their SCG-VH rota and control their heat for those 120secs...

 

they shouldn't fall behind sorcs or agents.

Edited February 5, 2012 by Urkanan