1.3 PVP/PVE Combat Medic Guide

[SPrime]

Trooper

 

AC Commando Combat Medic

 

About:

 

I have been playing this character as my main since launch, and I have tweaked it many times and have found this build to work the best for me in regards of healing and soloing people.

 

Updates and Revisions:

 

All I would like to add here is that the 1.2 nerf to combat medic healing was not that bad, and in fact was a much needed change. Why do I say this you ask? Well the advanced medical probe to medical probe was pretty much was a game breaker when supercharged cells was active. If you did this all day you would pretty much never run out of ammo. Not to say that it was not awesome, but it is, in a word: boring. With the new ammo management, it really makes the role of healer more active thus making the overall individual a better player. However, I will say that the nerf was balanced with the Kolto Bomb buff. Prior to 1.2 I would say that Kolto Bomb was arguably the worst heal that the combat medic had. Now, after the changes, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. You are probably saying, “but it only picks up one more person.” True, but before it could only crit on 1 person, now there is a chance it can crit on all 4 people it hits. I have hit all 4 crits before and I will say a 3000 hp heal per person for the trade off of 2 ammo is well worth it.

 

If you are one of the people who quit playing CM or rerolled DPS because of the minor nerfs, you deserve to subscribe to Hello Kitty Online.

 

Table of Contents:

 

1.0 – Abbreviations

 

1.1 – The Build

 

1.2 – The Gear

 

2.0 – PVP

 

2.01 – Juggernaut

2.02 – Marauder

2.03 – Sorcerer

2.04 – Assassin

2.05 – Mercenary

2.06 – PowerTech

2.07 – Operative

2.08 – Sniper

 

2.1 – Warzones

 

2.11 – Civil War (Alderaan)

2.12 – The Voidstar

2.13 – The Pit (Huttball)

2.14 – Novare Coast

 

3.0 – PVE

 

3.1 – Flashpoints (Future)

 

3.2 – Operations

 

3.21 – Eternity Vault

3.211 – Annihilation Droid XRR-3

3.212 – Gharj

3.213 – The Ancient Pylons

3.214 – Duel of the Fates (Infernal Council)

3.215 – SOA the Infernal one

 

3.22 – Karagga’s Palace

3.221 – Bonethrasher

3.222 – Jarg and Sorno

3.223 – Foreman Crusher

3.224 – G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator Droid

3.225 – Karagga the Unyielding

 

3.23 – Explosive Conflict (Story Mode)

3.231 – Zorn and Toth

 

3.232 – Firebrand and Stormcaller

3.233 – Colonel Volgath

3.234 – Warlord Kephess

 

3.24 – Explosive Conflict (Hard Mode)

3.241 – Zorn and Toth

3.242 – Firebrand and Stormcaller

3.243 – Colonel Volgath

3.244 – Warlord Kephess

 

3.25 – Terror From Beyond (Story Mode)

3.251 – The Withering Horror

3.252 – Ciphas, Heirad and Kel'sara

3.253 – Operator X

3.254 – Kephess the Undying

3.255 – The Terror from Beyond

 

3.26 – Terror From Beyond (Hard Mode)

3.261 – The Withering Horror

3.262 – Ciphas, Heirad and Kel'sara

3.263 – Operator X (Future)

3.264 – Kephess the Undying (Future)

3.265 – The Terror from Beyond (Future)

 

4.0 - Closing

 

1.0 – Abbreviations:

 

Healing:

 

HS – Hammer shot (Auto attack, Healing beam, please kill me I am a healer, green ray of light. Etc)

MP – Medical Probe

AMP – Advanced Medical Probe

SCC – Super Charged Cells

FAid – Field Aid

KB – Kolto Bomb

TP – Trauma Probe

BI – Bacta Infusion

 

Self Defence/Fighting:

 

ER – Explosive Round

SG – Sticky Grenade

SS – Stock Strike <- Main defensive skill (Tech damage)

RS – Reactive Shield

FA – Full Auto

CG – Cryo Grenade

CC – Concussion Charge

CR – Concussion Round

TO – Tech Overide

TE – Tenacity (CC break)

AR – Adrenaline Rush

PC – Pulse Cannon

EPC – Emergency Power Cell

At a minimum these should all be key bound for quick button pressing/mashing.

 

1.1 – The Build:

 

My build focuses on fast cast (alacrity) and hard normal heals (power), I use this build in both PVE and PVP which I will cover completely. Please note that this build is optimized for PVP and that I am just too lazy to spend the credits so that I can optimize myself for PVE. Although I think it does not matter considering the content we have cleared in PVE. Without further ado the build 31/8/2 link here.* Updated for 1.4.

 

*New to 1.4 is the front line medic skill in the combat medic tree. This to me is a buff, as now potent medicine only requires 3 points for the same bonus, but now when you have the TP on yourself, HS can activate it. This will further increase your soloing ability!*

 

Stat Priority

Aim > Power > Alacrity > Surge > Crit

 

1.2 – The Gear:

 

PVP: War Hero all augmented, half with 18 Aim 12 Endurance, and 18 Alacrity 12 Endurance.

 

PVE: Black Hole/Campaign I say BH and Campaign because physically the bosses on HM EC only drop 2 items per drop I have never rolled a win on any of the drops. But I have grinded out all the BH gear and remodded my Rakata gear for all the 61 mods and set bonus. In PVE I have full augmentation of pure 18 Aim and 12 Endurance.

 

In both builds I use the War Hero Power Relics.

 

I would also like to point out that armour rating is absolutely useless; anyone who says otherwise needs to L2P. Why you ask? Force and Tech damage are both pretty much ignore target defence (ITD), to me this is the biggest game breaker, although it is in the game to balance in the fact that commando healers wear heavy armour. So in the end you are pretty much as squishy as you would be as a healer in any other MMO. The only time you will really face damage based on amour class is when someone is auto attacking you, if they are auto attacking you, they deserve to lose to you in a 1 v 1 fight. I will also state that if you cannot beat someone who is only using auto attack on you; Trooper Commando Combat Medic is not for you. I suggest you reroll to Hello Kitty Online.

 

2.0 – PVP:

 

I will start with PVP first since I spent the majority of the time PVPing in the early stages of release. First off I will say Line of Sight (LOS) is your friend, if the enemy cannot see you but you can see your team, you are golden, as you get free range to keep your team up and the enemy has no idea where you are. Use whatever you can find in the environment to get this edge; I will cover the items I use in each warzone a little further down.

 

Always be moving, this goes against what is commonly said, which is that the CM is a turret healer. Chances are good that if you PVP enough, the enemy team will already know you are a healer, so using the HS heal beam on your own team (thus giving away the fact that you are a healer) does not matter anyways. With my build I have a balance of fast cast and activation. I have nearly 20% cast speed, and while some people will say “but you burn your ammo faster”, I find that this will not be the case, with the amount of interrupts going, you will probably find yourself with a full or near full ammo bar after a hard fought battle.

 

Regarding rotation, I do not have a set rotation as I feel that all situations are unique, and so should your rotations be. I will say that I always try to jump into a fight with TP on someone and a whole 30 charges of SCC. I will however always start with either a BI or an AMP. Note here is that you should always try to cast AMP prior to casting a MP simply because with the build I use, it reduces MP by 1 ammo. Next I will always triage. For those who do not know what that means, it is when I am looking at the health of my team and prioritize. I will always try to toss a heal to the guy that I deem to be the least health. It helps to have the percentage health of everyone in your party displayed (i.e, in the interface editor turn on information text).

 

If people are going down in unison and you are having trouble determining the best course of action, KB should be used. And to tell you the truth, I will toss KB as much as possible, it is on a 6 second cooldown, and for me it is always on cooldown. The reason is that it picks up 4 people and the range is way further than you think (i.e., the reticule is only about 3.5 m across, but in reality I have tested it, it picks up people who are 13 meters away from each other, which means it picks up people who are 6.5 m away from the centre of the reticule). I have used a combat parser and no other heal compares to the output of this, it is double of any other heal I use. Another thing I will do is refresh TP when it runs out as well. How do you know it runs out? Well the person you dropped it on will have the little icon on the effects bar. So if after a quick glance you do not see it anymore, cast it.

 

Regarding FAid, in my opinion, nothing frustrates a DPS (damage per second) more than a person who knows how to cleanse a person who is getting DOTs (damage over time) up the wahzoo. All builds who rely on DOTs will be rendered useless, prime example is the powertech in the pyro tree. If you can keep the cleanse going, getting hit over and over by rail shot will occur less.

 

HS causes quite the debate. When the enemy sees you using this, people will argue that they can identify you, to which I have stated already that no matter what, if you are a healer they will focus you, but however I will say that if you find that sweet spot to hide, and no one notices you, do not use HS, just give a little time in between heals so that you can regenerate ammo. I use HS a lot, people know I am a healer, anyone on the enemy team can mark me. I pretty much have nothing to hide as I welcome the challenge as I am not an easy mode player.

 

Regarding Warzone strategies: I would say as a node solo defender it is pretty good though you just have to be careful with your cooldowns, of which the most important one being RS. With the 2 piece PVP set bonus for combat medic, it extends the duration by 3 seconds, which may not seem like much but if you think about it normal duration is 12 seconds. That is a 25% increase which to me is actually 2 cast heals for a minimum of 6000 hit points if you are by yourself. It is important that you save the RS for when you have full resolve. Though in the case that you are certain that you are going to die and you do not have full resolve, you should use it anyway of course. In addition, use AR as well. It might seem like not that much, but hey the couple hundred hp difference can mean the difference of the guy attacking you being able to smoke you with their dispatch.

 

You are probably now asking why do I say save RS for full resolve? Well answer is just simple, when you have full resolve you become immune to stuns. In combination with the CM spec when RS is active you become uninterruptable, you essentially become a god among men. You have free reign to cast what you like, when you like for 15 seconds.

 

Fighting in the case of you getting attacked by yourself at a node by 2 people; the #1 thing you should do is ensure you have TP on yourself. #2 is calling it out in the ops chat, it is best to call out the amount of people coming. If you are on a node and you see 1 guy coming toward you do not panic and call out LEFT, EAST, SNOW or whatever. To me when someone calls it out like this essentially I think the whole enemy team is attacking your point. Call it out as 1 LEFT or 2 RIGHT, trust me people will like you more if you give a number.

 

Now you are probably asking what if 2 cloakers come at you (i.e., 1 stuns you the other starts capping). Well last time I checked, when you are stunned you can still type, take into account it takes 8 seconds for them to cap the objective. So type fast and abbreviate like “2 cloak l”. Call something out, most likely you can type then possibly, depending on how they stunned you, you will either have the stun broken before the guy is completed capping or if they double up the stun, you will have to break it with TE. Keep in mind a double stun = full resolve pop RS and the 15 seconds you will spend fighting off the attackers should be more than enough time for you team to organize a defence around you. The key is to stay alive near the objective throwing heals at yourself and HS the guy trying to cap.

 

Now I will say that for no reason should you ever be on a point alone, but since you are probably in a pug people do not understand this; 3 out of 5 times I always seem to be on the point by myself. This leads to massive problems. Let us use the last example of 2 cloakers, what if 1 of them were to be an assassin. So they mezz you as you are typing that you got jumped by 2 cloakers, he moves into a position that he pulls you way off the point all while the other guy is capping. There is nothing you can really do. Try to convince your team it is a good idea to have 2 on a point.

 

If 1 person decides to try to attack the point you are defending here are some tips to fighting them off. Have your TP up and SS every time it comes up. Keep in mind that even though most of your skills are 30m I only have SS in melee range. Last note before I get into the different advanced classes is that: even though I am most effective at melee range that means in no way that you leave the point. If they try to range you then use your ranged abilities near the objective you are protecting:

 

2.0.1 – Juggernaut:

 

Will most likely use a leap to get to you. After the leap you will be able to determine which spec the Jugg is. I mostly find that they are the shared tree so they will use smash. Do not panic if he hits you for over 5K, just use your SS right away then starting healing, they will probably try to interrupt right away so it is ideal that you use your AMP so that they lock out your AMP which is on CD to begin with. Continue with a combo of KB, MP and BI. Also keep in mind to cleanse with FAid as required and SS when it is up. Always be moving (strafe left or right to maximize speed) and of course, if they are out of range of SS you should default to HS.

 

2.0.2 – Marauder:

 

Will most likely use a leap to get to you. Can be a bit tricky to identify what spec they are running. If smash happens then they are for sure shared tree, if master strike happens then quickly hit your CG or CC to stop the 3rd hit. Keep healed up with your skills and SS when it is up. I do not know the spec but there is a dot spec, so FAid as required. Always be moving (strafe left or right to maximize speed) if they are out of range of SS you should default to HS.

 

2.0.3 – Sorcerer:

 

Here is an example of an AC trying to goad you off the objective. I find that FA and HS work best when you can. When you are not healing yourself throw in FAid when you got dots burning you. Oh and keep in mind that they can heal themselves making for a very long battle. Also keep in mind that CG will stop the heal cast, it also opens up the fact that you can HIB them, I recommend you take the opportunity and do so. Now how do you stop the next heal since you only got 4 seconds of stun. The answer is TO then CR, now keep in mind that this give them full resolve if you have to CG then CR right after each other, and they will most likely use the CC break, so I recommend that you toss the SG followed by ER then FA, hopefully that enough burst to finish them off. Lastly, note that 1 v 1 against a healer = stalemate.

 

2.0.4 – Assassin

 

This battle is a stalemate, but a really good one will beat you down. There is nothing I have tried where I can beat this guy because of self heals. I have however beat down really bad ones using my heal and SS combo. If one if these guys show up the key is to stay alive long enough for help to arrive. FAid and heal as much as you can on yourself. Keep your distance and HS.

 

2.0.5 – Mercenary

 

Same fight style to a sorceror. Only difference is they might be in shared tree the Pyro tree or whatever it call, I will cover that in the next section down.

 

2.0.6 – PowerTech

 

The trees other than pyro tree are pretty much just heal/SS till the guy is dead, it can get a bit more complicated, but not too much. Now the Pyro is most effective at melee range, which is good for you, since the gap closer they got is yank, they yank you to them. I recommend that you LOS them utilizing the objective until they get really close so that you do not get ninja capped. Having faced so many, it is essentially the class with the craziest burst. Even bads can play this class well. Your main skill to combat is FAid, now the CD is 6 seconds and they have no CD, so you gotta keep FAid up as much as possible, SS and heal/FAid, depending on how the procs go on their side, this battle is pretty much a coin toss. Always be moving (strafe left or right to maximize speed), if they are out of range of SS you should default to HS.

 

2.0.7 – Operative

 

More often than not, this fight is a hard one. Since these guys will pretty much have the jump on you, the key is to have your stealth scan up, but that is not always the case, because you have a 10 second gap I believe from when it ends until you can cast another one. In the event that you get jumped because they are cloaked, the battle will most likely go like this. Knockdown to backshot, if this crits you lose a large portion of health just on opener. The key is to not panic, when you get up just turn your face so you are face to face. Now cast MP, he will interrupt, cast AMP, this will force him to stun you. I believe your resolve bar will now be full. RS and your MP should not be locked out anymore. Get to full and keep fighting, combination of heal and SS, I try not to kite this guy, because I do not know how hit detection works, he wants your back so they can do backshot. Do not give them the pleasure of it.

 

2.0.8 – Sniper

 

This fight just centres on the fact that the sniper is a cast DPS. Just LOS then jump back out into sight and instant attacks like ER/SG/HS and then jump back behind whatever you are using for cover. You will essentially force the sniper to get up and move position, just keep rinse and repeat hiding. Heal when needed, you get lots of time to heal.

 

2.1 – Warzones:

 

2.1.1 – The Civil War (Alderaan)

 

There are plenty of places to hide here, the best ones, however, are the node at the objectives, I could be wrong but I do use body type 1 so I use the node for LOS. On the East and West sides the stair cases leading up to the nodes are good points to use as LOS, in mid point the stair cases are good for kiting as well. Lastly there is a downed ship on the West and some Power generators on the East. Running around these items and tossing heals to yourself when you need it, really, really, frustrates the enemy. Test this, get a duel going with a buddy, and just stand there and take damage. Compare that to a duel where, you run around a pillar or something, cleanse yourself when he snares, and toss your KB and BI when you can on yourself. The Time to Kill (TTK) is way different.

 

2.1.2 – The Voidstar

 

In the first room there are 4 pillars, kiting people around them really pisses them off, in the bridge room, there are somewhat pillars just below the attackers spawn, and then there are 4 pillars on the defenders side. In the final room, there are some crates near the attacker spawn and a stair case on the East, and some crates on the West of the defender sides.

 

2.13 – The Pit (Huttball)

 

Possibly one of my favourite maps, just because of the amount of places to hide and the traps, yes I may have only 1 knock back on 30 second cooldown, but I will say in a fight I can live for over 30 seconds if I miss my first knock back. I will not go into too many details but as a healer you should very rarely have the hutt ball. The only times you should have it is:

1. when no one is around in the middle and the ball spawns

2. someone tosses it to you because you are in a good position

Make sure you relay the ball ASAP. Find the ball runner in your team toss him the TP and stick to him like glue with your HS.

 

2.14 – Novare Coast

 

The giant turret at each point, also hiding inside the point works too sometimes, but not necessarily all the time, now the problem with using the giant turrets at the East and West points are that when you using these to LOS the enemy, someone could just sneak right into the point and cap it. Depending on how coordinated your team is, get your defenders to cluster around the cap point, with you blocking the console, if there are a lot of guys around, it is not only hard to manually target you, but tab targeting will be hard.

Edited January 11, 2013 by SPrime

[SPrime]

3.0 – PVE:

 

I am not going to cover flashpoints, I might do that in a later edit.

 

Notes:

PVE is a little less hectic for EV and KP so movement is not as important as it is in PVP, now I am not just going to say all you need to do is stand still and throw heals to people because that is not how the mechanics of some fights work.

 

For rotation, there is no set rotation. Although for EC there sort of is for the first 2 bosses if your team understands the mechanic. Always have TP on the tank before the match and have 30 charges of SCC. Always a good idea to use AMP before MP, and KB, just a note here that I parse my fights and KB is by far the most healing I do sometimes it does over 50% of the healing I provide, so essentially this is a spam ability every 6 seconds.

 

Triage the same way as in PVP; heal whom you deem to have the highest risk of going down, when in doubt toss a KB, keep in mind in the Tier 2 Operations aka Hard Mode Denova the tank takes precedence in triage order, just think of him as a wealthier person who will pay for medicare first.

 

3.1 – Flashpoints:

 

Reserved

 

3.2 – Operations:

 

I am not going to cover trash mobs. I will cover only the strategies that me and my guild run, I know there are many others but I do not really know other ones.

 

3.2.1 – Eternity Vault:

 

Composition is 1 tank, 5 dps, 2 healers, 1 dps should be either a vanguard, guardian or shadow just in case you need someone to hold aggro if the tank goes down or gets pulled into a mind trap, although in the final phase of SOA as long as you can keep heals on the person who SOA targets they should be able to kite him into the pylon. Also note the battle is the same on all difficulties, no new mechanics are introduced, just the bosses hit harder and have more HP. AKA after you get the title on Nightmare mode there is no need to run it on Nightmare mode anymore.

 

3.2.1.1 – Annihilation Droid XRR-3: Fairly simple tank and spank. He runs on a time based rotation up until 10%. Being all melee classes we distribute into a half circle formation around the boss (why half circle you ask?? I think we do it because he has a frontal cleave, if he doesn’t then the real reason is at random he will throw a red target on someone that someone will have to move away from the group as it does splash damage when it explodes).

 

With the tank facing the large doors that you see behind the boss, assign all members of the DPS to a clock position. Also with all the classes being melee, in order to keep the DPS going during one of his phases we choose a clock position to stack on (I will elaborate more in a bit). The healers are at 15m range at around 4 and 8 oclock. Every 30-40 seconds I would say the boss will randomly do 1 or 2 things. 1 he will do an AOE knockback, at this point, when the melee gets knocked back they should all be using their gap closers because following the knockback the boss announces that “I am armed with 42 distinct weapon technologies” and goes into a missile barrage that hits everyone, everyone with gap closers should land in the vicinity of the boss, and at this point you should use SCC (key was to save it for this) both healers should be tossing AOE heals and HOTS, when the missiles stop everyone should reset positioning. The other of the 2 is “Storm Protocol”, the robot will announce “Storm Protocol Initiated” what happens in this phase is that red reticules will appear on the floor underneath everyone. At this time, everyone in the party should be moving and not standing in them, the phase will eventually

end. He will repeat all these until 10% health, at this point, he will go right into a missile barrage, I cannot recall if he announces it or not, but he fires them faster and they hit harder, you can try to outlast by LOSing on one of the turret towers, but I think if you wait too long he enrages, the best solution I find in Nightmare mode is that everyone pops defensive cooldowns and everyone stack together so that AOE heals and what not can hit, and at this point just burn your ammo, no need to conserve. Just a note here this battle can be done with 2 commando healers no matter what other people think, if you have 2 commandos the key is when you are stacking that you split the groups into 2 groups of 4, save SCC for this, then toss a KB down on your mini group, followed by (AMP->MP->BI->KB->so on) do not use HS.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ??? seconds

 

• TP on tank, continual HS on tank and throw heals (AMP->MP) to people who get the red explosive target, refresh TP on tank as it runs out.

 

• Missile Barrage – Everyone stacks use SCC toss KB then go AMP->MP->BI->KB, if people are dropping there is no need to follow the rotation, triage those that are dropping first. Refresh TP on tank if it is gone by now.

 

• Storm Protocol – Just stay out of the reticules and HS should always be up, use KB and BI if you have them, every so often a reticule will not appear on you, take this opportunity to toss a MP on someone. As always refresh TP on tank if tank needs it.

 

• 10% Missile Barrage – Defensive cooldowns RS and AR, SCC KB and triage, mostly keep the other healer up followed by WIN.

 

3.2.1.2 – Gharj: Slightly more difficult tank and spank, runs on a time based rotation. When you enter the chamber you will notice that there are little islands, and the boss is standing on one, you will also notice that there are tiny little steps leading to all the islands. The tank should pull threat and point him away from the group since he has a cleave attack. The healing will be a bit hectic at points as mentioned before our comp is all melee, just ensure that you make it clear to your team that when the words “Gharg is going into Frenzy” appear on the screen, that all the melee move at least 15 m away from him to avoid his jump which is an AOE attack. Very soon after the island you are standing on will begin to shake, this is the queue to get to the next island, little platforms somewhere around the island will appear. You and your ops will have to move by jumping on the little platforms, keep in mind if you have to past direct through Gharj to get to the platforms, you should wait until he lands a jump before running, as he will smoke your ops trying to run past him. Starting on the second island Gharj will do a knockback to the whole ops group minus the person who has aggro on him. Depending on your distance away from him you will most likely get knocked into the lava, do not panic just run back on the island and start healing away, I will note here that there are pillars of lava, do not position yourself to be knocked into them, they are instant death. Again he will go into frenzy and you will have to platform over to a new island. Starting on the third island, in the phase that the island begins to rumble and you need to move, adds will spawn, we just get someone to AOE taunt all of them, and 1-2 people just AOE them down, then move to next island. You should be able to have Gharj down 2-3 more islands after this.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ??? seconds

• Island 1 – TP on tank, continual HS on tank throw heals on people who do not get outta AOE range in time (AMP->MP) you can use your SSC at anytime in this battle as there is no real need to save it, KB on the group facing the back of Gharj.

 

• Frenzy, if you saved your SSC use it now and KB the group.

 

• Platform over to next island HS, BI and KB as you are moving.

 

• Island 2 – TP on tank, continual HS on tank throw heals on people who do not get outta AOE.

 

• Check positioning for boss AOE knockback, then when it happens runs back onto the platform and heal up, KB on the group facing the back of Gharj.

 

• Frenzy, if you saved your SSC use it now and KB the group.

 

• Platform over to next island HS, BI and KB as you are moving.

 

• Island 3 and beyond – TP on tank, continual HS on tank throw heals on people who do not get outta AOE.

 

•Check positioning for boss AOE knockback, then when it happens runs back onto the platform and heal up, KB on the group facing the back of Gharj.

 

•Frenzy, if you saved your SSC use it now and KB the group.

 

•If the off tank does not get adds use PC as they will probably aggro to a healer

 

•Repeat Island 3 series and WIN.

 

3.2.1.3 – The Ancient Pylons: Not really a hard fight, nor is it heal intensive. The puzzle is separated into 2 parts that need to be completed together, so you should separate into groups of 4. There are 6 faces on the blocks and it goes as follows : Green, Red, Purple, Square with dot, Yellow, Squiggle, so what does that mean you ask? Well there are 2 consoles at the base of the pylons the left console and the right console, they rotate the puzzle once in the respective direction, so the left console rotates the middle column left 1 space. So the key to solving is to match the middle to the outside, i.e., outside is Green, and you want to get there from Yellow, I would rotate the blocks twice on the right console. The battle does not start until someone activates a console, so take your time to solve the puzzle beforehand. In between the consoles is a lock button, when the colours match, lock in the level of the puzzle, and wait for the other group to do the same. The key to this puzzle is that you will have to rotate console

pressers as when you press a console you get a debuff for 30 seconds where you cannot press it (in story mode this debuff does not occur and 1 person can complete the puzzle). Every so often adds will spawn, I think they are of the Rakata race and they have a shield or some kind of debuff that they cast on you and your team mates that deflects damage back, just be careful and mindful that you may need to throw heals on your team, but they should not take too much damage. The really tough add shows up around the third or fourth level depending how long you have been working on it, but with the crawler you can cc and stun to burn him down faster, but keep in mind the moment he hits someone, you need to FAid, because that hit bleeds, and it bleeds hard.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• Solve puzzle and inform your team of the console presses required to solve.

 

• TP someone it really does not matter, if the tank is on your side give it to him.

 

• Ensure other side is ready and hit first console together to activate.

 

• Clear mob, heal up and tell 1 of the other 3 people on your side to hit the console, lock in if level is solved.

 

• Repeat until whole puzzle is done.

 

3.2.1.4 – Duel of the Fates (Infernal Council): The solo battle as a healer, you will get assigned to fight an assassin whom has the least amount of HP and the most amount of burst damage. The battle is fairly easy and all you have to do is really follow my PVP strat to beating people down. One thing to note is ensure that you do not do AOE of anything, as in if you hit the guy over or heal the guy over, you will effectively lock yourself outta the battle, and the guy you are leashed to will kill you since you cannot attack him nor can you heal yourself.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – 2 minutes

 

• TP on yourself, charge SSC on your target.

 

• When he drops (someone activates the battle) SCC and just CB until you about to run out of SCC end with a FA.

 

• Heal yourself all the way.

 

• SS and HS until your next FA comes up.

 

• Heal and if you get SCC use it and CB.

 

• WIN.

 

3.2.1.5 – SOA the Infernal One: There are 5 phases to this fight, and I will explain them all. Phase 1 – Upper circle fairly simple just attack him down to 70%, when that happens he will become invincible, your whole ops group should move to the west side of the circle almost to the point that you fall off the edge. The inner floor will drop.

 

Phase 2 – Platform drop down I will not go into too much depth here as I do not remember the exact pattern of the drops, just keep HSing people, if the jump looks too far it probably is, just wait and another platform will drop and give you less of a drop down. As you are waiting, you and the other healer should be tossing as heals. Your ops should be taking out the pylons on the platforms.

 

Phase 3 – Level 2 is a firestorm of destruction. A few mechanics are introduced: once SOA lands and becomes vulnerable he will grab at random 1 person from the group and slam him in a mind trap, it is a little box that will be someone on the perimeter of the outer most circle. As a healer you should not worry too much about these, just call them out and your DPS should be on them, the tank will need to hold aggro, if by chance the tank is yanked into it the off tank should taunt and hold him while the team gets the tank out. Also at random will be 2 lighting balls that spawn, on the screen it will tell you who the 2 balls are targeting, and you will see to pylon like lighting spires appear with a white like glow, it is important that the 2 people who are called out on the screen, immediately run towards them, when the balls start moving you will then be able to determine which ball belongs to who. Do not kite, do not side step, do not do anything, except run into the centre of it as fast as you can, this is damage that has to be eaten, it does about 4-6 k so it is up to the healers to make sure that everyone in the group has more than this. Also I will reiterate how important it is to make sure other people are not around the balls as they zap lighting that does damage to surrounding people. Also at random he will pick someone up and spin them around the room, this effectively makes that person useless for the duration of the animation. At around 30% he will go invulnerable again and you move into another drop down platform phase, ensure the ops moves to the west to reduce the damage taken from drops.

 

Phase 4 – Straight forward and pretty much the same as phase 2.

 

Phase 5 – Same mechanic is phase 3 only he does not randomly pick someone up. Lighting balls still spawn and people will still get yanked into mind traps. The last thing is SOA is invulnerable, the key is that the tank should be zoomed out to max camera distance to determine where a giant pylon is going to fall. Sometime in this phase a pylon (at random) on the outskirts of the wall will go up into the air, the group should have their eyes peeled when one goes up. The tank will then have to kite SOA so that he is going to get drilled by it, everyone should clear the area as getting hit by the pylon 1 shots you. When he gets hit by it, everyone should be focused on burning him down, healing can come after it is more important that he take as much damage as possible. Depending how well your group does you can finish him off with 2 pylons, he will enrage after the third pylon, it is ok he does not hit very hard, but enough to have the healers on their toes.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – After third pylon drop on phase 5 if he is not downed

 

• Phase 1 – TP on tank HS and heal whoever gets hit.

 

• Phase 2 – Follow team HS while running BI, also KB as much as possible when group stops to wait for platform to drop SCC and heal up people.

 

• Phase 3 – TP on tank HS and heal, be mindful if you get targeted by a lighting ball, eat it.

 

• Phase 4 – Same as phase 2.

 

•Phase 5 – TP on tank HS and heal, be mindful if you get targeted by a lighting ball, eat it. When SOAs shields are down DPS him with SCC, FA, HIB, SG, CB as much as possible, heal up team and WIN.

 

3.2.2 - Karagga’s Palace

 

Comp is 1 tank, 4 dps, 1 dps (offtank) in some tanking gear 2 healers.

 

3.2.2.1 – Bonethrasher: Not really a difficult fight, just have to be mindful of his cleaves. In this fight the tank does not really have to tank. Instead, have the tank change to a DPS stance. The reason for this, is that at random he changes aggro, and cannot be taunted. So be prepared to get hit, as there is nothing you can do. Though keep in mind that he hits like a truck and if your group is not paying attention, everyone can get hit for over 8k at once. What we find that works best is that 1 person has target of target on, making him the caller, since our comp is all melee this is very important not only for the DPS but for the healers too. Since healers are ranged the best place for them is to stand away from the group but not near the edge, try to have at least 7m to the edge as he has an AOE knockback that will hit everyone in the group. If you get knocked off the platform the acid will burn you to death. When the fight first starts whoever hits Bonethrasher first will get aggro and be the target of the first cleave. After that attack he might remain targeted to him or might change immediately, it does not matter the caller needs to call who has it. Now what happens here can go two ways; either everyone who is not the target runs through his legs and starts DPSing on the other side, or the target runs through the legs, I recommend that your ops determine the course of action they want to take. Every so often an add will spawn with a giant red cone of light on him: this guy needs to die because if the boss eats him, he goes into a soft enrage where he hits harder. At 50% cats will spawn, they jump from the east and west, we normally knock them off the ledge, but if they walk into the centre of the platform this will not be possible, someone will have to cc them over and over, you can take them out, but depending on DPS you may hit the boss enrage timer.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ??????

 

• TP yourself, no real use in refreshing it this battle as tank cannot hold aggro.

 

• Stand at East or West of platform, this is to position yourself for knocking the cat add into the acid.

 

• No rotation for heals here, no need to cleanse either, throw whatever you can, ensure that everyone has at least 8k HP or they may die at the next cleaving attack.

 

• Help call out adds.

 

• Knockback cat that spawns at 50% and then walk forward a bit so the cat cannot jump back up at you.

 

• WIN.

 

3.2.2.2 – Jarg and Sorno: Main tank on Jarg, off tank on Sorno, give whichever tank you are assigned to the TP. For this fight I recommend that you try to keep your tank up at pretty much full as much as possible. Let the other healer worry about his tank, chances are the main tank can mitigate enough of Jarg, keeping in mind that Sorno tank is probably wearing all dps gear he will be taking a bit more damage. Sorno has 2 skills that need to be interrupted: a heal and full auto like skill. The tank and DPS should coordinate which ones they are interrupting. I do not know the percentages but every so often Sorno will fly up into the rafters and start shooting purple reticules on the floor, stay outta of them. At a few points in the battle Jarg and Sorno will centre themselves in the room, and Sorno will AOE pull people them him, just make sure to move away as soon as possible, because when he pulls you he does an AOE attack. Also every so often a carbonizer droid will spawn and freeze the person who has aggro on Jarg, which is essentially the main tank. Burn this droid down as fast as possible. Other than that there is not much more to explain, if your DPS stacks for you then you can KB them. Ensure that they die within 5% of each others health, as they go into a soft enrage when one dies.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ??

 

• TP your tank, keep HS going until other heals are needed.

 

• Throw heals as needed.

 

• I recommend saving SCC until Sorno jumps into the rafters because in this phase the group should be taking some damage from the AOE he casts from up there.

 

• Help call out carbonizer droids.

 

• WIN.

 

3.2.2.3 – Foreman Crusher: Tank and spank. Ideally the healer assigned to keep the main tank up would be a Commando. When you first enter the arena you will see the boss being held by 4 adds. The main tank will aggro the boss while the others work on the adds. It is recommended that the tank gets him near a wall as he has a large knock back and after the knock back he drops threat against the tank. Anyways, my role here is to stay on the tank pretty much the whole time, with TP and HS always going and with other heals as needed. Save the SCC until his frenzy phase. With the tank holding threat near the wall, and the DPS and other healer clearing the adds, there will be a few other mechanics. Large red reticule: get outta this asap, when this comes up you will see the boss do an animation where the throws a giant rock into the air, getting hit by this is pretty much 8k damage, not good, he only targets ranged classes. Dust cloud, as a healer you must get out of this cloud, it provides a debuff that reduces your healing by 95%, pretty much rendering you useless, the debuff disappears when you leave the cloud. Every so often on the screen you will see that it say “Foreman Crusher is going into a frenzy” at this point use SCC and toss a KB on to the tank for damage reduction, after that KB follow by just spamming AMP>MP even if the tank is at full, because the damage produced just blows the tank down, do not even think about doing a HS because the tank can be dead in a matter of seconds. At the end of frenzy he will do a massive AOE knock back and target someone that is not the tank. Not to worry though, as the tank should be able to save you if you get aggro. Every 25% adds will spawn, your role will be to stay on main tank using TP and HS and heals as needed, just make sure to get SSC up for the next frenzy.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP on tank, remember your role is to stay on the tank at all times, only if the other healer is going to die is when I change targets and heal, or if the other healer says he needs help.

 

• HS and heal tank as needed.

 

• When boss goes into frenzy, SCC when you see frenzy on the screen, if you miss the message he actually glows red or looks like he goes super saiyan. Toss KB, and heal AMP>MP.

 

• Rinse and repeat until dead.

 

3.2.2.4 – G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator Droid: There are 2 parts to this fight: a puzzle and the boss aggro, with both happening simultaneously. The group will have to be split into 2, 5 people in the pit, 3 up above on the puzzle. Our set up is Guardian, Sentinel and Sage on top, I have heard that if you have 3 ranged classes this boss is super easy.

 

I am not going to explain the details of solving the puzzle it should be fairly straightforward and if it is not then it is basically a Tower of Hanoi puzzle. The starting point of the boss is the location of armour

 

screen burn, in order to do any meaningful damage to the boss he must be under that location. Keep in mind that anyone around the boss should be outside of the launch zone (aka the little yellow caution tape around), if they are standing in it as the fire comes out, they die. Anyways the first armour burn is a gimme, so it is ideal that you set up the puzzle first. Get all DPS in position as to attack, aka the guardian or sentinel doing the puzzle should be on the ground (the sage will be standing on the middle platform). Get classes that you have to put the armour reduction stacks on, aka guardian 5 stack of whatever it is called, then hit the launch button.

 

The enrage timer starts when the first launch button is hit. After the burn phase, the guardian will guardian leap up to the sage, and the sage will rescue the sentinel up. The sentinel will then use Transcendence to make sure everyone gets to their console in a timely fashion. As the burn phase ends droids will spawn, there are 2 kinds, stun droids are very annoying if you get into range of one and exploding droids, they DOT you up when you eat one. Avoid both, I tend to stand near the middle launch pad, between the spawn of a stun droid and an exploding droid, both are out of range of me and do nothing.

 

The idea now is to heal up the tank; it gets a bit harder as the battle goes on because the tank will be gaining armour reduction stacks, so he gradually takes more and more damage. If you have another group member that can taunt this is ideal, it takes about 30 secs for the debuff to wear off, so when that happens the tank can re taunt him. Keep in mind that the puzzle cannot launch in the same spot 2 times in a row, so the tank needs to kite the boss to another launch pad for a debuff on the boss. The middle launch pad will remove all droids from the boss fight, the far left pad will remove the armour screen but only to regular damage, not double like the burn one does that is the far right. So what we do is the 2 DPS jump the stun droids and then the tank kites the boss to the launch pad of our choosing, it does not really matter, but if you ask me the one that removes the droids is better. Get the boss back into position for the amour burn and rinse and repeat. One other thing I will note is the DPS should

form a circle around the boss, not that the boss has cleave but will throw a grenade at random onto someone, you then have 2 seconds to respond as in get away from everyone before it explodes. This does a lot of damage and has splash damage.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP tank and keep HS going.

 

• SCC and KB use AMP>MP and BI when it is up, when tank has too many stacks and off tank taunts, start healing off tank.

 

• As healer just stand there and soak sticky bomb if you are target, if not then heal up whoever got it. Note that the 3 guys up above, do not heal them, they have a sage healer up there, let him sort it out, as he is not trying to be mega conservative on ammo as you will be.

 

• Throw KB as much as possible.

 

• WIN.

 

3.2.2.5 – Karagga the Unyielding: Tank and spank but with a few things to keep in mind. With this fight, the tank will be slowly kiting him around the room. Why you ask? Because Karagga is taking a scorched earth policy towards you and your group, as I am pretty sure he is not very pleased with the fact that you are going to dethrone him and take his hat.

 

Anyways pretty simple the tank will be moving him around the room probably the easiest way I would think, it is really up to him, the DPS should be on his side and not his back, because every so often he will spit fire out his back side, and char the ground, once that piece is charred, it remains on fire for the remainder of the fight. Do not stand/step in it, it burns and will kill you. In addition, every so often exploding mouse droids will spawn (like 4 of them I think). When they spawn DPS should AOE and kill them before they reach their target, I do not know how they choose a target, but I assume it is random. If they reach their target, keep in mind a person can eat 2 without dying, 3 = dead, and if you allow 4 to get to one person, I recommending that you press the “x” button on the top right of your screen, go to your web browser and go install Hello Kitty Online. Every so often the boss will pick someone at random, who will become rooted and magnetic, this magnetic attraction pulls in 4 others, the ones who get pulled need to move away fast or they will take damage. Also at random little drills will pop out of the ground and hit people, this damage is unavoidable, and it always interrupts any cast spell.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP tank and keep HS going on him.

 

• Avoid fire.

 

• Heal up those who take damage, use SCC as it comes up, no need to save it.

 

• Help call out exploding mouse droids or your job becomes a bit more difficult.

 

• If you get pulled into someone move away from them, if you are selected as the puller just keep healing as normal.

 

• Nothing special with this fight just WIN.

 

3.2.3 – Explosive Conflict (Story Mode)

 

Comp should be 2 tanks 4 dps and 2 healers the first 2 fights Zorn and Toth and Firebrand and Stormcaller should be 2 groups that are self sufficient as in 1 tank 2 dps and 1 healer each. Can be completed if everyone in your group has a at minimum of Columni gear.

 

3.2.3.1 – Zorn and Toth: Dual tank and spank, pretty simple with different mechanics every 10%. I have healed both sides and find that the fight is a lot easier if the dps you are paired with are ranged, but it can be done with all melee. The role of the tanks in your group are to hold aggro on the bosses, and they need ensure they are not close to each other because they do more damage the closer to each other they are.

 

Start the battle with your separate groups (I will give perspective from the group on Toth), when the health of Toth hits 90%, 70%, 50%, 30% and 10%: Toth will jump to Zorn, anyone within 30m of Zorn will receive a debuff from Toth called Fearless, this debuff in Story mode just increases incoming damage, I will explain the Hard Mode mechanic in a later section. At this point it is recommended that you swap bosses, so your tank will taunt Zorn while the other boss taunts Toth, the dps should also change targets, as the tank will get Zorn to walk to the location he was tanking Toth. 80% Toth goes into a frenzy, simple enough Toth just does more damage to his current target, just heal through it. 60% red circles and dot damage, in this phase you will gradually bleed there is nothing you can do to stop it, also there are red circles that will appear at random, GET out of them ASAP, if you are in the middle of cast, do not finish it, you cannot beat the circle, with my alacrity boost my fast heal is 0.95 seconds, fast enough to hit target, too slow to get out of circle.

 

Now the cycle repeats all the way to 50% jump and fearless debuff, 40% Toth frenzy, 30% jump, 20% red circles, 10% jump and red circles. When both bosses are downed, their handler gets mad and jumps down into the fight, the closest tank will need to taunt him, because he can do quite a bit of damage. Now that you have everyone on him, he should be useless as anything he cast should get interrupted, nothing special with him, just burn him down.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP tank, continually apply TP when it runs out and position yourself 30m from your tank and as far away as possible from both bosses.

 

• Depending on which boss is on your tank watch the health of Toth and prepare for jumps when applicable (i.e. 90%, 70%, 50%, 30%, 10%).

 

• SCC when it is up and just constantly toss KB and heals to people around the boss.

 

• When Toth goes into frenzy it is important to watch the tanks health if it is your tank that gets frenzied, pretty much like Foreman Crusher, just heal him for the time being.

 

• Red circles stay out of them, use only instant cast, if you can start casting before a red circle appears under you, it is up to you to decide if you can beat the circle or not.

 

• When the 2 bosses are down the mini boss will come out, nothing special here, just own him. That is all.

 

3.2.3.2 – Firebrand and Stormcaller: Another dual tank and spank, this battle is all about positioning. 1 person will have to be on the ground at all times. From my experience: that person should be the healer for Firebrand. Why you ask? Well Firebrand does not hit as hard thus resulting in less healing is required, making that tank the easier of the two. We normally stand him near the archway towards the next boss. We then position the 2 dps per tank, on the outside of the tanks (i.e., wall side of both Firebrand and Stormcaller). The tanks will both stand directly in front of the bosses, the other healer will stand near the 2 dps that are on Stormcaller right on the lip of Stormcaller. Fairly simple fight, try to avoid being beside the tank, for reason of betting shot with frontal cone.

 

Now the mechanics are timed and HP based, what does that mean you ask? The first mechanic will be Stormcaller will fire a lighting spire into the air, the target? Choice of anyone on the ground, the way we set it up, that would be the healer that is healing Firebrand side, when it lands just get out of the spire. What happens after that?? Firebrand will target a random person on the ground, which will be the healer on Firebrand side. The animation looks like a reticule with a yellow laser beam going up. The healer should cleanse himself and move out of it. Do not worry it is not instant cast, I think you get about 5 seconds before it hits you. Right after that, Stormcaller will cast dot damage and give a debuff called double destruction to the 2 people closest to him, so the tank should back up a bit and turn the tank right into the group of 3 people on him aka the 2 dps and 1 healer, it does not matter who takes it as long as the tank does not receive the double destruction. Why you ask? Any lightning damage from Stormcaller onto someone with double destruction will enhance the damage, and pretty

much 1 shots you. 4 seconds after that Firebrand will cast a debuff called Incinerate armour, the tank will eat this, and the healer will have to keep the tank up.

 

At intervals: 80%, 60%, 40% and 20% of Stormcallers health, the tanks will say they are going into defensive systems, which gives them some sort of armour buff and spawns some adds that are under a shield generator. Now everyone on Firebrands side will get under the shield that is spawned near the healer. For Stormcaller it is a bit more complex, the 2 dps and healer get under the shield that spawns near Stormcaller, but the tank will need to kite I think 6 of the lightning spires that drop over the course of this phase, meaning the tank cannot get under the shield or he will drop a lightning spire on the whole group wiping them. It is important that no AOE attacks occur also that no one targets the shield generator and blows it up, or else you will take lots of damage from missile barrages. The phase officially ends when you see red reticules on the ground everyone reset positions, and rinse and repeat until bosses are downed.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• My standpoint will be from that of Stormcaller.

 

• TP on tank, when battle begins you should be on your speeder so that you can get onto the tank platform asap.

 

• HS on tank and heal with AMP>MP as needed.

 

• When you see double destruction being cast, you will see 2 large bubble appear on the boss, I tend to move up close with the dps so that the tank has a lower chance of taking double destruction.

 

• At this point I use SCC and KB all 4 on my side, heal over and over and keep tossing KB until the debuff dot disappears.

 

• Every 20% “defensive systems” you can either run to the shield or point yourself in the direction of the shield and let the boss knock you to it, I recommend running to the shield as the trajectory that you get knocked might be way off.

 

• KB the group with you, and try to target your tank, who is kiting lightning spires, heal him when he gets in range.

 

• When missile barrage phase ends TP your tank and get back into position

 

• Rinse and repeat to victory.

 

3.2.3.3 – Colonel Volgoth: The puzzle boss, here the tanks will have to split up, 1 tank goes up into the watch tower and becomes the minesweeper and the other will be in the field. How it works is the tank that has decided to go up the platform will activate a console and reveal the mines, much like minesweeper. I do not know how it works or anything about what he is doing up there, so do not ask me about it. I just know he reveals the board to us, green is safe red is unsafe. So there are many aspects to this fight but is fairly simple.

 

The tank manning the mine field will unveil the board, you will see green squares and red squares, the group will stack on the first green square and the sweeper will call out a droid that has a kit that can disarm a red square. Blow him up and someone in the group will get the defuse kit, at this point the sweeper will make 1 red square safe only for the person with the defuse kit, that person needs to go to it and right click the mine in the centre of the square. This is pretty much what you gotta do until you reach the end of the field. When you do get there, 1 person should see a panel on the right side, that panel needs to be blown up because it controls turrets overhead.

 

Next the tank that is in the mine field with you needs to area taunt as the boss (Colonel Volgoth) spawns with 2 adds. This phase is just a typical tank and spank, 4 things to be mindful of are; at random he will change targets, one of the tanks will have to taunt to pick him back up. Turrets will spawn at some time in the fight, it is best to just CC these and worry about them afterwards. At random he will choose someone to large red circle, that person should get out of range of everyone around him as there is no way to dodge this circle. At random a small red circle will spawn on someone, this is an immobile red circle so everyone who is near or in it should move out of it.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP tank in mine field, stick close to group and drop heals as required, HS when not dropping heals

 

• If your name is called on the screen, wait for yellow square and disarm bomb

 

• Note that you can heal the silhouette of the tank that is up in the tower. So if he is in range just top him off.

 

•When the minefield is completed, if you are first out head to the turret control panel and disable it.

 

•Reapply TP to the tank, and just HS and KB the group that is attacking the boss.

 

•Watch for the large red reticule and just queue up some heals on the person who gets it.

 

•When turrets spawn, use CR on one of them, probably best to be assigned one so that you do not overlap someone else’s mezz.

 

•WIN

 

3.2.3.4 – Warlord Kephess: A complex cluster F of stuff going on in this fight. First when you enter the chamber you will notice 3 gold droids and a large AT-AT walker called Warstrider driod. *New to this phase added in 1.4 is the calibrating shot stacks. When the droids get a cast off they get a buff that reduces incoming damage. When interrupted they take more damage, it is best to separate your group into 2 groups of 3 and 1 group of 2. Ideally the group of 2 will both have 8 or less second cooldown of the interrupt (this may not always be the case), note here that everyone needs to interrupt, even you the healers will have to do this, the best method we have found that works is in the groups of 3 you have one caller each that will direct who is up next. If the group of 2 does not both have 8 second interrupts, then the priority of the group that first downs their droid will have to go help them, as they will most likely have built up 3 stacks of the buff.* When they are all down, a Trandoshan will spawn (Baradium Bomber) this guy needs to be burned down fast because he has a timer to explode. If you do end up killing him, 1 person at random in the operation will get mark above their head. They should immediately move right under the Warstrider droid and they will automatically propel up and bomb the droid down (much like Luke does in the Empire Strikes Back). This will bring the droid down and make it vulnerable to attack, at this point if you have a Sage in your group as the other healer I recommend that the sage cast salvation on the whole group, while myself who is the CM just help DPS the droid. The key is to get the droid down to at least 60% health. The burn phase ends when the droid starts to stand up, not when the Trandoshan Warrior and his lackeys spawn.

 

When the warrior and lackeys spawn the warrior must die first, because if you attack anyone other than the warrior they will reflect damage back, when the warrior is dead they will not reflect damage back. Rinse and repeat 2 more times, and a Baradium Bomber will spawn again, burn him down, do the Luke Skywalker, and help burn the droid down. The burn phase ends when he starts to stand up, but I recommend stopping all attacks when the 2 pulsor droids drop. Why you ask?? The droids will alternately take turns rail shotting the person furthest away so the way to mitigate the most damage is to have them target the tank by having everyone except for 1 tank to stack on the droid without the purple circle around him (I am not too sure how this mechanic really works, I just know the ideal way to do it is, have 1 of the tanks further out, to control the rail shot to hit the tank).

 

The droids will reverse polarity so the whole group will have to move towards and stack on the other droid, also keeping 1 of the tanks further out to take the rail shot. With both droids down, another Bomber will spawn, also Warlord Kephess jumps down. At this point the tank with more absorption, defence rating and dodge should taunt Kephess and the healer that can produce the most burst (aka combat medic) should be healing him, the other 6 should be working on the bomber. If by any chance that either the healer or the tank that is holding Kephess gets the bomb to take down the droid, the other tank or healer will have to switch roles (i.e. other tank will have to taunt and the healer will have to follow the aggro, or the 2 healers will have to swap). This is the last burn phase and with the little dps produced by the healers from earlier burn phases the Warstrider droid should die.

 

Now this is just phase 1 of the battle, what I did not mention is all while this is happening the Warstrider droid, while not in the burn phase will be spraying a frontal cone in a pattern. Normally I watch the pattern and inform the rest of my group where we can and cannot stand. In SM the cone can be soaked, but in HM I definitely recommend that the spray is avoided at all costs. The spray runs in a snake position starting from the right side of the of the arena when you first enter, or will be directly to the left of the position from the perspective of the Warstrider droid. There are 5 positions which I refer to as Right, diagonal right leg, directly in front, diagonal left leg and left. After a burn phase the droid will continue at the position it left off on. During the phase of the 2 pulsor droids, if the spray

 

hits you it will not damage you. After the burn phase of the pulsor droids, the spray resets to the right position. I recommend that someone is assigned to watch the spray, to be avoided at all times. With the Warstrider droid down, the final phase of the battle begins.

 

For the first 42 percent of the battle it is simply a tank and spank. (58% health remaining). At 58% Kephess will cast a large purple circle around him, make sure everyone is out of it. Once that disappears 1 tank will have to AOE taunt so that he has the most aggro, I also recommend that everyone except for him uses drop aggro skill. When Kephess reaches the tank, he will begin to cast a spell called “Breath of the Masters” and then will knock the tank away. At this point the other tank will have to taunt. The tank that had breath of the masters will then drop a series of small purple circles, he should not stop running for any reason because standing in them for a few seconds will kill the person that includes anyone else in the group. This portion is just rinse and repeat, so the other tank will get Breath of the Masters and then the first tank will taunt off, second tank drops circles and so on. The key to this part is that melee DPS is not standing beside the tank, as Kephess has a frontal cone, the healers can focus on healing just the tanks, even though everyone else may not be full health.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP 1 of the tanks, throw KB at melee, heal who needs to be healed, also try to make sure that your ammo is above 75% as much as possible, if your group is taking lots of damage burn your ammo. Watch the phases you might have a chance to recharge using only HS, but use your reload if it is early in the fight, ensure that you have a reload ready for when Kephess hits 58%. Save SCC for Warstrider droid burn phases. Watch purple spray and call it out continually to your group.

 

• Toss CG to interrupt the Baradium Bomber’s rocket launcher. Heal whoever gets hit by it if the group fails to interrupt it with a stun.

 

• When Warstrider droid gets brought down, pop SCC, HIB, FA, PC, SG, SS, HIB, FA.

 

• When Trandoshan warrior and lackeys come, HS on tank that is taunting the warrior. KB and heals as required.

 

• 2nd Warstrider droid burn, pop SCC, HIB, FA, PC, SG, SS.

 

• Stack on pulsor droid without the purple circle, and HS on tank that is away from group, throw heals to him when he gets rail shotted. While running to next pulsor droid throw a KB on the ground and a BI to anyone is under 13K health, HS on tank and heal when he needs it, keep doing this until both droids are down.

 

• Kephess now jumps down, TP on the tank that is going to taunt him, and queue up heals on him even if he is full health, SCC, KB, AMP, MP. Do not throw another KB just save it in the chance that the tank starts to go down, then toss your KB and BI as fast as possible. Now the reason I say start healing even tho the tank is full health is because Kephess hits fast and he hits hard, the 1.2 seconds it takes me to cast AMP does not beat the time between his hits, so my heal will hit him just after Kephess strikes the tank.

 

• With the Warstrider droid down the other healer will be able to assist in keeping the tank up.

 

• @58% make sure to be outside of his large purple circle and be ready to change healing target when Breath of the Masters is cast.

 

• WIN

 

3.2.4 – Explosive Conflict (Hard Mode)

 

Same comp as story mode but you should be wary about trying to carry someone through, as enrage timers are tight. Ideally everyone is fully decked out in Rakata. The fights are slightly different and I will only cover new mechanics introduced in HM

 

3.2.4.1 – Zorn and Toth

In the Toth frenzy phase, at random someone in the group will get a yellow reticule, this needs to be placed near Toth. The circle turns purple when it is placed, just stand near Toth away from the tank that is. A few things to note, the attack that comes from this hurts a lot so do not place it on the tank that is tanking Toth. If the opposite healer gets the circle, I recommending swapping healers, if the Tank that is on Zorn gets it, it is ok, Zorn remains in place. The other thing to worry about is the fearless debuff, while not always avoidable it should be main on the list of any serious ops group to be avoided at pretty much all costs. Make sure to be communicating well with your group about percentages, remember it occurs at 90%, 70%, 50%, 30% and 10% of Toths health.

 

3.2.4.2 – Firebrand and Stormcaller

Incinerate armour must be avoided by the tank on Firebrand at all costs, if the tank gets it, the 2 tanks will need to swap (i.e. Stormcaller tank taunts Firebrand and Firebrand tank taunts Stormcaller, and they switch positions). The defensive systems phase now drops the shield generators at random in 3 different locations, make sure to identify quickly and get there fast. One thing to note is that if it appears behind the tank when we are getting into position, I follow the tank all the way back to his position using HS all the way, the route our tank takes is through the centre, I follow and continually HS run right in front of the tank to get back into position.

 

3.2.4.3 – Colonel Volgoth

The minefield droid with the disarm kit has a new ability called Overload, this must be interrupted at all costs, as it is the equivalent of Concussion Charge. If it activates, it will kill everyone since it will knock people into the red squares. The assassination droids now explode within proximity of people, so knock them back or kill them before they reach the group. The turrets that spawn when you are fighting Col Volgoth cannot be interrupted so just stay out of their range.

 

3.2.4.4 – Warlord Kephess

*1.4 the calibrating shot stacks must be interrupted. When the droids get a cast off they get a buff that reduces incoming damage. When interrupted they take more damage, it is best to separate your group into 2 groups of 3 and 1 group of 2. Ideally the group of 2 will both have 8 or less second cooldown of the interrupt (this may not always be the case), note here that everyone needs to interrupt, even you the healers will have to do this, the best method we have found that works is in the groups of 3 you have one caller each that will direct who is up next. If the group of 2 does not both have 8 second interrupts, then the priority of the group that first downs their droid will have to go help them, as they will most likely have built up 3 stacks of the buff.*

 

Purple Spray does a lot more damage, keep an eye on it and avoid it at all costs. Pulsor droids rail shots do 13k damage, ensure everyone has at least this much health or you are in trouble. Kephess does more damage, also at the 58% large purple circle, he is even more of a jerk by pulling everyone in. I recommend that you tell everyone to pop their defensive cooldowns at 60%, for me it is AR and RS, also when everyone exits the circle they should use a medpack, as all heals are pretty much going to the tanks.

Edited October 27, 2012 by SPrime

[SPrime]

3.2.5 - Terror From Beyond (Story Mode)

 

Comp will be 2 tanks 2 healers and 4 DPS, since the drops are Rakata, this can be completed in full Columi, but lets be honest here, if you done any other operations prior to this, you should have more than just Columi gear.

 

3.2.5.1 - The Withering Horror

 

Before this fight begins take a look around the room, you will see 3 spots sorta in a triangle where there are some flowers. Watch these spots carefully and try not to stand on the flowers until a Jealous male is spawned.

 

The fight will be begin and be mindful of the bosses frontal cone, it hurts a lot, to avoid this your tank should turn the boss away from the group, the tank will be taking stacks of "Incubate" which if the Jealous male comes out and the Withering horror hits your tank, your tank will die. So at a certain point, I am not sure when either time or trigger, but a Jealous male will spawn. At this instance the other tank will taunt the Withering Horror and the original tank will taunt the Jealous male, the male will remove the incubate from that tank. Also when the Jealous male spawns one of those flowers I mentioned before gets some kinda red looking goop around them. This releases pheromones to whoever stands in it, now this could be a good or bad thing, as the person standing in it will attract adds that spawn anyways even if you do not stand in it. So ideally you would get a ranged dps or a healer standing in it. If you choose a healer to standing in it ensure that before they go in that they can pick up both tanks.

 

At this point all dps should be on the Jealous male, and then when the adds spawn they should aoe on the red goop as the adds will run towards it with the person standing in it. Also keep in mind that once a person stands in it they cannot stand in it again or go into the next one that spawns, if they do they will start taking a lot of dot damage, so be vocal that the flowers spawn and that someone needs to get into it. The boss will constantly burrow and move around 3 positions in the map, all the positions are near the flowers much like a triangle.

 

This is pretty much the fight just rinse and repeat until 10 percent, at this point a Jealous male will spawn and 2 sets of adds will spawn with him, at this phase the tank that has threat on the boss will taunt the male and the other tank will taunt the boss, ignore everything and burn the boss down.

 

Recap: Enrage Timer – ???

 

• TP on the tank who is going to take the boss first, HS and heal as required, if the tank does it right no one will be taking damage so you just have to watch the tank.

 

•Toss KB if the frontal cone does start to hit people in your operation group.

 

• When the Jealous male spawns toss the TP on the other tank who is going to pick up boss, check which flower has the red pool on it here decide who goes into it. Generally when I go into it, I wait until the adds spawn then I will use my defensive cooldowns RS and AR.

 

• This is the fight all the way until 10%. At 10% get everyone to burn the boss down, and heal the tank that is not on the boss as that tank will have aggro all possibly 2 Jealous males and 2 sets of adds.

 

3.2.5.2 - Ciphas, Heirad and Kel'sara

 

Before the fight begins you will see that there are 3 bosses and that if you read the buffs they have, you will see that their health resets when one of them is downed.

 

 

4.0 – Closing

 

I am going to end here with saying that do not worry if you run out of ammo, you get 1 reload, just keep in mind that it is on 2 minute CD. If people are going down, do not be afraid to just slam down MP over and over. If you need to heal yourself a lot, just make sure you use AR on top of your healing it helps a bit. Oh and if you are not biochem, make sure you have lots of med packs with you. The exceptional med packs are sold on the Gav for 1000 credits or your field repair droid for 1500 credits. I hope this guide inspires you to play this awesome class; I look forward to seeing lots of Combat Medic Commandos out there just Stock Striking people to victory. I fully expect the PVP forums to go mad with “OMG NERF THAT COMMANDO BUBBLE THAT MAKES THEM INVINCIBLE” followed by 50 million troll posts that say that is your own damn fault for giving me full resolve.

Edited October 28, 2012 by SPrime

[SPrime]

Reserved for future content..

[SPrime]

Version 1.1 - September 20, 2012

- Minor formatting and some spelling error corrections

- Added clustering around the console on Novare Coast as per OMGitsCHARLIE

- Corrected % from 70 to "75"on SOAs first phase thanks to KeyboardNinja

- Corrected damage from 5-6K from when SOA picks you up to no damage thanks to KeyboardNinja

- Added health % triggers for Defensive systems on Firebrand and Stormcaller thanks to KeyboardNinja

 

Version 2.0 - October 27, 2012

- Minor formatting and some spelling corrections

- Updated Skill tree to reflect changes made to CM build is now 31/8/2

- Corrected % from 75 to "70" on SOAs first phase thanks to LaniAkavir

- Corrected mechanic of Toth and Zorn fight, originally I had the jump percentages incorrect.

- Updated SM and HM Explosive conflict Kephess mechanics (added in 1.4)

- Added Story Mode Terror from Beyond

- Added Hard Mode Terror from Beyond (The Withering Horror, Ciphas Heirad and Kel'sara)

Edited January 11, 2013 by SPrime

[Theodulus]

Read it all and this will come in handy when I finally decide to continue leveling my lvl 30 commando. Looking forward to the HM FP update!

[OMGitsCHARLIE]

Great guide!

 

random thing I'd like to add:

 

First off with Novare Coast, my Commando is body type 4 (yes, he likes to eat) so while defending a node I just plump my big ole body right in front of the button. I tell everyone to fight in front of the hut so they don't LOS me and I just heal (usually myself). I aggravate teams so much cause they can't push the button behind my fatass (this technically can apply to all healers but it works best with Commando/Merc Heals as we can take damage a little better)

 

Though you don't necessarily have to be body type 4 but it does make it harder for people to press the button.

[TUXs]

WOW! Unreal guide Prime. As a guy who plays with this author regularly, I will tell you that he's one of the finest healers I'll ever meet. Proud to know him, lucky to play SWTOR with him and humbled to share a guild with him. Fantastic guide Prime!!!

[KeyboardNinja]

MASSIVE guide. Outstanding work. A couple nits to pick though:

 

• Force/tech attacks do *not* bypass armor. They bypass shield and defense. Internal/elemental damage bypasses armor. There isn't a huge amount of this though (Turbulence, Sever Force, Watchman Burns, Force in Balance), especially in PvE. The armor proc talent is extremely useful and has a measurable effect (I've measured it).
  
• You should be augmenting primarily for power, not Aim. Aim is a surprisingly weak stat for Combat Medics, given how awesome it is for the other commando trees. Spreadsheets show power ahead of Aim by almost 60%, with Crit following closely behind and Surge (generally) taking a back seat behind the lot. Alacrity and Cunning are about even in terms of HPS contribution, though Alacrity obviously has other benefits.
  
• Do not *ever* open with Bacta Infusion. You're just wasting a free heal. Save it for when you're lower on ammo. The only exception to this is if you NEED an instant heal and Tech Override is down. Even then, think twice.
  
• I *almost* never use HS, even in PvE, except to build charge. Forcing yourself to pause actually yields less downtime between heals (since HS is a forced 1.5s pause) and results in higher throughput. In PvP, I use HS as a situational "taunt", pulling people off of nodes. Otherwise, I never use it except on enemies.
  
• Soa's first phase ends at 75%, not 70%.
  
• Post-1.2, Soa's lift is merely a CC, it does no damage.
  
• Unless your tank is heavily over-geared, I do not recommend running KP with only a single tank. When we do it, we have both our tanks respec DPS for Bonethrasher (both of us have DPS gear that is just as good as our tanking gear). We *both* go back to tank spec for Jarg & Sorno (the most heal-intensive fight in the game), Foreman Crusher (the hardest-hitting boss in the game), and Fabricator (the hardest hitting non-CD-amenable boss in the game). Finally, we have my co-tank respec to DPS (again) for Karagga, since a second tank is actively harmful on that fight.
  
• 3 ranged DPS makes no difference on Fabricator. You should just solve the puzzle as fast as possible (with 3 people). We've successfully dabbled with making one ranged DPS step forward for 10 seconds after each right-most burn, but this is dicy because the tank will take a LOT more damage as a result.
  
• If you do not tank swap on Fabricator, you…will…wipe. The only exception to this is if your tank is massively over-geared. Fabricator's average pre-mitigation DPS is 3.3k on nightmare mode. Just 8 stacks is enough to completely negate a tank's armor. You cannot heal for 3.3k HPS, so you're totally relying on RNG mitigation to keep your tank alive. For some tanks (e.g. shadows), that's a workable strategy with good gear, but honestly even a shadow isn't going to stay up for long. Tank swap every time you solve the puzzle. This works out to once every 3 stacks of the debuff (2 if you're going really fast).
  
• The HP triggers for Firebrand and Stormcaller are 80%, 60%, 40% and 20% on *Stormcaller* (Firebrand's HP is not a trigger).
  
• The pulsar droid rail-shot is a random selection of *anyone* outside of 5 meters. It is not just the farthest person away. However, the ability does have a minimum range. Getting inside the 5 meter radius prevents the ability from going off.
  
• Kephess's frontal cone has a 35 meter range. It's not just melee DPS that need to stand behind him, it's EVERYONE.
  

 

Aside from that, fairly comprehensive. Combat Medic is indeed an amazing spec, and highly under-appreciated post-1.2. I've enjoyed the heck out of my commando healer, and hopefully others will as well.

[SPrime]

Read it all and this will come in handy when I finally decide to continue leveling my lvl 30 commando. Looking forward to the HM FP update!

 

I do not have a time frame for this, I can only really say I am working on it.

[SPrime]

Great guide!

 

random thing I'd like to add:

 

First off with Novare Coast, my Commando is body type 4 (yes, he likes to eat) so while defending a node I just plump my big ole body right in front of the button. I tell everyone to fight in front of the hut so they don't LOS me and I just heal (usually myself). I aggravate teams so much cause they can't push the button behind my fatass (this technically can apply to all healers but it works best with Commando/Merc Heals as we can take damage a little better)

 

Though you don't necessarily have to be body type 4 but it does make it harder for people to press the button.

 

Interesting, I would not know since all my alts are body type 1 as well, but you bring up a valid point. I have heard that people just block the cap point, hehe, you by yourself can block it just makes it that much more funnier!

[SPrime]

MASSIVE guide. Outstanding work. A couple nits to pick though:

 

• Force/tech attacks do *not* bypass armor. They bypass shield and defense. Internal/elemental damage bypasses armor. There isn't a huge amount of this though (Turbulence, Sever Force, Watchman Burns, Force in Balance), especially in PvE. The armor proc talent is extremely useful and has a measurable effect (I've measured it). Well if it does not bypass armour, then I do not know, I feel as squishy as my sage, I will test by getting a buddy to smack me with stock strike over and over, I will report the results sometime.
  
• You should be augmenting primarily for power, not Aim. Aim is a surprisingly weak stat for Combat Medics, given how awesome it is for the other commando trees. Spreadsheets show power ahead of Aim by almost 60%, with Crit following closely behind and Surge (generally) taking a back seat behind the lot. Alacrity and Cunning are about even in terms of HPS contribution, though Alacrity obviously has other benefits. How much weaker are we talking about here? on the gunnery tree you get 9% more Aim overall that includes buffs and stims, I am already sitting at 950 power and 2300 aim, if i switched all my augments that puts me at +252 aim and -252 aim on top of the ontop of the 9% so -23ish. I find with the added alacrity boost, I throw a hammer shot in and not miss a beat.
  
• Do not *ever* open with Bacta Infusion. You're just wasting a free heal. Save it for when you're lower on ammo. The only exception to this is if you NEED an instant heal and Tech Override is down. Even then, think twice. In combat parser, using Bacta Infusion every time it comes up, just makes me cry, it does not heal for very much, in fact my trauma probe does double it, I will continue to open up with it, and use it when CD is done
  
• I *almost* never use HS, even in PvE, except to build charge. Forcing yourself to pause actually yields less downtime between heals (since HS is a forced 1.5s pause) and results in higher throughput. In PvP, I use HS as a situational "taunt", pulling people off of nodes. Otherwise, I never use it except on enemies. With my mad alacrity boost, I have to use Hammer Shot, also if all 3 hits crit, after global CD and all, it essentially does just a little bit under what an advanced medical probe does.
  
• Soa's first phase ends at 75%, not 70%. Thanks will update.
  
• Post-1.2, Soa's lift is merely a CC, it does no damage. I guess it has been that long since I have battled him. Thanks will update
  
• Unless your tank is heavily over-geared, I do not recommend running KP with only a single tank. When we do it, we have both our tanks respec DPS for Bonethrasher (both of us have DPS gear that is just as good as our tanking gear). We *both* go back to tank spec for Jarg & Sorno (the most heal-intensive fight in the game), Foreman Crusher (the hardest-hitting boss in the game), and Fabricator (the hardest hitting non-CD-amenable boss in the game). Finally, we have my co-tank respec to DPS (again) for Karagga, since a second tank is actively harmful on that fight. Hahaha noted, ok I will not go into details, but yea our comp was not nice as some people would hope it to be.
  
• 3 ranged DPS makes no difference on Fabricator. You should just solve the puzzle as fast as possible (with 3 people). We've successfully dabbled with making one ranged DPS step forward for 10 seconds after each right-most burn, but this is dicy because the tank will take a LOT more damage as a result. Sorry I might not be reading correctly, but I will say that our whole comp was everyone was melee, I have described this to many people and they all were like how is that even possible to beat the Fabricator droid with 0 ranged classes. If we just left them up there to solve the puzzle, that means the dps on the floor would have to double the output so we do not hit enrage.
  
• If you do not tank swap on Fabricator, you…will…wipe. The only exception to this is if your tank is massively over-geared. Fabricator's average pre-mitigation DPS is 3.3k on nightmare mode. Just 8 stacks is enough to completely negate a tank's armor. You cannot heal for 3.3k HPS, so you're totally relying on RNG mitigation to keep your tank alive. For some tanks (e.g. shadows), that's a workable strategy with good gear, but honestly even a shadow isn't going to stay up for long. Tank swap every time you solve the puzzle. This works out to once every 3 stacks of the debuff (2 if you're going really fast). Have done it on NM without a tank swap, Full Rakata, was done prior to me getting a battle res, the sage was way outta range to pick up the offtank, we just did it as is and won.
  
• The HP triggers for Firebrand and Stormcaller are 80%, 60%, 40% and 20% on *Stormcaller* (Firebrand's HP is not a trigger). Noted Thanks!
  
• The pulsar droid rail-shot is a random selection of *anyone* outside of 5 meters. It is not just the farthest person away. However, the ability does have a minimum range. Getting inside the 5 meter radius prevents the ability from going off. Noted, altho we have stacked before within the 5 meters and they still shoot it, we are probably doing it wrong, but we seem to 1 shot hard mode every week. I will inform my guys about this and test. Thanks.
  
• Kephess's frontal cone has a 35 meter range. It's not just melee DPS that need to stand behind him, it's EVERYONE. Noted Thanks!
  

 

Aside from that, fairly comprehensive. Combat Medic is indeed an amazing spec, and highly under-appreciated post-1.2. I've enjoyed the heck out of my commando healer, and hopefully others will as well.

 

I will probably do some edits tomorrow I am tired now Thank you for you input, it is much appreciated.

[OMGitsCHARLIE]

Interesting, I would not know since all my alts are body type 1 as well, but you bring up a valid point. I have heard that people just block the cap point, hehe, you by yourself can block it just makes it that much more funnier!

 

It works wonders if you have a tank protecting you. It also forces all who want to cap the node to get in the hut and stand next to you. From there a quick knockback will solve everything and it lets your teammates aoe everyone down. Another great thing is that if you're flush against the button, people who try to use knockbacks wont really move you cause you're kind of "stuck" there. I'm not sure if this is intentional but I don't know how many times inquisitors run in there and try to knock me out only to have me move an inch. This is without a full resolve bar. On the other hand it will fill up your resolve quickly and you can just pop RS and god mode it from there. The only counter is to have a VG/PT or Shadow/Sin pull you out.

Edited September 21, 2012 by OMGitsCHARLIE

[KeyboardNinja]

How much weaker are we talking about here? on the gunnery tree you get 9% more Aim overall that includes buffs and stims, I am already sitting at 950 power and 2300 aim, if i switched all my augments that puts me at +252 aim and -252 aim on top of the ontop of the 9% so -23ish. I find with the added alacrity boost, I throw a hammer shot in and not miss a beat.

 

On my Black Hole/Rakata-geared CM, Aim is worth only 74.32% of the value I derive from Power, and that's *all* Power augments. If I were augmenting for Aim, the relative value of power would be substantially higher (since part of Aim's value is subject to DR).

 

Compare this to our Campaign-geared gunnery commando, where Aim is 14.35% *better* than Power.

 

Technically, right now Critical Rating is my best stat in terms of raw throughput (13.79% superior to Power), but I tend to deprioritize Crit due to its unreliability.

 

In combat parser, using Bacta Infusion every time it comes up, just makes me cry, it does not heal for very much, in fact my trauma probe does double it, I will continue to open up with it, and use it when CD is done

 

Bacta Infusion's expected value (including weighted crit) is 14.91% *better* than Advanced Medical Probe. And it's free. Trauma Probe isn't really a fair comparison, since it is (by far) your biggest and most efficient heal, it's just too slow to be used reactively.

 

I use BI *nearly* on CD, primarily as an ammo management skill. The core chain I use is KB -> AMP -> MP -> BI -> MP. Swapping in KB for that last MP is a good idea, and something I will start doing for AoE situations. I will also sometimes do something like AMP -> BI -> MP in the case where I'm starting AMP from 10-ish ammo, and therefore the MP would drop me into low regen without throwing Bi in the middle. Basically, it's my spacer heal. A lot of people use HS for the same purpose, but HS is too small of a heal to be worthwhile in that capacity. Specifically, Hammer Shot's expected heal (including all bonuses and weighted crit) is exactly 31.44% of what AMP's expected heal is. This is part of why I strongly recommend that commandos just skip this ability except at odd points in their rotation when BI is down and they need a pause of more than 1.5s (in practice, this happens to me about once every 10-11 seconds).

 

Sorry I might not be reading correctly, but I will say that our whole comp was everyone was melee, I have described this to many people and they all were like how is that even possible to beat the Fabricator droid with 0 ranged classes. If we just left them up there to solve the puzzle, that means the dps on the floor would have to double the output so we do not hit enrage.

 

People who claim that ranged DPS are necessary (or even particularly helpful) for this fight are just ignorant. I've done Fabricator numerous times on every difficulty mode with widely varied compositions. I've done it with 100% melee, and with 100% ranged. Usually, we're running 2 melee, 2 ranged, but we actually relegate one of the melee to puzzle solving.

 

The cool thing about Fabricator is a) the puzzle solvers actually do damage because the activation does a significant amount of damage to the droid, and b) the damage boost obtained from the right-most nozzle enhances everyone's DPS so significantly as to far outweigh the loss of two damage dealers. Even with under-geared DPS, we can beat the enrage timer 100% of the time by having 3 puzzle solvers going as fast as they possibly can (in practice, solving once every 12 seconds). It only leaves 2 DDs down below, and even they don't have 100% uptime (they switch to dealing with stun droids when they pop), but it's never really a problem.

 

Have done it on NM without a tank swap, Full Rakata, was done prior to me getting a battle res, the sage was way outta range to pick up the offtank, we just did it as is and won.

 

I'm impressed. I do not recommend that strategy to anyone else though. The healing is vastly easier if you tank swap on every solution.

 

Noted, altho we have stacked before within the 5 meters and they still shoot it, we are probably doing it wrong, but we seem to 1 shot hard mode every week. I will inform my guys about this and test. Thanks.

 

There's a 1s delay from when the droid "locks on" and when he actually does the rail shot. Thus, you can get rail-shotted within the 5 meter radius, since you were targeted before you reached that distance. However, this only happens a single time. Once you're inside the 5 meter range, you are in no danger of rail shotting until the droids switch.

[SPrime]

I will look into the Power Vs Aim bit, my idea is to use auto attack and see how much healing i do for non crit and crit, then I will augment in all the power augments and do the same, to see which does more. To me this is the best way to do it as the healing provided from the auto attack is static. I will report back with results when i scrounge up enough purple mods to trade for power mods.

 

As for BI at this point I would say even tho it it expected to be better, you are limited to the fact that it is on CD for 18 seconds (with 4 piece bonus) at best if you spammed it all the way, which I have, it is not enough nor worth it to save. In reality it does do alot, and a crit can be big, but its like trying to win the lottery. I will spam every time just because it is up.

 

I m not sure what left to say about the droid, everyone I ve spoken to is amazed that you can beat it without ranged classes, if you are not amazed you just became the 0.0001% that is not amazed. Thanks for all the feedback on that tho.

 

I am still looking into the the rail shot on the droids on Kephess.

[SPrime]

 

[*] You should be augmenting primarily for power, not Aim. Aim is a surprisingly weak stat for Combat Medics, given how awesome it is for the other commando trees. Spreadsheets show power ahead of Aim by almost 60%, with Crit following closely behind and Surge (generally) taking a back seat behind the lot. Alacrity and Cunning are about even in terms of HPS contribution, though Alacrity obviously has other benefits.

 

 

Statement is false, I have tested by ripping out all my Aim augments and replacing with Power augments, I lost alot of output, first I could not break 6000 on my big crit heal, 2nd my auto attack heal had a reduced output by alot.

 

Aim by far is way better than power. My stat prior remains.

[OMGitsCHARLIE]

Statement is false, I have tested by ripping out all my Aim augments and replacing with Power augments, I lost alot of output, first I could not break 6000 on my big crit heal, 2nd my auto attack heal had a reduced output by alot.

 

Aim by far is way better than power. My stat prior remains.

 

Agreed, the 9% aim increase from talents make the difference. The more aim the better. This goes for smugglers as well (for cunning).

[KeyboardNinja]

Statement is false, I have tested by ripping out all my Aim augments and replacing with Power augments, I lost alot of output, first I could not break 6000 on my big crit heal, 2nd my auto attack heal had a reduced output by alot.

 

Aim by far is way better than power. My stat prior remains.

 

Over a sustainable rotation, the math does not support your claim. The only "in game" evidence I would consider acceptable on this issue would be to get in a party with someone while they whale on the combat dummy (to keep a fight active) and just heal them non-stop for 6 minutes. Note your average HPS, then perform the same experiment with the alternative itemization.

 

Aside from this sort of experiment, the only real way to measure stat effectiveness is to do it mathematically, computing stat value in terms of heal output. This is *precisely* what I have done, and thus I stand by my previous assertion that power is superior to aim for commando healers over their ideal rotation at the stat budget afforded by Black Hole / Rakata (as well as the stat budget afforded by Battlemaster).

[LaniAkavir]

I'm certain Soa's first phase ends at 70%, not 75%, don't read the outdated guides, unless they're switching it in 1.4 in which I do not know of.

 

Statement is false, I have tested by ripping out all my Aim augments and replacing with Power augments, I lost alot of output, first I could not break 6000 on my big crit heal, 2nd my auto attack heal had a reduced output by alot.

 

Aim by far is way better than power. My stat prior remains.

 

Reading from your posts, I'd like to inquire on how high your aim is (With and without stims)

 

It seems that you have a high amount of Alacrity, I wonder how much endurance do you have, as well.

 

I'm currently at full Blackhole/Campaign gear with roughly 20k hp, 700 heal bonus, 40% crit chance, 80% surge, and 3% alacrity.

 

I only have unmodded belts and bracers, which could possibly give me a boost of 30 extra aim.

 

I'd trade the 1 point in Cell Capacitor CD for 1 point in Armor Screen, and replace all the alacrity for surge.

 

Though I'd try out trading the 2% Heal Dealt/Received with extra 4% alacrity and see if I like it.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800dfR0RdfdkqZMcoZb.2

 

Here's a screenshot of me bursting 8k heals on myself (With all the cooldowns popped, stims taken of course)

http://i.imgur.com/fqhCq.jpg

[SPrime]

Over a sustainable rotation, the math does not support your claim. The only "in game" evidence I would consider acceptable on this issue would be to get in a party with someone while they whale on the combat dummy (to keep a fight active) and just heal them non-stop for 6 minutes. Note your average HPS, then perform the same experiment with the alternative itemization.

 

Aside from this sort of experiment, the only real way to measure stat effectiveness is to do it mathematically, computing stat value in terms of heal output. This is *precisely* what I have done, and thus I stand by my previous assertion that power is superior to aim for commando healers over their ideal rotation at the stat budget afforded by Black Hole / Rakata (as well as the stat budget afforded by Battlemaster).

 

Well for the record these are guidelines, should you choose to follow them or not.

 

What I have displayed is what works for me, it is not on paper nor calculated out, but experienced with my own 2 eyes.

 

If you think power is the better stat, please feel free to use it, I for one cannot stop you from using it.

[SPrime]

I'm certain Soa's first phase ends at 70%, not 75%, don't read the outdated guides, unless they're switching it in 1.4 in which I do not know of.

 

 

 

Reading from your posts, I'd like to inquire on how high your aim is (With and without stims)

 

It seems that you have a high amount of Alacrity, I wonder how much endurance do you have, as well.

 

I'm currently at full Blackhole/Campaign gear with roughly 20k hp, 700 heal bonus, 40% crit chance, 80% surge, and 3% alacrity.

 

I only have unmodded belts and bracers, which could possibly give me a boost of 30 extra aim.

 

I'd trade the 1 point in Cell Capacitor CD for 1 point in Armor Screen, and replace all the alacrity for surge.

 

Though I'd try out trading the 2% Heal Dealt/Received with extra 4% alacrity and see if I like it.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800dfR0RdfdkqZMcoZb.2

 

Here's a screenshot of me bursting 8k heals on myself (With all the cooldowns popped, stims taken of course)

http://i.imgur.com/fqhCq.jpg

 

My aim without stim is 2150, with stim is 2280 roughly.

21k health

16% alacrity

900 power

40% crit

77% surge

 

I do not spec into armour screen for the reason that I believe and many others as well believe that force and tech are ITD, in others words 90% of all incoming attacks will ignore your armour. But right now I am in the process of testing this.

[Theodulus]

I'm interested in what you think is the optimal 1.4 build for both PvE and PvP. I'm not convinced Frontline Medic is worth the 2 points since you need to have the probe already casted on yourself for it to work. I also assume it will consume the existing charges reducing its usefulness.

[KeyboardNinja]

I do not spec into armour screen for the reason that I believe and many others as well believe that force and tech are ITD, in others words 90% of all incoming attacks will ignore your armour. But right now I am in the process of testing this.

 

This has already been tested (extensively) by many others. The tests themselves are tricky to get right, so I don't advise attempting to replicate them yourself (unless you're *really* a hands-on sort of theory crafter). Here's how damage works in this game:

 

There are two attack types, melee/ranged and force/tech, and two damage types, kinetic/energy and internal/elemental. Any combination of attack and damage type is valid. For example, one might have an ability that counts as a melee attack and does kinetic damage (e.g. Saber Strike). Alternatively, you could have an ability that is a force attack and does internal damage (e.g. Turbulence). There are no abilities (currently) in the game, PvP or PvE, that are melee/ranged attacks with internal/elemental damage. Thus, you only have to worry about three combinations:

 

• melee/ranged + kinetic/energy
  
• force/tech + kinetic/energy
  
• force/tech + internal/elemental
  

 

Mitigation is determined by the particular attack and damage type of the ability in question. Armor mitigates *anything* that does kinetic/energy damage. Thus, even force/tech attacks can be (and are) mitigated by armor. (e.g. Force Lightning) Defense and shield/absorb only mitigate melee/ranged attacks. Internal/elemental damage *is* mitigable, but mitigation against that damage type is extremely low for all classes (shadows/assassins have the highest at 23%) and cannot be affected by gearing (aside from some set bonuses).

 

Just under 95% of all damage in PvE is of the kinetic/energy type, and therefore mitigated by armor. As for PvP…that's another question. All classes (to my knowledge) have abilities that do internal/elemental damage (e.g. Turbulence for sages, Force Breach for shadows, all watchman sentinel DoTs, Incendiary Round for Vanguards, etc). The exact ratio of kinetic/energy to internal/elemental damage in PvP remains unclear, and varies significantly by class. Just given the ability proportions though, it seems absolutely impossible that 90% of PvP damage is internal/elemental (40% seems like a more realistic estimate).

 

Thus, 95% of PvE damage is subject to armor mitigation, and about 60% of PvP damage falls into the same category.

[LaniAkavir]

My aim without stim is 2150, with stim is 2280 roughly.

21k health

16% alacrity

900 power

40% crit

77% surge

 

I do not spec into armour screen for the reason that I believe and many others as well believe that force and tech are ITD, in others words 90% of all incoming attacks will ignore your armour. But right now I am in the process of testing this.

 

Interesting

 

I have everything maxed out except the belt and bracers, yet your stats are by far superior than mine.

 

Mind showing some screenshots with no buffs, no stims, and no buff from NMP? I'm curious as how you achieve such high stats with only 3% surge and 70 power trade off.

 

That way I may improve my armor mods, perhaps

[SPrime]

I'm interested in what you think is the optimal 1.4 build for both PvE and PvP. I'm not convinced Frontline Medic is worth the 2 points since you need to have the probe already casted on yourself for it to work. I also assume it will consume the existing charges reducing its usefulness.

 

For PVP I would spec 2 points into front line medic. Keeping in mind that trauma probe now belongs to you. And that you really only wish to fight people. If not I would move those 2 points to alacrity boost on crit.

 

I have not looked into PVE but I suspect I would take those 2 points and move it into the gunnery tree for the 2% more healing.