Scoundrel Healing 101

[stayonboard]

Soloing as a full sawbones is the easiest leveling of this class. Use a dps pet at all times, even soloing champion mobs and 2 man heroics. Once you get Risha it's cruise control to level 50 going almost as fast as a dps spec using a tank or healing pet.

 

Im wondering about this as well - I do have Risha and it does work out really well but Im a bit confused on how to open up attacks in PVE.

 

How do you start when soloing? Do you open with your companion attacking or do you throw a grenade and then drop your aggro, tanking/healing and letting Risha DPS everything down?

 

I find I can take on champion mobs myself once I get started, it's pretty crazy as a Sawbones char -- I just haven't found the "right way" to get going. Right now I barely have any DPS abilities on my main bar, and I don't even like seeing the current ones I have as is.

 

Thoughts?

[Maxvla]

Im wondering about this as well - I do have Risha and it does work out really well but Im a bit confused on how to open up attacks in PVE.

 

How do you start when soloing? Do you open with your companion attacking or do you throw a grenade and then drop your aggro, tanking/healing and letting Risha DPS everything down?

 

I find I can take on champion mobs myself once I get started, it's pretty crazy as a Sawbones char -- I just haven't found the "right way" to get going. Right now I barely have any DPS abilities on my main bar, and I don't even like seeing the current ones I have as is.

 

Thoughts?

 

You can do just about anything you want to really.

 

Sometimes (rarely) I'll let Risha take the first shot and initial aggro on everything. Most of the time I just lob a grenade and bum rush the first standard mob hitting it with auto shot as I run in then blaster whip for the kill. After that I'll see if I need a heal myself, if not I backblast the next lowest rank mob. Typically I don't need to heal until the 2nd or 3rd mob. I only keep a handful of dps spells on my bar, now that I've rebound everything at 50 to maximize healing. I use auto shot, grenade, backblast, and blaster whip. I have XS-Freighter bound since it's good aoe, even for a healer, but I don't use it regularly.

 

I also normally keep Risha on sniper mode with AOEs disabled so single mobs die asap lessening the healing burden. I gear her with maximum alacrity and HP since she is my tank and is not bound by resource.

 

On champions I usually let Risha tank giving her first shot, a manually activated Aimed Shot. Depending on the damage she's taking I might just heal her, but usually there is opportunity to at least auto shot here and there. Sometimes I'll toss in a backblast since it's only 10 energy.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Maxvla

[DonkeyofDoom]

Here are some numbers. My numbers. I hope they help you guys with some theorycrafting.

 

In the process of getting these numbers I learned two things:

 

Healing hand adds 3% healing base, plus an extra 6% per stack of upper hand, resulting in 15% healing bonus. Edit: Nevermind, forgot to account for Survivor's Scars

 

When HoTing a single target, you should cast Kolto Cloud before Slow-Release Medpac, since it has higher HPSC and HPS.

 

All heals with 2p and 4p PVE set bonus and 2 stacks of upper hand http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701MffrzGRRzsZ0cZG.1

1442 Cunning

36.26 crit rate

66.08 crit mult

13.78 alacrity

458.8 bonus healing

9% increased healing received

 

HPSC: Heals Per Second Cast

HPS: Heals Per Second

EPS: Energy Cost Per Second

Efficiency: Healing output per point of energy

 

Underworld Medicine efficiency: 145.202

Average heal 3630.05

Cast time 1.72

HPSC 2110.494

EPS: 16.66

 

Diagnostic Scan regen: 1.4/s

heal amount 187 crit 311

Channel time: 2.59

HPS: 261.72

 

Kolto pack efficiency: 174.717

Average heal 3494.34

Cast time 1.29s

HPSC 2708.79

EPS: 13.33

 

Slow-release Medpac efficiency: 180.01

Heal 363 603

Average tick: 450.024

Average heal: 2700.144

HPS: 150

HPSC: 1800.096

EPS: 10

 

Slow-release Medpac x2 efficiency: 180.2

Reapply efficiency: 360.55

Heal 727 1207

Average tick: 901.048

Average heal: 5406.288

HPS: 300.35

HPSC: 1802.096

Reapply HPSC: 3604.192

EPS: 10

 

Kolto Cloud ST efficiency: 107.7

Heal: 416 816

Average tick: 560.08

Average heal: 2800.4

HPS: 186.67

HPSC: 1866.93

EPS: 17.3

 

Kolto Cloud 4T efficiency: 466.73

Heal: 416 816

Average tick: 2240.32

Average heal: 11201.6

HPS: 746.68

HPSC: 7467.72

EPS: 17.3

Edited January 20, 2012 by DonkeyofDoom

[Maxvla]

It's 6% for any stacks of upper hand, not per stack.

[DonkeyofDoom]

You're correct. I forgot to account for the increased healing received from Survivor's scars, and attributed the difference to healing hands. Woops. ALSO more data, it seems you can trust tooltips (only for underworld medicine and kolto pack, literally no other heals are accurate) if you A: Rely on the average of the range, not the range. And B: are okay with having roughly 1% of error.

 

1320 Cunning

33.39 crit rate

66.08 + 30 crit mult

12.97% alacrity

438.4 bonus healing

9% increased healing received

 

82 non-crit

projected 82.59 crits

Average heal 2640.52

tooltip average heal 2415

tooltip-average multiplier 1.093

Total heal 216523

2673 2765 2724 2538 2565

2514 2734 2590 2589 2667

2715 2718 2663 2678 2751

2762 2512 2666 2691 2784

2662 2467 2614 2715 2468

2463 2724 2558 2470 2703

2637 2747 2615 2470 2542

2638 2698 2710 2782 2506

2679 2519 2686 2517 2594

2747 2569 2491 2799 2477

2529 2788 2552 2638 2734

2714 2756 2715 2645 2495

2762 2591 2637 2783 2658

2541 2582 2688 2714 2703

2541 2788 2649 2614 2663

2563 2584 2597 2676 2667

2704 2686

 

42 crit

projected 41.40 crits

Average crit 5156.59

projected crit from tooltip 4670.37

tooltip-average multiplier 1.10

Total heal 216577

4903 5289 5062 4921 5497

5195 5159 5103 5289 5352

5014 5002 5026 4977 4857

5053 5066 4861 4840 5073

5212 5292 4927 5412 5202

5211 5079 5463 5152 5179

5263 5499 5056 5074 4982

5260 5430 5337 5028 5198

5350 5432

 

Underworld Medicine efficiency: 139.71

Average heal: 3492.74

Cast time: 1.74

HPSC: 2007.32

EPS: 16.66

Edited January 20, 2012 by DonkeyofDoom

[Maxvla]

You could be doing better if you balanced your stats properly. You have very high alacrity for a class that benefits very little from it. My gear is probably only slightly better than yours overall, yet my average UM crit is between 5900 and 6500 when healing myself (9% bonus). I stack surge and crit. I sit self buffed at 1555 cunning 40% crit and about 92% multiplier, 442 bonus healing. I have just the 4% alacrity from talents. Edited January 21, 2012 by Maxvla

[DonkeyofDoom]

link to all of my theorycrafting thoughts: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/118474/Sawbones%20theorycraft.txt

 

I changed my stats around between tests. Right now I'm sitting at 1521 cunning, 469.7 bonus healing, 35.95% crit, 66.08% (+30%) crit mult, 13.78% alacrity in all pve gear.

 

My rationale behind alacrity.

 

1. It allows me to regenerate my energy faster with Diagnostic scan.

 

2. It allows me to dump my energy into emergency heals faster.

 

3. It speeds up my rotation allowing for SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS vs SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS, which gives slightly more HPS than the latter.

 

4. It allows me much more flexibility in the UMEM^3 rotation.

[alphaonyxia]

Thx for the great guide, really helpful. I just need some suggestion regarding healing in hm flashpoint as a scoundrel. I want to know how scoundrel handle an encounter that has a very bursty damage through the whole group. For example, the first bos in hm maelstorm prison where the dps will getting the aoe damage (I think around 7k damage?) each time. What rotation should ido to manage this?

[DonkeyofDoom]

In my opinion you have two options.

 

Key:

SRM- Slow release medpac

KC- Kolto Cloud

DS- Diagnostic Scan

UMEM- Underworld Medicine+Emergency Medpac

 

SRM-SRM-KC-DS-SRM-SRM-SRM-SRM-DS

 

SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS

 

Mess with these rotations, make sure you can do them without breaking the five-tick-threshold. But based on my calculations these are the absolute highest HPS rotations for me, and they're pretty easy. I'd wager they're pretty good for you.

[bshenkd]

Thx for the great guide, really helpful. I just need some suggestion regarding healing in hm flashpoint as a scoundrel. I want to know how scoundrel handle an encounter that has a very bursty damage through the whole group. For example, the first bos in hm maelstorm prison where the dps will getting the aoe damage (I think around 7k damage?) each time. What rotation should ido to manage this?

 

Also, if you're aware of an incoming burst to your tank, start casting BEFORE the damage hits. Having strong communication with your party members is key for success and knowing when to pro-actively heal a target can help a ton.

 

Communication also helps to let you know when to pop burst healing or for your tank to pop burst defense.

 

Also, thanks for the number crunching Donkey. After losing some crit/surge by replacing my gear with PVP/PVE geat that has power/alacrity, I feel like my heals have gone down a bit. Although alacrity does help in certain cases, I still believe crit/surge is ultimately the best way to go as far as stat prioritization goes. What do you think?

Edited January 23, 2012 by bshenkd

[Maxvla]

Unless we get some absurdly high amount of alacrity to where an entirely new rotation setup is possible I just don't see it working. You give up so much going for alacrity with little gain as I see it.

[Kutsus]

Unless we get some absurdly high amount of alacrity to where an entirely new rotation setup is possible I just don't see it working. You give up so much going for alacrity with little gain as I see it.

 

Even then you're still using your energy much less efficiently than with a lot of power/surge/crit. Alacrity is pretty much useless as it stands.

[DonkeyofDoom]

My guild runs with a sage healer and a scoundrel healer. In order for the sage to heal endlessly and not run out of resources he has to stick to a strict rotation, as a result, I end up raid healing. Based on my number crunching, the best rotation for raid healing is SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS. This is just barely possible with my level of alacrity, so if I were to drop any I would have to go to a lower HPS rotation, one with three UMEM's.

 

Here's the thing, though. I handle raid heals. As a raid healer, crit is a fantastic statistic. I have about 40% crit. Surge, on the other hand, is not very good. Surge isn't very good because it is an overheal statistic. It simply is not used.

 

If a target is low on health I will target them with underworld medicine and emergency medpac, the combination heals noncrit for at least 4000. If they both crit it heals for at least 8000. If a target is not so low on health, I'll use emergency medpac on a different target. Because of the flexibility of emergency medpac I do not need or want surge to increase the size of my heals, especially because it's a stat that gets beaten to death by diminishing returns. Alacrity stacks much more efficiently because all the way up to 14% alacrity from items (trinket) I have experienced little to no diminishing returns.

 

But really, why would a raid healer want bigger heals on fewer targets over smaller heals on more targets?

 

 

For more direct responses:

I have 13% alacrity, a new rotation is possible.

 

My diagnostic ticks 13% faster than yours and crits 66% of the time. It gives me 4 energy in 2.59 seconds. I have more energy to spend than you do, if I have to break the five tick threshold without cool head, I can recover much faster than you can. Alacrity allows me to counteract the fatal flaw of scoundrel healing, variable energy regeneration.

 

I love my alacrity. It kicks surge's ***.

Edited January 23, 2012 by DonkeyofDoom

[Maxvla]

You may have more energy to heal with, but you are also locking yourself out of casting a lot more by using global cooldowns on DS so often. A few hundred hp isn't going to make a big difference, but just not casting will allow you to regen and also respond to spike damage faster since you aren't locked into a global cooldown.

[DonkeyofDoom]

So often? I use diagnostic scan once every 15 seconds on full rotation. If I just stopped to regen I'd be lowering my healing output substantially because it would take longer, and any heals that I could cast instead of diagnostic scan would break the five-tick-threshold and make me cease to be an effective healer.

[Maxvla]

I don't cast DS often, only in rare cases. Using DS every 15 seconds is a lot. If someone takes a spike right as you hit your DS you can't react to that spike until 1.5 seconds later. If you had not cast DS and just let energy regen on it's own you could react to it instantly. That is huge when doing harder content.

[DonkeyofDoom]

If someone is taking a spike that's that urgent they A: need to use defensive cooldowns or a health pack: and B: probably screwed up. If they didn't screw up, they were probably victim of a predictable fight mechanic. The actual chance of someone taking an unpredictable unavoidable and critical damage spike within 1 second of me casting Diagnostic scan is pretty much nil. I can't even think of any unpredictable unavoidable and critical damage spikes in the game at all. Even the most raid damaging bosses like karagga and soa have predictable mechanics.

[bshenkd]

I agree with Donkey on this one. And plus, cancelling out of DS casting is extremely easy. If you're in the middle of your DS cast, go ahead and try casting Underworld Medicine - it'll automatically start casting. Bioware made it so every other ability takes priority over DS which is nice.

 

Also, I just uploaded two more videos to my youtube channel - both as a Sawbones healer.

 

- Huttball #1 (8-man premade!)

- Alderaan #2

 

Here are also some pictures that display the power of Sawbones healing:

 

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

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

[Corran]

My guild runs with a sage healer and a scoundrel healer. In order for the sage to heal endlessly and not run out of resources he has to stick to a strict rotation, as a result, I end up raid healing. Based on my number crunching, the best rotation for raid healing is SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS. This is just barely possible with my level of alacrity, so if I were to drop any I would have to go to a lower HPS rotation, one with three UMEM's.

 

Here's the thing, though. I handle raid heals. As a raid healer, crit is a fantastic statistic. I have about 40% crit. Surge, on the other hand, is not very good. Surge isn't very good because it is an overheal statistic. It simply is not used.

 

If a target is low on health I will target them with underworld medicine and emergency medpac, the combination heals noncrit for at least 4000. If they both crit it heals for at least 8000. If a target is not so low on health, I'll use emergency medpac on a different target. Because of the flexibility of emergency medpac I do not need or want surge to increase the size of my heals, especially because it's a stat that gets beaten to death by diminishing returns. Alacrity stacks much more efficiently because all the way up to 14% alacrity from items (trinket) I have experienced little to no diminishing returns.

 

But really, why would a raid healer want bigger heals on fewer targets over smaller heals on more targets?

 

 

For more direct responses:

I have 13% alacrity, a new rotation is possible.

 

My diagnostic ticks 13% faster than yours and crits 66% of the time. It gives me 4 energy in 2.59 seconds. I have more energy to spend than you do, if I have to break the five tick threshold without cool head, I can recover much faster than you can. Alacrity allows me to counteract the fatal flaw of scoundrel healing, variable energy regeneration.

 

I love my alacrity. It kicks surge's ***.

 

if you can get surge without giving anyting up, it does not matter that it overheals

 

overhealing is only an issue for healers with a finite resource pool or those that cared about healing 'meters'. in practice this does not matter.

 

crit and surge are far more important for this class than alacrity. IF alacrity made the hots tick faster and worked as it did in wow where certain plateaus in haste would not only make them tick faster but grant an extra tick of healing then the case for alacrity could be re-evaluated

 

however it does not work that way here. alacrity cant be avoided on our gear, but it should not be sought after.

[Maxvla]

I agree with Donkey on this one. And plus, cancelling out of DS casting is extremely easy. If you're in the middle of your DS cast, go ahead and try casting Underworld Medicine - it'll automatically start casting. Bioware made it so every other ability takes priority over DS which is nice.

 

You still have to wait for the global cooldown.

[bshenkd]

You still have to wait for the global cooldown.

 

I suppose so. As a mainly PVP healer, I almost never use DS in my "rotation". I only use it when I have everyone topped off and could use some extra energy. ALSO, IT MAKES A REALLY GOOD INTERRUPT BAIT. I can't tell you how awesome it is to have people waste their interrupt on a 300~/sec channeled heal.

[DonkeyofDoom]

I just tested this. You only have to wait for 1 second out of the 1.5 second global cooldown. That's not much to wait, it makes it definitely worthwhile to use diagnostic scan to regenerate energy. Yeah, it's not that useful in PVP, but having a quicker rotation in pve is always helpful.

 

Based on my theorycrafting the ideal rotation is SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS, which I can pull with 13% alacrity, with less alacrity you must drop a UMEM. It is also beneficial to drop Kolto Cloud into this rotation if you can hit two or more targets. However most of the time I do not even bother with HoT's. They have a significantly lower Heals Per Second Casting than direct heals, unless you are reapplying them for the second time after a full set of ticks. Because of that it is only beneficial for your healing to cast SRM on a target where you can constantly reapply it and the target is constantly taking damage, the tank. Kolto Cloud is effective. Slow Release Medpac is unfortunately not very effective.

 

Now I'm going to point out the flaw in your argument.

 

1. "If you can get surge without giving anyting up, it does not matter that it overheals."

You cannot gain a stat on gear without getting it from somewhere else. I find it pointless to gain a stat that will go directly into unused healing.

 

2. "Overhealing is only an issue for healers with a finite resource pool or those that cared about healing 'meters'. in practice this does not matter.

There are no healing meters, I do not care about that. I care about healing effectively and efficiently. Gearing for a stat that will not be used is ineffective and inefficient. You've already conceded that surge does contribute to overheal. I don't have a finite resource pool, but I do care about pushing my energy pool to its limits.

 

3. A lot of people are avoiding alacrity. They're removing 56 enhancements in their gear to replace them with 52 enhancements in order to gain surge and avoid alacrity. Note that I'm not saying we should avoid surge either, just that it shouldn't be stacked. I currently have 72.06% surge, this is enough. The people pushing 80%+ crit mult are, in my opinion, stacking it too hard.

 

4. Crit heals are unreliable. Now, I love my crit heals. I have 35-40% crit on my gear at any given time. However, crits tend to be streaky. If you base all of your healing effectiveness on needing crits, you might not when it matters. Which would be bad. I don't like to rely on crits like that.

 

if you can get surge without giving anyting up, it does not matter that it overheals

 

overhealing is only an issue for healers with a finite resource pool or those that cared about healing 'meters'. in practice this does not matter.

 

crit and surge are far more important for this class than alacrity. IF alacrity made the hots tick faster and worked as it did in wow where certain plateaus in haste would not only make them tick faster but grant an extra tick of healing then the case for alacrity could be re-evaluated

 

however it does not work that way here. alacrity cant be avoided on our gear, but it should not be sought after.

Edited January 25, 2012 by DonkeyofDoom

[Maxvla]

Surge contributes to overheal as well as heal. Alacrity contributes to over spending energy, that's it. Honestly, overhealing in this game is not really a factor. People have so much health and our heals do comparatively little that when people are at half health and we crit an underworld medicine it still doesn't top them off, especially if they are a tank. If they are at 90%+ they don't even need a heal (except tank), Triage 101.

 

During an enrage phase from a boss, you want to have your biggest best heals lined up for the tank to survive. Relying on your fancy rotation of small heals is not going to save the day. When you are approaching 50% crit (I raid with 43% buffed and 93% surge), crit heals are no longer streaky, but regular.

 

I agree with your comments regarding our hots. They just aren't powerful enough. I usually try to keep a double stack on the tank, and only hot anyone else during periods of low damage to buffer against possible future burst. I have full/near full energy might as well make use of it with positive healing (or at least the potential to be). It's really insulting on Soa where our blanket hotting the raid during the falling series should be our time to shine. Constant movement, healing on the run, but the hots just barely do anything, even with cloud running as well. We end up waiting for Salvation from the sages to really top everyone up for the next set of jumps. Pretty frustrating.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Maxvla

[WedgeRogueOne]

I just tested this. You only have to wait for 1 second out of the 1.5 second global cooldown. That's not much to wait, it makes it definitely worthwhile to use diagnostic scan to regenerate energy. Yeah, it's not that useful in PVP, but having a quicker rotation in pve is always helpful.

 

Based on my theorycrafting the ideal rotation is SRM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-UMEM-DS, which I can pull with 13% alacrity, with less alacrity you must drop a UMEM. It is also beneficial to drop Kolto Cloud into this rotation if you can hit two or more targets. However most of the time I do not even bother with HoT's. They have a significantly lower Heals Per Second Casting than direct heals, unless you are reapplying them for the second time after a full set of ticks. Because of that it is only beneficial for your healing to cast SRM on a target where you can constantly reapply it and the target is constantly taking damage, the tank. Kolto Cloud is effective. Slow Release Medpac is unfortunately not very effective.

 

Now I'm going to point out the flaw in your argument.

 

1. "If you can get surge without giving anyting up, it does not matter that it overheals."

You cannot gain a stat on gear without getting it from somewhere else. I find it pointless to gain a stat that will go directly into unused healing.

 

2. "Overhealing is only an issue for healers with a finite resource pool or those that cared about healing 'meters'. in practice this does not matter.

There are no healing meters, I do not care about that. I care about healing effectively and efficiently. Gearing for a stat that will not be used is ineffective and inefficient. You've already conceded that surge does contribute to overheal. I don't have a finite resource pool, but I do care about pushing my energy pool to its limits.

 

3. A lot of people are avoiding alacrity. They're removing 56 enhancements in their gear to replace them with 52 enhancements in order to gain surge and avoid alacrity. Note that I'm not saying we should avoid surge either, just that it shouldn't be stacked. I currently have 72.06% surge, this is enough. The people pushing 80%+ crit mult are, in my opinion, stacking it too hard.

 

4. Crit heals are unreliable. Now, I love my crit heals. I have 35-40% crit on my gear at any given time. However, crits tend to be streaky. If you base all of your healing effectiveness on needing crits, you might not when it matters. Which would be bad. I don't like to rely on crits like that.

 

 

 

1. I have lots of crit. Had lots of crit on my holy paladin pre illumination nerf. I love crit. I disagree with the premise that crit is a wasted stat for healing. The way you say your arguement in item 4 above, you are making it seem as if there are only two types of healers, those who "base their healing on crit, (and surge by design), and there for stack crit (and surge by design)" and those who "Dont". This is simply not accurate. If you stack crit or surge, you cannot, and I find very few people who actually do this, RELY on crits to keep their targets alive. I find the very premise that you think those types of people exist is laughable. How much HM or NMM healing have you done? Becasue unfortunately, as a Scoundrel, my targets are rarely at full health, and when I heal them, they are still rarely at full health.

 

Its as simple as this, if I crit, I dont heal that person again. If I do, I move on to the next person sooner. Getting to cast 2 times in a shorter amount of time in my experience rarely makes the difference in keeping someone alive.

 

Frankly, lots of people like to use that argument be it for haste, or alacrity. But it just isn't realistic in a high damage environment. If someone is taking that much damage that your single heal wont save them someone else is already casting a heal on them, they are using a medpac or other cooldown, or they are ALREADY dead, before you finish your next heal, regardless of whether you have a ton of haste or not.

 

Healing in this game for me feels a lot like triage, make sure they wont die, and move on to the next.

 

 

Bottom line, crits arent wasted healing, because people don't get to full in one heal in the majority of cases.

 

2. Surge does have bad DR, making it hard to get above 75%. I am wearing Rakata gear, and don't have 80% surge. But then again im not swapping out enhancements as you say people are, which doesn't make any sense. If you know people who are doing this, its not the extra surge rating that makes them bads.

[Maxvla]

Wedge I agree with a lot of your points except when you say it's a bad idea to pull out those power/alacrity enhancements to replace with crit/surge despite them being lower level.

 

Power/alacrity is not nearly as good as crit/surge and as long as you are stacking both, the diminishing returns isn't quite so bad as if you were stacking only one. It makes no sense to keep higher level enhancements that do almost nothing for you when lower level enhancements with proper stats will do more for your healing. It sucks because other classes don't have to do this and can use their high level enhancements and be better. Blame Bioware for making a completely useless stat (alacrity) and overloading our gear with it.