First time as healer in fp went badly

[Jeweledleah]

dear people who keep telling OP that he should have practiced before switching to healing at high level.

 

HE WAS TRYING AT LVL 20. he WAS starting to try and heal at early level, so that he doesn't show up in hardmode completely inexperienced.

 

yes unfortunately this is a nature of MMO's that you are going to run into jerks, just like in real life - it IS played by real people after all.

 

my suggestion to you, OP would be to keep learning and practicing, utilize your ignore button for people who are abusive to you (or others) in a flashpoint, and don't let this get you down. healing can be a lot of fun (to me at least) and healing pugs teaches you do be very quick on your feet, since they continue to be inconsiderate a lot of times, and it often ends up teaching you how to maximize your abilities, in a way that running with the guild might not.

 

and who knows, you might meet new friends there. i know I did.

[Qaoz]

To be fair, Combat Support Cylinder/Cell is one of the weirdest mechanics in the game. It's not exactly intuitive, using your attacks to heal with. Much prefer it to Diagnostic Scan, though - saves me a keybind.

 

Healing as a Commando/Mercenary is pretty easy:

 

1. Use Kolto Missile/Kolto Bomb whenever it's ready.
   
2. Use Healing Scan/Advanced Medical Probe whenever it's ready.
   
3. Use Rapid Scan/Medical Probe only after #2 (on the list...).
   
4. Keep Kolto Shell/Trauma Probe running on the tank.
   
5. Use Rapid Shots/Hammer Shot while waiting for the above abilities to cool off.
   

 

If things heat up, pop Supercharged Gas/Supercharge Cells, drop a Kolto Missile/Kolto Bomb and switch between casting Healing Scan/Advanced Medical Probe and Rapid Scan/Medical Probe. Insane healing output that way, because Supercharged Gas/Supercharge Cells allows you to use those two heals back to back for 10 seconds, or until you overheat or run out of energy cells.

 

Because of Rapid Scan/Medical Probe's longer cast time, switching between them prevents you from overheating or running out of energy cells as fast as simply spamming Healing Scan/Advanced Medical Probe. Once you put enough points into the Bodyguard/Combat Medic to get 3/3 Critical Efficiency/Field Triage, you can keep this rotation up for an even longer time, making you quite the healing monster.

 

I really enjoy healing on my Mercenary. I vastly prefer it to healing on my Sorcerer and Operative, mainly because having to track healing buffs on people is a pain in this game, and the Mercenary/Commando only has one healing buff that needs to be tracked - Kolto Shell/Trauma Probe - and it has a very long duration.

[LordArtemis]

This is a person that will be a good player late game IMO.

 

He decided to come in and talk about his performance and how he was treated as a result. That shows interest in improving IMO.

 

Kudos to the OP.

 

I'll give you what I feel is good advice.

 

1) Practice your rotations using a dummy. There are dummies on Korriban, behind the speeder pad on the right at the main temple ramp entrance. I'm not sure about the pub side.

 

Try to figure out the most efficient way to manage your skill bar.

 

2) Level Bio. The reusable stims and health packs you get are a huge help.

3) Make sure to stack power and alacrity. Both help in total healing ability and speed.

4) Use your agro reducing skill. If you get agroed, don't depend on others to save you. Find ways to break it.

5) Use your CC skills. Ask the group leader to mark desired CC targets for you.

6) When you quest and run lower heroics with your tank, take note as to which healing skills pull the most agro. This will be important later on.

7) Keep your distance. Stay at max distance if possible. The farther away you are and still in healing range, the less chance you will pull extra agro.

8) Do not stand in fire. Sounds silly, but if you get targeted with an AoE, move, even if you are in the middle of a cast.

 

Most of all, do not feel bad if you get blamed. It will happen quite a bit even if you do nothing wrong, but remember...you are one of the most important members of a team. They need you. You do not need them. Keep that in mind when considering whether or not you should take their insults to heart.

Edited June 24, 2013 by LordArtemis

[SlimsPicken]

Welcome to the world of MMOs, a wonderful land filled with new adventures and abilities to learn. Wait, ain't nobody got time for dat!

 

first reply.

 

Nailed it.

 

People just assume you are automatically overgeared/extremely talented at your class/spec, and if this turns out not to be the case, they generally have no patience to let you learn.

 

My advice is get a guild and run with them. They will be your friends, not just some random PUG who will kick you on first mess up. Repairs cost credits, so people have short patience for mistakes im afraid. Finding a better class of people is usually the answer.

[Revenaught]

There are a whole lot of people on this thread who failed at reading comprehension. No where in the OP did it state it was a high level toon switched over to heals. Then in a later post he directly said it was at level 20. Every single person who made long diatribes about swappin over to healing at max level needs to apologize to the OP now for posting without bothering to learn the topic properly.

 

Next anyone who gets irate because someone dared to join a pug less than perfectly prepared to be the perfect player I say stay out of pug groups. You pug you roll the dice and do your best with what you get. If you can't handle the bad with the good stay out of that situation that might put you in the bad. Oh and incidentally to the person who wanted a perfect group of companions because their queue time was so long by refusing to allow medics to run flashpoints unless they are perfect at it already just limits the number of medics who might learn and get better at it, thereby limiting your future source of group mates causing your queue times to get that much longer. In other words you're shooting yourself in the foot because it didn't move fast enough for you.

 

Last to those who say play solo until you know what your doing. I tell you this now, all the solo play in the world even with companions will not teach you how to properly heal in a group setting. Only by engaging in group settings will you get the experience needed to properly learn what you're doing as a group healer. I say this as a novice healer myself. I have plenty of experience as a tank and dps but my merc healer didn't hit 50 till last week and I am still learning how to be an effective healer and where I learn that is by healing in FP. There is no other way. I can read and study till I'm blue in the face and heal my comps from 1 to 55 but it's only in the FPs that I really learn how group healing works. Anywhere else I'm DPS throwing a couple of heals in between attacks.

 

The FPs along the way are the training grounds for end game play they get harder as you get more skills. Expecting players to be perfect at them or you kick them from the group defeats their primary purpose which is training grounds for group play at higher levels.

 

To the OP I will say this reading your skills as you get them is very important as understanding what they do and how they work together will make you or break you in any role. It may take some effort to really grasp how they all fit together but the info given on them should be enough. All the guides out there are great but even they make mistakes from time to time. Never accept them as gospel or the only way to be effective. Best advice I have to give is, I believe you said you were in a guild, ask your guild mates if any of them have experience healing and have them train you. If none of them do go to your server forums and post asking if any healers on your server of your class or with experience in your class would be willing to help you learn. Good Luck and Good Gaming.

[ObiJuanShenobi]

Don't let it get you down OP. This happened to me once when I first started healing. This guild invited me toI run a FP once and booted me like that, a few months later I was pleasantly surprised to see them on my team in a WZ. I refused to heal them and /lol'd while they were crying about it in OPS chat.

 

Revenge was soooo sweet.

[CosmicKat]

This isn't specifically an MMO problem, but it's pretty bad in MMO's with a heavy kiddie quotient. TOR has a very heavy kiddie quotient and it's been getting worse.

[Sarielle]

Interestingly, there is so much critic for not being prepared for healing in this FP. But not a single complaint about the stupid DPS bringing additional mobs into the fight and getting aggro with them. Did anyone read the opening post properly?

 

That sucks, and it especially sucks at low levels when your healing tools are really limited and energy management is harder. It doesn't, imo, excuse not reading your skill descriptions. But, again, OP learned something from the experience -- 1) what Support Cells does, 2) to read his skill descriptions carefully in the future -- and hopefully has begun the road to developing a thick skin. For all the "tanks get blamed for everything" talk I see, I've been blamed for "poor resource management" when an (undergeared) DPS queues as a tank and doesn't use defensive cooldowns. I can compensate some for that now at 31. Didn't have the tools for it at level 13 (or whatever Hammer Station level is), lol. Just gotta shrug it off.

[Kurin]

Perhaps, and I'm being critical for a reason, if you had taken as much time to research the best way to play your class BEFORE the FP as you did complaining about it after the FP, you would have had quite a different outcome.

[ravenaus]

as a players that has 5 healing toons ranging from 30-55...i found the best method for training your reactions and healing skills is in warzones...things happen alot faster in pvp and learning to react and keep your team mates up longer (people die in wz **** happens) but the longer u keep them up the better your team will go...the point is your reactions become quicker and trying the different ways to heal through a nasty fight will identify better rotations for different situations...my personal experience was that after healing many warzones it was so much easier to heal flashpoints when they are a much more controlled situation and that the majority of your heal time is focused on 1 team member not 8

 

hope this may help the op or any other new healers in the game..we always need more

[Sarielle]

my personal experience was that after healing many warzones it was so much easier to heal flashpoints when they are a much more controlled situation and that the majority of your heal time is focused on 1 team member not 8

 

hope this may help the op or any other new healers in the game..we always need more

 

I agree. I started leveling a merc healer as my first toon and I was pretty mediocre at best in flashpoints. Rerolled on another server to play with friends as a sage, did lots of PvP. I may still not be the best healer ever, but I'm definitely 10 times better than I was. And it has nothing to do with the change in class.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Sarielle

[jorill]

I take it half the people in this thread failed reading comprehension in school if they took it at all. I expect the second fp to be really rough. I really struggled healing on that flashpoint as well. Im above average healer now so dont let some people here get you down. You should of at least gone over your skills but at least you are trying to improve which is all you can ask for at this point

[Kourage]

http://www.noxxic.com/swtor/pve/trooper/commando/combat-medic/rotation-and-cooldowns

 

 

Can't say it's the best website, but it should help you.

[curtkram]

i was just in a flashpoint where some guy wiped us. that's fine, stuff happens and we learn from it.

 

so i was like, what went wrong? i'd like to help you, so let's talk about what we're doing here. the guy never said a thing. he just stood there and walked around. after probably maybe a minute and a half (i'm pretty sure that's a long time to watch someone just stand there) of trying to get him to at least say hi, we kicked him.

 

i've seen that a couple times. is it that there are a lot of people that don't speak english on east coast servers, so they're uncomfortable typing? is it easier than i'm thinking to accidentally turn off group chat so they maybe don't see that we're typing at them? in hindsight, maybe i should have said to ctrl-u twice, but i've only seen that screw up in ops (warzones) and this was a group. could it be that there are a somewhat significant number of people that are too shy to type? i mean, it's typing. and i was pretty specific that i wanted to help if i could, just that i couldn't help if he was unable to communicate.

 

i don't know. maybe he was just texting and gaming and was too embarrassed to admit it. still, if that's the case, just put down the phone and focus until we're done with the flashpoint.