Leveling as a combat medic: viable?

[Draksen]

Hi there

I was thinking about creating a new trooper on my rp server. I was also thinking about leveling it from 10 to 55 as a combat medic directly. Is it possible, advisable, viable?

How do you do dps, by using your henchman mainly? Which one?

I can spend cartel points, do you advise me to buy a new one, maybe the robot?

Thanks for help.

[theblaznee]

Hi there.

 

I'm currently levelling mine purely as medic, and I'm level 44 now.

 

What I'm doing is playing mainly Flashpoints and then sticking to class quest and whatever area quests I stumble upon. I'm using the 25% xp boost and I'm in a 10% boost guild as well.. I'm slightly underlevelled like this, but still doing fine.

 

Playing that many flashpoints mean that your companion is pretty well geared.. I tend to put FP drops on my dps companion (I use Jorgan) and then I spend the planetary commendations on my own gear. Seems to work just fine.

 

It's still a LOT slower than using dps spec though when soloing, so if you have the cash I'd recommend field respec for speedy levelling.. Play dps when solo and then queue FP's as healer and just respec.

 

But really.. In the end.. it's quite viable to level as Combat medic.. It's just a little slow..

[oaceen]

it's completely viable. it will take longer to kill mobs, but there will probably be less downtime between pulls, so it can go either way. i leveled a fair bit as a combat medic, but this was well over a year ago, so i don't recall how it compared to leveling as dps.

 

anyway, there's not really a dps rotation outside of using full auto when it's up, charged bolts with enough ammo and hammershot to conserve ammo; sticky grenade, mortar volley, and pulse cannon for aoe pulls.

 

when you get supercharge cells at around lv20, it can be used as a good burst dps buff as well since full auto and charged bolts are free for the duration.

if you can get a dps companion that bleeds targets (elara and treek are all you have until hoth, then you can get yuun), you can use high impact bolt. you can still use it if you stun someone with sticky grenade or full auto and the knockdown from mortar volley (or the knockdown from explosive round or the burn from plasma grenade, but that can get expensive).

sticky + HIB is a great combo though since HIB can sometimes kill a standard mob on its own, and it will cause sticky to explode a bit sooner.

 

best companion is probably going to be aric or HK-51

yuun will be nice when you get him because it will allow access to HIB as i mentioned above

[Pilgrim_Grey]

As others have said, it's definitely doable. Combat Medic can do decent off DPS and focus on DPS for the most part when fighting mobs. You'll want to pair up with a DPS companion and focus on healing him when fighting tougher mobs, but even then you can split between both and do well. I generally work with Aric Jorgan, and he does well.

 

I've tried with the tank characters, but it just makes it too slow. The quicker you burn down a mob, the less you have to worry about healing during the fight or just after.

 

Now, if I had the money, I'd probably respec to DPS when I was soloing, but I'm not there yet on my Commando. I don't feel like he's appreciably slower than my Guardian when soloing or Gunslinger.

[Dibolcrif]

I did all of my leveling as a combat medic - never done any other role on my commando.

 

I made the mistake of doing most of it with tank companions though - always took so long to kill anything (and Vik just always manages to seem like a terrible tank, no matter how well-geared he is )

 

Far more effective to just stick to a DPS companion, like everyone else has been saying. I always use Jorgan now for dailies, just cause he somehow seems a bit less squishy than Yuun