[Guide] Mercenary endgame PvE healing

[Iwipe]

Hey everyone, here is the Mercenary endgame PvE healing guide for the Bodyguard spec written by some of my guildies for my site. It should give you a pretty good overview of what to expect healing wise at L55 for both basic content and all the way into Nightmare operations.

 

Guide (last updated patch 2.5): http://dulfy.net/2014/01/04/swtor-bodyguard-mercenary-healer-class-guide/

 

Contents:

• Overview of the class
  
• Build
  
• Gearing & Stats priority
  
• Gearing Overview
  
• Ability Priority
  
• Healing Strategy
  
• Ability Details
  
• DPS Strategy
  
• UI setup
  
• Videos
  

 

Enjoy and let me know if you have any feedback, criticisms, or suggestions!

[elbaker]

Really nice job!

[Lucabratzi]

Good basic guide for fundamentals of Merc healing Iwipe. I would like to offer some of my finding and tricks that I have discovered that aid in turning a bad/ average Merc healer into a good one. These are primarily from the PVE perspective, but some of the ideas can be utilized in PVE. The first and fundamental "trick" (I am referring to them as tricks in reference to your guide) revolves around the use of rapid shots in the rotation. Many merc healers will healing scan > rapid scan> rapid scan until their heat is over 55 and then rapid shot to get the back down to a manageable number. By simply adding a rapid shot between each scan (excluding emergency scan) your heat will remain manageable indefinitely, while increasing the rate at which supercharged gas is gained and increasing you attacks per minute (APM). This will also allow you to maintain critical reaction permanently. The basic rotation should be healing scan > rapid shot> rapid scan> rapid shot with emergency scan, kolto missile and jet boost thrown in. While, yes, you may have moments where the tank or DPS may be getting nuked and you need to spam heal quickly make sure vent heat is up. A fight is more than just a few seconds and by spamming your big heals repeatedly for a short period of time will keep the individual alive at the moment, you will be heated out for the next 10 seconds and be of little use to your raid. The best example I can think of this is on NiM Cartel Warlords. You will need to sustain heals for the duration of the fight and any time spent for repeated rapid shots will generally result in overburdening your healing comrade and wiping the raid.

 

Secondly, you should utilize 4 points between surgical precision systems and upgraded arsenal not 5. The 5th point should be allocated to heat dampening. This will allow you to have jet boost, which should be used very regularly as it will hit every member of you raid in range, to cost 0 heat. This like emergency scan will reduce your overall heat during the partial second it is activated and the GCD to the next heal. This will vastly improve your heat management. Remember to make sure that kolto missile has been cast in the previous 15 seconds on your raid members, as you will want the 3% healing bump before you perform jet boost. You should allocate the other 4 talents points in direct relation to the fight. For fights where little knock back will occur (think Nefra), 3 points should for to upgraded arsenal, while 1 point goes to surgical precision systems. For fights where lots of knock back is occurring (think Gate Commander Draxus) you will want to allocate 2 points to surgical precision systems and 2 points to upgraded arsenal.

 

I would like to offer two critiques to the guide. The first is in regards to the use of supercharged gas. You state to use it on cool down. Which, while I agree, will give you your highest potential healing numbers, is not always necessarily best. Knowing your fights and knowing when to hold off on using supercharged gas is extremely powerful for raid utility. If you know you have a tough healing phase coming up in 5 or 10 seconds and you have supercharged gas up, you are probably better off waiting and popping the gas when the phase starts (Think healing challenge on Raptus). Secondly, I think your crit rating is slightly low. Due to critical reaction, and the increase to surge crit is useful to merc healers. I am in BIS 78 gear with theory crafted and tested numbers and I am running 378 crit rating. While I have gone into the DR, I can assure you that you will see an increase in overall heals and HPS.

 

Good work on the guide, these are just some findings from an experienced merc healer. The above comments were not written to take anything away from your guide but augment it.

[Iwipe]

Thanks for those suggestions, I have added them in

[KeyboardNinja]

So, there are a couple things in this guide which I think are flawed.

 

First off, merc healers are painted as having access to a broad range of tools, but as not really mastering any particular category. This is patently incorrect. Mercs have the best single target heals by far, and the best burst healing in both single and AoE categories. Rapid Scan is equivalent in healing power to Kolto Injection, but it costs 33% less. Additionally, Healing Scan is almost exactly as powerful as Rapid Scan, but casts in only 1.5 seconds. No other healer has anything to match that. Because of their cost and cast time, merc healers can use these abilities to achieve entirely unparalleled single-target burst in what is essentially two GCDs. Kolto Missile is the cheapest AoE heal in the game with the shortest cool down, while simultaneously doing the most burst healing of any AoE heal (4k instant on four players). This firmly places merc healers into the category of high-burst healing with a powerful emphasis on single target. Note how laughably easy the HM Raptus healing challenge is with a merc healer (I was able to almost solo heal it in 72 and 75 gear on my commando).

 

Further emphasizing merc role as a single target healer, Kolto Shell is the most efficient non-free heal in the game, but it is functionally just a single target reactive heal.

 

Merc group healing is moderately strong, but far weaker than the other two healers. Operatives have the best raid healing in the game given enough time, but sorc healing requires less setup and maintenance and only imposes a positional requirement. Mercs can put off an impressive amount of AoE healing, particularly in a 16 man, but most of that comes from very small ticks and a lot of high-maintenance Kolto missile usage (which is not heat neutral). While mercs are respectable raid healers in 16 man, they are woefully out classed in this area in 8 man. Their only real raid healing strength is in small burst healing over four or less targets. In this, they are superior to the other two healers, but in every other area, I would rather have a sorc or an op. (Sidebar: merc/operative is by far the most underrated healing composition in the game)

 

All in all, I think it is very safe to say that merc healers are first and foremost the strongest single target healers in the game, and secondarily the highest burst healers (in both single and AoE). The buffs provided to other healers are indeed noticeable, particularly the shield from Kolto Missile, but they aren't the primary strength of the class nor are they sufficient reason to bring one to a raid as opposed to another healer. Burst healing *is* sufficient reason.

 

Moving on. Jet Boost is a really fantastic heal. Used correctly, the circular nature makes it a vastly superior AoE heal to Overload, though primarily in 16 man raids. The radius is as long as the distance on Overload, but it is easier to position. The longer cooldown is of course annoying, though the cost is non-existent since there is no reason not to spec into the cost reduction (more on that in a second). Also annoying is the fact that the surge talent does not appear to affect it, which is I believe a bug.

 

Regarding spec, there is absolutely no need to spec into the cleanse, as there are no mental effects in the current endgame and the added heal is minuscule. Put those points into the cost reduction on Jet Boost.

 

As previously mentioned in this thread, optimal crit for a merc healer is around 400, with higher levels being allowed as taste dictates (I ran 550 until recently, and I'm now at 470). As a note here, your use of the phrase "diminishing returns" is inaccurate. Crit does not have a high DR. It has a very very low DR. Even at 400 crit, you have barely started to lose value on a point for point basis. Surge has a high DR. The problem with crit is not the DR but rather the "rate of return", which is very poor relative to stats like power. This has nothing to do with diminishing anything, and holds as much true at zero crit as at 400.

 

Final note: Kolto Missile should be used immediately *before* Supercharged Gas, not during (or if during, then exactly at the end). This does two things. First, it ensures you are above 0 heat when you pop supercharge (likely to be the case anyway, but worth noting). Second, it applies the shield without wasting a GCD under supercharge via the lingering AoE hot. This, combined with the set bonus, allows you to squeeze in a whole additional HS > RS combo before supercharge runs out, thus ending with HS off cooldown.

[Carlenux]

Good basic guide for fundamentals of Merc healing Iwipe. I would like to offer some of my finding and tricks that I have discovered that aid in turning a bad/ average Merc healer into a good one. These are primarily from the PVE perspective, but some of the ideas can be utilized in PVE. The first and fundamental "trick" (I am referring to them as tricks in reference to your guide) revolves around the use of rapid shots in the rotation. Many merc healers will healing scan > rapid scan> rapid scan until their heat is over 55 and then rapid shot to get the back down to a manageable number. By simply adding a rapid shot between each scan (excluding emergency scan) your heat will remain manageable indefinitely, while increasing the rate at which supercharged gas is gained and increasing you attacks per minute (APM). This will also allow you to maintain critical reaction permanently. The basic rotation should be healing scan > rapid shot> rapid scan> rapid shot with emergency scan, kolto missile and jet boost thrown in. While, yes, you may have moments where the tank or DPS may be getting nuked and you need to spam heal quickly make sure vent heat is up. A fight is more than just a few seconds and by spamming your big heals repeatedly for a short period of time will keep the individual alive at the moment, you will be heated out for the next 10 seconds and be of little use to your raid. The best example I can think of this is on NiM Cartel Warlords. You will need to sustain heals for the duration of the fight and any time spent for repeated rapid shots will generally result in overburdening your healing comrade and wiping the raid.

 

Secondly, you should utilize 4 points between surgical precision systems and upgraded arsenal not 5. The 5th point should be allocated to heat dampening. This will allow you to have jet boost, which should be used very regularly as it will hit every member of you raid in range, to cost 0 heat. This like emergency scan will reduce your overall heat during the partial second it is activated and the GCD to the next heal. This will vastly improve your heat management. Remember to make sure that kolto missile has been cast in the previous 15 seconds on your raid members, as you will want the 3% healing bump before you perform jet boost. You should allocate the other 4 talents points in direct relation to the fight. For fights where little knock back will occur (think Nefra), 3 points should for to upgraded arsenal, while 1 point goes to surgical precision systems. For fights where lots of knock back is occurring (think Gate Commander Draxus) you will want to allocate 2 points to surgical precision systems and 2 points to upgraded arsenal.

 

I would like to offer two critiques to the guide. The first is in regards to the use of supercharged gas. You state to use it on cool down. Which, while I agree, will give you your highest potential healing numbers, is not always necessarily best. Knowing your fights and knowing when to hold off on using supercharged gas is extremely powerful for raid utility. If you know you have a tough healing phase coming up in 5 or 10 seconds and you have supercharged gas up, you are probably better off waiting and popping the gas when the phase starts (Think healing challenge on Raptus). Secondly, I think your crit rating is slightly low. Due to critical reaction, and the increase to surge crit is useful to merc healers. I am in BIS 78 gear with theory crafted and tested numbers and I am running 378 crit rating. While I have gone into the DR, I can assure you that you will see an increase in overall heals and HPS.

 

Good work on the guide, these are just some findings from an experienced merc healer. The above comments were not written to take anything away from your guide but augment it.

 

that sounds really good, thanks for the tips.

[Carlenux]

So, there are a couple things in this guide which I think are flawed.

 

First off, merc healers are painted as having access to a broad range of tools, but as not really mastering any particular category. This is patently incorrect. Mercs have the best single target heals by far, and the best burst healing in both single and AoE categories. Rapid Scan is equivalent in healing power to Kolto Injection, but it costs 33% less. Additionally, Healing Scan is almost exactly as powerful as Rapid Scan, but casts in only 1.5 seconds. No other healer has anything to match that. Because of their cost and cast time, merc healers can use these abilities to achieve entirely unparalleled single-target burst in what is essentially two GCDs. Kolto Missile is the cheapest AoE heal in the game with the shortest cool down, while simultaneously doing the most burst healing of any AoE heal (4k instant on four players). This firmly places merc healers into the category of high-burst healing with a powerful emphasis on single target. Note how laughably easy the HM Raptus healing challenge is with a merc healer (I was able to almost solo heal it in 72 and 75 gear on my commando).

 

Further emphasizing merc role as a single target healer, Kolto Shell is the most efficient non-free heal in the game, but it is functionally just a single target reactive heal.

 

Merc group healing is moderately strong, but far weaker than the other two healers. Operatives have the best raid healing in the game given enough time, but sorc healing requires less setup and maintenance and only imposes a positional requirement. Mercs can put off an impressive amount of AoE healing, particularly in a 16 man, but most of that comes from very small ticks and a lot of high-maintenance Kolto missile usage (which is not heat neutral). While mercs are respectable raid healers in 16 man, they are woefully out classed in this area in 8 man. Their only real raid healing strength is in small burst healing over four or less targets. In this, they are superior to the other two healers, but in every other area, I would rather have a sorc or an op. (Sidebar: merc/operative is by far the most underrated healing composition in the game)

 

All in all, I think it is very safe to say that merc healers are first and foremost the strongest single target healers in the game, and secondarily the highest burst healers (in both single and AoE). The buffs provided to other healers are indeed noticeable, particularly the shield from Kolto Missile, but they aren't the primary strength of the class nor are they sufficient reason to bring one to a raid as opposed to another healer. Burst healing *is* sufficient reason.

 

Moving on. Jet Boost is a really fantastic heal. Used correctly, the circular nature makes it a vastly superior AoE heal to Overload, though primarily in 16 man raids. The radius is as long as the distance on Overload, but it is easier to position. The longer cooldown is of course annoying, though the cost is non-existent since there is no reason not to spec into the cost reduction (more on that in a second). Also annoying is the fact that the surge talent does not appear to affect it, which is I believe a bug.

 

Regarding spec, there is absolutely no need to spec into the cleanse, as there are no mental effects in the current endgame and the added heal is minuscule. Put those points into the cost reduction on Jet Boost.

 

As previously mentioned in this thread, optimal crit for a merc healer is around 400, with higher levels being allowed as taste dictates (I ran 550 until recently, and I'm now at 470). As a note here, your use of the phrase "diminishing returns" is inaccurate. Crit does not have a high DR. It has a very very low DR. Even at 400 crit, you have barely started to lose value on a point for point basis. Surge has a high DR. The problem with crit is not the DR but rather the "rate of return", which is very poor relative to stats like power. This has nothing to do with diminishing anything, and holds as much true at zero crit as at 400.

 

Final note: Kolto Missile should be used immediately *before* Supercharged Gas, not during (or if during, then exactly at the end). This does two things. First, it ensures you are above 0 heat when you pop supercharge (likely to be the case anyway, but worth noting). Second, it applies the shield without wasting a GCD under supercharge via the lingering AoE hot. This, combined with the set bonus, allows you to squeeze in a whole additional HS > RS combo before supercharge runs out, thus ending with HS off cooldown.

 

 

When considering Burst healing people often commit few mistakes, the fact that you can "deliver heals faster" doesnt mean you actually do more burst healing, the fact that you can deliver 30k dmg burst in 5 seconds as operative is good, the sidenote is that you burned 85 Energy, Burst not always means: instant dmg or as soon as possible... Burst means that you need to kill somethign, or heal something quick on a period of time... Dread council last phase for example, like 10-15 seconds of burst healing, now assuming your post lets compare the difference between Burst opertaive and busrt merc:

 

merc precast before phase= 1 kolto shell / 30 supercharged gas

operative precast before phase= multiple kolto probes

 

Merc burst: two heals 32 + kolto bomb / Supercharged 32 + 3 more heals 55-60 heat, overheated, total healing done 2 ticks of Shell - 6 heals.

 

Operative burst: nanotech + infusion + surgical + injection + surgical + injection + surgical + injection + surgical + surgical (assuming a proc from kolto probe) probably like 20 energy with this... 10 heals + Multiple Probe dots.

 

this is just few GCD merc delievered that in 9 seconds, while opeartive in 15.

 

now lets go more in depth, consider you dont want to get overheated because the phase has 30 seconds now you have to add rapid shots in between casts and control heat, this will waste 3-4 GCD on rapid shots with no special heat recovering from it as well as average healing and no back up heal suppoer (Hot or AoE).

 

Operative, adding 2-3 D.S will do the trick, probably 1 less than merc thx to the energy recovery, this taking in consideration the fact that nanotech and multiple probes atleast on 3-4 people are doing off heals while you are recovering energy.

 

so bottom line, merc has the fast burst heal, not the best, they can top you off in 3 seconds right away, they will also get overheated in 6 GCD most of the time and using rapid shots different from other classes, you dont have anything else to sustain healing while doing it like probe / nanotech / resurgence / revivification.

all the Hots plus just as fast and way easier to manage energy from operative enter in the discussion on burst, the thing is who delievered the heal faster? or who delievered more / better and sustained resources better during the Burst phase?, ops have a clearly advantage over merc for that.

 

Kolto bomb is the faster healing AoE, just because it is a splash instant, but it is not the cheapest, 16 cost on 100 heat = 16%... 70 cost on 600 force = 12% of your total force, considering u never use it without resurgence, just because the number looks smaller doesnt mean it cost less. for the Use / CD... revivification heals 8 Targets 8 ticks of 1,2k lets say = 9600 * 8 = 76800 healing done.

Kolto bomb no crit is like what 3k? on 4 person plus a 1k hot on 8... 3 *4 = 12 + 8= 20k on second 0.... 40k on second 6 (two uses), 60k on second 12 (3 uses 48 Heat)

 

now compare 12% force use for 76800 in 1 GCD Vs 60k healing done with 48% of heat in 3 GCD

 

now the CD... bomb has 6 second CD an instant, this means first GCD start running upon use, while revivificatoin has 2 second cast (can be faster atleast1 stack is useful)... so this means you waste 2 Seconds on cast - 10 second of heals / 5 second down time - 2 second cast, the actual downtime of the ability is 5+2+2= 9 second (could be 7 considering 1 stack of force thingie would make it a 1 second cast each)... so 6 Second CD vs 7-9 second Downtime, because the fact that it has 15 second CD has to be reduced by the 10 second duration anyways, this is the only thing that bomb wins and not by much.

 

so basically Revivification heals for more, heals more people cost less in average as well as in theory has the Same or 1-3 more seconds of downtime than bomb, using 1 instant rev + 1 stack would reduce downtime to 6 seconds, making it 6 sec CD vs 6 sec downtime, so none of the statements from kolto > rev are true .

 

as far as diminishing return, there is no diminishing return in this game if you put it taht way, everything has a rate of return, some change and some dont, the only thing that doesnt is power... every point of crit you get will lower the amount of crit gained by the next point by X amount, i have not done the math to know if it is consistent or not, but it is low, if u want to call it rate of return is fine, hte thing is that it doesnt hit a soft cap, surge doesnt hit soft cap either and has a rate of return too, the thing is that at some point it will increase the amount of difference between each "rate of return"... you would call it soft cap / hard cap if u had something like power, consistent return until X stat, hit soft cap, reduced by 33% until X, hit hard cap, Reduced by 66% more, so nothing here has that kind of cap, try using 200 crit, calculate the return given by each point of Crit, then try with 400, u will notice how it decrease same with anything thats not power, surge just happen to have an increase on the formula at some point close to 74%, on the other hand i do agree i could add more crit to the high surge gearing option anyways.

 

moving on, conal Vs circular is really up to preference i find it so much easy just to calculate the frontal cone that i basically hit whatever i want, ive been playing a sorc for longer than most people anyways since early release, the conal could be useful in certain situations but harder to aim if u want to give it proper use, like standing between melee /ranged group perfectly positioned to heal all groups, it has its utility but its up to choice, if u in a group of ranged u dont have to aim the overload which is a nice touch too.

 

the cleanse talent should always be used regardless of the content, this is the same as the comment on itemization for operations, just because there is not a type to claense for that now, doesnt mean you dont have to get it, if nightmare brings a debuff like that, then you are screwed until you notice you are not using that, and it will take people a while obviously, i often recommend my raiders to just go with 1 spec, for example on nim sav, my snipers had to go with diversion / leg shot talent for the whole thing, just because it is quite normal that respeccing mid trash or moving or title run or progressing u might misslclick, or forget an important talent hindering more your group because you wanted to not use something because it is not exactly useful right now, it has happened to me many times when parsing my operative no using the weak poison talents for the bug, then going to raid and half way thru it being like ***? i didnt respec, if it was nightmare title run, i just hindered my group for being extremely selective on my talents for no real apparent reason :S.

 

the kolto bomb with supercharged is a good add to pull it off if u happen to have it off CD when u want to use it, it is a nice tip for more experienced merc healers to use just like using Vicious throw before Gore on carnage rotation for 4 GCD instead of 3 in the gore window. requires practice .

 

anyways i am pretty burned out for answering hundreds of questions lol specially few ones that people get really stubborn on obvious things (which is none of your cases here ), so some of those things up there might be mixed up or mistaken lol.

[KeyboardNinja]

When considering Burst healing people often commit few mistakes, the fact that you can "deliver heals faster" doesnt mean you actually do more burst healing, the fact that you can deliver 30k dmg burst in 5 seconds as operative is good, the sidenote is that you burned 85 Energy, Burst not always means: instant dmg or as soon as possible... Burst means that you need to kill somethign, or heal something quick on a period of time... Dread council last phase for example, like 10-15 seconds of burst healing, now assuming your post lets compare the difference between Burst opertaive and busrt merc:

 

merc precast before phase= 1 kolto shell / 30 supercharged gas

operative precast before phase= multiple kolto probes

 

Merc burst: two heals 32 + kolto bomb / Supercharged 32 + 3 more heals 55-60 heat, overheated, total healing done 2 ticks of Shell - 6 heals.

 

Operative burst: nanotech + infusion + surgical + injection + surgical + injection + surgical + injection + surgical + surgical (assuming a proc from kolto probe) probably like 20 energy with this... 10 heals + Multiple Probe dots.

 

this is just few GCD merc delievered that in 9 seconds, while opeartive in 15.

 

now lets go more in depth, consider you dont want to get overheated because the phase has 30 seconds now you have to add rapid shots in between casts and control heat, this will waste 3-4 GCD on rapid shots with no special heat recovering from it as well as average healing and no back up heal suppoer (Hot or AoE).

 

Operative, adding 2-3 D.S will do the trick, probably 1 less than merc thx to the energy recovery, this taking in consideration the fact that nanotech and multiple probes atleast on 3-4 people are doing off heals while you are recovering energy.

 

so bottom line, merc has the fast burst heal, not the best, they can top you off in 3 seconds right away, they will also get overheated in 6 GCD most of the time and using rapid shots different from other classes, you dont have anything else to sustain healing while doing it like probe / nanotech / resurgence / revivification.

all the Hots plus just as fast and way easier to manage energy from operative enter in the discussion on burst, the thing is who delievered the heal faster? or who delievered more / better and sustained resources better during the Burst phase?, ops have a clearly advantage over merc for that.

 

If I am allowed to heal as slowly as an operative would during a burst phase, then I can stay essentially heat neutral for the same length of time that you listed. You keep claiming that mercs overheat in five or six GCDs, but that really doesn't happen. All you have to do is use your procs correctly. Starting from 22 heat or less, supercharge + HS > RS > ES > HS > RS > Rapid Shots is impressively close to heat neutral and still leaves plenty of time under supercharge. If I have to, I can actually spam between HS and RS for the whole supercharge, which is not heat neutral but, assuming that I started at 22 or less, will leave me just above mid regeneration. Note that if you put HS on cool down before you start, you can do HS > RS > SCG. And remember, with the set bonus and a sane amount of alacrity, you can get four HS > RS pairs into the window, even if you drop a ES in for cheaper healing. That is effectively just shy of 9 injections worth of healing done, assuming you aren't clipping the hot from HS, and I still haven't run out of heat. Four or five RS casts with another HS and ES will put me firmly overheated, which matches the point where you left your operative. That's a total of almost exactly 15 injections worth of healing, plus the ticks from Kolto Shell, in exactly the amount of resources your operative expended, or 17 if you count the HS > RS pair before supercharge. Your operative got the equivalent of four injections and a few surgicals, so we'll call it seven injections.

 

Merc wins here, hands down, even by your own metric. It's just that most people don't correctly manage their cool downs for these sorts of burst phases, and so they overheat early or mistime a heal.

 

Kolto bomb is the faster healing AoE, just because it is a splash instant, but it is not the cheapest, 16 cost on 100 heat = 16%... 70 cost on 600 force = 12% of your total force, considering u never use it without resurgence, just because the number looks smaller doesnt mean it cost less. for the Use / CD... revivification heals 8 Targets 8 ticks of 1,2k lets say = 9600 * 8 = 76800 healing done.

Kolto bomb no crit is like what 3k? on 4 person plus a 1k hot on 8... 3 *4 = 12 + 8= 20k on second 0.... 40k on second 6 (two uses), 60k on second 12 (3 uses 48 Heat)

 

A non crit Kolto missile is 4.5k without a 78 main hand. I've seen >8k crits on classes with healing bonuses when I'm standing in a phase walk, and remember my healing crit is just a bit shy of 38%.

 

Also, your energy comparison is flawed. Of course you're right that you can't compare costs on a point-for-point value, but that's not what I'm doing. The only fair way to compare is to look at *time* that it takes to recoup those resources. Kolto Missile is 16 heat, which is 1.77 GCDs. Revivification is 70 force, which is a whopping 5.83 GCDs of regeneration (if memory serves that sage regen is 8/sec; I don't have the game in front of me). Now, of course you also have to take into account Consumption. Generally, you consume (on average) once per Innervate. It will be more if single target healing, less if raid healing, so we'll approximate. Innervate is at most once every 7.5 seconds, consumption is 90 force with the set bonus (which is very worthwhile, btw), so that's another 12/sec of regen. Thus, we have 12+8/sec of regen at the absolute most, which means Reviv costs 3.26 GCDs worth of regeneration. That makes Kolto Missile the cheaper heal by almost exactly double.

 

Now, that's fair because Reviv unquestionably heals for more. However, even in max gear, it isn't going to tick for much more than 1k, or 1.6k on a crit. Kolto Missile ticks immediately for 4.5k, and almost 8k on a crit, which makes it superior to the first four seconds of Revivification unless you're hitting more than 4 players with Reviv. 4 seconds is almost enough time for Kolto Missile to come off cool down again, and more than enough time to recoup the cost, which means a Merc can heal for the value of 8 seconds of Reviv on four (or less) players in two instant activations for exactly the same cost. As I said, Kolto Missile is *very* underrated, even without considering the hot component. The fact that this healing is instant also makes it extremely powerful, for reasons which should be obvious.

 

so basically Revivification heals for more, heals more people cost less in average as well as in theory has the Same or 1-3 more seconds of downtime than bomb, using 1 instant rev + 1 stack would reduce downtime to 6 seconds, making it 6 sec CD vs 6 sec downtime, so none of the statements from kolto > rev are true .

 

See my analysis above. To reiterate, you underestimated the healing magnitude of Kolto Missile and also underestimated the cost of Revivification when converting between heat and force. Accounting for these errors gives the corrected conclusion. Note that I in no way believe Kolto Missile is the superior sustained AoE heal. The target limit prevents that. But it is far, far better than your giving it credit for, particularly given that its healing is compressed into an instant hit (rather than a hot).

 

as far as diminishing return, there is no diminishing return in this game if you put it taht way, everything has a rate of return, some change and some dont, the only thing that doesnt is power... every point of crit you get will lower the amount of crit gained by the next point by X amount, i have not done the math to know if it is consistent or not, but it is low, if u want to call it rate of return is fine, hte thing is that it doesnt hit a soft cap, surge doesnt hit soft cap either and has a rate of return too, the thing is that at some point it will increase the amount of difference between each "rate of return"... you would call it soft cap / hard cap if u had something like power, consistent return until X stat, hit soft cap, reduced by 33% until X, hit hard cap, Reduced by 66% more, so nothing here has that kind of cap, try using 200 crit, calculate the return given by each point of Crit, then try with 400, u will notice how it decrease same with anything thats not power, surge just happen to have an increase on the formula at some point close to 74%, on the other hand i do agree i could add more crit to the high surge gearing option anyways.

 

Of course crit has a diminishing return. As does surge. However, you don't "hit" diminishing returns at any point in Star Wars, since they are a smooth curve. The point I was making is that, by your own argument, we shouldn't stack any surge at all, since it has the harshest DR of any stat in the game. As for 200 vs 400, the math is pretty clear there. Remember, 15% surge talent. Now, I don't think there is a problem running lower crit if you really, really don't like the RNG (it can, of course, result in overheal). The HPS loss isn't too significant.

 

moving on, conal Vs circular is really up to preference i find it so much easy just to calculate the frontal cone that i basically hit whatever i want, ive been playing a sorc for longer than most people anyways since early release, the conal could be useful in certain situations but harder to aim if u want to give it proper use, like standing between melee /ranged group perfectly positioned to heal all groups, it has its utility but its up to choice, if u in a group of ranged u dont have to aim the overload which is a nice touch too.

 

Being able to heal the melee and the tanks is definitely an advantage of the conal, since it is harder to do that with the circular. Agreed on personal preference though.

 

the cleanse talent should always be used regardless of the content, this is the same as the comment on itemization for operations, just because there is not a type to claense for that now, doesnt mean you dont have to get it, if nightmare brings a debuff like that, then you are screwed until you notice you are not using that, and it will take people a while obviously, i often recommend my raiders to just go with 1 spec, for example on nim sav, my snipers had to go with diversion / leg shot talent for the whole thing, just because it is quite normal that respeccing mid trash or moving or title run or progressing u might misslclick, or forget an important talent hindering more your group because you wanted to not use something because it is not exactly useful right now, it has happened to me many times when parsing my operative no using the weak poison talents for the bug, then going to raid and half way thru it being like ***? i didnt respec, if it was nightmare title run, i just hindered my group for being extremely selective on my talents for no real apparent reason :S.

 

Oh man, my DPS respec between every boss in DF. That's another story though. :-)

 

There haven't been any mental effects in the PvE game since the trandoshan trash in EC (the slow), and nothing that is actually a real boss mechanic since Eternity Vault. I don't think it's coming back, even in nightmare mode. Mental effects happen more often in PvP (though still rare), and so I respec for that venue. However, I have to respec so extensively for PvP anyway (on every character) that it really isn't an issue.

 

On other healers, I do take the respective cleanse talent. However, for a merc, because of the wasted points throughout the tree, there just isn't enough left over. Maxing out the alacrity proc talent helps a lot more than you would think, as does the free Jet Boost (since you can just use it to replace a Rapid Shots as filler). I only respec my commando for DPS or when we are doing something cheesy (all commando run!). Any time I'm healing, I am in the same spec, and I doesn't talent the cleanse.

Edited January 6, 2014 by KeyboardNinja

[Carlenux]

If I am allowed to heal as slowly as an operative would during a burst phase, then I can stay essentially heat neutral for the same length of time that you listed. You keep claiming that mercs overheat in five or six GCDs, but that really doesn't happen. All you have to do is use your procs correctly. Starting from 22 heat or less, supercharge + HS > RS > ES > HS > RS > Rapid Shots is impressively close to heat neutral and still leaves plenty of time under supercharge. If I have to, I can actually spam between HS and RS for the whole supercharge, which is not heat neutral but, assuming that I started at 22 or less, will leave me just above mid regeneration. Note that if you put HS on cool down before you start, you can do HS > RS > SCG. And remember, with the set bonus and a sane amount of alacrity, you can get four HS > RS pairs into the window, even if you drop a ES in for cheaper healing. That is effectively just shy of 9 injections worth of healing done, assuming you aren't clipping the hot from HS, and I still haven't run out of heat. Four or five RS casts with another HS and ES will put me firmly overheated, which matches the point where you left your operative. That's a total of almost exactly 15 injections worth of healing, plus the ticks from Kolto Shell, in exactly the amount of resources your operative expended, or 17 if you count the HS > RS pair before supercharge. Your operative got the equivalent of four injections and a few surgicals, so we'll call it seven injections.

 

Merc wins here, hands down, even by your own metric. It's just that most people don't correctly manage their cool downs for these sorts of burst phases, and so they overheat early or mistime a heal.

 

 

 

A non crit Kolto missile is 4.5k without a 78 main hand. I've seen >8k crits on classes with healing bonuses when I'm standing in a phase walk, and remember my healing crit is just a bit shy of 38%.

 

Also, your energy comparison is flawed. Of course you're right that you can't compare costs on a point-for-point value, but that's not what I'm doing. The only fair way to compare is to look at *time* that it takes to recoup those resources. Kolto Missile is 16 heat, which is 1.77 GCDs. Revivification is 70 force, which is a whopping 5.83 GCDs of regeneration (if memory serves that sage regen is 8/sec; I don't have the game in front of me). Now, of course you also have to take into account Consumption. Generally, you consume (on average) once per Innervate. It will be more if single target healing, less if raid healing, so we'll approximate. Innervate is at most once every 7.5 seconds, consumption is 90 force with the set bonus (which is very worthwhile, btw), so that's another 12/sec of regen. Thus, we have 12+8/sec of regen at the absolute most, which means Reviv costs 3.26 GCDs worth of regeneration. That makes Kolto Missile the cheaper heal by almost exactly double.

 

Now, that's fair because Reviv unquestionably heals for more. However, even in max gear, it isn't going to tick for much more than 1k, or 1.6k on a crit. Kolto Missile ticks immediately for 4.5k, and almost 8k on a crit, which makes it superior to the first four seconds of Revivification unless you're hitting more than 4 players with Reviv. 4 seconds is almost enough time for Kolto Missile to come off cool down again, and more than enough time to recoup the cost, which means a Merc can heal for the value of 8 seconds of Reviv on four (or less) players in two instant activations for exactly the same cost. As I said, Kolto Missile is *very* underrated, even without considering the hot component. The fact that this healing is instant also makes it extremely powerful, for reasons which should be obvious.

 

 

 

See my analysis above. To reiterate, you underestimated the healing magnitude of Kolto Missile and also underestimated the cost of Revivification when converting between heat and force. Accounting for these errors gives the corrected conclusion. Note that I in no way believe Kolto Missile is the superior sustained AoE heal. The target limit prevents that. But it is far, far better than your giving it credit for, particularly given that its healing is compressed into an instant hit (rather than a hot).

 

 

 

Of course crit has a diminishing return. As does surge. However, you don't "hit" diminishing returns at any point in Star Wars, since they are a smooth curve. The point I was making is that, by your own argument, we shouldn't stack any surge at all, since it has the harshest DR of any stat in the game. As for 200 vs 400, the math is pretty clear there. Remember, 15% surge talent. Now, I don't think there is a problem running lower crit if you really, really don't like the RNG (it can, of course, result in overheal). The HPS loss isn't too significant.

 

 

 

Being able to heal the melee and the tanks is definitely an advantage of the conal, since it is harder to do that with the circular. Agreed on personal preference though.

 

 

 

Oh man, my DPS respec between every boss in DF. That's another story though. :-)

 

There haven't been any mental effects in the PvE game since the trandoshan trash in EC (the slow), and nothing that is actually a real boss mechanic since Eternity Vault. I don't think it's coming back, even in nightmare mode. Mental effects happen more often in PvP (though still rare), and so I respec for that venue. However, I have to respec so extensively for PvP anyway (on every character) that it really isn't an issue.

 

On other healers, I do take the respective cleanse talent. However, for a merc, because of the wasted points throughout the tree, there just isn't enough left over. Maxing out the alacrity proc talent helps a lot more than you would think, as does the free Jet Boost (since you can just use it to replace a Rapid Shots as filler). I only respec my commando for DPS or when we are doing something cheesy (all commando run!). Any time I'm healing, I am in the same spec, and I doesn't talent the cleanse.

 

i dont underestimate kolto bomb, i think is really good, i do agree with you it is underestimated, it is just way harder to fit it in the mercenary rotation than any other AoE heal in other class rotation, there are some flaws too on instant vs tick AoE, just because its instant doesnt mean it is better, considering the fact that you can deploy a revivification before or at start of a aoe dmg phase, and the small heal will give few room to overheal while it ticks, while if at that time u use a kolto bomb u will probably wast 5k of healing done with Overheal, anyways this is all situations and everything has is good and bad things, the thing i believe is, merc are often underrated as a good haeling class by the majority of the playrers, but they are also WAY too overrated by the very few people that play them "good", as i see they are good but i dont see any special advantage above any other, in fact i believe all 3 are well balanced, i believe Surgical probe and hots give operative an small advantage vs the rest also thanks to orbital strike (until nerf maybe) for versatility.

 

and yeah respeccing is fine lol i always do, but i sometimes forget, i like to keep the people to the minimum of chances to **** up, since not everyone pays attention or know their build and all that stuff. the point from crit reaction to jet boost is a nice touch, few other people have noted that too, that is something i never thought of when writing the guide and totally make sense actually so will have to add it .

 

thanks again for the feedback!

[Lucabratzi]

A non crit Kolto missile is 4.5k without a 78 main hand. I've seen >8k crits on classes with healing bonuses when I'm standing in a phase walk, and remember my healing crit is just a bit shy of 38%.

 

I think you are mistaken. I have less crit then you by 92, meaning that i have 92 more power, and my crits are around 5300. Unless you are running an extreme surge build I would like to see how you are reaching 8K. My max heal, on the Raptus challenge with the healing buff was 6300 without a sin puddle. That would put me at ~6600 with puddle. What are you point rating allocations?

[KeyboardNinja]

I think you are mistaken. I have less crit then you by 92, meaning that i have 92 more power, and my crits are around 5300. Unless you are running an extreme surge build I would like to see how you are reaching 8K. My max heal, on the Raptus challenge with the healing buff was 6300 without a sin puddle. That would put me at ~6600 with puddle. What are you point rating allocations?

 

I'll double check my commando tomorrow. My surge is in the 400s, so it's really not that unusually high.

[cs_zoltan]

I looked through my last 14 parse and in full 78 (minus 1 obroan relic) with 430 crit my avarage highest Kolto Missile is 6100