Tips for newb healer?

[Halinalle]

Good evening.

 

I want to get to Commando/Merc healing. I've only healed my companion in heroic on my Sage so Commando/Merc healing is totally new to me but I've heard it's a lot of fun.

 

I have lvl 55+ Merc.

[cs_zoltan]

My tip is to read a guide. Yo ucan find one at the top of this subforum.

[Halinalle]

My tip is to read a guide. Yo ucan find one at the top of this subforum.

 

Sorry, I forgot this is indeed a single player game.

[cs_zoltan]

What?

You asked for tips, but didn't specify. Why would you want me (or someone else) to type down all the things that's already collected in a guide made for people like you, people new to the class.

If you still have questions after you read the guide I'd be happy to answer them.

 

You can read the guide here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=690668

Edited March 18, 2015 by cs_zoltan

[Ridickilis]

What?

You asked for tips, but didn't specify. Why would you want me (or someone else) to type down all the things that's already collected in a guide made for people like you, people new to the class.

If you still have questions after you read the guide I'd be happy to answer them.

 

You can read the guide here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=690668

 

You seem to be getting a little crusty lately. What's up d00d?

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just that sometimes guides can be overwhelming at first if you've never touched the class/spec yet. Lots of references to abilities and procs that you don't even get for 30, 40, 50 levels. How about some tips for him on healing levels 10-20 or something?

 

Personally I don't check guides until I'm close to the end of the leveling, I find trial and error along with looking ahead at my tree the best for me. Only then do I use a guide and compare to what I've been doing all along and make adjustments/tweaks from there. But everyone's different, sometimes people find it reassuring to have a 2-3 post chit chat with someone experienced with the class who can relate to the leveling experience.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Ridickilis

[cs_zoltan]

You seem to be getting a little crusty lately. What's up d00d?

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just that sometimes guides can be overwhelming at first if you've never touched the class/spec yet. Lots of references to abilities and procs that you don't even get for 30, 40, 50 levels. How about some tips for him on healing levels 10-20 or something?

 

Personally I don't check guides until I'm close to the end of the leveling, I find trial and error along with looking ahead at my tree the best for me. Only then do I use a guide and compare to what I've been doing all along and make adjustments/tweaks from there. But everyone's different, sometimes people find it reassuring to have a 2-3 post chit chat with someone experienced with the class who can relate to the leveling experience.

 

He's lvl55+ and he didn't ask specifics so the best thing I could do is to point him to a guide. What he asked is exactly what guides are for.

I didn't mean to be rude or anything, it's just how I talk.

[Halinalle]

I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just that sometimes guides can be overwhelming at first if you've never touched the class/spec yet. Lots of references to abilities and procs that you don't even get for 30, 40, 50 levels. How about some tips for him on healing levels 10-20 or something?

 

Exactly. Even though Commando/Merc isn't new to me as class (I can do Gunnery/Arsenal rotation blindfolded) that guide is way too overwhelming for me.

 

I decided to start new Commando and plan to level as Combat Medic. Maybe that's for the best. She's already level 17 so I don't have many heals yet and resource management is quite difficult.

As a added bonus I get finally Armormech on Pub side too.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Halinalle

[corbyone]

Good evening.

 

I want to get to Commando/Merc healing. I've only healed my companion in heroic on my Sage so Commando/Merc healing is totally new to me but I've heard it's a lot of fun.

 

I have lvl 55+ Merc.

 

Below is something I wrote-up at the request of a guildie for that exact purpose. Hopefully its less overwhelming. But I do suggest read the stickied guide when you are more comfortable with the spec as it is very good.

 

Commando / Mercenary Healing SWTOR 3.X

 

Introduction

 

Hello I’m Giibbs (yes the name comes from NCIS). I was asked to create this guide for a new website a guildie is putting together. I’m a healer in the casual-guild The Krayt Council on the Shadowlands server. While we are not hardcore, we do have an active raid group that doesn’t compete for world firsts or anything close to that but we do try some of the more challenging content in the game. We were 4/5 on NiM DF last tier (w/ 3 melee DPS I may add) and are currently working on HM ToS and Ravagers. This guide is not meant to be the be-all end all guide to healing on the Combat Medic, there are a few of those already. This is meant to introduce the spec to new players (both the game and the class) and hopefully be an additional resource.

 

The Combat Medic in 3.0 is an extremely versatile healer that is a jack of all trades and are extremely effective at all facets of healing thus making them an effective paring with any other healing class or itself. Commando healers have of good but not great ammo management, called energy cells that when fully speced can be somewhat forgiving as long as you use your cool downs and supercharge cell effectively (more on this later). We also have fantastic AoE healing capabilities, excellent signal-target heals, and if-not the best, close to it, burst in the game. The combination of Bacta Infusion and instant Advanced Medical Probe (via emergency response talent, lvl 24) is something you will love when your tank is taking some serious damage.

 

Combat Medic Spec

 

When Bioware launched 3.0 they removed the old talent trees and added disciplines which took most of the section out of your class. They did this to streamline the builds and make them easier to balance. Thus are only real options after selecting your spec is in the utility section. Here is a link to the Discipline Calculator built by swtor_miner found on Dulfy’s website. As you can see the Discipline path is already chosen for you. As you progress your characters level (starting at level 10) each of the milestones will become highlighted and you will then receive those passives or abilities. When they made Disciplines they rearranged the skill order and tried to give you more of your specs core abilities earlier on to make you more effective at your roll sooner. This is especially true for tanks and healers now. By level 26ish most class will have enough of their spec in place to play them adequately and be able to perform your desired role, in the case healing.

 

At level 26 as a combat medic you get Kolto bomb which until much later will be you primary, and only source of AoE healing. You will also already have the Bacta Infusion à Advance medical Probe combo I spoke about earlier. Before they added Disciplines (pre- 3.0) it was much harder to heal flashpoints in the early-game because you didn’t have the tools yet. This is no longer the case you have the tools just be careful to watch your ammo management and use med shot, our free instant 3 tick heal that helps us maintain energy.

 

At level 59 you will unlock Med boosters which will help with energy management by reducing the cost of Kolto Bomb but also allowing med shot to refund 1 energy cell normally and 2 when it crits. Between level 26 and 59 you will unlock other passives that increase healing output and reduce damage to both you and your allies. You will also unlock 2 new abilities Trauma Probe (lvl 41) and Successive treatment (lvl 57). These 2 abilities while not a necessity early on will make your life so much easier during more challenging content ie. HM flashpoints and raids.

 

Trauma Probe is a skill that actives a probe that will monitor your target and will automatically heal them when they take damage, set it and forget it so to speak. However don’t forget it. In a flashpoint it should be up on all 4 of you at all times. In raids I like to have it on the tanks, healers, and melee dps at a minimum. Don’t refresh it too early, it has 6 charges but replenishing these too early or too often can lead to energy issues. Successive treatment is great healing ability that on many fights will be your leading heal. It is a channeled 3 second heal that heals your primary target and another target with each successive tick with the original target receiving the largest amount of healing over the duration. Additionally, thanks to Preventative Medicine a level 48 talent, successive treatment also grants each target a 10% armor increase. Lastly, one of our utilities will allow you to use it on the move. Yes Please!

 

Utilities

 

That brings us to utilities which you will want to familiarize yourself with as you will change them, as needed, depending upon the content you are doing. There are 3 levels Skillful, Masterful, and Heroic and you will have 7 points to spend. However, you must spend at least 3 at the skillful level before selecting any masterful. In order to select at the heroic tier yon must first spend at least 5 in the skillful and masterful levels combined. Below is a list of the Commando utilities that I find most useful for Combat Medic.

 

Skillful

 

Concussive Force: Stock strike immobilizes target and concussion charge’s knockback is increased.

Useful in PVP or in fights where you have to knock something around but it’s not a utility I take too often outside of PVP

Cell Capacitor: Alacrity boost and more energy cells for recharge cell

Very good ability and one I most always selected. Alacrity helps build back energy and makes your heals cast faster. Win/win here.

Charger Barrier: every medical probe you cast builds a charged barrier stack (up to 5) each stack reduces damage you take by 1%. Stacks up to 5%.

This is a great skill in PVE as you cast MP often so it will help reduce damage, and in PVP you may have them fall off and not get to 5 often but any damage reduction will help and there’s not another skill I would select

Heavy Trooper: Increase endurance (health) and all healing received by 3% each.

Must take in PVE and PVP. Don’t leave home w/out it.

Chain Gunnery: Increases damage done by hail of bolts by 25%

Not really used in endgame raiding but is a great source of AoE damage on a somewhat spamable skill. This is great for leveling, dallies, trash, and role-neutral flashpoints.

 

Masterful

 

Advance the line: Increase duration Hold the line for 4 second.

Great ability in PVP and PVE and for fight with lots of movement or big AoE you need to avoid. It’s also great for leveling, dallies, and PVP because HtL makes you immune to movement impairing effects for the duration.

Suit FOE: When activing field aid (our cleanse) on yourself you reduce all parodic damage by 30% for 12 seconds.

Useful in PVP or in PVE fights where you can’t cleanse a hard ticking DoT but want to reduce the damage you take. Very situational

Combat Shield: Reduces pushback by 30% and makes you immune to interrupts while reactive shield is active.

Use in PVP to make sure you don’t get interrupted at a crucial time and if a fight is causing push back to your channeled abilities. I find it very situational but some people like it more than I do.

Efficient Conversions: Removes the energy cell cost of Concussive Charge, Concussive Round, Field aid, and Cyro grenade.

Makes our knockback, CC, cleanse, and short duration stun free. Very useful in PVP or in fights where you may be doing a lot of any of those abilities. Also great for dallies and leveling as you will be DPSing while healing which can be ammo intense so making those cost free helps in that manner.

 

Heroic

 

Shock Absorbers: Reduces AoE damage to you by 30%, additionally while stunned you take 30% less damage from all sources.

Mandatory. Reduces damage, Nuff said!

Forced March: For healers allows Successive treatment to be used on the move.

AWESOME for PVP and move-intense fights, and I swear by it. However some people say that in certain fights you can drop it for something else, your call, but I always take it.

Overclock: Reduces the cool down of tech override (TO) and and CC as well as makes TO affect our next 2 abilities.

Teach override, when active allows us to then activate an ability that has a cast time instantly. So this utility allows us to active 2 casted ability instantly. Now I find this ability very situation and hardly every take it over Shock absorber or forced march but some people swear by it. I find that in practice not as useful as it seems. IMO.

 

Rotation and Healing Philosophy

 

As a healer, your job is to heal the damage that is being done and this is ever changing. Sometimes mechanics will cause damage, sometimes lag or RNG, sometimes it’s stupid. The point being is your job as a healer is to be both reactive and proactive at the same time. Learn the fights, if there are fps and/or raid boss and you have never seen them ask the group to explain it to you. I promise there maybe someone mad or a Noob comment but the group will be happier that you asked and it took 5 min or less to explain something then to not say something and cause a wipe. Know what is going to happen is part of being proactive, the reactive is what you will do when stuff goes wrong and it will. You may hear people say you can’t heal stupid in relation to standing in red, walking into a boss’ cleave, running out of AoE healing, etc. but while it may be true that doesn’t mean we don’t try to heal through stupid. It’s our job to keep them alive if we all die, we fail. Now if we fail numerous times to the same stupid then that their bad.

 

Now you’re probably asking yourself Giibbs what does this have to do with rotation and here it is. There is NO rotation to healing. Get it, Got it, GOOD! Your job is to keep people alive and mistakes and RNG and everything else we loathe about MMO mechanics comes into play here and we need to adjust. You may be asking yourself well then how do I know when to use what abilities and on who at the right times and the answer is you don’t. To be an effective healer you need to understand your spec, how your abilities interact with each other (and your co-healers during raids) to find the best use of the abilities. All I can say is practice (in my best Allen Iverson voice). A great way to practice burst healing and chaotic situations is PVP. Practice makes perfect.

 

Below is a list of rotational guidelines:

 

Make sure you are using combat support cell (similar to stance)

Trauma probe yourself and other allies pre-fight, reapply when depleted on tanks and others taking continuous damage

Build Supercharge (pre—fight and during down times) buy using med-shot and Medical probe.

Supercharge cell takes 10 stacks of supercharge to initiate and will only work when activated. When you active supercharge it will refund 10 energy, increase healing done by 5% and it removes the cast time of AMP as well as reducing its energy cost by 5

Use Supercharge cell to manage energy and/or when healing is intense

Use Bacta Infusion to help conserve energy or when burst healing is required.

Tip: Remember that after lvl 24 AMP will be instant after using BI and can be used on another ally. Ex. you is BI on the tank but he is now at 90% health but another member is lower you can then active the instant AMP on the lower health ally. You can also delay the instant AMP as the proc last for 15 seconds.

Single target healing (generally in this order depending upon health missing, upcoming damage phases, and your energy cells)

AMP > MP > Med shot

AoE healing

Kolto bomb heals up to 8 allies initially and even more w/ the residues ticks but only heals any of them for a moderate amount. A good rule of thumb is if a majority of the targets are not going to stay in the area for the duration its best to use Successive treatment or other signal target heals.

Successive treatment heals 2 allies for a pretty large amount and additional 3 for a fair amount, but it’s still more than KB.

In fights where you stack a lot it’s useful to layer KB and ST to put out a crazy amount of AoE healing.

 

Conclusion

 

I hope you enjoyed this guide and found it useful. Its purpose is to serve as an introduction to the combat medic spec and I hope that it does it justice. For a more in depth guide and descriptions of all the abilities, gearing, and methodology I encourage you to check out the SWTOR 3.0 Commando Combat Medic Healing guide by Orderken. You can also hit me up in game on the Shadowlands server if you have any questions.

 

HAVOC Squad out!

 

-Giibbs

[Halinalle]

I've used Med Shot since I got it between fights when me and Aric run from group to group. Mostly just because it looks cool. Maybe I should keep doing that.

 

But I'm not sure about this anymore after my latest experience.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=8100776&postcount=6194

 

Basically:

- No burst (should be fixed somewhat at level 24?). VG in that group kept losing health so fast that I couldn't keep up or because only instant heal I have is BI and it doesn't really help when someone dies in few seconds.

- I can't heal anyone else, not even myself in most cases, when I see 3 elites running to my location.

 

After thinking about it over night I decided to give Combat Medic one more try.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Halinalle

[Halinalle]

I'm starting to see why people keep saying "Commando/Merc healing is fun".

 

Was doing NS Blood Sport H2+ with Aric and he died at the boss at 60% or something. Didn't look too good because I kept losing health at alarming rate. I still managed to kill the champion. I dropped multiple times to 10%. That was stressful but still really fun. Only had 58s (?) in chest and offhand, everything else was various level 17-19 greens and blues.

 

Now my interrupt and clease are broken because I used them way too many times.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Halinalle

[Halinalle]

I give up. I can't even complete first heroic 2+ on Tat at 28. 4X just takes too much damage and my Medical Probe just heals what boss' last attack did.

 

When I was on fleet earlier today I healed casually some other characters and one of them was level 60 Commando. He healed me too. After I started I got like 3 Medical Probes in less than second. How is that possible? I can't get 3 medical probes out no matter how fast I spam the button.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Halinalle

[cs_zoltan]

You need like 200% Alacrity to get off 3 MP in 1sec, it's not possible. Could've been a lag spike or something.

[corbyone]

I give up. I can't even complete first heroic 2+ on Tat at 28. 4X just takes too much damage and my Medical Probe just heals what boss' last attack did.

 

When I was on fleet earlier today I healed casually some other characters and one of them was level 60 Commando. He healed me too. After I started I got like 3 Medical Probes in less than second. How is that possible? I can't get 3 medical probes out no matter how fast I spam the button.

 

Not sure what he did or in a sec (maybe 2?) but you can cast Med Prob then Bacta infusion (which procs instant AMP) then Advanced Medical Prob then TO (instant) Medical Probe. To the target being healed in would be 4 heals real quick and the animations would seem like some one is casting 3 MP very quickly.

[Halinalle]

Ok, I'm having some serious trouble healing in KDY, especially Sith boss.

Everyone just stacks up and waits for circles to spawn and not move out of them.

 

I have to spam Tech Override on cooldown, Reserve Powercell on cooldown, Recharge Cells on cooldown. Med Probe does nothing when they take damage from those circles. Can't use BI and AMP because they are on cooldown. If, and only if, I'm lucky I have 10 stacks of Supercharge so I can make AMP to have no cooldown. No matter what I do, always at least one dies.

 

What should I do in these situations?

 

I already know I'm bad healer, even though some people disagree for some reason.

"Sorry, I'm bad healer."

"Not in my books. :p"

 

I get sometimes groups that allow us to rush through KDY and make it look too easy, exactly what it is but that's not the point.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Halinalle

[cs_zoltan]

Everyone just stacks up and waits for circles to spawn and not move out of them.

What should I do in these situations?

 

Tell them to *********** move out of the circles. You did nothing wrong, they aren't meant to be healable.

Edited April 2, 2015 by cs_zoltan

[Halinalle]

Tell them to *********** move out of the circles. You did nothing wrong, they aren't meant to be healable.

 

Ok, I get it. "Can't heal through stupid."

I actually planned to use that but it's not that easy to just let them die.

 

Got my Commando to level 50 yesterday and I still want to continue. I bought Campaign Combat Medic's 4 piece set bonus. Was that mistake? Asking because that's probably the only set bonus I can get for her. I don't know if I'm good enough to heal raids.

[cs_zoltan]

Got my Commando to level 50 yesterday and I still want to continue. I bought Campaign Combat Medic's 4 piece set bonus. Was that mistake? Asking because that's probably the only set bonus I can get for her. I don't know if I'm good enough to heal raids.

 

I guess that's as good as any, I usually don't bother with gear until lvl cap.