Mercenary Bodyguard PvP

[iWopo]

I've been bouncing between arsenal and bodyguard with my merc since beta, but haven't done any healing since the beginning of 4.0.

 

I really enjoying playing my merc and healing, but it always feels underwhelming or a consistent up-hill battle between staying alive and keeping your team members alive without hitting max heat in 4-5 casts.

 

Anyone play bodyguard anymore in pvp? Is it any better, or should I just finish leveling up my operative their last few levels and heal with him instead?

 

I don't think i've seen a single bodyguard merc in PvP for a long, long time. Is it doable, or am I asking to get frustrated once again?

[teclado]

I've been playing Bodyguard. It's better than it was in 4.0 if only due to the drastic increase in personal DCDs. There have been times where it felt like I was impossible to kill. You can really lean on your DCDs to keep you alive while you focus on healing others.

 

The new absorb-reflect-heal ability is insanely good. Beyond that, there is a utility point that makes Kolto Overload heal up to 70% (instead of 35%) and that ability is EXTREMELY strong. There is another utility that will heal you for 75% of your max health when your Energy Shield ends. So if you do a good job cycling these, and using WZ medpack and Adrenal, it's a lot easier to stay on the field longer.

 

With all that said, the healing output is not on par with Sorc or Operative. Check out Bant's 5.0 numbers here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112

 

For the most part, I've not been able to compete with Sorcs in warzones in terms of sheer healing output. The personal survivability is awesome, healing output is sub-par. I'm finishing leveling my Sorc from 65-70 and I might be permanently switching. Just takes too long to grind CXP to settle for a bottom tier performing healing class.

[AmarantKando]

In terms of Ranked PvP, mercs still aren't strong enough versus a sorc healer, mainly because of doing much less total healing output. A sorc healer will have an easier time healing himself, aswell as his teammates back up. Sure, the new merc defensives are great, but when your opponents start mezzing you at every possible moment, and focus one of your dps, you won't have enough healing output to keep your teammates alive.

[iWopo]

I figued mercs would be decent in 4v4 matches due to the high "burst" healing mercs can pull off compared to sorcs or operatives

 

Is heat still the issue, or just a lack of utility / abilities? I haven't played many classes outside the merc, so I'm not totally familiar with how sorc or operatives work from a healing aspect

Edited December 9, 2016 by iWopo

[teclado]

The issue is HPS. Sheer healing output. See below, taken from Bant's 5.0 Numbers

 

Healers vs Number of Targets:

 

 

Note: this is all estimation based on a preset rotation / priority list. Stats shown reflects 3 Target Optimal Stats.

 

 

Healers in Iokath MK-5, Tier 3: Legendary (242 ilvl)

 

 

Sorcerer - Corruption || Sage - Seer

43 APM | 8205 Endurance | 6745 Mastery (Stim) | 3793 Power

1876 Critical (6xE, 4xA, 2xC) | 1820 Alacrity (4xE, 10xA) | 0 Accuracy

1 Target: 11592+-384 HPS

2 Targets: 14575+-466 HPS

3 Targets: 16279+-539 HPS

4 Targets: 17202+-468 HPS

8 Targets: 21346+-572 HPS

 

 

Mercenary - Bodyguard || Commando - Combat Medic

44.5 APM | 8439 Endurance | 6745 Mastery (Stim) | 3793 Power

1999 Critical (3xE, 12xA, 2xC) | 1697 Alacrity (7xE, 2xA) | 0 Accuracy

1 Target: 10948+-717 HPS

2 Targets: 12960+-701 HPS

3 Targets: 14401+-694 HPS

4 Targets: 15546+-722 HPS

8 Targets: 17479+-764 HPS

 

 

Operative - Medicine || Scoundrel - Sawbones

41.4 APM | 8205 Endurance | 6745 Mastery (Stim) | 3793 Power

1949 Critical (5xE, 7xA, 2xC) | 1747 Alacrity (5xE, 7xA) | 0 Accuracy

1 Target: 12584+-715 HPS

2 Targets: 15553+-790 HPS

3 Targets: 20277+-750 HPS

4 Targets: 24969+-829 HPS

8 Targets: 31144+-596 HPS

 

 

[iWopo]

Those numbers are depressing, lol.

 

I at least expected the merc to outperform the other two in single-target healing.

 

Have you tried playing with stats? (i.e more crit vs power, alacrity, etc...)

Edited December 9, 2016 by iWopo

[teclado]

Yeah, I was expecting Merc to be better at single target as well.

 

Personally, I've just been aiming for Bant's numbers. I'm pretty sure that tweaking Crit and alacrity would increase or decrease burst healing. For example, more crit and less alacrity would make for bigger individual heals at the expense of HPS over a longer duration. More alacrity and less crit than Bant's numbers would probably make for smaller individual heals and less HPS over a long duration - so that would be bad in both ways.

 

As a dps, I know that people often like to go with less alacrity in pvp than what is optimal for sustained dps because they want a bit more burst damage, even if it comes with a sustained damage / s loss. As a healer...you probably don't want that. You want alacrity so that you can increase your responsiveness by shortening the GCD, meaning that you often need to get a heal on a friendly right NOW else he is going to die. Also, if I recall correctly, alacrity affects your heat management in a good way - more alac means faster heat venting.

 

So my view is that going with less alacrity than Bant's numbers would be harmful and going with more alacrity than Bant's numbers would also be harmful. But I could be wrong. Mercs pretty much are burst healers anyway, so maybe we should play to its strengths? But that would make an already low HPS healer put out even less HPS, thereby making a problem even worse.

 

One really nice thing about healing is that I don't think you need to change your stats at all for PvP vs PvE. For dps, I think that many specs really do. PvP dps is obviously not dummy parsing. This is something that I don't think BW understands at all, otherwise they never would have thought that they could get rid of pvp gear in order to allow players to have "one gear set." People who are fine with not having optimal gear will have one gear set. The rest of us are just going to have to grind more. Except for healers, in my view. But again, I could be wrong.

 

I leveled my Sorc healer and ran some pvp with it. The reality is, I just don't enjoy it as much as Bodyguard. And the numbers aren't really THAT drastically behind sorcs, so whatever. I decided to stick with Bodyguard. I'm going to be healing unranked and HM operations, which Bodyguard is plenty good enough for those things. Command level 34 and rising...let the grinding continue haha.

[Nyla]

I have the same kind of experience but different conclusion.

I'm not playing ranked but tested in regs each healer class with the same gear level.

 

To be fair I have less experince with bodyguard mercs than healing sorcs/ops but still, healing output is not enough with bodyguard. With the 5.0 changes, I die a lot less than before with a merc but I don't come close to what I heal with the 2 others, it's probably partly because of me but mercs seems not as good.

 

I think some healing abilities are not working well in pvp. I'm talking about getting charges, using supercharged Gas (healing buff) to get Healing scan without cooldown and generating less heat. As Supercharged Gas is time based (8s long), if you are pulled/pushed/knocked down/stuned... just after you activated it, you just lost all the preparation you did.

 

As for sorcs and ops, sorcs seem to heal a bit more but I still prefer ops, probably a matter of personal playstyle.

Edited December 24, 2016 by Nyla

[Yenick]

My major problem with Bodyguard is its lack on my mobility on its core abilities. Operative core abilities can be used on the move, same with sorcs. As for mercenary when channeling healing scan and advanced healing scan, your prone to stuns and interrupts, which then in turn makes keeping a dps alive all that much of a challenge, Another thing I would point out is that Bodyguard still has the weakest healing output. I wonder when that one is going to get addressed. Probably when the survival gets nurfed and only a handful of players are still playing Bodyguard.

[jedcjedcjedc]

the funniest thing about it, is if you look closely, the Merc healer has to do more work to get those lower numbers, as you can see by merc having the highest APM by 1.5 more than the sorc and 3.1 more than the Op, and that is each minute. Do all the work, get none of the rewards, lol.

[Wimbleton]

I see people talking about the kolto overload to 70% utility.

 

One of the best things about merc heal is the double insta cast on 45 sec could down. It allows you to do Supercharge Gas > Emergency Scan > Healing Scan (instant) > [double instant] Healing Scan (instant) > Healing Scan (instant). If you line that up with some procs, you can easily heal 90-100k with this method every 45 seconds.

 

Sounds like operatives and their bugged utility, except its a non bugged utility for us, in tier 3.

 

Try it.

 

This is effectively how I save people where on my Sorc I might do Bubble > Polarity Shift > Rejuve > Roaming Mend > Innervate > Dark Infusion (hardcast) > (Instant) Dark Heal for that same amount of healing. (Difference is, I can do this every 13 seconds on Sorc heh)

Edited January 20, 2017 by Wimbleton

[jedcjedcjedc]

I see people talking about the kolto overload to 70% utility.

 

One of the best things about merc heal is the double insta cast on 45 sec could down. It allows you to do Supercharge Gas > Emergency Scan > Healing Scan (instant) > [double instant] Healing Scan (instant) > Healing Scan (instant). If you line that up with some procs, you can easily heal 90-100k with this method every 45 seconds.

 

Sounds like operatives and their bugged utility, except its a non bugged utility for us, in tier 3.

 

Try it.

This is essentially what I use, and why I can't actually afford to pick kolto surge having to choose between kolto surge, power overrides, power shield and energy rebounder, something is bound to get lost.

 

Just as a PSA, make sure you don't activate PO until you are ready to cast the 2 instants, because if you use your emergency scan then precast PO, PO will ignore the proc for the instant healing scan from the emergency scan and count it as one of your two instant moves from PO

[Kalantris]

As far as the numbers go, I believe it's borked a bit. The ability to heal a team for a scoundrel is based on keeping two stacks of long-term infusion medpack or whatever it's called (21 sec hots) and it's impossible to maintain in PvP. You keep one on most, leave one without any for the surprising surrender + instaheal combo, which only works when your target has no stacks on them, so that really hampers the healing. Also scoundrels have just two strong heals, both with cast and one of them on a 10s CD. Sure, you have a couple of combo-wombos (like alacrity bonus with one insta heal + surrender + two instaheals for 100% hp total), but that's on a 45s-60s CD. I heaven't played sage yet (OMW there), but scoundrel seems to be extremely focused on positioning, which is not necessarily true for commando. Also in most unranked warzones, you get a marker on your head as soon as the enemy team sees you're queued as heal and they're focusing you most of the time. I've had one situation in which the enemy team tried to mez me and kill my teammates. It's three of them chasing me and three of my guys chasing the enemy healer most of the time .