Healers in 6.0? Any testers have experiences they can share?

[Lhancelot]

Just curious if anyone mains a healer and can share what kind of numbers they are putting up in PVP? Do they have decent survivability or is it worse for healers now with DPS getting buffs to their damage?

[phalczen]

Just curious if anyone mains a healer and can share what kind of numbers they are putting up in PVP? Do they have decent survivability or is it worse for healers now with DPS getting buffs to their damage?

 

I played three warzones as a sage, one Nar Shaddaa Huttball and two Makeb arenas. Only one arena was a win for my team. I didn't notice any difference in survivability, but I'm pretty terribad so I die very quickly anyway. I had whatever random 270 item modifications the RNG vendor would give me for the set bonus I had bought with tech fragments and credits from the boost terminal. Nothing was augmented except my MH and OH with the nerfed formerly rating 240 augments. I did vendor trash enhancements that weren't alacrity, and I believe I had enough to make the 1.4s GCD but definitely not enough for the 1.3s and I felt it. I know I questioned that in other threads, whether we would feel the difference. But its not as much the GCD as it is the cast times for Deliverance and healing trance channels.

 

Of note, Snave was on the opposing, winning huttball team. At least, it was an operative named Snave. They won 6-4. It would have been on October 4th I think. It could have been someone just trolling the real Snave, but they were up 3-0 before anyone from my team thought maybe they should play objectives, so, I would bet it was a coordinated team.

[JattaGin]

My main is a commando medic. I copied the char to the PTS. Last weekend, I played 10 regular warzones for testing, 5 on Saturday, 5 on Sunday. Well, it was 2 warzones and 8 4v4 arenas due to lack of players in the queue.

 

I had read the news article about commandos and bought the yellow armor set with set bonus for medics and the tactical which makes you able to use the main heal ability while moving. I filled the armor with randomly bought armorings, mods and enhancements from the vendor on the fleet. I had thus a full green, unoptimised 270 rating set.

 

My findings (without being able to state actual numbers):

 

1. Without enough alacrity, I felt that all my heals and defensives were constantly on cooldown (I mean: occupied and unuseable) and I would thus always come in a bit late for the necessary heal. In one arena, one player started calling me out for being a bad healer, because he felt that I wouldn't use my abilities properly. But I did. (Also, he stood the whole time in AoE stupid, so it was his own fault for dying first. In another arena, another guy decided to phasewalk into a hut where I couldn't heal him at all, and then he ragequit for his team being too bad. That was funny, but I digress.)

 

2. I didn't really feel much of a difference compared to live. With a half decent team around me, I performed quite well. With a dysfunctional team, I was just as bad as the whole team.

 

3. Generally, commando medics are very hard to play in 4v4 arenas and it's still like that.

 

4. Almost all arenas saw my team facing 3 inquisitors (don't remember the advanced classes) and one sniper. We had no chance in any of these arenas. Quite imbalanced classes.

 

5. I get that it was most likely due to the lack of queued players, but the teams were not always balanced. Like 2 v 0 healers etc. (But well, most of these arenas started with a 3 v 2, so it was basically just: hopefully someone fills up at all.)

 

6. The tactical which makes you use your main heal while moving didn't really feel that useful, as I don't move overly much in the middle of the action in PvP. Maybe because I'm used to play like this. Instead of moving, I use my defenses. I then bought another tactical which added a HoT to the medical shot. I feel that this tactical works better for my healing style.

 

7. My healing output varied massively from very few to a lot, depending on the games. My best output was in the only Voidstar game that we had. I did over 3 million heals in that game (2nd highest heals in that warzone). However, there was a Sith inq who got over 9 million heals! I find this too much. Like 3 times as much as I and even more than the other 2 healers.

 

8. The medic's defenses are still in a good spot.

 

TL;DR: I didn't really experience too much difference to the live game with my commando medic in the 8 reg arenas + 2 reg warzones that I played last weekend.

[dracmor]

Caveat: I am a casual PVP'er and a mediocre PVP'er but I have played a sorc/sage healer since 1.0, so I would say I am (was?) a good PVE sorc/sage healer.

 

But as a sorc healer in PVP the heals just did not keep up with the damage. I could prevent someone from dying if they were in a one-on-one fight but could not heal them upwards while the battle continued. I could not heal the person or myself if two dps were focused on a single target. The only time I could do well was if I was not focused on or could use the environment sufficitently to survive - but not heal my teammates - or if I was just ignored due to the healing being poor anyway. The only time a dps/tank would heal to full was when they used their own DCD, not due to any heals from me.

 

There are so many mobility options that kiting and using the environment is harder or non-existent. The only real DCD a sorc healer has is the bubble and it is on a 3 min cooldown with no utility or tactical that reduces this timer.

 

Resource management is terrible especially compared to Live - even if I did well and healed for a million my resources would be 50% or less constantly. And if I had to heal to survive they would just basically drain down to nothing, so even if I survived a concentrated attack I would no longer have the resources to be effective.

 

Innervate becomes so critical to the sorc healer that you are basically forced to used the Revitalized Mystic set, and if a smart PVP'er interrupts your Innervate constantly then the sorc healer is practically neutralized. The sorc heal tacticals and set bonuses don't give enough of a boost to compensate for what you lose on Live plus the additional dps that DPS/tanks are doing.

 

So, in short, I died a lot and the heals could not keep up, making for a miserable experience.

 

One other note: so with higher alacrity (like the usual 15.5%) pvp did get better, but this can only be obtained once you are in higher gear (I could not augment my gear on PTS, so I do not know the effects of augments), but I was under the (probably mistaken) impression that gear was not supposed to matter in 6.0 pvp? Anyway, unless something changes I will not be pvping as a sage sorc unless or until I am in top, augmented gear. Even then I have my doubts as to the viability of the sorc healer in pvp if there are no changes. Also note that not all my matches were losses, but we certainly did not win due to healing - it was more to how the dps performed and if there was an elite dps (usually a sin, sniper or op) on your team or if the team just seemed to be more coordinated. This overall probably makes for better pvp, unless you are the poor soul trying to play the healer.

 

As always, just my two cents.

[Ollmich]

I played 6 arenas and 2 warzones as a sorc healer in 306 gear without set bonuses and augments.

 

In general healers didn’t seem to be noticeably better or worse than on live. There were no operative heals in queue though, only sorcs and a lone merc.

 

Playing without 1.5 sec reduction on Innervate CD is indeed a miserable experience. I mean, I got used to it so much that 8 matches weren’t enough for me to adjust, and I was doing worse than usual. What I’m going to focus on when 6.0. goes live is getting that Revitalized set bonus as fast as possible.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Ollmich

[black_pyros]

Playing without 1.5 sec reduction on Innervate CD is indeed a miserable experience. I mean, I got used to it so much that 8 matches weren’t enough for me to adjust, and I was doing worse than usual. What I’m going to focus on when 6.0. goes live is getting that Revitalized set bonus as fast as possible.

 

I just wish the Revitalized Mystic’s set had the (6) bonus from Empowered Restorer set (Dark Heal heals for 20% more if you have a Consuming Darkness or Reverse Corruption stack and consumes 1 stack upon use) instead of that weak Resurgence buff (Healing a target with another ability while Resurgence is active on them, has a chance to cause an extra Resurgence tick for half. Refreshing Resurgence on a target refunds some Force).

Edited October 12, 2019 by black_pyros

[Lhancelot]

Innervate becomes so critical to the sorc healer that you are basically forced to used the Revitalized Mystic set, and if a smart PVP'er interrupts your Innervate constantly then the sorc healer is practically neutralized.

 

Since I came back from my last break, I find my reliance on Innervate significant even now, tbh. It's cooldown is so fast, and it basically is the backbone to the rest of my healing rotation I find this is constantly used far more than any other heal.

 

In fact, the crazy thing is I hardly see a point to our big heal Dark Infusion. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. I wish something was added to Dark infusion to make it more valuable or useful to cast... Even right now, with Innervate being able to be cast on the move I rarely find any reason to even touch Dark Infusion.

 

Don't you find it this way, now? I mean Innervate is still the backbone to the healing sorc's rotation. I guess they are just building on that part of the sorc's healing rotation.

 

Who is going to bother using a slow stand still casting heal like Dark Infusion, even if it is a big heal when we got Innervate? Plus you add in the other instant cast heals we got, they just make Dark Infusion that much more inconvenient to use.

[WeaniS]

I played as an operative healer on pts, ill say that dmg out paces heals. There are a few videos from Cease you can watch that will show the difference. Tank dps is a real problem and burst is a major issue for operatives. The burst coming from conceal ops is insane. Whats worse is that pretty much all dps classes have synergy with tac/amps but healers do not. For operative heals the best tac i found was rolling boil or something (increases mastery by 5% for every relic proc) and the basic set bonus (5% more heals for tac) or the flashbang resets CM (for survivability). Over all dps can hit upwards of 20k+ and heals can as well. I think they need to re-evaluate all the set bonuses for heals at the very least and FIX rolling heals, not take it out of game. It was an amazing concept but due to it lagging fps (all the buffs) it might be removed..... >.>

 

Summary: heals is okay, its worse than live ofc, however a decent healer should perform okay (unless in an arena against skank tanks or burst) but lets try to BALANCE everything first before just taking stuff from game. Keep in mind amps were not enabled, so thats a HUGE unknown. Also merc/mando healer seems to be the next FOTM due to the bursty heals.

Edited October 12, 2019 by WeaniS

[Ergecrs]

Since I came back from my last break, I find my reliance on Innervate significant even now, tbh. It's cooldown is so fast, and it basically is the backbone to the rest of my healing rotation I find this is constantly used far more than any other heal.

 

In fact, the crazy thing is I hardly see a point to our big heal Dark Infusion. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. I wish something was added to Dark infusion to make it more valuable or useful to cast... Even right now, with Innervate being able to be cast on the move I rarely find any reason to even touch Dark Infusion.

 

Don't you find it this way, now? I mean Innervate is still the backbone to the healing sorc's rotation. I guess they are just building on that part of the sorc's healing rotation.

 

Who is going to bother using a slow stand still casting heal like Dark Infusion, even if it is a big heal when we got Innervate? Plus you add in the other instant cast heals we got, they just make Dark Infusion that much more inconvenient to use.

 

Why not just instant cast Dark Infusion with Force Potency up followed by a cast of it and you can get some pretty big numbers for Emergency situations.

[DreadtechSavant]

I found the healers doing less than before. Thou even no in live now they are doing less than a few months ago. However what was on PTS may or may not make it in the live version of 6.0. So anything we say here and now makes little difference.