Jedi Knight - Human or Zabrak Jedi Consular - Miralukan or Mirialan Trooper - Human or Cathar Smuggler - Twi'Lek Sith Warrior - Sith Pureblood or Human Sith Inquisitor - A female makes the most sense, and I'd say a Twi'lek or Human makes the most sense Bounty Hunter - Rattataki or Cathar Imperial Agent - Lore-wise would be human, but story-wise would be Chiss

Guild Name: Sithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Faction: Empire Focus: Rebuilding our numbers, then PvP and PvE Website: http://sithhikersguide.enjin.com/ Point of Contact: Elwyn

You don't know how to gank a lobby Crinn? Noob.

This is not necessarily true. As a healer you're going to be focused, and as a merc healer you're going to be focused even more. I ran BiS and did pretty good, but with all that focusing it was hard enough just getting heals off after being stunned or interrupted or knocked back. I switched to all Alacrity augs, and even switched out for Alacrity Enhancements. Currently at a little over 14% Alacrity (probably way too much, but I'm still fine tuning it). Not only am I able to get more heals off, I'm surviving a lot more. I may not be getting 15k crits anymore, but I'm actually getting more healing in than I used to. Bottom line though, if you've got the time and creds, try it, see if it works for you. If it doesn't, well, at least now you know for sure.

As the title suggests, I'd love it if you were to obtain medals based off of the damage taken in warzones. Call it a 'survivor' medal or something. I'd even take 'punching bag'. Running as a healer in warzones, a mercenary healer to boot, I regularly see myself taken anywhere from 200k to 800k more in damage than the next highest person in the warzone, even if and when that other person is also a healer. It would be nice to obtain a little incentive to keep playing a healer considering we are usually the first to be targeted and focus fired on during any warzone or arena. Besides, I noticed that some of the Conquest points have to be earned by actually landing Killing Blows in warzones, how do you expect a healers to even compete with that? This would at least add a little reward for us.

I totally read that as "Light from a few can be a bacon to many", Much better in my opinion. Sithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy went with {The Heart of Gold}.

Sithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is currently raising funds to obtain 1 as well.

You can sign me up as well, I should be on at that time. Elwyn, Merc healer.

The best and only reason to choose to be a Merc healer is this: For the challenge. We aren't easy-mode. We take actual skill to use effectively. Gear may have something to do with the problems you're having, for yourself or your companion. If PvE is giving you so much trouble, take a look at the people you're running with. It's easy for people to blame the healer for everything when the real cause for the wipes is because other people aren't doing their jobs right.

You do mean server wide right? Or even legacy wide? I do agree with the premise though, and I would also like to know about any updates regarding the 'friends list' fix.

As I understand it, 1.7 is supposed to be the patch that attempts to rebalance the classes. I'm pretty sure that EAware already has all the changes they're going to make set-in-stone and are only messing around with the mechanics to make them actually work, if they do not however, I'd like to make some suggestions to be implemented in 1.7 or implemented further along in the next class rebalance patch. Although I've dabled in the DPS skill trees for a Merc, the Bodyguard (healer) tree is where I've spent more than 99% of my playtime in since launch, so I can only really provide (probably biased) suggestions for it. I personally think System Calibrations is fine where it's at, although if it is increased to a 3 point ability, it should be more along a [ 2 / 4 / 6]% increase. If left at 2, perhaps increasing it to [ 3 / 6]% would be better than the [ 2 / 4]% it is now. I know from personal experience, and from my own observations, most Mercs remove most of thier mods and stuff that include Alacrity and trade it for crit, power, or surge. So it'd only add a small boost over where it's at now. As it stands, Kolto Shell is bantha poodoo. The heat cost for it is still too high to be used as anything but a pre-fight ability, so I definitely think it should be lowered to at least 8 to make it somewhat viable to be used during actual fights. As already mentioned, being able to apply it to multiple people (I'd even be happy if you could apply it to at least 4 ppl) would make this an actual ability to get instead of putting points in other things (like I've recently done, and I'm a much happier and better healer because of it). If it must be kept as a single target ability, and it seems like it's intended purpose is to be more of a self-heal when upgraded and using Rapid Shots during a rotation, then at least increase the amount it heals. I know a charge going off every 3s is actually fairly quick, but these days you can lose more than half your health during that time and the heal you get for the charge going off doesn't even come close to being able to save your arse. I'd personally recommend increasing the amount healed to 10-15% of the applicants total health, but increasing the amount of time a charge goes off to say 5s. So a person with 20k health could potentionally be healed for 2-3k health every 5s. Not OP'd at all, but much better than how it stands now. Although I do wish Cure Mind would remove all effects, I do understand why it only removes certain ones depending on what class you are. So as an alternative, remove the tiny, tiny, tiny, TINY, tiny, heal you get from using it and make it provide a slightly more substantial one, or at least add a small HoT to it to make it actually worth using if you try to remove an effect and it ends up being the wrong type. For Superheated Gas, I agree with the suggestion to increase the heat it removes back to 16, instead of the 8 it got nerfed to. I think Emergency Scan is fine where it is, but I wouldn't complain at all if it got reduced by a few seconds. One addition I'd like to make is when Power Shield is up, it'd be nice if we were immune to both interrupts and any physical effects such as push, pull, and knockback. I can't tell you how often I have had my heals interrupted by those abilities, and in some PvP instances, I was affected by those mechanics the whole time my shield was up, unable to get off any of my main heals, only to be actually 'interrupted' when my shield went down. Death followed very shortly after. Extremely frustating to be a healing class that can't get a single heal off when employing an ability that should allow me to do so. For this added immunity though, I'd suggest switching it with Protective Field, that way only committed healers would be able to get it, especially when the expansion comes out. Although after reading and hearing about all the issues Arsenal Mercs have as well, they should have access to an ability that provides those same immunities. My 2 credits, and my excessive use of text.

Unless they were to implement a system that would allow all BH specs, namely healers in this case, to be able to participate in player bounties (PvP) then they shouldn't implement it at all. However, I fully support the idea of class specific missions. PvE bounties like they did during the storyline would be greatly appreciated.

Merc's aren't bad healers, unfortunately, the only thing we really are better at than the other 2 healer classes (sorcs, ops) are single target heals. This is great in FP's, not so great in Operations. You'll never see a group try to complete an Ops with 2 Merc healers in it and expect to actually live, unless those Mercs were seriously overgeared for the Ops. Needless to say we are often passed over for Ops because the other 2 healers are much better at healing groups of people, which most Ops require. Not saying you'll never be able to do a good job in an Ops, it's just going to be a bit more of a challenge for the group. Sadly enough, most people don't really want a challenge, they want 'easy mode'. Hopefully they bring Merc's back to pre-nerf specs soon, then you might see a change in attitude about us.

Get the EWH relics, the one with +120 power on them. The healing proc one only gives you a crappy arse heal anyway. The EWH is even better than the Dreadguard ones in my opinion, so I wouldn't really worry about wasting your Daily comms on those.

I agree, heat management is the key to a Merc healer, and we can kick arse in PvP and PvE, but as I've stated before, Sorcs and Ops can do everything we do, and do it better. For example, I'm almost completely in full EWH with full Reflex augments on everything, and I happened to be in a match in a WZ with a Sorc I know to actually be very good at thier class, although I'm unsure of thier gear. We both had plenty of people to heal throughout the whole match, yet even though I was virtually left alone and the Sorc was constantly harrassed, the Sorc was still able to put up a good 200k more in healing than I was. With tooting my own horn, I'm actually very good at my class, so it's not about learning to play my class, it's just that back towards the beginning Mercs in general got nerfed because other players didn't know how to handle us at the time. Now that they do, however, we've yet to get buffed to make up for our previous loss. Needless to say, we are currently sitting on the bottom of the barrel. If you like to be challenged though, like I do, then this is definitly the class for you, or maybe a Madness Assassin (for PvP). As for the LI issue, is the problem occuring during the last phase? If it is, is your group all grouped together with thier back to a wall? If not they should be. You can just keep dropping your Kolto bomb when it's up and should be throwing out any additional extra heals on those that need it. If that still doesn't work then it's probably not your fault at all, you just don't have enough DPS to get him down in time before you overheat for the 2nd time. Healers are typically the first to be blamed for any wipes, even though it may not be our fault at all. The best of luck to you though.