I logged in. I disliked the changes to my main, spent an hour trying to get somewhere close to where my Merc was in 2.10 (and failing due to the new utility system) I got to Rishi, suffered a load of lag, DC'd a few times, swore profusely and unsubbed. Cost me £12 to preorder SoR, took me ~2 hours to decide to save the sub and not bother any more. Saving me roughly £108 a year. At least it wasn't a complete waste of money.

I've seen repeatedly, both on the forums and in game, Vanguard DPS players saying that dropping AP out of the rotation entirely is a dps increase. This seemed counter intuitive to me, since it is our 'big boy' talent. AP is also somewhere on the priority list for every dps guide i've seen. I'm somewhat low level and undergeared still, so I get that it doesn't really matter, but i like to get to know my class as i go so once i hit max level i dont need to relearn it in an Ops environment. Been doing some testing tonight at the fleet on the level 10 dummy, this is what i got on Torparse. Without AP: 3:05 fight length, 118,057 damage done, 636.429 DPS With AP: 2:54 fight length, 125,480 damage done, 718.503 DPS With AP & lvl 40 stim & Relic use: 3:08 fight length, 143,513 damage done, 761.345 dps. What this is showing me is that properly buffed and using AP im getting 124.916 more dps than when i drop AP from the rotation entirely. Just AP alone and unbuffed is a 82.074 dps increase. Are the people suggesting dropping AP mis-informed, or does something substantially change at end game? I'm currently level 46 with mostly level 40 orange pvp gear from the Coruscant vendor.

Indeed, I'm a bit confused, that someone who claims to have completed all the HM operation content doesn't know his own ingame skill trees.

Interesting stuff, thanks for the input. How are you finding it without the extra 4% alactrity from Assault Specialist?

1 - I can agree with 2-4 being the best place to pop it, but you should never wait to hit 0-1 to use it. 2 - See 3 3 - This is all based on what you say about Alacrity affecting the GCD. If this is true, and it's a pretty big if, then AMP at 1.2 is still the better choice! Why? Again due to the fact you can get more of these off onto more targets in a shorter span of time. The armour buff it adds is simply more icing on the cake. Regardless of whether or not it's HPS or HPA is inferior, which it is, when raid healing raid wide damage you want to heal as many raid members as possible in the shortest time possible. I feel that I can say that with some authority, I've managed to maintain a world top200 guild spot raiding from AQ40 to Cho-Gall in Cata, as a healer for all this time in probably the most competitive raid environment currently available in the MMO scene, healing multiple people in the fastest time possible trumps healing fewer people for more. Not to knock what you have written mate, from what I've seen of your writing you're obviously an intelligent guy who get's what it is to raid at a reasonable level, you could very well have an even better track record than mine. It's not a pissing contest between us, and I don't want to come across as a dick, it's just that I feel from what you write that you've not experienced the manic pace of healing hardmode encounters at a level where you are pushing for records. Efficiency vs inefficiency, HPs vs HPA all comes into account when you are able to play trauma surgeon and choose whether a heal is more or less important than resource regeneration. When taking into account healing raid wide damage, these factors don't even come into play. In any competitive raid environment at sufficient level, you must heal everyone up to the minimum level to survive the next round of raid wide damage. I'm not disparaging what you have written, as yes, mathematically what you are saying is correct. Should alacrity turn out not to affect GCD and MP's cast time is 1.6 vs AMP being 1.5, then it would be insanity not to alternate MP out at every opportunity. 1.2 vs 1.6 is massive however, it's the difference between healing 5 people and healing 4 over a 6 second period, and when the **** hit's the fan from my experience, that is always of more value. In most high end raiding environments, losing even one person is cause for a wipe and reset, leaving out healing someone will end up in you being benched.

1 - Technically the magic ammo number is 11. If you go from 0-8, the very first cast that costs ammo is going to put you in sub-optimal ammo recharge. I'd rather spend 1-2 seconds at max ammo than 3-5 seconds at a lower recharge while healing. 2 - Anecdotal evidence from some players. My own anecdotal evidence is that my Advanced Medical Probe casts at 1.3 second cast time, however I cannot cast another one straight away when it finishes. Most likely I imagine, due to the 1.5 second GCD. Anecdotal to be sure, until parsers or a dev quote addresses the issue. 3 - When raid healing, it is better to heal many targets for less than fewer targets for more. The difference between the healing of the two abilities isn't massive enough for Medical Probe to be prioritised over AMP when there are multiple raid members needing healing. Perhaps it is how I've worded it, I'll likely have to go back and reword it, the optimal way of healing would be to AMP everyone who has taken damage, then use the FT buff to heal the tank. Alternating AMP/MP between targets will result in less total heals being cast due to the extra .5 second cast time on MP. In a raid environment as a healer, raid wide damage very rarely ever kills anyone. In 99% of scenarios it's usually a case of topping them off before the next raid wide damage can hit. The most effective way of doing this is to put as many heals as possible, onto as many targets as possible, in the shortest time frame manageable. AMP spam is the quickest way of doing this for a Commando.

Hello guys, spent quite a bit of time knocking out my IA and BH guides which have already become rather large on their repsective boards (BH one alone hitting over 20k views), time came for me to finally knuckle down and get on with my 'main' character. Here you will find my guide to Commando PvE Healing, hope you all enjoy!

We're perfectly fine at end game hardmodes. Our responsibility is not AoE raid healing, but maintaining tanks and burst spot healing. If you're struggling to keep your dps up in flashpoints while correctly geared, they're either taking too much avoidable damage (dpses fault) or something is wrong with the tanks threat or your healing.

If I may suggest this, as a compromise between the extra threat while maintaining the necessary defensive talents. You lose Flame barrage though, so whether it will work for you or not is another thing completely.

Oh wait, so have I. Shieldtech is one of my favourite classes to tank on. Anecdotal evidence and opinion means nothing. In your opinion, Shieldtech tree is lame, in my opinion, Shieldtech tree is pretty good.

I've found that mobs group up for it more often than not, you'll usually have a group split of 3 and 2, i usually jump to the 3, grapple one of the two and then Sweep. Leaves me one mob to pick up.

Take the two points from No Escape and put them into Ion Screen. Then it becomes a servicable spec. Without parsers and a combat log it's impossible to really tell, but it always felt like we took too much of a hit to our survivability in this spec. Time of course, will tell.

This is not the bump you're looking for. Move along.

It's always useful, simply because it put's the -4% damage debuff onto all target's it hits. Flamethrower doesn't do this, and to cast Flame Burst on each target would usually cost more heat.

Fair enough mate, I also apologise for not considering your playstyle. One thing I like about the BH boards, we're all friendly people at the end of the day =)