-big hugs for you!-

 

I just hit 25 on my Merc Healer and I have been having a lot of Heat issues, especially moments when my Vent Heat is on CD and the enemy suddenly tosses out a junk load of damage on the party. Some of the tips and tricks you've recommended have really helped clear up a lot of things and I look forward to trying them come next FP run.

10k views

That is really awesome. It seems like the guide is being used

 

It does not seem like there are any major changes for bodyguard in 2.7. The only think that will effect us is the reduced cooldown on power surge that will give us more instant cast potential. The change to the bodyguard tree is just a rearrangement of the talents and it will not have any affect at all for PvE...

 

Back to Manaan for more kolto - NeNiMel out!

 

PS. I also noticed that I forgot to update the talent builds for commandoes in the translation section, which should be corrected now.

Don't worry guys I haven't forgotten

There will be a update to the guide, so it reflects 2.7. Torhead just needs to update too, so I can correct the skill tree and BiS gear.

Edited April 9, 2014 by NeNiMel

Okay I have updated the Guide for 2.7!

askmrrobot havent been updated yet, so my profile there is still outdate...

 

I have made a few additions to the guide aswell, nothing major. As always let me know what you think

Here's a quick feedback, the changelog is messed up

Also I suggest turning of Quick Ground Target Activation, It's really annoying for me, I messed up so many KM on Nefra Nim because of it.

Edited April 14, 2014 by cs_zoltan

Awesome guide and effort put forth.

 

Been playing an Arsenal merc for my entire playtime of over a year. Just began a merc healer to challenge myself. Will probably be referring to your thread continuously to guide me along and keep me from reverting to my dps mindset.....

Here's a quick feedback, the changelog is messed up

Also I suggest turning of Quick Ground Target Activation, It's really annoying for me, I messed up so many KM on Nefra Nim because of it.

 

I'm in a split mind about that option it's great I've agressed most of the robots (Edit: against nefra) (so a lot of running around) and the ability to throw a Kolto Bomb backwards is awesome sure i could probably hit the tanks as well as two people in the DD camp if i threw carefully enough.

but I can do that no matter the Option (it doesn't force you to use it after all)

 

finally no more Kolto Bombs and Salvations at the ceiling while fighting the Trash on the way to Bestia that's awesome

 

keep the option just don't use it if you loose out on the healing when centering on one person instead of placing it manually between a group of people

Edited April 22, 2014 by DarthSpekulatius

@cz_zoltan thanks for the feedback should be fixed now

 

Regarding the Quick Ground Target Activation option I think it is a matter of personal taste. I always uses the normal way to place the Kolto Missile, with very few exceptions. I still like to have the option enabled because it helps me when I am moving around.

I too messed up a few kolto missiles when I first enabled the option, but after a few runs I got a hold on it. So I think it is just a matter of practice aswell as everything else with this class So I will keep the option on, but as DarthSpekulatius said:

keep the option just don't use it if you loose out on the healing when centering on one person instead of placing it manually between a group of people

 

@baxleyjo Thanks. Hope you will find it useful

15k views that is really awesome

 

I am still checking in on the guide regularly to see if there have been any questions and so on.

As you all know there are not planned any changes for the mercenaries that will affect anything in this guide, so probably will not be any changes to it either.

 

Stay strong out there and pump some kolto into those allies of yours! Atmea

Hi NeNiMel,

 

I had time to clean up the Mercenary|Commando model for PVE healing that I developed some time ago. I added a link to it in my signature.

 

As noted in worksheet "Introduction", my use for the model has been to optimize Critical from gear for the amount of Surge that I choose to have. In addition, since the link in the OP to MMO Mechanics is broken (MMO Mechanics no longer exists), my model is a source for abilities' properties, such as Coefficients.

Very nice guide, benefitted my small Commado greatly. One minor (very minor) note is I would classify Trauma Probe/Kolto Shell as HoDT instead of HoT

Updated the guide so the dead link in the gearing section have been removed! A new link to Orderken's healing model have been added to the section instead

 

@Orderken That model looks really nice. I just need a little time to get more familiar with it, but the first impressions are really good

 

@Adaliaya Glad to hear you like it I will keep Kolto Shell as a Hot for now to avoid having too many abbreviations.

Dump!

 

There were no changes for merc healing in 2.9 and as far as I can see there are none planned for 2.10 either...

Hey;

I am a Commando and i am a PvP-Player, so my suggestion might be wrong, but i think you aim for the wrong crit-target.

 

You said you wanna have 200-300 Crit Rating and i think this is not optimal.

 

Mathematically, you are right, 200-300 Crit are optimal, but if you look at your fights, you really never loose somebody, because Healoutput overall is too small, you loose your allies, because the Healoutput in the last 5-10 Seconds was to small, and that happens, if your last 5 Heals doesnt crit. If one of the heals would have critted, everything would be fine, but with 200-300 Crit, the possibility that i does not crit is far higher than with 700-800 crit.

 

For example. (Numbers are fictive, but the difference is pretty accurate to the real Numbers)

With 40% Standard Heal goes for 3000, Crit for 6000

With 30% Crit, 3333 and 6666.

 

For 40% Crit:

8% Chance for 0 equals 15000 Healoutput

26% Chance for 1 equals 18000 Healoutput

34,5% Chance for 2 equals 21000 Healoutput

23% Chance for 3 equals 24000 Healoutput

8% Chance for 4 equals 27000 Healoutput

1% Chance for 5 equals 30000 Healoutput

 

For 30% Crit:

17% Chance for 0 equals 16667 Healoutput

36% Chance for 1 equals 20000 Healoutput

31% Chance for 2 equals 23333 Healoutput

13% Chance for 3 equals 26667 Healoutput

3% Chance for 4 equals 30000 Healoutput

<<1% Chance for 5 equals 33333 Healoutput

 

 

If you compare this, you have for example

With 30% Crit a 53% Chance to heal for 20000 or less.

With 40% Crit a 66% Chance to heal for 21000 or more.

 

On the other Hand,

With 30% Crit a 16% Chance to heal for 25000 or more.

With 40% Crit a 9% Chance to heal for 25000 or more.

 

 

So choose which is better. What do you think? I think with more crit you loose maybe 2-3% of your total output, but your heal is much more predictable and the amount of your heal is more stabil. And this is more worth than 2-3% of possible output.

Hey;

I am a Commando and i am a PvP-Player, so my suggestion might be wrong, but i think you aim for the wrong crit-target.

 

You said you wanna have 200-300 Crit Rating and i think this is not optimal.

 

Mathematically, you are right, 200-300 Crit are optimal, but if you look at your fights, you really never loose somebody, because Healoutput overall is too small, you loose your allies, because the Healoutput in the last 5-10 Seconds was to small, and that happens, if your last 5 Heals doesnt crit. If one of the heals would have critted, everything would be fine, but with 200-300 Crit, the possibility that i does not crit is far higher than with 700-800 crit.

 

For example. (Numbers are fictive, but the difference is pretty accurate to the real Numbers)

With 40% Standard Heal goes for 3000, Crit for 6000

With 30% Crit, 3333 and 6666.

 

For 40% Crit:

8% Chance for 0 equals 15000 Healoutput

26% Chance for 1 equals 18000 Healoutput

34,5% Chance for 2 equals 21000 Healoutput

23% Chance for 3 equals 24000 Healoutput

8% Chance for 4 equals 27000 Healoutput

1% Chance for 5 equals 30000 Healoutput

 

For 30% Crit:

17% Chance for 0 equals 16667 Healoutput

36% Chance for 1 equals 20000 Healoutput

31% Chance for 2 equals 23333 Healoutput

13% Chance for 3 equals 26667 Healoutput

3% Chance for 4 equals 30000 Healoutput

<<1% Chance for 5 equals 33333 Healoutput

 

 

If you compare this, you have for example

With 30% Crit a 53% Chance to heal for 20000 or less.

With 40% Crit a 66% Chance to heal for 21000 or more.

 

On the other Hand,

With 30% Crit a 16% Chance to heal for 25000 or more.

With 40% Crit a 9% Chance to heal for 25000 or more.

 

 

So choose which is better. What do you think? I think with more crit you loose maybe 2-3% of your total output, but your heal is much more predictable and the amount of your heal is more stabil. And this is more worth than 2-3% of possible output.

 

 

However, with 40% crit and those healing numbers assumed, the expected value is 21,000 whereas at 30% crit the expected value is 21,667 rounded to the nearest integer. So it seems that the expected output over 5 heals would favor the 30% crit build.

yeah, the absolute output is lower, although its not as big as assumed, 21k, vs 21,6k in truth its about the half of the difference.

 

But: Lets say there are 17,5k Damage which must be healed:

With 40% Crit, you have a 8% to fail.

With 30% Crit you will fail in 17% of the cases.

 

With more crit, the worst case scenario, is better. The question ist, can you make the worst case scenario so good or so improbably that i wont happen?

If you can go so deep in crit that you can handle this, crit is stronger.

 

In other cases, of cause, AP is stronger.

 

Its a deep theory question and its a question which answer will change for different bosses/circumstances..

 

but its an very interesting question

yeah, the absolute output is lower, although its not as big as assumed, 21k, vs 21,6k in truth its about the half of the difference.

 

But: Lets say there are 17,5k Damage which must be healed:

With 40% Crit, you have a 8% to fail.

With 30% Crit you will fail in 17% of the cases.

 

With more crit, the worst case scenario, is better. The question ist, can you make the worst case scenario so good or so improbably that i wont happen?

If you can go so deep in crit that you can handle this, crit is stronger.

 

In other cases, of cause, AP is stronger.

 

Its a deep theory question and its a question which answer will change for different bosses/circumstances..

 

but its an very interesting question

 

I can understand you are coming from here but I think a few changes could be made to make it a little more accurate. First if we start with base heals of 3000 and 3333, a crit heal would be closer to 174% of the base heal, as ideal surge values sit around 74%. This means we should tweak the crit values to 5220 and 5799.

 

If you recalculate the same probabilities the new EVs are 19,440 and 20,364 for 40% and 30% crit respectively. A larger difference in expected output. Also this will bring the values to :

 

40% crit

Crits , Prob, Value:

0, 7.77% 15,000

1, 25.92% 17,220

2, 34.56% 19,440

3, 23.04% 21,660

4, 7.68% 23,880

5, 1.02% 26,100

 

30% crit

Crits , Prob, Value:

0, 16.81% 16,665

1, 36.02% 19,131

2, 30.87% 21,598

3, 13.23% 24,064

4, 2.84% 26,531

5, 0.243% 28,997

 

I chose the extra 2 decimal places on percentages as we deal in thousands in the game and those places will matter.

If we go back to the scenario of 17,500 damage needing to be healed you can see that there is only 16.81% chance of not healing that with 30% crit, but a 33.70% chance of not healing that with 40% crit rating.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Osxoba

yeah, ok, but Surge Rating is about 1,9 because you can skill 15%.

 

Furthermore, the numbers real difference is not 3000 to 3333 its a little closer . Will test it, and use ingame Numbers ;

Simple math does not apply to an entire boss fight. There's multiple factors that go into optimization of gear which can't be given a set variable. The first is your other healer/s who support you. The second is the moves which are used to heal a specific way for that situation. The third is the overall length of the fight or rather the amount of time you are actively healing. I have messed with my crit so much in the past month while we progressed through NiM council. I tried over 500 crit rating and I tried 330 crit rating. I tried a dozen different crit levels between the 2 as well. What I finally realized was that me thinking my crit was affecting my heals was actually just some self fulfilling prophecy. It was me who made my heals go up by not overhealing and by using the best heal for that time. When we killed council I had exactly 402 crit rating with half alacrity gear and half surge gear. I don't know if this helps but I just figured a first hand account of a merc bodyguard trying to optimize gear during nim council progression would be beneficial. Thank you Edited September 8, 2014 by Rambeezy

Simple math does not apply to an entire boss fight. There's multiple factors that go into optimization of gear which can't be given a set variable. The first is your other healer/s who support you. The second is the moves which are used to heal a specific way for that situation. The third is the overall length of the fight or rather the amount of time you are actively healing. I have messed with my crit so much in the past month while we progressed through NiM council. I tried over 500 crit rating and I tried 330 crit rating. I tried a dozen different crit levels between the 2 as well. What I finally realized was that me thinking my crit was affecting my heals was actually just some self fulfilling prophecy. It was me who made my heals go up by not overhealing and by using the best heal for that time. When we killed council I had exactly 402 crit rating with half alacrity gear and half surge gear. I don't know if this helps but I just figured a first hand account of a merc bodyguard trying to optimize gear during nim council progression would be beneficial. Thank you

 

You are right, it is not simply about the amount of crit rating you have. It is more about the mechanics of each fight. Yes having optimal healing output over the long run is important, and so is having big spike heals. In the end it comes down to certain fights needing more spike healing and some just needing more overall sustained healing.

 

As a follow up, were you decked out in almost all 186 gear by the time you guys defeated NM council?

You are right, it is not simply about the amount of crit rating you have. It is more about the mechanics of each fight. Yes having optimal healing output over the long run is important, and so is having big spike heals. In the end it comes down to certain fights needing more spike healing and some just needing more overall sustained healing.

 

As a follow up, were you decked out in almost all 186 gear by the time you guys defeated NM council?

 

Yeah petty much. 1 relic, 5 mods 1 enhancement and mh barrel is all I was missing.

 

Edit: Here's my amr.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Rambeezy

I have rewritten parts of the guide so it fits commandoes aswell Since we now share forum I thought it might be a good idea to put it all into the guide, instead of only having an apendix.

 

I know we are gonna have a lot of changes soon (with 3.0 on the way), but I had already started the changes, so just finished up what I had begun! Hope you can use it out there

 

As always just send me some feedback if there is something wrong or you need me or others to elaborate on!

 

- Atmea

I am very grateful to the author of this guide, and I hope that it will continue to he 3.0

I am very grateful to the author of this guide, and I hope that it will continue to he 3.0

 

I am sure we can work something out!

 

There are coming a lot of changes to mercenary and commando healing, so we all probably have to try out the changes before we can comment on them...