A Healer's 1.2 Grievances: The story of why healers are upset

There is a lot of good points in this thread, but it would take me too long to quote from each, so I'll sum up and build on a few.

My belief, in any MMO that has a healing class, is that Healers should be able to mitigate - through negation, recovery or avoidance - any single source of damage.

As an Operative Healer, I had one WZ experience where two DPS (although in fairness I think one was out of force) chased me all over The Pit for a good two minutes (felt like forever) until I caught a weird carem off a vent and lost them with my disappearing act. Comments in the General channel were that healers are OP. I had responded "can't I just be good, and not OP?"

I understand the frustration... but please consider the following, in pre-1.2 conditions:

1. you're a dps that does damage and I am countering it all with heals. Don't forget, I'm working for it. It's not like I'm popping one skill, standing still and laughing at you while you beat on me with now-wet noodles.

2. throw enough dps on me and I won't be able to keep up and will die.

3. while you're beating on me, I can't heal anyone but myself. You ARE helping your team win by preventing me from keeping my team alive longer. The longer I stay alive with you harassing me, the longer I am away from my teammates healing. I don't think that's OP, I think that's strategy, and a good one on your part.

But the other critical piece of this is that I should be able to keep any other one person alive while they are being attacked by the same number of dps players. Patch 1.2 diminishes that capability and renders healers as 'nice to have' when pre-1.2 they were 'absolutely critical'.

Post 1.2, the gap between dps maximums and healing maximums has grown too much, and not only can one DPS kill a healer handily 1v1, but healers have been marginalized to almost optional in a WZ group.

And while complaining about the comms, gear, medals mechanics all have points to argue, I leave them out of my opinions in this post entirely.
Pre-mades should beat pugs more often than not.
Gear should matter, but so should skill.
PVP gear should not be as, or more viable than PvE gear in the opposite environments and vice versa.
Healers should be able to mitigate - through negation, recovery or avoidance - any single source of damage.

Version 1.2's PVP changes negates this statement.

-- Orenishi, Saber of Exar Kun

Medals are a problem that needs to be addresses...

but...

Healers are not tanks. You can't expect to heal through 2-3 dps and run around the map healing your teamates.

People have to die in PvP for PvP to even make sense. If they don't you end up with the healer/tank combo problem we had previously. Put enough healers and tanks on ONE team and no one dies.

It's not about healing through 2 dpsers... I can do it now too, problem is when my friend gets attacked and pops all his cooldowns and I'm tunneling 50k healing in him versus a marauder and a powertech over the course of 2 mins and instead having his HP at least remain the same he ends up dying regardless of his CDs and my healing. I ask myself why would my rated team need me? If I can't contribute to their victory at all and essentially I'm the weak link just because I picked healing instead of damage. If a dps class can do 4 times the healing I do as damage in the same time frame. Why would anyone want a healer in their team instead of an extra dps?

Cuz in the time I cast a 2k heal (1.5 secs) that Marauder does 9k.

Some will argue you "but he can't do that 9k again for X amount of seconds", sure but this is where his friend comes around and goes the extra mile for another 9k. So bottom line when a healer and 1 dps/tank end up in a 2v2 situation vs 2 dps or a dps and a tank. Healer and dps/tank die to any of the other two combinations. So why get a healer for your rated team instead of dps?

Edit: Of course this is a very generalized situation but it will happen, A LOT. It happened to me yesterday 4 times in the course of 6 warzones.

And my perspective is from playing both operative and sorc to BM, both prior to the ez-mode valor patch. I've played both toons as DPS as well, so I know how hard it is to dps down the three healers as well.

As a Sorc healer pre-1.2, the amount of HPS is can put out is unrivaled by my Operative healer --- and on the Operative I still outheal everyone else. But it just wasn't even the same thing. Survivability was a bit of hit or miss, depending on the map and class makeups. In certain scenarios my Sorc was better (specifically Hutball and vs force users), while my Operative was more survivable in Civil War and vs. tech users.

While I would dps on my Operative, I could faceroll Sorc healers. Operative healers could get away with Vanish, but be useless during that time. Merc healers were by far a significant amount harder to kill.

While you are entitled to your perspective and how the classes felt to you, I believe the majority of the population sees things more accurately.

For those who are having a hard time getting medals here's what I'd call the 'submission' defense that I ended up using on a 6on8 where we were never close. It works on Novare Coast/Alderran, but not the other two maps.

Fight like usual and cap your closer point. If you can't do this, you're already doomed anyway and wouldn't have gotten any meaningful reward even under the old system.

At somewhere close to 450-300 (so 100% - 60% in NC) take all your guys to your only node and wait there.

The attacker will see that your side has given up, but because they don't have a 2-1 advantage, they wouldn't attack you in case something crazy happens and you actually counter attack. They will usually just chill out for the rest of the fight after it's obvious you're not attacking, giving you more chances to get defender medals.

Now if the attackers do attack, having all your guys by your node is the best chance you've at killing them. You'll usually have 8 on 6 + closer spawn odds on your side, so you might even be able to get quite a bit of kills. If you still get clownstomped like this, then your team never had a chance anyway.

Can't fraps yet... but sure I use all of the above... but here's a newsflash...
yes I have 2 instant heals (that do some healing-over-time)... but these heals don't keep people alive. In order to really heal people I need to stand still to cast and actually be in LOS of the people I want to heal... which also means being in LOS of the ones that want to kill me.

I can still heal in warzones and I will make it work with the skills I have now... not the point I was trying to make in all my previous posts..

I don't think a healer should be able to survive against 2 or 3 dps. But since my main deal is to heal... I should at least be able to outheal them to some extend. That's the point of healing isn't it? Being able to survive long enough to heal others as well as yourself?

The point I've been trying to make (as have others) is not that healers couldn't use some adjustments in their skills... it's the fact that the expertise % does not favor ballance, that annoys me... the odds are stacked against the healing simply because of the difference in % that has been implemented. Even if the classes are now more ballanced.. the expertise impact is not.

Healing in a warzone should be a combination of running (if under attack) and standing still to cast a heal... a quick heal in case of still being under attack, so not the decent heal of 2.3 sec cast.

But it should be done on an equal basis... and with that I mean healing % equals dps %

i cant even begin to explain... Flash grenade is not gonna do jack **** vs a tank/heal/heal triangle. Please elaborate for me

Question: Are you using relics and adrenals?

I can pop my crit relic and my power adrenal at the same time and get a 5-6k heal no problem. (Last night I got a 5900 crit in case you were wondering if this was post patch or not.) That's like 2 medals right there in a single fight. If I have time left over, I use one of my higher damage attacks and get a 2.5k damage medal. Then I pick a target that's about to die and auto-attack it, there's another medal for killing blow. Hell, cast an aoe heal in a big fight, you get your 10 enemies dead thing right then or soon after. All of this being done whlie I heal my group.

I just don't understand how people are complaining about getting so few medals medals when it is easier now than it ever ever was.

Work smarter, not harder.

The op is just confirming that he was carried by playing a broken healer class. In my opinion the nerfs to Commando's were warranted. I mean he wasn't even using the 20% increased healing and tanking people with ease. Just shows that his class was broken and has nothing to do with his skill.

Plus your argument about NEVER dying but also never being able to kill anyone further confirms how overpowered we Commando Medics were. How frustrating is it to try and capture a node in Voidstar / The Civil war when a commando + tank can just outlive everyone for the duration of the game.

I for one welcome these changes and look forward to the challenge. Not saying it wont be easy but atleast it will separate the good commando's from the average.

....

Again people that cant do math. +DMG % from expertise is completely canceled out by DMG mitigation.

Healers still get +12% I think that still puts healers at a +12% advantage over DPS where expertise is concerned.