I have played with/against you quite a few times. I burned out on Merc heals for a while, but we should hook up on JC. My guild has an open Imp PVP section of mumble open to the public. Anyway, I'll look for you next time I'm on this toon struggling to heal. .

 

Cool, what's your toon name? I'm sure I've seen you in WZ. Glad you're giving it another shot.

 

But to be fair, if you can't make use of 10% alacrity + heat dump from vent's, then why would you take 2% alacrity from System Calibrations? If you find your own survival that much more important than healing why wouldn't you take Custom Enviro suit for the 2% HP + 2% Healing to yourself? Or for that matter, Kolto Jets, which can crit for over 2k, plus hits nearby friendlies.

 

The 2% alacrity is all the time and is needed for baseline heat management and to provide a little bit of casting speed at least + GCD reduction. I look it kind of like not accuracy capping in PvE for a dps. You just take it.

 

I've never found much use for endurance talents for anything other than a tank. The 4% damage reduction ought to have more effect than 2% self-healing.

 

As for the knockback heal, I hate it in PvE as is but in PvP you'll probably only ever hit yourself with it as you'll be using it defensively. If you're not getting focused and LOSing properly you won't be near your teammates most of the time. I just personally find the passive damage reduction more or as useful for my purposes. With 2.6 things may change a little bit being able to rapid shot ourselves on the run.

Well you guys have somewhat convinced me to give it a shot again.... after days of warzones with no, or horrible healing (unless I'm pre-grouped) I'm giving in. Now I can do this on all 3 healers, but I always enjoyed Merc as DPS since.. launch. So I guess if it's too ugly I'll hop on one of the other healers...

 

On a side note, I want to make sure I'm clear on this gearing situation:

1) Considering some of you are adament about the 'Alacrity skills' in the healing tree, should I keep Alacrity in my gear or ditch it, and replace it with power?

 

2) Conquerer healing gear. Is it worth going 4 pieces for PVP? If I just use my DPS gear, is it going to be notable?

 

Thanks again.

 

You can't drop alacrity for power directly, it's a secondary stat so you can only pickup Crit or Surge in place of alacrity. Aim->Power should always be the priority over everything else. But for secondary stats, I run 3 pieces of Alacrity to boost my cast times.

 

I run full oboron sets for both healing and dps'ing. Basically I switch out 3 pieces so I can get the 4 piece bonus. I put alacrity enhancements in the helmet, legs, and boots. I keep the healing gloves and dps chest on for both sets. I run all power/surge in implants, ear, wrist, waist, ect.

 

Remember the name on the gear is irrelevant, it's the stat's and the bonus that you should worried about. While the 4 piece combat medic bonus is meh... it's better than nothing.

You can't drop alacrity for power directly, it's a secondary stat so you can only pickup Crit or Surge in place of alacrity. Aim->Power should always be the priority over everything else. But for secondary stats, I run 3 pieces of Alacrity to boost my cast times.

Actually only surge. The stats go like this:

-Main stat

-Power vs Crit

-Surge vs Alacrity vs Accuracy

i played some merc healer past 2 weeks (to prepare myself for 2.6) i have to say its very difficult but due able if u play it right, the only problem i have now i cant sustain a group (refer to arena) when u get pressured or interrupted like a mad man. they cant get close to or very difficult to match even a a sorc healing most of the time unless u have a strong group backing u up. Some how i cant play other healing class as i feel like i have better control playing merc healer. i like the gameplay allot suits me well so im just waiting and see for does incoming changes if that can help the sustain healing.

Yea, I think I've seen some of your PVP vids on youtube, and I know you prefer DPS but if there's a challenge to healing, it is the merc.

 

I've had a long running love/hate thing going on with it. I'd agree that high pressure situations are the big key. If your bubble is down, you can't really heal anything against a smart team. Everything just gets interrupted.... if your Kolto AOE is on CD, you're SOL.

 

After 2.6 I am mixed about it. Yes, it is an improvement. I like that rapid firing myself is a nice, subtle animation, and I can build stacks on myself. Being able to bubble everyone is nice, but man is it ever hard to tell who has a bubble without actually clicking on them.

 

I honestly don't see the hierarchy changing at all here. Op healers are still the goto healer class I think. I still like the Merc mechanics but it is still a bit clunky.

Yea, I think I've seen some of your PVP vids on youtube, and I know you prefer DPS but if there's a challenge to healing, it is the merc.

 

I've had a long running love/hate thing going on with it. I'd agree that high pressure situations are the big key. If your bubble is down, you can't really heal anything against a smart team. Everything just gets interrupted.... if your Kolto AOE is on CD, you're SOL.

 

After 2.6 I am mixed about it. Yes, it is an improvement. I like that rapid firing myself is a nice, subtle animation, and I can build stacks on myself. Being able to bubble everyone is nice, but man is it ever hard to tell who has a bubble without actually clicking on them.

 

I honestly don't see the hierarchy changing at all here. Op healers are still the goto healer class I think. I still like the Merc mechanics but it is still a bit clunky.

 

 

My first match I hit 1.35M heals with 3 other healers on my team (match was a mess), and I was averaging over 1500 HPS in the matches I healed... Another Merc on my server hit 2550 HPS in a NC last night.

 

We don't have the kiting capability of the other two classes... but we can put out the heals now if needed...

Thanks for letting us know your experiences with 2.6

 

My best match last night was 1 mil+. I think it was 1.2 mil to be exact. But I had too many matches where I was focused by dual ops. So while I won't say I was easy to kill, I had to simply keep myself up which hurt my numbers drastically.

 

This is what I would define as survivability. I simply can't vanish to relieve the pressure, and start anew from a better focal point of the battle and blast off some hot's or AOE's before anyone knows where I am again.

 

There were times I queued with a team, but no one peeled for me, so it was ugly. I found the high pressure moments still difficult to contend with, but for certain the ability to Kolto shield the team was big... just wish it was easier to physically identify at a glance.

 

I'll keep trying.....

before 2.6 i could never pass 1.6 million (my highest was 1.59m) in heals but today i finally did it and got over 2 mil Edited February 6, 2014 by Kallpa

I don't play a merc, but an old guildie of mine was the only merc healer I felt comfortable playing with. He would keep up with ops pre-2.0. Anyways, here is a ss of him healing post 2.6

 

http://i.imgur.com/ibxs8D4.jpg

I don't play a merc, but an old guildie of mine was the only merc healer I felt comfortable playing with. He would keep up with ops pre-2.0. Anyways, here is a ss of him healing post 2.6

 

http://i.imgur.com/ibxs8D4.jpg

 

That was the match I was referencing

 

The bigger problem I see with the Merc Heals vs other... is that our shell doesn't stack. So basically, if you have more than 1 merc in a WZ, then which ever one get's their shell out there first is going to run much bigger numbers.

The highest i have healed on my merc before 2.6 was 2.1m

The highest i have healed on my merc before 2.6 was 2.1m

 

That must have been a long-*** match... I'd be more interested to know what your HPS was. Because, total heals is a product of a long crappy wz, You can have 700HPS and still hit 2M heals if you have a bunch of tanks and a long drawn out NCoast where mid doesn't get capped. (Don't get me wrong... 2m heals is amazing, I never did better than 1.5m pre patch and my best HPS was like 1600)

 

I remember seeing a Merc hit 1750 HPS pre patch and that was amazing... 2k+ HPS is where most ops and sorcs are at.

I don't play a merc, but an old guildie of mine was the only merc healer I felt comfortable playing with. He would keep up with ops pre-2.0. Anyways, here is a ss of him healing post 2.6

 

http://i.imgur.com/ibxs8D4.jpg

 

Wow nice. I was gonna share my 1.2 mil screenshot, but ... yea forget that. lol

 

Now things are getting ugly. I am getting focused like crazy... and multi root ravages are becoming a REAL PITA to deal with... hydrolics simply can't be up enough now! I was getting trained on 2.6 release day by mostly Ops... which sucked because your numbers just go way down.

 

Now it seems to have swayed slightly towards.... Vengeance/vigilance. Rooting and not being able to CC the ravager is pretty tough to deal with.

 

I have to admit in some warzones last night I was so heavily focused by multi-ravagers, I was truly glad (for the first time since launch) to have my Merc be a Cybertech. I pretty much had to use a grenade on cooldown.

 

This is probably nothing for most of you, but I had a Voidstar last night where I did manage about 775K healing, but took 811K damage with 9 deaths. I had one other healer with me... also merc, He did 200K healing and had about 16 deaths!

 

We won the warzone but a few things came to me.... the combined root/burst of Vengeance + Carnage marauder is REALLY hard to contend with. Your armour is getting blown away, and they are essentially taking turns rooting you while one of them is typically CC immune.... nasty.

 

But the silver lining is I don't think I could have hung in there at all pre-2.6. I was severely overwhelmed at times.... just unable to avoid all the ravages, with gore.... ugh. But it shows that we are a bigger priority, and I think the kolto shields are at least giving me -some- chance of healing others while I'm being focused down so hard.

Edited February 6, 2014 by Krozis

Seen some people suggesting you should stand and heal in the front this is a grave mistake: you are not harder to target because remember you are probably being marked by a big glowing icon above your head.

 

Secondly standing in the front makes it very easy for melee to get their paws on you not to mention you just stepped into range of the enemy ranged dps hanging out in their back line and that is why you go splat in seconds. Ideally what you do is hang out and heal your target from max range and make sure to have friendlies between you and your healing target so that any enemy melee will have to run through them. Or in some cases when they jump or stealth you they just cut themselves off from their own team and die very fast and lonesome deaths assuming your team gives a damn about you and picks them off.

Seen some people suggesting you should stand and heal in the front this is a grave mistake: you are not harder to target because remember you are probably being marked by a big glowing icon above your head.

 

Secondly standing in the front makes it very easy for melee to get their paws on you not to mention you just stepped into range of the enemy ranged dps hanging out in their back line and that is why you go splat in seconds. Ideally what you do is hang out and heal your target from max range and make sure to have friendlies between you and your healing target so that any enemy melee will have to run through them. Or in some cases when they jump or stealth you they just cut themselves off from their own team and die very fast and lonesome deaths assuming your team gives a damn about you and picks them off.

 

I have been trying to take the advice in my thread here pretty serious. I want to explore all options before going back to Sorc/Op heals.

 

So I did try experimenting with this quite a bit, and I agree with you 100%. The heavy armour doesn't mean a heck of a lot, and as you suggest playing frontline or even midline heals is just making a HUGE target of yourself.

 

In my previous post I made note of the damage I took in that voidstar. I was solo queuing, and had no peels. I came to a point where I couldn't cross the bridge, but they wanted me dead SO bad that I was pulling them so far off the doors we were capping....

 

There's no doubt in my mind that even with 'heavy' armour' we are pillar humpers just like every other healer. The backline is where I do my best work and only when getting tunneled by cloakers do I personally find it wise to move up. (the cloaker(s) blow their burst and then get taken out.)

 

Being a healer is such an abusive position in PVP. Why expose yourself to it even more by moving up and healing in the mid of a scrum? Sure you can do it sometimes, but when the other team knows what they're doing... it's best to stay out of the heat.

That must have been a long-*** match... I'd be more interested to know what your HPS was. Because, total heals is a product of a long crappy wz, You can have 700HPS and still hit 2M heals if you have a bunch of tanks and a long drawn out NCoast where mid doesn't get capped. (Don't get me wrong... 2m heals is amazing, I never did better than 1.5m pre patch and my best HPS was like 1600)

 

I remember seeing a Merc hit 1750 HPS pre patch and that was amazing... 2k+ HPS is where most ops and sorcs are at.

 

It was a pretty long civil war, my hps was 1740, i never bothered to look for the hps, i usually look at the overall healing because i thought it was just an average of the total healing.

http://i.imgur.com/wX9Tw2T.jpg

 

what i usually do to measure my performance is that i quickly round and add up the enemy damage and compare it to the total healing done on my team.