Hi all. I'm very new to SWTOR (coming from WoW) so just trying to figure some basic stuff out.

This is all in regards to PVE. My main on WoW was a shadow priest. I liked having tons of DOTs and ranged damage, plus the healing abilities for when the main healer wasn't up to snuff or died. My question is, is sawbones similar in the sense that it's primarily ranged attacks with some backup healing? Or the reverse? Is it a decent dps/heal hybrid? I've heard that it's meant to be a main heal but that it just doesn't compare to sages. In that case, is the dps okay or not worth the bother? So far I'm really digging my smuggler, but I do miss healing/shielding. (side note, I would have played a sage but my friend who brought me over here's main is a telekinetic sage)

Honestly, I'm totally newbie baffled by the class system in this game, lol. I'm about to ding 10 so I've got some decisions to make. Any input would be appreciated.

Hi all. I'm very new to SWTOR (coming from WoW) so just trying to figure some basic stuff out.

 

This is all in regards to PVE. My main on WoW was a shadow priest. I liked having tons of DOTs and ranged damage, plus the healing abilities for when the main healer wasn't up to snuff or died. My question is, is sawbones similar in the sense that it's primarily ranged attacks with some backup healing? Or the reverse? Is it a decent dps/heal hybrid? I've heard that it's meant to be a main heal but that it just doesn't compare to sages. In that case, is the dps okay or not worth the bother? So far I'm really digging my smuggler, but I do miss healing/shielding. (side note, I would have played a sage but my friend who brought me over here's main is a telekinetic sage)

 

Honestly, I'm totally newbie baffled by the class system in this game, lol. I'm about to ding 10 so I've got some decisions to make. Any input would be appreciated.

All I can say as I don't have a healer but we have a smuggler healer in our guild and she is very good at what she does. She does an excellent job at keeping people alive . She is level 50 and frankly I am not sure what some of the guild would do without her healing. She knows her abilities and is fast on keeping everyone healed.

I do know she has maxed out pretty much the healing tree.

I play as a sawbones so I might be able to help you out with at leat some of your questions.

First, I don't think that it's fair to say that scoundrels don't compare to sages. Sages tend to be preferable to taking care of raid wide damage due to their freaking awesome aoe heal, but scoundls are more mobile which can be useful in some fights, and do well as a single target healer. Any of the three classes can do pretty well at any of the jobs though.

I don't know much about hybrid specs since the only time I use them are when I'm farming low level WB to gear out alts, or in the occasional wz. With pvp I might spec far enough to get the medpac mastery skill (to help proc upper hand), but I wouldn't recommend healing end game as a hybrid. :-/ I dunno, emergency medpac is probably one of my favourite things in the world, and while the aoe isn't strictly necessary it can be very useful.

When a group is easy to heal, and I feel like dpsing I do find that it's easier to do so at melee range (as a fully specced sawbones)since I normally just cycle through back blast, blaster whip and the occasional sabotage charge or flyby. If you do like more ranged or dot based attacks you might be able to come up with a cool sawbones/dirty fighting hybrid. Again I don't know how useful it would be for end game healing. I do find dpsing as a scoundrel can be kind of clunky... That might just be me not knowing what I'm doing though.

Honestly I think that if you're interested in range dps/healing, a sage may be the way to go. They are a fully ranged class, whereas a scoundrel is very melee based, and from what I hear can switch back and forth pretty easily! That said healing as a scoundrel is crazy fun, so if you want to do pure healing is recommend it whole heatedly!

Thanks everyone. I tend to get a little overwhelmed honestly when it comes to tons of stuff going down at melee range, so I think I'll try the sage when I decide to go healing.

Sharpshooter here I come!

Honestly I think that if you're interested in range dps/healing, a sage may be the way to go. They are a fully ranged class, whereas a scoundrel is very melee based, and from what I hear can switch back and forth pretty easily! That said healing as a scoundrel is crazy fun, so if you want to do pure healing is recommend it whole heatedly!

commandos are also rdps/heals. they are really good for burst heals. but i agree that the scoundrel is the most fun. i adore my sawbones. her stealth, 2 cc, and mobility give her great utility. especially the mobility. whenever i heal as a commando or sage, i hate it when i'm in the middle of casting a heal and then i end up having to stop and move to get out of some attack's range. or if i'm a sage and i throw down an aoe heal, then the whole team moves out of it for some reason. sawbones don't have such problems.

In terms of PVE Sawbones healing it is after 2.0 AMAZING. Love it to bits.

I am always healing together with a mix of 3 different sages none of whom can outheal me according to Torparse - we are all using it and are all grouped so we can see who heals what and how effectively. The reason for this is that my ticks on hots seem to pop in earlier than the sage heals. Last time we went on S&V HM the sage healing with me more or less just ended up putting salvation up and dps'ed whenever that was on CD. If spike damage was too high for me to keep up on he stepped in with a shield.

In pvp i feel very useful in terms of output - i can fairly easily compete with most sages. (although i do not play ranked pvp).

The spec sawbones can do dps however it isn't amazing. Tbh i would any day prefer a sage off-dps'ing as they do tend to do quite nice dps in heal spec.

In terms of PVE Sawbones healing it is after 2.0 AMAZING. Love it to bits.

.

I agree...Sawbones so far in 2.0 is a fun spec to heal with, and I love running solo with a hybrid. even healing with a hybrid can be done quite easily up through level cap. By the way, I also have the other 2 healers and have levled and raided with them in game, so have plenty of background in all 3 (all 3 are fun classes to play BTW...so personal preference makes a big difference in selection). Right now, scoundrel is my favorite healing class. the other two are fun as heck, but the scoundrel has just enough different heals and mobility and additional flavor that I prefer it.

the problem with running as Off-DPS I've found is energy. the commando has similar issue, but not as extreme. when your fully heal specced, damage simply eats up yoru energy like it was a dozen doghnuts in a sugarholics anonymous meeting. So DPS comes in only when you have the extra energy (which isn't hard as full healing, but it is a big choice when your doing the healing). but i've always put in a bit of damage on my Sawbones in every group. whether its just keeping my DoT up on a few targets, or sitting behind the mob and going to town....there's no reason you can't add some.

In light damage pulls this is pretty easy actually. you throw Slow release medpack on the tank and a few DPS, and DoT things up, then do a quick check of your energy and the tanks health. if he's getting hit hard, drop an emergency medpack and start an Underworld medicine. if he's fine and DPS aren't dropping like flies, hit the mob with a backblast and a pistol whip. reapply DoT's and SRM's and keep it up. if your a Hybrid spec like mine, cycle in suckerpunches when you have free Upper Hand charge available (which happens more then I thought it would). Sp can put out a ton of burst damage if you have the right talents and Flying fists procs.

the only other issue with doing off-DPS as a Sawbones is that the scoundrel is "mostly" a melee toon. yeah, they have a gun, but 85% of their damage skills are close range (4m-10m). So if you want to do off-DPS, you'll be up front with the other DPS behind the boss/mob, which means you are also getting hit with Aoe's, you're avoiding cleaves, and your having to run when the Boss does "X" kill-everything-in-10m-skills. On the flip side, our HoT's are pretty potent...so our mobility is much better then the other healers, and having to move isn't as big of a deal with us as it is with the other two.

Final note on hybrids. I love playing Hybrid solo. I have just enough talents in the sawbones tree to get the energy return off of my Diagnostic Scan (our free channeled heal). then I work up the Scrapper tree to sucker punch (and it's associated buff talents). between my heals and my DPS and Akaavi's mad DPS, mobs go down pretty fast (almost scarily so). So Hybrid is very viable for solo work and all content up to level cap hard modes...

Though at level cap your looking at a high gear level requirement, and at this point it's important to be able to maximize your throughput in the role you are filling in the group (a.k.a healing). so at that point I'd recommend full sawbones. but prior to that, have fun with hybrids. I only recommend that you spec far enough in Sawbones to get to tier 5 and fill it up, with teh exception of Psych Meds. the rest are amazing skills and definitely worth getting.

I agree...Sawbones so far in 2.0 is a fun spec to heal with, and I love running solo with a hybrid. even healing with a hybrid can be done quite easily up through level cap. By the way, I also have the other 2 healers and have levled and raided with them in game, so have plenty of background in all 3 (all 3 are fun classes to play BTW...so personal preference makes a big difference in selection). Right now, scoundrel is my favorite healing class. the other two are fun as heck, but the scoundrel has just enough different heals and mobility and additional flavor that I prefer it.

 

the problem with running as Off-DPS I've found is energy. the commando has similar issue, but not as extreme. when your fully heal specced, damage simply eats up yoru energy like it was a dozen doghnuts in a sugarholics anonymous meeting. So DPS comes in only when you have the extra energy (which isn't hard as full healing, but it is a big choice when your doing the healing). but i've always put in a bit of damage on my Sawbones in every group. whether its just keeping my DoT up on a few targets, or sitting behind the mob and going to town....there's no reason you can't add some.

 

In light damage pulls this is pretty easy actually. you throw Slow release medpack on the tank and a few DPS, and DoT things up, then do a quick check of your energy and the tanks health. if he's getting hit hard, drop an emergency medpack and start an Underworld medicine. if he's fine and DPS aren't dropping like flies, hit the mob with a backblast and a pistol whip. reapply DoT's and SRM's and keep it up. if your a Hybrid spec like mine, cycle in suckerpunches when you have free Upper Hand charge available (which happens more then I thought it would). Sp can put out a ton of burst damage if you have the right talents and Flying fists procs.

 

the only other issue with doing off-DPS as a Sawbones is that the scoundrel is "mostly" a melee toon. yeah, they have a gun, but 85% of their damage skills are close range (4m-10m). So if you want to do off-DPS, you'll be up front with the other DPS behind the boss/mob, which means you are also getting hit with Aoe's, you're avoiding cleaves, and your having to run when the Boss does "X" kill-everything-in-10m-skills. On the flip side, our HoT's are pretty potent...so our mobility is much better then the other healers, and having to move isn't as big of a deal with us as it is with the other two.

 

Final note on hybrids. I love playing Hybrid solo. I have just enough talents in the sawbones tree to get the energy return off of my Diagnostic Scan (our free channeled heal). then I work up the Scrapper tree to sucker punch (and it's associated buff talents). between my heals and my DPS and Akaavi's mad DPS, mobs go down pretty fast (almost scarily so). So Hybrid is very viable for solo work and all content up to level cap hard modes...

 

Though at level cap your looking at a high gear level requirement, and at this point it's important to be able to maximize your throughput in the role you are filling in the group (a.k.a healing). so at that point I'd recommend full sawbones. but prior to that, have fun with hybrids. I only recommend that you spec far enough in Sawbones to get to tier 5 and fill it up, with teh exception of Psych Meds. the rest are amazing skills and definitely worth getting.

Would you mind posting what hybrid build you tend to use for sawbones/scrapper? I'm currently working on lvl'ing my smuggler and am using full sawbones build, but just feel it lacks enough dps. I do PvE solo play with this alt and found your post interesting.

Thanks!

Hi, I tanked classic WoW on a Warrior, DPS'ed most of BC on my mage and healed the end of BC on my Druid and continued to main him into WotLK and the sadness of Cata. I had tried tanking, then DPSing and I wasn't bad at those roles but after years of playing I had found my role (one in which I both excelled and was happy) and I devoted myself to it. I had one of every healer class fully decked out by the end of WoTLK and used them all in guild runs... needless to say, I played too much WoW at the time but I'm well equipped to help out if not answer your question.

My priest Sardonicus was mostly Disc but offspecced Shadow... and he played nothing like a smuggler. If there's a class that draws obvious comparisons to the Smuggler in WoW it's the Druid, my one true WoW-love (lol). You've got stackable HoTs (lifebloom/medpack) that you can spam on the whole party, an area of effect based heal that isn't really spammable (Wild Growth/Kolto Cloud), an initial heal with HoT (Regrowth/kolto pack) on it, a big slow heal that is impractical in pinch situations (underworld medicine/ healing touch) and B-Rezzing. There are speedy conditional heals like nature's swiftness/emergency medpack and both have mana/energy recovery with innervate/cool head... to say nothing of sharing stealth and stealth based sapping CC!

So yeah sorry I can't answer your shadow priest question very well BUT if there's a class in SWTOR that has an equivalent in the druid, it's got to be the Smuggler.

...you won't be going Boomkin though.

If you want a class that plays very similarly to a WoW Shadow Priest then you want the Sage Balance spec. Very similar to SP except for no shadow form.

Couple dots, channeled spell that can proc instant cast nukes. Some self heals and a bubble.