Hello, quick thoughts on Operative Healer:

1. The only real PVE set bonus choice is the Tacticians Set. The Probe Tech Set combined with the two-set bonus of the Authority set comes close. But since I don't Parse it was hard to tell how much Probe Shield actually absorbed; also the range is too limited (only 5m, would prefer raid level range like 15m or more) and it was not clear if the skill Augmented Shields had an affect on all the shield probes. Without extended range and the bump in protection I don't see why anyone would choose this set over the Tactician. As for pvp, it's hard to imagine why anyone would not take double stuns. So meh on the variety of set bonus items.
   
2. The new ability, though, does mesh well with the healer class, unlike the sorc's new ability. Well done.
   
3. The tacticals are also well done, as a case could be made to use either Critical Surgery, Combat Medic, Diagnostic Probe, or Regenerative Waves. It's nice having a variety of useful tacticals.
   
4. It would be nice for Diagnostic Probe that when the Kolto Injection was an insta-cast the ability box would highlight, otherwise I've found no other issues to report.
   

As always, just my two cents.

Thanks for listening!

I do not main an operative healer and I am by no means a theory crafter...but I do use my Op heals a lot as a secondary healer. That said, I am very disappointed with the lack of set bonuses designed to enhance healing. Small buffs to healing from using an area attack...or shielding group mates with probe use is absolutely insufficient in my opinion. I will admit, some of the tacticals do look nice and afford some handy abilities, but they do not make up for the utter lack of healer focused set bonuses on armor. It's enough to make me want to never play the class if this is what they will receive in 6.0.

Edit: The above was a first blush response. after loading up gear and taking the op heal for a light test drive, I think I understand a little more what was trying to be accomplished. Many of the best bonuses to healing are actually on the Tactical items....making Kolto Infusion cast while moving, making Kolto Injection instacast on every third consecutive Surgical Probe, etc. In this manner, I see the intent to implement the "play your way vision" and create a more customizable gear layout. However....in our current set, we have three bonuses that directly affect healing output. In this test phase, the most relevant armor set is the Tacticians, which grants the ability to gain and extra tactical advantage and a 1% bonus to healing for having a tactical advantage. To me, this is just a "meh" bonus as I don't have any problems maintaining Tactical advantage stacks with our current gear set. The tacticians set combined with a tactical that provides ONE bonus that affects healing output (in one form or another) feels like we are actually losing some of the Op healers current effectiveness. In my opinion, an armor set bonus that directly grants a bonus to healing cooldowns or critical chances would be more desirable.

About lethality operative.

Tactical Items:

1. Synox Shots - Toxic Blast does 50% more damage. Useless. Suggestion - none. Its useless.

2. Catalyzed Toxins - Toxic Blast finishes all your poison effects on the target and deals their remaining damage immediately. Toxic Blast cooldown is extended by 9 second.

Useless in current view because of low dots damage (20k for both within 30 seconds - its just 2-3 standart rifle attacks) BUT it can be good single target tactical bonus.

Suggestion - make autocrit on dots or increase overall damage.

As example

Toxic Blast finishes all your poison effects on the target and deals 200% their remaining damage immediately . Toxic Blast cooldown is extended by 9 second.

Toxic Blast finishes all your poison effects on the target and deals autocrit their remaining damage immediately. Toxic Blast cooldown is extended by 9 second.

3. Viral Elements - Toxic Haze spreads Toxic Blast Effect and Lethal Strike does additional damage to all nearby targets affected by Toxic Haze.

Very good this one. Nice AOE burst and synergy with set of Authority and new Tactical Overdrive Skill. No need to change.

Set bonuses:

All useless except set of Authority last bonus

Medicine Feedback:

As a whole, I feel that (for better or for worse) not much has changed about the playstyle of op heals. I tested a lot of variations on the healing dummies yesterday, however, it is ultimately challenging to determine the strength of the spec without having access to non-scaled difficult content. Additionally, please note that this feedback is coming purely from a PVE mindset; I have not yet tested any tactical/set bonus that could potentially have use in PVP. Nonetheless, here are my findings thus far.

Tacticals:

1. Critical Surgery

When testing on the PVE dummy, this tactical seemed quite strong given that the dummies were sub 35% for a decent amount of time. However, in an operation setting, my fear is that this tactical will be overshadowed (mainly by regeneration waves) as the benefit of critical surgery is barely present compared to the other two tacticals, whose benefits are always active. In the majority of scenarios in an operation, players are barely sub 35% health, meaning that this tactical unfortunately doesn't have much use in most situations. My suggestion for this tactical would be to either raise the health range in which the tactical activates, or to straight up increase the critical chance of surgical probe by an amount to where this tactical could have a comparative advantage to the other tacticals in general healing scenarios.

2.Diagnostic Probe

While this tactical does not provide maximum output, its goal is clearly to attempt to provide operatives with opportunities to burst in certain scenarios. However, given that there currently isn't any challenging content to heal on the test server, I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to play with this utility as I hoped for. In theory, I could see it being useful on fights with a lot of burst/spike damage, but my fear is that even on those fights it may still overall be outshined by Regeneration Waves. One way that might further the benefit of this tactical is to increase the healing done by Kolto Injection for each stack of the tactical probe in addition to the reduction of it, furthering this tactical's strength of burst heal and making the tactical even more useful for burst scenarios. In all, I enjoy the concept behind the utility and like how it gives operatives an opportunity to be a little more bursty, however, without the opportunity to heal difficult content, I don't think I can give more feedback on this tactical than a SeemsGood for its purpose.

3. Regeneration Waves

So far, this seems like the go-to healing tactical for most scenarios. I find that it will yield maximum HPS in most scenarios while possessing the benefit of boosting AOE/pressure healing (the operative's speciality). Therefore, given the benefits of this tacical, I feel that it overshadows the need for the Critical Surgery nearly completely, only leaving Diagnostic Probe (potentially) for few specific scenarios.

Overall Tactical Thoughts:

I think each tactical is created to give the operative a different strength: Critical Surgery for certain pressure situations (for example I could see this CURRENTLY being good in PVP); Diagnostic Probe for burst; and Regeneration Waves for massive AOE. However, I think the biggest issue of the tacticals is that there is simply almost no use for Critical Surgery in its current iteration. If Critical Surgery is changed to change when surgical probes, and if Diagnostic Probe is slightly bufffed to increase the healing done by kolto injection per stack, I think all 3 operative tacticals will each have their own distinctive advantages to be used in different situations or for different playstyles.

Set Bonus

Again, speaking from a PVE perspective, the only operative set bonus that seems even slightly worthwhile is the Tacticians set. However, like almost every other spec in the game, the class-specific set bonus is worse than the general Berserker set. From the Berserker set, the operative gains a significant boost in HPS compared to the Tacticians set, and the extra TA from the Tacticians set is not nearly enough to compensate for the HPS loss. Consider buffing the Tactician's set to be more worthwhile for the class. Generally speaking though, it seems like almost every single set bonus in this update is garbage compared to Berserker, I think that, in general, set bonuses need to be relooked at significantly. Otherwise, literally, every single spec except tanks may end up wearing the same gear.

About lethality operative.

 

Tactical Items:

 

1. Synox Shots - Toxic Blast does 50% more damage. Useless. Suggestion - none. Its useless.

I haven't had a chance to test the changes yet but can you explain to me why this is useless?

Overall toxic blast does like 15% of your damage which is quite high considering your dots only do like ~22% of your total damage each. Therefore wouldn't buffing this number by 50% be quite a large dps increase?

I haven't had a chance to test the changes yet but can you explain to me why this is useless?

 

Overall toxic blast does like 15% of your damage which is quite high considering your dots only do like ~22% of your total damage each. Therefore wouldn't buffing this number by 50% be quite a large dps increase?

If you put it in current patch terms, you'd be making your Toxic blast tick for more 500 damage if non crit and more 1000 damage if crit.

It's not that much of a "buff". Only noticeable in PvE and even still, not that great.

About lethality operative.

 

Tactical Items:

 

1. Synox Shots - Toxic Blast does 50% more damage. Useless. Suggestion - none. Its useless.

If anything, 100% would be the right value. Or maybe I'm exaggerating but it does feel immensely underwhelming.

2. Catalyzed Toxins - Toxic Blast finishes all your poison effects on the target and deals their remaining damage immediately. Toxic Blast cooldown is extended by 9 second.

 

Useless in current view because of low dots damage (20k for both within 30 seconds - its just 2-3 standart rifle attacks) BUT it can be good single target tactical bonus.

 

Suggestion - make autocrit on dots or increase overall damage.

 

As example

Toxic Blast finishes all your poison effects on the target and deals 200% their remaining damage immediately . Toxic Blast cooldown is extended by 9 second.

 

Toxic Blast finishes all your poison effects on the target and deals autocrit their remaining damage immediately. Toxic Blast cooldown is extended by 9 second.

Turned out as I expected

They have to make it deal massive damage because its doing less about -10k damage than Corrosive Assault + 2 Dots + regular Toxic Blast on hit. And, if anything, it should be +20k compared to the usual attack that Leth does.

But they won't, so this tactical is basically going to acumulate dust in the vendors.

3. Viral Elements - Toxic Haze spreads Toxic Blast Effect and Lethal Strike does additional damage to all nearby targets affected by Toxic Haze.

Very good this one. Nice AOE burst and synergy with set of Authority and new Tactical Overdrive Skill. No need to change.

I'd prefer if they'd make Noxious knives insanely powerful while Toxic Haze is up, to give the same kind of AOE pressure like Virulence has honestly but I guess this is fine too.

Turned out as I expected

They have to make it deal massive damage because its doing less about -10k damage than Corrosive Assault + 2 Dots + regular Toxic Blast on hit. And, if anything, it should be +20k compared to the usual attack that Leth does.

But they won't, so this tactical is basically going to acumulate dust in the vendors.

Actually strangely enough I’m parsing more with this tactical rather than without it. I’ve actually be able to beat people in duels with this. It works greatly against other Scoundrels because they usually clear your dots before you can do anything with them. Though it feels quite clunky at times I feel like the cool down increase should be at 3-5 seconds instead of 9. And with the Tactical Set Bonus (increase UHs to 3) you really never run out of UHs.

Actually strangely enough I’m parsing more with this tactical rather than without it. I’ve actually be able to beat people in duels with this. It works greatly against other Scoundrels because they usually clear your dots before you can do anything with them. Though it feels quite clunky at times I feel like the cool down increase should be at 3-5 seconds instead of 9. And with the Tactical Set Bonus (increase UHs to 3) you really never run out of UHs.

1 : I doubt you're parsing higher with it. I highly doubt it. A tactical that is meant to just lower your over all dps in trade of burst abilities? Sorry, but not a good troll.

2 : You could always beat people with it rather easily? Even against other Ops.

3 : The damage is still ridiculously low to what it does.

1 : I doubt you're parsing higher with it. I highly doubt it. A tactical that is meant to just lower your over all dps in trade of burst abilities? Sorry, but not a good troll.

 

2 : You could always beat people with it rather easily? Even against other Ops.

 

3 : The damage is still ridiculously low to what it does.

1. Let’s compare numbers

2. But with Ruffian it took way long band was tenuous when someone cleansed your dots, attests now it’s more versatile.

3. No it isn’t, it’s doing the same damage your dots are doing but now it’s just instant.

And calling anyone you has a different experience/thought than you a troll isn’t good discussion.

1. Let’s compare numbers

 

2. But with Ruffian it took way long band was tenuous when someone cleansed your dots, attests now it’s more versatile.

 

3. No it isn’t, it’s doing the same damage your dots are doing but now it’s just instant.

 

And calling anyone you has a different experience/thought than you a troll isn’t good discussion.

The troll part is mostly because I had feedback from other five friends of mine saying the same thing as I said. Don't take it bad but I'm surprised as you say the raw damage is higher when you have lower output in sustained damage.

1 : Could you make 2 parses with and without the tactical?

2 : I never found difficulty in taking down other operatives and some of the matches were relatively short. Its tenuous already, regardless of spec. My longest duel as Leth vs Conceal was 51 minutes and won it and as Conceal vs Conceal was 38 minutes and lost it. And it was basically me getting back into shape for duels and was a while ago.

3 : The Corrosive assault is doing more damage if everything is setup than this attack. From personal experience, the new attack has been doing was -17% at best and that's generally what Corrosive Assault also does. Can you make an estimative of how much % it saps off of someone on your side? And I'm doing the best setup possible -> Shiv -> Both dots -> Lethal Strike -> Toxic Blast.

The troll part is mostly because I had feedback from other five friends of mine saying the same thing as I said. Don't take it bad but I'm surprised as you say the raw damage is higher when you have lower output in sustained damage.

 

1 : Could you make 2 parses with and without the tactical?

 

2 : I never found difficulty in taking down other operatives and some of the matches were relatively short. Its tenuous already, regardless of spec. My longest duel as Leth vs Conceal was 51 minutes and won it and as Conceal vs Conceal was 38 minutes and lost it. And it was basically me getting back into shape for duels and was a while ago.

 

3 : The Corrosive assault is doing more damage if everything is setup than this attack. From personal experience, the new attack has been doing was -17% at best and that's generally what Corrosive Assault also does. Can you make an estimative of how much % it saps off of someone on your side? And I'm doing the best setup possible -> Shiv -> Both dots -> Lethal Strike -> Toxic Blast.

1.I have tried it multiple times within the 5 hours I have been on the PTS server.

3. Until you can show me a screenshot or some other proof of BS doing more damage than 35k I won’t believe you

Thinking I might toss a little feedback lethality's way.

Heres an extremely low-effort log. First dummy to see how poison overload was read by starparse. Second to use poison overload tactical. Third to run with no tacticals. Fourth with the 50% boost to Toxic Blast damage.

http://parsely.io/parser/view/445867/3

My feelings on the tacticals:

Our version of Poison Choke sucks to use. In the i270 gear (what we get from the vendors) it hits for around 15k to 20k depending on how many gcds elapse between refreshing corrosive grenade and corrosive dart (upper limit on crit probably approaches 30k). However, you lose a tactical advantage as TB has its cooldown increased by 9s (15 -> 24) so over the course of a fight you'll use TB up to 60% more often. Additionally we've got to talk about the opportunity cost. As it currently functions TB forces CD and CG to do the remaining damage immediately. This means that this ability should never be used if its damage will be less than a Corrosive Assault CA was ticking for 10k on a crit for me, 5k without, each of the Dots ticked for either 2k or 3k (crit). Thats a bare minimum of 9k with a more likely average of 12k per hit. So TB should never be used with 4 seconds remaining. DoT durations are 24 seconds apiece, dots must be reapplied every 24 seconds, TB new cooldown is 24 seconds. So you'll end up clipping to reapply before TB, then reapplying after TB. You lose out on TB hits as you'll have fewer GCDs under a TB window to use CA or Lethal Strike.

Napkin wise its a burst tactical that should increase your potential kill threshold in PvP, but its going to hurt sustainable rotations... alot. Killing those dots means you don't have energy generation outside of passive ticks for a GCD or two, waste GCDs reapplying the dots, and have less TA generation per period of time. I can't think of a way to use it in a PvE setting to make the class do more damage over anything more than a 10s window. (doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just means I don't want to think about it.)

Synox Shots (TB does 50% more damage) is noticable but fails to meaningfully impact the rotation. It succeeds as a damage boost but utterly fails to be "gameplay defining" in any way.

The AoE thing... Lethal Strike while in Toxic Haze is a nice bit of AoE pressure and gets a pass from me I suppose.

If you put it in current patch terms, you'd be making your Toxic blast tick for more 500 damage if non crit and more 1000 damage if crit.

 

It's not that much of a "buff". Only noticeable in PvE and even still, not that great.

Ah yep just had a chance to test it and I see what you guys are saying.

I got a higher parse using the toxic haze one that increases lethal strike damage by incorporating toxic haze into my single target rotation. It seems that this tactical is worse at single target and aoe damage which makes it completely pointless to use in pve and pvp.

About the medicine operative I tried the Diagnotics probe tactical item in flashpoint and warzone

"Activating Surgical Probe reduces the cast time of the next Kolto Injection by .25 seconds. At 3 stacks, Kolto Injection can be cast instantly."

From what I have seen ingame a stack has a duration of 6 sec. I think it's too short. Why not a permanent stack like the advanced prototype powertech thing. Otherwise I could be happy with a duration of 12 sec. I remind everyone than Surgical probe needs a tactical advantage (so 3 TA to have 1 instant Kolto injection) and the buff of kolto infusion to be really useful and I don't even speak of the energy management.

3. Until you can show me a screenshot or some other proof of BS doing more damage than 35k I won’t believe you

A small analysis of the attacks.

Notes before checking screenies:

1 - Don't mind the gear. I know very well its a bad setup. Couldn't bother gearing properly as I just wanted to test the abilities and how they work, nothing more.

2 - Don't mind the tactical either.

List of abilities:

1 - Corrosive Dart:

1.1 - No Crit : https://prnt.sc/onglmf

1.2 - Crit : https://prnt.sc/ongffu

1.3 - Crit + Lethal Strike buff: https://prnt.sc/onggco

2 - Corrosive Grenade

2.1 - No Crit : https://prnt.sc/ongmnr

2.2 - Crit : https://prnt.sc/onggy6 <- There was a double tick and one was higher than the other because relic proc

2.3 - Crit + Lethal Strike buff: https://prnt.sc/onghi9

3 - Toxic Haze + Toxic Blast:

3.1 - Toxic Haze No Crit + Toxic Blast Crit: https://prnt.sc/ongidl

3.2 - Toxic Haze Crit + Toxic Blast No Crit: https://prnt.sc/ongj2w

3.3 - Toxic Haze + Lethal Strike buff: https://prnt.sc/ongjr2 <- I have no idea whats with the 3.8k hit but it was there, for some reason. The 8k hit is the Toxic Haze one. The debuff from is also applied but Toxic Haze is considered internal damage, not Tech, thus is not affected or shouldn't be. If it does, it's 5% so whatever.

4 - Corrosive Assault:

4.1 - Corrosive Assault No Crit: https://prnt.sc/ongkkf

4.2 - Corrosive Assault Crit: https://prnt.sc/ongev1

This is simply a short review of the attacks individually. Anyway, for the math time now...

For your burstier attack with Corrosive Assault, you'd have used Shiv + Corrosive Dart + Corrosive Grenade + Toxic Haze + 3x Toxic Blast(one per dot) + Lethal Strike + Corrosive Assault.

Put everything in crit state ( it should be easy to have 70% crit chance on your dots so its easy to have everything crit, over all. The only uncertainties is the Corrosive Assault and Toxic Blast) and you got your high CA hit. And as doubtful as it may sound, it happens more often than you'd believe.

And, don't forget this fact, the chance of double tick is also applied to Corrosive Assault while I haven't verified that in Toxic Blast, when boosted by the tactical item.

PS: I noticed that the burst attack can be nice if EVERY tick goes into crit. IIRC, I saw a -60k HP in a target. Still, not worth it due to the reasons I presented due to how the rotation/sustained damage will work, most likely, over all damage is going to be toned down. Devs already said this.

As a followup to my post from yesterday about operative healing, I tried the Toxic Haze heal set bonus today and was pleasantly surprised. This set bonus seems quite strong for group healing. I also found that given that toxic haze takes up a tactical advantage, Regenerative Waves does not work too well with this set bonus. Because of this, I strongly urge you to relook at the Critical Surgery tactical. If this tactical was not as limited to only work when someone was sub 35% health, it could pair up very nicely with this set bonus.

As another thought, when Regenerative Waves is utilized, the Tactical Medicine proc from the operative skill tree is not being given. The passive says: "Executing a Tactical Advantage with a healing ability increases all healing done by 3% for 6 seconds". It would be nice if kolto waves were added to the list of healing abilities when the tactical is equipped.

1.I have tried it multiple times within the 5 hours I have been on the PTS server.

 

3. Until you can show me a screenshot or some other proof of BS doing more damage than 35k I won’t believe you

Good policy. I'll bet his "five friends" are called Pinky, Ring, Middle, Index and Thumb...

Good policy. I'll bet his "five friends" are called Pinky, Ring, Middle, Index and Thumb...

Read all the posts first before you act that way, really...

I have been testing the Medicine Operative healing changes on the PTS and overall I have been pretty underwhelmed.

Keep in mind I am posting about PvE.

I'll start with the positives.

I like the new ability, Tactical Overdrive. It is nice to be able to reset the CD on Stim Boost, since it has so many different reasons to use it. I'll feel better about using Stim Boost aggressively, knowing I can have a backup if I need it as a defensive later. A 1 minute cooldown seems strange, a 1.5 or 2 min cooldown might me more appropriate. Not 3 minutes though.

Now everything else.

The only set bonus worth using is the Aggressive Treatment set, which causes Toxic Haze to heal for a minor amount. I imagine that either the wording is wrong or the heal is stronger than intended, since it makes each Toxic Haze tick heal for the same amount as each tick of Kolto Waves. That is not a minor amount.

-The other bonuses are so unimportant I would consider using 3 different (2) piece set bonuses instead, just for the extra stats. If Aggressive Treatment gets nerfed, it will bring the number of set bonuses I want to take down from 1 to 0. They just don't really matter.

-The Berserker set bonus has been changed and is no longer an alternative for healers.

The tacticals feel more useful than the set bonuses.

-The Diagnosis Probe reducing the cast time of Kolto Injection is nice, and feels good to use.

-The additional healing on Kolto Waves will be good in heavy AoE situations, so the Regenerative Waves tactical is fine in my book. Although it doesn't work well with the Aggressive Treatment set, so that is currently a big downside.

-Critical Surgery looks nice, but isn't quite enough. Having it only active on only such low health targets makes it a nice backup, however it goes against the general playstyle of the class. I would rather prevent major problems than try to catch up.

Moving onto the utility changes. The way the utilities are divided now causes so many useful utilities to be in the Heroic tier. Having only 3 points to put in Heroic, while being forced to put 6 in the other tiers just feels bad. I end up putting filler points into some utilities to get to the heroic tier, just to be punished by having all the ones I used to care about shoved into the last tier.

Lastly, it seems as though the overall healing numbers haven't increased as much as I would have thought, considering how much the player health pools have increased. Although to be fair I haven't done as much testing as I would have liked to figure it out for sure.

Overall, I feel as though Operative healers are losing more than they are gaining in 6.0.

I will miss the autocrit Kolto Injection, the reduced CD on Recuperative Nanotech, and the reduced energy cost of Kolto Infusion.

Operative tactical item suggestion,

exfiltrate meters increased to xx

I think the Surgical Probe Tactical should be changed to:

Increases Surgical Probe Critical Chance by the amount of health the target is missing

So at 60% target health you'd get +40% crit chance, at 30% health +70% crit chance and so on