Hi guys, this is going to be a long post and I've been thinking about this basically since I started playing SWoTR early this year.

I have been playing a Healer for several years in Guild Wars, where I managed to stay on Top of the competitive GvG-Scene (GW's most prominent 8-man PvP-Mode) and as soon as I started playing SWtOR, I felt right at home. The 2 games just feel very similar: The duration it takes for ppl to go down to damage, the impact healing has on the game, the way 8 players have to play together etc. There was just always sth. that didn't feel right about healers in this game and I will try to explain what it is and why SWtOR should go the direction of GW.

There will be many suggestions by me on how to possibly balance healers and I will name both aspects that are too strong with healers, but also aspects where the healers need to be buffed, so if you comment on this, don't panic if I dish out a few nerfs or buffs; plz read to whole thing where I hope they should balance themselves out and you'll understand each single proposition better.

Mana-Management

What I've noticed right away when playing SWtOR was this: I don't actually run out of Mana when healing. This is both true for Sage-healers and Commandos and with the recent buff to Scoundrel, I think they are doing fine as well. One major point why this is the case are the Maps and respawn-timers: Often times, you'll have smaller engagements with a major amount of downtime between them, where you can easily reg your Mana. A large portion of it is also the fact that Healing is very Mana-efficient in SWtOR: If you have enough time to dish out a 1.5+ Second spell, you will get your Mana's worth for it.

This might also be the reason why so many players regarded healing as OP in SWtOR. Healers should be able to keep themselves alive for a certain amount of time without problems, even if they are attacked by 3 players, but this sort of pressure on a Healer should have an impact on his Mana, which would make it necessary for a supporter or tank to relieve the pressure from the healer, so he can regain his mana. There are enough skills that would make this possible, like guards, slows, stuns, Interrupts or CC on heavy DD's etc.

As it was before 1.2. It required a lot of skill to deal with healers, which is in itself a good thing, but dealing with healers almost never encompassed messing with their Mana-management. There are no Mana-drains and pressure alone, switching targets, dealing a lot of AoE etc. would take simply too long to make a healer go OOM.

There is also a lack of skills for the healer to regain their mana, that was attached to a certain drawback. In GW, we had spells like this:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Channeling (which would force the Healer to go near enemies, which is obviously sth. you'd like to avoid as a healer)

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Blood_is_Power (which was a spell of the supporter to secure your backlines mana-management, which means with only 1 Elite-skill per Char and 8 Skills in total, a great sacrifice to use this skill in your build on a supporter, which would have to sac life as well)

There are also skills, that are very similar to what SWtOR has to offer, like;

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Offering_of_Blood

But compared to this spell, the amount of mana gained by Noble Sac is just too small, even if you would take out the dereg of your mana. If you'd either heavily reduce the dereg or health sacced or give us at least double the amount of mana, it would actually be a decent spell. It would also help to make the skillpoints used to buff this spell more efficient, cuz as they are now, they're just too weak.

There were also some skills in GW, that didn't cost any Mana or very little, but also didn't heal that much or had a very long casttime. That's one reason why I think the recent "nerf" to Deliverance+Rejuvenation wasn't too bad: Del. now just becomes a very mana-efficient healspell, that has a very definite drawback - it's casttime. If there was some sort of Mana-problem, this spell could act as something to heal up pressure, but it's long casttime would make it harder to just spam around.

So why give Healers better Mana-management but make Spells cost more? Doesn't this lead to the very same amount of Mana?

Kinda: If you play well and regulate your mana-management to the top of your ability, you will probably end up with the same amount of Mana and roughly the same amount of Points healed at the end of the BG. But by making mana-management a necessity and bound to certain drawbacks, you open up possibilities of the opponent to react and interfere with your heal-potential: if they'd (the abilities that granted the healer mana) have a cast-time, they could interrupt you and heavily apply pressure this way, if you'd have to sac life, they could time their spikes right and unload Damage on you when you are vulnerable, or if you'd take a spell like "channeling" (see above) they could utilize good positioning to deny you mana or abuse the more vulnerable position the healer would have to get himself into. In short words: It would involve the opposing team more into the ability of the Healer to have enough mana to heal, even without having skills that directly drain his mana.

What could be done:

- Increase the cost of Healing-spells by roughly 20%, but give the Healers some skills to regain mana, that are bound to a certain drawback. If you'd go for the 20% increased cost, I'd say that Noble-Sacrifice should give you 15% of your mana back and have no deregeneration debuff.

Impact of dying

If you died in GW, you had maybe 5-6 Battle-Rez rdy that could only be used once per GvG (unless you got a morale boost, which was achieved by holding the flagstand) that rezzed the target with very little health/mana (very similar to the ones in SWtOR). If you've used your Battle-rezzes, the target was down for up to two minutes (depending on when you killed the target, because respawn-time was all 2 mins). This made dying much more impactful and B-rezzes a MUST-HAVE and added a lot of strategical depth, because B-rezzes were interruptable and kill-timing a necessity (much like it is on VoidStar).

In SWtOR, dying isn't only much less impactful and B-rezzes don't need to be used most of the time, it's actually beneficial for you to die on certain Maps. This can also closely be linked to the Problem with Mana-management: If you're OOM on lets say Voidstar, you look at the respawn-timer and time your death accordingly.

I definitely see the advantages in having a short respawn-timer, cuz no1 likes to stay in respawn for a minute or two and it opens up a lot of strategic options for both attackers and defenders on every map, but as it is now, the respawn takes up too less time. For Healers to be beneficil enough to a team and for B-rezzes to actually be used, we need at least 10-20 seconds more on the respawn-timer, because as it is now, especially after 1.2. there is actually no need for healers at all.

What could be done:

- Add 10-20 seconds on the respawn-timer

Amount of Burst-Heal or strong Instant-prots

This one is probably the biggest Issue with Healers atm and I've noticed this since day1 of playing SWtOR (even before when checking out the skills when deciding which class to pick). The amount of Burst-Heal, with which I basically mean Instants, is nothing compared to the DMG-output possible by the DD's.

If SWtOR had in mind, that Healers are actually used in 8-man PvP, most ppl would say, that 2 healers per 8 players is probably the way to go, which is a good number because Healers should be necessary, but not outweigh the importance of DD's. The Maps are actually made so well by BW (really - HUUUGE props!) that it is also possible for PuG's with no or more than 2 healers to win a game (which is very important for the casual PvP-players out there). This is the main reason why Healers shouldn't have infinite mana to heal up the players, cuz that would be and obviously was very unappealing to lots of lower level players.

There is a strong need though, to balance the Burst-DMG output to the burst-heal potential of the Healers around the number of maybe 2-3 Healers. To balance things out in PuG's with more than 2-3 Healers, those burst-heals should come with a big drawback, to make those very efficient heals unspammable and require the healers to utilize the strenghts of the whole team.

As it is now, the potential to coordinate spikes of concentrated DMG onto targets in under one second is ridiculous compared to the amount of healing that can be done during that time. If you just take 4 DD's (which is a number that you will encounter very often, even on maps where splitting up the teams becomes a necessity) of Sentinels, Comms, Vanguards, Gunslingers or Sages, the potential to dish out DMG in under 1 Second per character is maybe 4-7k. Depending on the Class, you can spike those amounts of DMG roughly every 10 seconds and most classes can even keep pressuring the target for several more K's in the second(s) that follows the spike. If you'd have let's say a team of 4 Gunslingers using Aimed Shot/Charged Burst + Trickshot/Quickshot/Quickdraw, you easily dish out 5-7k each and could spike roughly every 7 seconds with either of the combos.

During that time, just because of the global cooldown, a Healer has time for 1 spell, maybe 2 if the spike has been sniffed out or is very poorly executed. Unfortunately, we don't have many high-level scoundrels on our server and maybe, with the recent buffs, Emergency-Medpack will help out against those spikes tremendously, but still, the ability to burst-heal of the Sage and the Comm is way too low.

The Sage can basically only use his bubble or Trance, with Trance really not healing that much during the first 1-2 seconds and with the bubble leaving the target open to get spiked again for about 20 seconds; the next time it won't be able to get protted by the bubble. The Comms bacta-Infuse would be decent, but it's recast of 20 seconds make it undependable against well orchestrated spikes.

What SWtOR needs are more very efficient insta-heals or prots, that have certain restrictions that make them unspammable: We've seen it with the Scoundrel and the upper-hand mechanic, that BW is very capable of designing such skills.

Another very good Skill in this department would be (again referring to GW), this one:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Infuse_Health

It is a very effective and fast heal with a low cooldown, but because of it's drawback, it will require good support and cannot be spammed, therefore neither overpowering the Sage (with Sage and Sorc already having skills that need them to sac live, I think this one would fit into the lore of the Sage very well) by making this skill spammable, nor making it possible to heal up infinite amount of pressure in teams where you have more than 2-3 Healers, because it essentially only transfers Health, which shouldn't be OP in lower level PuG's.

What could be done:

- Give the other 2 Healing-classes a similar very effective Burst-heal (like the Scoundrel) that had certain drawbacks that make it unspammable

Amount of Stun or CC

This is a very very tricky subject, because it will be hard to balance this for both random-PuG's with a totally random amount of Healers, compared to a 8-players-premade, with roughly 2 healers. If you take a team with 2 Healers, the amount of Stuns and CC that is available, scales very poorly to the amount of Healers, because the very efficient stuns, if used on a Healer, will take out 50% of the Healing, if used on DD's, it will only take out maybe 20%.

I think the way to tackle this problem is through the Supporters: I think it's very nice that Comms/scoundrels/Sages can remove stuns (I actually still don't know exactly what conditions stuns really are - are they physical, or is a stun by a Soldier Tech and by a Counselor Might or Force? Anyways - With my Sage, I've been able to remove stuns very fast and efficient, but when I wasn't able to remove the Stun, I was never sure if it was because my skill couldn't remove it, or because other conditions were stacked on top of it). I think that it's essential, that it's possible for all the three healing classes to remove stuns and maybe even CC, even if they are just in a supporting role or as DD's (which means not having skilled the points in the skill that buffs the condition-remover).

If you time a spike well and coordinate your stuns, it's necessary for the healers to be able to heal - if 50% of the healing power is stunned/CC'd, this one healer simply has no time to remove stuns, that's why it's so important to give supporters a good stun-remover that is able to remove every kind of stun/CC, even if there are numerous conditions stacked on top of it.

This way of balancing it, stunning and CC'ing healers in PuG's wouldn't loose much of it's effect, but premades at least had a quick way of dealing with it.

What could be done:

- Give Support-Classes effective and dependable stun-removers

Amount of Interrupts and their Impact on both healers and DD's

One thing i've noticed right away when I started playing SWtOR was, that there is a huge amount of Interrupts in the game with a very low cooldown. I was very pleased with this fact, because Interrupts are some of the most versatile skills possible: You can take out DMG, you can take out Heal, you can take out key-skills in an opposing teams strategy etc.

So what's wrong with them then? As it is now, the heaviest DD's in the game actually cannot be interrupted, or have tools to make them Immune to them: Gunslingers cannot be interrupted as well, some Comm-specs have reactive-shield that makes them impossible to interrupt (there are some very good builds designed around the reactive-shield buff) and Melee-DD's cannot be interrupted at all. There are also a lot of DD's that rely mostly on instants etc. This leads to the fact, that Interrupts actually cannot be used to take out DMG and Builds that rely on interruptable spells to deal DMG, are almost unplayable against a good group of players (Commandos for example can be constantly interrupted/CC'd/stunned by a single player hanging on them, effectively reducing their DMG-output to almost nothing).

The big thing though is, that most healers can be heavily interrupted and there is very little they can do about it: a Sage-Healer with casttimes much higher than 1 Second, can be reduced to spamming the bubble (which is essentially bad, because it's your only tool against spiked DMG) or Reju, just by having one Melee DD or Tank on them.

This should be possible of course, but there should be a tension between taking out Heal and taking out DMG through interrupts, because Interrupts should be versatile and present an option to counter focused and spiked DMG.

This is why it's just impossible for one of the highest burst-DPS classes to be uninterruptable or for Instants to deal so much DMG. It's also kinda stupid to buff Master-Strike in DMG AND make it uninterruptable. Because as it is now, You cannot really Interrupt DD's but it's very easy to interrupt Healers, which both makes the life of a healers much harder and gives ppl the possibility to abuse certain specs with DD's.

What could be done:

- One way to balance this without completely revamping a large amount of skills would be to give Interrupts a very short lingering aftereffect like adding 2 seconds of Global cooldown to the player it was casted upon, IF you werent able to interrupt sth.

TL : DR

- Healers have a too easy time managing their mana - Make skills more expensive, but give healers options to reg mana with certain drawbacks (like Noble Sacrifice, but not as bad)

- Most Healers have no effective and unspammable Instant-Heals, which makes the burst-potential of DD's in under 1 Second way to strong compared to the amount of healing possible in that amount of time.

- Stunning/CC'ing Healers is more effective than stunning DD's - give supporters reliable stun-removers

- Interrupting Healing is much easier than taking out DMG through Interrupts - make Interrupts useful against Gunslingers, Melee-DD's and DD's that rely mostly on Instants.

I really hope some ppl took the time to read this and I'm eagerly awaiting your responses.

One small flaw. This is not Guild Wars. This game is made by BioWare, ergo (Latin) any comparison is moot.

....But my suggestions carry some weight nonetheless:

- GW was an MMO heavily invested in 8-man PvP, so is SwtOR

- GW and SWtOR "feel" very similar, I think most ppl that have played both games and several other MMO's would agree that the PvP in SWtOR is easily most comparable to GW, much more than to other MMO's and the way they handled PvP.

- Advanced Strategies and the way coordinated teams will play SWtOR is very similar to GW and many concepts, like spiking DMG, can be easily applied to SWtOR.

If you would've read my post, you would've noticed that it's neither a QQ-Thread, nor an appeal to buff Healers, but an effort to make Healers work in Swtor without being too weak or too strong. So unless you just want to play a game without any healers, I don't really see why you are so prompt to disagree with me.

*edit: Okay, thanks for giving my post a second thought - much appreciated.

My apologies. Post edited wrong, no offense meant!

Thanks, this actually means a lot to me.

Thanks, this actually means a lot to me.

Great post. The only thing I disagree with is allowing interrupts to effect melee dd's, the only way i could see this working is by allowing channeled melee attacks to be cast while moving since melee are so dependent on positioning. there are plenty of things to use interrupts on right now and if i wanted to stand still and do damage I would play a caster/ranged class. Maybe having 1 or 2 abilities per melee dd that could be interrupted wouldn't be a bad idea as long as they don't take it overboard.

Dunno, I feel like the healing paradigm is very different between GW and SWTOR. I played infuse for Vent Rage [vR] on the ladder in GW (top 50 for over two years).

Healing in GW1 is all about field vision, active preprotting, and managing energy.

In SWTOR maps are so compact, there's so many particle effects, and positioning is less important, so field vision becomes a lot less important. There are no active prots (beyond sorc bubble, but that has such a long duration that you don't need to use it carefully, you just spam it) and there are no real 3-2-1 spikes (which are the primary killing tool in any non-split team setup in GW). Energy management isn't really a problem either. In GW you ALWAYS have enough healing potential to deal with any amount of damage, it's all about managing your energy so that you're able to apply that potential when it's necessary.

Dunno, from my perspective the healing in SWTOR and GW are VASTLY different and that comes primarily from the way damage is focused and the lack of active prots (since pre-protting damage before it arrives is the MOST important function of a healer in GW). Just watch a WZ from a healer perspective, and then watch some of the videos of Awowa from [rawr] on infuse back in 2007. The two games just play completely differently.

Dunno, I feel like the healing paradigm is very different between GW and SWTOR. I played infuse for Vent Rage [vR] on the ladder in GW (top 50 for over two years).

 

Healing in GW1 is all about field vision, active preprotting, and managing energy.

 

In SWTOR maps are so compact, there's so many particle effects, and positioning is less important, so field vision becomes a lot less important. There are no active prots (beyond sorc bubble, but that has such a long duration that you don't need to use it carefully, you just spam it) and there are no real 3-2-1 spikes (which are the primary killing tool in any non-split team setup in GW). Energy management isn't really a problem either. In GW you ALWAYS have enough healing potential to deal with any amount of damage, it's all about managing your energy so that you're able to apply that potential when it's necessary.

 

Dunno, from my perspective the healing in SWTOR and GW are VASTLY different and that comes primarily from the way damage is focused and the lack of active prots (since pre-protting damage before it arrives is the MOST important function of a healer in GW). Just watch a WZ from a healer perspective, and then watch some of the videos of Awowa from [rawr] on infuse back in 2007. The two games just play completely differently.

I agree with what you've said about preprotting and awareness and that is also sth. that is lacking in SWtOR as a healer, but it has just been redirected to the tanks.

The main Set-Up for the backline in GW was 1 Infuser, that was mainly based around the spell with the same name and also used other spells to heal up targets.

The other Char was an active-Prot, which protted targets that suffered pressure, removed conditions and healed stuff up when you had a bit more time.

The role of the Prot has been redirected to tanks with their guard (that actually needs to be switched very actively) and taunts, that are basically negative Prots on opponents, so we do have decent protting in SWtOR, just not on the healers, which is fine by me.

There are also some light Prots (like Rejuvenate) you can preemtively put on a target if you can sniff out spikes, which is still possible by looking at what targets melees run toward or in which direction Ranged-DD's are facing when casting their spells. There are also some debuffs that can give away spikes, like Weaken Mind or burning targets or other debuffs that need to be on the target to be spiked.

One major thing lacking now is strong burstheal and i just don't think that the ones of the Smuggler or the ones with rather high CD on the comm are enough. I'm not saying that the Sage needs some sort of BurstHeal, if the other 2 healers would have enough, cuz not every healer needs to fit that need, but I don't think the burstheal atm. is enough.

Regarding spikes and spiked DMG: Just because ppl aren't doing it yet as often in SWtOR doesn't mean it's not by far the most effective way to dish out DMG. Spiking DMG is actually so much better in SWtOR than it was in GW, cuz Melee-DD's have good gap-closers, burstheal is lacking, a lot of interrupts don't work on DD's etc.

The only reason why we don't see many spikes around is because there are no 8-man premades, but even if you go in with 4 DD's and face a team of 2+ competent healers, spiking targets while healers are stunned or out of position is by far the best way to kill sth.

Btw. I've played for "Capita Cerberi" [CC], probably the most well-known mixed-spike for months in the Top50 and for "Bruderschaft der Verdammnis" [bdV], one of the most successful GER/EU Guilds in the Top-20 of the World-Ladder.

I agree with what you've said about preprotting and awareness and that is also sth. that is lacking in SWtOR as a healer, but it has just been redirected to the tanks.

 

The main Set-Up for the backline in GW was 1 Infuser, that was mainly based around the spell with the same name and also used other spells to heal up targets.

 

The other Char was an active-Prot, which protted targets that suffered pressure, removed conditions and healed stuff up when you had a bit more time.

 

The role of the Prot has been redirected to tanks with their guard (that actually needs to be switched very actively) and taunts, that are basically negative Prots on opponents, so we do have decent protting in SWtOR, just not on the healers, which is fine by me.

 

There are also some light Prots (like Rejuvenate) you can preemtively put on a target if you can sniff out spikes, which is still possible by looking at what targets melees run toward or in which direction Ranged-DD's are facing when casting their spells. There are also some debuffs that can give away spikes, like Weaken Mind or burning targets or other debuffs that need to be on the target to be spiked.

 

One major thing lacking now is strong burstheal and i just don't think that the ones of the Smuggler or the ones with rather high CD on the comm are enough. I'm not saying that the Sage needs some sort of BurstHeal, if the other 2 healers would have enough, cuz not every healer needs to fit that need, but I don't think the burstheal atm. is enough.

 

Regarding spikes and spiked DMG: Just because ppl aren't doing it yet as often in SWtOR doesn't mean it's not by far the most effective way to dish out DMG. Spiking DMG is actually so much better in SWtOR than it was in GW, cuz Melee-DD's have good gap-closers, burstheal is lacking, a lot of interrupts don't work on DD's etc.

 

The only reason why we don't see many spikes around is because there are no 8-man premades, but even if you go in with 4 DD's and face a team of 2+ competent healers, spiking targets while healers are stunned or out of position is by far the best way to kill sth.

 

Btw. I've played for "Capita Cerberi" [CC], probably the most well-known mixed-spike for months in the Top50 and for "Bruderschaft der Verdammnis" [bdV], one of the most successful GER/EU Guilds in the Top-20 of the World-Ladder.

Oh fun, I always liked playing [bdV] ^___^ That all sounds pretty accurate, and I do aggree that a 3-2-1 spike will become more viable over a simple focus once we get full 8-man premades.

Oh fun, I always liked playing [bdV] ^___^ That all sounds pretty accurate, and I do aggree that a 3-2-1 spike will become more viable over a simple focus once we get full 8-man premades.

I actually think that Mixed-Spikes or Gunslinger-spikes might get very prominent, once 8-man teams are available and once ppl have 1-2 twinks.

If you have 4 Gunslingers, you actually already have enough spike-power to spike down targets every 5-8 seconds and the DMG, which cannot be interrupted, would be like 25-30+k, just by the Gunslingers alone on a non-tank. If the target is being guarded, you just redirect the afterspike (trickshot, quickdraw, quickshot) to the tank guarding the Healer/Support/DD, basically doing more DMG overall, cuz the tank mitigates his DMG received by the spike through the Player he was guarding.

Then there's still place for 1-2 Tanks, the backline and maybe another Ranged-DD with good utilities, like the Sage.

I literally see no way how you could deal with that amount of spiked DMG with the tools the healers are given now.

You could also run a team with 6-8 comms, some of them pure DD and some Hybrid-Healers that can easily spike a target down (even if 2-3 get interrupted, the DMG of the others and the instant Demo-round/HIP that follows would be enough to spike sth down) and are able to heal themselves up. Yes, there would be a bit of a problem with Ammo, but 1 heal of every Comm would totally suffice to make this comp an unstoppable Zerg-force and again - you can easily make room for 2+ Chars that have strong utilities like a Sage or Shadow, to make the team more viable in Huttball or on Maps where you'd have to split up your team.

I actually think that Mixed-Spikes or Gunslinger-spikes might get very prominent, once 8-man teams are available and once ppl have 1-2 twinks.

 

If you have 4 Gunslingers, you actually already have enough spike-power to spike down targets every 5-8 seconds and the DMG, which cannot be interrupted, would be like 25-30+k, just by the Gunslingers alone on a non-tank. If the target is being guarded, you just redirect the afterspike (trickshot, quickdraw, quickshot) to the tank guarding the Healer/Support/DD, basically doing more DMG overall, cuz the tank mitigates his DMG received by the spike through the Player he was guarding.

 

Then there's still place for 1-2 Tanks, the backline and maybe another Ranged-DD with good utilities, like the Sage.

 

I literally see no way how you could deal with that amount of spiked DMG with the tools the healers are given now.

 

You could also run a team with 6-8 comms, some of them pure DD and some Hybrid-Healers that can easily spike a target down (even if 2-3 get interrupted, the DMG of the others and the instant Demo-round/HIP that follows would be enough to spike sth down) and are able to heal themselves up. Yes, there would be a bit of a problem with Ammo, but 1 heal of every Comm would totally suffice to make this comp an unstoppable Zerg-force and again - you can easily make room for 2+ Chars that have strong utilities like a Sage or Shadow, to make the team more viable in Huttball or on Maps where you'd have to split up your team.

Yeah I really like the idea of a team with 2 tanks (sins or powertechs preferably), 2 healers, and 4snipers. A 3-2-1 Ambush->followthrough spike would probably be able to compress upwards of 20k damage into a period that no healer could deal with (since there's no "osh*t" spike catch ability available like infuse/spirit bond). I like it ^__^

Yeah I really like the idea of a team with 2 tanks (sins or powertechs preferably), 2 healers, and 4snipers. A 3-2-1 Ambush->followthrough spike would probably be able to compress upwards of 20k damage into a period that no healer could deal with (since there's no "osh*t" spike catch ability available like infuse/spirit bond). I like it ^__^

Yeah, it's of course a neat Idea, but playing against those kinds of teams would basically negate any purpose of a healer, because you simply cannot heal up the spikes, even with perfect reactions. And if you had two scoundrel healers or two comms with bacta rdy, they would maybe be able to get 1 spell out and heal the target for 5-8k (together!), but then come the Quickdraws/Trickshots/Quickshots immediately after the Global Cooldown of the Gunslingers that dish out an additional instant amount of DMG. And this is only taking into account 4 of the 5-6 DD's you will encounter in most situations. There are also Shadows that can take out Healers for 4 Seconds every 15 seconds (every second spike) and with the other stun/cc and rupts available on the Shadow, one Tank can easily take out 50% of the heal the first 3-4 spikes. (Low Slash is IMHO the most imba skill in the game tbh, kinda reminds me of a blackout from GW on steroids).