The following information was gathered from playing Bodyguard Mercenary Healer in Hardcore Ranked Warzones on the Public Test Server.

 

Thought Process:

Bodyguard Mercenary/Commando healers are a hard cast, heavy armor class. It is the least mobile heavy armor class (see juggs/guardians). Of the 3 healer classes, our escape ability hydraulic overrides is a great improvement compared to live servers, but it is the slowest moving one and thus doesn't provide escape as quickly as it should or could. Looking at the sorc first, the sprint ability is also a root breaker and allows for a fast burst of movement speed, then they have group absorb bubbles and friendly pulls, which are very clutch saves. Next, the operative can roll now at anytime and multiple times at the cost of energy, but if timed properly, can get a free energy roll every few seconds making them almost impossible to stick on, and on top of that there is always the vanish which causes all dps to drop their targets and they have sleep dart. Finally, we take a look at the merc healers and they really cannot compare to the buffs the sorc and operative have received and I feel this healer class needs an additional group utility to bring it up to par.

 

Suggestions:

1. Improve the rate and methods at which charges of supercharged gas are gained.

--Examples:

out of combat heal channels to 30 stacks like carnage marauders.

healing scan now grants 3 stacks of supercharge

emergency scan now grants 3 stacks of supercharge

2. Emergency Scan -or- Rapid Scan -or- Jet boost knockback add small absorb shields on friendly targets. Tie this in with the knockback heal 2/2 talent, which I personally feel costs to many points currently (50% chance per point to activate?)

3. Possibly change rapid scan to a channeled heal with the same net heal over it's cast duration. The reason being that we are to easily chain interrupted in hardcore ranked matches that having all our abilities on hard cast times and all our escape abilities are very slow, we can barely get to a point where we can freecast unless we are slaughtering the enemy team. This especially applies to voidstar defense and won't really change much with teammate assistance and peels.

 

Conclusion:

Overall either tune down sorc + operative healers or tune up merc healers. The rewards don't meet the effort for playing the hardest pvp healer class. I challenge you to prove me otherwise.

 

Thanks for reading,

-DkSharktooth

 

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Please Post Your Reply on This PTS Thread so developers can read it: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5979222#post5979222

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Edited March 11, 2013 by DkSharktooth

So....

 

It looks like there are no additional changes planned for this AC. When a single guy is doing the entire class balancing for a giant game like swtor, i guess only so much can be expected. Reroll if you want to heal in a WZ.

Edited March 26, 2013 by dmanlong

I wanted to give Ranked feedback on my commando but my teammates told me that I could either come on my vanguard or not come at all.

I wanted to give Ranked feedback on my commando but my teammates told me that I could either come on my vanguard or not come at all.

 

Lulz. Ya it sucks, CM's/BG's get more utility but will still struggle to make a dent on rated teams. I wonder what the highest rated CM/BG is ranked at? Would be interesting to see.

If they fix the class (im talking about pvp now) would that make the pve unbalanced? Because i really dont understand why BW dont do anything about this. For so long time have players been posting on forums about the problems and yet nothing happends (compared to other classes)

It feels like they just ignore us and have given up or something. Do they have any employees who actually played the class?

It feels like they just ignore us and have given up or something. Do they have any employees who actually played the class?

It's my understanding that they only just got around to doing that fairly recently.

My serious question to BW is this:

 

Why do you even have casting in the game/ The trade off for waiting for the cast to land is in no way worth the time take in comparision to the results that damage dealers and other healers (scoundrels) can pull off with their instants.

 

I'd suggest that casting be simply removed, or you make casts actually hit hard. It is rediculous that an instant smash, HiB, or other such skills can hit harder, or that a scoundrel can heal way better with his instant casts than a CM.