I know I'm not the only one who doubts their usefulness in PvP. Can these get a buff or changed in some way?

Trauma Probe: It's a fun little device to mitigate minor damage at the beginning of a battle but other than that it's useless. Half way through a fight where my ammo reserve is halved I'm not about to use it because it uses up valuable ammo and simply doesn't deliver the punch a Bacta Grenade does making it a purely contextual skill. Literally it was designed for the lazy healer who doesn't want to mash HS during an minor encounter.

Possible improvements? Maybe increase the amount it heals per charge and then halve the charges. So a 1/5 charges heals 2x as much as a normal 1/10 charge, either that of lower the ammo cost to 1. It really just needs more punch to it, right now it's just simply not useful or worth it to use in PvP.

Adrenaline Rush: I don't think I need to say much here. It's a throw away skill, it doesn't help me substantially in the least bit. It's not going to save me in a pinch. Yes it does help some, but its not going to help me in clutch situations where I need that health right there and then.

Possible improvements? I'm not sure, I would like a new skill entirely. Maybe replace it with a helpful escape like all the other classes have. It would be nice if they changed the effect entirely. It might even be better off by making us immune to interrupts for at least a few seconds to pop off our channeled abilities, snipers/gunslingers an ability like that. Why not us? There is nothing more I hate than being interrupted, stunned, and tossed around like a rag-doll when I'm trying to channel my heals, and don't tell me that combat shield is the solution because it's not. I only get that every 2 minutes.

Maybe these improvements aren't really necessary but these skills as they are are just boring and not worth the hotkey space to me. They are weak, especially adrenaline rush. Trauma Probe is okay but I do think it could be improved. Maybe it's just a matter of preference, I'm sure many of you are happy with your little periodic heals, but to me they just don't deliver.

As it for trauma probe. Its got a buff actually recently with that skill above it in skill tree. You can actually trigger its effect with hammer shot on enemy which is nice when interupting ppl.

In wh gear it can crit up to 900 and it does that every 3 secs so i feel its like having a HoT on you.

What I really dont like is the price. If 0 ammo was too easy, 2 ammo is actually quite a lot in heat of battle so what about meaking it at least 1?

Adrenaline rush should have a spec that would give you back like 3 ammo cells per duration or something like that.

Adrenaline rush should have a spec that would give you back like 3 ammo cells per duration or something like that.

I do not know if this would be overpowered, but what if Trauma probe also gave, say, half of the amount of armor that AMP does (add a 5% armor buff to the heal)?

i would like adrenaline rush to actually live up to its name.

increased speed, power buff, etc. for the duration

As it for trauma probe. Its got a buff actually recently with that skill above it in skill tree. You can actually trigger its effect with hammer shot on enemy which is nice when interupting ppl.

Yeah I used to spec that and I love it for PvE, if you are in a FP with a vanguard tank it rules and like you said, when it's on you it actually does some decent heals (and I mean that). It's just not so useful when putting it on any other player and even more so when you're in the context of PvP where everything is not certain and you're not about to blow 2 ammo on something so weak.

I think like someone else said and I mentioned, making the ammo just 1 would definitely make me want to use it more and maybe adding a buff with it would be great too. Like 3-5% armor or something.

The main problem with AR as a defensive CD is that is simply isn't large enough to deal with the amount of burst damage many DPS classes are dealing in PvP now. It lasts for what, 15s? In most cases, you are either dead in 5-10s, or the threat has been distracted or killed, and you don't need it anymore.

So I'd like to see it's effective time shortened, and it's healing frontloaded significantly.

Trauma probe should heal when you deploy it, like 500 to 800 (does not consume charge), I mean it costs 2 ammo and it's not that great of a skill. You can only deploy it to 1 person so I'd say make the healing abit more powerful than it is and it should consume all 10 charges (or whatever is left of it) imidiatley if the targets health is dropped below or at 30%.

Adrenaline Rush should give at least 15% dmg reduction when it's active.

i wonder if frontline medic could be expanded: if trauma probe is used on another player, using hammershot as a heal on that player would consume a TP charge and heal the target, on the same 3s lockout timer

Trauma probe should heal when you deploy it, like 500 to 800 (does not consume charge), I mean it costs 2 ammo and it's not that great of a skill. You can only deploy it to 1 person so I'd say make the healing abit more powerful than it is and it should consume all 10 charges (or whatever is left of it) imidiatley if the targets health is dropped below or at 30%.

 

Adrenaline Rush should give at least 15% dmg reduction when it's active.

Trauma Probe is already fantastic when you use it right. It's our most efficient heal by a WIDE margin. Buffing it would be…somewhat OP.

It's efficient for the sole reason that it heals for that amount over the course of 30 seconds, which is what makes it less than stellar. Honestly, you can go without the Probe and it will do almost nothing to your actual healing throughput. The "buff" to it with Frontline Medic is almost entirely laughable since it's only really useful while leveling, when you wouldn't have your Trauma Probe on a tank and would be shooting someone with Hammer Shot rather than healing someone with it while you're in a situation where you're taking damage. It's ludicrously poorly thought out.

I would be more willing to use Trauma Probe if it were off the GCD. So it can at least be applied with some degree of rapidity. Multiple targets for it would be a bit overpowered, though maybe talenting it so that you can apply it to yourself and someone else would be justifiable. Compression of the stacks so that they either have a lower ICD or fewer stacks that heal for more would also be good. Barring that, I'd be more than willing to have it provide some kind of survivability buff to the target to make constant application worthwhile (something like the heal being able to proc Armor Screen would be enough). Trauma Probe has so much potential that's largely wasted by an overly high cost for such a slow HoT (since that's what it functionally is), especially when it doesn't even have anything particularly special going for it.

It's efficient for the sole reason that it heals for that amount over the course of 30 seconds, which is what makes it less than stellar. Honestly, you can go without the Probe and it will do almost nothing to your actual healing throughput. The "buff" to it with Frontline Medic is almost entirely laughable since it's only really useful while leveling, when you wouldn't have your Trauma Probe on a tank and would be shooting someone with Hammer Shot rather than healing someone with it while you're in a situation where you're taking damage. It's ludicrously poorly thought out.

The expected efficiency of Trauma Probe is defined by the following:

(1 - Crit * Surge)(10)(((0.022 + 0.026) / 2) * 7085 + 0.481 * BonusHealing) / 2

Compare that to the expected efficiency of Medical Probe *on proc* (which is obviously an fairly efficient cornerstone heal):

(1 - Crit * Surge)(((0.116 + 0.156) / 2) * 7085 + 2.72 * BonusHealing)(1.06) / 2

A bit of algebra…

850.2 + 2.405 * BonusHealing

vs

510.6868 + 1.4416 * BonusHealing

Even without carrying this any farther, it's pretty easy to see that Trauma Probe is nearly twice as efficient as Medical Probe *on proc* and scales quite a bit better with gear. Its only downside is it takes forever to complete its ticking. It's actually a significantly *better* heal than Slow-release Medpack (when scaling Scoundrel energy back to Commando ammo):

(1 - Crit * Surge)(6)(0.0168 * 7085 + 0.336 * BonusHealing) / 1.8

396.756 + 1.12 * BonusHealing

Trauma Probe is simply saddled with several limitations that make it *difficult* to use effectively. The immediate ammo cost is high, and so it is difficult to simply keep it rolling on the tank in the same way that a Scoundrel might keep Slow-release going. It also does not stack in the same way that Slow-release does, thus there is an argument to be made that a fair energy comparison would look more like this (for Slow-release):

793.512 + 2.24 * BonusHealing

Still comes out in favor of Trauma Probe, but it's a much closer race now. Once you consider the fact that it is nearly impossible for Trauma Probe to overheal, and you start seeing it shine.

The single-target limitation is its biggest problem as a HoT, since you really can only keep it on the tank (in PvE) or yourself (in PvP). Allowing it to be stacked on multiple people would be amazing, but as you say, overpowered.

Oh, it's worth noting that the ICD on Trauma Probe is currently bugged (and, afaik, has been since day 1) in that hits from independent sources can exhaust the charges on an independent CD. This can make it function as more of a "burst HoT" in trash pull situations, while remaining a long HoT for bosses.

In any case, I stand by my assertion that Trauma Probe is a fantastic and highly efficient heal. It is, however, immensely difficult to use effectively. I tend to think of it primarily as a way of investing ammo *now* in easing my ammo management over the next 30 seconds. Given the way that trooper energy regenerates, that is nearly always going to be a tactically advantageous decision.

it's pretty easy to see that Trauma Probe is nearly twice as efficient as Medical Probe

I was never saying that it wasn't amazingly cost efficient. The *issue* is that it's efficient because it's a delayed effect over the course of 30 seconds which ends up diluting the benefit of said efficiency by making it a generally low value contributor.

When dealing with any over time effect, the duration matters just as much as the effect itself. If there was a HoT that healed for 50k for only 2 ammo, it would be an *amazing* heal from an efficiency standpoint but it's going to be worthless if it does said healing over the course of an hour (which is a mere 13.89 hp/sec). Even Slow Release Medpac only lasts 18 seconds, and it's the longest HoT in the game that I know of.

Resource efficiency is *not* the only metric by which a heal is measured. There is also a balancing factor insofar as how effective the heal is from a time standpoint. It's one of the reasons why HoTs in every game on the planet are more efficient than instant heals. Trauma Probe isn't efficient from a time standpoint. In fact, if you average it out for the time invested (cast time + elapsed time), it's nowhere near as good as you would say it is.

It's explicitly because of this factor that Trauma Probe needs some kind of buff-style attention. Take it off the GCD so it's easier to reapply, provide some kind of buff for having it active, compress the healing to a more effective rate; any of those are perfectly functional options to make Trauma Probe better and it's not as if Commandos would somehow be overpowered if it happened. They're already in a generally poor position compared to Scoundrels and Sages.

I was never saying that it wasn't amazingly cost efficient. The *issue* is that it's efficient because it's a delayed effect over the course of 30 seconds which ends up diluting the benefit of said efficiency by making it a generally low value contributor.

The HPS contribution is obviously small, but not as miniscule as you make it out to be. On my commando (who is campaign/dread guard geared), the expected value of each tick of my TP is 753.56. (note: this comes with the caveat that the healing math appears to be inaccurate since 1.4. Tooltip values appear to be about 3-5% *higher* than predicted) Thus, the overall HPS contribution (assuming TP is refreshed exactly as it falls off):

(753.56 * 10) / 30 = 251.1867 HPS

Note that I'm not counting the cast time since the effect is applied at the *start* of the GCD and can tick immediately upon application.

That's not at all shabby. 30 seconds is *well* within the span of an average boss fight. In fact, you should be able to get at least 13 TP refreshes on average per fight. It's certainly a much longer time period than Slow-release, but hardly comparable to the facetious 1 hour HoT you propose.

Efficiency isn't the only metric by which a heal is measured, but it is a very important one. Healing is all about periodic burst and sustainable energy management. TP is pointless in the burst department (which is why it is the first thing to get cut out of my rotation when people are dying), but it is extremely valuable in the area of energy management. Without it, your sustainable healing drops by a fairly significant margin.

It's explicitly because of this factor that Trauma Probe needs some kind of buff-style attention. Take it off the GCD so it's easier to reapply, provide some kind of buff for having it active, compress the healing to a more effective rate; any of those are perfectly functional options to make Trauma Probe better and it's not as if Commandos would somehow be overpowered if it happened. They're already in a generally poor position compared to Scoundrels and Sages.

I'm not sure I would agree with that assessment of the three healers. In the area of burst single-target healing, commandos absolutely destroy the other two healers. Any single-target healing, for that matter. Our weakness (and arguably, an area which does require attention) is in our energy management. It is far, far easier to manage Scoundrel or Sage energy while maintaining high output. This becomes particularly acute when a commando is forced to multi-target heal, which is an immensely inefficient task for the class.

So, I do think that commando healers need some attention, at the very least in the quality of life department, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they are underpowered.

I'm not sure I would agree with that assessment of the three healers. In the area of burst single-target healing, commandos absolutely destroy the other two healers.

I regularly manage much better ST burst healing on my Scoundrel than I do on my Commando, especially when a target is getting hit hard enough to get slammed below 30% hp. Pretty much the only thing it lacks compared to the Commando is the armor buff and that comes with the Sage healers that come with 90% of raid groups.

So, I do think that commando healers need some attention, at the very least in the quality of life department, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they are underpowered.

Commando heals are underpowered in the same sense that Guardian tanks are underpowered: they're *capable*, but they're not really equal with the other classes within the same role. It's not as if Commandos are somehow incapable of doing the same content in the same gear as other healers; they underperform just enough to be noticeable but not enough to make them worthless at their role.

I regularly manage much better ST burst healing on my Scoundrel than I do on my Commando, especially when a target is getting hit hard enough to get slammed below 30% hp. Pretty much the only thing it lacks compared to the Commando is the armor buff and that comes with the Sage healers that come with 90% of raid groups.

Without popping my relic (*and* without dropping below high ammo regen):

SCC -> KB -> AMP -> MP -> BI -> AMP -> MP

That's:

2071.20 (KB) + 3442.93 (AMP) + 892.22 (Prev Med x2) + 4827.20 (MP) + 3817.29 (BI) + 3442.93 (AMP) + 446.11 (Prev Med x1) + 4827.20 (MP) = 23767.08

Total cast time: 9.4 seconds (with current alacrity)

Total HPS: 2528.41

That's a fairly high burst, especially given that it is single-target and sustainable. I'm not sure how a Scoundrel would be able to match that without destroying their energy regen.

Commando heals are underpowered in the same sense that Guardian tanks are underpowered: they're *capable*, but they're not really equal with the other classes within the same role. It's not as if Commandos are somehow incapable of doing the same content in the same gear as other healers; they underperform just enough to be noticeable but not enough to make them worthless at their role.

That's a fair point, and a good analogy I think. The problem with commando healers is not that the skill floor is high, it's that the skill ceiling is not commensurately high. It takes a lot of work to play a commando healer at a high level, and when you do, your results would be only comparable to a (much easier-to-play) Sage or Scoundrel. At least this is true in PvE. Commandos are the lords of PvP, esp paired with a Scoundrel, but that's for tactical reasons more than anything else.

Maybe Bioware could fix both our energy issues and the less-than-attractive Trauma Probe ability by simply buffing Kolto Residue:

Healing a target affected by Kolto Residue has a 30% chance to restore 1 ammo. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.

Or, it could be made less powerful (but more attractive) by changing the ICD to 3 seconds and upping the probability to 50%. Either way, this would strongly incentive a) keeping TP on the tank, b) keeping KR on the tank. The awesome thing about it is it would give us an active ammo regen mechanic, which would raise the skill ceiling tremendously and significantly reward players who manage the class at an optimum level.

2071.20 (KB) + 3442.93 (AMP) + 892.22 (Prev Med x2) + 4827.20 (MP) + 3817.29 (BI) + 3442.93 (AMP) + 446.11 (Prev Med x1) + 4827.20 (MP) = 23767.08

 

Total cast time: 9.4 seconds (with current alacrity)

Total HPS: 2528.41

 

That's a fairly high burst, especially given that it is single-target and sustainable. I'm not sure how a Scoundrel would be able to match that without destroying their energy regen.

My Scoundrel heals is only in full, un-auged, unoptimized Rakata (except for MH and OH that are Columi) so my numbers are substantially lower than they "should" be (I've got way more alac that I actually need), but I can match that pretty well.

Assuming 2 stacks of Slow Release are rolling (which they should be constantly for 796 per tick, 34.32% crit, 69.32% surge), alternating Underworld Medicine (1.7 sec cast, 25 energy, 3186 healed, generates UH stack, 34.32% crit, 99.32% surge) and Emergency Medpac (instant cast, consumes UH stack, 1900 healed, 34.32% crit, 69.32% surge), in a similar time frame (3 iterations), can generate 22828 healing (3 * 796 * (1 + .3432 * .6932) + 3 * 3186 * (1 + .3432 * .9932) + 3 * 1900 * (1 + .3432 * .6932)). Since the only thing that costs anything is UM, that's 25 Energy every 3.2 seconds. With Pugnacity active, you're regenerating 18 Energy every 3 seconds, for a net loss of 17.4 Energy for the entire 9 second period, well within the maximum resource regeneration area (takes 40 Energy to drop down to moderate). You could potentially swap out an Emergency Medpac for a Slow Release reapplication (costs 15 energy rather than 25), but you wouldn't really miss a beat because Slow Release generates UH stacks anyways and that's only required once every 18 seconds (BI is once every 18 secs as well, so I feel justified in saying that the HoT is up as long as you've got BI sitting in wait).

In addition, this can be maintained without the need of any non-permanent buff (Pugnacity should be up constantly), buildup, or long CDs (burst healing without SCC is a biyatch and BI is still on that 21 sec CD), and it's not even the absolute limit on ability based burst healing for a Scoundrel. You can crank the healing up by a lot by sacrificing some Energy via replacing Emergency Medpac with Kolto Pack (1.25 sec cast, 20 energy and UH consumed, 2771 healed, 49.32% crit chance, 99.32% surge): you get better throughput at the cost of a lot of energy, which can be fixed by just using Cool Head when you get low (66 Energy is enough to bring you from empty to fast regen).

Commandos are the lords of PvP, esp paired with a Scoundrel, but that's for tactical reasons more than anything else.

I really have to question that: Commandos have got negligible mobile burst healing (which is a *major* issue in PvP) because AMP and MP are both hard casts; all they get is Hammer Shot, BI (18 sec CD), and Kolto Bomb (6 sec CD, more healing than Hammer Shot but a good deal less than your ST heals). Scoundrels get Kolto Bomb (15 sec CD, substantially more than Kolto Bomb but over 6 seconds), Slow Release Medpac, and Emergency Medpac (which is refreshes the UH stack on its own if the target is below 30% hp). The big one is Emergency Medpac because you can just spam the bejeesus out of that thing. The HoTs can be thrown around to keep your group alive and, when someone is low, you can spam a nice hard heal while on the move without costing anything. Pretty much every PvP group I see refuses to run with anything except for Scoundrel heals for this exact reason. Commandos, thanks to the green beam and a general inability to move or have decent, effective CDs, are generally considered to be free kills, even if they're guarded.

Healing a target affected by Kolto Residue has a 30% chance to restore 1 ammo. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.

I really don't think that ammo maintenance is the solution to improving Commando healing, especially when you're predicating it upon Kolto Bomb spam. And, anyways, that suggestion is completely borked: baseline regen, at max, is 1 ammo every 1.67 seconds. You're suggesting an almost 50% improvement to that (remember, HoTs, Trauma Probe, and hardcasts would all be factored in, so the actual number of heals/GCD is greater than 1). Doing so would largely render any ammo maintenance issues nonexistent except under the most dire circumstances. At best, if ammo maintenance really were a problem, I would remove the CD from SCC.

Personally, I think that the solution is to give Commandos more of what they already have that is mostly unique to them: buffs attached to their heals. Buff Charge Armor a bit (7% rather than 5%), bring Kolto Residue back up to where it used to be (5% rather than 3%), and give Trauma Probe some kind of secondary benefit while charges are present (a 5% armor buff, 1-2% defense buff, or 5% healing received buff; something of the kind to make it useful to maintain constantly). Scoundrels already have the HoTs and mobility, Sages have perfectly functional ST heal, the monopoly on AoE healing, and shields; Commandos need something that actually sets them apart rather than trying to do something that the other classes already do.

In addition, this can be maintained without the need of any non-permanent buff (Pugnacity should be up constantly), buildup, or long CDs (burst healing without SCC is a biyatch and BI is still on that 21 sec CD), and it's not even the absolute limit on ability based burst healing for a Scoundrel. You can crank the healing up by a lot by sacrificing some Energy via replacing Emergency Medpac with Kolto Pack (1.25 sec cast, 20 energy and UH consumed, 2771 healed, 49.32% crit chance, 99.32% surge): you get better throughput at the cost of a lot of energy, which can be fixed by just using Cool Head when you get low (66 Energy is enough to bring you from empty to fast regen).

This is true. I still maintain that Scoundrel sustainable ST burst is lower than Commando, but they're able to do it more often (it takes a while to get SCC back). It is worth noting though that BI is only on an 18 second cooldown with the set bonus.

I really have to question that: Commandos have got negligible mobile burst healing (which is a *major* issue in PvP) because AMP and MP are both hard casts; all they get is Hammer Shot, BI (18 sec CD), and Kolto Bomb (6 sec CD, more healing than Hammer Shot but a good deal less than your ST heals). Scoundrels get Kolto Bomb (15 sec CD, substantially more than Kolto Bomb but over 6 seconds), Slow Release Medpac, and Emergency Medpac (which is refreshes the UH stack on its own if the target is below 30% hp). The big one is Emergency Medpac because you can just spam the bejeesus out of that thing. The HoTs can be thrown around to keep your group alive and, when someone is low, you can spam a nice hard heal while on the move without costing anything. Pretty much every PvP group I see refuses to run with anything except for Scoundrel heals for this exact reason. Commandos, thanks to the green beam and a general inability to move or have decent, effective CDs, are generally considered to be free kills, even if they're guarded.

You need to play with better commandos. :-) It is true that commandos have no mobility whatsoever, so you can't really play tactically the same as a scoundrel. However, the immensely strong single-target heals are the closest thing this game has to a counter against focus targeting. You just have to be super-careful with positioning.

For example, if I'm in a huttball match, the *only* thing I ever do is control mid. I hang out with our gunslinger and whoever else happens to be in that area and we just keep control. As soon as someone gets the ball from mid, my job is to get them *out* of mid and into the range of the scoundrel, who should be past the first fire. Since mid is where most of the opposing DPS cooldowns, energy and positioning are at their maximum potential, it tends to be a very intense burst of ST healing (perfect for a commando).

Voidstar, Civil War and Novare are all pretty similar: I just hang out on a node and keep people alive, LoSing around pillars and other debris. I never use the green laser of doom unless I'm *deliberately* attempting to draw attention to myself (e.g. pulling smash-happy marauders away from the node). If the opposing team lets me free-cast, life will basically suck for them. If they focus me, they're going to have to focus pretty hard to get me to even stop healing the rest of the team. Heavy armor makes a fairly significant difference, and the strong single-target commando heals work just as well on myself as on anyone else. If my cooldowns are up, I can take as many as three DPS at once (as long as they don't out-gear me), and hold their attention for a good 12-15 seconds. If my cooldowns are down, it can be harder. I had a Civil War once where I spent the entire match kiting around (mostly just healing through) a marauder who had healer tunnel vision, but for the most part, if two+ DPS focus fire me without my cooldowns, I'll go down.

If I'm in a guard with a good tank, it's game over. I've had as many as four DPS whaling on me, trying to just out-damage my heals to no avail. That is the strength of the commando healer. I'm not even a particularly strong or geared healer from a PvP standpoint. There are several on my server who are far, far better and you just cannot kill them. You just can't play a commando healer even remotely like you would play a scoundrel. They fill very different tactical roles.

I really don't think that ammo maintenance is the solution to improving Commando healing, especially when you're predicating it upon Kolto Bomb spam. And, anyways, that suggestion is completely borked: baseline regen, at max, is 1 ammo every 1.67 seconds. You're suggesting an almost 50% improvement to that (remember, HoTs, Trauma Probe, and hardcasts would all be factored in, so the actual number of heals/GCD is greater than 1). Doing so would largely render any ammo maintenance issues nonexistent except under the most dire circumstances. At best, if ammo maintenance really were a problem, I would remove the CD from SCC.

No, I'm suggesting an 18% improvement to it if we take the 30% suggestion, or a 10% improvement if we take the 50% suggestion. According to combat logs, I average about 0.88 heals per second (that was on HM Dread Guard, but I had a very strong co-healer, so we'll round up to 1). That's right in the same league as Pugnacity. Ammo management would still be challenging, but not quite as razer-edge as it is right now. This change wouldn't affect PvP much at all (since ammo management isn't the limiting factor in that realm), but it would make it much more feasible to get excellent results out of a commando in PvE.

Personally, I think that the solution is to give Commandos more of what they already have that is mostly unique to them: buffs attached to their heals. Buff Charge Armor a bit (7% rather than 5%), bring Kolto Residue back up to where it used to be (5% rather than 3%), and give Trauma Probe some kind of secondary benefit while charges are present (a 5% armor buff, 1-2% defense buff, or 5% healing received buff; something of the kind to make it useful to maintain constantly). Scoundrels already have the HoTs and mobility, Sages have perfectly functional ST heal, the monopoly on AoE healing, and shields; Commandos need something that actually sets them apart rather than trying to do something that the other classes already do.

I think the danger of this sort of thing is it turns commandos into "support healers." They would then exist primarily to make healing easier for their co-healer and would lack the independent healing strength that the other two healers have. Maybe that's balanced for operations (though without stacking buffs, two commando healers would probably be gimped relative to any other combo), but it seems like it would have problems in smaller-group content.

This is true. I still maintain that Scoundrel sustainable ST burst is lower than Commando, but they're able to do it more often (it takes a while to get SCC back). It is worth noting though that BI is only on an 18 second cooldown with the set bonus.

Keep in mind that the numbers that I threw at you were for an unauged Columi MH/OH Rak otherwise geared Scoundrel that was nowhere *near* optimized compared to your Camp/Dread, presumably also auged and optimized to some extent, and, even then, can manage 2377 hp/sec using a similarly sustainable, non-CD reliant rotation when you're pulling 2528. If I got my Scoundrel geared up as well as your Commando, I'm pretty sure I would be blowing you out of the water *and that rotation is actually more sustainable than yours* because, as soon as that rotation is up, your throughput drops significantly (5% lower healing, and AMP gets its CD back) until you can generate enough stacks to drop SCC again. At best, you can expect to maintain a 33% uptime on SCC and only while SCC is active are you actually pulling HPS that compete with what a Scoundrel can manage easily on a constant basis.

You were burning 10 ammo over the course of that 9.4 sec rotation. In 10 seconds, you're going to regen 6 ammo. That's one-third of your ammo and enough to force you into using Hammer Shot a couple times to remain solvent afterwards (possibly with a Kolto Bomb dropped immediately after). Unless you're burning Reserve Powercell or Recharge Cells, you're not going to be able to keep up heals like that for longer than the 9 seconds you listed and that's pretty much the absolute cap on your ability to throughput heal as well. On a Scoundrel, you can keep up that rotation for 20 seconds before you start dropping into the realm of "needs to worry about Energy maintenance", and it's not the absolute cap on your ability to throughput because, as I mentioned before, if you're willing to tank your Energy management (likely planning on rebounding with the use of Cool Head), you can replace Emergency Medpac with Kolto Pack and get substantially larger, substantially faster heals.

This is *purely* a numbers game that Commandos just don't have the numbers to compete with in. Scoundrels are better at ST healing, both from a sustainability and throughput standpoint, than Commandos are, can manage better AoE healing on more people (not just with Kolto Cloud either; Slow Release is amazing when you need to heal lots of people; Kolto Cloud is just icing on the cake; a vast majority of expectable AoE damage can be handled by prebuffing people with the HoT), and are more effective when mobile. The *only* thing that Commandos bring that Scoundrels don't is the buffs, and those have been nerfed to such a point that they're almost entirely negligible.

You need to play with better commandos.

You're either playing against people that don't know how to interrupt (unless you only ever heal with Reactive Shield up, which is kind of a waste of a healer) or have never seen a proper Scoundrel healer: Dodge, Defense Screen, Flash Grenade, and Dirty Kick, combined with Disappearing Act make a Scoundrel *incredibly* hard to kill. The only advantage is in having ~35% K/E DR compared to ~29% K/E DR, which means that, against K/E attacks that hit (keeping in mind Dodge, Defense Screen, loads of CCs, and substantially higher mobility), you're taking all of 9% less damage, though you've got substantially worse CDs (Reactive Shield is *way* worse than the combination of Dodge and Defense Screen). All of this combined with the fact that Scoundrels are capable of both superior mobile healing and, at worse, similar static throughput healing, is why I doubt your claim that Commandos are somehow the kings of PvP healing.

I'm not doubting that you can manage excellent performance with a Commando. I'm just doubting that someone equally skilled could not manage *better* performance with a Scoundrel because of the similar performance in the areas that Commandos are good at and superior performance in the other areas that make a substantial difference.

Not to cast aspersions, but I have to wonder whether you're simply not being prioritized as a danger because Commandos aren't really considered to be priority targets in my experience. Most of the people I know that are big into PvP just consider Commandos, especially Commando healers, either free kills or beneath notice.

I think the danger of this sort of thing is it turns commandos into "support healers." They would then exist primarily to make healing easier for their co-healer and would lack the independent healing strength that the other two healers have. Maybe that's balanced for operations (though without stacking buffs, two commando healers would probably be gimped relative to any other combo), but it seems like it would have problems in smaller-group content.

Being a support healer is better than being a second class healer, as I see it. At least as a support healer, you have a purpose within your raid other than filling a healer spot that couldn't be filled by a Scoundrel or Sage. It also creates healer functionality that I've always enjoyed playing that so often gets thrown to the wayside in games that follow the Holy Trinity: the support healer rather than the green number machine. In WoW, I played a Resto Shaman because I liked the fact that I brought buffs with my totems rather than just throwing out massive green numbers (even though I threw out massive green numbers just the same). I wouldn't mind seeing something like that in TOR where a healing class, rather than just being used for the green numbers it throws up, also brings secondary benefits to offset a nominally lower ability to put up green numbers. A healer shouldn't just be defined by their green numbers; other extant buffs provided should be just as important.

Imagine if Commandos were still in the same position they are now (tied for best ST healing, worst mobility, worst AoE healing) but, instead of getting better ammo management or outright healing ability, you provided buffs that actually decreased the need for raw healing by providing more than just a token amount of additional healing received and conditional bonus DR when a limited uptime CD is active:

1) Have Trauma Probe provide some degree of flat DR so that the presence of a Commando healer means that the tank simply takes less damage than s/he would otherwise.

2) Remove the target cap on Kolto Bomb but cap the total possible pre-crit healing so that you can actually provide the entire raid with a bonus to healing received when AoE healing is required (and remove the stack limitation on it so that multiple Commandos don't interfere with one another).

Those 2 bonuses would, when combined with removing Trauma Probe from the GCD, would be enough to cement most Commandos a permanent place in many raid rosters: their outright HPS might not be sufficient to guarantee a spot, but their non-healing contributions would more than make up for that. Overall contribution matters more than pure green numbers, and I see that as being something of the rallying cry of the Commando healer.

Pretty much every PvP group I see refuses to run with anything except for Scoundrel heals for this exact reason. Commandos, thanks to the green beam and a general inability to move or have decent, effective CDs, are generally considered to be free kills, even if they're guarded.

I'll agree with you on the first sentence, not so much on the second. IME, scoundrels are THE preferred PvP healers, with their mobility, stealth, and HoTs that don't care if your target breaks your LoS. But my commando medic can be pretty damn hard to kill if I have guard. And if the enemy fills my resolve bar, I pop reactive shield and become pretty much unstoppable for the duration. But with no escapes, even a single mara/jugg can ruin our day very quickly without reactive shield up.

Sage healers are welcome for our stun bubbles, but once that goes away, we'll be back to mostly wasting a slot.

Keep in mind that the numbers that I threw at you were for an unauged Columi MH/OH Rak otherwise geared Scoundrel that was nowhere *near* optimized compared to your Camp/Dread, presumably also auged and optimized to some extent, and, even then, can manage 2377 hp/sec using a similarly sustainable, non-CD reliant rotation when you're pulling 2528. If I got my Scoundrel geared up as well as your Commando, I'm pretty sure I would be blowing you out of the water *and that rotation is actually more sustainable than yours* because, as soon as that rotation is up, your throughput drops significantly (5% lower healing, and AMP gets its CD back) until you can generate enough stacks to drop SCC again. At best, you can expect to maintain a 33% uptime on SCC and only while SCC is active are you actually pulling HPS that compete with what a Scoundrel can manage easily on a constant basis.

All true. Commandos have super-situational rotation due to the way their cooldowns interact, and while they can absolutely ST burst like a madman, they can't do it all the time.

This is *purely* a numbers game that Commandos just don't have the numbers to compete with in. Scoundrels are better at ST healing, both from a sustainability and throughput standpoint, than Commandos are, can manage better AoE healing on more people (not just with Kolto Cloud either; Slow Release is amazing when you need to heal lots of people; Kolto Cloud is just icing on the cake; a vast majority of expectable AoE damage can be handled by prebuffing people with the HoT), and are more effective when mobile. The *only* thing that Commandos bring that Scoundrels don't is the buffs, and those have been nerfed to such a point that they're almost entirely negligible.

I think we would need to break out the game coefficients and algebra to know for sure. My healer's gear is pretty tightly optimized (with the exception of deliberately under-statted crit) and only 2 enhancements shy of full 61/63 (most mods at 63), so head-to-head comparisons between our healers are completely overshadowed by gear disparity. That's work for a lazy evening though, so I'll leave it be for now.

You're either playing against people that don't know how to interrupt (unless you only ever heal with Reactive Shield up, which is kind of a waste of a healer) or have never seen a proper Scoundrel healer: Dodge, Defense Screen, Flash Grenade, and Dirty Kick, combined with Disappearing Act make a Scoundrel *incredibly* hard to kill. The only advantage is in having ~35% K/E DR compared to ~29% K/E DR, which means that, against K/E attacks that hit (keeping in mind Dodge, Defense Screen, loads of CCs, and substantially higher mobility), you're taking all of 9% less damage, though you've got substantially worse CDs (Reactive Shield is *way* worse than the combination of Dodge and Defense Screen). All of this combined with the fact that Scoundrels are capable of both superior mobile healing and, at worse, similar static throughput healing, is why I doubt your claim that Commandos are somehow the kings of PvP healing.

A coordinated pair of interrupting and stunning scoundrels can pretty much put me in the dirt. The same goes for a pair of sentinels. Though, they have to work a lot harder at it when my cooldowns are up.

I actually used to regularly run with one of the serious PvP teams on our server. We would run scoundrel-commando healers in ranked. Both of the scoundrels that I've run with in competitive PvP have been insanely good (700k+ matches in unranked while maintaining a high degree of team support). I honestly don't think I could have out-healed them if we sat and had a heal-off (not even close), but I regularly healed for more than they did in ranked matches since they spent more time on objectives and support healing than I could. Death ratios were usually in the same ballpark.

I'm not doubting that you can manage excellent performance with a Commando. I'm just doubting that someone equally skilled could not manage *better* performance with a Scoundrel because of the similar performance in the areas that Commandos are good at and superior performance in the other areas that make a substantial difference.

 

Not to cast aspersions, but I have to wonder whether you're simply not being prioritized as a danger because Commandos aren't really considered to be priority targets in my experience. Most of the people I know that are big into PvP just consider Commandos, especially Commando healers, either free kills or beneath notice.

That's entirely possible. I don't seriously PvP very often anymore, so my name isn't well known at all. Commando healers are usually pretty terribly played, so teams could very well have been classifying me as a non-issue. There *are* commando/merc healers on the server though who draw serious attention from ranked teams, at least the teams that I ran with. There are at least two who are so infamous that they were always given special priority in the kill order for our ranked team, to ensure that they never, ever got a chance to free-cast anything.

I've never played a scoundrel in a serious PvP situation, so I can't really compare apples-to-apples. I have done healing at level 50 with a scoundrel (playing on a friend's account), and I can definitely agree that energy management is *worlds* easier while mobility is substantially higher.

Those 2 bonuses would, when combined with removing Trauma Probe from the GCD, would be enough to cement most Commandos a permanent place in many raid rosters: their outright HPS might not be sufficient to guarantee a spot, but their non-healing contributions would more than make up for that. Overall contribution matters more than pure green numbers, and I see that as being something of the rallying cry of the Commando healer.

I think it would be really interesting to see, if nothing else. Removing the upper-limit on KB but forcing it to draw evenly from a maximum heal value is an interesting idea. I thought about that a while back. It would also function to encourage commandos to lob it on the tank, since hitting only a single target would result in a commensurately larger heal. Thus, KB would have two functions: buffing raid heals and serving as a significant instant ST heal.

I think we would need to break out the game coefficients and algebra to know for sure. My healer's gear is pretty tightly optimized (with the exception of deliberately under-statted crit) and only 2 enhancements shy of full 61/63 (most mods at 63), so head-to-head comparisons between our healers are completely overshadowed by gear disparity. That's work for a lazy evening though, so I'll leave it be for now.

I think the fact that my Scoundrel in unauged, unoptimized Rak gear just *barely* underhealing your mostly DG Commando gives pretty good evidence about Scoundrels being able to put up better numbers, more consistently, with less preparation.

I think it would be really interesting to see, if nothing else. Removing the upper-limit on KB but forcing it to draw evenly from a maximum heal value is an interesting idea. I thought about that a while back. It would also function to encourage commandos to lob it on the tank, since hitting only a single target would result in a commensurately larger heal. Thus, KB would have two functions: buffing raid heals and serving as a significant instant ST heal.

My idea is actually based on making sure it remains a multi-target heal by capping the maximum base healing per target at what it hits a single target for now but capping the maximum total base healing at 4 targets while still being able to hit as many people as possible. To explain with numbers, 1-4 targets would each get healed for the standard amount (so, on a single target, the amount is only the base amount listed), whereas 5 targets would get healed for .8 equivalents (4 equivalent max / 5 targets = .8 equivalents per target), 6 targets for .67 equivalents (4 / 6 = .67), 7 targets for .57 equivalents (4 / 7 = .57), and so on and so forth. The only time you'd ever see any difference is when Kolto Bomb is lobbed on a group of more than 4 targets wherein, rather than just hitting the 4 closest to the origin point, all target are healed for an amount such that the total healing is no more than what is already capable, just distributed over additional targets.

The real benefits, aside from less chance of wasting a heal if you actually need to heal more than a small number of people, is getting Kolto Residue and Charged Armor on more players, which plays to the uniqueness of Commandos: unlike every other healer, Commandos bring the buffs, which is what Commandos should be all about (and what they used to be about until said buffs were nerfed into oblivion in 1.2).

I know I'm not the only one who doubts their usefulness in PvP. Can these get a buff or changed in some way?

 

Trauma Probe: It's a fun little device to mitigate minor damage at the beginning of a battle but other than that it's useless. Half way through a fight where my ammo reserve is halved I'm not about to use it because it uses up valuable ammo and simply doesn't deliver the punch a Bacta Grenade does making it a purely contextual skill. Literally it was designed for the lazy healer who doesn't want to mash HS during an minor encounter.

 

Possible improvements? Maybe increase the amount it heals per charge and then halve the charges. So a 1/5 charges heals 2x as much as a normal 1/10 charge, either that of lower the ammo cost to 1. It really just needs more punch to it, right now it's just simply not useful or worth it to use in PvP.

 

Adrenaline Rush: I don't think I need to say much here. It's a throw away skill, it doesn't help me substantially in the least bit. It's not going to save me in a pinch. Yes it does help some, but its not going to help me in clutch situations where I need that health right there and then.

 

Possible improvements? I'm not sure, I would like a new skill entirely. Maybe replace it with a helpful escape like all the other classes have. It would be nice if they changed the effect entirely. It might even be better off by making us immune to interrupts for at least a few seconds to pop off our channeled abilities, snipers/gunslingers an ability like that. Why not us? There is nothing more I hate than being interrupted, stunned, and tossed around like a rag-doll when I'm trying to channel my heals, and don't tell me that combat shield is the solution because it's not. I only get that every 2 minutes.

 

 

Maybe these improvements aren't really necessary but these skills as they are are just boring and not worth the hotkey space to me. They are weak, especially adrenaline rush. Trauma Probe is okay but I do think it could be improved. Maybe it's just a matter of preference, I'm sure many of you are happy with your little periodic heals, but to me they just don't deliver.

all i have to say is learn to play your class, yea i miss my free TP back before the nerf hammer hit us and the sage/sorcs got a free self-heal, but it was never ment to be a major part of the class and shouldn't be buffed.

all i have to say is learn to play your class, yea i miss my free TP back before the nerf hammer hit us and the sage/sorcs got a free self-heal, but it was never ment to be a major part of the class and shouldn't be buffed.

did you even bother reading his post? it's clearly not a L2P issue