Great guide, this and the other one posted pushed me to respec to medic from Gunnery. At 32 currently, and with M1-4X kitted out in cyber blues we're pretty much un-killable by anything once I got a handle on the rotation. Love not getting bored with the constant grav round spam...

 

Food for thought -- I think it would help leveling people to have a suggested point allocation. For example, at my level I couldn't decide on whether to throw points into ironsights for the 9% aim buff, or to go deeper into the medic tree. I know the guide is mainly setup for play at 50 so this would be more of an afterthought I suppose. Just an idea.

 

Great work!

 

I'd recommend going all the way up Combat Medic first. Your bonus healing from aim isn't level dependent, and that 9% boost is a lot stronger at higher levels. You also have the benefit of gaining more abilities as you progress up the CM tree.

 

Typing this in on my iPhone right now so I'll keep it short, but I'll try and add a leveling section.

Posted in the other thread figure I'd share here as well.

 

My Spec Here

 

HM 5/5 EV

HM 5/5 Karaga's Palace

-Starting Nightmare's on Sunday.

 

We run 3x8 mans as we don't find 16 to be worth it. They drop the same loot, just more of it...

 

5% Healing on Kolto Bomb is not worth it imo. You can't control who will get the buff in a group of people and can be wasted on someone that is already full health. And you can't keep it up on the entire raid. I'd rather having increased healing to myself. If I or my heal partner can heal me back up to full faster than we can go back to healing others faster as well. Alive healers are better healers. Our heal team is Me (Commando) and a Sage.

 

I've tried both Spamming AMP, and the AMP > MP Combo. After numerous runs, I stick to the more efficient AMP > MP Combo. I pop SCC then will AMP one person, then either MP them or someone else who is lower health. Always healing the lowest person 1st. AMP > MP is far more efficient and more desirable as it ensures I keep a high Ammo regen. Sages are going to out AE Raid heal you anyway.

 

When healing raid wide damage the Armor Buff from AMP on everyone doesn't do anything unless you are the tank, the buff will be gone by the next incoming raid wide damage. You are correct you must heal everyone up to the minumium. And when push comes to shove I ensure I have the Ammo to do so.

Have been doing some number crunching based on my stats in a mixture of Columi and Rakata gear. While the value of Crit Rating and Surge fluctuates depending on several factors, there seems to be a sweet spot at ~180 Crit rating and ~225 Surge. This will vary depending on how much Aim/Cunning you have (because these also affect crit chance). This assumes use of a blue stim (104 aim and 43 power - I'm not biochem) and having full class buffs.

 

So what does this mean? What you'll almost certainly find is you have a lot more than 180 crit. It's on pretty much all of our gear. This immediately makes Surge your best stat per point by far. Once you're sitting at around 220 Surge, Aim becomes your best stat. Why? Because Aim accounts for both Healing Bonus and Crit Chance, so it edges out Power. At some point Power will surpass Aim in weighting, but I don't think we'll even see this once people are full Rakata.

 

tl;dr Stack Surge to 220-250 and drop Crit Rating for Power wherever you can. Aim > Power.

Excellent guide, I really appreciate your efforts! Edited January 20, 2012 by Chuck_Diesel

Excellent guide, I really appreciate your efforts!

 

I just wanted to point out that your skill calculator is out of date, there is no +alacrity in the Assault tree.

 

I recommend the calculator on Torhead, and will now shamelessly plug my CM build:

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800rfRMRdcdzqZrco.1

I am in-game, staring at my skill trees. Believe me, Weapon Calibrations is still in the Assault tree.

Don't know where you got your information... >_>

I am in-game, staring at my skill trees. Believe me, Weapon Calibrations is still in the Assault tree.

Don't know where you got your information... >_>

 

Clearly I got it from Torhead. Guess I have to reappraise my spec...

I am in-game, staring at my skill trees. Believe me, Weapon Calibrations is still in the Assault tree.

Don't know where you got your information... >_>

 

Can you post a screen shot? Maybe it is a bug or changes on primary spec? I respecced to Gunnery last night (until Raid Sunday) and there was no +alacrity in the Assualt tree. It was 2 points with 4% increase to stock strike damage per point.

Can you post a screen shot? Maybe it is a bug or changes on primary spec? I respecced to Gunnery last night (until Raid Sunday) and there was no +alacrity in the Assualt tree. It was 2 points with 4% increase to stock strike damage per point.

 

Here it is.

Hope this helps.

is CM really viable for solo play? The sound of grav round haunts me at night, and I mainly do solo PvE/PvP.

Not sure about the PvP side of things, but it's totally viable in solo PvE. I leveled 1-50 using a CM build (though compared to the "normal" PvE CM build, I swapped the two points in Advanced Tech for Muzzle Fluting and Efficient Conversion). For soloing, Bacta Infusion and Trauma Probe are both fantastic allowing you to slow down damage taken by either you or your companion and able to toss out a heal without spending valuable resources. And for when the time comes that you do want to do a flashpoint or whatever, healers are always in short supply.

Have been doing some number crunching based on my stats in a mixture of Columi and Rakata gear. While the value of Crit Rating and Surge fluctuates depending on several factors, there seems to be a sweet spot at ~180 Crit rating and ~225 Surge. This will vary depending on how much Aim/Cunning you have (because these also affect crit chance). This assumes use of a blue stim (104 aim and 43 power - I'm not biochem) and having full class buffs.

 

So what does this mean? What you'll almost certainly find is you have a lot more than 180 crit. It's on pretty much all of our gear. This immediately makes Surge your best stat per point by far. Once you're sitting at around 220 Surge, Aim becomes your best stat. Why? Because Aim accounts for both Healing Bonus and Crit Chance, so it edges out Power. At some point Power will surpass Aim in weighting, but I don't think we'll even see this once people are full Rakata.

 

tl;dr Stack Surge to 220-250 and drop Crit Rating for Power wherever you can. Aim > Power.

 

Can you plug your stats into the calculator in Post #3 and post the results here?

 

Aim, Cunning, and Crit can all independently add 30% crit, with independent diminishing returns, however Crit rating, of course, increases it faster.

 

Keep in mind that Power also increases the size of your crits, because the base is larger, and Power has a higher coefficient than Aim for bonus healing. Power and the bonus healing portion of Aim also have no diminishing returns and are not level dependent.

 

The math, at least at Tionese levels of gear, shows that Power beats Aim by 10%, with both Aim's healing and crit effects factored in. Power is 3 times better than Crit with stock Tionese stats, but bearing in mind that Tionese drops with 154 Power and 279 Crit, and Crit has diminishing returns while Power does not, so this is not unexpected.

 

I'd appreciate if you could post both your complete stats and what the calculator says your stat weights are.

Are you considering that for one point of Aim, you're actually getting 1.14 Aim (9% from talents, 5% from Sage buff)? I'll do some stuff with the spreadsheet a bit later and post results.

Are you considering that for one point of Aim, you're actually getting 1.14 Aim (9% from talents, 5% from Sage buff)? I'll do some stuff with the spreadsheet a bit later and post results.

 

I was not including that. Thank you for catching it. Does the sage buff increase Cunning for non-Agent/Smuggler's?

 

Thank you for catching this. This sort of thing is why I left all the calculations visible. Please let me know if you see anything else. I've corrected for it now.

Edited January 21, 2012 by RuQu

well I gotta hand it to ya... level 33 combat medic, finished act 1 with ease.

 

one more thing though... which pet do you use? M1-4X with sentry stance is great for tanking, but damage is a bit lacking. On the other hand, Jorgan is great for damage, but has a hard time keeping threat. Which pet do you use, and are there any tips or tricks to it?.

well I gotta hand it to ya... level 33 combat medic, finished act 1 with ease.

 

one more thing though... which pet do you use? M1-4X with sentry stance is great for tanking, but damage is a bit lacking. On the other hand, Jorgan is great for damage, but has a hard time keeping threat. Which pet do you use, and are there any tips or tricks to it?.

 

I just hit 50 today. I've been using M1-4X since I got him. As a healer, it becomes more and more important to have a tank companion. I tried using Tanno Vik but he was constantly breaking CC's and I love the grappling hook M1-4X has. Anytime an enemy targets me I have M1-4X hook'em in.

well I gotta hand it to ya... level 33 combat medic, finished act 1 with ease.

 

one more thing though... which pet do you use? M1-4X with sentry stance is great for tanking, but damage is a bit lacking. On the other hand, Jorgan is great for damage, but has a hard time keeping threat. Which pet do you use, and are there any tips or tricks to it?.

 

This was my advice to someone else asking the same question:

Most of them do pretty well if geared. I ran with M1-4X for a long time after I got him since I am a Cybertech and gearing him was easy. We did quite well together.

 

On a lark I pulled out Dorne one day to see what dual healers could do, and I liked it so we ran together for a long time. She could heal me when my AP was on cooldown and dps when my TP and a quick AP/MP every now and then was all I needed.

 

Around Quesh I started having trouble getting things dead in time with her, which was especially problematic with a certain quest boss who had some painful spells that we can't interrupt because Commandos (and our mirror the Mercenary) are the only AC without an interrupt on a short cooldown that locks out ability use. I switched to using Tanno as my tank/dps and that worked well and we are still running together.

 

Really, I think most combos are pretty viable. Jorgan and Yuun will do more dps, but need more healing from you so that may be your full time job. If you want to do some of the damage yourself, use M14X or Tanno. If you want to do most of the dps, but keep TP on yourself and have good heals in a pinch, use Dorne and take advantage of the cheap Charged Bolts from Supercharged Cells.

 

The beauty of combat medic is you really do have the versatility to customize your play style to your preference.

 

One more thing: you don't have to just stand back and heal. When I'm running with 4X or Tanno, I tend to weave in Full Auto, Charged Bolts, and Hammer Shot (dps) between keeping up TP and using AP/MP combos. If my ammo is 10+, and the pet doesn't need a heal, spend some ammo on dps. If you pop SCC, Charged Bolts gets nice and cheap and you can do some decent burst. 4X and Tanno may not be huge dps on their own, but if you help them out things die pretty quick.

Edited January 21, 2012 by RuQu

I was playing around with the calculator and trying to optimize the HPS while staying in the same rating budget (ie remove 10 from Crit, add 5 to alacrity and 5 to surge). I found max, using the Tionese budget, was at 40-50 Surge and all other ratings dumped into Power.

 

I posted a topic on the healer forum detailing what I did more, but long story short the math says Power=Aim >> Anything else.

The Jedi Consular buff adds 5% to Aim, Cunning, Strength and Willpower. So yeah, you'll get a small Cunning boost as well. But this is the reason that Aim is better than Power - 1 point of Aim = 0.14*1.14 = 0.1596 Healing Bonus. This is still less than the 0.17 per point of Power, but Aim is adding to Crit Chance as well (subject to diminishing returns). However I'm still finding that at 2000 Aim, Aim still has more value for me per point.

 

I am basing my value for Crit and Surge upon an "effective" Healing Bonus rating. That is, your healing bonus + an additional amount based upon your chance to crit, and then the bonus you get on a crit. For example, if you had 500 Healing Bonus with 50% Crit Chance and 80% Surge, the effective healing bonus would be 700. This is how I've been working out the value of Surge essentially, because the magnitude of each of our healing spells scales with Healing Bonus based on static spell coefficients (as far as I can tell).

 

One thing I noticed when plugging Tionese values into spreadsheet - have you assumed the use of a particular weapon/offhand? I need a Tech Power value to throw in to the grinder, and you've not listed one in the original post. Off the top of my head I think the Tech Power values from mainhand/offhand at that gear level is 548 each, so I'm putting 1096 in for Tech Power for now. I have assumed the use of a blue level 48 adrenal, and having the Jedi Consular and Smuggler buffs (raid conditions).

 

Results as follows (one more point of X is worth Y Healing Bonus):

Aim - 0.176

Power - 0.170

Crit - 0.092

Surge - 0.296

 

Similar to my own experience, our tier gear is way too crit heavy. This is part of the reason why Surge is so valuable - you have too much crit. Interestingly enough, the sweetspot for crit/surge at this level of Healing Bonus is somewhere around -75 Crit Rating, 75 Surge. Crit Rating itself has no value because Aim/Power/Tech Power are so low that the passive crit from buffs and you primary/secondary stats pushes you well over the break point (where 1 point of crit = 0.17 healing bonus).

 

Assuming you could increase Surge without changing any other stats, you would need 178 Surge before it is again eclipsed in value by Power.

This is how I was dealing with crit/surge:

 

Every heal has a static range (Min-Max) based on a fixed value determined by the level it is trainable (or every level for skill tree learned abilities) and a "StandardHealthPercentMin" and "StandardHealthPercentMax" value associated with the skill. That produces a fixed value, which I average. I then multiply the bonus healing by the spells coefficient, and get the "Avg Healing" of the spell.

 

If "Average Healing" = AH

Crit Chance (ie 30%) = C

Surge Bonus (ie 75%) = S

 

Your effective average healing is:

 

EAH = AH * (1 - C/100) + AH * (1 + S/100) * (C/100)

 

But, sadly, it doesn't do us any good to know just how hard each spell hits if we don't know how often we use them, so I created the rotation sheet, where you always use AP if it is off of cooldown, always follow it with MP to use the FT buff, after that BI always gets used if it is off of cooldown. If we are still above 10 Ammo, we then fire unbuffed MP which should drop us to around 8ish once regen is factored in. If we aren't above 10, and AP and BI are on cooldown, we fire Hammer Shot.

 

Obviously we would also be maintaining TP during an actual fight, but for modeling purposes it is just a free regen period and so long as we aren't using these numbers to compare to other healers I don't think the complication of factoring how often it procs, etc is necessary, just know it would be tossed in where a HS is.

 

Anyway, after all that and dragging the cells down I had just over 2 minutes of data. I could increase it to 20, but I felt 136 seconds was fine considering one rotation cycle takes 9 seconds. I then use the total healing for that entire time period and the total elapsed time to calculate the HPS. I have a base value for reference, and duplicate the spreadsheet for each stat and iterate that stat +1, then find the difference after 136 seconds of sustained healing.

 

 

 

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Changing gears a little, to answer your question about Tionese weapon / offhand, I used the weapon named "Hurricane" since it had the same level (51). I think I forgot to add in a generator. Generators tend to be mostly Aim/Endurance + Power, and Power has no diminishing returns so more of it is always better anyway. I just tossed an extra 1K Power into the calculator and the only significant change was to upvalue Surge more, which should be expected since that gear only has 40 Surge and 362 Alacrity.

 

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Back to calculations, using my way of factoring in Crit's influence on HPS increase increased the value of Aim to just over that of Power, as opposed to slightly below before you caught my error. They are now essentially equal, with 1 Power = 0.99579 Aim, or 1 Aim = 1.00422 Power.

 

I also tend to assume that the Aim is more fixed than the ratings, since it tends to be attached to the Armoring and the item level. When I move stats around, I tend to leave Aim alone. Of course, for those still leveling (such as myself...) evaluating a Aim vs Power upgrade may be a valid question, but I don't think it comes up often at 50, and the values are so close to equal as to not matter.

 

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When I first created this Guide and was giving advice to people I treated crit like you do, using it as a multiplier to create an "Effective Bonus Health." However, since different heals scale differently with Bonus Health and Crits are applied later to the total heal, I felt this was mathematically inaccurate and was artificially devaluing crit. I think my method is more mathematically sound and gives us a better approximation, but I am always open to suggestions to improve it, and I am open to being convinced that a different way of modeling crit is more accurate.

I am basing my value for Crit and Surge upon an "effective" Healing Bonus rating. That is, your healing bonus + an additional amount based upon your chance to crit, and then the bonus you get on a crit. For example, if you had 500 Healing Bonus with 50% Crit Chance and 80% Surge, the effective healing bonus would be 700. This is how I've been working out the value of Surge essentially, because the magnitude of each of our healing spells scales with Healing Bonus based on static spell coefficients (as far as I can tell).

 

You are correct, there is a fixed coefficient, and a static range as well, so if coefficient is 'c', bonus healing is 'BH', and Min/Max of the range are "MinH" and "MaxH" respectively the two equations are:

 

Minimum Heal = c*BH + MinH

Maximum Heal = c*BH + MaxH

 

For simplicity, I assume that on average every heal is an average heal, and simply say:

 

Heal = c*BH + (MinH+MaxH)/2

 

And the only part of that equation that changes is BH.

 

However, I do think you are mismodeling Crit, since using it to increase BH misses the crit bonus to the static additive portion.

 

Results as follows (one more point of X is worth Y Healing Bonus):

Aim - 0.176

Power - 0.170

Crit - 0.092

Surge - 0.296

 

 

After changing the spreadsheet to incorporate the Aim change, and if you increase the Skills/Buffs listing on the front sheet to add in Smuggler and Sage buffs, the second sheet reports the following list:

 

1 Point of Stat = X Bonus Healing Per Second

 

Power 0.43339067655722

Aim 0.43457265043219

Cunning 0.034346616537505

Crit 0.12849879632176

Surge 0.51131034172636

Alacrity 0.12608572802696

 

We can see that Crit and Alacrity are both over-itemized, Surge is so underitemized it exceeds Power and Aim, and Cunning is included for completeness but you should know better than to gear for it. Personally I find the normalized values that compare to Power more readable, but the Results sheet reports both.

 

Note: These are in Bonus Healing Per Second since it is based on actual ability usage, not the static Bonus Healing which has variable value based on skill. That is why Power is so far off from 0.17 and Aim from 0.14*1.14.

 

Note that these do closely mirror your results in that Power and Aim are very close to even, Surge is worth more due to only having 40 on that whole set, and Crit and Alacrity are very very low in value. Assuming an average cast time of 1.5s, we can roughly say I value Crit as 0.18 bonus healing, which is roughly double your value, and this difference comes from letting the static part of the spell crit.

This was my advice to someone else asking the same question:

 

 

The beauty of combat medic is you really do have the versatility to customize your play style to your preference.

 

One more thing: you don't have to just stand back and heal. When I'm running with 4X or Tanno, I tend to weave in Full Auto, Charged Bolts, and Hammer Shot (dps) between keeping up TP and using AP/MP combos. If my ammo is 10+, and the pet doesn't need a heal, spend some ammo on dps. If you pop SCC, Charged Bolts gets nice and cheap and you can do some decent burst. 4X and Tanno may not be huge dps on their own, but if you help them out things die pretty quick.

 

 

Yeah, after playing a bit more, stuff dies really quickly. All in all, loving the play style, since I can heal 4X, then pull off some crazy DPS in a SCC phase. Thanks you very much for making this guide, it has been extremely helpful.

Hmm, this is true, hadn't considered the static portion of healing spells.

 

My reasoning for evaluating the value of Aim and Power was to determine which is better suited to augment slots. You're correct in that there's very rarely a time where you can choose between Aim and Power, but as an Armormech, I have a Rakata belt and bracers, each with an augment slot. I'm also using a crafted "Expert" (Power/Surge) reverse-engineered earpiece with an augment slot, which is superior to the Columi one as far as I'm concerned. So that's 3 Augment slots where I had to choose between Aim and Power - thus it being worth working out which is more valuable.

 

I'm not sure if looking at a static rotation is the best way to judge the value of Alacrity, because real combat is rarely such a sterile environment. I guess it'll have to do though, in an attempt to balance the weighting between MP/AMP and TP/BI. TP is hard to judge from my experience, because I've seen it trigger more than once per 3 seconds, contrary to the description. I'm not sure if this is a bug or what, but I've seen it drop multiple charges in the same global cooldown.

I don't have a slicer or armor mech so I'm not as familiar with augment options. Sort of forgot about those.

 

If TP is proccing more than once per 3 seconds it will likely get fixed soon as that just ups the HPS of an already extremely efficient spell that is supposed to be balanced by needing a long time to apply the full heal. Enjoy it while it lasts.

 

I agree that static rotations aren't as useful for healers as they are for DPS players, but with the different scaling of spells I can't think of another way to estimate the effect of changes than to supply a guess of what you used over a reasonable duration. It will likely be useful to also model a high burst rotation and a raid heal rotation, and then we can estimate fights based on what percentage of a fight is maintenance / burst / or raid healing.

 

Suggestions or alternative approaches are always welcome.

 

I'm about 200 miles into a 700 drive today and may not be able to respond much more. This is longer than I like to type on an iPhone as it is.

good reading, thx.

Corrected an error where I thought each hit of Hammer Shot healed for your Bonus Healing, when each hit is BH/3. I also used Sherdyn's estimate of tech power (1069 total) since Torhead doesn't list the Tech Power on weapons and generators, only the +Power, and added the assumption of this generator for my sample numbers.

Since people seeking Commando healing advice come here more often than the Healer role forum, a sticky sure would be nice...