Hello, this is my first healing class and I'd like to ask for some tips how to PVP better. Currrently, I'm lvl 34 and I'm happy if I can get 100k healing in a WZ and then I see another op medic do 200k on my team at about the same lvl and I'm bummed because I don't understand how he could have possibly done that.

 

I've read a few generig operative guides #1 #2 (these are bit old but I figured the mechanincs should be the same) on how to manage energy, how to level, what skills to pick in the skill tree.

 

Here is the skill tree I'm going for. I picked those extra skills in concealment to give me better changes to ninja pylons in the ancient hypergates (AH) wz (which I'm able to do on regular basis if only person guard the pylon - I mean, that is very easy)

 

So for healing I'm usually using Kolto Injection, Kolto Infusion and Kolto Probe (I'm about 2 lvl away from the Surgical Probe I believe). I almost never use Diagnostic Scan - should I use that more often? To be honest, I don't see the point in PVP of such a long channel with such small healing numbers (compared to the kolto injection and infusion)

 

I'd appreciate any tips from fellow op healers. I believe I'm pretty good at trying to win the game (doing the objectives right, not going after kills and medals etc). Now I'd like to improve my healing - mostly in PVP. Once I get to lvl 50, I'll be joining my guild on ops but that's another story.

 

Thank you

Diagnostic Scan is an energy management tool. If you pick up the right talents, it will crit on most ticks, and each one restores energy. So while HoTs are up or on cooldown, and if you don't need to be doing any burst healing, you can spam DS to keep your energy level up. With the increased regen talent you have (the one that consumes Upper Hand, or whatever your tactical advantage is on Operative), you should basically never run low on energy. Also, if you have DS fully talented, its heal is not trivial. You can deal with a lot of damage with just the two HoTs and spamming DS, if you're only healing one target.

 

Like Scoundrel, Operative is primarily a HoT based healer, with single heals for emergencies and quick top offs. When healing one target, your goal should be to have HoTs up at all times, keep your regen proc up, and use single heals or DS as needed for either emergency healing or energy recovery. Any time your energy is not full and you have nothing to heal, just spam DS on anyone (including yourself) to get back to full.

 

You have one big single heal that procs Upper Hand, and a medium single heal that consumes Upper Hand. It might not look like it at first, but your peak HP/second for burst healing comes from hitting those back to back; big first to get the Upper Hand, then medium to consume it. If you have an extra stack of Upper Hand, throw on an Emergency Medpac, or whatever the "free" Upper Hand heal is for Operative, to finish up. The medium heal that requires Upper Hand also has a nice set bonus in PvE that buffs it quite a bit; people trash that bonus all the time, but its mainly because they don't understand what this heal is for, or how it fits into the rotation.

Edited February 16, 2013 by Heezdedjim

Sweet, that means I've been doing it wrong - DS should be part of the healing rotation. Thank you, that explains quite a bit. I was almost sure there was a good reason for having it - just couldn't figure out what it was

As you are level 34, I would concentrate more to the healing tree until you get Surgical Probe and the 1point sister-talent. You can get them by level 31. (http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401McfrzG0oz.2) Then, if you want, you can go into Concealment to get the stealth-extras (I would still recommend full heals though, the 10 second boost to your stealth level via Evasion is good enough for stealth capping).

 

Basically what you want to do is always have at least 1 Tactical Advantage so you have the healing bonus. Only exhaust the last one on Surgical Probe in an extreme emergency. Keep your Stim Boost up (but no need to refresh on cooldown necessarily - the effect is longer than the cooldown so you can wait those extra 15 seconds), always exhaust a Tactical Advantage so you don't waste them by "going over three" (with Surgical Precision your TA-cap is 3, not 2). What I mean is that if you happen to have 3 TA's do not use Kolto Injection, as the TA that it grants wouldn't be applied because your stack is full. So at 3 stacks, go, for example, Surgical Probe -> Kolto Injection -> Surgical Probe.

 

Kolto Infusion loses a lot of its usefulness when you get Surgical Probe, but if you can spare the energy it costs and you need more healing than what Surgical Probe offers, you can still use it. It's also a good feint to use - if the enemy is aiming to interrupt your heals, they waste the interrupt on the "lesser" Kolto Infusion, which you will follow with Kolto Injection for more healing.

 

And as was said, use Diagnostic Scan whenever you start to drop under, say, 60% energy. Also use them as a filler whenever you don't need to really heal anything but there are still people with health under 100%.

Edited February 16, 2013 by Memo-

Honestly, for pvp, you do not need to use DS, nor the waste of talent points to actually make it useful when they can be better spent elsewhere. All it will do is make you a sitting duck with little gain. You should just auto attack if you need to regain energy and help focus with your dps. The high healing numbers have nothing to do with DS and are more likely due to positioning and hot spreading by the other operative. Achieving higher numbers just comes with practice and throwing around hots on everyone is an easy way to pad and inflate numbers as well.