Medicine Operative Guide By:Talidas OVERVIEW: Medicine Operative has the highest possibility to be the best healing class in SWTOR as well as its Pub side counterpart Sawbones. Medicine is a relatively easy to use but hard to master healer specialization, possibly the hardest of the three choices available in the game. It relies heavily on abilities that do heal over time (HoTs) and Area of Effects (AoE), given that it is its strongest in comparison to Sorcerer and Mercenary, although it lacks in the capability to heal on demand, being inferior to the other two in that regard. (Vulkk guide 6.0) STATS: With the changes in 7.0, BioWare has made Alacrity basically useless as a stat. This is due to them changing the stat ceiling to a large number. As a healer in 7.0 you should dump your stats into Crit. This will be from Critical augments which we will get to later. Your gear as a healer should already drop the stats that you will need for alacrity, as well as crit. WHAT IS ALACRITY: Alacrity is the stat that reduces your overall cooldown for abilities. The threshold for 1.4 second GCD (Global Cooldown) is 2054. Your gear should already get you this far as a healer. In order to get that extra .1 second you'd have to invest all of your augments into alacrity, which is seen as a waste. This is due to a large stat ceiling. WHY CRITICAL: Getting a high amount of crit from a healing standpoint is always a good thing. In any situation higher numbers are always a good thing, whether it is Raiding, Flashpoints, or even Heroics. Basically this number scales well and gives you significant bonuses when it comes to healing in general. The number scales your percentage as a whole, so your crit chance, damage (healing in this case), and bonus go up the same amount. TACTICALS: there are a few tacticals depending on what you would like to do. ● I personally use Regenerative Waves. This is due to Medicine Operative being heavily focused on HOT (Heals Over Time) and AOE Heals Regenerative Waves heals each individual ally 20% more than it usually would, the downside to using this is that Kolto Waves now requires that you have a Tactical Advantage. ● If you are wanting to make a single target healing build however, I would recommend the Critical Surgery tactical. Critical Surgery allows you to instantly critically heal an ally once your target is below 50% health. This can be used to get your allies in a Raid or FP out of a sticky situation. ● The last tactical you can use, is a very situational tactical that hardly anyone uses. Diagnostics Probe allows you to build stacks of Tactical Probe, each stack will reduce the activation time of Kolto Injection by .25 seconds, and caps at 3 stacks. At 3 stacks kolto injection is an instant cast. SKILL TREE: Your skill tree has a few abilities that you can choose from, there are some very obvious abilities you should always choose, and some that are optional depending on your playstyle. Your First ability to choose is one of those obvious abilities at lvl 23 you have the choice to choose “Kolto Burst” thai ability allows you to heal yourself and 8 other allies within a certain distance of you if you use Kolto Injection on yourself. The numbers are the exact same if you were to heal anyone else in the party, meaning that everyone is getting the same numbers you would usually get (this includes crits as well) Your next choice at level 39 is a choice between three abilities, depending on how you use your abilities. The first ability, Nanotech Stim reduces the cooldown of your Stim Boost by two seconds for each member of your party affected by Recuperative Nanotech. The second ability choice, Nano Mark allows for Recuperative Nanotech to heal the targeted ally for 20% more than others affected by the ability. The last ability you can choose is Critical nanotech, one that i personally like because it increases crit chance up to 30%, meaning that when you use Recuperative Nanotech, you gain 30% more healing when you use the ability, healing those who are affected more. At level 43, all of the abilities here are good, they are strictly preference. The first ability Stim Burst allows you to increase healing by 15% for 15 seconds when you cast Stim Boost. Tactical Overdrive allows you to reset the cooldown for Stim Boost, Recuperative Nanotech, Toxin Scan, and Shield Probe as well as the ability increasing your master by 20% for 15 seconds. The last one for this level is Tactical Effectiveness. This passive ability increases your healing and damage by 5% for each Tactical Advantage you have, meaning you can get up to 15% more healing if you keep your stacks up. Your next choice, doesn't matter as well, because it does not increase any of your healing numbers, but increases survivability. At level 64 you should ONLY choose Endorphin Rush, because as an Operative healer, during Raids, you will run into an energy problem. It's inevitable. This ability makes it to where Adrenalin Probe will give you an extra 15 energy when cast. This makes it to where you can continue to heal while your party is in combat. It will also help when you are in a pinch in combat, making massive damage phases easier to deal with as well as sometimes enrages (yes with enough practice and effectiveness you can outlast enrages, sometimes). The last two abilities are more for PvP, if you want to know which ones to pick, for level 68 either flashbang or holotraverse, and for 73 Evasive Imperative. IMPLANTS: With the release of 7.0 set bonuses disappeared. The only way to get bonuses is to go to the implant vendor located on the fleet in Supplies. There are two routes you can take when it comes to implants, single target healing, and AOE healing. As a Healer it is important to have both sets of these implants to give your class more flexibility. For AOE, you will want to go Trapper Package, and Aggressive Treatment Package. These two work interchangeably, Aggressive Treatment allows the use of Toxic Haze as a healing ability (and a damage ability), where Trapper Package refunds a Tactical Advantage when you cast Toxic Haze. For Single target healing, Field Medics Package, and Tacticians Package. Tacticians Package increases crit chance by 10% for 10 seconds, and Field Medics Package allows for activating any healing ability to have a 15% chance to grant Field Medic’s Critical Bonus, which causes your next Kolto Injection to automatically crit. Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. HEALING ABILITIES AND ROTATION: As a healer, all of your abilities are important. KOLTO PROBE: The most important ability on Operative’s tools. One that should always be kept up on the teammates, since it counts close to 1/2 of the healing that will be done at the end of the game. RECUPERATIVE NANOTECH: The second most important healing ability due to its nature. This is what one could call a ‘smart heal’. When casted on the main target, it will reach to 3 of the teammates with the lowest health. KOLTO WAVES: Big AOE heal. Affects up to 8 targets. A must use if the team is taking damage. Not worth it if it is on a single target. (I still use it anyways if its a Tank) SURGICAL PROBE: The ‘big burst’ heals from Medicine. This ability will be used to refresh probes (Only refreshes if there is a 2 stack on a target. If it's only 1, it won’t work). So, not only will it apply its own heal, it will also be buffed by the Kolto probe refresh that one gets from applying 2 stacks. KOLTO INJECTION: This is by far the most used ability for Operative Healers. Reason being is because it does the most healing out of any other ability, and generates a Tactical Advantage, which I talked about earlier, gives your healing an extra 5% towards your healing per stack. KOLTO INFUSION: Refreshes Kolto Probes, this is your second ability to use after Kolto Injection. Not stated in the tooltips but if you use this ability after Kolto Injection, you get additional healing, as well as starting a combo with Surgical Probe increasing your healing numbers even more. DIAGNOSTIC SCAN: This ability was brought up to me by a fellow guildmate that showed me its usefulness. On its own, this ability doesn't do much. Its healing efficiency is crap, and feels kinda useless. BUT through research I have realized that this isn't a healing ability, but an energy recovery ability. When your Adrenaline Probe is on cooldown, use this ability to generate more energy. Also this is the only DOT (damage over time) healing ability you can use while moving. TOXIC HAZE: (only usable with the Aggressive Treatment Package) this ability allows for you to heal/damage up to 8 people within the circle. Large AOE with decent Healing and DPS ROTATIONS: Healers have rotations that change depending on the circumstances. For main tank healing your rotation should be as follows: KOLTO PROBES x2 RECUPERATIVE NANOTECH KOLTO INJECTION KOLTO INFUSION SURGICAL PROBE P.s. there is no reason to overheal a tank, heal only when necessary AOE Healing rotation should be as follows: RECUPERATIVE NANOTECH KOLTO INJECTION (use on self in group) TOXIC HAZE (if using Aggressive Treatment Package) KOLTO WAVES Repeat until party is full HP Emergency Single Target Healing KOLTO PROBES x2 RECUPERATIVE NANOTECH KOLTO INJECTION KOLTO INFUSION KOLTO INJECTION + STIM BOOST (use until target is healed sufficiently) Emergency AOE Healing RECUPERATIVE NANOTECH TOXIC HAZE (if using Aggressive Treatment Package) KOLTO INJECTION (use on self until damage phase or group is healed sufficiently) ABILITIES TO NOTE SITM BOOST: Stim boost will allow you to use Kolto Infusion and Kolto injection instantly without a cast time. Can only be used once, unless using Tactical Overdrive to refresh all other abilities mentioned. SHIELD PROBE: Will block damage for a time, but can only block a small amount of damage. CLOAKING SCREEN: Use as a secondary cleanse on yourself, does not always allow you to exit combat EVASION: Primary self cleanse TOXIC SCAN: Cleanse for your allies and yourself. Speaking of cleanses… PRIORITY CLEANSES: Cleansing debuffs goes as follows: TANK YOURSELF ANYONE WHO DOESN'T HAVE A CLEANS