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Sawbones: Guide to Healing with HoTs and Kneeing People in
Uncomfortable Places
A Remnants of Hope Smuggler PvP Healer Guide By
Dr. Ascendi Maracadi
Remnants of Hope Smuggler PvP Healer Guide 3.0 Date Created: 23
March 2015 Date Updated: n/a Applicable Game Version: SWTOR 3.0
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE MINDSET
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2
HEALER SKILLS
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2
DEFENSIVE/ UTILITY SKILLS
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6
STEALTH
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8
UTILITIES
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8
HEALING PLAYSTYLE AND ROTATIONS
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OFF-DPS
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12
HEALER STATS
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13
GEARING A POWER-STACKING HEALER
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CRITICAL THEORY IN SAWBONES GEARING: ADVANCED STAT AND GEARING
PRINCIPLES ________________ 15
CONCLUSION
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16
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The Mindset Being a good Sawbones healer in PvP isnt about doing
the most healing up front; its about keeping everyone alive. For
example, as tempting as it is to spam Emergency Medpac, taking two
globals when you can afford it to fill stacks of Slow-Release
Medpac or refresh HoTs on other teammates will help you in the long
run and make you a better healer. If none of that made sense, thats
why this guide is here. This is a comprehensive guide to healing,
assuming the reader has zero knowledge, yet simultaneously
providing details that even moderately skilled or master players
will find useful. First, some key concepts:
1) You cant heal anyone if youre dead 2) You cant heal someone
if they are dead 3) You or others will die if you dont pay
attention 4) You or others will die if you cant react 5) Sometimes,
you have to let idiots die
Healing isnt an archetype you can play without astute attention
to detail in any situation. PvP isnt a game you can play without
phenomenal attention to detail. And Smuggler Healer is a discipline
which requires perception that borders on foresight. Even if you
know what is going to happen, and what is happening, you still need
to have all conceivable options in mind when reacting, and react
according to those options. Be forewarned, this guide will train
your knowledge of options and tell you the appropriate reactions.
Actually reacting has to be learned by practice. If you lack
either, people die; and your status as a healer will reflect
that.
Healer Skills With the Exception of Upper Hand, these are all
the buttons you will have to press at some point. However, Upper
Hand is the key to using many healing skills. Upper Hand
(passive/buff) (UH) This is a buff that controls how often you can
use your more useful healing skills. You can have 3 stacks of this
buff at a time. You generate stacks of Upper Hand by:
1) Stealth: Coming out of stealth (grants 2); 2) HoTs: generated
by your Heal Over Time (HoT) skills, which have a 30% chance to
give you
one stack every 6 seconds. Play the class right, and you can
reliably say every 10 seconds you will get 1 UH;
3) Blaster Whip: Bitchslap an enemy with this skill to get a
stack of UH every 6 seconds. Its a dumb idea to chase down an enemy
to get a stack, but because you are a healer and probably have at
least one melee on you anyway, a quick tab target is all it takes
for the most satisfying way to proc a skill in the game;
4) Underworld Medicine: My least favorite skill and least
favorite way to gain Upper Hand. It costs the most energy, has a
2-second cast time, and is easy to interrupt. On the plus side, its
guaranteed and in and of itself is a good heal; or finally
5) Tendon Blast with Get the Bulge masterful utility: Its like
Blaster Whip but with range and an enemy speed debuff. Included as
an idea, not because its a good one.
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To take full advantage of healing bonuses, use a skill that
consumes UH once every 6 seconds. Its a good idea to save one stack
of Upper Hand, but it isnt mandatory and its easy enough to gain
them. However, dont waste time building stacks of Upper Hand when
you already have 3, as thats the cap. Personally, Im persnickety
about ensuring I have 2 stacks
max, so I can take advantage of the automatic regeneration of UH
by my HoTs to the fullest. Slow-Release Medpac (SRM) This is the
single most important healing skill at your disposal. At the
highest level of gear, this skill will say it does 4200 or so
healing over 18 seconds, and stacks up to two times. Costs 10
energy. More in depth, this is a respectable HoT that will heal for
750 every 3 seconds at 1 stack and 1500 at 2. Passives increase the
crit chance of these ticks by 3%. Keep 2 stacks running as often as
you can on as many people as you can. Though the incredible
single-target burst prevents you from wasting too many global
cool-downs (GCD or Globals, the 1.5 seconds between each skill)
keeping it fresh on 4 teammates (the recommended for comfortable
PvE healing), consider that number an ideal. Despite logically
knowing its good enough to have 2 stacks on myself and one other,
that slight disappointment in not doing everyone makes me work
harder. When in doubt and out of danger, cast SRM. ALL of our
healing is calculated under the assumption that we have SRM
rolling; you will never get the same huge single-heal numbers sages
and commandos can pull off, but if you have two stacks of SRM
rolling than your SRM + Underworld Medicine (our biggest heal) will
get you just about within range. It is not an overstatement to say
that a collapse in refreshing SRM is a collapse in Sawbones
healing; and in high-pressure situations you will feel its absence.
Another interesting property of this skill is that it works
differently on yourself versus other players. Usually, you lay out
the two stacks and by the time that second stack is placed, the
heal, which occurs every three seconds, goes off. Refreshing this
HoT on other players wont reset the timer; it will tick every three
seconds no matter what. However, when used on yourself, refreshing
SRM actually resets the healing tick too, and the healing is
front-loaded (at the start of the 3 seconds instead of the end. You
can cast SRM every 1.5 seconds, which means refreshing SRM
constantly makes it tick twice as fast on yourself. This leads to
interesting interplay with Emergency Medpac discussed below.
However, as a pro tip, if you find yourself in the ultra-rare
situation where you are out of stacks of Upper Hand, out of
defensive cool downs, and cant risk sitting still to cast anything,
SRM spam can still save you by this property AND makes it twice as
likely to get a stack of Upper Hand in the same amount of time.
Emergency Medpac (EM) CONSUMES UPPER HAND and (pft!) 5 energy.
Instant cast heal for about 2500, and no cool down. Also, refreshes
your stacks of SRM ONLY IF you have two stacks on the target. This
is where the interplay between Emergency Medpac and SRM gets
interesting. Because SRMs HoT is frontloaded at two stacks, casting
EM on yourself with 2 stacks of SRM will trigger both heals
simultaneously. EM is bound to the GCD, at 1.5 seconds between
casts, and SRM usually takes 3 seconds
SRM: Keep 2 stacks running as often as you can on as many people
as you can.
UH: To take full advantage of
healing bonuses, use a skill that
consumes UH once every 6 seconds.
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between ticks. However, spamming EM, as you will do a lot in
PvP, causes SRM to trigger every 1.5 seconds. In perspective, the
1500 healing of SRM and the 2500 of EM is about 4000 healing from
one Global. In perspective, Underworld Medicine is your biggest
direct heal, and it does about 4300 with a 2-second cast time. When
you think that this combination is an instant-cast uninterruptable
ability which almost matches your 2-second easily interrupted cast
time ability, it should be clear why I stress the importance of
keeping your SRM HoTs rolling on yourself. Also of great
importance, every 10 seconds EM regrants Upper Hand on use, making
it essentially free. Also has a passive that causes 20% increased
healing on a critical hit. Kolto Pack (KP) CONSUMES UPPER HAND and
18 energy. This skill has a 1.5-second cast time, does about the
same direct healing as EM (2500), and gives a powerful HoT that
heals for 3700 over nine seconds. More in-depth, it heals for 420
every second for nine seconds. Is also has a 9-second cool down. It
is definitely a good skill to use, and keep on cool down. I like
casting it on people who are taking damage that I havent hit with
SRM, as a way to keep them up until both stacks are rolling and I
can let loose with EM spams. Also has a passive that causes 20%
increased healing on a critical hit and another that decreases
damage taken by certain effects. Underworld Medicine (UM) COSTS 20
(fn) ENERGY. All good things must run out, and the same must be
said of Upper Hand. After you spammed EM 5 times in a row, you have
literally no options. As much as you may want to spam SRM at this
point, the DPS have other ideas. They need heals, they need them
now, and the damage they are taking wont stand for that soft-core
HoT stuff. No, enemy DPS doesnt appreciate the fine arts of HoTs.
For them, you need to bring out the big, unwieldy, unsophisticated
Single Target Heal. Clocking in at 4200-4500, 4900 fully revved in
your rotation, and a 2 second cast, this healing ability will be
felt, but it is also the most vulnerable. Its easy to interrupt,
your teammates will LoS (Line of Sight, or
moving where you cant heal them) it, it wastes a full .5 second
off the GCD you could have spent casting EM, and it costs a ton of
energy. There are exactly two situations you would want to use this
skill; you are out of stacks of Upper Hand or your teammate just
ate 25% or more in the span of a GCD. Both situations are
unavoidable in PvP, neither are situations you want to find
yourself in. In the second case, your teammate is being hard
focused and needs you to use an emergency rotation to live (see
ROTATIONS section).
NEVER use this skill if you have 2 or more stacks of Upper Hand.
ALWAYS follow up with either Kolto Pack or EM for the best burst
heals if you end the cast with 2 stacks of Upper Hand. This skill
is the devs curse to bad smuggler healers, and has been since 1.0.
Thats not to say never use this skill, just know using this means
something went wrong. They also doubled down when they made the
most useful part of our gear set bonuses the guaranteed critical
hit of UM. Basically, every 30 seconds you get 15% chance for a
free crit. Its so unreliable I dont even look out for it, but it is
nice when it pops-up in oh shit situations. Also has a passive that
causes 20% increased healing on a critical hit.
There are exactly two
situations you would want to
use this skill; you are out of
stacks of Upper Hand or your
teammate just ate 25% or more
in the span of a GCD.
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Triage Costs 10 energy. Cleanses 2 negative tech, physical, or
mental effects and heals for 1000. Its not a good skill to use as a
heal, however that doesnt mean remove it from your hot bar.
Cleanses in this game are a bit infuriating, as they cant be relied
on to cleanse damage done by DoTs (because Bioware). However, if
you are rooted, you can use this as an escape tool. Also, your
teammate can call out for you to cleanse them of stuns and roots.
An impeccable tool in ranked arenas, where a cleansed stun can be
key. Kolto Cloud (KC) Costs 20 energy. An instant cast AoE skill
which heals 3 people for 9 seconds for 4200 healing. In depth,
thats 600 heals every second for 9 seconds. It is cast on a person
and affects the radius (10m) around that person. Its a smart heal,
so it will always heal the weakest. Cast on groups with at least
three people within an area or, more commonly, cast on yourself
while you position yourself between the people who need healing. A
good skill that further advances our position as group-healer
extraordinaire. Also increases all healing received by affected
targets by 3%. Kolto Waves (KW) Channeled over 3 seconds and costs
28 energy over the channel. Heals 8 people within 8m for 4300.
8.5-second cool down. In depth, it heals about 1200 every second, 4
times (once at the start, once every second). Id call it the AoE UW
if it didnt provide such good group healing. Cast KC and KW
together, and you can reasonably expect everyone to be brought back
up significantly. Everyone. In exchange though, you are rooted in
place. Ugh. Can you tell Im miffed about our mobility nerfs? Has a
10% increased critical chance each tick on each person. Diagnostic
Scan (DS) Our lightest heal, and another 2-second channel. On the
plus side, it costs no energy, heals for 2000, and actually
restores energy. In depth, this skill ticks 3 times for 650, but
ONLY after the first second; all 3 ticks happen after in the last
half of the skill. This skill has a significantly higher crit
chance (25% increased) and critical hits restore 1 energy. If you
go under 70 energy and dont have anything better to do, cast DS.
This is important because under 60 energy, your energy regen rate
slows down. Before that point, most of your skills can be rotated
through at minimal and manageable energy. After that point,
however, even your light skills will progressively cause a
cascading effect that ends with you dead and out of energy. Of
course, burst and AoE heavy healing will cause you to dip under,
but Cool Head (see Defensive cool downs) can resolve that. After
thats gone, you have to make a choice every time you reach 70
energy; can I risk DS and the chance the person Im healing dies, or
do I have to power through and hope the fighting breaks long enough
to gain energy. Stack the Deck More group utility than heal, this
skill increases critical chance by 10% for everyone in your group.
Use this at the start of a fight, just after things have gotten
heated, when you most need to power through enemy burst and your
team wants to burn the other down. Cannot be used in ranked
arenas.
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Heartrigger Patch In-combat revive. Last I heard, you can
technically revive an ally in a warzone; however you cannot do so
in an arena. Furthermore, coordinate with your team beforehand
before trying this trick, as most people retreat as soon as they go
down.
Defensive/ Utility skills These skills are designed to keep you
alive and increase your healing. They have relatively long cool
downs or are situational. Nevertheless, they are essential to have
and to use. Cool Head Restores 50 energy over 3 seconds, 65 if you
take the masterful utility Keep Cool. If you are getting low on
energy, use this. Be careful, its tempting to think this skill
brings energy to full, but if you keep burning through the three
seconds youll end up right back where you started. I suggest using
it at 35% energy for best effects. 2-minute cool down. Pugnacity
Gives an Upper Hand and grants 10% alacrity (if you dont know what
this is, it makes skills channel faster, and adjusts energy
consumption and cool downs to compensate. Basically a 10% healing
increase). Use this when you cant waste a global to gain Upper
Hand, or when you need to really heal through some burst. 2-minute
cool down. Defense Screen Absorbs a Moderate amount of damage over
10 seconds. 30-second cool down. What this means is about 5000
damage will be stopped completely. This number is affected by your
healing rating, so stacking power increases this absorb. I must be
clear, this is not why you stack power; there are other reasons.
This is your weakest defensive CD, but this is also one of your
first defensive cool downs to pop; indeed I pop it as soon as I
start taking damage. Its not as if the cool down (30 seconds) makes
it too strategic. Scamper (a.k.a. Roll) A 12m dash that you can
activate twice in a 10-second span. While dashing, you increase
melee and ranged evasion by 30%. That 30% evasion isnt as useful as
it sounds, as most people will be hitting you with force and tech
attacks and thus wont evade. The Dash is phenomenal for escape and
positioning. Roll into a group of friends, AoE Heal them and
yourself, then roll away is my favorite maneuver. Against ranged
classes except snipers, Scamper through them in the middle of a
cast to LoS them and interrupt (snipers are immune because of how
cover automatically rotates them to face the target). Finally, kite
melee with some dashes to give yourself space and reduce incoming
damage. Be careful, you cant use this while rooted completely. Have
something to cleanse roots if you really need to roll. Distraction
Interrupts a targets cast. What doesnt hit you cant hurt you. What
doesnt hurt you doesnt need to be healed. What doesnt need to be
healed can be given back to others as healing. Thats why you
shouldnt forget your interrupts. When I see a Commando, I am always
ready to tab-target and interrupt. Sometimes I interrupt other
healers, just to help out. This does require you know how to
efficiently tab-target (covered in Playstyle).
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Dodge Increases Ranged and Tech evasion chance by 200% for three
seconds and cleanses ALL detrimental effects. The evasion chance is
generally useless because most damage isnt melee or tech attacks.
The two notable exceptions are the Knight/Warrior 3-second
channeled light saber skill (they have different names, but Im sure
you have seen it; it roots you in place and they do a fancy little
spin) and the Snipers 3-second channeled abilities. You can
completely negate that damage with this skill, but outside of this
it doesnt stop much damage. What it DOES do is cleanse everything
from you, even effects that cant normally be removed. Use this when
the Damage over Time effects are stacking too harshly, or if youre
caught in uncleans-able roots; basically every time your character
is chained or affected by something you wish they were not.
1-minute cool down, as little as 25 seconds if you take the heroic
utility Scramble. Dirty Kick 4-second stun. 45-second cool down. 30
seconds with Dirty Escape. The same principle applies here as it
does with Distraction. 4 seconds without getting beat on is 4
seconds of damage you didnt take. Combine with blaster whip to make
a ball-bashin, bitch-slappin method of gaining Upper Hand. Flash
Grenade 8-second Mez (stun that breaks on damage). Be sure to use
this on a person who isnt taking damage if you want them to suffer
from a long stun. Affects multiple targets if you can hit a group
of people. 1-minute cool down. Escape Breaks all movement and stun
effects. 2-minute cool down, 1:30 with heroic utility Smuggled
Defenses. Watch your Resolve bar; chances are as a healer you are
going to get stunned a lot. Wait to use this ability until you have
full Resolve or you have no other choice, otherwise it wont be
there when you really need it. Disappearing Act Reading the
tooltip, I hope you noticed some key phrasing. This button,
appropriately placed under the category of oh shit buttons, drops
you out of combat and into stealth - UNDETECTABLE for 10 seconds.
Undetectable, not invulnerable; any damage taken will pull you
right back into combat. Including DoTs. So, for the best results,
use Dodge and immediately roll after using this skill. This will
prevent DoTs from breaking you out of stealth, and roll will make
it harder for lucky AoEs to break you out of stealth. A few things
to do BEFORE using this skill:
Take heroic utilities, Scramble or Skedaddle. Ill explain
further in the Utilities section.
Make sure that you have a way to activate Dodge, either
automatically through Skedaddle or manually by managing the cool
down of the ability.
Use up all stacks of Upper Hand. Youll gain more when you leave
stealth, and they wont be any use to you in stealth.
Use all warzone medpacks and adrenals. You can only use these
skills once per combat. But since Disappearing Act drops you out of
combat, they are essentially refreshed.
Also, if it means following these rules to the letter but dying
anyway, then ignore everything I just said and use it anyway.
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Stealth While we are on the subject, lets make sure everyone
knows how stealth works. You cant be targeted while you are unseen,
but stealth doesnt make you unseeable. Here is a list of
recommendations about remaining unseen:
1. The closer you get to someone at the same stealth detection
level (same as level), the less time it takes to be seen. In front
of someone 10m out, you will be seen within 3 seconds. That time
increases as you get further out. Conversely, it decreases as you
get closer, so you are usually spotted before you get much closer
than 10m;
2. Someone with a stealth lvl 30 higher than you, your best bet
is to stay 20m out at all times, any closer and you will be seen
within 3 seconds. Even then, its best not to loiter. This applies
mainly to snipers, who gain 30 levels of stealth detection in
cover;
3. You should have an active ability which raises stealth level
by 15. Use this if you need to get within that radius mentioned
above;
4. If you need to get within 10m, its worth it to use your
stealth level up on yourself AND your tranquilizer on him (a cc
ability which can only be used out of combat while in stealth).
This will prevent them from knocking you out of stealth and allow
you to get out of their detection radius. If they break out of it,
you can use another cc ability; this time they cant break out of it
because you put their cc breaker on cd); and
5. Use Scamper (the dash ability that can be used twice) to get
through quickly unseen. Surrender This skill is only useful in PvP
to remove roots and slows if you take the masterful utility Dirty
Trickster, described below. Not necessary, but also not a bad idea.
Sneak Increases stealth level by 15 for 8 seconds. Use this near
enemy players to make sure you are not seen while in stealth. Only
effective in stealth. Ineffective if you get within 10m in front of
a target. Smuggle Make like a human trafficking aficionado and
disappear your entire team. Lasts 15 seconds 10m around you. Does
not stealth people in combat, and your friends stealth level is
equal to yours. Let people know when you are stealthing them,
because you need to move as a coordinated group for this to work.
If some joker is hovering outside your radius or activating skills
to pop out of stealth, just roll away because the enemy team is
about to AoE the group out of stealth anyway. Remember: when you
are in a situation that makes you go Oh Shit! Dodge, Drop
(stealth), and Roll.
Utilities Utilities are passive skills that change the effects
of your active skills or other class mechanics. You can see them by
accessing on the Discipline page in game. Some utilities are
required, some are optional, and some are simply not supposed to be
used for Scoundrel healing. Ill make note of why some are good and
some are optional, but the bad ones are self-explanatory so Ill
just list them with a few notes.
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Skillful Utilities Useless: Sneaky, Let Loose, Flash Powder The
first two are for melee DPS who need more damage and rest heavily
on stealth. We use stealth to stay alive, we wont be getting close
and 15%+ speed wont help you kite melee who also have 15%+ speed.
While the defensive part of Flash Grenade is great, you have to be
careful about how you stun people in PvP so that you dont make them
cc Immune when your team really needs to stun them. Add to the fact
that Flash Powder is easy to break in PvP, what with dots and AoEs,
the skill point is better spent on more reliable defensive
abilities. Optional: Holdout Defenses, Smuggled Get-up, Scar
Tissue, Dirty Escape All the rest of the skillful utilities can be
taken based on personal preference. I feel Holdouts 50% speed
increase from Blaster Whip is the weakest, but if you find yourself
focused by melee a lot this gives you a great kiting tool at the
same time it gives Upper Hand. I like to roll into groups taking
AoE damage and dropping AoE heals on myself, taking the group as a
whole back up, which is why Smuggled Get-ups damage reduction from
AoE damage is pretty good for me; you may be the opposite. Also,
Dirty Kick has a few of the same drawbacks as Flash Grenade, so
perhaps you prefer to leave out stuns from consideration, in which
case take Scar Tissue. At the Skillful Level, it really is up to
you. Masterful Utilities Useless: Stopping Power, Anatomy Lessons,
Tranquilizers, Defense Screen You do not rely much on Tendon Blast,
spend much energy on cc abilities, or find yourself in 1v1 out of
combat situations where the first 3 would be useful. While 5% heal
isnt too bad, it is outclassed by other skills and is more helpful
to DPS Scoundrels who cant self-heal as well as us. Optional: Dirty
Trickster, Keep Cool Use DT if you like moving around but your
enemies always stop you, as it makes surrender an escape from
roots. Use KC if you have energy troubles or you wait until youre
completely out of energy to use Cool Head as then the 15 more
energy is nice. Required: Flee the Scene Because you need to use
your oh-shit button a lot as a healer who is focused a lot, that 30
seconds off gives you a second get-out-of death card in long
engagements. Additionally, the increased movement speed decreases
the possibility of being revealed by random-cast AoEs as you run
away Heroic Utilities Useless: K.O. You wont be DPSing anyone from
stealth, which means that immobilizing people with DPS skills is
pointless. Optional: Surprise Comeback, Get the Bulge, Hotwired
Defenses, and Smuggled Defenses You can only chose one, and
Surprise Comeback is perhaps the strongest for its damage reduction
and self-heal. However, HD and SD are fair for increasing defenses
too. Despite being the weakest of the four, Get the Bulge isnt bad
for gaining Upper Hand on the move while slowing enemies down, and
works with a much shorter cool down.
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Required: Skedaddle OR Scramble. Scramble is better because, as
a healer, you will get focused so much you can reasonably expect
Dodge to have a practical 30-second CD with this skill. However, if
managing this skill to be up when you need to stealth out with
Disappearing Act, than Skedaddle is better because it combines a
shortened Dodge into DA, making it a one-button for two deal.
Taking both is fine if you dont like any of the optional skills for
some reason.
Healing Playstyle and Rotations Having already described what
the components of Smuggler healing are, we now get into the theory
of actual usage. First, the basic setup and mechanics all healers
share and require is described in detail, after which I describe
the Scoundrel healer specific rotations. Rotations are in quotes
because healers dont have rotations. You react to what peoples
health is like then you activate skills accordingly. That said,
certain situations call for different skills at different levels of
use. Be creative, these situations are only examples. However, they
represent common archetypical situations. Healer Basics
1. Key bind all skill bar slots, use keyboard clicks and
peripheral buttons and ONLY such buttons. Dont place skills on your
bar then try to mouse over and click them in game. This is because
you must:
a. Have your operation frame placed such that you can: i. Click
each Name in the frame with your mouse
ii. Watch health bars and simultaneously watch what happens in a
battle 2. Bind F1 through F4 to targeting each respective member of
your group (Default), set tab to
target enemy and shift tab to target nearest friend (The reverse
is also acceptable for tab targeting).
3. IMPORTANT! Memory map your skills. Whatever it takes, make
sure you set your buttons up in a way you will remember what
activates each skill. You need to pay attention to the battle,
peoples health, and react automatically to what happens. If you pay
any attention to where your skills are, you are losing critical
information that results in worse heals and dead teammates.
4. Never top off a players health. You play HoT spec healer with
tightened energy restrictions, you cant afford the energy or
resource waste from over-healing. Spending an Upper Hand to get
that last bit of damage healed isnt a smart idea when your HoTs are
going to take care of it anyway, Save EM for when your friends are
under 90%.
5. Watch Rates of health decay, not health itself. Rhetorical
Question: who needs healing more, the person with 50% health or 60%
health? Answer: Whoevers health dropped the fastest. Obviously,
lower health players have priority, but if the person you are
healing is at 50%, but the guy you werent healing just got blasted
to 60% in a GCD, that means the DPS has switched and he needs
healing right now. Eventually, the incoming damage on both will be
stable enough to AoE heal them both back up.
6. Some people were not meant to live. Its a hard thing, judging
when to pull the plug on someone, but for the greater good you have
to do it. This isnt a problem in arenas, everyone has to live no
matter what and you are perfectly capable of healing all 4. But in
Unranked 8v8 you simply cant make everyone live. The basics of
making the judgment call comes down to two factors; how important
is this person and how will my energy be effected. If keeping
someone
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alive means you get into a dangerously low amount of energy, let
them die unless they are of key importance. Further, if trying to
heal one person means others will get into dangerous levels of
health, that person isnt worth it. Read Rotations to know how to
predict the healing stress of keeping people alive in certain
situations. As for a players importance, prioritize yourself, your
tank, and people actually focused on objectives.
7. Queue skills; each time you activate a skill, think of the
next skill you want to activate and start pressing that button.
This will queue up the next skill, tell the server what skill you
want to use with minimal lag, and take the most advantage from
alacrity (See Stats)
Rotations Better called tactical situational reaction
suggestions, but referred to as rotation by tradition and
simplicity. Pre-fight: (Uses mainly: stealth, SRM) As much as you
may want to keep SRM rolling on all targets before a fight, certain
adjustments to our energy and the nature of player focus on healers
makes this hard if not impossible. Stay in stealth, near friends
and far from enemies, then start stacking SRM on people who start
taking some chip damage. Chip damage is the little bit of damage
people take before most classes start unloading their burst, and
seeing it clues you into who is about to need healing, in which
case SRM lightens the healing burden. When you leave stealth, try
to be somewhere inconspicuous, where you can see your allies, LoS
your foes, and look genuinely inconspicuous. Nothing screams Im an
Underpowered Healing Class Kill ME like sitting in the middle of a
group, throwing green shit out of your hands, stabbing yourself
like a druggie and laughing. The prefight usually leads into
maintenance healing. If you see a vanguard, be prepared to go right
into emergency healing. Maintenance Healing: (Uses mainly: SRM, EM,
KP, and DS) At the beginning of a fight, assuming a vanguard hasnt
decided to open up on someone, and at certain lull stages of a
fight, and between fights, people will be taking considerably less
damage. Roll SRM on as many people as possible to lighten your
healing load later when it matters. As people take more damage than
SRM handles automatically, start using EM in between SRM refreshes.
REMEMBER, EM refreshes SRM if the target has two stacks, so when
refreshing SRM skip people you have healed with EM. If someone
drops under 75%, use KP to keep them up. When casting SRM, try to
cast it on people you think will take the most damage (Yourself,
your tank, other healers, DPS who are under geared/underpowered,
etc.). If someone without SRM starts taking some sizeable (but not
yet life-threatening) damage, use KP to keep them HoTed out of
danger until you can get SRM rolling. If you find yourself
maintenance healing after a long battle and have questionable
levels of energy, throw in DS a few times. This stance is not
energy- intensive, you will not run out of energy. Heavy-Handed
Healing: (Uses Mainly: KP, EM, UM) Differs slightly from emergency
healing in that no one is immediately in danger of death, but SRM
and EM can no longer keep up with incoming damage on one or more
players. Keeping in mind who has SRM running on them, cast
Underworld Medicine on the person taking the most damage and KP on
the person taking the most damage who doesnt have SRM running.
After every use of either UM or KP, follow up with an EM, if you
have Upper Hand (which you should). Use this mode when one or two
teammates gets toward 60% health, or if they get under 75% health
at an alarming rate. This is very
Nothing screams Im an
Underpowered Healing Class Kill
ME like sitting in the middle of a
group, throwing green shit out of
your hands, stabbing yourself like
a druggie and laughing.
-
energy-intensive, nothing drains energy like UM except perhaps
your group heals. You will start to see danger in this spec
energy-wise, yet it still isnt that bad. Still, it isnt the energy
cakewalk that Maintenance is. The main thing to worry about is
Upper Hand, as you will be consuming a lot of stacks. Keep an eye
on your buff bar when spamming EM. Group-Heavy Healing: (Uses
mainly: KC, KW, DS, and scamper) While healing, it pays to be
constantly aware of your teammates positions, especially as a
Smuggler Healer. At any point where your group is within 16m of
each other and has sizeable damage on them but no one is in
immediate danger, switch into this mindset. Target one friendly who
is in the center of everyone you want healed, then use KC and KW in
quick succession. If you have trouble targeting or if people are
too spread out, position yourself between everyone and cast these
skills on yourself. As soon as these two skills are on cool down,
switch rotation. Using this rotation mindset will ease a lot of the
burden of healing, because Smugglers simply cant heal everyone
effectively as single target. However, people who are smart know to
unleash AoEs when people are grouped up together, so you cant
linger like this. Use your roll once to position yourself, unleash
healing, and then roll again to safety. This does not cost any
stacks of upper hand, and in fact will probably give you a stack.
However, this is very energy intensive, at about 20-25 energy after
the channel at the high end of your energy pool. Unless you started
this at almost 100% energy, contemplate throwing in a DS for your
energies sake. Emergency Healing: (Uses mainly: KC, UM, KP, EM) If
you see someones health dropping fast, go straight to emergency
healing. This rotation relies on knowing how to cast UM at
precisely the right moment. If you have 2 or 3 stacks of Upper
Hand, burn
them with EM or KP. Once those are gone, your target will have
been given just enough healing to be able to live 2 seconds while
you cast UM. After UM goes off, immediately follow up with either
EM or KP. I recommend EM if you know Upper Hand is going to
refresh, then KP. Otherwise, KP then try to build Upper Hand for
EM. Use KC if you know the target needs healing but wont die, as
that
extra HoT really helps take a weight off. Often, all this time
and attention means you have just let a lot of peoples health
suffer, so now you have to go into group-heavy healing mode. This
style burns energy like a plague-ridden corpse, and it doesnt help
that you will have to play group-healing catch-up AND restack SRM
on everyone because it expired.
Off-DPS There are EXACTLY three situations in PvP where you will
do any mentionable DPS: stopping a cap, fighting a 1v1, and
fighting with another DPS against a SINGLE enemy who needs to be
burnt down during stun lock. These situations are if and only if
scenarios, there are no exceptions, you should not spend even a
modicum of time DPSing as a healer if you can help it. However, for
these rare situations I will make a couple comments.
1. Use your Flash Grenade to stop caps, its an AoE, instant
skill. If thats on cool down, Flurry of Bolts.
2. If you are helping burn a single person in stun lock, use
Back Blast, Grenade, Blaster Whip, Tendon Blast all exactly once,
then use Flurry of Bolts. Thats it.
3. In a 1v1 situation, which you should avoid at all costs, you
still will spend most of your time healing yourself through the
damage the enemy gives you. Use your only DoT in between healing
yourself, Grenades and Back Blast if you can, and a whole lot of cc
(stuns, roots, etc.) to
This style burns energy
like a plague-ridden
corpse
-
give you more healing breathing room. To understand the mindset
of the 1v1, its not about taking down your opponent, its about
outliving them.
4. Never, under any circumstances, use Quick Shot. It isnt worth
the energy, ever. Similarly, Blaster Volley is only useful in a few
situations, like trying to knock a stealther out of stealth if they
just disappeared. Otherwise, it really isnt worth the Upper Hand
cost.
Healer Stats There are two ways to think about gearing a healer,
but Ill save that for latter. First off, Ill tell you what the
common wisdom is in terms of stats, then Ill give some
counterarguments for advanced understanding of stats. Each stat has
a stat it trades off with. If you take more Power, you take less
Crit, and vice versa. If you take more Surge, you take less
Alacrity and vice versa. Technically, Surge and Alacrity compete
with Accuracy as well, but Accuracy is a useless stat for healers
as our heals dont miss. The Cunning and Endurance on our gear is
good as-is and shouldnt be tampered with; only tanks would think
about sacrificing main stat for Endurance. Thus, all stat
considerations will focus on mods, enhancements, and augments. For
clarity, this will focus on the highest gear tier, Dark Reaver,
when referring to exact stat numbers. Plan out in advance which
Dark Reaver pieces you want, then buy the lower tier Exhumed pieces
you need to trade in to buy the Dark Reaver Piece. Accuracy 0.
Zero. Take zero accuracy. None at all. If you have any, you fucked
up somewhere. Healers cant miss a heal, thus we do not need
Accuracy. At all. Power vs Crit In terms of gear, Power and Crit
compete with each other, which means taking more of one means less
than the other. The common wisdom, what the PvE parser gods and the
stat calculators tell you, is to stack Power, all Power, and
nothing but Power. No Critical Rating at all. Surge vs Alacrity
Alacrity speeds up everything; your energy gain, your heal ticks,
your cast times, etc. This means two major things; the percentage
shown in the Alacrity tooltip is the exact percentage healing is
increased by Alacrity, and because everything is faster, your casts
are easier to get off and a bit harder to interrupt. This has
become a favorite of healers. Surge increases the healing done by a
critical heal, and it becomes more useful the higher the Crit
Rating. Because we have should have zero Crit if you take most stat
people at their word, you can perhaps see where Surge rates. You
still have some critical chance though, so about 86 or 172 points
to Surge is sufficient. The difference between the two is 60.71%
crit bonus and 8.02% activation speed or 56% crit bonus and 8.86%
activation speed. As to which is better, the difference in absolute
healing is less than +/- 0.05%. This is such a small difference
most stat calculators cant register the difference, so it comes
down to perceived utility. I like 172 Surge because heftier crits
feel better, but others prefer Alacrity to reduce cast and HoT
times. Either way, you wont notice a real difference.
-
Everything else should be in Alacrity. You have 860 points to
spend in either Alacrity or Surge. With the two options given, you
should either have 86/774 Surge/Alacrity or 172/688
Surge/Alacrity.
Gearing a Power-stacking Healer The first pieces most people buy
are the relics. This is easy, you want Relic of Serendipitous
assault and Relic of Focused Retribution. These increase your power
stat and your primary stat, respectively, as their additional
affect. Since two of the same relics effects cant occur at the same
time, you need them to be different. Since Power is so important
the power relic is obvious. However, Cunning improves both critical
chance and our healing bonus (the same stat power effects) and so
increasing cunning is like a mini power boost. Dont take Critical
Rating relic boost, as the diminishing returns can be as brutal as
the RNG. Also, Ephemeral Mending is inferior because you have no
control over who it lands on and it provides less overall healing
than the bonuses to Cunning and Power will if you are healing
multiple targets. Next, get your set bonuses. You have to buy at
least six pieces of Field Medic gear to get the bonus, and it has
to be out of the seven major gear slots (head, chest, gloves,
bracers, waist, legs, and feet). I suggest skipping over the Field
Medic headgear and getting the Professionals headgear, so that you
can min-max your gear easier latter on. Then, get your weapons,
Field Medic shotgun and blaster. These are the only pieces with
Weapon Power so they are pretty important. Finally, get your
implants and earpiece. You want the Field Medics earpiece, and two
Enforcers implants. At this point, your stats dont look like they
are supposed to; you have to min-max the gear for that. Before
min-maxing, however, trade your low-tier gear for the high-tier
gear. Most people do this by getting your relics, then your
weapons, then the left-side pieces, than the right-side pieces.
This will keep all stat proportions the same, but raise your stats
overall. Remember to save the shells of your low tier gear to trade
in, or else you will have to buy the piece again. Finally, min-max
your gear with the Augments, Mods, and Enhancement pieces. Augments
Be sure that all of your gear is fully augmented. You want Power
augments, and you want 14 of them (1 for each piece of gear). Mods
Find any Critical Rating given by any mods in your gear and replace
them with mods that have Power in them. The mod you want is the
Advanced Artful Mod 33x. Enhancements Look at your Surge-Alacrity
ratio. These stats are in each enhancement, 86 points per
enhancement. If your Surge is too high, switch out one enhancement
that has Surge with one that has Power and Alacrity (Quick Savant
33x).
-
Finally, look for any enhancement with Critical Rating and
switch it out for an enhancement that has the same allocation of
Surge or Alacrity as you are about to switch out. You are now
min-maxed at the highest level of gear.
Critical Theory in Sawbones Gearing: Advanced Stat and Gearing
Principles In academics, a critical theory is a theory which
challenges a dominant theory in commonly held practices. These
theories are not presented because they are necessarily truth or
because they are examples of what to do or not, but because you
gain significant understanding from studying alternative
perspectives. For that reason, I examine Critical Rating as a more
useful stat than it is at first perceived, and explore the effects
and requirements of running additional Critical Rating. The chief
criticism I make of power-maxing healing is that is doesnt take
into account the utility some crit can provide, assuming a perfect
model of continuous, uninterrupted healing and damage that can be
overcome by a maximally efficient healing rotation. Imagine for a
moment you put 300 points into Critical Rating, which necessarily
means you took out 300 points of Power. You just lost 2.25% of your
overall healing, and gained 5% Critical Rating (From 18% to 23%).
Because Cunning increases both Critical Rating and healing bonus,
you can also switch out Power augments for Cunning augments and
maintain some of the lost healing bonus while gaining some crit.
Switch it all out, and you lose 1.35% overall healing and gain 1.4%
crit chance. Overall, thats a loss of 3.6% total healing and a gain
of 6.4% crit chance. Also remember, Surge gains in value as
Critical Rating goes up. Where before, the possible Surge/Alacrity
combinations where 86/774 or 172/686, the new optimal levels are
172/688 or 258/602; again either value is indistinguishable from
the other in terms of gain or loss. Factoring in this new stat
allocation, we actually gain 0.3 total healing, bringing the total
loss of healing down to 3.3% overall. Now, our stats are allocated
thus;
1096 bonus healing
24.55% Crit chance
64.54% more healing on crit
7.15% faster activation speed (GCD is now 1.4 seconds) When we
talk about what stat allocations give you the best healing, I think
its important to understand that we are speaking about 3.3% more or
less healing over all. 3.3% is not going to be what makes or breaks
a healer, even at the highest levels of play, because current meta
revolves around burst DPS. In the long run, a Power[stacking healer
will do more healing than you, but in the short run, a healer with
optimized Critical Rating can heal through burst much better. At
25% crit chance, about every 4 skills activated will have 1 crit,
vs a Power-focused healer who will have only one of every 5. The
crits of the first healer are even more substantial, so there is
even less burden. Of course, the superior non-crits of the second
healer will eventually do more healing if the healer can perfectly
get off heals over a longer period of time, but the additional work
that the second healer needs to do to keep people alive through
burst will necessitate using more skills like UM or KW, which are
easier to interrupt and root you in place, or to burn through cool
downs like Pugnacity trying to deal with the burst more often. This
is further reinforced by the nature of our single target heals,
which gives a massive 20% critical healing bonus to our single
target heals; making EM with a good crit chance a viable way to
keep someone up on the move. Further, with the nature of our HoTs
KWs channel, we make sure our team is having a
-
bunch of little heals going off all the time. Power makes these
stronger, and will lighten your burden considerably; but they arent
anything good burst cant burn through. Lay all your HoTs down and
give them a considerable chance to crit, and they might just give
sizable enough heals to keep people going longer if you cant get to
someone right away. With more Surge, these little heals pack more
of a punch, and with so many going off its hard not to find
something that crits every GCD. I bring this up to make a point as
a corollary; I believe we can no more maximize healing through
stats as healers than DPS can maximize damage through perfect
rotations in PvP; there are simply to many other considerations to
make than what the numbers reflect. This is not to say that people
are wrong to stack Power or that Crit is underrated; its to show
that you are not bound to your stats, your stats are bound to you.
There are some unalterable truths about stats; you need more Power
than Crit, the Surge you need is proportional to your crit chance,
Alacrity speeds everything up and can be read as a base increase to
crit. However, when you know what the perfect healing stats are,
and you know how stats interact, and you know how your skills work,
you can change many different things to achieve different results
to solve different problems. I personally subscribe to the above
gearing philosophy, because its what works for me, my playstyle,
and the problems I encounter. But it is important that people know
that the actual optimized healers are Power stackers, because only
by learning the basic logic can players advance enough to tweak
things to fit their needs; which leads nicely into the
conclusion.
Conclusion Sawbones is a discipline for foresighted and
attentive individuals. Besides being considered the most
underpowered healer, our healing structure requires not only that
we react to damage, but predict it with HoTs and pre-casts. We need
exceptional situational awareness in this respect, and for this
reason we have to have a very ingrained understanding of mechanics.
However, now more than ever we fit the archetype of Underground
Doctor. We heal based on our guile, our reflexes, and our
knowledge; PvP is no match for our street smarts. But most
importantly, everything we are is based on creativity. Never think
that there is only one right answer, dont stop finding your own.
This guide is only that; a guide. Not an instruction booklet. Refer
to it as a source of knowledge, but let your own experience dictate
how you use and interpret the knowledge in here. That is the most
important thing you can learn and why the last chapter covered
something of my own creation, so that you know could know that
there is much more that can be done than exists in this guide;
indeed that might even contradict it. The knowledge contained
within these pages can only carry you so far; its up to you to take
the first step.
Never think that there is only one right answer, dont stop
finding your own.