PvE Healing - Discussion

[Kaladris]

Healing as an Operative – Basics & How To.

1. Why no compedium?
1.1: First of, i do prefer to invest work in numbers from the point at which i can be sure the numbers are reliable.
Although the numbers seem to become more and more reliant, i'd like to fill in numbers
when their are official.

1.2: Secondly, and this is, after the formal, the much more argumentative reason.
The resource system of the IA differs so much from the usual healer-typical mechanics, that it seems to be important to first elaborate the optimal way to heal for your resource system, as it will be the factor that will determine how well we do perform and the only limitation we will be able to manage with our current knowledge. Moreover, this will be a factor that will never change, as better equipment will only give us more healing output, not more energy or reg. ( Actually i do speculate on this point, but it seems to be pointless to create a unique resource system just to treat it the same way as the others and rendering the effort a waste.)
It is also important to point out that for the SI, elaborating how he uses his spells best is to compare different types of numbers, such as healing-per-force-point, healing-per-second, and think about scaling is the best way to get to know how to heal most efficiently.
Our resource system is different, so it is plausible to first take a sharp look at these basics.


2. Energy

2.1: Our resource is called energy. Its maximum is 100 points, its minimum zero.
How much energy we regenerate depends on how much energy we currently have.
The latest numbers i know are from Anubis' posts from 09-15-2011:
"80-100% 5 EP
60-80% 4 EP
40-60% 3 EP
20-40% 2,5 EP
0-20% 2 EP"
We can see right now, as an Operative healer, we will be torn between two directives:
We want to heal as much as possible, which would mean burst heal everyone and run out of energy pretty fast, and having problems getting out of our energy-hole to heal at least a little bit, which would lead to a wipe pretty fast.
On the other hand, we will want to have as much energy as possible all the time, to keep our reg up, giving us the potential to react as good as possible.
The solution will be, just judging from this numbers to maintain a of energy that is right between the extremes, between 20% and 80%.
To ensure this, we will have more tools than just watching our yellow bar and healing about every 5 secs, enhanching our energy-reg, restoring our energy directly and some ways to use HoTs.

2.2: Tools for energy-management
Our first tool for energy management will be:
„"Adrenaline Probe"
Cooldown: 2 min
Summons a droid that helps you recover 50 energy over 3 seconds.“

(I copy & paste shamelessly from the stat spam thread).

It will give us first of all the 50 energy in 3 seconds, and can be skilled to grant us 16 energy instantly on use, which will sum up to 66 energy, or 2/3 of our complete pool.
This is surely the first clear answer to the „spike-damage“ problem, which would be pretty problematic otherwise.
With this skill we can put every bit of healing we can squeeze out into our tank, dropping our energy to zero, activating this skill and continue healing in our „normal routine“.

The second possiblity to increase our reg will be:
„"Stim Boost"
Cooldown: 35 sec
Executes your Tactical Advantage to recover 3 energy every 3 seconds for 45 seconds. Requires and consumes Tactical Advantage. Does not break Stealth.

It is pretty clear that we will want this buff to be up for the most time possible.
The problem about this spell it that it is connected to our second resource, the Tactical Advantage-Buff, which will be talked later on.
It is important to note at this point that this buff will greatly enhance our reg, but will still render us unable to continously spam our heals in the area of 0-40% energy.

The third possibility of gaining some energy benefit is first skilling
„Prognosis:Critical“ and after that the following talent „Patient Studies“.
The combination will increase your crit chance for Diagnostic scan, our 3-second-long channeled heal by 24%, while the crits will refund us with 2 energy.

It is also important to note that our only HoT for one person has to skilled, and could be pretty important to keep our energy level in control.
Furthermore, it is a way of granting us Tactical Advantage – which shall be talked about now.


3. Tactical Advantage

3.1: What is Tactical Advantage?
Tactical Advantage is a buff.
We can have a maximum of two at a time, and a minimum of zero.
This buff could be considered as some type of equivalent of a combo-point-system, except for the fact that it works binary – either you have it and can execute the skills that consume one stack of it, or not.
Moreover, we will be unable to use two stacks at a time to get a better result.

3.2: Why would we want Tactical Advantage?
First of all, we have a talent called „Medical Consult“ that increases our healing by 3% all the time, and additional 6% while Tactical Advantage is up.
It seems cleary that we will want to have at least one stack of Tactical Advantage up all the time to enjoy the benefit of this talent at its maximum.
Furthermore, there are some abilities that consume this buff.
You already know about our Stim-Boost-ability, which increases our energy-reg significantly for 45 seconds, but consumes one stack of Tactical Advantage.

The other two abilities that consume Tactical Advantage are our two „Oh-Shit- Buttons“,
Surgical Probe, which needs to be skilled an can be improved to re-grant the buff on targets below 30% health.
And Kolto Infusion, which need just 20 energy and has a cast time of just 1,5 seconds.

To sum that up, we need Tactical Advantage for three things:
First, passivly increasing our overall healing power by 6%.
Second, to grant us improved energy reg with Stim Boost, giving us more flexibility, which we will surely need.
Third, to enable us to use our „Oh-Shit-Buttons“.
Judging from this, we will be happy to have at least one stack of Tactical Advantage up all the time, and do the best to get it back as soon as possible.

3.3: Cool, but how do i get this handy buff?
At the start, we will be granted Tactical Advantage whenever we kill an opponent or use shiv, a melee skill.
To make Tactical Advantage manageable as a healer, we will need to skill „Incivise Action“, which decreases the casting time of Kolto Injection and gives a 100% chance to grant Tactical Advantage.
Furthermore, we can skill Kolto Probe, our single-target-hot and improve it to having a 10% chance on every tick to grant Tactical Advantage.
It seems a good idea to keep Kolto Probe up on the tank the whole time anyway, so this seems to be pretty handy.

Summing up once more:
We will get Tactical Advantage just by healing in our normal routine.
We can safely assume that we will probably have an overflow of it.



3.4: So how do i use this overall the best?
As already stated, we will want to have the buff up all the time, which makes the second stack interesting as an „all time-use-pool“, so you will want to use your second stack as fast and efficiently as possible.
Your first priority should be to keep your Stim Boost up all the time.
If your Stim Boost still has some time till it fades, it seems to be the best idea to use your second Tactical Advantage to cast Kolto Infusion, the probably more efficient and faster heal as the next spell each time you hit your TA-cap, and recarge it after t hat with either the proc of Kolto Probe, of with a manual cast of Kolto Injection, and use your second Tactical Advantage once more.



I hope to get some feedback, questions and everything else – just post it.

So long,
Kaladris

[Pred]

Nice post

I assumed looking at the tree that the IA is the hots maestro. An IA raid healing via Kolto Probe would have multiple tick chances of proccing TA. If this is too costly to mass spam, then maybe focusing on both, or all 3 tanks, whatever the case may be, in this fashion would prove very efficient. If focusing solely on the 2-3 tanks (which is where WoW druids excellent who were HoTers) you will be able to make use of supplement your standard healing rotation with Surgical Probes whenever things get scary.

As for the resource, I think its a very interesting mechanic but I worry that because it technically punishes poor resource budgeting/management that weak players will cry, and it will become unpopular.

[kashya]

I've been toying around with this myself in the beta so far. What I've found is that I really dislike diagnostic scan even as a filler skill. It has no energy cost but its a 3 second channel that barely heals 1/4 of a basic attack over that time frame (pretty much if someone needs a bit of healing, and you'd rather not shoot the monster). resource management is key to successful healing, as I think it will be for all of the healing classes in the game. Efficiency is very important as it is very easy to accidentally over heal and burn through your energy putting your recharge into the lower break points. I've haven't noticed any shortage of having TA while steady healing. Though I sometimes like to play offensive healer at times (just ask kore) I shiv every now and then if no one is in desperate need of healing and I can run in. Keeping Stim boost active is important since as stated above it greatly increases energy regain. However you want to activate this ASAP as it helps keep you in that higher energy regen bracket longer. I only just got kolto probe last night and I haven't had a chance to use it in a flash point yet. At this time I also can not comment on the Top tier AoE healing probe. When I get the time to test these I will add further information about my experiences with them.

[Tactician]

Yeah, I see what they're hinting at with Diagnostic Scan being the "autoattack" of healers, but the amount it heals is really underwhelming. If they buffed the energy restore on crit from 1/2 to 2/4 I think that might actually make it something worthwhile to throw out if you accidentally use too much energy and land in the lower regen bracket, and Adrenaline probe and the like are down.

[kashya]

(11-11-2011 05:22 AM)Tactician Wrote:  Yeah, I see what they're hinting at with Diagnostic Scan being the "autoattack" of healers, but the amount it heals is really underwhelming. If they buffed the energy restore on crit from 1/2 to 2/4 I think that might actually make it something worthwhile to throw out if you accidentally use too much energy and land in the lower regen bracket, and Adrenaline probe and the like are down.

I can understand that reasoning, unfortunately you have to get to at least level 25 (26 to finish the talent) before you can start getting energy back from crits which when you learn the skill in the early game (level 12 or 13 if I recall) when people are first learning how to heal. Having this skill that does almost nothing until it is talented is not very helpful. (I pointed this out during one of my what are you doing now surveys while playing maybe a dev will ask me about it ) so you either learn to figure a way around the energy costs of skills or become better at knowing how much your heals do to help prevent over healing. I feel that healing is going to be much more reactive then predictive as an agent, though my opinion on that may change as I level and go through more content. We'll have to see if the skill changes as we get closer to launch.

[Tactician]

Yeah for sure. It sucks that you get the skill that early but don't get the talents to make it a little less useless until so much later.

[Zubrowsky]

Thanks for the insightful post.

I'd like to play a healing-capable class and I wanted to know if, af this stage of the beta, there are already distinct healing styles between mercenary, sorceress and operative. I imagine all three classes will have similar healing potential and some tools in common.

From what I've read so far, the sorceress seems to be a straightforward all-purpose healer à la WoW priest and the operative seems based around HoTs, resource and buff management (tactical advantage). I have no clue about healing as a mercenary.

Feel free to redirect me to an existing answer.
Thanks in advance.

[Pred]

Zub - I think the general WoW comparisons are as follows

Druid/IA - HoTs maestro with stealth
Priest/Sorcerer - Shield, big heal, small heal
Shaman/BH - earth shield, big heal nukes

[Falkenherz]

I am not beta testing and am very very grateful for all this wonderful information. I don´t understand the difference between the talented Surgical Probe and the Kolto Injection. My guess is that the former is less effective than the latter, else you would always use the former to use up one charge of tactical advantage. Also, the 31 area heal Nanotech doesn´t seem so terrible important. 10 Meters range will be rarely covered, as the fights seem to include a lot of movement and the hot seems to be very low.

[Hybris]

(11-17-2011 12:04 AM)Falkenherz Wrote:  I am not beta testing and am very very grateful for all this wonderful information. I don´t understand the difference between the talented Surgical Probe and the Kolto Injection. My guess is that the former is less effective than the latter, else you would always use the former to use up one charge of tactical advantage. Also, the 31 area heal Nanotech doesn´t seem so terrible important. 10 Meters range will be rarely covered, as the fights seem to include a lot of movement and the hot seems to be very low.

The importance of Surgical Probe stems from its instant cast, so one could use it while on the move. Still, I agree that it doesn't seem terribly important, especially in a PvE context where if your tanks are doing their job you should be free to cast heals with a build time.

That being said, I can see it being important when one of your tanks or other group mate eats a cleave and is dangerously low on health. In that scenario, an instant cast heal may be the difference between life and death. So basically, I see it as an emergency heal to bring someone back from the brink, followed by an Injection or some HoT's once imminent death is averted.