1.2 RN speculation

[Agenteusa]

Just to contribute:

I think that DoT´s are nothing special tbh. I mean in a perfect world they would be if you take into account that every raid member avoids taking random damage and such but in the real world I use them more to proc TA´s than to heal.

I´m not even going to talk about Recuperative Nanotech since I consider it to be weak (I can´t drop it though since we don´t have a real aoe healer in the guild) specially for a endtier ability.

So yeah, I agree we´re more of a tank healer than anything else but I still find us to be gimped (even after they fixed medical teraphy). Not because we can´t heal fine, that we can, but so do the other classes and even better imo (also having more survivability).

I can tell you that healing Soa HM with Merc/Operative is clearly not the way to go unless you can deal with very low health bars cause you really can´t control who is going to take dmg and when specially since folks seem to go berserk when LB´s come out and hot´s won´t save them there.

So yes, I would like to see dots be a more reliable form of healing. If they would last longer for instance they might be more helpful but imo there´s no way you can think about redotting every 18 secs and wasting GCD´s while doing it.

[Smokeskin]

If you can hit multiple targets with it, RN is great.

The problem with KP is that it is only really good when you refresh stacks close to the HoT ending (which with the current UI is very difficult to manage on several targets). Other than that, it is only a heal-on-move ability.

[meleth]

According to the Q&A from last week RN will be changed from a hot to a 'frontloaded' aoe heal. As far as healing soa goes, i have no problem with it. The biggest problem with our heals compared to sorc is the energy cost and the way our regen works imo.

From the Q&A http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-feb-17th-2012
'As for Scoundrels having no tools for short burst healing, we don’t agree with that assessment. A scoundrel, for example, is capable of producing rather significant burst healing output by using Upper Hand gained from Underworld Medicine or Kolto Injection to trigger an instant Emergency Medpack or Surgical probe when needed. That said, we certainly think there’s room for improvements (and our upcoming Game Update 1.2 has a sizeable chunk of such improvements). For example, we are shifting the healing created by the Kolto Cloud ability to be front loaded in 1.2 to allow it to act as an emergency Area of Effect healing tool.

Finally, the perception of a specific class being not desirable can also be affected by the desirability of other classes. For example, Sage/Inquisitor healers are currently able to exceed our intended healing performance at times by affecting multiple heals with the same Conveyance/Force Bending buff. Game Update 1.2 will remove the ability to do so.'

[Mycroft]

Frontload just means that it will start with a healing tick immediatly instead of after 3s as it is right now.
It still is vastly inferior in both output and unintelligent targeting (Target+closest 3 instead of target + the 3 guys with the lowest HP in the area) compared to the Sorc AE Heal

(02-28-2012 09:52 PM)meleth Wrote:  ..that George Quote i refuse to repeat..

there's quite some outrage about that quote on swtor.com and that is fully justified.
George refuses to admit that we are lacking basic functionality as well as survivability options and actualy calls the filler ability "burst heal potential" when it is merely a bandaid that you can use only after our long-cast-time ability or after proccing a 2nd TA through KP.
basicly telling us L2P does really show how qualified he is for comunicating with his playerbase (and not the freaking press)

[Agenteusa]

(02-28-2012 09:52 PM)meleth Wrote:  According to the Q&A from last week RN will be changed from a hot to a 'frontloaded' aoe heal. As far as healing soa goes, i have no problem with it. The biggest problem with our heals compared to sorc is the energy cost and the way our regen works imo.

The cone heal is a nice change provided it affects all targets in the cone.

Energy management is something I can control. Members screwing up mechanics I can´t if you know what I mean I also don´t have problems healing Soa (although it´s easier if you bring a sorc along) but it heavily depends on how the group as a whole behaves.

The thing is I find operatives don´t have an "oh crap" button if someone for instance doesn´t notice a lightning ball and blows it up in the middle of the raid.

I mean you have for single target , 2 targets at most but the SP´s dont heal for that much unless they crit and that´s where RN should come in. As it stands like I said the healing takes way too long to kick in into interesting numbers not mentioning you wont be able to KI right after or you will lose energy efficiency.

I also agree we have burst heals, that was never the point.

Honestly it seems BW wanted us to use alacrity (judging from the amount of it present in rakata gear) but it feels it would benefit sorcs much more since they are the ones who dont need to manage energy and can spam heal for quite some time. It´s not that alacrity is bad but the other stats are much better.

[meleth]

(02-28-2012 10:18 PM)Mycroft Wrote:  Frontload just means that it will start with a healing tick immediatly instead of after 3s as it is right now.
It still is vastly inferior in both output and unintelligent targeting (Target+closest 3 instead of target + the 3 guys with the lowest HP in the area) compared to the Sorc AE Heal

Man i thougt he meant that it would heal for all at once. Then i would consider it to be on pair with the sorc aoe heals since ours an insta, if that's the only change then it still suck.

[Pashtun]

(02-28-2012 10:18 PM)Mycroft Wrote:  Frontload just means that it will start with a healing tick immediatly instead of after 3s as it is right now.
It still is vastly inferior in both output and unintelligent targeting (Target+closest 3 instead of target + the 3 guys with the lowest HP in the area) compared to the Sorc AE Heal

(02-28-2012 09:52 PM)meleth Wrote:  ..that George Quote i refuse to repeat..

there's quite some outrage about that quote on swtor.com and that is fully justified.
George refuses to admit that we are lacking basic functionality as well as survivability options and actualy calls the filler ability "burst heal potential" when it is merely a bandaid that you can use only after our long-cast-time ability or after proccing a 2nd TA through KP.
basicly telling us L2P does really show how qualified he is for comunicating with his playerbase (and not the freaking press)

Can you please explain why you think frontload means it will start to tick immediatly instead of after 3 seconds? I have not seen a dev post that made this explicit. When I read the Dev comment, I read it as it will be a burst instant heal, I did not come to the same conclusion as you did. Did I miss a dev comment that further clarified how the frontload would work or did you just read his comment differently?

[Smokeskin]

It just comes down to different interpretations I think. I read it as it'll be a "heals your target for x, and for another y over z seconds" type of thing, but its just guessing.

[Pashtun]

(02-29-2012 08:32 AM)Smokeskin Wrote:  It just comes down to different interpretations I think. I read it as it'll be a "heals your target for x, and for another y over z seconds" type of thing, but its just guessing.

OK, it seems like it was posted as a fact, thats why I was wondering if their was another dev quote related to the AoE operative heal changes.

[Mycroft]

(02-29-2012 09:35 AM)Pashtun Wrote:  

(02-29-2012 08:32 AM)Smokeskin Wrote:  It just comes down to different interpretations I think. I read it as it'll be a "heals your target for x, and for another y over z seconds" type of thing, but its just guessing.

OK, it seems like it was posted as a fact, thats why I was wondering if their was another dev quote related to the AoE operative heal changes.

technically it can mean either. don't be disappointed if it turns out to be the lesser.
after 16 years of experience comunicating with game design and PR staff I find it less frustrating to expect the worst possible interpretion, vocalise that that's not good enough and let them suprise me how far up the ladder they actualy go.