f13.net

So to start with, I'm going to talk mostly about healing and the base mechanics.

The least documented/explained mechanic last time I played was Upper Hand/Tactical Advantage. Basically, you use your melee attack of doom to proc this little buff, and you spend it on other things that consume it. You can only have 2, and they only last about 10 seconds. So it's very much a gain/spend quickly mechanic. As a sawbones/healer spec you gain this via your slow casting normal heal after spending your first talents.

Mostly, the class tempts you with chaining low cooldown skills and a high energy bar. DO NOT BE TEMPTED. The class is actually about a very measured approach with a lot of filler to pace your spending. For dps specs this is mostly special attack/auto attack, repeat. For healers, it's Big Heal/Diagnostic Scan when not big healing. About halfway down the tree Diagnostic scan gets a hilarious crit rate buff and restores energy when it crits. It's a rest period filler. Anything you can do to increase your energy regen lets you do more without dipping below 60% energy. If you go below 60%, drop cooldowns to get above that, because your regen TANKS.

I highly recommend noticing that Pugnacity (costs an upper hand, but provides energy regen for 30s) has a 20s cooldown, so you can have this up permanently and should.

Also: smuggler stun, best stun.

So here's a question:  For the abilities that "require and consume Upper Hand", say you've accumulated 2, does the ability use 2 or does it just use 1, leaving you with 1 still available?

Uses 1. What I have seen is that the 10s stack expiration is.. less than forgiving. If you don't burn them as you get them, the entire stack tends to go poof.

If Ingmar's correct in the other thread that it's like LOTRO's Champion Fervour then I understand. Thank the maker for always playing DPS classes up until now! :grin:

Talent question: in the Sawbones tier 1 is a Cunning boost talent. Is it worth putting all 3 points to get a 9% bonus in it or just the 1 and putting 2 points Anatomy Lessons (the energy reduction for Vital shot, dirty kick etc)?

I can't see why you'd care about the energy reductions if you were going pure healer (they're pretty much all damage skills, iirc), but for leveling it might be fine. That talent struck me as the "dps spec dipping over here" talent for the tier.

Depends on the ability I think, being able to drop your DoT in a fight without really spoiling your heal/regen balance is keen.

Playing this from the Operative side.  Having been the healer for every group I've been in thus far, and only being 21, my thoughts:

- Diagnostic scan is a stupid skill unless you talent it.  Without those mid-medical talents, I'm better off just giving someone a Med pack than casting that POS skill.

- The stim-pack is a must have buff up at all times. 

- Don't bother with cover when healing.  Every time I do, I can't cast shit.  I'm hoping this is just a bug, but if not, why not roll a BH instead?  They get heavy armor and are supposed to be standing out in the open

- While a non-medical operative will get some baseline heals, do not assume that they're gonna save you, let alone carry a group in a flashpoint.

Diagnostic Scan is just your auto-attack heal until you pick up Patient Studies.  On the talent side, you can do a lot with just the 2 points in Incisive Action.  The other points up until you have Patient Studies/Medical Engineering aren't fantastic, although if you can get good at rolling Kolto Probe it's pretty nice.

I can heal from Cover just fine, but unless I have aggro from ranged mobs and can find natural cover, there's no point to it.  I may as well be in melee doing some damage and keeping up TAs if there's no big need for healing.

So I'm a little fuzzy on Diagnostic scan. I guess it's for healing when completely empty or needing to get out of the hole energy wise. But once you pick up Emergency Medkit/Surgical Probe it seems completely pointless.

You basically wind up rolling around in Upper Hand charges when healing due to HoTs frequently granting them and your main cast heal always granting them. So you can happily burn them away on free instant heals, or use Underworld Medicine + Medkit as a giant heal combo. Basically, my energy management problems went poof, and Kolto pack left my bars for good. I'm suspecting now that Kolto Pack is really an oh shit ability for every other spec scoundrel. It's fast and inefficient, but not that much faster than a talented Underworld Medicine.

Some debate in my guild as to the mechanics of Scoudrel. Couple of guys have rerolled to Gunslinger because they don't want to play rogue/burglar like they have been doing but it seems to me that for the most part, stealth isn't that necessary. Only one ability needs stealth (Shoot First/Hidden Strike) and you don't get that until level 36 so presumably, up until that point, stealth isn't really required if you're grouping.

Or have I totally missed the point as usual?  :awesome_for_real:

Stealth is a cute perk, from a pve standpoint. It's abusive as shit to skip time consuming content (kill 15 fozzles for the bonus! Now stealth past the next 48 of them between you and the objective.) It's completely pointless to the actual dps/healing gameplay. It's really awesome in pvp to avoid/start fights per every stealth game.

SpaceVanish is also crazy useful. But from a sheer "how does this play" standpoint, you have one positional attack, everything else doesn't matter. You have one buff to keep up, with a 45s duration/35s cooldown that must always be up.

That there is definitely a useful bit of information that I failed to utilise last night.

Pugnacity/WhateverIAsHave is a 20% increase to your energy regen, which is huge. It should basically be up all day long, every day. I find it's the difference between my opening cycle taking me to half energy and into the regen bad touch zone, and being completely unable to spend energy fast enough. Though admittedly, I pretend Quick Shot has a cooldown, because spamming that is BAD.

My fakedps rotation as a medic is keep my DoT up. Pistol Whip, Shotgun, Quick Shot, autoattack once or twice, repeat when pistol whip is back up.

What the hell is autoattack?  :why_so_serious:

Whatever that silly "just shoot them" button is!

It actually does a surprising amount of damage. I like it, since it's on the GCD they seem to be happy to make it actually hit for 100-200 for me.

Past 30, yes, as a healer it's replaced by KoltoSurgical Probe/Emergency Medpac.

Took my untrained, level 13 noob Sawbones into a couple of PvP matches last night.

It was a total disaster of the absolute and unmitigated kind. It didn't help that I got targeted by one particular Sith Marauder (called Khal'Drogo) and my team just stood and watched to see how much I squealed like a stuck pig.  :why_so_serious:

PvP tips for a Sawbones would be welcome (if they're anything other than "Don't do PvP!")

It will get A LOT better as you level up and get your instant heals.  Hardcasting heals in pvp is huge nono.  Once you get your hot traited to give TA, and the instant heal that regens TA when you are below 30% you will be much more difficult to kill.

What is the difference between "Crouch" and "Take Cover"? They seem redundant. Both say they will take cover if it is available, or crouch if cover is not available.

From a users perspective, there's effectively no difference at all but from a system perspective, Take Cover gives a defense benefit from being behind an object that Crouch doesn't because you're unconcealed in an open area.

That's my take on it anyway.

Yea, i'm just wondering if there is ever a reason to use Crouch, since Take Cover makes you Crouch if there is no cover to be had.

I prefer crouch, just due to take cover moving you into odd places if you just want to use the cover skills.

But I'm a scoundrel, and we don't give half a fuck about cover anyways (as much fun as the bomb and rapid shots skills are, they're terrible from an efficiency standpoint for us)

Only issue I have had with cover, is sometimes, even though I know there is a cover spot, he won't go in it. That and I am confused as to why some are green arrows that I can't get to change to the player outline.

Green arrow = Is a cover spot that you 'can' go to if you move there and hit the Take Cover button, and will provide said coverage.  You have to move your ass to that spot yourself.

Green outline = Is a cover spot you will auto-move to if you hit Take Cover.

If you just manually hit crouch/cover next to a cover object I find that you get the bonuses anyways (green shield icons for LOS'd targets)

My issue with it is that at certain angles channeled abilities seem to fail randomly. And I just can't have my heals randomly not work halfway through the cast.

Same here.  I'm hoping it's a bug and not intentional.

I think what happens when it fails is if the ground you're standing on when behind cover is uneven, it can cause you to move when the animation of the ability starts, which then interrupts said ability.

Finally, working physics.

Playing as a DPS Operative, I'm finding it exceedingly clunky.  I have stealth, but no stealth opener.  My non-cooldown ability is a blaster shot, and my hand-to-hand ability is on a (too long) cooldown... everything at these early levels seems to be on cooldown, as If I am some burst monster that I clearly am not.  Cover was important for the first 10 levels, now it is useless, but some of my abilities still require it.  My suspicion is that the early Operative clunkiness is just a casualty of needing to balance end-game abilities plus needing to give healing Ops some buttons too... and in the long run when we're all 50, the poor gameplay/animations of 10-2x will all be forgotten.  But until then, they really should consider parceling out an extra ability or two to make up for the fact that 2 of the first 3 heals are just not useful to me in this role (and 2 early abilities rely on a mechanic (cover) that is negated by my role mechanic (stealth)).

This is the first class where I've felt that my AC choice needs a do-over.

Tell me there is a magic level where my abilities "click" with my role?  I _want_ to believe.

There is.  You do eventually get a stealth opener, along with some other neat tricks.  Don't give up on the cover mechanic...I'm sure there will be those fights where you'll need to duck out of the fire, and we're the only class that can do that with the push of a button.

The transition to ACs is still very clunky for some classes.  Operatives and Assassins are the ones with the most trouble I have noticed.

Seriously, those first eight to ten levels as an Assassin were just painful, and made even more so in groups.

I think it clicks a little earlier, maybe ~16 when you get Carbine Burst, but I can see how there isn't enough of an emphasis on Cover being mostly vestigial as soon as you pick Operative.  Part of that might be that Skirmisher (+15% damage on Overload Shot) is just a passive boost versus just getting a whole new shot.

You basically lose cover as a common mechanic (slightly less as a healer, but completely as a DPS scoundrel/operative)

Mostly because you need to be in there using your 4m range attacks, and not much is going to come over and play with you in cover. The transition is odd (from level 1, the only way you can actually do damage is in cover), but you essentially replace the high damage cover attack with Quick Shot or it's operative counterpart as your filler instant attack. Your from stealth opener is, meh? I mean, it's really good, but in solo pve you won't really give a shit about it imo. Without a distract type ability, it actually turns into a pain to use effectively in a lot of situations where you can't sap/ambush something since the mobs tend to be placed with their backs towards a wall often.

I use spacebackstab whenever possible, but since I usually tank when soloing I get more mileage out of pistol whip, vital shot, and quick shot.

Right... that's the nub of the problem... 5 abilities are mostly negated, and stealth is more useful as a navigational device than a combat mechanic.  I find myself with very few options in combat and the added bonus of simultaneously being resource starved at level 12 - such that my first "Yay:Tactical Action" ability is...hmmn...an energy boost that almost requires 100% up-time.

As Lantyssa says, the transition for Operative is terrible; I would add that it is bad in ways that should been seen miles away and likely would be fixed by replacing or morphing Snipe/Explosive Probe into abilities Operatives could use without cover (or, more creatively, make Cover in general more interactive with the Operative).

I'm sure they are extremely concerned about this and have long, bitter, tearful debates each and every time they gather in the vault for the daily money massage.

It happens with both of the classes with really different ACs. Sages and Smugglers both have an odd transition if you pick the AC that isn't like the base class, because you are basically thrown to the wolves at 10 and told to figure it out. Hell, tactical advantage isn't explained at ALL in the course of gameplay that I've seen. It's just explained in a tooltip for something you get passively when picking your AC up.

It didn't really bug me much, but that's because I found kick to the nuts/shotgun to the head to be entirely too hilarious a combo to care about the rest of it.

With regards Sages, I beg to differ.  Transition is exactly the right word... emphasis from melee to force is quite smooth, everything I did from 1-10 is done better from 10+. 

Consular -> sage is just More Range, More Force.

Consular -> shadow seems a bit stranger.

You do replace Snipe at 10 though.  I don't know how much we need a replacement for Explosive Probe now considering we can use Shiv normally.

I think having both different ranges and weapons animation-wise IA is doomed to a bit of clunkiness.  The same sort of dynamic between Snipe and Overload Shot happens with Headshot and Eviscerate.

Yes, this is what I was talking about, just in Inquisitor -> Assassin terms.

It's clunky as hell, and the Shadow/Assassin is left with sub-par 1-10 skills that the Sorcerer/Consular gets an immediate upgrade to.  They need to transform or be upgraded in some way, too.

This. I deliberately screw up my rotation (what there is of it) any time there's a vague possibility of being able to kill a mob with either NutKick or Back Blast. It never gets old.

I was thinking about taking my agent through scoundrel - lethality. Problem I'm seeing is that battles are generally over faster than dots can be useful. Anyone having luck with dot spec?

Not sure about a pure DoT spec, but I can say that post 30 fights last long enough for my vital shot to wear off twice against anything meaner than weak trash. Before 30, nothing lasted more than 10 seconds ever.

So, does every Smuggler giggle when Slow-release Medpac procs Upper Hand, or is it just because I'm playing a Twi'lek female?  :ye_gods:

I'm only 25 with 1 point in the Talent Skill so it's not too annoying yet, but I'm picturing it with a 30% proc chance for the rest of my career and can't help feeling it's going to eventually end up getting on my nerves.

Edit: and do Operatives do anything similar? Was playing one and enjoying it until I had to make the Smuggler to play with a friend, but if I'm stuck listening to giggles it may drive me back to the dark side.

No no, the good/evil laugh occurs whenever you get an Upper Hand/Tac Adv.

Really?  :oh_i_see: Can't believe I never noticed it before. It must have been drowned out by the noise of me smacking them in the back of the head with my blaster and has nothing at all to do with the fact that I'm getting old and daft(er).

I don't know if it happens when you gain ANY Tactical Advantage, I've never heard it on Shiv or Hidden Strike, but "the giggle" definitely occurs when you proc one off of Kolto Probe or Laceration.  (Don't know if it did the same thing with Surgical Probe, didn't have it for long.)

That's probably the kicker then.  Shiv and Hidden Strike are 'given' TAs; you know you'll get one when you use the ability.  The laugh is for the HoT/DoT procs to let you know "Hey, you got a TA/UH.  Go fuck up/mend up someone's day."

Is Sawbones DPS really bad or is it just me being really bad?

This is for solo play before some smartarse makes a comment about being a heal spec.

As the IA mirror, I would say that it's not bad, you just have to play differently.

Like we've been talking about in the other thread, there are some skills that you won't/shouldn't use.  The way I play my Operative solo is one that pretends to be Lethality spec.

- I run in with my companion guns blazing and keeping my grenade on cooldown.
- Once I'm in range, I keep Shiv and Backstab on cooldown.
- Use Flashbang and Debilitate to get those Backstabs in if your comp. isn't focusing on them.
- Keep Eviscerate on cooldown.
- Keep Stim Pack up.
- Keep Kolto Probes on you and your comp.  Once it's speced to generate TAs on tics, you can use Carbine Bursts to lay waste to everything a lot more frequently.

Sawbones DPS seems...ok...to me. But basically that's compensated for by the fact that you don't have to do a huge amount of the content. The stealth mechanic, thank the maker, is actually functional in this game big-time, unlike in WoW, where Blizzard really doesn't want you to skip content. If you had an all-stealth instance team, something that's actually possible, you could skip a ton of trash. More importantly in solo play, there are many quests where I don't have to fight a damn thing, which is immersive (e.g., the quest story only makes sense if it's not me killing half the Imperial forces in the galaxy) and efficient. I also can get a fuckton of nodes that other people would have to fight through crap to get at.

Note on skipping trash pulls: Fordel was apparently level 50 before hitting the last planet. I dinged 50 on my last quest on said planet with my scoundrel.

Trash provides a huge chunk of your XP, as much as I like skipping it.

As for sawbones DPS: It's not terrible, but it's a lot slower than a real DPS spec. However, it's unkillable. So I run with a DPS companion that puts my hardest hitting abilities to shame. Shoot first crit for 1.7k! Oh look, my companion's spammy damage attack crit for 2.3 ><

Sawbones dps is ok but don't use your tank companion except you want to solo champions mobs.
 Use your dps companion e.g. Risha with the aoe powers and have fun.

I did skip every bonus objective on my way to 50 except I got a multistage one.
We have stealth use it, prefer with the +3 points in Sneaky. As a sawbones you have the option to use your hot/group hot and
emergency medpac and just run past the mobs. Use Disappearing Act if you take to much dmg. :P

I'm on Belsavis at level 43.5, just beginning it, and that's with skipping trash in a lot of cases. As long as you actually do the quests, and do bonuses when they pay off, it's not really a problem. If greens were more useful or needed, I'd probably kill more trash just looking for green drops.

Most purple drops I've seen coem from random trash mobs.

There seems to be a select number of different blue/purple/orange world drops from trash on each world. I spend a bunch of time grinding different trash groups on DK trying to work out whether Op sucked, or I was just doing it wrong (a bit of both), and got 2-3 of each of about 9 items, orange saber, purple shield, purple gen, some blue gear. And a pile of greens/grays.

Saw the same thing on Balmorra with my Jugg doing the same thing.

Been playing an Op for the last week and now I'm level 24.

Doing Nar Shadaa now and playing concealment specced and I've essentially gotten everything up to the third tier in the tree.  I'm thinking that instead of going up even more, than I should go up and get the HOT in the Medicine tree.

In any case, I'm a wrecking machine and shit just dies, how did everyone else level their Op, build wise?

I leveled as a healer until about 40, but then I switched to Concealment once the grouping opportunities thinned out.

As for stealth, I still use it to get around most groups but I do a test pack or check Torhead to see if there are any bonuses attached to mission I'm doing.  (I think the only bonus I left undone knowing about it was my last Chapter 2 story mission, just couldn't find the mobs for it.)

I got 50 doing the Voss Bonus and some of Corellia, but I wound up skipping Quesh and Hoth before then just to get my story moving.

As a Sawbones Scoundrel I found I could quite happily steamroller my way up to and through Nar Shaddaa although I got to 25 soon after reaching the planet (and after skipping most of Taris). I only did my story quests on Tatooine and have stareted Alderaan at level 27 (just 28 last night). I'm no longer steamrolling (but I may be under levelled).

As a fully specced 43 sawbones, I'm not having any trouble with content now. Essentially on boss + 2 normal fights, I just open with a stun, get Risha or Akaavi loaded up with DOT heals, grenade and quickshot the flunkies and let the companion tank. That usually gives me enough time to then start healing the companion when the flunkies are down. I can keep them up through almost anything (it's actually good practice for my healing/energy regen rotation) and when the boss is at about 1/3 health I can usually switch to dps and get it down quick.

World PvP it's basically a rogue thing in a 1-on-1 fight. Tranq the companion, Shoot First the player, crotch-kick 'em and it's pretty much all over already. Haven't done enough warzones to really evaluate how to do stuff there, but the healing AOE once I get it should help a lot.