These aren't the final patch notes, but there sure is a lot of it!

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=363056

After reading the notes, I hate/love it. The changes to Gunslinger, particularly the Sharpshooter tree is awesome! I feel it is a nice buff for Sharpshooter fans. Don't get me started on the Sage changes though. The Seer tree is just completely mangled. Conveyance was fixed, but the buff was changed to be pretty stupid.

Quote :

Conveyance no longer unintentionally allows its buff to be applied to more than one healing ability. Its effects have been slightly redesigned. It now increases the critical chance of Benevolence by 60% and reduces the Force cost of Deliverance by 30%.

They are essentially forcing Seers to rely on Benevolence instead of using it has a maintenance heal. Removing the cast time buff on Deliverance REALLY bugs me though. I had no problem with its Force Cost, and there is no reason to reduce it since by the time you can cast a second your force will mostly likely have already compensated for it.

TL;DR Expect to see me on Gooey a lot more.

Healing in this game was already really shit.

4 heals is just silly. No where near enough. I recently started playing wow, all I can say is priest healing is infinitely more interesting than sage healing.

The last time i used benevolance was level 10, or whatever level i got deliverance at.

Only visual changes to shadows: lol

Sorcerer/sage: Yeah that's just BS. That 2.5seconds is way too long. I mean the only times I have run out of force are after a long time of combat during pvp and during the second Foundry boss because we used a companion to tank. Force isn't the problem, cast time is.
"Force Surge no longer removes the health cost from Consumption." : goodbye sorc healing, hello dps! Guess Beta will be happy that I can perfectly run HM FP with him now since at least he got buffed.

Commando:
gunnery: More full-auto, less grav round. not too bad though
healing: nerfed as much as sorcerer/sage. reduced crit chance(which commando healing relies on), reduced cost reduction of medical probe (which is basic rotation: advanced med -> med), reduced supercharge cells and reduced increased healing from kolto bomb. Really BW? Is smuggler/IA your favourite class or what?

Amorphic wrote:

Healing in this game was already really shit.

4 heals is just silly. No where near enough. I recently started playing wow, all I can say is priest healing is infinitely more interesting than sage healing.

The last time i used benevolance was level 10, or whatever level i got deliverance at.

Yep never used Dark Heal past level 10 either. Now they force you to use it meaning you'll use up a lot more force because Dark Infusion is a lot better heal/force cost.
Seeing as how they also nerfed consumption this means that Sage/sorc healers will run out of force b
efore half the fight is over. gg BW

Bioware wrote:

Lockouts have been removed from Hard Mode Flashpoints.

Pinkie Pie approved

Bioware wrote:

You will no longer lose access to a Flashpoint phase immediately after defeating the final boss. Access is removed upon completing the [FLASHPOINT] mission.

At least solves the FE problem where you're fucked if you fall in the pit on Malgus.

Bioware wrote:

Mentor's claw previously targeted the group's healer more than intended. It now focuses on its initial target.

At least something positive for non IA healers.

Bioware wrote:

The health of KR-82 Expulser's probe droids has been increased significantly.

Guess they decided to make players NEVER fight it again rather than almost never.

Bioware wrote:

Krel Thak's enrage timer has been increased to 2.5 minutes in Hard Mode.

Maybe he's possible with an average team now...

Bioware wrote:

G4-B3's health has been increased in 8- and 16-player Hard Modes.

He might have been a bit easy...

Bioware wrote:

Loot drops from endgame activities, such as Operations and Flashpoints, now take group composition into account.

No lockout + that = lol full columi in a day.

Bioware wrote:

PvP vendors now sell the Recruit set, a new entry-level PvP set (for level 50 players), for credits.
Battlemaster PvP vendors now sell Battlemaster gear pieces for Warzone Commendations.
The Warzone Commendation cap has been increased to 2000 (up from 1000).
The Warzone reward medal cap has been increased to 8.

Nice to see that new players can be useful in pvp now. And that you don't need a crapload of commendations for Battlemaster weapons (aka 3 battlemaster comms = 12k warzone comms)
And lol warzone cap increase right when I don't need it anymore cause my inq is nearly 50.
And then players started playing for medals again...

Bioware wrote:

Novare Coast

Civil War style which will be a lot better seeing as how once your team is winning you can no longer say: "let's just defend this last one and we'll win".

Bioware wrote:

The Spaceport section of Coruscant can now be explored correctly.

Oh so it was a bug that I couldn't complete my map there.

Bioware wrote:

The Jawa Balloon on Tatooine no longer occasionally disappears from underneath players.

Finally I can do it on my inq lol.

Consulsion: Everything but some Class changes and the million of bugs this is gonna have will be awesome. With a bit of luck they might change those back to what it used to be with enough negative feedback from the PTS though......

Amorphic wrote:

Healing in this game was already really shit.

4 heals is just silly. No where near enough. I recently started playing wow, all I can say is priest healing is infinitely more interesting than sage healing.

The last time i used benevolance was level 10, or whatever level i got deliverance at.

I've had much more fun on my Operative healer, and also Priest heals in WoW bored me to death.

Twilight Sparkle wrote:

Amorphic wrote:

Healing in this game was already really shit.

4 heals is just silly. No where near enough. I recently started playing wow, all I can say is priest healing is infinitely more interesting than sage healing.

The last time i used benevolance was level 10, or whatever level i got deliverance at.

I've had much more fun on my Operative healer, and also Priest heals in WoW bored me to death.

Priest healing... Never again... And yeah, Bioware seems to not know what the hell they're doing with class balance. I just hope they'll learn. Hopefully soon.

With this the guild might as well stop raiding until new healers come. The removal of no health cost from Trance and the fact that I can't cast Deliverance quickly with Force Potency for a quick save means that my rotation is completely destroyed and I might be forced into going DPS.

I would not usually suggest that anyone goes on the SWTOR forums, this time please do, please complain about this (be smart though, no bitching) as much as possible to get them to notice it (since there will be a flood of bitching by every class).

Darth Dreselus wrote:

With this the guild might as well stop raiding until new healers come. The removal of no health cost from Trance and the fact that I can't cast Deliverance quickly with Force Potency for a quick save means that my rotation is completely destroyed and I might be forced into going DPS.

I would not usually suggest that anyone goes on the SWTOR forums, this time please do, please complain about this (be smart though, no bitching) as much as possible to get them to notice it (since there will be a flood of bitching by every class).

I'm reading that topic about sorc healers and by the time I hit page 10 the last page was pushed 9 further.

Guess a lot of people decided to do it :p

I still think the Sage healer will be a viable healer for party healing, but not single-target anymore. They weren't best at single-target healing to begin with and now they are even worse at it, awesome. The only reason for me to stay Seer spec is our AOE heal and the importance of Force Armor in Ops. Other than that I am finding it hard to want to stay a Seer at this point. I just keep telling myself that this list isn't final, and I hope BW realizes their error on a few of these changes before this patch goes live.

Also, if you're bored with Sage healing take up Scoundrel. I played as an Operative healer in beta and got up to around 30, it is a lot more fun than Sage. They have more heals, different kinds of heals, and their procs make it a lot more dynamic and interesting. The only thing bad about them is that their AOE isn't as good as Sage.

Some people are clinging to the hope that the change is on top of the 1 second decrease. I, however, doubt that. It could also be possible that there are changes in the skill tree which make up for the change but they have not been publicised (someone get a consular to level 10 on PST quick).

I am not sure I will re-roll just because of this, I am currently working on a Juggernaut and Vanguard so it would take me forever to get a Scoundrel.

Looks like I'll be able to have a viable presence in the end-game market now. Hurray for Armstech becoming useful at high levels!

Just want to say that I am never touching my Commando again once this drops. Bioware completely destroyed everything about Combat Medic that made them even remotely viable. They also took Gunnery and in a very convoluted and roundabout way, kept it exactly the same and just reduced the damage of grav round.

I can go into detail if anyone is interested, but I am tired at the moment, and don't have the energy to post a wall of text.

I'll go into detail for you:

-10% grav and +10% demo
seeing as how I fire at least 4 grav rounds before demo is off cooldown this reduces damage.

more full auto procs
Costs 3 ammo so too much of this will drain your ammo seeing as how you still need to grav round every once in a while to keep 5 stacks.

Gunnery conclusion: nerfed.


Combat medic conclusion: Commando healers are useless now since it'll be impossible to keep your team alive.

Someone in Bioware really must have vendetta against healing. The updated patch notes now state that you will be only able to use 1 medpack per fight, which will be SOOOO useful at Soa (when there are 2 drop sequences and you never leave combat.)

And that someone will be Georg:

Georg: Sometimes it's hard to hear this, but the change to healers you're referring to was, quite simply, a result of them being too good. When one healer is close to target performance and the others aren't, it's natural to think that the logical course is to buff the underperformer and leave the over-performers alone. I want to dispel that notion and explain why it isn't always possible.

All specs for all roles have a target performance. This is what drives the balance of the game: soloing, Heroics, PvP, Flashpoints, Operations... everything. When those targets aren't hit, we can't just ‘bring everyone up’ to the highest performer without negatively impacting the balance of the game and creating unsustainable inflation in our combat system. Frankly, it's also a lot more work to change all end game content in the game to compensate for an over-performing role than to bring the role back in line. The hard but simple truth is that Sorcerers and Sages had better Force management than we intended (e.g. a well-played Sage was almost incapable of running out of Force) and Mercenaries and Commandos were significantly over target in their healing performance.

After considerable testing, we're more confident than ever that all healing roles are both closer to target performance and closer to one another than ever before, leading to a much tighter balance on end game content. The community will be able to confirm this using the new combat logging feature in Game Update 1.2.

I know trying to ‘sell’ a downwards adjustment (AKA nerf) to anyone affected is like selling the need for a tax increase to people. When you are on the receiving end of it, you're not going to be happy about it. It may appear massive to you, even if the overall impact is limited. You likely won't care that it's 'for the greater good of the game' and, if you decide to disagree with our action, there's little we can do to sway you.

Based on the feedback brought to us so far from testers playing on PTS along with metrics and combat logs gathered from our guild testers, we are going to make additional adjustments before Game Update 1.2 is promoted to the live servers. For example, we reopened the internal debate about having an in-combat resurrect ability for Mercenaries/Commandos based on PTS feedback regarding the new Operations, in light of the higher utility value this ability brings to the table in 1.2. We're listening to your feedback, too, and rebalancing some of the changes made to healing based on data gathered from PTS. Look out for a future update to PTS for more details.

I would just like Georg tell me how exactly I am meant to heal Jarg and Sorno post 1.2 Both Shy and I are very good healers but we had an incredibly hard time keeping up.

crazyBE wrote:

I'll go into detail for you:

-10% grav and +10% demo
seeing as how I fire at least 4 grav rounds before demo is off cooldown this reduces damage.

more full auto procs
Costs 3 ammo so too much of this will drain your ammo seeing as how you still need to grav round every once in a while to keep 5 stacks.

Gunnery conclusion: nerfed.


Combat medic conclusion: Commando healers are useless now since it'll be impossible to keep your team alive.

from the patch notes it may look like its all nerfed but until you get a lvl 50 on the PTR you cant say its nerfed they did a lot of changes to the equations behind the abilities and stats so it may not be as bad as you think.

I also doubt that the CM is really nerfed that bad theres probably something not listed that is buffing them.

P.S Gunnery was a little over powered in PVP going 3v1 against 1 healer and 1 dps and 1 half dead dps and winning when only using 1 ability (grav round) seems OP to me.

Okay, JUST using Grav round against 3v1 is NOT how you can win...anything. No offense, but that healer, DPS, and other DPS must have been horrible if that happened, or there is more to the situation than just 3v1. It is impossible, because you will run out of ammo before being able to kill one person if there is a healer involved, and definitely if there is more than 1 person period.
Grav round is not nearly your best damage ability. I have done something similar to what you said, but it was against a DPS, tank, and tanky-dps, one after the other in rapid succession, and while yes, I won, I had to work my ass off healing, running around obstacles, and generally playing skillfully and intelligently. Gunnery in PvP is not OP at all unless you just don't know what you are doing and ALLOW them to spam grav round, which is still a stupid way to DPS. I have won 1v1 against bounty hunters who just spammed ass rockets on multiple occasions because it is a lackluster way to DPS and results in a much lower DPS output than using everything at your disposal.

That being said, I took a look at the patch notes just now, while not drunk off my ass, and I realized that gunnery is not really changed like I thought it was. My mistake. It seems like it is more focused on NOT spamming grav round, which I approve of. Forgive my unnecessary hate.

Healing though, let me explain why I am very nervous about these changes (this is without playing on the PTR, and all reasoning is pre-1.2, before any of the new equations behind skills):

~Field Training now increases critical chance by 1% per point. This now results in 3% less crit, and makes it so you now have to talent in one point (up to three, which you WILL talent into for the second tear ability attached to this) for one point of crit. Since Trooper is a VERY crit dependent healer, they are essentially reducing your chance to be effective.

~Field Triage now reduces the cost of Medical Probe by 1 (down from 2). This reduces the effectiveness of the bread and butter of CM healing: The Adv. Med Probe-Med Probe combo. This combo also when combined with Supercharge Cells allows the CM to keep up healing in dire situations. This will reduce their effective ammo sustain overall, in all circumstances.

~Kolto Bomb now affects up to 4 targets (up from 3), improving reliability in group and Operation situations.
Kolto Residue now increases all healing received by 3% (down from 5%). The increase to 4 targets is good, but should have been implemented from day one. On the downside, they reduced the bonus buff it gives to healing when applied, which is its only real use outside of when Supercharge Cells is active. A flat 2% nerf to healing output on targets with Kolto Residue. Plain and simple.

~Psych Aid no longer reduces the cost of Field Aid. It now causes Field Aid to heal the target for a small amount.What equates a small amount? Is it even worth wasting one ammo on? I can see why adding a heal to a debuff is a win-win situation, but if they add the need to debuff on multiple occasions in Ops., this is disconcerting. The small heal, if going by how small heals are currently, will be completely worthless when compared to the damage it will cause to our ammo sustain. I would much rather have a no cost debuff with no heal, than a one-ammo cost debuff with a small heal, leaving more ammo for the heals that really matter.

~Supercharge Cells now restores 1 Energy Cell (down from 2) when used and increases all damage and healing dealt by 5% (down from 10%). The shield applied by Kolto Bomb now reduces damage taken by 5% (down from 10%). With this change, our emergency situation button becomes 50% less effective across the board. 50 percent! One less energy cell to put out extra heals, 5% less bonus healing when it is needed most, and 5% less damage reduction for those who need it, causing you to heal even harder to compensate. This is all around a negative change.

~Trauma Probe now costs 2 Energy Cells to activate. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Trauma probe has 10 charges, activates when the person with it on them is damaged, is only available to activate every 3 seconds, and is only able to be on one person at a time. The heal that is produced is roughly 750hp when it CRITS. The only real advantage to this ability is that it is used for extra sustain, allowing you to throw out big heals less often. It also is able to be cycled through allies that need it most. The tank taking all the damage, or maybe the healer that is getting aggro and needs a little help, or that DPS that is close to dying and that extra bit of health keeps them fighting. Using two ammo for a HoT that ticks every 3 seconds, ONLY if the person takes damage, is only available for ONE person, and heals for a low amount, only barely noticeable when it crits, is asinine. It becomes an ability that I dredge to ever use except at the start of a fight or when I have ammo to easily spare, because that two ammo for such a minimal effect is much better spent elsewhere. It is now useless for the sake of emergencies and situational healing.

Now, I am not sure just how much they are adjusting healing ratios behind the scenes, but if it is not significant, then there is no hope for CM to ever have a place as a viable healer in end game content, especially with the new, harder Ops coming.

tl;dr - CM is going to be even worse unless Bioware pulls some fancy behind the scenes adjustments out to compensate. Our ammo sustain is still taking a huge hit, though.

they could change how much aim effects your tech power and a lot of other equations to do with healing so again until you have a lvl 50 on the PTR or the patch comes out you cant claim its a nerf. they dont put all the changes in the patch notes so I feel everyone just needs to relax on the whole (YOUR CLASS HERE) are dead thing.

and going 3 v 1 is possible with grav round 2 sith sorcs lvls 23 and 34 and a operative healing or trying to heal lvl 11 is pretty easy to deal with since I hit sorces for about 15% of their health per grav round and your right I guess I did use more then grav round. I used my 2 stuns, Hammershot, reload and reactive shield. When I said I only used grav round I meant that was the only special offensive ability I used my bad. My rotation is Grav round, Hammershot, Grav round repeat.

P.S. why do you say CM relies on Crit so much? just because the games tier gear gives you crit doesnt mean thats the best stat for your class. In wotlk (before the patch that removed Armor Piercing) I don't think I used more then 2 pieces of tier gear because I had non tier gear with better stats and the set bonuses didnt help me out that much. and in 1.2 your gear might not even have crit on it. (please elaborate on why CM need crit so bad why won't power work?)

Like I stated in my post, all my views are based off of the pre-1.2 game, and based off of how the game is currently, it is a nerf. Until 1.2 drops and I see for myself, I stand by my view of it being a nerf, but I fully realize that it may be good balancing based on the behind the scenes changes.

Please don't assume that my views on what Commando needs is based largely on what the gear has or any other factor aside from pure experience. I say CM relies on crit so much because I have been healing with one since level 10, and have done Ops and PvP at endgame exclusively with a Commando. I am not basing my view on CM solely off the tier gear, and frankly, the tier gear is garbage unless modded to hell and back, like I have mine.

CM relies on crit because even with a power-surge-alacrity build, like I have with my CM, I still heal for less with a Med Probe than a Sage DPS does with their big heal. I have had it happen on multiple occasions, and this is why crit is a big deal for CM. They have lower ratios for their healing than Sage (don't know about Scoundrel) and so we have to rely on getting lots of crits to make up for that. The nerf to our passive crit talent by 3% means that I will now have to keep more crit on my gear, instead of modding it for better attributes, such as power or surge. I also get a lot of crit from other talents, and that is the only reason I am able to mod my gear for a power-surge-alacrity build. If not for those talents, the crit on the gear would be essential to be even remotely useful.

I didn't assume nothing thats why I asked you to go into greater detail. anywho whats your stats like? you say you mod for alacrity? commandos don't need a whole lot of that 5-7% is all you need total and theres a talent that starts u off with 4% to much higher any you start losing HPS. your crit rating shouldn't be above 400 (realistically I wouldn't even go for 400 crit rating I would stop at around 300) after that stack power. But I don't have your spec or your rotation or your gear so I just based your primary stats off columi tier gear.

plug your stats in Here and you'll find out your HPS

I mod for power and surge, then alacrity is all from just residual gear, like implants. My crit rating is sitting at 274, so as you can see, I am not speccing into crit at all, but still sitting at ~40% buffed crit. Which means I have been speccing for power and surge and still coming up short.

According to that guide, and after plugging in some quick (but not entirely accurate) numbers, I am at 1471HPS. I don't know where that stand in comparison to where I "should" be.

I have a feeling you are getting your numbers and what I "should" be doing from guides, instead of actual experience, so I am done arguing my case. If you want to talk more about it, get with me on mumble, because typing it out is going to be an arduous process. I'd love to discuss the workings of CM and how the different builds can affect the capability of healing.

Edited for clarity

Lyra wrote:

I mod for power and surge, then alacrity is all from just residual gear, like implants. My crit rating is sitting at 274, so as you can see, I am not speccing into crit at all, but still sitting at ~40% buffed crit. Which means I have been speccing for power and surge and still coming up short.

According to that guide, and after plugging in some quick (but not entirely accurate) numbers, I am at 1471HPS. I don't know where that stand in comparison to where I "should" be.

I have a feeling you are getting your numbers and what I "should" be doing from guides, instead of actual experience, so I am done arguing my case. If you want to talk more about it, get with me on mumble, because typing it out is going to be an arduous process. I'd love to discuss it with you and let you know how CM healing really works, not what a guide tells you how it supposed to do.

I feel your very aggressive about this so I should say I have no idea where you "should" be at nor am I saying your weak I never said you "Should" have anything you pay for your game you can play and build your char how you want. and yes I did look up guides to find this information because a lot of people that make guides do a lot of number crunching to make their chars the most effective and I was suggesting some of the things they said.

Now you say this was a argument yet all I was asking why troopers rely on crit and why they couldn't be reliant on something other then crit and gave a calculator to show you that you can do effective healing without a whole lot of crit. You can plug any number you want into that calculator and it will give you your HPS so you can tweak your gear to be the most effective. and not to be mean but just because you played a healer since lvl 10 doesn't make you an expert and just because you can heal ops and bgs with focusing on crit doesn't mean its the most effective or the only way to go.
(again I'm sorry if this comes off mean nor am I saying your not a credible source for info on troopers or anything really but the guides have given me better information then you have on why power would/could be more effective then crit.)

edit: removed for no longer being relevant

AJ, never once have I said that I have a crit build, nor think it is the best build, and even told you that I spec power-surge, so yes, a solid crit build is not the best and only build. I am merely trying to let you know that crit is important to a trooper from my experience, but is in no way the main stat to spec into. Just that it is important. No, I am not an expert on Trooper, and never did I say I was, I am just letting you know how CM is from my experience, since I have exclusively played Commando at level 50, and have put more time into the class than anything else.

I am not trying to sound like a douchebag or argue that you don't know what you are talking about. I just was a little irritated that you were trying to counterpoint my opinions by using a guide, instead of experience. Forgive me if I came across as anything but reasonable.

Imma just leave this page about BH/Commando healing post 1.2 here.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=368624

Wow, holed up looks like a useful skill. I can see a 60% reduction in AoE damage during hunker down being quite useful against a lot of raid bosses, and possibly in some tough PvP situations (when AoEs are heavily coordinated).

G4 released an epic preview. Go look!

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/722203/star-wars-the-old-republic-content-update-12-preview/

Fluttershy wrote:

G4 released an epic preview. Go look!

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/722203/star-wars-the-old-republic-content-update-12-preview/

"When we find out what your class is we are gonna nerf it" eeeeyup.
Not really any new info though...try harder Shy =P