About first time healing..

[Deleted]

Hello,

Flame me all you want, but this is just a newbie with a question about difficulty.
This will be the first MMO where I will be rolling a healer, have no experience healing whatsover.
I'm leaning towards the Republic, and I really like the look of the Smuggler character and his humor.

However, after looking up a video of someone healing with Sawbones it seems to be an incredibly advanced and very confusing class.
The Sawbones tree seems to be completely devoid of AoE heals and I'd hate to constantly fail keeping the entire group alive, whereas for example the Sage seems to be very basic and balanced.

Do you guys recommend another healing class to start with, or is Sawbones easier then it looks and should I just throw myself at it?

Thank you!

[Thornstar]

I can tell you that of the healers the IA/Smuggler seems to be the most involved. Many things to watch and all that. You do however get abilities slowly as you level so you learn as you go. NO one is going to know how to play it. So if you want to play it I say go for it and learn with everyone else ^_^. I mean you can pick another healer if you like, but I see no reason if all your worried about is difficulty. Every healer was new at some point. The main thing is to not be afraid to just go out and heal. One of the best places I learned to be an amazing healer was PvP. Do warzones allot as you level and it will help your awareness, reaction time, and your mobility to boot!

Hope everything works out for you. Any other concerns or questions please feel free to ask them ^_^

[dredlox]

To be honest, the state of the healers right now, especially smugglers are probably going to cause issues. If you like to pvp and plan on being a healer, smugglers are the way to go, between the stuns, group stealth, cc's, quick/instant heals, etc., they scream pvp atm. As far as high end raiding, I'd prefer a combat medic all the way just due to the passive bonuses, better ae heals, and easier resource management. (10% mitigation buff for the whole raid? Yes please)

I'm sure this will be looked at shortly after launch, let's hope, but right now a smuggler brings nothing to the pve side that a combat medic doesn't do better.

[azrielen]

Hi Hiephoi!

Glad to hear you're rolling a healer! A game can always use more healers! Haha

Personally I have never played anything BUT a healer in an MMO in the last 3 or so years.

My experience has always been that a class may look very confusing or difficult from the perspective of someone who has never played it. However you must remember that you will be playing this class from level 1. You'll be growing into and along with this character and the healing roll. You won't just be dumped into the game with a level 50 Sawbones and left to your own devices.

For instance, for my first two years of World of Warcraft I played a warlock and a tanking druid. I was decent at both. Never really found my niche. But then my guild needed a healer and I had a low-level Paladin alt just hanging around. I respecced it into a healer and finished leveling it in Dungeons to learn how to heal. I've never played anything but a healer in any MMO since then. Healing looked kind of scary at first, but growing into the roll made it much easier to understand.

Basically, don't let a video you saw of a complicated-looking high-level healer scare you away from the idea. You really enjoy the Smuggler and you want to be a healer, then give it a shot! You will gain your abilities over many levels and figure things out along the way, just as you're meant to.

Also, being a Paladin for a long time, I know all about lacking AOE heals. XD You learn how to work around that perceived "handicap." Every class in any game has its own unique toolbox. If the Sawbones was incapable of keeping a group alive, I'm sure we'd have heard about it by now and (hopefully) BioWare would have fixed it.

[Deleted]

The Sawbones is easier as it looks. Really.
Here's a quite good compilation of the abilites/playstyle of the three healing classes (remember IA = Smuggler, with different abilites-names)

and one for the imperial agent

Every healing class has only one AE/Group Heal - Sage and Scoundrel get theirs at 31 points spent in their healing tree, Commando-Trooper gets his at level 20 (11 points in the healing tree).

From my experience (and my personal opinion):

- Trooper is annoying as hell - you don't have a HoT Spell to top health bars, so you end up spamming (!) Hammer Shot with combat support cell active at people, you need to build up the combat support cell, that stacks up to 30, to power up your heals - it was veeery, very hectic in my opinion and i really had problems with ressource management here

- Sage was very straight forward "classic" mmo healing, if you've played a priest or shaman before, you know exactly what you will get here.

- Scoundrel was - by far - the most fun healing class i've ever player. It feels very dynamic, you get a very good HoT (slow release med-pack) at level 20 (and that's most of the time enough to get your group topped), you get a "free" heal at level 30 (consumes a buff generated by ticks of you slow release med-pack and/or primary direct heal), you have a energy-refill button every two minutes. You have a combat ress (Sage too, Commando doesn't get one), you can "vanish" every two minutes, completely taking you out of combat (so very usefull as a healer), group stealth, etc. etc.

well, a bit one-sided, but smuggler really had the best perks (story, WOOKIEE COMPANION, style, dialogues,...)

[Deleted]

To be honest, the state of the healers right now, especially smugglers are probably going to cause issues. If you like to pvp and plan on being a healer, smugglers are the way to go, between the stuns, group stealth, cc's, quick/instant heals, etc., they scream pvp atm. As far as high end raiding, I'd prefer a combat medic all the way just due to the passive bonuses, better ae heals, and easier resource management. (10% mitigation buff for the whole raid? Yes please)

I'm sure this will be looked at shortly after launch, let's hope, but right now a smuggler brings nothing to the pve side that a combat medic doesn't do better.

smuggler gets a combat rez and your lovely combat medic dont get that

[dredlox]

smuggler gets a combat rez and your lovely combat medic dont get that

Yes but Sages do, and it's on a 5 minutes raid wide cooldown (shared with smugglers)...If you can only combat rez someone once every 5 minutes, how useful is it? Relying on combat rez'es, well, you just shouldn't.

[Deleted]

smuggler gets a combat rez and your lovely combat medic dont get that

Druid was for almost 6 years the only class with a combat ress, still the people kept playing priests, shamans and paladins.
The Trooper has other perks, like 10% less damage and 5% more healing received on kolto bomb, 10% more armor on Advanced Medical Probe and so on.

[Deleted]

Wow, genuinely surprised at all these detailed responses, very helpful. Thank you!
It seems I will show no fear and start off as a smuggler.

Please keep the responses coming!

[Trollsbane]

Really the best advice I can give is remember to watch your own health. You can't heal anyone if you die. Haha

You'll get the hang of keeping others alive, but for me personally, the hardest thing is remembering to heal myself. =)

[Daniboy]

Really the best advice I can give is remember to watch your own health. You can't heal anyone if you die. Haha

You'll get the hang of keeping others alive, but for me personally, the hardest thing is remembering to heal myself. =)

QFT, remember this. Dead healer = bad healer

[HonestJohn]

Really the best advice I can give is remember to watch your own health. You can't heal anyone if you die. Haha

You'll get the hang of keeping others alive, but for me personally, the hardest thing is remembering to heal myself. =)

Lol i use to do that all the time when i first rolled a Disc Priest in that other mmo game (Cant Remember its name :P)
I was like WTF ! Oh Shit ! I forgot myself LOL

[Deleted]

My advice will be to wait until add ons are implemented, save yourself the pain of trying to manage everything with the standard UI

[Trollsbane]

My advice will be to wait until add ons are implemented, save yourself the pain of trying to manage everything with the standard UI

I reccomend the opposite. Start by learning without the "crutch". It'll make you all the better when adding are in the game.

[Zech]

My advice will be to wait until add ons are implemented, save yourself the pain of trying to manage everything with the standard UI

Yeah, wait until healing is done for you and you dont have to worry about doing anything yourself....that makes you a better player.

[Deleted]

How are sages comparing to the other in game healer classes? Out of curiosity.

[Deleted]

sages/sorc are more the standard mmo healers, where the others dont really have one you can compare with.

[Deleted]

By standard....you mean boring?

[Deleted]

By standard....you mean boring?

No it means you have the traditional resource like Mana, traditional heals that don't need a buff like tactical advantage etc.

[Deleted]

Ahhhh got you now. Thanks.