This post continue the Scoundrel and Operative healing guide from the previous post. I'll concentrate on healing abilites and skills and only mention others when they directly apply to the healer responsibilities or play style.
Abilities:
Tack Cover - Boost your defense when healing from a distance, making you less likely to take damage so you can worry about healing your team mates.
Kolto Injection - Your typical big heal. It's pretty expansive to cast, so you won't be able to spam it, but when someone needs a big health boost, this is your best line of defense.
Adrenaline Probe - regenerate energy, very useful after an expansive healing burst is needed and you need to keep healing.
Flash Bang - Stuns up to 5 targets, very good to use while you get agro, giving you more time to heal and the tank time to grab agro or the dps to burn the mobs. Also good as in interrupt.
Escape - Free you from all incapacitating and movement imparing effects, great to get back to healing when targeted by these abilities.
Slice Droid - A druid CC, you are a healer, but you should always help with CC when needed.
Stealth - Not directly healing, but a very nice thing to have, can make you avoid confrontations while leveling and generally feel safe walking around dangerous places.
Evasion - Increase dodge chance, should be used when you grab agro to make sure you take less damage and can keep healing.
Shield Probe - Self damage absorb shield, another great talent when grabbing agro or when taking damage.
Countermeasures - Reduce threat, don't forget to use this when you get agro, the last thing you need is mobs targeting you when you try to heal.
Stim Boost - This consumes TA to give energy regeneration boost, you should always keep it up during long fights to avoid running out of energy, normally before a boss fight starts I'll make sure it's up and refreshed during the fight as needed.
Diagnostic Scan - A channeled weak heal. It cost nothing and with talents boost energy regeneration, so when healing isn't too intensive this ability is great when you can afford to slow down and need to regenerate energy.
Kolto Infusion - Direct heal that execute a TA. There aren't many situation when you should cast it, if you need serious healing and have energy you should use Kolto Injection and if you have a TA to burn you can use Surgical Probe which cost 0 energy, instant cast and heals almost as much. It's most useful below level 20 when you don't have Surgical Probe yet.
Sleep Dart - Out of combat CC ability, you can and should use it in groups when possible, keep in mind that there is no way to refresh it once combat starts, so you get a minute of CC and that's it.
Kolto Probe - A HoT that can be stacked 2 times, very cheap to cast. You should always keep it on the tank and anyone else who is going to take damage. This ability makes sure you are always busy when healing because it should constantly be refreshed on anyone who is going to take any damage. This ability really shines with skills, more on that later.
Cloaking Screen - This get you out of combat and put you in stealth mode. It's on a long CD so you can't use it often, but if you pulled more than you can handle, or you must loose agro during a fight this is a real life saver.
Sneak - Boost your sneaking, give you 15 seconds of being able to literally walk over enemies and still not get detected. Useful before applying Sleep Dart to make sure you won't accidently pull a group of enemies instead of just CCing one.
Toxin Scan - Remove negative effects, also provide small healing with skills. Should be used when someone in your party is debuffed by an enemy ability. This really makes a huge difference with some boss abilities.
Surgical Probe - Costs TA and no energy and instantly heals your target. This should be used whenever you have a TA to spare since it uses no energy and won't hurt your resources. Also useful for emergencies, being a pretty descent instant heal.
Infiltrate - Cloaks your entire party, nice tool if you want your entire party to avoid a confrontation.
Resuscitation Probe - Your standard combat resurrection, all healers get one. They share a CD with all other combat res abilities, so be careful not to waste it when it's not absolutely needed.
This is my recommended healing spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401MffbzGRRzsZ0cZG.1
There are 2 free points which you pretty much can use wherever you like, all the "must have" skills are already taken.
Incisive Action - reduce the cast time of Kolto Injection and grant you TA when you cast it. Both are very useful.
Imperial Education - 9% boost to cunning, making you better at everything you do, this is the Operative primary stat.
Endorphin Rush - Makes your energy regeneration ability grants you additional instant 16 energy.
Medical Consult - additional 3% healing and 6% while TA is active, this is the main reason you want to keep at least 1 TA active at all times.
Surgical Steadiness - reduce pushback of healing abilities and healing threat, must have to avoid healing agro and be able to heal when attacked.
Prognosis: Critical - Increase Diagnosis Scan crit chance significantly, making this weak heal a bit more useful as well as getting criticals to restore energy.
Kolto Probe - Your bread and butter HoT, always try to keep 2 stacks up on the tank as well as anyone who needs to be topped off or about to take damage. It's very cheap to use, no excuse not to cast it extensively.
Patient Studies - Diagnostic Scan crits restore energy, great for when you need more energy and damage isn't too intensive, or if you somehow burned all your energy and can't do anything till you get more.
Medical Engineering - Give Kolto Probe a chance to grant TA. Since you'll be constantly running Kolto Probe this is a great skill to keep these great TAs comming.
Evasive Imperative - This skill is mostly there to advance the skill tree, it gives you a nice 20% movement speed boost for the times you need to get to your target quickly. You can take these points somewhere else if you prefer, as it's very situational.
Tox Screen - Make sure Toxin scan removes mental debuffs as well, also give you a small heal when you cast it.
Medical Therapy - 10% buff to HoTs and 6% buff to surgical probe. Since you'll be using HoTs often this is a must have.
Surgical Probe - 0 energy 1 TA instant heal. Very useful when you have the TA available or when you absolutely need to heal someone.
Surgical Precision - Surgical Probe heals for 15% more as well as regrants TA when used on targets below 30% health. This means that as long as you have a TA you can keep spamming Surgical Probe forever on anyone below 30% health, even if you are out of energy. Great talent to make sure you can be useful even in these problematic situation when your group health is low and you have no energy to spare.
Accomplished Doctor - Increase crit bonus of Kolto Injection, Kolto Infusion and Recuperative Nanotech by 30%. Since agents rely on high crit this is a huge boost for your critical healing benefit.
Recuperative Nanotech - Group AOE for 4 allies, your best and only group heal, one of the reasons operative are great raid healers, or should I say Operation healers?
Concealment tree:
Survival Training - 3% increase to all healing, plus the self healing boost doesn't hurt.
Lethality tree:
Deadly Directive - 4% more alacrity, meaning you can do more in a shorter period of time, always great to have.
Lethality - Increase crit by 6%, since so many of your abilities benefit from crit, this is a must have for skill.
You are left with 2 skills to spend anywhere you like, there is really no more must have skills, so pick whichever fits your play style.
What to expect when healing: Overall the Operative is a very "busy" healing style, you constantly need to refresh HoTs, you have to keep Stim Boost up, manage your TA. Always something to do, always things to think about and decisions to be made. However, once you get more experience it gets easier to do the right thing quickly and it's very satisfying to skillfully use your abilities to save the day. If you like keeping busy and making quick decisions for the right situation, the Operative is the healer for you.
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