The Scoundrel and Operative are identical classes for the Republic and Empire. The only difference is the skills and abilities names and some of the visual effects. I'll be using the Operative terminology, but everything also applies to Scoundrel unless I specifically mention it.
Generally speaking the Operative healing style is based around HoTs, he gets cheap ones that stack and can be active on multiple targets and he has the only group HoT skill. In many situations the Operative can keep the party alive by making sure everyone who is taking damage or about to take damage is covered with HoTs, however the Operative also has few other tricks up his sleeve when more intense healing is required.
Race: For both factions you can pick Human, Cyborg and Zabraks, the Operative can also be Rattataki and Chiss and the Scoundrel Mirialan and Twi'lek. Originally during beta, classes had different advantages, however to avoid having "best race" for the different classes Bioware removed the benefits and only added pure social abilities to classes. So you can just pick the class that looks most appealing to you visually, there is no benefit for any race choice.
The Operative has a mechanic called Tactical Advantage (Upper Hand for Scoundrel). The way it works is that some abilities give you a buff called... you guessed it: TA and other abilities use TA. You can have up to 2 available TA points at a time. Generally speaking, TA giving abilities spend more energy while TA using abilities cost less or no energy. There's a skill that gives you a healing bonus while TA is active, so ideally you should keep 1 TA active when possible.
Leveling: An Operative is mainly a melee class, most similar to WOW Rouge. This gives him powerful close range DPS abilities, avoidance skills which reduce damage and even go into stealth breaking out of combat, the ability to sneak and a wide array of stuns and CC abilities. This means the Operative can very easily avoid unnecessary confrontations on the way to quest objectives as well as break out of combat in desperate situations. The Operative, being an Imperial agent which is also the base class for Sniper, gets access to the cover mechanic which greatly enhance ranged defense and a wide array of ranged abilities, making him very capable ranged fighter when needed, however the further you advance through the levels the more the balance shifts toward the melee skills. Like all classes in SWTOR you can easily quest solo even at higher levels with healing spec, so there's no obligation to use a DPS spec for leveling if you want to be a healer from the beginning.
Resource management: The Operative use Energy as the main resource to use abilities, he has 100 energy which fills over time. An important thing to be aware of is that the more energy you have, the faster your energy regenerates, starting from 5 energy per second when your energy level is 80-100 and getting as low as 2 energy per second when you are at 0-20 energy. This means that you should keep your energy levels high to be able to continue using your abilities, the lower you get, the harder it is to climb back up.
There are various mechanics to help you with energy management. The TA using abilities are very energy efficient (more on abilities later), you have an ability called Adrenaline Probe which restore significant amount of energy every 2 minutes and you get an ability called Stim Boost which burns a TA and give you faster energy regeneration rate, Stim boost should be kept active at all times during long fights where energy levels are concerned. In addition you get a channeled weak heal ability "Diagnostic Scan" that can (and should) be talented to give back energy on crits, giving you the option to get into "recharge mode" casting it and recovering energy.
I will review the Operative abilities and skills in depth on my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment