Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Introduction

Do you like really big guns? Does laying down a lethal storm of fire and then healing any of your allies dumb enough to step in front of a lightsaber sound like fun? Well then, the Combat medic may just be the AC for you.

One of the things they did really well in this game was to allow you to heal without sacrificing too much dps. None of the Trooper trees, Vanguard or Commando, has any talents to boost the damage of our AoE abilities. That means you, as a healer, can lay down just as much AoE damage as anyone else, and Troopers are the kings of AoE.

This ability to put out huge AOE damage, and decent single target damage, makes leveling a Trooper Combat Medic so much more fun than the pain we are used to seeing with leveling healers. We also have a new resource mechanic that is more interesting than the standard, tired, giant mana pool mechanic we are all used to from every game before.

This guide endeavors to answer most standard questions and help a new Trooper Combat Medic get off to a good start.

A PVP Guide will be added later.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Table of Contents

1. Trooper Combat Medic Abbreviations
2. Trooper Combat Medic Ammo
3. Trooper Combat Medic Abilities
4. Trooper Combat Medic Skill Tree Builds
5. Trooper Combat Medic Stats
6. Trooper Combat Medic Stat Priorities
7. Trooper Combat Medic Gear
8. Trooper Combat Medic Rotations and Strategies
9. Trooper Combat Medic FAQs
10. Trooper Combat Medic Links
11. Trooper Combat Medic Contributors
12. Trooper Combat Medic Theorycrafting

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Abbreviations

• CM: Combat Medic
• AP: Advanced Medical Probe
• MP: Medical Probe
• SCC: Supercharge Cells
• CSC: Combat Support Cells
• BI: Bacta Infusion
• KB: Kolto Bomb
• TP: Trauma Probe
• HS: Hammer Shot
• CB: Charged Bolt
• HIB: High Impact Bolt
• FA: Full Auto
• RC: Recharge Cells
• ARPS: Ammo Regenerated Per Second (gained)
• APS: Ammo Per Second (spent)

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Ammo

Ammo is our resource mechanic, and deserves a section to discuss how it works. You have 12 ammo, and using most abilities costs some ammo. A few are free. Ammo regenerates on its own, at a rate tied to how much ammo you already have. The more ammo you have, the faster it regenerates. This means you generally want to stay as conservative as possible to stay in the high regen range.

Very Slow: 0-3 Ammo. 0.24 ARPS
Moderate: 3-8 Ammo. 0.36 ARPS
Fast: 8-12 Ammo. 0.60 ARPS

We do have a couple of abilities to help with this.
[*]Recharge Cells: Instant. 2 minute cooldown. Restores 6 ammo over 3 seconds. When talented, 2 additional cells recharge instantly. I have not yet tested to know if this means you get 8 total from the ability, or just that 2 of them instantly are given to you while the others regen over 3 seconds.
[*]Supercharge Cells: Instant. 1.50 seconds. Among its other effects, instantly recharges 2 cells. Requires 30 charges of Combat Support Cell.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Abilities

Medical Probe: 3 Ammo. 2 second cast. Standard Heal.

Advanced Medical Probe: 2 Ammo. 1.5 second cast. 9 second cooldown. This heal is slightly weaker than MP, but it is your core heal. Once talented it not only heals, it also increases the target’s armor, adds our only HoT, and reduces the cost of the next MP to only 1 Ammo. That means for 3 Ammo (the same cost as MP) and a slightly longer cast time, you get the heal from AP, the heal from MP, the heal from the HoT, and the decreased damage intake from the armor boost. Not a bad deal.

Bacta Infusion: Free. Instant. 21 second cooldown. Huge free heal limited only by its cooldown. 21 seconds is pretty short. Use it early, use it often!

Trauma Probe: Free. Instant. No Cooldown. Free reactive heal. This puts 10 charges of a shield on a target, and every time the target takes damage they get healed. It isn’t a large heal per charge, but it’s free and it adds up substantially over time.

Kolto Bomb: 2 Ammo. Instant. 6 second cooldown. Our only AoE heal. Limited to only heal 3 targets, but has a low cooldown. Talented, it also provides a 5% buff to healing received.

Hammer Shot: Free. Instant. No cooldown. When using Combat Support Cells as your ammo type, you can use this to target people as a very small heal while letting ammo regen.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Skill Tree Builds

SWTOR skill trees are all pretty straightforward, without a lot in the way of options, so this build shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic PVE Build.
Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Alternate Build *Lileth argues that the Kolto Residue buff is unreliable, and prefers the increased self-healing to decrease how often you have to heal yourself. A dead healer does no healing.
*

There is some flexibility here based on personal preference, playstyle, and content. If you are finding you are doing content that has you using Recharge Cells regularly, two points in Cell Capacitor instead of Weapon Calibration is probably worthwhile. If you find you are having plenty of time to weave dps into your rotations and still keep people alive, toss a point into Muzzle Fluting. If you find you are spending a lot of time healing yourself, move some points towards the Alternate Build above.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Stats

The only stats you should be concerned with are Aim, Surge, Critical, Power, and Alacrity. Endurance comes for free, so don’t worry about it, and the other stats are for other classes.

Aim: Provides increases to ranged damage and critical chance, tech damage and critical chance, and healing power and critical chance. Note healing critical change IS tech critical chance. Simply stated twice to make it clear Aim increases healing critical chance.

Critical Rating increases the chance you will have a critical effect from damage or healing abilities. This increases the effect by 50% plus the bonus from your Surge rating.

Surge rating increases the bonus on critical effects.

Power increases the base damage/healing of your abilities.

Alacrity makes cast times faster. Cast time abilities cast faster. Channeled abilities take less total time, with the ticks coming faster. HoTs and DoTs tick faster. Unlike in some other games, this does not increase the number of ticks of any HoT/DoT abilities.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Stat Priorities

I added a Stat Weight Calculator
to Google Docs, with the first sheet Public so you can enter your own current stats, and the calculation and results sheets protected to avoid trolls damaging things. Feel free to use and share, and provide feedback in this thread.

As a test sample, I assumed a level 50 character in Tionese gear. Under that assumption, HPS was maximized when Crit and Alacrity were reduced to 0, Surge was between 50 and 50 and all other points from the Tionese rating budget were in power.

Looking at our skill tree I initially advocated a lot more crit, but now that more data is in and simulations are present, it looks like the answer is simply this:

STACK MORE POWER.

Personally, I find this boring and disappointing and hopefully they will make some changes to increase the value of other stats so gearing can actually be interesting. For now, Aim and Power are all you need.

It only takes a moment to plug in your own values on that spreadsheet. More explanation is in post #3.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Gear
Obviously, I’m not going to make a Best in Slot list, as those are annoying to keep up.

However, crafted gear is worth addressing. When you RE green crafted gear, it can gain one of three prefixes: Redoubt (+defense), Critical (+crit) or Overkill (+power). If you RE those blues, they can gain one of five second stats: Presence, Shield, Alacrity, Surge, and Accuracy. Presence only boosts your companions, and is useless in group play. Based on the above stat priorities, it can be seen that only two combinations are of any value.

Expert Gear: Power + Surge
Endowment Gear: Critical + Surge

Since the power vs crit debate is still open and will likely be a matter of preference even after the math is in, I’m not going to make a call about which of those two to us, but obviously there is better synergy with the Endowment gear. Take whichever works better for you.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Rotations and Strategies

When healing as a Trooper Combat Medic, you should always have CSC as your active ammo type. You also want to stay at 30 charges whenever possible for the 3% healing boost and the ability to pop SCC. You can preload CSC charges by firing hammer shot on the run at friendly targets, even out of combat. Always keep Trauma Probe on the tank.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – Single Target

Currently the consensus is that this is where we shine best, and Tooper Combat Medics are likely to be one of the most popular dedicated tank healers in this game.

Most of the time keeping Trauma Probe (TP) on the tank and using an AP/MP combo every time AP comes off of cooldown should be sufficient. Pre-tossing a Kolto Bomb (KB) for the 5% buff is easy if it looks like they took a little more damage in since the last AP/MP cycle than your AP/MP combo heals for. While waiting on cooldown, toss out some hammer shots as either heals or damage, or weave in a Full Auto or Charged Bolt cast if you are fine on ammo.

In high-burst damage situations, it is time to break out the SCC. You still want to keep TP on the tank, and the KB buff. Lay down a AP/MP combo followed by a full price MP. If that isn’t enough, pop SCC which will refund 2 of your ammo (making that last MP essentially only cost 1). Now AP has no cooldown for the duration and KB places a shield on targets. MP is still your most powerful heal, and AP/MP combo costs 3 Ammo vs 4 Ammo for a double AP cast. The cast time of MP also allows the AP HoT time to tick, so avoid the temptation to just spam AP when you pop SCC. Use the lack of cooldown to power as many AP/MP combos as you can.

If the high-burst phase isn’t over before SCC expires, spam MP as needed to get back up to 30 charges, weaving in AP when its off cooldown of course, then pop Recharge Cells (RC), followed by SCC and another round of burst AP/MP combos. Try not to use Hammer Shot for healing while SCC is active, unless everyone is at or near full health. If you are low on ammo after SCC, toss some Hammer Shots after it expires.

When the high-burst phase is over, use hammer shot and AP/MP combos to do light healing while you regen Ammo and build up charges.

Swtor Trooper Combat Medic Guide – AoE Healing

We are a bit weaker here than some other classes, but we aren’t worthless. Obviously Kolto Bomb (KB) is our go-to ability. The cooldown is only 6 seconds, and the 2 Ammo cost is low, making this ability spammable. You will recharge more in those 6 seconds than the cost, so if you aren’t casting anything else you could toss KBs all day.

KB has two major downsides. First, it only heals 3 targets, which means someone in a flashpoint group is getting healed, or in an Operation it means we heal one fewer than a Scoundrel and 5-13 fewer than a Sage (I could be wrong here, but it is my understanding that the Sage AoE heal has no limit number of characters healed.) Second, the radius is only 8 yards, so those being healed have to be quite close together. This is made harder by the fact that the current SWTOR AoE targeting indicators don’t actual show the size of the area the ability affects.

That said, KB is basically a MP, spread over 3 targets for 1/3 of an MP each in healing. There is a good chance that if your group is taking AoE damage, it is coming in faster and harder than that. So what do you do?

Well, luckily, our AP/MP combo isn’t tied to one target. Casting AP puts a buff on us reducing the cost of MP, not a buff on the target, so we can cast that MP on someone else. An AP/MP. So toss a KB out, drop AP on one of the targets, then drop MP on another, and Hammer Shot (HS) or Bacta Infusion (BI) the final one. Going through this rotation of those three abilities with a free cast is Ammo neutral or very very close, so you should be able to keep that up all day.

For High-Burst AoE, once again SCC comes to the rescue. KB now applies a shield. When in SCC mode during high-burst, you want to keep your rotation basically the same. If you are still in high-burst when SCC expires drop a second full cost MP instead of HS in the rotation to build charges quickly, and then use Recharge Cells. KB doesn’t generate CSC charges, so it can take a little longer to get back up to 30. Plan accordingly.

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