Bodyguard Mercenary

Increased drop rate from conquest crates.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Onboard AED becomes an instant-cast.

(6) Kolto Shot leaves Lasting Meds on its target, restoring health over 18 seconds.

Analysis:

Tech Medic was redesigned in patch 6.1.2. Combined with nerfs to Concentrated Fire (the previous healer set bonus of choice), it seems that the developers intended for Tech Medic to be the preferred healer set bonus.

The four piece set bonus is very slightly helpful for progression situations. An instant rez is better than a cast rez or having to burn a cooldown for an instant cast. I would prefer an actual healing buff but I have seen many situations in progression where a tank dies and the group wipes because the team was one GCD too slow in getting them revived. So cool though not really great.

The six piece set bonus adopts the old HP-5 Dart tactical benefit by letting your base heal apply a HoT. The HoT lasts a long time over 18 seconds and provides a heal that is fairly close to the heal by Kolto Missile applied to each affected player. The HoT can be refreshed on one player such as a tank, or by rotating it among several players a healer can keep several Lasting Meds HoTs ticking at once.

The value of this set bonus is most important when viewed in context with the impact of changes to the Rocket Fuel Vapors tactical. Prior to 6.1.2, using Kolto Missile on cooldown in a group would provide super high uptime on Supercharged Gas and its energy savings and healing buffs. In that situation, I found myself using Kolto Shot only very occasionally as I never really had energy issues.

Now I expect to see much more use of Kolto Shot. It should not need to be spammed given the discipline's energy cooldowns and still fairly frequent use of Supercharged Gas. That said, a Mercenary healer will likely need to use it semi-frequently anytime energy cooldowns are not available to stay energy positive.

Skillful players will likely look to keep Lasting Meds ticking on several targets at once by rotating their use of each Kolto Shot amongst 3-4 players. It is a far cry from the ticking HoTs from Operative healers but between Kolto Shells on most players and Lasting Meds on several more, the Mercenary has more and better passive healing with Tech Medic than otherwise.

In comparison to the new Concentrated Fire set bonus, I think Tech Medic is a clear winner. Concentrated Fire offers the potential for more Supercharge but at an almost negligible level (see below for more discussion on that). The six piece is better to offer a guaranteed critical heal every Supercharged Gas, but as discussed below that is also a bit marginal because the Emergency Scan could crit anyway. Tech Medic offers a guaranteed sustained healing increase.

Impact on Rotation:

Kolto Shot will need to be used anyway in the rotation and generally should not be prioritized just for this extra HoT. However, I do think there are a few considerations to how to decide when to use Kolto Shot:

1. Rotate Kolto Shot among players as much as possible. Refreshing the Lasting Meds HoT by spamming Kolto Shot is a huge waste of this set bonus. If you can remember to rotate each Kolto Shot among around 3-4 players who consistently take damage then you will get a lot more sustained healing from having HoTs ticking on multiple players. The best candidates will be any tanks and likely most melee DPS, though this may vary from fight to fight. Sometimes you may have to spam Kolto Shot on one player to try and keep them up when your energy is horrible, though honestly if you are in that situation Kolto Shot is unlikely to save them anyway.

2. Heat management. Kolto Shot is free and its total heal with Tech Medic is not too terribly much lower than Rapid Scan. Experience is key here but if you know there is little danger of spike damage then Kolto Shot is far better with this tactical to heal players or at least mitigate low ongoing damage in combination with Kolto Shell.

3. Prep for AoE damage phases. In fights with predictable sustained AoE damage phases (e.g., Dread Council burn phase) then using Kolto Shot to get HoTs ticking on most players and get your heat in an optimal situation can be very helpful. Just like an Operative who has HoTs ticking on most players, a Merc who has Kolto Shells and Lasting Meds on most players will be able to really kick out powerful sustained AoE healing.

Increased drop rate from PvP.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Damaging an enemy or healing an ally has a 10% chance to generate a stack of Supercharge. This effect cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.

(6) Activating Supercharged Gas makes your next Rail Shot, Mag Shot or Emergency Scan critically hit or heal.

Analysis:

Concentrated Fire was nerfed in 6.1.2 to remove the +10% critical chance buff applied by gaining a stack of Supercharge. The four piece then assumed part of the old six piece bonus without any net additions to the combined set. It's design goal appears to be primarily for DPS players and to offer an off-DPS option for healers.

The set suffers greatly by losing its main attraction to healers via the +10% critical chance buff. The remaining benefits are really not that great, as we will briefly discuss below. When compared to the Tech Medic set that offers a guaranteed and high uptime buff to healing output, Tech Medic is a clear winner for healing though Concentrated Fire will be slightly better for healing while prioritizing off-DPS for tight DPS checks.

The 4 piece can generate a Supercharge as often as every 5 seconds but that is misleading given the low chance to proc. The rate limit means that the RNG to proc it only begins 5 seconds after it procs then takes some time to proc again. More testing is needed to determine an average proc rate but it seems likely be 5-10 seconds or so. That suggests the 4 piece should provide an extra Supercharge every 50-100 seconds, or around 4-6 extra Supercharge windows over a fight. It's also possible to waste the proc if you are sitting at 8 Supercharge, proc it to get to 9 and then cast Rapid Scan that would have gotten you to 10 anyway thanks to the Warden passive. So, it's nice but very RNG dependent and not that helpful due to the lack of control. Letting a high cooldown ability trigger an extra free Supercharge 2-3 times a fight would have been a similar HPS benefit and far more useful in my opinion.

The 6 piece is helpful by making your Supercharged Gas windows more powerful by giving you an auto-crit on your free heal. It is also very helpful for adding off DPS for tight damage checks on operations by letting you use the auto-crit on a Rail Shot. For healing purposes, it's helpful but weak. The healing ability could crit anyway, so the incremental healing is as big as the difference between a crit and a non-crit, but as small as the difference between a crit with extra crit damage and a crit with regular crit damage. In the latter case, the buff is quite small indeed.

Impact on Rotation:

No change to rotation or ability priority.

Increased drop rate from Dxun Nature of Progress operation. Not available from the Tech Frag vendor.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Activating Power Shot, Tracer Missile or Rapid Scan increases the critical chance of your next Power Shot, Tracer Missile or Rapid Scan by 10%. Stacks up to 5 times but is removed on 6th stack.

(6) Dealing damage with Power Shot or Tracer Missile or healing with Rapid Scan grants a stack of Power Step, stacking up to 5 times. At 5 stacks, your next Power Shot, Tracer Missile or Rapid Scan is more effective and generates no Heat.

Analysis:

This set is not terrible but buffs the wrong abilities and as such is outshined by the Tech Medic set bonus. For healers, Rapid Scan is a filler that is used semi-frequently but is the lowest priority and does the least healing. Buffing it is nice but it encourages over-use which is a very bad idea. Tech Medic's buff to Med Shot provides a safer and more predictable (i.e., not RNG dependent on critical chance) healing benefit.

The critical buff from the 4-piece set bonus means the average use of Rapid Scan will be buffed 25%, with the 6-piece set bonus meaning every 6th use of the ability is free. This is a nice buff but is unlikely to come close to the impact on healing from Tech Medic.

Impact on Rotation:

No impact. The periodic free use of Rapid Scan will help energy management and likely enable a second use of the same filler shortly thereafter, but that will vary based on the healing situation so would not fall into a “rotation” comment so much as simply making your healing decisions regarding energy levels slightly easier from time to time.

Increased drop rate from The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode Difficulty, and has a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Activating a healing ability has a 15% chance to grant Combat Medic's Critical Bonus which causes your next Rapid Scan to be critical.

(6) Healing an ally with Rapid Scan applies Restorative Drive to them for 10 seconds. Each enemy defeated by this ally increases your healing by 2%, stacking up to 5 times.

Analysis:

This set bonus was introduced in patch 6.1.2 along with MM Dxun. A key unknown for is what internal cooldown (if any) is applied on the triggering of the auto-crit buff. Absent a cooldown, the ability has a 50/50 chance to trigger after 4 GCDs and 75% chance to trigger after 8 GCDs. This can be really strong though it seems likely there will be an internal cooldown limiting its use to every 30 seconds or something.

The six piece is tantalizing but I think very difficult to utilize on most fights. It offers the potential for high uptime on a +10% healing buff but with a lot of hurdles. You can only get the buff from players whom you have healed with Rapid Scan, only within 10 seconds of using Rapid Scan on them and you only get charges when they defeat an enemy.

The ideal scenario for the 6 piece set bonus are fights with high uptime on add waves. The best example is the Control Center encounter in the Dxun Nature of Progress operation, where you are continuously fighting 8+ adds at a time. Just use Rapid Scan on a DPS with high sustained AoE damage and you are highly likely to get a couple stacks of Restorative Drive. The downside is that Rapid Scan is usually a very low priority in AoE fights due to the desire to use Kolto Missile and Progressive Scan on cooldown versus their lower priority in single target. Trying to fit in extra Rapid Scans to proc the set bonus is a mixed bag because it offers a cool healing buff but comes at the cost of reduced healing output for using your worst single target healing ability instead of a better heal.

Impact on Rotation:

No change in overall ability rotation. You should be using Rapid Scan often enough to take full advantage of the 4 piece set bonus anytime it procs. For the 6 piece, I would recommend adjusting your target selection for heals such that Rapid Scan is nearly always going on a DPS player (preferably one assigned to deal with adds).

Increased drop rate from flashpoints.

Kolto Pods last a second longer and heal for an additional 5%.

Analysis:

Rocket Fuel Vapors was significantly nerfed in patch 6.1.2. Now it provides a buff to AoE healing by adding an extra tick of healing from Kolto Pods (the HoT applied by Kolto Missile) and buffs the HoTs overall healing by 5%.

Kolto Pods normally ticks 3 times over its duration so adding an extra tick represents a 33% increase in healing prior to the 5% buff. Combined this should buff the healing done by Kolto Pods by 40%. In comparison to an average tick of Kolto Missile per person, Kolto Pods does around half the healing as Kolto Missile's initial heal. Thus, on a combined basis I would expect Rocket Fuel Vapors to buff the combined healing provide by Kolto Missile by around 13-15%.

A 15% buff to a low cooldown AoE heal is very helpful for AoE fights. On a heavy AoE fight where I can use Kolto Missile on cooldown and always clip the maximum 4 people, I would expect Kolto Missile to output around 35-40% of my total healing combined with the Kolto Pods HoT. In those scenarios, running Rocket Fuel Vapors could provide around 5-6% extra healing entirely through AoE HoTs. That's not as powerful as the old Rocket Fuel Vapors but still a meaningful increase in AoE healing.

It is important to note that the healing buff from Rocket Fuel Vapors falls apart on any encounter where you are not using Kolto Missile on cooldown. The tactical buff in incremental healing per use of Kolto Missile is relatively small so its power entirely depends on being able to spam Kolto Missile via its 4 GCD cooldown. On fights with some but not continuous AoE I would typically use Kolto Missile far less often and its HoT would often be wasted via AoE healing from myself and other players. In that scenario the tactical healing buff amounts to maybe 1% or so which is very weak compared to SC-4 or Running Restoration.

Impact on Rotation:

Rocket Fuel Vapors should only be taken on fights where you expect to encounter very high AoE sustained damage to the group. As such, you should generally look to use Kolto Missile on cooldown to maximize its benefit. If your healing priority does not let you do that, then Rocket Fuel Vapors is probably not a good choice for that fight.

Increased drop rate from operations.

Healing Scan can be activated while moving and heals for an additional 15%.

Analysis:

Healing Scan is typically the most used healing ability for Bodyguard Mercenaries and the key to burst healing phases during Supercharged Gas windows. Running Restoration provides a powerful buff to single target healing during these windows.

On purely single target healing, Healing Scan can make up more than half your effective healing. A 15% buff to half of your healing can be up to a 8% (or better) healing buff overall and is quite strong. This tactical is straightforward and a good choice for stronger single target healing and making your Supercharged Gas windows much burstier if used to spam Healing Scan.

When compared to other tactical options, Running Restoration may be an ideal choice for some fights and for some play styles but not all. The tactical will not be ideal for AoE healing as Healing Scan is a purely single target heal. For really high sustained AoE healing that requires using Kolto Missile on cooldown, Rocket Fuel Vapors is a solid choice. For mixed single target and AoE healing, SC-4 Treatment Scanner is a good choice also.

The real question is for general purpose use whether to use Running Restoration or SC-4 Treatment. Running Restoration provides a stronger buff to Healing Scan, which is primarily usable during Supercharged Gas windows. SC-4 Treatment Scanner provides a much smaller buff to Progressive Scan that is used far less often in the rotation, but more importantly generates 4 Supercharge during its channel. SC-4 therefore provides more frequent uptime on Supercharged Gas and its energy regeneration and availability of Healing Scan with no cooldown and a reduced energy cost.

So which is better, really strong Supercharged Cell windows via Running Restoration or weaker but more frequent windows via SC-4? For pure single target healing, the results are fairly close and depend heavily on playstyle. My testing seems to favor Running Restoration, though as you factor in more group healing (and Progressive Scan becomes more important) the balance shifts towards SC-4.

The key distinguishing factor between the tacticals relates to energy costs. SC-4 provides more frequent uptime on Supercharged Gas and its +5% healing buff and 10 energy regeneration. However, SC-4 does not otherwise noticeably increase my actual healing output via its core abilities, as the 5% buff to Progressive Scan is just not that impactful. As such, to deliver more healing I have to use Healing Scan or Rapid Scan (my two spammable heals, though one only during Supercharged Gas windows) more often with SC-4 than I would with Running Restoration. I actually can do that fairly easily, and in my testing I found that I Healing Scan actually made up a higher percentage of my healing output than under Running Restoration because I could use it that much more often.

However, it’s important to remember that Supercharged Gas only regenerates 10 energy whereas Rapid Scan costs 18 and Healing Scan has a base cost of 20 (which can decrease down to 0 depending on whether Supercharged Gas is up and the number of Critical Efficiency stacks). So each Supercharged Gas only “pays for” around half a Medical Probe or around the same for an Healing Scan at its base cost. That is not a self sustaining net energy usage to deliver enough higher cost healing to compensate for the +15% buff from Running Restoration.

In my testing, I found that to keep using Healing Scan during each Supercharged Gas window I had to use far less Rapid Scans. That makes sense since Healing Scan is a far better healing ability, but using less Scans severely compromises my Supercharge generation since each one generates +2 Supercharge. My preliminary testing found that this compromise cut the net Supercharge coming from Progressive Scan by nearly half.

Overall, I found that Running Restoration outperformed SC-4 in a purely single target heal context primarily because it delivers more healing per ability use net of the related energy costs. By getting as much healing out of every Healing Scan as possible, I had more overall energy available to use Rapid Scans to generate Supercharge stacks.

Since it probably seems like I’m dumping on SC-4 as a tactical option, let me be clear. I think it’s a really good tactical. When one still maintains a primary focus on single target healing priority but includes at least 4 total healing targets, I found the two were extremely close in total healing output.

I believe the key driver for folks will depend largely on playstyle and will shift from fight to fight. Players who tend to avoid using Supercharged Gas on cooldown and sometimes save it a few GCDs for predictable burst windows should most likely take Running Restoration to maximize the burst of those Healing Scan spam windows. Folks should take SC-4 if they are used to the old Rocket Fuel Vapors tactical and want Supercharged Gas up as often as possible for energy management and reduce the risk of spike damage without burst available.

Impact on Rotation:

No change to rotation. Healing Scan will be stronger when it's available off cooldown and during Supercharged Gas windows.

Increased drop rate from flashpoints.

Progressive Scan heals for an additional 5% and generates Supercharge stacks while channeled, up to 4 stacks for a complete channel.

Analysis:

SC-4 is a great tactical in that it provides a slight buff to your best burst group heal ability and noticeably increases your uptime on Supercharged Gas windows. I feel that it is the best tactical for folks as they transition away from the old Rocket Fuel Vapors, and its ridiculously high uptime on Supercharged Gas, back to a “normal” healing system.

Please see the analysis above on Running Restoration as it relates primarily to discussing the merits of each tactical. SC-4 will be better in a variety of circumstances. It provides better group healing in situations where Progressive Scan is a highly effective group heal. It provides more frequent uptime on Supercharged Gas, which can be important for fights where spike damage is unpredictable or highly frequent. The increased uptime can also be very helpful for players who prefer to use Supercharged Gas as an energy cooldown as much as for spamming Healing Scan.

Impact on Rotation:

Players should prioritize using Progressive Scan on cooldown as often as possible to build Supercharge. Players should be careful to avoid spamming Healing Scan during every Supercharged Gas window, as doing so will create major energy issues or require spamming Kolto Shot outside each Supercharged Gas window. When running SC-4, a good approach is to try and only use 2 Healing Scans each Supercharged Gas window, instead of 3-4, which provides a good balance for energy management and less powerful but more frequent burst windows.