Last night Rouf ventured to Section X on Belsavis to try out the new dailies. I was interested in finding out where the HK-51 quest line started – I don’t know how difficult or bugged the quest is but I still don’t see that many people with him as a companion on fleet – and ended up doing something I’ve never done before in any MMO.
I healed in a group.
Well, okay, that’s not entirely true – I mean, I did heal but there was also a Sage so I sort of did DPS too. Not very well. But I did tranquilize elite mobs like a boss! We even managed to finish the quest – which might not seem like a big deal except that it took us 3 attempts to defeat the Dread Guard Legion Commander.
Kitted out in my Recruit Mk-2 healing gear with a couple of pieces of War Hero kit (I haven’t bitten the bullet on getting a set of Tionese gear yet because I can’t decide between DPS or Healer) I found my way to Section X and picked up the missions. The first couple seemed fairly straightforward and I was pleased to see that my DPS wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t cope with the area. Risha’s was a bit dire though – I think she’s still using a level 42 sniper rifle and some other not so high level kit so I may need to get on that.
Half way through one dungeon run (switching on shields, turrets and consoles – no idea what the mission was called), I got a whisper asking if I’d like to join the Heroic 4+ mission in the Aurora Cannon. Normally, I’d say no but this time I figured why not – so I joined, albeit with the hasty warning that I a) hadn’t done this before and b) was rubbish.
Highlights of the group:
I got to heal a bit.
I didn’t get the group wiped.
We completed the mission.
The last boss proved a little bit of a challenge and I shoulder some of the responsibility for that. If I came to a difficult boss during the latter part of levelling, I let the companion deal with most of the DPS while I healed through it and did some DPS with my hybrid Sawbones/Scrapper build. In the group, I assigned myself the role of off-healer as well as trying to do some DPS. Except I have no idea how to maintain DPS and I probably need to swot up.
What really caught us out though – bearing in mind that at least two of the group hadn’t been in the instance before – was the bosses abilities. On the first attempt, I suddenly realised that his health was going back up. On the second attempt, we very nearly got him down – his health was nearly at zerio – when suddenly, he was back up to full. That time I noticed that he had an ability called Consume Lifeforce and figured that was what I needed to interrupt rather than the Force Siphon I had been interrupting. I checked with the group leader who, laconically, said “Yeah, make sure you do that!” and we tried again.
I also remembered to try and use XS Freighter Flyby and some other high DPS skills I usually ignored while soloing. See, told you I was rubbish. Whatever – it worked. We killed the boss, got some boring loot drops and finished the mission.
Of course, I then did what I should have done before the mission and that was to look up Dulfy’s guide to the quests. This is what I learned:
- Consume Lifeforce is only used when the boss is under 20% health
- Force Siphon is a debuff that also absorbs any healing done to the targeted player and passes it to the mob
So, my off-healing by keeping two stacks of Slow Release Medpac on the tank was actually doing more harm than good. Typical! I also have no idea if that debuff is dispellable which is something else I can do.
I am tempted now to respec fully into healing and see if I can actually manage PUGging a flashpoint. I should also probably sort out my UI to help with healing too – if anyone has any tips or suggestions, please feel free to share.
If it’s any comfort, that last boss in the H4 can be a pain even with an incredibly overgeared group simply because it feels like you should interrupt every damn thing he does, and inevitably two people overlap their interrupts at the worst possible moment and it all goes to hell.