7.5 Combat Medic | Body Guard SWTOR Guide
Combat Medic is the heal spec for the Commando class. Combat Medics excel at AoE healing and can provide moderate sustained single target healing. They have the easiest time with energy management of the three heal classes and have the best fire and forget healing of the three as well. Trauma Probes stick to their target for 3 minutes, having 7 charges that heal their target as they take damage. A good combat medic will have an easy time setting back and ensuring that their trauma probes get refreshed as they fall off, and can largely just heal this way as they keep AoE heals up and focus single target only as needed.
Gearing up for Combat Medic
Below are the gear selections, legendary implants, tactical and skill point choices I recommend for this class.
For more on gearing, visit the pages under gearing your character in the basic training tab. Gearing to 340.
Prefight Preparation
Combat Medics' can take advantage of a little prework before each boss pull by prestacking their Supercharge to 10 stacks, activating the ability to use Supercharged Cell in the opener. This should be done as often as possible.
Method 1 - able to stay stationery and time given
Using an out of combat recharge ability will build stacks. Watch your group and make sure they will be giving time for you to do this. Prepping this during an explanation is useful.
Method 2 - always on the move
No one likes waiting for you to "charge up" and if someone "accidentally" pulls you are outta luck. Spamming Med Shot while moving to the next boss or trash mob will stack your supercharge.
I sometimes use a hybrid of both, charging up with recharge and reload and maintaining my stacks if they are in danger of falling off with med shot if everyone is dragging their feet to pull. I find method 2 to be the safer, more curious route to get in the practice of. But if everyone's taking their time, recharge and reload does it for you without the need of spamming a button. End of the story, make sure you supercharge before fights. (Note we are not pressing supercharged cell (YET) The provided picture is just showing it lighting up. Save it for the pull)
The Opening Blocks
As part of the prefight prep, as you are getting ready for a pull, apply trauma probes to ALL party members. You should never let your tank pull before all players have a stack of 7 trauma probes.
x ALL OPS MEMBERS
Healing Abilities
Unlike the Seer and Sawbones, most of the Combat Medic's abilities are fairly stand alone and chosen based on their availability off cool down and what use is currently needed. As such, there are no complex patterns to memorize or sort through. Below are your abilities and some general usage situations.
(Use on cool down) I use supercharged cell as it proc's from a 10 stack of supercharged gas. This works to speed up our channels and reduces cell cost and gives Adv Med Probe reduced energy cost and removes its cool down (allowing it to be spammed). It will proc quickly as a healer. There is no reason to hold it unless there is a downtime where you are not healing in a fight. Note though that most downtime in fights is uptime for healers to catch up.
(Use as a filler heal) This is your basic heal, and our go to when other abilities are either on cool down, or our energy management becomes a concern.
(Use on cool down) Our general purpose AoE heal. Unlike the Seer's AoE aura, this AoE does not stick to players that leave the affected area, as such you will want to place this generally where folks are going to be if movement is involved in a fight. As it is an AoE I generally place this in the large group of players, it should not be used on a single target. We have better heals for single target.
(Use on cool down) Successive Treatment is a Heal over time ability that is best used on the tanks as it provides them a 10% increase to their armor for 45" (as such it should always be on them). Successive treatment is also handy in that it works similar to wondering mend (sage) bouncing to and spreading its HoT healing and armor buff to 3 targets addition targets (4 total) within a 20-meter range of the first.
(Use on cool down) Bacta Infusion is a Free Healing ability as it cost no energy cells to use. It is a HoT ability and works to proc our advanced medical probe. The typical flow becomes Bacta Infusion > Advanced Medical Probe. Use this ability anytime it is up and healing is needed.
(Never use) Medical probe is a pretty basic heal that will eat energy. It serves to proc adv medical probe, but the cost to cells will lead to a burn out. You can do 2 med shots over the duration of the medical probe's channel for more healing and a net positive energy gain, as well stand to build more cells for supercharge from our random charge tactical. Steer clear of using this ability. Use med shot or reapply your trauma probes instead of wasting energy here.
(Use During Supercharge Window)) This does about twice the healing of a normal medical probe, but it has two added benefits from passive abilities. The first is given to use at level 23 as a choice to pick "Integrated Probes". Using this ability increases the healing we do by 5% for 15". At level 68 we get an automatic passive in Kolto Residue that provides a 3% healing increase to the target of our advanced med probes for 45". That's an 8% healing increase to that target that we can take advantage of rotationally. As such, we need to use Advanced Medical Probe as close to on cool down as possible. I prefer to delay 3-4" to allow bacta infusion to come back off of cool down before using advanced medical probe for the instant cast of it.
Not a heal, per say, this is our combat revive ability. Use this to get back up an incapacitated ally. I sometimes find it useful to let a DPS die that is taking too much damage to teach the valuable lesson that my fingers will not bleed for your fluffing, but that is just me.
Gunnery's Defensive Abilities
Minor self-heal with a long cool down. Smash it to get +1% Hp over 60", if your HP dips below 35% it heals you for 35% and ends the Periodic healing. It's helpful, but not something you should be pressing thinking it will save your life (not a DCD).
25% damage reduction for 15", our best and really only actual defensive cool down. (though you can pick others in the skill tree, doing so is a DPS or movement loss). 2 minute cool down, so time it when you need it.
Technically, this ability provides no defensive use in terms of damage reduction. Hold the line prevents "most" knock backs in the game from affecting you. (if the game wants you to be knocked back, it will happen). I use these to ignore all sort of annoying mechanics or to give me a huge movement speed boost to get out of danger.
The Choice is yours
Level 68 Choice
Echoing Deterrence is a very powerful defensive, in PvP in particular. For 6 seconds, you are 100% protected from incoming damage and reflect 50% of all damage the shield absorbs back to the source of the attack. It further heals you for 5% each time you are attacked, and you can use it if you are stunned.
Like hold the line, technically not a defensive, but it can be used to quickly get you out of a bad spot. This one can be tricky though, as it blasts you backwards (often where you are not looking). I recommend you check your six before using this.
Level 43 Choice
Increases ranged and melee attack type defense by 35%, provides interrupt immunity and drops threat. Also gives us 2 charges of Decoy that absorb the next two Force or Tech Attacks. With having to pick this over tech override, it is a hard sell for me. Tech override speeds up our firing of grav rounds, leading to a dps increase. In fights where you need the extra defensive, this is the way.
Legendary Implants and Tactical
Our choice of tactical is fairly locked in, but we do have some choices for legendary implants. Personally, I use Concentrated fire and Random charge, just for their synergy with the commando's DPS specs. Advanced Scanning package will get us more activations of bacta infusion/emergency scan. If I were to use this one, it would be in place of the random charge package.