Posted by Reedyn in Halls Of Healing | 16 Comments

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

I was lucky enough to be able to get into the game on the first day of Early Access and experience the wonderful process that is leveling in Star Wars: The Old Republic. If there is something to say about doing Missions (known as Questing for you ancient cavemen) it is that they can be hard. Yes, you can pretty much forget going up and soloing bosses designed to be taken down with a group, and sometimes you can fail multiple times just doing your normal Class Missions. These type of Missions makes me remember the days back in World of Warcraft with the rare Class quests. They were totally do-able, but sometimes required multiple attempts before you actually learned how to beat it.

Now, where does healing come into all of this? Leveling as a healer has historically been tedious. You usually do much less damage than your tank or damage-dealing counterparts and things just take much longer to accomplish. This holds true for TOR as well – you will have less damage output than the other roles and since some NPCs are actually designed around you nuking them down quickly, making things much more difficult as a healer.

However, there are aspects to leveling that will actually make things easier as a healer. One of them is that NPCs tend to do a lot of damage, especially when you get to the higher levels. The tanks and damage dealers will take more damage and will have to pause longer between fights to regenerate their health and resources – you won’t need to do this as much as a healer.

The other major part is the Companion system. Companions make this game very different in the leveling process from any other MMO I’ve played. Due to the way you can choose and customize your Companion to complement your role and skills, you can mitigate the impact of having reduced damage output. Where damage dealers and tanks might choose a healing Companion you can choose an all out damage dealing Companion or a tanking Companion.

Now, down to what this article really is about: how can you make your leveling in TOR easier and more enjoyable as a healer? Read on for some pro-tips!

Play Together, Stay Together

One of the most entertaining, rewarding and spontaneous ways to play TOR (and any game, really) is to team up with a buddy. Especially as a healer, this is really powerful as you can beat almost anything with your Companions out, including some of the Missions designed for groups of 4.

Teaming up with your friends early not only helps you learn your class better as you get to play the role of the healer more often but it also helps you get closer with your gaming buddies and potentially even meet or make new ones. Not to mention those luscious social points!

Skip Tedious Bonus Missions

This is probably one of the most important things I learned while playing. Bonus Missions should really be treated as such, especially as a healer. If you don’t get them while doing the normal Mission you shouldn’t bother with these – you save much more time and level faster by just skipping them and continuing the storyline. You can always come back and do these later if you wish.

Do All Flashpoints And Group Missions

Learn to love Group Missions and Flashpoints. As a healer these are perfect for getting that much needed experience you might have lost from not killing all those extra mobs on a Bonus Mission or series.

Most of the time people are going to be actively looking for a healer. Keep an eye on general chat for players looking for a healer for the Group Missions you have in your log, or even start a group for it yourself!

I Choose You!

Choosing your Companion probably makes the biggest impact on your gameplay. As a healer it’s often good to have either a tanking or a damage dealing Companion for most Classes, if not all. The first Companion you receive should fit this criteria already. You will, however, receive more choices as your progress and you might want to pick one later on that fits your own playstyle better.

Keeping your Companions gear up to date, correctly itemized, and utilizing good quality items is probably the best way to boost your Companion’s performance and, seeing as it will be a major part of your damage output, really shines when you’re fighting tougher mobs and you have to resort to healing to keep the companion alive. Very often you get a perfectly itemized level-appropriate item for your Companion from a Mission. While Momus had good reasons for selecting the Commendations as your reward, I would actually advise against this much of the time, the gear for your Companion is of high importance as a healer!

Improving your Companion’s gear is not the only way to increase output, though. There is an attribute called Presence, which, while not very common on gear in the lower levels, can be acquired from consumable items such as Field Tech Command Stim crafted by your friendly neighborhood Biochemist. Presence will directly improve the damage, healing and health of your Companion.

Reedyn is the chief nerf-herder over at Force Heal, the healing community for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Artwork is done by strawbeki.

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