Darth Hater

The Imperial Agent relies on cunning and stealth to serve the Empire in a wide variety of roles. The Operative advanced class focuses on technology and concealment tools and abilities in order to provide healing and unleash damage from close range. Imperial Intelligence is known for quickly and quietly doing their job without being seen, and the Operative is an important piece of this covert organization. The abilities and suggested specs for Operatives in these roles are examined after the jump.

Upon reaching level ten, Imperial Agents will be directed to choose their permanent advanced class. The Sniper advanced class is limited to a damage dealing role and is most effective at long range. Alternatively, the Operative can heal or deal damage and is most effective at short to medium range with several effective melee attacks. This guide takes a look at the Medic specialization of the Operative advanced class.

Attributes

Primary Attribute: Cunning
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Combat Ratings: Alacrity (Cast/Channeled Time Reduction), Power (+Damage/Healing), Critical Rating, Surge Rating (+Critical Damage/Healing), Accuracy Rating (+Hit Chance)

Cunning affects all Operative abilities, including damaging attacks and healing abilities. Power affects bonus healing and is a popular choice for healers. Currently, both damage and healing Operatives will wear essentially the same gear, especially at the early levels. Where this will differentiate is on what Combat Ratings are preferred.

Skill Trees

Medic

* Note, this is a sample PvE oriented skill setup.  Player preferences may dictate some minor changes for other content types.

The Medic tree is available for Operatives who want to maximize their healing ability. Healing is done through the use of kolto healing technology and a variety of droids. All Operatives will receive the healing abilities Diagnostic Scan, Kolto Injection and Kolto Infusion. Toxin Scan is useful for removing harmful effects and is another skill available to Operatives regardless of spec. Resuscitation Probe is an in-combat revive ability also available to all Operatives.

For those who decide to dive into the Medic tree, several additional healing abilities become available. Kolto Probe is an instant-cast heal over time (HOT) ability that players can stack up to two times on a friendly target. Surgical Probe provides an instant-cast heal that costs no energy but consumes the Tactical Advantage buff. Recuperative Nanotech is the top tier ability in the Medic skill tree and is an effective area of effect HOT skill.

Healing as an Operative depends largely on making effective use of Tactical Advantage. Two of the advanced class’ most effective heals - Kolto Infusion and Surgical Probe - require and consume Tactical Advantage. There are some additional choices within the Medic skill tree that result in more frequent uptime for Tactical Advantage, meaning more healing options are more frequently available to the Operative.

Medical Engineering gives each healing tick of Kolto Probe a chance to grant Tactical Advantage. When several stacks of Kolto Probe are spread across multiple targets, the frequency of this proc occurring is fairly reliable. The Agent gives a small laugh as an audible cue each time Tactical Advantage becomes available through this ability.

Surgical Precision makes the already effective Surgical Probe even more powerful. Not only does it increase the healing of the base ability, it automatically refreshes Tactical Advantage if the Probe is used on targets with less than 30% health remaining. This essentially lets the Operative repeatedly cast Surgical Probe on targets under 30% at no cost until the target is back over 30% and no longer facing immenant death.

Energy consumption can become a concern in intense healing situations. The Operative has some options to help deal with the resource management. Endorphin Rush makes the Adrenaline Probe ability more effective by instantly restoring some energy in addition to the energy over time restored by the base ability. Stim Boost will consume Tactical Advantage and provides another way to restore energy over time.

While Diagnostic Scan as a base healing ability is not incredibly impressive, enhancing it with Prognosis: Critical and Patient Studies make it a useful part of a healing Operative’s rotation. Increasing its chance to crit coupled with crits restoring energy make it a good situational heal when your target is not in need of a large heal, allowing the Operative to take advantage of its energy restoring property.

Companions

Kaliyo Djannis
Combat Style: Ranged Tank
Primary Attribute: Aim
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Primary Weapon: Blaster Pistol
Secondary Weapon: Shield Generator
Armor: Heavy
Crew Skill: +2 Underworld Trading Critical,+10 Armstech Efficiency

Kaliyo wears heavy armor and wields a blaster pistol, making her ideally suited for a ranged tank role. Abilities such as Guard Stance and Distract help Kaliyo generate threat and draw the attention of enemies, allowing the Operative to get into place for positional attacks such as Backstab.

For healing specced Operatives, a decent strategy against Elite and Boss enemies is to allow Kaliyo to tank and deal damage while the Operative focuses on keeping her alive. This works well at low levels, where the enemy opponents do not have a lot of health. At higher levels however, Kaliyo’s lack of high damage output makes this strategy a bit less effective as it can take quite some time for her to kill Elite targets.

Vector Hyllus
Combat Style: Melee DPS
Primary Attribute: Willpower
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Primary Weapon: Electrostaff
Secondary Weapon: Generator (non-shield)
Armor: Light
Crew Skill: +5 Diplomacy Critical,+5 Bioanalysis Efficiency

Vector is a lightly armored melee DPS fighter. Swinging around an Electrostaff at close range, he can crank out a good amount of damage in a short amount of time. However Vector does not have any threat generating abilities, so chances are he will not be keeping enemies from attacking the Operative. His stance can be toggled between Combat Pheromones, increasing armor penetration and reducing downtime between fights, and Exsanguination, which gives his attacks the chance of applying a strong damage over time effect.

Doctor Lokin
Combat Style: Healer / Melee DPS
Primary Attribute: Cunning
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Primary Weapon: Blaster Pistol
Secondary Weapon: Vibroknife
Armor: Medium
Crew Skill: +15 Biochem Efficiency, +10 Investigation Efficiency

In human form, Doctor Lokin fills the role of healer. With abilities such as Med Scan, Field Dress and Kolto Jolt, the Doctor can keep the Operative alive while they focus on dealing damage and attracting the attention of enemies. Med Watch stance reduces threat generation, decreasing the chance nearby enemies will attack Doctor Lokin while he keeps the Operative alive. For healing specced Operatives, having a second healer in the group may be redundant.

Through Transformation, the rakghoul version of Doctor Lokin becomes an entirely different beast. Abilities such as Swipe and Infect allow Lokin to engage enemies at melee range and deal a significant amount of damage. Similar to Vector, the transformed Doctor Lokin is not likely to generate enough threat to draw the attention of all enemies, so Operatives will likely be taking some damage from foes.

Ensign Raina Temple
Combat Style: Ranged DPS
Primary Attribute: Cunning
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Primary Weapon: Blaster Pistol
Secondary Weapon: Blaster Pistol
Armor: Medium
Crew Skill: +2 Armormech Critical, +10 Scavenging Efficiency

Temple goes into battle wearing medium armor and wielding dual blaster pistols, providing ranged DPS. She is essentially an Agent with abilities that will seem very familiar. Her Force attunement makes an appearance by way of the Force Burst ability, while other skills like Blaster Sweep and Twin Shots make use of her dual wielded pistols.

Clad in medium armor, Ensign Temple is not designed to take much of a beating as a tank for the Operative, although she can hold her own when receiving healing. A more likely scenario is the Operative and Temple trading aggro from enemies as they deal out damage and build threat. The medium armor proficiency and shared primary stats make Temple an excellent candidate to receive armor that the Operative has outgrown, which should keep her fairly well geared and competitive without much extra effort.

SCORPIO
Combat Style: Melee Tank
Primary Attribute: Aim
Secondary Attribute: Endurance
Primary Weapon: Electrostaff
Secondary Weapon: Shield Generator
Armor: Heavy
Crew Skill: +2 Slicing Critical ,+10 Cybertech Efficiency

SCORPIO's metallic body acts as heavy armor, making her well suited for a tanking role. Wielding a tech staff means she is best suited for melee tanking, dealing damage with skills such as Power Attack and Cleave. Abilities like Guard Stance, Guardian Strike and Deploy Shields give her effective tools to generate threat and absorb damage, keeping the enemy from attacking the Operative. The Jet Rush ability gives SCORPIO a way to charge into combat quickly and draw attention to herself.

Because she uses droid parts and has access to an additional armor slot, SCORPIO's damage mitigation will be more effective than Kaliyo's. For healing Operatives, SCORPIO provides a very good option as their companion of choice. The heavy armor, melee attack range and threat generation allows for her to take a beating and keep the focus away from the Operative as they get into position to attack and toss out occasional heals to keep her alive.

Crafting Skills

Obviously, Crafting Skills that focus primarily on force users are going to be wholly ineffectual for Imperial Agents, especially considering the Agent has no force using companions. With that in mind, there are a few Crafting Skills that do stand out.

Cybertech:

Cybertech crafts item modifications, earpieces, mounts and droid parts. Operatives, regardless of spec, can make effective use of all of these items. Item modifications can be used to upgrade newly acquired gear, earpieces can be used to equip themselves and their companions, and Agents who prefer to use SCORPIO can craft upgrades for her as well. Because three of an Operative's five companions receive bonuses relevant to this skill - Temple with Scavenging Efficiency, Scorpio with Cybertech Efficiency and Kaliyo with Underworld Trading Crit - Cybertech is a very good choice for an Operative.

Armstech:

Armstech crafts all non-force weaponry, even weaponry that is companion exclusive. Higher quality item schematics can be discovered by reverse engineering a standard quality item several times. This allows an Operative to focus on developing Blaster Rifles and Barrel modifications, along with weaponry for their preferred companion.

Armormech:

Armormech allows the Operative to ensure they have the most up to date gear equipped in each available armor slot. Much like Armstech, players can reverse engineer basic quality items to discover high quality schematics. As the Operative has several companions who wear medium or heavy armor, this crew skill is one of the most useful available.

Biochem:

Able to craft stims, medpacs and implants, Biochem provides some of the most universally useful items in the game. Adrenals that boost stats such as Cunning and Power can bolster an Operative's healing ability. Beyond that, reverse engineering these items can leave the player with high quality reusable versions fairly early, allowing the player to save massive amounts of credits while staying exceptionally buffed and augmented with additional healing.

Conclusion

The Operative is a versatile advanced class that can be effective at both healing and dealing damage at close range. Stealth is an important aspect of the Operatives arsenal and sustains their covert role within Imperial Intelligence. The Medic skill tree is composed of several interesting and unique tools that make the Operative a healer equipped to thrive in most situations.