Prelude:

Developers stated during class streams that they aim for different dps goals for wheter a specc is sustained or burst.

They didnt mention healing, however operative has a serious lack of burst while not pulling more hps as the others.

This is a serious drawback, especially since it has a ramp up time (appliying kolto probes)

Also operative is the only healer without a buff for armor. Although there are actual differences in numbers, i feel that a lot of problems can be solved by QOL changes rather than increasing raw numbers by a lot.

Proposed changes:

Change "medical therapy" so that in addition to its current effects casting kolto injection also adds 2 stacks of kolto probe to the target. This will be a minor sustained hps increase, however it really speeds up responsiveness and gives a smal burst increase.

Change "patient studies" so that in addition to diagnostic scan it also affects kolto waves. (Speed up channels by 30% and crits restore 2 energy).

This change is proposed with pvp in mind. If it boosts pve hps by too much, consider leaving kolto waves at 3 seconds but change its effect into satele shan style cast while fighting revan. (healer has to stand still to cast but the target may move freely)

Having the healer stand still for 3 seconds can work in pvp, having the targets stand still for that time not. (thats why you changed sorcs aoeheal to a hot)

2 seconds really is the practical maximum for an aoe target heal.

The above mechanics are not totally new, they have been on PTS.

imho they are totaly reasonable to implement as it wouldnt make the class better than the other two. However it would be more in line with them.

Considering the others will still have more burst and sustained, i`d also pledge to revert the pts talent which gave Kolto probes a significant healincrease. However it should be tied into healtree and not baseline for all disciplines as it was on pts.

imho operatives with its HOTs should not be the class with the least HPS, thats unreasonable.

My thought on the proposed changes first.

Getting two probes on a target at one time, would be very nce, but would give us a lot of "downtime" and apm would go down, so we would need to have it compensated to use somewhere else. The changes also makes good sense, since double stacking hots on players, have become/becomes boring and tedious, to press the same button over and over. Thats also part of the reason why stimboost was changed back in old days of swtor.

I propose that in addition to this, if we used surgical probe on a target with probes, it would proc the next kolto injection cast x% faster, or be instant or something on a 10sec cd. It would make us use it alot more for emergency burst heals, instead of just being the slowkid in the class topping off from a large spike.

Also koltowaves critting energy I dont like, and it channels just fine, but I would like to see a utillity that impacted our heals only. I would love for koltowaves to be cast on the move ect. I can see the logic in pvp where targets cant stand still, but im a pve guy at heart

Currently, compared to the other two healers, operative has two big weaknesses:

1. OP can not cope with the introduced in 3.0 spike damage (e.g. DPS hit by a cart and a barrel in Bulo). Single target healing is too weak for this.

2. He does not have an AOE heal which is usable when raid is spread (other healers do).

The result: 1) Operatives are the worst tank healers and 2) can not heal the raid effectively enough if the raid is not stacked. The latter means that operative is hardly usable in several of the new fights and there is no reason to take an operative instead of any of the other two healers.

The problems stem from the design of Ravagers and ToS. In the old ops (DF/DP) operative is very much what it has been but with c.a. 25% more HPS. Operative wasn't nerfed. It is only that the new OPs are playing on the class weak sides a way too much.

All this of course doesn't matter for SM.

TL;DR Operative seems to be the less effective healer in Ravagers and ToS. It weaknesses are so great that several fights are a pain with an operative in the group.

I would love to be proven wrong. Really don't want to reroll.

Its not only pve, missing burstheal is a major issue in pvp especially since burstdmg hast increased a lot there.

An idea would be to make kolto injection procc a free surgical probe off gcd and let kolto infusion add 2 stacks of kolto probe.

This would give excellent target switching capabilities and good enough burst heal.

koltowaves really needs a change in any form, its utterly useless for pvp.

EDIT: bringing back the 30% surge talents may also be reasonable