[ARCHIVE] 1.1.5 Sith Sorcerer Healing Compendium

[Petrus]

(03-29-2012 07:36 PM)Venaliter Wrote:  

(03-29-2012 07:21 PM)Livid Wrote:  Therefore, in my opinion, this nerf to Force Surge will probably only be an issue in very healing intensive fights.

The nerf to Force Surge/Force Bending is simply crippling in PvP. Sorcs are no longer viable in that aspect - and I HAVE tested on the PTR.

In PvE, the nerf is badly designed, uncomfortable gameplay. The numbers I'm seeing from the PTR and the new combat logs Sorcs are taking an extra 15-25% more damage then other healers. I haven't yet seen any good numbers on HPS comparisons (rough guess - pretty close) but only when a Sorc can make effective use of Revivification, which to be fair is pretty common.

While I do agree that the consumption change is fairly crippling in PvP - we already are just about the easiest class to kill - and even the other Sorc specs have more survivability/utility than we do as a healer - it's clearly meant that we're not supposed to use consumption in PvP except when we have the upper hand. Even without consumption we can still burst heal longer than either of the other two healers in PvP, although to be fair once we're out of force we're dead - whereas they have ways to get it back.


Anyways, as this forum is more or less aimed at PvE (we do have PvP forums where we can discuss this more in detail) let me talk about consumption in 1.2

The truth is... I like it.

Do I take more damage than the other healers? Absolutely. Easily 20 - 30% more. (As I still use consumption on CD 95% of the time.) Is it a nerf to our healing done? Frankly, yeah. Theoretically you could heal yourself 100% by standing in revivification or letting another healer heal you, but in practice you're going to be healing yourself a lot more than before. It'll probably equate to a 5 - 10% total nerf for heals done on other people, depending on what spells you use to heal yourself, and how often you have another healer doing it.

That said, it does add another layer to the class. Not only do you have to watch when you can use consumption, but you have to decide when/what spell to heal yourself with. We still have the potential to never go OOM, and honestly it's still not that hard to do.

I've done all 4 bosses on the PTS now, and I can count the number of times on one hand where I didn't use consumption because I was concerned about my HP. Looking at my logs, I used consumption 218 times over 12 attempts. I really don't think that's much farther behind than someone will use it on live.

As far as healing output, this will obviously need a lot more testing - but I still feel we're kind of the kings in that regard. Based on heal logs from the PTS and warzones (when I could stay alive) I'm still doing substantially more healing than the other two heal classes. Is a lot of that from my AoE? Yeah. Could some of that be because myself/the other healers? I'm sure it is. It'll take a lot more data to truly know where everyone stands, but so far I'm pretty comfortable with it.


*The key to remember here, and the reason I'm ok with this change, is that boss fights in 1.2 are VERY different. They're all mechanic based, and they're all about people doing what they are supposed to do. Healers can no longer carry a raid by powering through mistakes. Frankly, I'm fine with this.

EVERY fight in 1.2 gives plenty of time for a healer to sit back and regen force. 90% of the damage is predictable too. There's several times where I sit at 30% HP and am not too worried - I know when and where the next damage is going to come from and I have time to deal with it.

These two things combine to make healing MUCH less about powering through content, and more about making sure your players do the right thing.



The one place where I see the sorcerer extremely lacking, and the one thing that might kill the class for me in the end - is our lack of emergency heals.

The sorcerer is about sustainability. Yes, it's true that if things get bad we can pump out some big heals for a fairly long amount of time (although we'll be in trouble by the end if we go OOM) but that's not really what I consider emergency healing.

When my tank is sitting at 5%, and he's about to take a hit - there's nothing I can realistically do. Even if he doesn't have a shield debuff, 3.5k isn't likely enough to save him. The same goes for innervate - even if it's off CD it's likely not going to tick for enough to bring him up quick enough, especially if I don't have time for a resurgence first.

The truth is we have no viable emergency heal that is under 2.5 second cast time.

Dark heal is a joke that I don't think anyone should ever use. The only possible scenario would be if you already have a force bending up AND your target has the barrier debuff already. Even then, I'd probably chose another spell.

Barrier is clearly designed as part of our rotation - our talent choices make that abundantly clear. Saving static Barrier as an emergency heal isn't practical, and would hurt our total healing quite a bit in the long run.

Innervate is instant(ish), but even on a double crit its only 3.5 - 4k in 1.5 seconds.


Clearly, we have no real emergency heals, which basically makes it the job of the other two healers - the Operative with their instant and free heals if the target is under 30%, and the merc with an instant heal that can hit for 6k+.

I'm fine with that, and don't expect our tools to be as good as those two classes - but the largest gap I've found in 1.2 is our utter lack of ability to bring someone back from the edge in a timely manner - and I really think that does need to be addressed in some way.


Anyways, hopefully that gives a little insight into 1.2 healing. Despite the issue with our emergency healing the class is still very strong. I honestly think we're in a pretty good place going into 1.2, and the only thing I would change would be giving us some type of instant heal - even if it was on a long CD and took a % of our HP. It can be costly, that's fine - we just need something.


*Edit* Btw - the one real issue with consumption is the scaling. The more HP we have, the more it hurts. I stopped using an End stim in progression - though this problem is only going to get worse. We have 650 (600 if we lose our 4 set in T2 gear) force, and that never changes. Our HP continues to go up though, and every extra point of HP we have is more healing that we're required to do.

This does need to get changed to either be a base amount of our HP, or to restore force based on HP lost, although honestly this won't be a major issue until we start seeing HP in the 22 - 25k+ range.

[frmorrison]

It isn't too hard to get Dark Resilience (2% off HP taken from Consumption) talent (there was 1 floater and take the other one from the 1% healing Tier 1 talent). However, perhaps that % should be increased a little bit.
It is interesting that a Healer has to use a Life Tap mechanic to gain resources back, but the numbers are off (13% HP for 8% force). If Dark Resilience took of 5% HP to make Consumption take 10% HP, that would help a bit.

I am not sure Sorcs are going to get a big heal.

[Venaliter]

(03-29-2012 10:40 PM)Petrus Wrote:  Anyways, as this forum is more or less aimed at PvE (we do have PvP forums where we can discuss this more in detail) let me talk about consumption in 1.2

The truth is... I like it.

*The key to remember here, and the reason I'm ok with this change, is that boss fights in 1.2 are VERY different. They're all mechanic based, and they're all about people doing what they are supposed to do. Healers can no longer carry a raid by powering through mistakes. Frankly, I'm fine with this.

Completely agree. It's boring when you can Reviv through all the boss mechanics. Fights should be complicated then that. I agree Sorcerors needed a nerf, but I shocked at which nerf they actually applied.

(03-29-2012 10:40 PM)Petrus Wrote:  The one place where I see the sorcerer extremely lacking, and the one thing that might kill the class for me in the end - is our lack of emergency heals.

Force Bending should have been left as it was. But I suspect they wanted to exactly what they accomplished; end class stacking. Sorcerors really have no catch up if they fall behind. None. a Pair of sorcerers can't as effectively heal in an 8 man as a pair of one-ofs could.

(03-29-2012 10:40 PM)Petrus Wrote:  Btw - the one real issue with consumption is the scaling. The more HP we have, the more it hurts. I stopped using an End stim in progression - though this problem is only going to get worse. We have 650 (600 if we lose our 4 set in T2 gear) force, and that never changes. Our HP continues to go up though, and every extra point of HP we have is more healing that we're required to do.

I would define the issue with Consumption as three-fold, most of which we've touched on.

1) Self Damaging mechanics don't work in PvP or PvE encounters with 90%+ AoE spikes.
2) Consumption damage increases with Endurance, but Force Regen does not.

3) While they are striving to bring HPS in balance (a noble goal), a healer that takes 20% more damage but has the same HPS as the other two classes is extremely flawed design. There's a contradiction there.

Not to mention it just feels awkward to most players to have to heal themselves so aggressively every fight. Normally, you pair off self-damage with self- passive healing.

I wish they had have nerfed us in a more elegant way.

Flat out removing the Consumption mechanic and re-adding "Meditation" as in Beta would have been fine.

Changing Force Surge to only proc every X seconds for Y force would have been okay.

Changing Force Surge to something like "Innervate crits apply a buff, "Whatever" causing your Consumption to deal 50/100% less damage, but to restore only 25%/50% less force.

And these are just off the top of my head.

Frankly, the balance changes in 1.2 make very little sense; were badly implemented, simple "knee-jerk" reactions or conspicuously absent. I'm just not a happy camper this patch.

[Petrus]

(03-30-2012 03:43 AM)Venaliter Wrote:  I would define the issue with Consumption as three-fold, most of which we've touched on.

1) Self Damaging mechanics don't work in PvP or PvE encounters with 90%+ AoE spikes.
2) Consumption damage increases with Endurance, but Force Regen does not.

3) While they are striving to bring HPS in balance (a noble goal), a healer that takes 20% more damage but has the same HPS as the other two classes is extremely flawed design. There's a contradiction there.

All I can say - don't knock it 'till you try it.

1. - It DOES work. Through the occasional resurgence, standing in revivification, and my partners free heals - that's all I really have to do.

I'll point you towards your own quote - Sorc healing was too easy. These things are about mechanics. If you're taking 90% of your HP from an AoE then quite franking - you're doing it wrong. As I said, the VAST majority of damage in these new raids is predictable.

2. Agree

3. My disagreement here is 2 fold. First off, I still think we do MORE HPS. Secondly, my healing partner healed me for MORE than I healed myself. I let their free heal and my revivification do the VAST majority of the leg work. As I said... we're still king in the HPS book.

So yeah, this gives priority to raids bringing more than sorcs (as it should) but 2 sorcs healers can still down content.


I have video's up of most of our fights in the Tier 2 progression forum. Please don't judge me by my healing (as I was raid leading, trying to figure out my class changes, and adapt the strat on the fly) but it should give you an idea.

There were MANY times where myself or others sat at 10%, and it was no big deal. I knew when the next damage would come.

Also, as I said, there's always downtime to regen.



Gives those videos' a shot, but hold off making your final opinions until you try it. I was VERY against these changes until I had a chance to clear all the bosses. Now I"m a fan. They work. (Except in pvp, where they suck and bioware broke the class... but that's a different story )

[frmorrison]

Oh they listened (new patch on PTS):

Dark Resilience now reduces the health spent by Consumption by 2% per point (up from 1% per point). So 11% health loss is still high, but a little more reasonable.

[Venaliter]

(03-29-2012 10:40 PM)Petrus Wrote:  I was VERY against these changes until I had a chance to clear all the bosses. They work. (Except in pvp, where they suck and bioware broke the class... but that's a different story )

That alone is why the changes should have been reverted.

(03-30-2012 08:56 AM)frmorrison Wrote:  Oh they listened (new patch on PTS):

Dark Resilience now reduces the health spent by Consumption by 2% per point (up from 1% per point). So 11% health loss is still high, but a little more reasonable.

Fabulous. 2% solves exactly jack-shit.

Personally, if accept these changes, you're complicit in implementing them. They completely break the class in PvP and that's utter bull.

These changes are going live. I cancelled my sub. I won't pay a for a service Bioware is not providing.

[Livid]

(03-30-2012 11:29 AM)Venaliter Wrote:  These changes are going live. I cancelled my sub. I won't pay a for a service Bioware is not providing.

Well as someone said earlier, nerfs and buffs come and go in every game. And in every game they are sometimes done well and sometimes not. I mean, if you feel overall that the game isn't fun, that's understandable that you cancel your subscription. But if you drop a game every time they nerf a class you might play, then you might be missing out on a lot of fun. If these changes aren't tolerable, then maybe leveling another class would be a better option.

[Malal]

(03-30-2012 11:29 AM)Venaliter Wrote:  These changes are going live. I cancelled my sub. I won't pay a for a service Bioware is not providing.

This was my initial reaction but the fact is that sages are getting over-nerfed and it will change with time. The changes might not even fully go live. We don't know.

Bioware is changing the way healing functions in the game it seems from watching the new boss videos. Thank you Petrus. Personally I think it is going to suck a little bit but hey a challenge is a challenge.

My main point for this post is let's avoid the qq that is running rampant on the bioware swtor forums. This place is so above that. They complain but we find solutions.

[Ears]

Any plans to update for 1.2?

[frmorrison]

(04-02-2012 04:14 AM)Ears Wrote:  Any plans to update for 1.2?

The person that wrote the first post has said maybe a month ago that he doesn't plan to update anymore. I am not sure someone else volunteered to update it.