Alacrity - Little effect on sustained HPS

[Smokeskin]

I'm 100% sure I'm right, at least in principle. I might have made a mistake in my calculations or my assumptions, but there is no doubt that there are some serious, serious flaws in the analysis that has let to the idea that surge > alacrity even for large values of surge. Those analysises are based on several faulty assumptions of which the most serious are pre-nerf surge numbers, not considering wasted TA procs while casting KI, and not looking at burst healing numbers at all.

[denDAY04]

@Smokeskin
I agree about the burst healing, but a guildie of mine came with an argument that made me think a bit. He said that aren't operatives HOT healers while burst healing would rather fall to Sorc and BH healers?
Now I have no idea how Sorc or BH manages healing but seeing as KP and SP are our key healing abilities I do seen his point about operatives being HOT healers.

[meleth]

Imo we're better suited to keep the tank up than the raid since sorc aoe heal is far suprior to ours and keeping the tank up means having to deal with burst healing. Ki also have a faster cast than DI.

[Anonymousy]

i don't think there is a 'burst healing' class. everyone can just burn his resource down with the best heal/time spells.
also we are definitely no 'hot healer'. sure, keeping our hot on the tank is basic, it's not worth doing it on any other character due to the low heal/energy efficiency.
alac vs surge forgets mainly the following points: overheal that is treated as effectual heal, rotation that ignores movement and other situational changes (tank gets a few crits and then dodges the following few).
alac improves flexibility and hurts people that feel like they need to behave like a 6yo adhs kid on cocaine by constanly burning the energy down.
surge helps us whenever it is an effective heal: our hot on the tank is mostly effective and not influenced by alac. also the <30% hp patients that get our chain-instant are influenced by surge and not alac.

[Kaedis]

Quote:I agree about the burst healing, but a guildie of mine came with an argument that made me think a bit. He said that aren't operatives HOT healers while burst healing would rather fall to Sorc and BH healers?
Now I have no idea how Sorc or BH manages healing but seeing as KP and SP are our key healing abilities I do seen his point about operatives being HOT healers.

Given that a Sorc's key healing abilities are Resurgence

Resurgence
Sith Inquisitor (Sorcerer)

Force: -40
Range: 30m
Channel time: 3.0 secs
Cooldown: 9 secs
Damage Type: Healing
Mirror: Rejuvenate

Immediately heals a target for [?], plus an additional [?] over 9 seconds.

and Innervate

Innervate
Sith Inquisitor (Sorcerer)

Force: -40
Range: 30m
Channel time: 3.0 secs
Cooldown: 9 secs
Damage Type: Healing
Mirror: Healing Trance

Immediately heals a target for [?] and a further [?] per second for 3 seconds.

, I think maintaining the claim that IA healers are "HoT healers" and Sorcs are not would be difficult at best. Problem is, neither is really a "HoT healer". Sure, they both use HoTs, and sure some of their central healing mechanics revolve around HoTs, but the implication of "HoT healer" is that, like Druids of yesteryear, the majority of their healing comes from HoTs, and therefore their reactive and burst healing is almost nonexistent. HoT healers are traditionally maintenance healers only, and none of the healers in this game really fall into that archetype.

[Azaranth]

(02-25-2012 05:08 AM)Kor Wrote:  Given that a Sorc's key healing abilities are Resurgence

Resurgence
Sith Inquisitor (Sorcerer)

Force: -40
Range: 30m
Channel time: 3.0 secs
Cooldown: 9 secs
Damage Type: Healing
Mirror: Rejuvenate

Immediately heals a target for [?], plus an additional [?] over 9 seconds.

and Innervate

Innervate
Sith Inquisitor (Sorcerer)

Force: -40
Range: 30m
Channel time: 3.0 secs
Cooldown: 9 secs
Damage Type: Healing
Mirror: Healing Trance

Immediately heals a target for [?] and a further [?] per second for 3 seconds.

, I think maintaining the claim that IA healers are "HoT healers" and Sorcs are not would be difficult at best. Problem is, neither is really a "HoT healer". Sure, they both use HoTs, and sure some of their central healing mechanics revolve around HoTs, but the implication of "HoT healer" is that, like Druids of yesteryear, the majority of their healing comes from HoTs, and therefore their reactive and burst healing is almost nonexistent. HoT healers are traditionally maintenance healers only, and none of the healers in this game really fall into that archetype.

Agreed.

Slow-Release Medpac is a decently efficient heal (that improves to very, very efficient if you're reapplying stacks properly). The trade off is that the healing happens over a fairly large window of time. It doesn't compare to the WoW Druids front-loaded, high HPS heal, nor do we have a Swiftmend style tool to realize all the healing potential immediately in an emergency.

As Kor notes, a majority of our reactive healing comes from direct heals, not HoTs. Good reactive healing is critical, and in my opinion, prevents more wipes than min-maxing the output of your maintenance healing. This is why I don't think the numbers do a suitable job at valuing Alacrity in a real-world scenario.

Soa, Jarg+Sorno, Fabricator, Bonethrasher and Foreman Crusher all favor active healing, and that list probably includes the three hardest fights in the game right now. The only fights where I think our HoT's play a really crucial role are Gharj and Karagga, two of the easiest.

[Kaedis]

Hmm, you may have a solid point there, Azaranth. I traditionally don't favor Alacrity much either, as mathematically it tends to provide less output then other stats, particularly for resource-limited healers. However, maintenance healing, as you say, isn't really the focus of min-maxing healing output, as maintenance healing generally takes place during periods in which maximum output is not required. Burst healing fights tend to be the harder ones in this content, and Alacrity certainly tends to favor burst healing more than maintenance healing. This bears further considerations.

[Azaranth]

(02-25-2012 07:38 AM)Kor Wrote:  Hmm, you may have a solid point there, Azaranth. I traditionally don't favor Alacrity much either, as mathematically it tends to provide less output then other stats, particularly for resource-limited healers. However, maintenance healing, as you say, isn't really the focus of min-maxing healing output, as maintenance healing generally takes place during periods in which maximum output is not required. Burst healing fights tend to be the harder ones in this content, and Alacrity certainly tends to favor burst healing more than maintenance healing. This bears further considerations.

I've been preaching the "Alacrity isn't as bad as everyone thinks" message for a while now, but I tend to get shut down by people who either over-analyze the math (ignoring the context in which clutch healing happens), or over-generalize ("Most of our healing comes from Hots!")

HoT's are, by definition, applied in non-critical situations. I'll grant that there's a few situations where you're forced to cast on the run and applying HoT's is our best bet, but these HoT's are topping off raid members, not saving someone from imminent death.

UWM, by contrast, is almost always cast when someone is missing a significant chunk of hit points. My most frequent healing methodology is to target the lowest hp raid member with Underworld Medicine, and then shoot the ensuing Emergency Medpack at the second lowest hp raid member. In clutch healing situations (aka, your dps fail to interrupt Sorno before he gets a few ticks off), activation speed is *the* most important stat on your sheet.

Now, I'm not saying to favor alacrity over all stats. Not at all. Power and Crit are still going to be crucial to every healer. My argument is this: Maximize quantity over quality. I feel it's a major mistake to drop your Alacrity from 250 -> 0, just to push your Crit rating from 400 -> 600. That will lose you about 10% activation speed, and gain you about 3% crit. Bad trade.

To put it another way, due to the mechanics of diminishing returns, I'd rather have 5 crit, 5 surge, 5 alacrity and 5 power than 10 crit and 10 surge.

[Smokeskin]

(02-25-2012 08:01 AM)Azaranth Wrote:  I've been preaching the "Alacrity isn't as bad as everyone thinks" message for a while now, but I tend to get shut down by people who either over-analyze the math (ignoring the context in which clutch healing happens), or over-generalize ("Most of our healing comes from Hots!")

I believe you're quite right. I posted a spreadsheet here http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Ope...preadsheet which not only fixes some quite serious mistakes in previous spreadsheets, but also does both a burst healing and sustained healing comparison. It shows that at 300 surge, more alacrity is about 75% as effective as surge for sustained healing, but a massive 500% as effective for burst healing.

[Kaladris]

(02-25-2012 08:01 AM)Azaranth Wrote:  

(02-25-2012 07:38 AM)Kor Wrote:  Hmm, you may have a solid point there, Azaranth. I traditionally don't favor Alacrity much either, as mathematically it tends to provide less output then other stats, particularly for resource-limited healers. However, maintenance healing, as you say, isn't really the focus of min-maxing healing output, as maintenance healing generally takes place during periods in which maximum output is not required. Burst healing fights tend to be the harder ones in this content, and Alacrity certainly tends to favor burst healing more than maintenance healing. This bears further considerations.

I've been preaching the "Alacrity isn't as bad as everyone thinks" message for a while now, but I tend to get shut down by people who either over-analyze the math (ignoring the context in which clutch healing happens), or over-generalize ("Most of our healing comes from Hots!")

HoT's are, by definition, applied in non-critical situations. I'll grant that there's a few situations where you're forced to cast on the run and applying HoT's is our best bet, but these HoT's are topping off raid members, not saving someone from imminent death.

UWM, by contrast, is almost always cast when someone is missing a significant chunk of hit points. My most frequent healing methodology is to target the lowest hp raid member with Underworld Medicine, and then shoot the ensuing Emergency Medpack at the second lowest hp raid member. In clutch healing situations (aka, your dps fail to interrupt Sorno before he gets a few ticks off), activation speed is *the* most important stat on your sheet.

Now, I'm not saying to favor alacrity over all stats. Not at all. Power and Crit are still going to be crucial to every healer. My argument is this: Maximize quantity over quality. I feel it's a major mistake to drop your Alacrity from 250 -> 0, just to push your Crit rating from 400 -> 600. That will lose you about 10% activation speed, and gain you about 3% crit. Bad trade.

To put it another way, due to the mechanics of diminishing returns, I'd rather have 5 crit, 5 surge, 5 alacrity and 5 power than 10 crit and 10 surge.

I agree completly to your point, but i think that the problem is mainly rooted in the fact that people do not over-analyze the math, but tend to take completly serious in 100% of all cases for truth what is written here, and furthermore tend to intensify the presented message.
I would also never even consider to agree to drop 250 alacrity for crit rating 400-> 600, but appearantly, people tend to take the stat weighting not as a fluctiating system of different values that influence each other's worth, but as a source of eternal wisdom that must be obeyed in every circumstances.
If all of our user knew how to read and interpret the graph from the stat weight thread, we would not need something like a special section explaining or posting stat weights on its own.
The result is that within this community, at least here in the IA/Smuggler section, trends start to evolve, trends that can/could even be contradictory in a time frame of perhaps 2-3 weeks, and my assumption is that this will continue from the moment the next big update will come and the game will be set to zero.
The difference to the not so sophisticated community is, that we actually crunch lot more numbers, and that at least most of us do not tend to defend a position dogmatically forever, two things that are certainly more excessive in other part of the web.

My personal conclusion is a growing urge to try to write something like a general guide of theorycraft-usage that tries to put theorycrafting back within the general frame of gaming and/or game design, redirecting all the numbers to the actual presence on the screen while playing, and how do use the results of theorycrafting for your own purpose ( which doesn't have to end in min-maxing to be a good player, to just make one point that is often mistakingly assumed after reading in forums like ours).

I know that this does seem like a wall of text and quite an emotional outburst, but i hope this post is able to set the whole discussion a little bit in perspective for both sides.

So long,
Kala