See new thread for 2.0 Changes - Sorcerer / Sage Healing Compendium Updated for 1.2!)

[Ears]

Fantastic improvement, many thanks

Maybe a few points to note about the HPS vs HPF argument is that it is normal to find that as your gear and indeed raid members improve you will probably find not as much force is being used.

Therefore you may wish to start on the HPF route but switch to the HPS route gradually as and when required.

Also some more skill analysis/situational advice would be welcome. I am not level 50 yet but plan on a sage being my main. The bit about how to heal your tank up in the quickest fashion was really uesful to a NOOB like me

[DarkLordOTS]

I was looking at my skill tree deciding how to respec it today with the innervation/surge change. I realized I rarely use the AOE heal, but admittedly I mostly PvP and Flashpoint. I havent tried healing an Op yet.

So, I'm turning to the far smarter than me people here.

I was curious what the opinion would be on a 27/7/7 build.
http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201RGb...f00MZdMb.1

My thinking was that it still gives you the good single-target heals and boosted static barrier, but you trade off the AoE heal for Parasitism, which combined with reduced health loss from Consumption, would help off-set the damage you'd take from regenerating.

Alternatively, 23/7/11
http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201RGb...0MZdrbzz.1

In which you'd mostly forgo Consumption and attempt to regenerate force through lightning procs.

Opinions? Way off base?

[Gabryella]

The thing thats missing in your builds in my opion is Penetrating Darkness 3/3 - Increases bonus healing by 6%
Your missing allot of healing as a healer with healing over a fight in a pvp match or ops/fp, what means that you have to heal more (use more force) to compensate that.I use the AOE heal allot in PVP, especially with The Civil War or Novara Coast.

[Petrus]

Quote:From my experiences last night, I'd agree with Adam that this isn't really a big deal. A far bigger deal, certainly in terms of healing spike damage, but also with regard to healing-ouput in general, is the change to force-bending's effects on DI. I'm wondering how this changes the crit vs alacrity argument. I used to favour crit, but am starting to feel that I should go the other way. It certainly increases the need to be able to predict damage rather than healing reactively.

1. As far as consumption, I've gone a step farther and put 0/2 in it. This is how I raided HMs on the PTS and I had no issue. I put my last point into the 10% affliction slow, which is useful in PvP, and in certain boss fights - like HM Minesweeper where you have to burn targets before they get to you. The 10% slow is noticeable.

2. You're right about the lack of an emergency heal being our largest issue, but personally I still wouldn't touch alacrity, for two reasons: A. Even with max alacrity you're only going to get the spell around 2.0 seconds. That's not enough to make it an emergency heal. B. We AREN'T Emergency healers. It's just a fact right now. It's far more beneficial, in terms of your overall raid - to spec for your sustained heals, and let a merc or Op spec into the emergency heals. It just comes down to the fact that we're always going to rely on our other healer for emergency heals, and trying to fix that, IMO, is just going to hurt us in the long run. 1.2 is all about execution and working together, and healing is no different. The three healers have very different roles in a fight now, and we need to play to our strengths, not try to make up what we lack. (Although that said, I'd kill for some type of emergency ability.)

Quote:My thinking was that it still gives you the good single-target heals and boosted static barrier, but you trade off the AoE heal for Parasitism, which combined with reduced health loss from Consumption, would help off-set the damage you'd take from regenerating.

DarkLord - while both of those specs may be viable on PvP, I think they'd both struggle to perform in a HM FP, and I can guarantee you they'd never work in an Op. Our AoE makes up between 25 - 55% of my heals in an 8m operation, and even more in a 16m. It's our strongest spell - not just in terms of healing done, but in utility. You can drop it under just the tank, along with a resurgence, as a buffer them when they're about to take a lot of damage. You can use it to negate pulse damage, or heal a group up that takes large damage, but rarely. It's an invaluable tool in any situation - even in PvP, but certainly in PvE.

[Malal]

For what it is worth I'll throw my 2 cents about the changes.

Yesterday I did the HM flashpoint and the first and second normal bosses in the ops. The ops was very easy to heal but it was normal. We just wanna learn the fights and get some comms in the process. I had no issues with the op healing. I really like the strategy of keeping trance up on the boss and becoming a melee healer. Keeps big hot on tank and melee and allows you to consume like normal. I must agree our emergency healing is horrible now. HM Lost Island was extremely hard. Our group was 3/4 Full rakata and the 4th dps was offspeccing in columi. Keeping the tank up in that place was very difficult. We didn't even get last boss down

The two things I am working on to outweigh the nerfs are:

1) Aoe boss and melee heal as stated above

2) When tank is 90+ percent and things are calm, start casting Deliv on the tank. By the time the cast bar is up he will either not be at 90 percent or you just step forward and cancel.


Also I want some input about stats now. I am currently sitting about here with stim and personal buff (some arent exact cause server is down and memory escapes me):

Willpower - 1865
Power - 602
Crit - 180ish
Surge - 190ish
Alacrity - 339


I have enjoyed heavy alacrity but right now deliverance is not an emergency heal, and the bit shaved off with alacrity is not amazing. Mainly now life is Bubble ==> Trance ==> AOE and consume with deliv thrown in as a filler. With the majority of our heals being trance and aoe, is alacrity worth it anymore? Im debating swapping all my alacrity enhancements for surge/power ones. I know Petrus is normally a fan of no alacrity but I am still kind of worried about changing things up.


Also another question:

I feel like a noob asking this but our emergency healing just feels that awful. Is anyone using our flash heal with the crit buff? Our bubble is pretty much part of our rotation so it isn't really useful for emergencies reliably. Trance is good but not really the emergency I always need unless I am popping CDs. Do we rely on our other healer to get the job done? And what if we don't have that luxury (4 man or a split boss in new ops)?

[Shahryar]

@ Petrus

How are you coping with situations which require a substantial amount of burst healing i.e. 8m T&Z hardmode tank switch? Clever planning, or leaving it to your partner to take most of the slack there?

We're running two sages due to roster restrictions and it seemed pretty rough last night. Certainly the time I've most wanted double 1.4s Deliverance back.

[Petrus]

(04-14-2012 02:35 AM)Shahryar Wrote:  @ Petrus

How are you coping with situations which require a substantial amount of burst healing i.e. 8m T&Z hardmode tank switch? Clever planning, or leaving it to your partner to take most of the slack there?

We're running two sages due to roster restrictions and it seemed pretty rough last night. Certainly the time I've most wanted double 1.4s Deliverance back.

Clever planning is 90% of it. AoE's pre-cast where the tank is moving to, hotting him up, shielding, pre-casting DI (switches are % based, you can plan a lot of it) etc. I also generally burn through all my CDs on the transitions from zorn to toth. It's not that I need to, but it allows me to use less DI, and thus regen more force. This hasn't screwed me yet, but you never know.

Because of our positioning it's very rare that both healers are in range of a tank, so it's really all up to me to keep him up.


Biggest tip I can give you for that fight - don't be afraid to burn force while healing Toth. Healing zorn, even with the spikes/rocks is a recovery phase if everyone is doing it right. I will generally drop 50% of my force healing 2 melee and the tank on Toth, and regen 40 - 60% on Zorn, depending how many circles I get under me.

I of course try to use shield, AoE/innervate with a force bending up, and resurgence, but I find I probably cast about 40% DI on Toth. On Zorn I can keep 4 people up with my force-positive rotation no problem.


I'll be uploading videos tonight when I get off work, and hopefully you can see things a little better. I'm not going to pretend that I did it perfectly, I'm sure as I watch the video's I'll see all kinds of stupid shit I did - but hopefully you can get a feel for sorc healers and what we can do.

[Shahryar]

(04-14-2012 02:52 AM)Petrus Wrote:  

(04-14-2012 02:35 AM)Shahryar Wrote:  @ Petrus

How are you coping with situations which require a substantial amount of burst healing i.e. 8m T&Z hardmode tank switch? Clever planning, or leaving it to your partner to take most of the slack there?

We're running two sages due to roster restrictions and it seemed pretty rough last night. Certainly the time I've most wanted double 1.4s Deliverance back.

Clever planning is 90% of it. AoE's pre-cast where the tank is moving to, hotting him up, shielding, pre-casting DI (switches are % based, you can plan a lot of it) etc. I also generally burn through all my CDs on the transitions from zorn to toth. It's not that I need to, but it allows me to use less DI, and thus regen more force. This hasn't screwed me yet, but you never know.

Because of our positioning it's very rare that both healers are in range of a tank, so it's really all up to me to keep him up.


Biggest tip I can give you for that fight - don't be afraid to burn force while healing Toth. Healing zorn, even with the spikes/rocks is a recovery phase if everyone is doing it right. I will generally drop 50% of my force healing 2 melee and the tank on Toth, and regen 40 - 60% on Zorn, depending how many circles I get under me.

I of course try to use shield, AoE/innervate with a force bending up, and resurgence, but I find I probably cast about 40% DI on Toth. On Zorn I can keep 4 people up with my force-positive rotation no problem.


I'll be uploading videos tonight when I get off work, and hopefully you can see things a little better. I'm not going to pretend that I did it perfectly, I'm sure as I watch the video's I'll see all kinds of stupid shit I did - but hopefully you can get a feel for sorc healers and what we can do.

That's pretty much how I did it last night. Though it does sound as though you're using more AoE than I am - so will give that a test tomorrow. We wasted a fair few tries taking too much damage from Toth due to tank positioning in relation to the ranged group.

Will look forward to vid.

[Petrus]

(04-14-2012 03:07 AM)Shahryar Wrote:  That's pretty much how I did it last night. Though it does sound as though you're using more AoE than I am - so will give that a test tomorrow. We wasted a fair few tries taking too much damage from Toth due to tank positioning in relation to the ranged group.

Will look forward to vid.

I try to use my AoE on CD, even in these fights where it's only healing two people.

[Adam]

(04-14-2012 02:33 AM)Malal Wrote:  Willpower - 1865
Power - 602
Crit - 180ish
Surge - 190ish
Alacrity - 339

I have enjoyed heavy alacrity but right now deliverance is not an emergency heal, and the bit shaved off with alacrity is not amazing. Mainly now life is Bubble ==> Trance ==> AOE and consume with deliv thrown in as a filler. With the majority of our heals being trance and aoe, is alacrity worth it anymore? Im debating swapping all my alacrity enhancements for surge/power ones. I know Petrus is normally a fan of no alacrity but I am still kind of worried about changing things up.

Personally no; Alacrity isn't worth it. In my opinion even more so now that DI has such a long cast time. High Alacrity its not going to make-or-break anything. You're shaving (at maximum) 20% off of your cast time. at 400 Alacrity you've hit cap. Past 400 you're so far into diminishing returns that almost none of your skills change past that point. I do plan on expanding upon this, once i get my research rock solid.



Static Barrier - No effect (instant cast)
Resurgence - No effect (instant cast)
Revivification - No HPS gain due to mechanic on Revivification.; reduces cast time
Innervate - Little effect; reduces time in "channeled". improves "emergency heal" value of Innervate, but overall HPSe gain is very minimal.
Dark Heal - Heal is reduced a grand total of 0.2s (realistic), decent HPS gain. (about 300HPS)
Dark Infusion - Heal is reduced a 0.3s (realistic), highest HPS gain. (skills gains about 500HPS)