I can't wait to see how this yellow post is summarized in the next Dev Tracker summary!

Don't forget my personal favorite: You've got the ball in Huttball, you're reasonably tanky. I'm healing you, you're around 60% HP but I am keeping you up with 3-4 on you, because they are too bad to notice me freecasting on the ball carrier. You panic and pass the ball to me, I get zerged down, and you die 5 seconds later.

I like how the rational posts on disparity between Op vs Sorc (or Sco vs Sage) go unanswered, while Georg chooses to respond directly to this quasi-paranoid rant with what amounts to 'l2p noob' Thanks

Sorc heals > Op heals yes, but your group is just bad for thinking that XRR-3 missile phase can't be healed with that setup.

Pardon the wall of text. I have a BM/Rakata Op and a Sorc now in Cent/Champ/Columi, both heal spec. I have healed quite a bit on both of these characters in PvP and PvE normal/hard/nightmare operations. The difference between these 2 healers right now isn't even funny. I really enjoy playing my Op, but I honestly can't think of a single encounter where I'd say the Op's set of skills is more desirable than the Sorc's. I can heal any content in the game currently on the Op, but that doesn't change a thing about the relative power of these 2 healers. Even fights that involve a lot of moving around, such as Bonethrasher, Soa, or Karagga; once I actually took my Sorc to them it became clear just how much better the class is even in fights where mobility is important. You don't even need to number-crunch to see what I am talking about, because (at least to me) the issues are in the mechanics, specifically the observation that Sorc healers have more numerous and better tools available to them, and these tools interact with one another in interesting and powerful ways. Combined with the frontloaded nature of some of the Sorc's spells, this makes them extremely effective and reactive healers. Some of these tools/mechanics are not well-known to people who don't play heal Sorcs, so I'll break them down. I'm going generally avoid getting into direct comparisons with Operative abilities, because I assume you are familiar with those and can do this part on your own. Innervate (Tier 5 talent) - This is a ridiculously good heal. It is a 3 second channel, which ticks one time right when you cast it, and then once a second after that, for a total of 4 ticks. In my Sorc's lackluster gear, ticks crit for 1600. It is on a 9-second cooldown, which can be reduced to 7.5 seconds with 2pc PvE gear. The fact that this is front-loaded makes it a great heal for when people are low on health ... by the time a Kolto Injection would have landed at the 2.5 sec mark, I've already hit the target with 3 ticks of Innervate. Static Barrier aka the Bubble. We all know what it is, it's awesome. More front-loaded 'healing'. Ops have nothing close. It is particularly valuable in situations where there is predictable, high damage that risks 1-shotting, such as the lightning balls on Soa HM/NiM or reticle missile on XRR-3, since it increases the maximum hit you can withstand. Force Bending (Tier 3 talent): Resurgence is a small instant-cast direct heal + HoT component on a 6 sec CD, Dark Heal is the 1.5 sec small heal, Dark Infusion is the 2.5 sec big heal. This means that every 6 sec, you get to choose from having one of these secondary effects on the next heal you cast after Resurgence. Currently this is bugged and you can get 2 spells to benefit from Force Bending. This will be fixed in 1.2. Even once it's working as designed, it's still really really good. Force Surge (Tier 6 talent): This means you can cast Consumption and get back 8% of your Force at no cost other than the 1 GCD required to cast Consumption. This procs all the time. Assuming a 30% crit chance, you have a 76% chance for at least 1 tick of Innervate to crit. At 40%, the chance rises to 87%, and at 50% there is a 94% chance to get a proc. These numbers are not unrealistic, especially given the +25% crit chance to this spell that can be gained through Force Bending. This talent basically makes Force regen a non-issue. 30m range on stun/snare/interrupt/mez. This is huge in PvP, particularly in dealing with ranged classes. Mez castable in-combat, on any type of target More/better utility, particularly in Huttball. Don't think this one needs explaining. Revivification aka the Purple Puddle >>> RN in its current state, even considering Force cost, cast time, positioning requirements Far less vulnerable to a well-timed interrupt lockout due to not having a secondary resource requirement (TA) on abilities. If somebody interrupts my big heal? Innervate on self. Or bubble if it's ready. Or even my 1.5 sec Dark Heal, since it's better than nothing, and castable anytime. But but! You can fake cast and avoid the interrupt! Well of course you can. So can I, as a Sorc. Defensive CDs are on shorter cooldowns. Bubble, Force Speed, and your knockback are all in the 20-30s range. Most Op defensive abilities are in the 30s - 3m CD range. Recklessness (1m30s CD) ... +60% crit chance on direct heals / attacks ... 2 charges, each crit consumes a charge. Can basically guarantee 2 big crit heals in a very short window of time with this. I have tried to keep this factual and avoid opinion, or at least present only opinions which are shared by an overwhelming majority. I would encourage anybody who questions the information I have presented here, to play a Sorc/Sage for a bit. It's a solid healer in the low levels. You will suffer from Force regen issues in the 20's and low 30's, but once you hit 36 and have Innervate talented for Force Surge, you really get a good idea of where things stand. I'm not advocating that the classes work the same, because that would make the game less interesting. What I am advocating is that some of the Operative mechanics be changed such that these 2 healer specs are roughly equal in effectiveness despite having very different playstyles. Currently that is not at all the case. Hopefully 1.2 will make it so.

You're not seeing expertise 'from both sides of the fence' until you get farmed by groups of players in max level raid gear in a game that has no expertise-like stat. You can't understand expertise without talking about PvE. Gear progression exists in PvE, therefore PvE gear can become the best choice even for PvP if no additional measures are in place. Common attempts to deal with this: limit/remove gear progression entirely from all aspects of the game, restrict which gear sets can be used where, or introduce a mechanic like expertise. Expertise is kind of stupid, yes; but simply removing/nerfing it while doing nothing else will create even worse problems.

F'ed Up Beyond All Recognition

People actually spec into a gimp tree just so they can be better at something that isn't terribly hard to begin with (defending nodes), in the 2 least frequently played maps?

I can defend a node for long enough against multiple attackers with or without dots, and you can't seem to figure out how this is possible. Who is bad again?

Nice debuff but I don't like giving them that much resolve at the start of a fight

It's vague, and the context of the rest of the Q&A suggests that they really don't understand a lot of the mechanics issues, but it's just slightly better than nothing.

Sorc healing output will get worse with the bugfix, yes, but the point is that the Sorc class/spec design will stay the same -- or at least they have made no indication that they will change it. Saying they will 'nerf sorc healing' with no qualification of any kind suggests that they will actually redesign aspects of Sorc healing, especially to somebody who had not seen the original Q&A. Based on the Q&A there is no reason to expect anything other than bugfixes to Sorc healing i.e. things that don't work the way the say they do might get changed.

I died a little inside

I can dot attackers faster than they can be cleansed. Then I can redot them if they are cleansed and try to cap again. As an added bonus, guess what? Sorcs/sages can't cleanse my dot, since it's tech. I've locked down a door against 2-4 people this way, by dotting, LOSing, self-healing, and just generally being a nuisance. Does this make me good? Of course not. It's a stupid mechanic, which is why it generally doesn't work this way in other games.

Where are you getting this from? If you're referring to the recent Q&A, the only change they mentioned to Sorc healing was the bugfix to Force Bending allowing double benefits. The skill was bugged and not working the way the tooltip described. Seems to me like Sorcs are right where they need to be for healing in both PvP and PvE, and that they plan to bring Merc/Op into line with that.

Just became?

BM level valor means you have spent enough time playing to get BM level valor. That's it right now. What BioWare is trying to do here, is correct a mistake that they made. The mistake was not having a valor cap in place on release, thus allowing people to grind up to 70 or 80+ valor during the first 2 months of release. Why is this a bad thing? PvP in an MMO is a delicate balance between (1) providing a sense of gear/character progression, and (2) keeping gameplay competitive and interesting. Some players will play more than others, and so will be rewarded more. This is natural and expected, as long as the rewards are not so great that the power gap becomes unmanageable for the game developer. Currently, the only significant breakpoint in valor rank is sub-60 versus 60+. If BioWare were to add more items or power increases of any kind tied to valor rank in the future, they would create a situation where the difference in power between the most powerful players and a fresh level 50 would be, quite simply, ridiculous. I've seen it happen in other games, most notably Warhammer Online. This is not a route you want a game to go down, because it drives away new players. In the absolute worst case, new items tied to valor rank would become available and purchasable overnight for characters with the requisite valor -- I don't think they would do this, but it would be suicide if they did. For warzones, this problem can be mitigated to a large extent by matchmaking systems, but for open PvP, the problem would be intractable. If valor rank is in fact intended to be a gateway to 'more power' in the future, then it is good for the game overall if the power gap is kept small, rather than having high-valor players become as gods walking among men. If this means that valor gains need to be accelerated now for players on the lower end of the spectrum, then I personally am OK with that. No serious PvPer should ever have a problem with other players having access to gear of their same caliber, and I note that you said you did not have a problem with this aspect of the change. Which leaves me wondering what in fact your objection is ... is it their access to titles, or mounts, or other features which you felt uniquely identified you as someone who spent a great deal of time playing the game?

They made exactly the right change. Everything else is just overcomplicating the issue. It isn't like "dots not breaking caps" is some wildly new mechanic that's never been tried anywhere before. Most other games I've played didn't allow dots to interrupt caps, and they weren't broken as a result -- in fact, they were better off because of it. Good job on this one Bioware.

Wait you mean there are actually people who think medal count is a good measure of skill?

The champ head and gloves are worth cannibalizing too, especially if you already have mostly full champ Yes. Same holds true for Battlemaster. BM/Rakata implants have no accuracy or lolacrity, so I'd work toward those

How is requiring people to actually be present at the objective and actively defending it 'dumbing down' anything?

It's not easy. I usually mash innervate while in the knockdown, then I follow up with a resurgence -> recklessness -> dark infusion combo, and pop a pot and/or expertise adrenal. You will get interrupted at some point in this by any halfway decent player, at which point you must go straight into whatever heal is next on your list with no delay. Trinket the 2nd stun, don't forget to recast bubble ASAP. Kite for as long as you can with force slow / force speed, and hope teammates show up or you can KB them into a hazard / off a ledge / bridge / etc. Or whirlwind and run far away. If you know they are coming (like you spot them 2-3 sec before they are in range to open) you can trinket the first knockdown right as it happens, create distance, and throw them off their whole rotation, but I would only recommend this if you think you won't be able to survive the KD (like if they greatly outgear you). If they slow you, purge it ASAP -- you must have the talented purge that removes physical effects in order to do this. They will be unable to slow you again for 12 sec.

Your instincts are pretty much right on. Compared to your sage, you will have to deal with tiered energy regen, TA maintenance, and will give up a boatload of utility. In PvP, if you get interrupted you will have far less options for survival than on your sage. Ranged classes will be more difficult to deal with since you will only have a max of 10m on your interrupt/CC abilities, with no way to speed out of their range/los. Using cloaking screen is a mixed bag as medic since it debuffs your healing done and received by 100%. You will be able to heal effectively in any content in the game (PvE or PvP), but you will likely find it requires more micro-management and frustration for the same level of reward. I am telling you this as somebody with a BM Op main and a 48 Sorc alt

Accuracy exists so that you can inspect people and tell the good ops from the bad

This is also what I have observed It seems to me like they intended it to be the person with the highest overall valor, but mistakenly referenced the wrong variable in the code and so it ends up using your valor into current level