aptitude mods from the force master's boots (exhange all 26A) adept mods from force mystic's gloves Dont buy any vestments. too expensive. If you need a mettle mod to up your crit then the stalker's boots. You can exhange the mods/ enhancements from the elite stuff which would be better but iirc the mods in the stalker offhand is mettle 27.. you only 2-3 mettle mods. The enhancements is assault which is less than ideal. Not sure what the mods/enhancements are like in the mainhands or the other offhands.. mrrobot isn't upto date with it and I haven't boughten.

Yeah sniper/gunslinger. Though there has been a few mercs owning me in warzones this last week. Not sure if it was some 1.4 buffage or the fact that the server merger brought some competent ones over. DPS mercs are no longer free kills for me I have to work a bit for it.

>.> You could argue that the sentinel should still come since he provides a temp group wide damage buff, group run speed and shorter cool down interupts. 50 dps difference is neglible considering the utility a sent brings to a raid.

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/6cdafdf7-1a34-4c0c-897e-724995951682 I think that spec is pretty close to BIS for pre TFB gear (it's not mine. I stole it from mmo-mechanics.) It has proper crit:power ratio and surge: alacrity ratio. However, the offhand should be swapped with a modably offhand with a level 61 armoring, power crystal, aptitude mod and adept enhancement. Will up the power a bit doing that.

While I agree sages generally put too much emphasis on Alacrity, completely sacrificing a stat is Krazy, Carl. Even with a superficial understanding of the diminishing returns, it is obvious. Anyways, here's a quote from mmo-mechanics with some numbers regarding 550/0 surge/ alacrity vs. 300/250 surge/alacrity: "....Beyond that, mathematically you're gaining VERY little from that additional ~250 Surge rating (from ~300 to ~550). At 300 Surge Rating, you have a 75.2790% crit multiplier. At 550, you have 78.9889%. For 250 itemization points, you've increased the healing done by your crits by 2.12%. Even assuming a 45% crit chance (ballpark averaging in the 25% bonus to Innervate from Resurg), that's still less than a 1% increase in total healing output. If you instead invested that 250 in Alacrity, you'd get 7.9569% activation speed out of it, which is a straight ~8% increase to HPCT from cast-time abilities. Even assuming that's only 60% of your HPS, that's still nearly a 5% increase to healing output." http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-954-page-14.html

Gratz EI. Mind postponing your next raid day till Friday? k. thx. >< Agree with taking out SM.

I like the change. Please leave it.

Tried your hybrid tonight and was pleasantly surprised. Has a nice syngery to it. Did 600 k my 2nd match with it in random solo queues lol. Even managed a 300k/200k dmg/heal. Think i'll keep it for a couple weeks and give it a whirl. Certainly has all the utility of both trees, infinite force and pretty good aoe burst. Might modify it a bit and add suffusion.. tempting. Since 1.4 I'd have to say I enjoy playing my sage again.

That's exactly what i'm saying. Use a triage adrenal, another gear set, stim and test it yourself. Your heals will scale with your HP's so putting on power augments (with +12 endurance) will help your heal slightly because of the 120 extra HP. Putting on all 14 augments (from none) will increase your HP by 1680, and thus your self heal by 134 total (or 34 per tick)

gratz, you've won the game.

For bonus healing (and damage) there is no diminishing returns from either power or willpower. Willpower will contribute to your crit % and that relationship is subject to DR. With your talented willpower % bonus, your sage buff and the crit bonus contribution, willpower will be always slightly better than power (for dps willpower is ~ 10% better than power; for healing it's probably about the same). So switch your power augments to willpower. But other than that you really can't 'ditch' power for willpower. The only mod that would effect is aptitude mods... But in that case you want the higher power/ lower wp and endurance version. (because the power on the aptitude 26 is >10% the loss in willpower compared to the 26A version) Enhancements dont have primary stat and armorings dont have power. For implants/ ears you generally want the highest combined willpower/power version. For implants I believe itit the mk-1 black hole implant. For the ear the only black hole version better the rakata daily comm is a rare drop from EC HM. (and hazmat of course) You could probably ditch a little alacrity for surge though. 10% seems a bit high to me.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=499626

Pub pvp'ers were horrible during prime timE on harbringer. For the first time in month I went in as a sage healer...the only one on several matches. Had 4 classes with taunts one game. No one peeled anyone off me. No guard. A total of 3k protection for the whole team the whole match between 4 players with taunts. Was pathetic. I can see why no one plays heals in non ranked on harbinger. Suggesting the imps have some advantage is laughable. Took a break, but when I restarted it was much better. Even had a couple tanks guard swapping etc. Won 3/3 late evening and 3/3 on my slinger iirc. One was an epic battle where we got 3 capped on NC, half the team left, were replaced and we came back to win 4% to 0%. Love games that are close like that. From my experience the best pvp is late evening. Early evening I think all the noobs are getting there dailies done on their fotm smash juggs/guards.

This was a bad change. Wastes alot of my time. I loved queuing for both especially on my dps toons. Had to start queueing as healer on my sage just to get a pop in a reasonable amount of time. As heals or tank it's nearly instant pop so no big deal. But as a dps it takes forever. Can't wait till I get my implants so I can stop doing FP's altogether. This only hurts the pve'er imo. Increases the wait time for queue's. No one really cares if someone leaves a warzone. If you're losing you're gonna loose half your team anyways. It's rare to even have a win without someone dropping out for whatever reason. Having a person drop out to take a FP queue isn't even noticeable.

If it annoys you, respec dirty fighting/ lethality or a sab/DF hybrid. More tech damage which will bypass it. A shadow/sin can 'resist' that too with resilience/force shroud but the duration is only 5s or so. Also use your temp accuracy / armor penetration buff vs. a defense geared tank type, though i wouldn't waste it while a CD is up. And invest in some accuracy on your gear. I think SS/MM is still one of the best 'tank killers' despite them being able to mitigate some of your white damage. Learn what the buffs look like. If they pop a 'defense' cooldown root, load them with a grenade, dot them, set up a flyby etc etc. Then when it pops off blow your aimed/charged/quick/trickshot combo or whatever the sniper version is. Buf if they are using a defense cool down.. you're not really suppose to be able to kill them. However, if it's a 1vs1 scenario you have enough 'get away from me' abilities to keep them at bay for awhile. Better than any other class imo. As for the healer/tank combo you'll not be able to solo that. Proabably take 3 as it should. Use your heal debuff skill often it's incredibly helpful. If it's an incredibly competent duo then occasionally having one dps on the healer so he's forced to heal himself, split them and have the other 2-3 dps take down the tank.

Sorc's got a slight buff. More was probably needed but it certainly isn't any worse than it was before 1.4

The benefit of having no delay associated with the skill far exceeds the 360 -> cone nerf. Good change. Still not as good as slingers/sniper but an upgrade nontheless.

Success in pvp in this game consists of finding 7 other non-idiots that work together well and took the time to learn their class/get the gear. As long as you have a couple healers, a couple guards, and a couple pulls/leaps for huttball any class is viable. However, if I was rolling a toon to be a ranked PVP wrecking machine I dont think it would be sage/sorc. But that might change in 6 months... 6 months ago I would have wanted 2 sages in my ranked group lol. People cried about ops/scoundrels they got nerfed. Then they cried about sage/sorcs they got nerfed. Now we cry about PT/vanguard and they are getting nerfed. Next it will be mara's/ snipers and maybe sins. Ops / sages are seeing some buffs (adequate or not) with 1.4. The cycle continues.

I believe the darkness and madness heailng skill are % based only and healing bonus will have zero effect on them. Willpower and power BOTH affect a healers heals in much the same way they affect damaging spells, just a different coefficient. As for the willpower vs. power thing... for pretty much every class primary stat > power. However, in a deep darkness build you get alot of autocrits with PA/energize and 3 recklessness if you were dps gear which devalues the crit contribution from willpower. I'd expect that willpower and power are about equivalent dps wise for a darkness spec'd pvp sin in dps gear.

Well HPF is probably what you'll want to do 90% of the time. During spike phases than HPS will be key i would think. HPS vs HPCT is more of a cast rotation thing than a gear thing. Your channeled heal is well ranked for HPCT, HPF and HPS and it's your bread and butter. Force armor and your hig heal are less force efficient but are your best HPS. Basically how it works is any 61 (and 63) piece of armoring, the set bonus is on the armoring iteself. The black hole and the dropped armorings from ops do not have set bonuses. Any 'set' gear below 61 the set bonus is on the shell itself. You want at least the 2 piece heal bonus on the pve healing set. The 4 peices is kinda meh. Get at least two peices of tionese or columi for the set bonus and replace all the armorings/mods/enhancements from BH and you'll keep the set bonus. For the other 1-3 peices you can wear whatever orange peice you like the appearance on and swap in black hole armorings, mods and enchancements. Basically you'll need to buy one of each BH peice for the BIS armoring. Then you'll want to swap out all the mods for aptitude 26 (maybe one mettle) and the enchancements for mostly adept 26's and 2-3 quick savants (depending on what ears/ implants you are wearing. Shoot for approximately 8% alacrity (so your big heal is ~2.2-2.3s), 30-35% crit, rest in surge and power. If you get >75% surge you can kinda value alacrity = surge. Basically Crit competes with power and alacrity competes with surge. For mods/enhancements the non-lettered version is best (ex. 26 > 26A > 26B). You're time is probably better spent farming black hole comms doing SM ops, flashpoints, rakghoul weekly and black hole weekly. You'll probably complete a set of columi doing that (56 level) in ~ 1 week. You'll get ~ 1.5 peices of black hole/ week

Heh, yeah everyone is going to think their class is the worse off, that's unavoidable. I mostly go by max theoretical dps provided by bis optimized simcraft 'parsing' . Unfortunately, modules don't exist for some acs, and some of the modules have had much more work done with them to validate them. Whether its nerf snipers and mauraders or buff the rest I don't really care. I really hate nerfs/ buffs based on pvp crying which is what has motivated alot of the nerfs/ buffs so far. think I'd prefer some unique group utility tbh rather than just a dps boost.

Mercs are better PVE dps than Sages. DPS ops and Sin's are getting a buff, rightly so, but not because sages/sorcs can beat them on joust/movement/knockback fights but because marauders are clearly superior. Comparing melee and range is a bit complicated. Most melee can dps while moving but may have range issues. Ranged will be more affected by movement but not have range issues. Melee should have a bit more burst, ranged should have a bit more sustained. I think that's true for the most part. I think each class should have a unique ability/skill that they bring to an ops /group to make them desirable rather than just 'dps' numbers. Take Maruader/ Sentinels Inpsiration/Blood lust for example, that group buff is rediculous and it's desirable to have 1 (8 man) or 2 (16 man) for that reason alone. Combine that with runspead and passive aoe heals (however weak they are), best defensive cooldowns, shortest cooldown interupt and their superior dps.. and you see inbalance. In certain situations the gunslinger/sniper dome can be great but it's pretty situational and pales in comparison. Mercs and Sages have incombat cc's i guess. But most classes do have a cc of some kind. Sages have a potentially very useful threat drop that was useful if used correctly pre 1.2. However it was broken then and threat is no longer an issue rendering it completely useless. IMO each AC should bring something unique and useful to an ops. Like a temp Crit bonus, an armor penetration bonus, healing received buff or even just raid wide migitation or threat management. Since that doesn't exist it comes down to dps numbers for 'usefullness' which puts sages at the bottom for ranged classes and near the bottom overall.

Balance gets % based regen while casting TT. 20% more total force = 20% more force generated back while channelling TT. Consumption? Never use it. If you are having force issues these arethe possible reason - you are healing, bubbling, curing too much. You have healers in your group that is their job. Other than pre pull, before kephess's pull @ 60, running to shield phase on firebrand for example, there really is no reason to casta bubble even on yourself. - you are interrupting your TT channel. Some movement is inevitable. However if you move early, cast force potency/interrupt/etc, queue too early while channeling this ability you pay the up front full cost without the force regen. Channellng Tt is force positive, but only if you get all 4 tics in. Queuing your next ability and cutting Tt is very common way to mismanage force. -Casting project. Incredible waste of force. -double dotting. While this is an important source of dps for balance, stop doing it when you get to ~ 30% force untill u figure out your force issues - improper spec: need to take the % force regen on TT and the 100 force - if you still are having force issues after considering the above then take the 9% cost reduction

Never played that spec but stat composition seemed to make sense. I found the stun bubble filled up resolve too much to make it worthwhile. I really prefer a madness spec for pvp. The root with severed force is invaluable and the mobility is great. I've used a seer /Tk hybrid that I quite liked. Could put out decent single target heals and decent enough damage. Could do 300 k/ 300k with it easy enough. Can hit 600 heals with it but found it hard to do much more than 400k damage (only used it in non rated though).. The changes post 1.4 to mental alacrity might make your spec a bit more attractive to me but we'll see. THey need to increase the duration or decrease the cool down to make it shine IMO. The proc rate on tidal wave is a bit low to be viable but I imagine a proc'd tw and fib combo followed by a hasted TT would be quite nice ... But how often would that line up for you?

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=499627&highlight=1.3+bis The above link has priority lists for abilities under the show icon. Its pretty intuitive. Only cast project when moving and fib is down. Never cast disturbance. Cast mc and fib off cool down (try to keep synced and cast fib first). Refresh wm/sf when they expire. Spam tt when not doing the above.