The same folks that thought "hey a proc extra dmg relic would be great!" made a proc heal relic... *sigh* Some off the wall alternatives. - 30% chance to proc a +6% bonus healing buff lasting 8 seconds This effect cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds. (might be a little op as it's a multipler buff and thus scales with gear, won't be BiS until end game) - 30% chance to temporarily increase alacrity rating by 100% for 8 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds. (similarly scales with gear, so not great for low alacrity folks, but it makes people think about their gear/stat choices) - 30% chance to cause critical overheals to be redirected to friendly group members within 5 meters of the intended target. (for this one... I dunno, perhaps I'm just being silly)

Should be... 2 * ( 1 / 1 + 0.0809) = 1.8503 ~= 1.85

There sure are a lot of Dark Heal naysayers in this thread. So serious question... How many of you have actually tried it post 2.0 in comparison to Dark Infusion? And for those that are successfully using Dark Infusion, are you one of those that went full power + alacrity? I'm interested in seeing what heal style is driving the particular comment. For me, as I don't stack alacrity and prefer a more balanced stat distribution (which yes includes NOT going full power and allowing some crit to stay on my gear), I tend to like the Resurgence -> Innervate or Dark Heal combo. As others have said, Static Barrier -> Resurgence -> Innervate/Revivification is my go to combo, but in a pinch I'll Resurgence -> Dark Heal for the almost always guaranteed 6k-ish heal. Dark Infusion is just too darn slow to cast and not really a big enough heal. Thanks

Most of the Black Market Force-Healer stuff has better armorings than crafted 66 purple armorings, so if you're not bothering with set bonus, you should be getting armoring upgrades. The purchasable BM Force-Healer gear has good power mods, you just need to buy that piece and ignore the crit ones (if you don't like crit). So these should be better than crafted 66s. Enhancements on purchasable BM is crap, so stick with 63s or 66s, unless you're getting Arkanian or dropped MK-2/3/4s that have an actual decent enhancement on it.

Because the EM relic is uncontrollable, it is often very likely that the extra heal will go to overheals and thus wasted. And since you can't control it and make it proc when you really need it, it's not reliable. If you want control, Boundless Ages (clicky power) is the only real choice for one of your relic slots. If you like the power proc, then any of the SAs will be good, especially with how the benefit works. There's a rumor that the PvP versions of the SA relics are "broken" in that they multi-proc and don't necessarily honor the shared cooldown even though they have the same effect. YMMV on this one... As I suspect this will eventually get fixed. For the SA relic, the trick I've found is to make sure you've got Resurgence ticking as well as Revivication. Each tick is re-evaluated based upon your stats at that time. So if SA procs while those are ticking, all ticks will gain the benefit. That let's us as sorc healers not lose out on the proc.

Get the 66 quality crafted implants. http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/49733/%5Bartifact%5D-microfilament-awareness-d-motivator IMO, better than Black Market and comparable to Arkanian.

The actual crit hard cap from gear/stats is 50% (30% from crit rating, 20% from main stat). Crit bonus from skill trees do not affect this hard cap. I think folks are under-valuing crit and surge too much. Yes... the DR on crit rating and main stat crit contribution from a purely mathematical perspective makes power seem like a better choice, but operative healing 2.0 has a lot of hidden stuff going on that needs/wants crit (and by extension surge). For example, due to 2/2 Prognosis: Critical - Increases the critical chance of Diagnostic Scan by 24%, that 24% plus a minimum of approximately 20% from buffs/gear/skill tree gives Diagnostic Scan alone 44% crit on each tick. Since DS is energy positive and therefore an excellent filler heal, surge rating makes it that much more useful. And due to 3/3 Accomplished Doctor - Increases the critical healing bonus of Kolto Injection, Kolto Infusion and Recuperative Nanotech by 30%, this puts your base crit multiplier for these abilities at a whopping 80%. Allocating 5 pieces of gear to surge rating (and the other 5 to alacrity) would already give you another 15% crit multiplier. This simply explodes the value of crit chance on these abilities as you definitely want to take advantage of the all that extra healing. IMHO, these two abilities should elevate the value of crit rating (and by extension) surge rating.

The funny thing is... this is actually a good system in that it allows for credits to move around in the economy. There's not really any major credit sinks in the game and in most games, you need to have credit sinks. Despite what people think, credit sinks are necessary, and therefore consumables are necessary. Dyes are simply a new credit sink and is actually one of the friendlier ones since you control if and when you spend your money on it... Whereas repair bills, flight points, medpacs, one-time use stims and adrenals are all heavily on the non-friendly side. Those you pretty much have to pony up if you do content that needs it. Dyes... are a choice. Look at it this way. You buy paint, you paint your room. That paint is used up. Can you really scrape it off and bring it to a new place and reapply it? No... conceptually dyes are the same way. I'm sure this won't make you feel better, nor convince you otherwise, but it's the nature of the beast. Give it a week or two and the dye costs will come down and won't cost 10 million credits. And if you're willing to pay 10 million credits on a dye pack that you KNOW is a consumable.. then you chose poorly.

The problem with this type of argument is that we're all using gut feeling and perceived "feelings" to connote whether this is a good patch or not. Unfortunately there's not enough real evidence either way to support either point. We simply cannot know if more people like or dislike the patch. I think both camps can agree that it would've been nice if... a) Cathar was free to choose as a race for Subs when starting a new toon b) Baseline appearance changes were free or nearly free (i.e. being able to go back and dwiddle your character selection screen choices) c) The armor dye system was implemented as 2013 tech as opposed 2003 tech (meaning if the armor textures actually looked nice with the colors as opposed to simply slapped on in some cases). Those are "nice ifs..." the implementation chosen by BioWare might not have been the best, but certainly wasn't the deathknell for the game as many of the extremists on the forums are spouting.

It's not a nail, it's a toothpick and that came in 2.0 CC (or more correctly people buying CCs) is what's keeping the game alive. Whether these people are Subscribers or F2Pers, as long as they're spending money on the game, the game stays alive. Artificers can make dyes. They can't make all of them (currently) and they don't have the most interesting colors (currently) but you're wrong. Dye crafting exists. You mean like the Seeker droid mission line and the Dreadseed/Star Forager gear that can't be obtained by CC and can only be obtained by PvE content? You're right, the point of having Subscriber benefits is to convince certain F2Pers to switch to subbing. These would be the F2Pers that either PvP or PvE so much that they need/want the Subscriber benefits (unlimited ops, fps, warzones, max quickbars, more inventory slots, cargo holds, etc, etc.) The problem you (and others) have right now is that you feel that, as a Subscriber, you're entitled to what you believe should be a baseline set of features and functionalities for Subscribers that differs from what the game currently offers. It's a perfectly valid and understandable viewpoint... but it's mostly based on personal opinion (or rather the difference of). Subs might not automatically have access to Cathar, and yes... EA/BioWare could (should?) have chosen to allow Subs to create fresh level 1 Cathars for free. And no they didn't, and yes you can ding them for it. In the long run, this one might haunt them... but to say that 2.1 is the death of Sub benefits is kind of overkill. 2.2 is around the corner with potentially more content (we don't know what's in it yet) which will benefit both Subs and F2Pers alike. And if it's the introduction of a new PvE tier, then that benefits Subs. If it's new Flashpoints, it's a Sub benefit. If it's a revamped Gree event for level 55, it's a Sub benefit (since F2Pers have to pay to unlock event gear use and Subs don't).

First off... please use more page breaks in the future. And now have a look at the bolded parts of your post. What you're referring to here are two different actions. The first one is to globally unlock a race on your account. This is very similar to how it exists today for the other races. The only component of this that one can argue is that the unlock is not necessary if you created and leveled a particular race from 1 to max level. That automatically unlocks the race for future use. For Cathar, you pay for the unlock. For Subs, that's either one month to wait, or two. The only reason people are complaining is that they don't want to wait and would prefer to spend their free monthly allotment of CC on something else. Well tough, how you spend your allowance is on you. You can't complain that there are too many neat things to spend your allowance on. The point is to save up, or buy more CC. At least as a subscriber you have the option to save up. F2P do not. Now as for the second feature/action, that's a completely separate thing. That's a cosmetic/vanity choice to change an existing character's race to something else. Just because it's coincidental with your desire to switch to Cathar doesn't make it any better/worse than say... if you wanted to switch from Rattataki to Zabrak. You'd still have to pay for that customization. No one is forcing you to switch a character to Cathar, you could simply unlock it and level up a new Cathar. You'd also get to see all the cutscenes as a Cathar... whereas a race switch would bypass all that. Race change (as well as the other character customizations) are all cosmetic and vanity and thus correctly belong as something you need to spend CC on. Again, as a sub, you can simply save up the CC and wait on the cosmetic change. Why must you get it right away for "free"? And then you leapt to a comment that talks about "good gear" which implies either PvE or PvP competitive gear, which has NOT shown up in the Cartel Market at all. Sure there's some leveling gear, but it's obsolete at 55. All of the rest of the gear is cosmetic, which still continues to fit inside the basic rule of the Market being vanity items only. Sorry, but I have to disagree with you.

Edit: ignore me.

You're quibbling over a very tiny amount of bonus dmg difference between power vs willpower augs, whereas the difference between a full kit of power augs vs mainstat augs (at least for sorc) is roughly 1% crit. If you feel that 10 bonus dmg (and that's being generous) is greater than 1% crit, go for it. But at the end of the day, that's the real difference. 10 bonus dmg vs 1% crit. Which you choose is up to you.

How exactly does 6% extra bonus healing NOT benefit a willpower augment stacker? It's a mulitplicative bonus and is applied universally to bonus healing (whether it came from willpower, power, force power) as a whole. The only way I can see it being "disproportionately favoring" power is the slight difference in bonus healing received via power vs willpower... But from an earlier post (and applying healery math): 14 adv wp aug 28s = 0.14 * (14 * 32) * 1.11 (0.6 from will of sith, 0.5 from sorc buff) ~= 69.62 bonus heal 14 ad power aug 28s = 0.17 * (14 * 32) * 1 = 76.16 bonus heal So we're talking about a total difference of 76.16 - 69.62 = 6.54 * 1.06 (6% bonus heal buff) ~= 6.93 bonus heal. So going full power augs you get 6.93 more bonus heal and no crit benefit Going full willpower augs gets you 6.93 less bonus heal and approx 1.0% more crit (assuming 2500 willpower with power augs, 3000 willpower with wp augs) IMHO, 1.0% crit > 6.93 bonus heal... YMMV

Looks like a heal tick triggered on you at the same time those adds spawned. Aggro perhaps?

Hmmm... interesting. What's odd is that on my sorc healer, which has a similar skill which gives 6% bonus healing at 3 points, DOES actually affect the bonus healing number and is reflected in the character sheet when you mouseover the bonus healing value. There's a breakdown that shows the contributing sources, and the +6% is there. For my operative though, while there is a breakdown, it only shows contributions from power, tech power, cunning. Thus why I thought it might be a bug. I have to double check my merc healer, but I could've sworn that one behaved exactly like my sorc.

So... there's two skills in a typical operative healer build that (according to the text) convey a total of +6% buff to bonus healing: Medicine - Tier 2 - Medical Consult Increases all healing dealt by 1%/2%/3% at all times and an additional 2%/4%/6% while Tactical Advantage is active. Concealment - Tier 1 - Survival Training Increases all healing done by 1%/2%/3% and all healing received by 1%/2%/3%. However, when you spec into those, neither of them seem to be reflected in your bonus healing number on your character stats, nor does the tooltip show any benefit from them... So the question is, is this working as intended? Edit: Just tested it again. It seems the bonus does actually occur so thankfully the skills work, but the character sheet tooltip isn't showing any benefit, so that's either a UI bug, or intended to not show.

The only con with using Dark Heal is the force cost, and right now force really isn't an issue for Sorcs. Using Resurgence with Dark Heal will almost guarantee a 5.5 - 6k heal, whereas DI, you're lucky to get the 10k crit heal, but most of the time you'll only get the 5.2-5.6k non-crit heal (this is due to the strategy a lot of folks are adopting to go full power only and skip on crit rating, thus dropping your crit to roughly 25% or worse on DI). I agree that main rotation should be Resurgence -> Innervate, rinse repeat as much as you can (and if you're rocking the 2 by 2 PvE bonus for 6s cooldown Innervate, then even more so). Just stating that situationally, DH isn't as bad as it used to be.

This one seems like a good complement to either the WH/EWH or the on use Boundless Ages, or even the Ephemeral Mending (proc bonus heal). http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/gear/48379/underworld-relic-of--serendipitous-assault

Dark Heal is in an odd place now that they've buffed it's heal by a significant amount. It all boils down to how you're chaining your abilities and your personal style (as well as the other healer in your group and their particular strengths.) For emergencies, Polarity Shift -> Triage Adrenal -> Resurgence -> Dark Heal -> Recklessness -> Innervate -> Static Barrier. If the target is good at this point then, self Static Barrier, consume as many times as necessary to top off, then either self Resurgence or Unnatural Preservation or talented Overload depending on my health (as well as others around me). Otherwise Resurgence on target to eat the remaining Recklessness charge. This should all fit inside the Adrenal's benefit period and Polarity Shift should drop off around the last tick of Innervate. The Resurgence -> Dark Heal is quite compelling as with a decent surge rating/bonus heal, a crit DH will hit for around 5.5 - 6k whereas a normal DI will be around 5.8 with the same stats. Granted a crit DI will be close to 10k... but it's an emergency situation and the extra second to gain 4k more heal could mean wipe or success. Not saying this is the best, just something I'm testing out as I'm trying to wean myself off of Dark Infusion as the goto heal. I know DH is less force efficient, but really force shouldn't be an issue if you can keep people topped off. I find force is more an issue when I'm trying to catch up due to the long cast time of DI. Please feel free to comment on my newbness. Cheers

He's adding the 6% willpower bonus from Madness tree + 5% willpower bonus from Sorc buff, neither of which would be applied to a Power augment.

Two things... 1. It was always the case that leveling w/o changing gear would make that gear get ever more obsolete as the stat conversion formulas aren't flat, they're curved with one of the variables being your level. Higher level = less contribution and therefore need more stats to achieve the same effect. 2. This update also brought changes to the formulas themselves, which in turn has also drastically changed things. It's the combination that's making your stats appear nerfed. They are... but it's universal, meaning everyone got the same formula nerf.

Considering some of the posts talking about how hard s to get the purple mats... I say the augs will be much higher than this.

Server just went offline.

Alright... This is not any different than now. Some folks choose to wait until 50 to grind out their gathering, some do it along the way and some choose to throw cash at the problem by leveling purely through crew skills (with 5 companions, it's quick). This is actually a benefit as it makes crafting viable. There is currently a trailing off of crafting as well as mats prices due to 2.0 and the fact that people are starting to dump their molecular stabilizers and stuff. This move is actually good for keeping the player economy healthy and moving until 2.0. I can't argue with you here... But at the same time, if 2.0 is truly coming in a month or so, this simply means more people in your level band to play with (either the new FPs, new OPs, quests, Makeb, PvP, whatever). I think giving the entire player population the ability to "start fresh" is brilliant. Those of us that have been 50 for a really really long time and have been complaining about lack of groups (out of guild) will suddenly have an easier time of queue pops and such. The skill level aside, more queue pops is a good thing. This is only true for those folks that have enough time on their hands to grind all the dailies on all their toons. Again, this isn't really any different. All that changes is that these same folks are getting their extra 50s a week or so earlier (if that even). People need to stop looking at the negatives and think about the long term benefits of having a lot of equal level toons to play with. I've seen folks desperately trying to get their Ops runs in on Sunday evenings... but because there aren't enough toons, they can't get groups. Not everyone can run their FPs/OPs during the week, so this helps by adding more available toons to the pool. Again queue pops are good.