I agree about Nadia, but people are seriously underestimating Holiday and also misunderstanding her relationship with Tharan. She's in charge of that show, folks, and keeps him on a tight leash. He's all talk and no hat. If you actually try to romance Tharan, it goes nowhere -- Holiday shuts him down. She would do so with any of his other pathetic attempts, no doubt. He's actually rather stuck and I almost feel sorry for the guy.

I like power/willpower and then surge, myself. Don't see much reason to stack either crit or alacrity, but if I have to choose, I'll take crit over alacrity, up to about 35-40% paper doll value.

Yeah, WoW aoe tanking has ruined a lot of players. That kind of ez mode no CC tanking doesn't fly here. (Didn't use to fly in Wow, either. At least through TBC you had to CC mobs in 5 mans. Wrath changed that up and went with the present brainless aoe tanking.)

I leveled to 50 no problem and cast tumult maybe a half dozen times during the process. It's just not that useful for sages. Not wanting to be in melee range -- and stealing aggro from your companion, particularly if that companion is Nadia and has sketchy aggro to being with -- is a perfectly good reason.

Power. It's not hard to get crits, particularly with cooldowns and conveyance + healing trance. You really don't need much more than a nominal 25-30% crit. In practice, I'd guess this translates into something like 50% crits. Won't know for sure before parses are out, but crits aren't rare. A more interesting question: what about surge? Nobody ever talks about this, but given the ease of crits, I think surge may be worth picking up some. When I was leveling I had enough surge for 75% crits, and this really helped a lot. You don't need to stack a huge amount of surge to reach these numbers, either.

TK is more like a mage. Sages don't resemble shaman in the least. No totems, for starters. The class can be best understood as a sort of mix of mage/lock/priest. It's a one stop clothie shop.

Tharan is mighty useful on some boss fights, though, even as a sage. Not so much for the healing, but the interrupts. And hey, so far as the holo pervert stuff goes, he's actually kind of stuck with Holiday. She's very possessive. Dumping her could be dangerous for his health.

Yeah, this didn't work for me. He became untargettable when he tried to pursue me around the corner. I finally just stood in the back center of the room and tanked his damage, with interrupts on some casts and one always saved for the cave in; and I used Tharan, too, who is good on this fight.

Latency on this fight is a problem, and it will also bug out in certain spots and prevent you from targetting him. (The corner near the cave entrance is bad, if you try to do LOS tricks there, weird things happen.) Took me four tries, but I got it. I finally found a good spot where I could turret. Back center of the room. Used Tharan for interrupts and heals. This is one of the few fights where he really comes in handy. Did this as hybrid seer/TK spec.

He's all talk and no hat so far as womanizing goes. Holiday has him on a tight leash.

What is a "toolbox" healer? That's an MMO phrase I never heard before.

DPS is a dime a dozen; if you want groups fast and easy, heal it up. Later on, once you score the gear and feel more comfortable with your damage output, then switch over -- gear requirements are mostly the same, so it's not like you need to farm two sets.

If you want to cast, go sage. If you want a mix of melee and casting go shadow. If you are a light saber junkie, reroll knight.

Nadia needs to toughen up a bit, yeah. She's a bit clingy and desperate. Her hero worship of my toon is embarrassing. After a while with her I start to appreciate Theran's cool cynicism, or even Qyzan's obsession with point scoring. OTOH, I do appreciate her voice acting on pulls when she declares that nobody messes with her friends.

Sages are putting up good numbers in operations.

I can't imagine that it's a good idea to rely solely on sage healing in operations. Generally speaking in these things it's best to have a mix of healing types to field the strongest overall healing team. That being said, I love the sage healing toolset. I'm a casting traditionalist and instantly knew this was the class for me, as it combines all the things that clothies in WoW can do in one class. (I never cared for healing as a paladin or druid or shaman, either. If I was going to heal, by God, it was going to be on a priest. In my mind casting = cloth.)

Kozor wins this thread.

I don't think she's whiny...just needy. A little too needy. Not quite creepy stalker fangirl needy, but yeah.

Nadia also has a diplomacy crit bonus; synthweaving can bite me, that's 100% a credit sink so far as I can tell. Truthfully, our companions aren't very good for biochem, only Nadia and Qyzen bring goodies to the table. But even if I had zero companion bonuses...I'd still be running with biochem. I might eventually drop one or the other of dip or bioanalysis and put those on alts, but until and unless professions get a do over in this game, it's biochem or nothing for mains.

I hate to tell you this, but Holiday is actually quite attached to Theran. I romanced him, and Holiday was most unhappy about that and brought him back to line. She's the one wearing the pants in that relationship. I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard. He'll never be able to get any good old fashioned action.

It's doable with Nadia, but I agree she's not amazing for this fight. You need to grab aggro or at least trade aggro off between yourself and Nadia. And then do kiting and LOS tricks. I was half dead at the end of this, but did one shot it. May not have the dps to pull this off as pure seer, though. I roll hybrid (split seer/TK roughly in equal amounts.)

Inquiring minds want to know what quest this is. Was it a heroic? I sure as heck never got such a blade and so far as I know you're the first person to report this. I'll go back to Taris and hunt this sucker down if it's for real. (So will a lot of other desperate sages.)

No thank you. We do not need two Vanguard companions. I already do not use the LT and dislike the way he does pulls. I prefer Qyzen precisely because he is a melee tank and not a ranged one. They just need to put in some modable orange techblades is all. I've tried all the other companions, and find only Nadia moderately useful, and ditch even her when I've got a particularly tough fight.

Techblades. This is a gaping itemization hole that affects Consulars in particular, thanks to their very odd starting companion.

Cool, thanks. This is my favorite planet since Alderaan, I think. Didn't like Quesh or Hoth, Bolsavis was ok. Great for bionalysis, too.