Fantasic. Good work. I want to add some minor points, but i don't want to detract from the good work you've done here posting this, so i'll leave it for now, good job again!

This is statement is completely false. At the end of the day the only thing that affects energy regen and less hps is YOU the player. Put your own pauses in if need be, but the player manages his energy, not the other way around. While i'm sure the poster is a very competant player who can acheive alot on his scoundrel, his way of thinking about alacrity is flawed and not based in fact. My personal opinion on alacrity is take as much as you can get without sacrificing your surge numbers below what i believe is the 'sweet spot' at around 250 points.

OMG. There is so much misinformation in this thread. There is also alot of people's opinions paraded as facts. Opinions are fine and everyone has a right to one. It doesn't make yours right. The below quote is the most accurate post in this entire thread. For any new people, this is the guy/post you should listen to out of anyone here. There is only 1 thing i would add to that post for informational purposes: Fact #4: Alacrity is the only stat that improves the rest of your stats and makes them more worthwhile. What i mean by this is that while your stats are poor or medicore, alacrity will have much less of an affect on your total healing. As your stats get better, and you approach the top tiers of your gear, alacrity's value actually increases on an exponetial scale, not a linear one, as it makes all of your other stats perform better. There are so many things people have said that i really want to tear apart, but it would only start stupid forum wars that i can't be bothered with, so i will just leave you with my opinion to finish: It's always better to have faster heals and not need them, as opposed to needing them and not having them. In PvP especially, 0.25 of a second is the difference between life or death in many instances.

The difference between power and main stat is minimal. So minimal in fact, that you would barely notice a complete swap from 1 to the other to the total healing done value. Run all of 1, or half/hlaf, the end net result is the same. But have some fun playing around and learning for yourself

The stat choicess are really fool proof, this was proved a few months back by someone who ran the numbers for swapping all power out for critical and vice versa. The difference between having all power, or all critical was like 2% to total healing done, with the most healing done literally a spilt down the middle. BW really made it pretty foolproof. That said, most people pick up cunning over power where they have the choice, critical generally around 37% without the talent tree buff (alot of good scoundrels run without it to get the extra movement speed), around 75% (200-250) surge and around 200 - 300 alacrity, bringing UWM done to 1.70 - 1.75 sec cast time. All of which you seem to have. So my opinion is without logging in right this second and checking my own fully aug WH numbers, is your pretty much spot on the mark.

It is unfair to blame players leaving this server at this point in time if they no longer find it fun. Anyone leaving at this point is just a symtom of a problem that they had no control over during the past few months. They pay their money, and if they don't enjoy low populations and pvp ques in excess of 30 mins, then they have a right to leave. Again, not their fault, and who's to say that those people re subbing just didn't do it on another server? The bastion has a rocking AU population now. All the blame on this lies squarly with bioware. They have all the tools and options at their disposal to make the game more enjoyable for everyone, and to do something about populations. No one should be made to suffer through months of boredom in the hopes of f2p "maybe" solving issues. There are quick and direct steps bioware could have done weeks if not months ago, but did not.

Depends on the match alot and who your facing.... interesting to see what your heal numbers are actually like OP. Are you cracking 800k healing each rated WZ like the best ops/scoundrels on my server? What are your healing numbers like without DS? Are you in a top rated team? Is there no competetion for your team, hence no need to heal anyone? Is your team getting crushed, and you dont have to worry about heals? Too many factors change your heal numbers and weather or not you can 'keep people up'. If your against an evenly matched team, your healing each match should be easily over 700k, and approaching 850k+ if your a great healer. If you can do this with no DS, good for you. If your not reaching those sorts of numbers, people with DS are doing it better.

Truly and honestly, it is the most underrated and under used heal we have. For starters, it is hte highest HPS heal in our arsenal. Also, with a little sprikling of alacrity, its cast time is around 1.3 secs. Thats damn fast for a heal that almost heals as much as UMW. For burst healing, spamming UWM + KP is unsurpassed imo. Yes you will run out of energy, but if you have cool head up, you can spam it for a seemingly long time. Sometimes keeping someone up under heavy fire is more important than maintaining energy levels. You will be honestly suprised at the pressure/damage that spam can keep people up under. It is not however, our "goto" heal. You need to look for oppertunities to use it, it also takes time to get a feel for this. Try looking for those opertunities more often, because especially at 50 pvp and ranked, you wont be disappointed.

Nice to see another guide out there for people. More resources is always good, thanks for taking the time. This is true. I'm not getting into the whole debate of cunning v power, though i will say this: If you run without the full 3% crit chance from no holds barred, then taking cunning over power is probably a priority. Which leads me to my next point: I disagree with this. I used to run the build in your post, but left it in favour of the 15% bonus to movement speed at all times. Tbh, i wont run without it now. I was hesitant to try it at the start, but even in rated WZ's, i find the 15% always buff preferable to a 30% for 4 secs every 30. I can't tell you how many times i have been saved by being able to out manovour people. Stating there is only 1 viable build in your guide is false. Alot of people have sucess with running a build that incorporates 3 points into sneaky for the movement buff. I think the only part of a sawbones build that is really non-negioable is what is selected in the sawbones tree itself (it is also really quite easy pick and almost everyone gets it right by default). The spare points to be distrubuted between the other 2 trees can vary somewhat, and depends on personal playstyle.

The reality is that there is no world pvp that happens in this game on any meaningful level. The questing areas are quite seperate between factions, and when servers were jam packed i made it to almost level 30 before running into an imperial. If the pvp server was merged in to the pve one, under pve rules, the sad truth is that almost no one would notice a difference. And, those that do notice the difference, and feel like they may have lost something... well, when the server your playing on is empty, there is no one at all to pvp with, open world or otherwise. While they might complain a little about the ruleset not allowing open pvp (which is non exsistant anyway), they would soon get over it when the warzones start popping 3 times as fast. Master Dar Nala (MdN) is a ghost town. I rarely see it reach 100 people in the fleet, if ever. WZ's are starting to pop less and less frequently, and the competition is laughable. Rated Warzones between teams that actually want to play, and not just medal farming/win swapping is practically non exsistant too. There are also PvE only guilds on this so called PvP server.... It boggles the mind. Yet i log onto The Bastion, and its least populated fleet has over 200 most times, even in the US off peak. Alot of people have already started rolling alt's there. Merge the AU pvp server or allow transfers off it, and save yourself some subscribers while you can. Or else they will all leave due to no one to play against.

First off, My main is a healer, but i dont play a sorc. I can only give you advice from an outsiders perspective looking in, and how i go when i roll my dps and fight sorcs. The above poster about the ops frames is 100% correct. I have found that the combination of what was said above (make sure you move it closer to your hotbar), along with tab targeting and the occasional click select works best for me. I also find, that when i am fighting a sorc/sage, the best players on our server do NOT run with the salvation/AoE heal. They pick up some survivabilty from the other trees and run hybrid. For example, the root after the knockback in the lighting(?) tree. From what my guild mates say, it helps alot for survivabilty. Now, lastly, what i am going to say you are probably not going to like, but i feel that it should be said. The sorc is a squishy class, and as such, your reactions to things need to be really fast, and proactive. If your warzone awarness is lacking, its going to hurt. Also, by clicking instead of keybinding, you are really hampering yourself. My best advice is to pick up a logitech g13 gamepad for under 50 bucks, and take a few weeks to adjust your hand to it. Start by binding only a few powers at a time, and every few days keep adding a few more. You will get worse before you get better, but, i can gaureentee you that after a few weeks, you will be 200% better than where you started. Also, i should state, that if you are really good, and a bit of a whiz at gaming, gamepads and gaming mice arent nessecary. But if yo uare struggling, (self admittedly you are), they honestly really do help. Good luck!

LagunaD, It is somewhat re-assuring to know that the things i have been saying and doing for the last little while are also confirmed by someone else who knows the math better than i am. A few questions and comments though: 1.) As for your critical stat weight, when calculating did you include the 30% surge stat bonus increase for your UWM, KP and KC heals? 2.) I have known about kolto pack for a long time, its a beast heal, and probably the most undervalued heal in the scoundrels toolbox for a very long time. Hopefully your comments will help to spread the word. 3.) Same comment stands for Alacrity as it does for KP. Alacirty shouldn't be ignored. Take it people! It's value gets better and better when all of your other stats get better too, as it helps all your stats do their jobs faster! 4.) Getting cunning up that high, is that using all PvE gear? I can't seem to get mine up that high, but i PvP mostly and aren't really aware of the maximum stats gained from PvE gear, especially the tier 2 gear. Cheers

Quoted the most important parts out of this post. Some very valuble information there, at least for end game healing, its been to long since i leveled up. There is ALOT to be said for an UWM cast time of 1.67 secs, and a KP cast time of 1.3 secs. Sometimes energy usage is not a factor, you just need to keep people up. Also, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from inserting your own little pause between casts to recover energy. Just dont be a mindless heal bot spamming heals and wondering why you have no energy. Faster heals when you want it is never a bad thing. Back on topic, one thing to remember as a sawbones is our 'Accomplished Sawbones' talent. It adds 30% surge to UWM, KP, and KC. This means, if your casting those heals alot, the crit chance stat wieght will be alot higher for us than other classes. So having a high crit chance stat can be very important depending on playstyle, and also possibly the reason why our WH gear gives us crit rating over 400 iirc...

I did the math for myself, and im not a wizard at it hence it taking so long to get right, so im not going to repeat it all out for you again, however i will list some rules of thumb, and tell you what i have found works for me: Surge: I get 5 pieces of WH gear for a total of 265 surge rating. I find with my companion max affection, that gives me 75% surge. I dont see it being worth it to get another piece of surge gear for a 1% or so bonus to surge due to DR hitting it hard. Alacrity: Once surge is at a minimum 265, dump the rest in alacrity. Also, the alacrity relics can be handy to depending on playstyle (Vary greatly on person and playstyle as to what people think of the alac relics). There is something to be said for a 1.65 second cast of UWM. By getting the rest after 265 surge as alac (with no relics), you should be sitting somewhere around the 1.75 sec cast time for UWM. Power/Cunning: Despite great theoretical debate as to which is superior, in the real world and in practice, that difference equals to practically nil. They can be treated as 1 and the same, and just get as much total of them as you can. Critical: Two trains of thought on this. First is after 300 critical rating, DR starts to hit hard, so then you start chasing power. The one thing most people dont think of however is we have the ability in the sawbones tree to add to our surge rating for UWM, KP, and i think KC(?). Depending on your playstyle, those abilities will have an impact on the importance of critical chance, hence lifting the stat wieght of critical chance beyond other things and meaning it may be more important to take critical well after DR has hit hard, if you use those abilities alot. This is a potential reason why Crit chance on WH gear is up around the 400's iirc. You have to decide that for yourself, minimum 300, and then as much or as little as you would like. Hope that helps.

Everything this guy said is 100% spot on. I would just switch his 1 and 2 around on the pug list though. Just like to add for sorc/sage dps, u can use dodge to cleanse there dots off you ... once lol

Last time i tested scramble (pre 1.2) it was bugged and didn't work. Haven't tested it since, but i'm pretty sure it's still bugged. Had this come up in another thread a week or so ago, and someone else confirmed it was still bugged. Test it yourself to find out, although i wouldn't hold my breath.... Also, i agree pretty much 100% with what the 2 other guys had to say. About everything pretty much. Also, with sedatives, when you start a fight, there is nothing to say you don't hit them with it twice to fill there resolve bar on purpose, then try to cap the point. If there stupid, the'll use a cc break. If not, they will just wait for it to wear off, by which time the resolve bar will be almost empty....

Your right about his answer, i didn't get much from it either. Your also correct about that flash grenade power, probably worht testing at some point. From a dps standpoint, alacrity doesn't benefit you much, only on XS flyby. If you use alacrity for survival purposes because you solo que alot or don't recieve support from a healer then thats fine. When i dps i prefer to try and get as much dps out of my scoundrel as possible.

As far as accuracy goes, when you choose to replace it, it's only a choice between accuracy, alacrity and surge with how the current gearing itemization system works. The primary stat you want from those 3 is surge. As a dps scoundrel you will see almost no benefit from alacrity, and a little to some benefit from accuracy. Once you reach around 250 surge points, DR starts to hit the stat quite badly, and returns on your investment there are poor. Some people will recommend gaining up to 300 surge points, for a surge bonus of just around 76-77%. 265 surge grants a bonus just over 75% ( i mentio n265 becuase that is what is gained from 5 pieces of WH gear). Basically, as a scrapper, go for your 250-300 surge, then sink whatever is remaining into accuracy. I asked a question recently about acuracy in the Q & A which was answered, although not in as much detail as i would have liked. It stated that accuracy is used for force/tech attacks (our primary attacks) as well as melee/ranged ones, although it really didn't have anything on the numbers or actual effectiveness, which was what i was seeking. Take what you will from it. http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-june-8th-2012

Could be multiplicative, i assumed additive, happy to be corrected if wrong on that one. I will test some more to find out, by respecing and testing with and without the skill. As for my testing, i dont know what to tell you. Those were honestly the results i got. Erranous rounding errors??? I tested first with the consular buff swapping 1 augment, and then tested without consular buff too swapping an augment again. Wrote the results on paper so i didn't get confused. Remodded an augment like 4 times and cost me some dearly needed cash .... Your correct about the damage modifier numbers being higher, but the title was spefically listing which augment for a pvp healer, hence i used the bonus to healing numbers found on sithwarrior, which are .17 and .14, last updated on the 18th May. http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Thread-SWTOR-formula-list With the abundance of crit on gear, i never have any problems reaching what i need to with crit chance without the bonus from cunning augments. I gues it comes down to gearing preferences really. I 100% agree on the cunning+power mods. Thanks for a healthy exchange of ideas and thoughts, really hard to find on forums these days.

As already stated, power has no diminshing returns. For the record, i am in full augmented war hero gear, with the exception of the main hand. For my test all i did was swap one of my 12end/18power augments for a 12end/18cunning augment, and record the results with all buffs up and running. And i am sorry snaple, i don't quite understand what you were trying to get at in your last post. I think my test proves there is literally no difference between the two, but if anything power is always a slightly better choice between it or cunning.

Okay tested it out and my initial response was correct. With the 9% skill buff to cunning, and the consular 5% buff, power was giving me slightly stronger heals. When i say slight.... Cunning augment non crit tick of SRMP = 697 Power augment non crit tick of SRMP = 698 (numbers are low b/c im specced 11/30 atm, but thats beside the point) lol. so swapping my power augment for a cunning aumgent gave me a whooping +1hp heal. So yeah, basically nothing between them, but from a pure min/max perspective, we can conclude power comes out on top. In reality, buy whatever is cheapest at the time.

Thanks, the part of the picture i was missing was the consular buff. However by my math power is still slightly ahead. for example, choice between 300 cunning or 300 power: Power bonus to healing = 300 * 0.17 = 51 Cunning bonus to healing = (300 + (9%+5% = 14% = 300 * 0.14 = 42)) * 0.14 = 342 * 0.14 = 47.88 I will do as you suggested tho, and test it out on my SRMP in case my simple math is missing something, which may be the case and it wouldn't be the first time heh. I will post my results here for everyone to see. I agree either way the difference is negligable. I just find it somewhat distracting when people state on a forum that beginners come to for advice that way XYZ is better, without giving any explaination as to why. Anyway thx for bringing a little more light to the subject.

I tip my hat to you sir. I will continue to persevre now i know it can be done! Thanks for the vid.

There is alot of confusion with the people i speak to about force and tech attacks, and how there hit rolls work, and weather they are seceptable to defence, resists, or can be shielded. I am mainly interested in pvp and how they hit or miss on another player, so: Can force/tech attacks (for example a scoundrels backblast) actually ever miss (excluding any special abilities players have)? Does accuracy and defense play any roll with these attacks, or does accuracy/defense only affect melee/ranged attacks? Can force/tech attacks be shielded?

That has pretty much been my experience too alukhard. Although i can last against some of them for a while, others have incredible burst, and regardless of what spec i am, if we go 1v1 with both of us having all cooldowns up, skill being equal, i lose. I would love to see anyone in any scoundrel spec going 1v1 with a VG/PT with both people fresh, reasonably and equally skilled, and the scoundrel coming out on top. The more i ask around, the more i feel that my expereince with them is shared by just about every scoundrel out there, at least on my server. I have even taken the time to duel a few of the best around on my server just recently, and was not very successful at all.