This is not quite true. My operative withstands fire over the course of a match better than my merc does. Regardless, both are vastly better than my sorcerer at taking a beating.

To my point before, the difference in this part is that while kiting properly ..a sorc isn't healing, but my operative is.

In the exact same circumstance, I would heal for twice as much as the sage in question because the interrupts would hardly phase me. Not only that, I would have to spend far less time healing both you guarding me and myself because I am far less squishy (for several reasons). This means the majority of my healing is going to other people that need it instead of to us. Also, I am not trying to be rude here, but your example is a little far fetched. You should know as well as I do that you aren't going to be fighitng practice dummies. They are going to be using CC, interrupts, etc. on your healer as well. Your cool downs are going to be half as effective in use compared to theirs simply because multiple opponents have more to burn through than you do alone. I would venture to say that even a single well played marauder (using my guild members as an example) is going to do more than enough to lock that sage's effectiveness down despite your best efforts, even if a single marauders cant kill him. Really man, I know what you are trying to do and say, but coming from the perspective of playing all three healers, I have a pretty damn good perspective as to the difference between them. The sorc/sage excels, no doubt, but only in situations where they are fighting idiots.

Possible, but severely limited against competent enemies especially when compared to the other healing classes. The change to force management to sorc/sages was probably enough. The change to force bending was uncalled for because they were already overly susceptible to interrupts before 1.2. Heh

You really don't know the difference between healers do you? In terms of effectiveness through interrupts it goes as follows: Operative > Merc > Sorc ...and believe it or not, viability vs competent enemies goes as such: Operative > Merc > Sorc

Regardless, there is a huge difference even when guarded between a scoundrel/op and a sorc/sage. Even if protected, a sorc/sage can be completely gimped via a competent interrupter, effectively making their healing throughput worthless. An operative/scoundrel (and I speak from intimate knowledge) does not have that issue. This is what you are missing. Not all healers are created equal.

Actually sorcs aren't a mobile healer, that title belongs to operatives. You really cant call a class with one crappy hot on a cool down that can be cast on the run as a 'mobile' healers. Sure a sorc can run with force sprint once in a while, but that is hardly mobility and can really only be relied upon to work against a good player if their resolve bar is full (...and even then). On the other hand, I can hot stack, surgical probe, and ae hot on the run with my operative. HUGE difference in survivability right there even without taking into consideration those three cant be interrupted

You aren't completely accurate with your statement. You also cannot include guard and taunts as a healer resource outside of running a guild group / premade. While interrupts lock one ability, you are forgetting that a good DPSer is going to use the interrupt on a castable and use a form of cc\player movement ability to interrupt the channels\abilities on cool down (effectively locking them out until off of cooldown). For example, when I face a sorc healer. I am going to lock the big heal and cc/movement the channel. They wont stand a chance through the dps with the baby heal, the hot, or by dropping a puddle at their feet. They are going to need cross heals to live. The second they force sprint, they are getting stunned... so no running kid. My operative on the other hand .....good luck stopping my healing.

You shouldnt bring up WOW ever in serious PvP discussions. Just giving you some helpful advice because WOW invented carebear PvP.

What James Ohlen is completely ignorant about is interrupt susceptibility. I suspect this is not going to fully come into their 'metrics' until they start seeing poor performance from sage/sorc healers in ranked matches where the level of competency in regards to cc/interrupts/focus fire come into play far far more than they do in random pugs. (For example I saw a poster say they fake cast the small heal before channeling ...works great against idiots, but not against a person that knows the difference between the two heals and wont waste interrupts on the baby heal) A sorcerer can out heal my operative in situations where they are left alone and hardly interrupted because they have higher bandwidth ....HOWEVER, they will not come even remotely close to matching my healing throughput under fire. At the moment, this is completely skewing their 'metrics' and is proof positive as to why metrics out of context means exactly jack ****.

That is irrelevant to the issue I am talking about. Outside of void star, most of the sorcerer survivability issues can be managed with positioning and a little help from team mates ...or having guard otherwise. I am referring both to susceptibility to and lack of ability to manage being interrupted. Even if you have cross healing, guard, and use terrain/positioning/escape tools to never die in a match, a single competent player that knows how to interrupt and more importantly 'what' to interrupt, can completely shut your healing output down. This is entirely the reason why I switched to my operative full time to heal. Superior in every way across the board. Edit: ..and before some ignorant tool makes a post about fake casting, that only works against bad players.

Sure, they were for sure. They aren't now because they are laughably easy to shut down with interrupts and are way too much of a draw on guard against competent opponents. But sure, highest bandwidth no doubt ...they just have nowhere near the actual throughput of an equally skilled operative against opponents with half a brain.

As long as its in a random direction. I need ONE more thing to randomly throw me into fire and acid in huttball.

Of course you don't. I have no problems either healing on my operative. We are hands down the best healer in the game. Sorc healers on the other hand ...completely worthless.

Not having an interrupt is the single largest issue I have with my merc at the moment. I understand my play style helps me significantly against melee players and that this isn't the norm for the average player. With that said, adding more duration to the snare on unload, say from 2 seconds to 4 seconds would help them considerably... of course that does nothing for the other trees. Perhaps a medium insta snare on a cool down ?

...and you assume anyone cares about the nonsense coming out of your pie hole ?

If you want to enjoy healing again, try an operative. Once you are high enough to get surgical probe, you will be set ...but you will have to grind it out until then. I was a sorc healer too and the toon is perma shelved.

...and if the interrupt alone isn't enough (and to me its the biggest issue for us), the next step would be to increase the snare effect duration with pinning shots slightly 4 seconds.

I get the most deathblows, kills, and damage in every single match I play in on my merc. We really don't need much to make the class viable to the average player, but BW has to be extremely careful not to enhance so much that we are grossly OP again. My thoughts are to simply give us an interrupt on a medium cool down and see how it pans out after a few weeks.

Umm no

Anyone can beat bad players. I fail to see your point. Put someone equally skilled as your 'friend' on a maurader and the sorc would get eaten for lunch.

If you provide the funding and the pay check, I will provide the time and effort.

Try removing the dots on you first. Stealth saves me the majority of the time I use it.

You are obviously doing something very very wrong with your operative if these are you opinions. I have a sorcerer healer, a merc healer, and a operative healer. My sorcerer is permanently shelved and my merc is now dps. Why you may ask? Simple. My operative out performs them overall by a long shot. The change to consumption was a fair nerf to sorcerers and wasn't 'that' bad. The real issue with sorcerers was the change to force bending. This makes it nearly impossible to get the big heal off in combat now against any opponents with even half a brain that knows what to interrupts. Sure they can still dish out the highest heal numbers when left alone, but the lack of survival tools and sheer susceptibility to interrupts make the class completely gimp as a healer in comparison to an operative. The biggest tool you have as a healer is mobility while healing. It trumps everything else when it comes to survivability. I -always- am mobile on my operative. With a super long cast time heal (the small heal will suck you dry in terms of force management, but is still useful), a channeled heal on a cool down, and only a crappy hot on a cool down, a sorc is screwed in terms of mobility. Operative > BH > Sorc ....across the board against anyone even semi competent

You are obviously clueless about sorcerer utility as a healer. A pure healing spec sorcerer has no blindness when bubble is uses up. They also have no root on knockback. They have castable single target mez (whirlwind) on a cool down, snare, very short ranged aoe knockback (really only usefull in huttball), and a stun. As well as force sprint. In terms of survivability, we are way better than sorcerers.