PS: I forgot to mention, the reason you don't update your gear after 41. When you go to Makeb, get the GSI buff. From this point on, every story line quest you do will have some means of bolstering you up to the right gear level for the content you are doing, either via GSI, or straight buffing you up and giving you a combat droid to help you out.

I have a couple basic rules for leveling any class in this game (excluding tanks). Stats: Your main stat (in this case Willpower) > Power > Everything else. That's it. Gear: Get a full set of adaptive, use a pilot suit from your mail if you have to. At level 21, update it all to level 21 mods, enhancements, armorings and lightsabre hilts through comms and/or crafting (pre 21 who cares, level naked, it's not like it's hard). Update it again at 31, update it again at 41. You will use the level 41 gear until 60. The above works for any healer or dps. Now on to Sage/Sorc specifics. How to level: Leveling Skills and spec you say? Don't care if you wanna heal, spec TK/Lightning, take the utility that grants 25% bonus damage to Force Storm/Force Quake. Bind every key on your keyboard to Force Storm/Quake. Target mob, roll face on keyboard. Repeat until 60. With 12X Exp, do your class quests. That's it. when you hit 47, abandon your class quest. Don't care if it's not done, move on. Come back later if you want. Go to Makeb, do the Makeb story line. When you hit 55, do the Rishi storyline. Then do Yavin, then do Ziost. At this point you will be 60, and you should have enough comms and drops from Ziost to be fully 186/190 geared (cuz you've been saving comms since 41). Congrats, you're SM Ops ready. Go read dulfy as a starting point for your endgame career. It's a bit out of date but not much. It's gearing and rotation and break down of skills is still relevant.

Personal Experience, your mileage may vary: First night of HMs with the changes I hated it. Out of Force'd constantly, people died. Second night, started being a little more proactive with my Consuming Darkness. Begin to pay more attention to how many stacks of Force Surge I have at any given moment. HPS slightly higher than pre 3.3. Third night, deciding on how to spend Force Surges, either for CD or Reviv becomes a primary focus of awareness. VERY proactive in Consuming usage, begin using one CD at 70% force to bump me back up in the 90% range and keeping myself there until "burn" phases where I need to pump out healing. Throttling up and down is VERY effective. During down time use Force Surge procs on CDs to ramp up Force pool, burn phases use them for Insta-Revivs. Outcome: 300-500 HPS higher than pre 3.3, no gear changes depending on the fight. I like this change. A lot. Took me til the third night to get it all worked out, but I'm looking forward to my raid times this weekend.

It was my understanding it was nerfed due to it's being too nice of a heal for tanks in PvE and not nerfed due to it's burst dmg for AP in PvP.

I've played this game since Beta. I have never seen the issue described in this thread. I blame the hardware you're running, not the code.

You sir, win all my internets for the day.

I don't always reply, but when I do, it's in a 1 yr 5 month necro bump'd thread.

At lower levels (under 25) just WZ queue chaining will level you faster than questing. 25-35 they kind of start to balance out. 35+ PvE starts to bring in the exp faster than PvP queues. Your mileage may vary. Personally I can't quest grind anymore on my alts. It's just tedious to me. I do the class storyline, maybe a few quest lines per planet, and then move on. I will just find a place to grind mobs over and over instead of questing if I want to level but am not in a WZ mood.

As someone who has been /lick 'ing his friends in greeting dating back to the mid 90's (MUDs FTW) I whole heartedly /sign.

I took a break from the game. At launch through 1.1, I played a Mara and a Powertech. The forum was NOTHING but ************ about how bad Mara's were. How much buffing they needed. Meanwhile, I'm ****** face with my Anni spec thinking "these fools complaining we need buffed?!? ***, we own." So now I'm back. And, well the fools got what they whined for, we got buffed, now the nerfherders are out in full force. Surprising? No. Stupid, yes. Moral: Gaming companies should stop balancing their game based on forum QQ.

Yes, from being on the receiving end of it. LOL. If they dump their energy bar, from range, unfettered (meaning you can't LoS or stun them or no one else is around to interrupt them) you die.

I went Rage 10-20, Carnage 20-25, Anni 25+ and I'll be sticking with Anni from here on out. I started my mara as an alt to my 50 PT, I think my mara might become my main when he hits 50 and I get him geared.

Shhhhhhhhh, you're giving away secrets to the bads. I do something similar with my PT. That expertise adrenal is a far better defensive CD than offensive.

Any Advanced class is fine in PvP in the right hands. Juggs are fine, Snipers are fine, Ops are fine, Mercs are fine... it's the player, not the class.

Purely "Best Burst" nothing else to consider, hands down Sniper/Gunslinger.

Rofl, my level 35 Anni Spec'd Mara who hit 200K on 4 straight WZ's and topped the dmg for all players in same WZ's last night would like to contend your statement. Rage and Carnage might have problems, Anni does not. Edit: And i've been pulling numbers with him like that since lvl 25.

I keep that point in the slow less for dealing with kiters and more for slowing ball carriers in Huttball. I play on a heavy Empire server so I see Huttball about 3-4 times more often than the other two WZ. Using an unload on a ball carrier almost garuntees a proc of the slow, or just running after them spamming base attack to proc it when grapple is on CD. It is very difficult to kite a PT even without that slow proc, 10m range on flame burst helps alot. And as soon as I see a Sorc/Sage pop their sprint I grapple then stun. Typically they don't try to run until I've had a chance to get em to 50% health, then grapple, followed up by a stun usually gives me enough time to blow of most of the remaining 50%. I also find it useful for kiting myself. I try to weave in and out of 4-10m range when fighting Juggs, Mara's and melee spec'd operatives. As most of their attacks are 4m and mine are not, in a sense I "kite" them by trying to stick to 10m so I can still use FB. I only drop into 4m range purposefully when I want to get a Rocket Punch off, other than that I do best I can to stay out of their range. But I don't rely on it, so it's a quality of life point when it procs.

TBH, if you play the spec right, any of the 3 mara builds is effective. It just comes down to playstyle preference. Personally, I like Anni for my alt Mara. I started Rage til about 20, did carnage from 20-25, and at 25 swapped to Anni. I'm 35 now and have no intention of changing my spec from Anni. Yes, the DoT's don't help much on regular mobs, so don't bother with them. You don't have to DoT it if it's going to die in two swings anyway. I also feel with anni, for tougher storyline fights I'm not Married to Quinn, I can still use Jasea and get through thanks to the self heals. There is something very satisfying about beating a Champion level mob in PvE solo and ending with 100% health without a healer companion.

Oh, and PvE is totally boring, nothing will present a challenge to you. Set mako to heal, throw a guard on her, and you can sleep through your quests. I also tanked most 4 person heroic quests as I level'd. I did not try this spec in FPs. I find them boring to run.

My Spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#301hR0MZ0MZbIbbdGGMs.1 The 2 points in Rebraced Armor is debatable. I like it because you get a lot of incoming lightsabre dmg being melee ranged, and Armor DOES work on Lightsabre dmg. I use Ion and the Shield Offhand (Supercommando), the rest of my gear is all Eliminator set. This has been my target build since launch day. I regularly beat both straight DPS build PT's and the Carolina Parakeet Hybrid 1v1 with it. 8-12 medals, and top 3 DPS w/ 25-75K protection while playing for objectives is the norm at level 50 with approx 600 expertise. Its a very fun, very versatile spec build for WZ. I never find myself thinking my DPS is low. I have tried both a full DPS and the CP build and found the CP doesn't have much more "tankiness" (tho Jet Charge is awesome) and the DPS build doesn't really have that much of a difference dmg wise. Maybe 5% more, but tbh it's not really noticeable, **** still dies fast. Without using trinkets or adrenals I can get 3K+ crits out of TD and RS. I do struggle with solo'ing healers tho. I can hamper them, and keep them running and interrupt most casts, effectively taking them out of the fight, but killing a good healer solo with this spec is tough. You hafta time your TD/RS burst perfectly. Heat is rarely an issue. This spec shines when you are working with 1 other person. Doesn't even need to be a healer. Your Guard + DPS + taunts + CC make you an impressive duo partner. Find a friend, whoop some ***. I believe this spec has been dubbed the "Bulldog" by the forums.

I'd say go IA, people give them crap as being bad healers, they aren't. They just aren't faceroll healing like a sorc. Manage the energy bar well, and keep those HoTs rolling and your PT hubby will stay up just fine. Also, IA story is possibly the best one in the game.

And today's Necro'd Thread of the Day Award goes to.... Guys, this thread is 2 months old and from pre-50 WZ's. As well, they guy who posted that 400K+ Screenshot just posted a 700K+ one in another thread. Get with the program...

Sorc Healer. I play him with 2 friends whenever all 3 of us are on. But I much prefer my Powertech.

Level in WZ's, srsly. Do nothing but your class quests til you hit Hoth. All your gear can be purchased with commendations. (You get a full pvp gear set at level's 20 and 40, orange, just buy mods to upgrade when needed) Once you hit Hoth, do all the quests there, gloss over Voss, then do all of Corellia. Sprinkle in more WZs as needed. I did 48-50 in one night pulling in 20K+ exp per WZ win. 14K for a loss.

Well played Mara/Sents are really tough 1v1. Poorly played Mara/Sents are just a free kill. This class probably has the widest gap of "bads" to "goods". A poorly played Sorc or Merc for example can still do decent DPS. Mara/Sents when poorly played are absolutely worthless. But when well played, they are probably the best 1v1 class in the game. Sins/Shadows are rather easy unless tank spec'd. Their defensive cooldowns at that point make them tough to burst down so it really becomes a "who has more CDs" fight. DPS Ops are easy if you trinket their opener and keep a DoT on em. Healer Ops are a pain in the *** to bring down solo. Slippery little buggers. Mercs, interrupt tracer early, game over for them usually. Merc healers I've never really had any problems with either. Sorcs similar to Ops, the DPS varieties aren't too much of problem, the healers can be more difficult, probably easier to kill a Sorc healer than an Op Healer though IMHO. Juggs/Guardians, kite em. If you can keep em right around 10m you remove a lot of their attacks but you still have Flame Burst and Railshot, and as long as you are getting procs, that's all you really need. Snipers are a free kill as well as long as you have some way to break LoS and close the gap. If you are out in the open and they are pounding on you, there isn't much you can do to get to them before you die. If you can get to them with a relatively full health bar, they don't pose much threat.