How is "Alacrity" useful?

[Gridfire]

I don't see that Alacrity has problems as such, it's useful for healers and - I would imagine the Sage or Sorc - it just doesn't do what you want it to do, reduce cooldowns, and so you believe it is useless.

 

Now how useful it is next to crit or surge for a healer, I'm not sure.

[Wuxifinger]

Go look up "Haste in WoW".

 

It's effectively the same stat and you can find thousands of pages explaining why it's good and how it's good for each class.

 

 

WoW was pretty different though. I never, ever went OOM in WoW even in a 20 minute raid fight. I constantly overheat in SWTOR unless I work in default attack every other attack. Im not complaining... just saying that it isnt comparable for several reasons.

[Aurinax]

It's unfortunately a limitation of how they interfaced combat with animations, and, the game engine itself.

 

Right, that engine is the culprit for so many of the issues that we're experiencing; ability delay, the fact that a cast is based on the animation firing and not the cast bar finishing (which is totally FUBAR), and just PVP in general.

 

They really made a bad choice using that heroengine instead of spending some of that voice-acting money on creating their own or at least furthering development on a previously successful one.

[failr]

Go look up "Haste in WoW".

 

It's effectively the same stat and you can find thousands of pages explaining why it's good and how it's good for each class.

 

You do not even know how wrong you are, in wow haste affects casting time, amount of ticks for channeled spells and hots, and reduces gcd.

 

For instance as a druid healer in wow you have over 10 haste break points which give you extra hot ticks effectively improving the output of your hot spells per mana used.

 

In swotor is does nothing. Longest cast time you see on often used spells is about 2 seconds, gcd is 1.5, reducing it below 1.5 is useless because you will still have gcd up even if you casted your heal faster. Not to mention the ability delay in SWTOR for spells with cast time making alacrity a stat that is less usefull than presence.

[Yfelsung]

You do not even know how wrong you are, in wow haste affects casting time, amount of ticks for channeled spells and hots, and reduces gcd.

 

For instance as a druid healer in wow you have over 10 haste break points which give you extra hot ticks effectively improving the output of your hot spells per mana used.

 

In swotor is does nothing. Longest cast time you see on often used spells is about 2 seconds, gcd is 1.5, reducing it below 1.5 is useless because you will still have gcd up even if you casted your heal faster. Not to mention the ability delay in SWTOR for spells with cast time making alacrity a stat that is less usefull than presence.

 

Last time I played WoW, Haste didn't effect the GCD yet. That changed later as certain classes weren't getting much use from haste because it didn't drop the GCD.

 

It was only useful for certain classes.

 

And reducing a cast time isn't useless, even with a GCD, because it gives ME, a class that can rotate 8 spell counters in a row, less time to catch your cast.

[Valcutio]

Alacrity is pretty useless as of right now. It's the one stat that should be avoided.

[failr]

I am a healing merc level 50, I try and get as much alacrity as I can, but I rarely find myself overheating, only if dps players do not understand how to play and joust boss abilities, or rip agro. Sometimes I'll just elt them die.

 

I find being able to cast faster helps me for that ohh-crap time when the tank gets below 50%.

 

Trust me, drop your useless alacrity and invest heavily into surge and crit and you will actually be able to save nontanks from dying in your groups because your instant cast spells will actually start healing for enough to save them.

[Gridfire]

Gone are the days of dual Warglaives, the Dragonspine Trophy, and Mongoose procs

[SarahR]

Right, that engine is the culprit for so many of the issues that we're experiencing; ability delay, the fact that a cast is based on the animation firing and not the cast bar finishing (which is totally FUBAR), and just PVP in general.

 

They really made a bad choice using that heroengine instead of spending some of that voice-acting money on creating their own or at least furthering development on a previously successful one.

 

I agree completely. It feels as though they spent 70 million on voice acting and getting lip syncing to work and just sorta threw it on top of an unpolished gameplay system.

 

 

Methods of fixing this issue (killing two birds with one stone): Removing the lock of animations binding with casts. Unfortunately, they won't do this. Georg Zoeller has touted this function for years and made it a main selling point.

 

The hero engine was all the rage in 2008. It is used for small time 4-8 player MMORPGs and general games, mainly indie. It works well in smaller deployments - but was not, and is not, ready for the huge deployment of this scale. It is still single-threaded, even. Something that WoW upgraded from over the course of two years. (Which, Bioware had the time to do, during development.)

Edited January 6, 2012 by SarahR

[Syas]

Wouldn't a lot of alacrity just make you overheat, run out of force, etc. faster? Leaving you with default/wimpy attack?

 

If I could increase my force pool or my ammo pool, then alacrity would make sense. However, these systems are basically fixed in SWTOR.

 

What I am hoping, is that alacrity increases venting, ammo replenishment, force recharging, etc., and I just don't know it.

 

Is this the case?

 

Not exactly, your damage/healing/threat per resource point doesn't go down, it just decreases the timeline. If you do 1000 damage for 100 resource, that never changes but maybe you do it in 8 seconds instead of 10 now.

 

Now picture you are fighting a boss that needs to be burned down (or healing through a hard phase). Being able to deal/heal damage as quick as possible become integral to those fights.

 

Hence, alacrity. It may not be the most useful tertiary stat, but it is useful to some extent.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Syas

[Wuxifinger]

It doesn't increase venting/force regeneration/etc.

 

It doesn't quicken ticks on DOTs and HOTs.

 

It doesn't decrease the GCD.

 

All of the above is true?

[failr]

Last time I played WoW, Haste didn't effect the GCD yet. That changed later as certain classes weren't getting much use from haste because it didn't drop the GCD.

 

It was only useful for certain classes.

 

And reducing a cast time isn't useless, even with a GCD, because it gives ME, a class that can rotate 8 spell counters in a row, less time to catch your cast.

 

First of all it was usefull for all classes in wow, even for melee it improves auto attack speed.

 

As for your point of it being usefull in pvp, it may be, however it only affects casted heals and those are terrible in pvp to begin with, where every other stat affects your instant heals, hots, shields etc that are the main tools of a healer in pvp that has someone beating on him. And if he does not and is healing someone else who you are beating then you cannot interrupt him can you?

[xentus]

Alacrity shouldnt affect your force pool because every damage tree has things that help you regenerate force or get 100% or 50% less force cost when using your trees abilities. For a healer that uses force it doesnt matter because healing is healing. Its better to be able to heal faster. The amount of healing you are required to do will not change depending on how fast you use your force.

 

For the other classes im not positive how this stat works because each has its own ability generator.

[Rizem]

So many Sith in this thread, only dealing in absolutes.

 

No Alacrity is not pointless, usless, worthless or any other expression to describe a lack of value.

 

It may not be optimum, a sensible choice, best for your class etc, but that's just balance.

[SarahR]

It doesn't increase venting/force regeneration/etc.

 

It doesn't quicken ticks on DOTs and HOTs.

 

It doesn't decrease the GCD.

 

All of the above is true?

 

Correct.

 

Whereas Crit/Surge:

 

Criticals can happen on instant casts, per tick on HoT/DoT, and casted spells.

Surge will increase the height at which a critical can go, up until 200% as per diminshing returns.

Critical and Alacrity are sitting at 40% diminishing returns. However, at 40% alacrity you will still be largely bound by the GCD anyway.

[Yfelsung]

First of all it was usefull for all classes in wow, even for melee it improves auto attack speed.

 

As for your point of it being usefull in pvp, it may be, however it only affects casted heals and those are terrible in pvp to begin with, where every other stat affects your instant heals, hots, shields etc that are the main tools of a healer in pvp that has someone beating on him. And if he does not and is healing someone else who you are beating then you cannot interrupt him can you?

 

I'm not disagreeing that it's a bad stat, I'm just disagreeing that it's completely useless.

[Astarica]

Alacrity isn't too useful if you're a melee where you might have 2 abilities with a casting/channeling time. It probably isn't too useful for the classes that must stay at about 60% resource to get maximum regen. But it'd be useful for a Sorcerer, and even for classes on the Heat/Energy resource, being able to cast a 3s heal faster has its uses.

[failr]

So many Sith in this thread, only dealing in absolutes.

 

No Alacrity is not pointless, usless, worthless or any other expression to describe a lack of value.

 

It may not be optimum, a sensible choice, best for your class etc, but that's just balance.

 

Lets just say as a melee operative you r better off wearing a marauder piece of armor with str on it as operative if it has something other than alacrity than a piece with cunning that has alacrity on it. It is the stat to be avoided.

[SarahR]

I'm not disagreeing that it's a bad stat, I'm just disagreeing that it's completely useless.

 

Well, it isn't completely useless. But 90% useless, yes.

[Jokael]

Alacrity is pretty useless as of right now. It's the one stat that should be avoided.

 

I disagree.

 

My Merc has 1400Aim 34%Crit 18%Surge and the next stat i look for is alacrity. It took my main heals from 2.25secs to 1.7secs to cast, which in major fights can mean the difference between a wipe or not.

 

Over the course of a long fight I will throw out more heals then someone who has less alacrity, which increases the survivability of my group/raid members. I can top off a tank then top off a dps or myself faster then someone without alacrity.

 

Also it's use in dps can be summed up the same, you can throw more dps the quicker you can cast them. taking a tracer missile from 2.5secs to under 2 secs increases your dps.

 

The math is there, use it.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Jokael

[Rizem]

Well, it isn't completely useless. But 90% useless, yes.

 

Usless isn't a scale. It's either without use, or it isn't.

 

Just say it's not very good, or even say it's the worst of the relevent stats per class, but lose the hype and exageration inflation. It gives a much more accurate answer and allows inteligent people to properly understand the situation.

[SarahR]

I disagree.

 

My Merc has 1400Aim 34%Crit 18%Surge and the next stat i look for is alacrity. It took my main heals from 2.25secs to 1.7secs to cast, which in major fights can mean the difference between a wipe or not.

 

Over the course of a long fight I will throw out more heals then someone who has less alacrity, which increases the survivability of my group/raid members. I can top off a tank then top off a dps or myself faster then someone without alacrity.

 

Also it's use in dps can be summed up the same, you can throw more dps the quicker you can cast them. taking a tracer missile from 2.5secs to under 2 secs increases your dps.

 

The math is there, use it.

 

But if you would just add a bit more crit and surge, every single one of your abilities would be doing 20% more damage/healing versus only a handful of abilities being casted 20% faster.

[SarahR]

Usless isn't a scale. It's either without use, or it isn't.

 

Just say it's not very good, or even say it's the worst of the relevent stats per class, but lose the hype and exageration inflation. It gives a much more accurate answer and allows inteligent people to properly understand the situation.

 

It is without use 90 percent of the time. There, happy?

[Liquidacid]

I tried a bunch of gear with Alacrity bonuses on my marksman sniper and it made a world of difference... then again a vast majority of my skills are channeled... the boost in DPS more than made up for the fact I ran out of power faster... it's all about resource management Edited January 6, 2012 by Liquidacid

[failr]

I disagree.

 

My Merc has 1400Aim 34%Crit 18%Surge and the next stat i look for is alacrity. It took my main heals from 2.25secs to 1.7secs to cast, which in major fights can mean the difference between a wipe or not.

 

Over the course of a long fight I will throw out more heals then someone who has less alacrity, which increases the survivability of my group/raid members. I can top off a tank then top off a dps or myself faster then someone without alacrity.

 

Also it's use in dps can be summed up the same, you can throw more dps the quicker you can cast them. taking a tracer missile from 2.5secs to under 2 secs increases your dps.

 

The math is there, use it.

 

Two points

 

1) As far as I am aware merc's heal is a 2 sec cast, so unless I am wrong and please enlighten me, your heal only went down by 0.3 sec.

2) All of the gear pieces only have 2 secondary stats on them, unless you put mods of different type in, but essentially mods cannot have more than 2 secondary stats so there are only 2 top secondary stat choices you have, and if you chose alacrity over surge crit or power then you did it wrong.