Willpower vs Power for a Sage

[LucentBeam]

I know that Willpower increases the skill of Force powers and Power increases damage and potency of healing, but if I'm choosing between the two stats for a mod on an item, which is more useful if I want a powerful heal? What amount of points in one is the equivalent in effect in the other (i.e. is +13 Power better or equal to the effect of +13 Willpower)?

[Phydra]

Willpower > Power > Critical > Surge

 

Now, you'll have folks who want to argue about the order of the last two depending on their spec, but pretty much anyone wanting to argue about the placement of the second or first for a Consular is off in the weeds; even BioWare tells you straight up on the load screen:

 

"Power increases the damage or healing done by all abilities." (See screenie)

 

http://www.4shared.com/photo/D8JJYRAS/Screenshot_2012-01-28_19_37_23.html

 

For the record, critical affects how often you might crit (% chance to crit) and magnitude of that crit when it happens (% of base damage - i.e., 100% of 100 base damage is 200 damage).

 

Surge affects the duration/tick of damage of heal, heal over time; how many "ticks" you'll get from them.

 

Generally speaking, you want your willpower as high as you can get it, then work on power to raise your base amount of damage or heal. Next, work on crit to get those nice spikes of damage happening more frequently (both for damage and heals) and finally, get surge up to see those regens or dots tick longer.

 

For me, as a level 50 seer, I was tempted to try putting crit before power, but crit doesn't matter if your baseheal is crap.... (What, I'm going to crit up to what I would have if I'd stack power correctly? Hmph!)

 

I'm sure opinions can/will vary. This one is mine. I hope it's helpful to you.

[MAgson]

For the record, critical affects how often you might crit (% chance to crit) and magnitude of that crit when it happens (% of base damage - i.e., 100% of 100 base damage is 200 damage).

 

Surge affects the duration/tick of damage of heal, heal over time; how many "ticks" you'll get from them.

 

Crit affects your critical chance ONLY. Surge increases the magnitude of the crit ONLY. What you describe surge as doing is completely false. Hover over your crit chance and crit multiplier stats on your character sheet. The tooltips tell you flat out what the stats do for you.

[Kitru]

which is more useful if I want a powerful heal?

 

In doing the calcs for Shadow Tank damage, I found that Willpower (or any primary stat) is worth roughly 1.1 (Willpower adds Bonus Damage at a 5:1 ratio whereas Power adds at a 4.3:1 ratio but it also adds Crit chance) of a given secondary stat (Power, Crit, Surge) for contribution equivalence before factoring in stat multiplication talents. Since you should be taking Will of the Jedi for 6% additional Willpower, this means that Willpower is worth even more (roughly 1.166 of a given secondary stat).

[zYNNN]

1. Willpower until 1600 (critical bonus decreases)

2. Accuracy until +10% in total

3. Surge around 230 rating (80%, at 250 rating the value of surge rapidly decreases)

4. Power

5. Crit

[Noxoz]

1. Willpower until 1600 (critical bonus decreases)

2. Accuracy until +10% in total

3. Surge around 230 rating (80%, at 250 rating the value of surge rapidly decreases)

4. Power

5. Crit

 

How did you get to these numbers?

[Onager]

Surge affects the duration/tick of damage of heal, heal over time; how many "ticks" you'll get from them.

 

You're mistaken about what Surge does. It's crit magnitude. Instead of reading load screen tips perhaps you should mouse over the stats on your character screen.

 

That said, it depends on the total difference. Once your crit percentage is decently high (as a healer I'm going to stay at around 35%) then the relative attractiveness of willpower vs power starts to balance out a little.

 

As I get more native willpower on my gear, I'll need less crit, and can swap that out for more power.

 

 

1. Willpower until 1600 (critical bonus decreases)

2. Accuracy until +10% in total

3. Surge around 230 rating (80%, at 250 rating the value of surge rapidly decreases)

4. Power

5. Crit

 

Healers don't need accuracy.

Edited January 29, 2012 by Onager

[LucentBeam]

Alright, so from the sound of it, I should be opting for gear with more Willpower rather than Power (like Resolve Mods rather than Rage ones).

[Phydra]

Force Power (on your focus) helps as well, but that and your weapon are the only ways I know to get it.

 

For the other folks who replied, thanks for taking a moment to offer advice... even if it took someone putting something wrong out there to get you to post.

 

(Oh gosh! I've been wrong on the internet.... my life is over!... um, not.)

 

[Onager]

Force Power (on your focus) helps as well, but that and your weapon are the only ways I know to get it.

 

For the other folks who replied, thanks for taking a moment to offer advice... even if it took someone putting something wrong out there to get you to post.

 

(Oh gosh! I've been wrong on the internet.... my life is over!... um, not.)

 

 

Classic backhanded defense. You offer unsolicited advice far too often on these boards for you to be so cavalier about any unintentionally false info you provide. You should take this more seriously instead of arrogantly dismissing it as being somehow unimportant.

 

To volunteer yourself for the position of 'MMO forum know-it-all' you need to have all your factual bases covered, and most of all you should have a much more humble approach to being disproven.

 

Nobody asked you in the first place. Nobody owes you anything.

[SpankyMcFlych]

You'd think phydra would be happy to have a misconception corrected. People are weird.

[Onager]

You'd think phydra would be happy to have a misconception corrected. People are weird.

 

It all boils down to why they do what they do. If they're into it for the accretion and dissemination of knowledge, they'd LOVE the idea of having their factual weaknesses shored.

 

If they do it for the sake of appearing to be a know-it-all, then that's when they'd act dismissive about it.

 

*shrug*

[Nerithiel]

i have 2 mods and im curious which to use

 

27endurance/45willpower/34power or 34/57/10

 

my stats currently with the 1st mod is

1595willpower

29,47% crit with 301crit rating

77,53% crit multiplier with 198 rating

280 alacrity rating

 

Columi set gives alot of alacrity it would be wise drop alacrity/power enchantments also for crit/surge 56lvl ones?

[Phydra]

Classic backhanded defense. You offer unsolicited advice far too often on these boards for you to be so cavalier about any unintentionally false info you provide. You should take this more seriously instead of arrogantly dismissing it as being somehow unimportant.

 

To volunteer yourself for the position of 'MMO forum know-it-all' you need to have all your factual bases covered, and most of all you should have a much more humble approach to being disproven.

 

Nobody asked you in the first place. Nobody owes you anything.

 

Nice projection. To give your phrase back to you, "Nobody owes you anything" - that happens to include living up to your expectations, thanks.

 

I have no issue with being wrong and lookie-there, I was wrong. If you're waiting around for me to have a melt down over it or "humble myself" to you... heh... all I have to say is, "Don't hold your breath, honey; you've got miles to go before you deserve humility and likely a few more beyond that before you figure out how to practice what you preach."

 

Anyway... a thank you to the folks who managed to get the right information into the thread without needing to over-inflate things... I like learning the same as everyone else.

[Onager]

Nice projection. *textual assault*

 

Exactly what I was expecting of you. Didn't read it, of course, but it was expected nonetheless.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Onager

[Phydra]

Of course you didn't.

 

Annnyway... here's a question for the thread: Has anyone figured out the formula for when the benefits of power level off? I note that increases from power didn't make THAT big a difference until after 40 and, frankly, I'm thinking about switching out for either critical or surge.

[Onager]

Of course you didn't.

 

Annnyway... here's a question for the thread: Has anyone figured out the formula for when the benefits of power level off? I note that increases from power didn't make THAT big a difference until after 40 and, frankly, I'm thinking about switching out for either critical or surge.

 

We're going to need a means of determining specific stat weights before we can do this, I think. Something like SimulationCraft or the like.

 

The means to properly parse DPS would be great too.

 

There's so little known mechanically about the game right now, and no way to test it ourselves beyond raw empiricism. It's a bad place to be in when it comes to theorycraft.

 

We're stuck with just the tooltips, and those are often just blatantly wrong. (Read: Psychic Suffusion)

[Phydra]

Ooh! Looks like Khadroth has done some homework; this read is interesting to me and I'm off to experiment to see how it plays:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=235219

 

Edit to quote relevant part for folks who dislike clicking through:

 

You'll see people (myself included) listing stat priorities for people on the forums who ask. Which truthfully, Willpower/Power > Surge > Crit > Alacrity is the base priority. That is, the priority for stats assuming you have zero ratings in them all at 50. Obviously this could only be true if you're naked, and thus isn't realistic. Another point is that diminishing returns only applies to RATINGS, not percentages gained from talents or abilities. Basically this means DR on your gear stats, but not anything else.

 

The key is that your needs vary based on your gear and spec. For example, Alacrity is quite subpar for a Hybrid DPS or Balance Sage who operate almost entirely on instant casts, but fairly good for a Seer or TK Sage who love to cast and channel. Similarly if you had 400 crit rating and 15 alacrity, Alacrity would be better for you. It can get confusing but the best advice to give you is to maintain a balanced character. Some specific tips would be:

 

• Power is not subject to diminishing returns. The better your gear and the further you advance your other ratings, the more power pulls ahead of other stats for usefulness.
   
  
• Surge is amazing early on. It has the lowest base amount required to gain another 1% of any stat subject to DR. It also has the highest cap threshold at 50% (gained through ratings remember). However it's still closely linked to crit, and thus volatile depending on your amount. Having horrible crit will make surge near useless, having moderate to high, will make it amazing.
   
  
• Alacrity can reduce the GCD on casts and channels which would complete faster than the 1.5 second normal GCD. It will not reduce the GCD on instant casts. It's also a wierd stat in that it doesn't diminish at the rate it should. This is due to the fact that despite needing more and more rating to get another 1% as you move along the curve, the more alacrity you have the more valuable additional alacrity becomes. That additional value will never outpace the diminishment curve, but it does make it less harsh.
   
  
• Crit is good, but it would be better for us if we didn't already have potency. It has a fairly high base amount to get another 1% bonus (22.5 to surge's 5 rating) and a moderate cap threshold (30%). However, it's opposite of alacrity in that Crit's diminishment curve is harsher than it should be. Despite needing more rating to get another 1% as you move along the curve, the more crit rating you have the less useful additional amounts are to you.
   
  
• Beyond about 400 rating in any stat you should REALLY pay attention to further gains in relation to other stats. Generally at this point you're starting to really begin to climb the curve for that particular stat and should evaluate it in relation to others.
   
  
• Beware of relics/adrenals as they can come close to capping you out and be less useful than they appear at higher gear levels. This is why you'll see a lot of people suggest using power triggers, as they're not subject to DR.
  

Edited January 30, 2012 by Phydra

[Dominoris]

2. Accuracy until +10% in total

Accuracy is never a factor for any healer.

[Cragen]

Accuracy is never a factor for any healer.

 

Or a sage at all. It might have been supposed to be relevant at some point since there is still a healing talent that gives 3% accuracy, but as it stands right now ingame. Accuracy has zero effect for a dps or healing sage.

 

The light armor with accuracy is meant for shadows, not sages.

[DvP_]

Or a sage at all. It might have been supposed to be relevant at some point since there is still a healing talent that gives 3% accuracy, but as it stands right now ingame. Accuracy has zero effect for a dps or healing sage.

 

The light armor with accuracy is meant for shadows, not sages.

 

Accuracy still factors into PvP, where players can resist spells.

[Khadroth]

Accuracy still factors into PvP, where players can resist spells.

 

Not really. Shadows/Assassins can get 3% internal resistance from their first tier tanking talent (they have to be in their tank form though). That right there is 1 out of 8 AC's (and you still have to be the proper spec and in the proper form, so even less likely). It's not worth wasting the itemization on just to counteract the quite rare situation in which you would encounter someone who reduced your chance to hit to 97%, which again isn't likely to every make you miss.

 

The only other situation is again Shadows/Assassins who can pop their 100% tech/force resistance for 3 seconds. 100% is 100%, no amount of accuracy you could possibly slot would be able to significantly counteract this ability, and trying to do so would cripple your other stats. Combined with the fact that you can just wait it out in most situations or *puts in earplugs to mute the saberist squee* use your saber attacks to continue dealing dmg, and it's just not smart try and itemize around.

 

In summary: Two situations it could come into play. 1.) Too miniscule to matter. 2.) Too crippling to bother, in the face of other acceptible alternatives.

 

So basically. Nope, it's still useless. Save yourself the trouble and slot more power/surge/crit/alacrity, and you'll be glad you did.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Khadroth

[Onager]

So as a DPS sage, if you get a drop from a hard mode with an accuracy enhancement, just bump that out to give to one of your dps pets and slap some more power/crit/surge in that badboy? Good to know.

[Khadroth]

So as a DPS sage, if you get a drop from a hard mode with an accuracy enhancement, just bump that out to give to one of your dps pets and slap some more power/crit/surge in that badboy? Good to know.

 

Provided there was no Shadow present. Otherwise you probably shouldn't have gotten the piece.

[Caltiom]

We're going to need a means of determining specific stat weights before we can do this, I think. Something like SimulationCraft or the like.

 

Have a look at http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft-swtor/