Alacrity is appallingly useless for healers.

[eeSanG]

1) You WILL get interrupted in PvP. No amount of Alacrity will save you from all interrupts. Nor will you always be fast enough to save a dying teammate. Once someone sees you, interrupting you will become a top priority for them. So saying "Alacrity will help you avoid interrupts" is hocum. I may force a couple extra burned interrupts on completed spells, sure but mostly the result is they interrupt my second spell instead of my first one. I'm spellspamming after all. This is PvP.

 

2) Accepting that interrupts will happen, you are now responsible for making the heals you do get off as effective as possible. For that, mathematics IS effective. You CAN measure how one point of a stat affects the heal that got into the field and Alacrity in this regard is laughably inferior to Crit/Surge/Power.

 

Do you... not juke interrupts? Right now PvP feels like Wotlk PvP, where if your heal was ever kicked you died.

 

Right now, if my non-cooldown heal gets kicked, I may not immediately die but I fall really far behind in terms of keeping someone up. A second kick is pretty much death.

 

3v2 situations where 3 DPS are on me while I'm Guarded and being Taunted for, I will not die unless I am kicked. If I get kicked, I die. Alacrity helps a lot.

[vrok-]

So over the casting window, the same Probe now costs 16% more to cast.

Math is useless without logic and that's where you're failing. The probe costs the exact same amount of ammo. Alacrity simply shortens the interrupt window and gives you an extra .3 seconds to do something else. The only thing alacrity ever costs you is the stats you would replace it with.

 

THIS

IS

PVP

Edited February 3, 2012 by vrok-

[ErrantMercenary]

This whole discussion is about PvP healing so I could frankly care less what you preferred on your PvE shaman and why that somehow made you want the same stat for PvP here.

 

I wanted it for healing in general because I'd had good results before, so it was a jumping off point. I was only illustrating that I wanted it to be good here too because of past experience, that's all.

 

 

 

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Just because I prayed yesterday then won the lottery it doesn't mean praying won me the lottery.

 

Which makes your "evidence" just as anecdotal. At least some portion of what I do is reinforced by reproducible testing.

 

 

I'm not disputing the value of the stats in a vacuum. But PvP isn't a vacuum.

 

Nor is it Calvinball or Whose Line Is It Anyway where everything is made up and the points dont matter. Stats have predictable reliable expected outcomes on the value of your heals and currently Alacrity has such a damaging effect on your healing throughput, which offsets some of it's otherwise valuable PvP application.

 

How did you get from someone knowing you're a healer makes alacrity "hocum?" I just don't see the logic from point A to point B.

 

Because you WILL get interrupted. It's unavoidable even if you're at the Alacrity cap. It's the nature of PvP. When people see healers standing unharassed, a lot of interrupts knockbacks and damage tend to come your way. Assuming Alacrity saves you from interrupts isn't necessarily good thinking. If you're chain-casting, the interrupt will still interrupt something, it will just be the next heal. If you're not chain casting, you have to hope that your opponent is furiously mashing his interrupt key towards the back end of your cast and wastes it while you do nothing. Otherwise, his interrupt is still available, and will simply be applied to your next spell.

 

Let me give you a scenario.

 

Scenario A - Your heal takes 5 seconds but heals 15k.

Scenario B - Your heal takes 1 second but heals for 2k.

 

Mathematically Scenario A wins every time if you're left alone. But what if you're being interrupted, knocked back, stunned, etc? Then Scenario B wins because you have a much better chance of getting off the fast, small heal than the slow, big heal.

 

First of all, delicious, you just acknowledged that we get knocked around like cushions, validating my point RE: Alacrity and Interrupts. Second of all those unrealstic scenarios don't do any good here because they aren't something a real PvPer will ever have to choose between. My big heal checks in at 1.78 seconds and my little heal checks in at 1.34 seconds. The values I need to compare then are how much healing throughput do I sacrifice to bump it to let's say, 1.5 seconds and 1.15 seconds (25% alacrity, as opposed to the 11% I run currently)

 

Since you're curious, let's take a look:

 

Assuming NO diminishing returns (which is untrue, but to demonstrate the skew, I will give you the benefit of the doubt), moving from 11% Alacrity to 25% Alacrity would take an additional ~391 points of Alacrity.

 

That same 391 points (assuming Alacrity has the same item budget as other like stats) put into Power (since Power doesn't have diminishing returns for real, we'll use it as the example) would make my heals go off for ~166% (I run about +650 Power currently) of their current value, and all I have to trade for that MASSIVE buff in output is to learn to play smart enough to find two to three tenths of a second. For the curious, two tenths of a second is faster than the average human reaction time. I know sometimes those two tenths of a second are big, but the disparity in value is even more enormous. I save more lives suddenly healing like I'm one and a half people than I do healing like one particularly fast one.

 

 

If the gap were smaller, I'd advocate more alacrity, but it's so comically large, such that even though I can't optimize a 1:1 trade on stats, even with some loss involved I still come out ahead!

[ErrantMercenary]

Math is useless without logic and that's where you're failing. The probe costs the exact same amount of ammo. Alacrity simply shortens the interrupt window and gives you an extra .3 seconds to do whatever else you want to do. The only thing alacrity ever costs you is the stats you would replace it with.

 

THIS

IS

PVP

 

Yes, it's true, the window is shorter and you're now free to do whatever, but your Ammo pool is still the same size. If you rush more med probes you end up bankrupted (the only other skill Alacrity has any effect on), and your only other realistic option is Hammer Shot, which will have a negative impact on your overall throughput.

 

 

It being PvP doesn't change the underlying mechanics by which spells are cast.

[ErrantMercenary]

Do you... not juke interrupts? Right now PvP feels like Wotlk PvP, where if your heal was ever kicked you died.

 

Right now, if my non-cooldown heal gets kicked, I may not immediately die but I fall really far behind in terms of keeping someone up. A second kick is pretty much death.

 

3v2 situations where 3 DPS are on me while I'm Guarded and being Taunted for, I will not die unless I am kicked. If I get kicked, I die. Alacrity helps a lot.

 

If you're chaincasting to keep up (which you likely will be in the event 3 people want your bones), all Alacrity has done is timeshift the interrupt to your next spell. Juking interrupts is only possible for so long. As a healer you WILL get interrupted, stunned, knocked back and otherwise interfered with in PvP. Alacrity will help you beat certain interrupts to the finish line, but it will not magically rescue you from being interrupted. Your best case scenario is in a splitsecond race you get the cast off, STOP casting, eat the interrupt because they overcommit to it, and resume casting.

[vrok-]

Yes, it's true, the window is shorter and you're now free to do whatever, but your Ammo pool is still the same size. If you rush more med probes you end up bankrupted (the only other skill Alacrity has any effect on), and your only other realistic option is Hammer Shot, which will have a negative impact on your overall throughput.

 

 

It being PvP doesn't change the underlying mechanics by which spells are cast.

Rolling a commando instead of a sage that spams AoE heals has a negative impact on your overall throughput. Healing people other than yourself as a commando has a negative impact on your overall throughput. Interrupting cappers has a negative impact on your overall throughput. I could continue but I'm sure you get the message...

 

It's the ability to save lives and complete objectives that count and that is something you simply cannot quantify.

 

Either way, in no shape or form does alacrity make any ability cost more ammo. Ever. Period.

Edited February 3, 2012 by vrok-

[ErrantMercenary]

Rolling a commando instead of a sage that spams AoE heals has a negative impact on your overall throughput. Healing people other than yourself as a commando has a negative impact on your overall throughput. Interrupting cappers has a negative impact on your overall throughput. I could continue but I'm sure you get the message...

 

That you like non-sequiters? Not that any of this is relevant or deserves a response but I chose Commando before anyone had a firm grasp on who was ahead of who in the Class Balance race. I'm glad you see my inability to see into the future as a shortcoming.

 

It's the ability to save lives and complete objectives that count and that is something you simply cannot quantify.

 

Either way, in no shape or form does alacrity make any heal cost more ammo. Ever. Period.

 

As to the former, yes, yes you can. Saying my ability to save lives is not in any way dictated by my stat choice and maximizing the benefit I earn from those stats would imply that I could just as easily run with Cunning instead of Aim and I would somehow be as good.

 

As to the latter: Completing objectives routinely depends on my ability to perform the former so that my opponents and not my teammates, end up dead.

 

 

Effective Cost of ammo matters because with sufficiently high Effective Cost, I have shortened the window in which I am an effective healer, because either I

 

A) Spammed to empty.

 

or

 

B) Stopped casting during the precious seconds Alacrity supposedly bought me, meaning my heals were hitting for less the entire time than if I had just used some other stat.

[eeSanG]

Alacrity also buys you fractions of a second in reacting to teammates getting bursted. When the average human reaction time is 0.2 seconds, Alacrity removes it.

 

Tell me that isn't significant.

Edited February 3, 2012 by eeSanG

[ErrantMercenary]

Alacrity also buys you fractions of a second in reacting to teammates getting bursted. When the average human reaction time is 0.2 seconds, Alacrity removes it.

 

Tell me that isn't significant.

 

It is! I'm not debating that, I just want you to consider the opportunity cost of buying that .2 seconds. I did some math a couple posts up that indicated that the same .2 seconds I bought with Alacrity could result in a 66% increase in the amount the heal goes off for.

 

Imagine it like this:

 

If you had a switch that let you choose between that .2 seconds and that 66% increase in healing at will, there are certainly situations where you'd choose the speed, but I've found it more often beneficial to take the more powerful healing. Since reality dictates that you may only choose one, it makes sense to choose the option that will benefit you the most often.

 

Sometimes (and the state of PvP currently should readily demonstrate this to anyone) all that matters is bringing the biggest stick to the fight and putting up the largest, gaudiest numbers you can. Alacrity cannot help you do that effectively on any scale that compares to what the other healing stats will bring to the table.

Edited February 3, 2012 by ErrantMercenary

[vrok-]

That you like non-sequiters? Not that any of this is relevant or deserves a response but I chose Commando before anyone had a firm grasp on who was ahead of who in the Class Balance race. I'm glad you see my inability to see into the future as a shortcoming.

 

 

 

As to the former, yes, yes you can. Saying my ability to save lives is not in any way dictated by my stat choice and maximizing the benefit I earn from those stats would imply that I could just as easily run with Cunning instead of Aim and I would somehow be as good.

 

As to the latter: Completing objectives routinely depends on my ability to perform the former so that my opponents and not my teammates, end up dead.

 

 

Effective Cost of ammo matters because with sufficiently high Effective Cost, I have shortened the window in which I am an effective healer, because either I

 

A) Spammed to empty.

 

or

 

B) Stopped casting during the precious seconds Alacrity supposedly bought me, meaning my heals were hitting for less the entire time than if I had just used some other stat.

It's not irrelevant because the point is that overall throughput and effective ammo cost has little to do with the ability to save lives, being effective or winning at all in PvP. Just like overall damage done has little to do with the effectiveness of ending lives.

 

And no, you cannot quantify the effect alacrity has on saving lives in PvP. At all. Because it's not a static environment.

 

The rest of your post I already addressed when I wrote that the only cost of alacrity is the stats you would replace it with. Whether alacrity is worth it or not at all isn't even the point. The point is that the logic used when evaluating it is flawed when it comes to PvP, because thinking you can quantify something that is inherently unquantifiable is silly.

Edited February 3, 2012 by vrok-

[Daex]

Alacrity for Sawbones is pointless, IMO.

 

It benefits ONE special. Reducing it by maybe .2-.3 seconds.

 

In order to Benefit ONE special, you are having to have Crit and/or Surge reduced. Therefore, all the rest of your heals that are NOT even in the slightest benefited by Alacrity are doing less healing.

 

:\

 

Pointless, yes it is ALL OVER end-game and Artifact grade Smuggler wear >_<

 

Alacrity needs to do more, or be removed from Scoundrel clothing. Period.

 

They could make HoT ticks tick faster with alacrity or something.

[ErrantMercenary]

Thinking you can quantify something that is inherently unquantifiable is silly.

 

I cant seem to unglue you from this ridiculously backwards notion. If the numbers that drove the game engine didn't matter, I would be equally effective naked as I am with gear. Obviously this is not the case. PvP is not necessarily quantifiable, but a great deal of what happens in PvP boils down to predictable, measurable numbers. You press a button and you do X damage/healing. Certainly the circumstances surrounding what led you to press that button are nebulous, but the impact your stats have on X aren't. Optimizing your stats matters no matter what segment of the game you play, and if you would like to pretend otherwise, boy howdy do I have some property down by the river for you.

[vrok-]

Now you're not even reading and just selectively quoting. I can do that too.

 

PvP is not necessarily quantifiable

 

Finally you realize this. PvP, and hence the benefits of alacrity, because of the unmeasurable benefits of the time gained because of it, is unquantifiable. The rest is just nonsense no one was arguing in the first place.

Edited February 3, 2012 by vrok-

[Blasphemerr]

Why in the world....do I want to be able to cast my heals more quickly.....yet also run out of my resources THAT much faster? Healing spells, to my experience, cast quickly enough as a commando healer (without taking the alacrity skills) to where I just want to stack power, crit, and surge.

 

I cringe when I see alacrity on my gear. I don't want it. Stop giving it to me.

 

"Casting faster is bad cuz uh you go out of resources faster"

 

Clearly, we need to add Apathy as a stat. The apathy stat makes you cast slower, giving you much more resources.

 

Genius.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Blasphemerr

[Astarica]

"Casting faster is bad cuz uh you go out of resources faster"

 

Clearly, we need to add Apathy as a stat. The apathy stat makes you cast slower, giving you much more resources.

 

Genius.

 

What about a chance for the heal to have no effect and consume no resources? That way you've a chance to gain resources while casting a heal.

[ErrantMercenary]

Finally you realize this. The rest is just nonsense no one was arguing in the first place.

 

 

I never once said "All of PvP is measured by numbers". I'm not that delusional. There are however, two different parts to PvP. There's intuitive advantage, where being smarter, having better battlefield awareness and a firmer command of class mechanics will give you the edge because you make better, more informed decisions more often. Alacrity DOES offer you some intuitive advantage because it naturally feeds into your response and reaction times.

 

 

The issue I've been raising over, and over and over and over and over is in regards to the other side of the coin: Mechanical advantage. This is the advantage offered by playing within the rules of the game system. You can be leagues smarter than your opponent, but sometimes they will just outright hit you with numbers that are too big and you will die. It cannot be avoided. In short, while it is theoretically possible for an undergeared level 49 whatever to beat a level 50 Battlemaster using intuitive advantage, mostly, that level 50 just has to faceroll some buttons and his opponent is going to lose because of the confines of the game system. His numbers are bigger, plain and simple.

 

My problem is that in the present model Alacrity works against you in the field of mechanical advantage, and even if you DO benefit, it's mechanical benefits are laughable when compared against literally every other healing stat. The gulf is so wide mechanically that I'm willing to sacrifice intuitive advantage because the result is a mechanical advantage so large as to be unfair.

 

The worst part of all this? Everyone wants so desperately to be right on the internet and silence me that they don't even understand my aim in all this: I want BioWare to MAKE ALACRITY BETTER. It is not well designed or thought out, and to rub salt in the wound BioWare crams it down your throat even if it offers literally no benefit to your class. It makes optimizing mechanical advantage very very boring and stupid.

 

Keep that in mind: The thing I'm arguing for is to take the stat you have more of than me, and make it even better. Someone's trying to put you ahead in the footrace! Better sock that guy in the mouth!

[vrok-]

I never once said "All of PvP is measured by numbers". I'm not that delusional. There are however, two different parts to PvP. There's intuitive advantage, where being smarter, having better battlefield awareness and a firmer command of class mechanics will give you the edge because you make better, more informed decisions more often. Alacrity DOES offer you some intuitive advantage because it naturally feeds into your response and reaction times.

 

 

The issue I've been raising over, and over and over and over and over is in regards to the other side of the coin: Mechanical advantage. This is the advantage offered by playing within the rules of the game system. You can be leagues smarter than your opponent, but sometimes they will just outright hit you with numbers that are too big and you will die. It cannot be avoided. In short, while it is theoretically possible for an undergeared level 49 whatever to beat a level 50 Battlemaster using intuitive advantage, mostly, that level 50 just has to faceroll some buttons and his opponent is going to lose because of the confines of the game system. His numbers are bigger, plain and simple.

 

My problem is that in the present model Alacrity works against you in the field of mechanical advantage, and even if you DO benefit, it's mechanical benefits are laughable when compared against literally every other healing stat. The gulf is so wide mechanically that I'm willing to sacrifice intuitive advantage because the result is a mechanical advantage so large as to be unfair.

 

The worst part of all this? Everyone wants so desperately to be right on the internet and silence me that they don't even understand my aim in all this: I want BioWare to MAKE ALACRITY BETTER. It is not well designed or thought out, and to rub salt in the wound BioWare crams it down your throat even if it offers literally no benefit to your class. It makes optimizing mechanical advantage very very boring and stupid.

 

Keep that in mind: The thing I'm arguing for is to take the stat you have more of than me, and make it even better. Someone's trying to put you ahead in the footrace! Better sock that guy in the mouth!

Well that's all fine and somewhat subjective. I can pretty much agree with most of this but no one is saying to only stack alacrity just like no one is saying to only stack surge or crit or power. Flawed logic doesn't prove any points though and that's what I took issue with.

Edited February 4, 2012 by vrok-

[sfryman]

There's a lot of blah blah blah in this thread over trivial points.

 

Bottom line, alacrity is an inferior stat especially for non-sorc and this deserves to be looked at by BW.

[zeroburrito]

my 2 second heal goes off in 1.6 seconds. not useless for pvp.

[Delkerramak]

Why are you trying to heal (or for that part PVP) if you are not a sorc?

 

No mana management issues at all and they heal better then you.

 

It's not BIOWARE'S fault you didn't pick the only class they feel we should be playing.

 

Interrupt the first tick of Innervate and you will run the sorc into the ground very quickly. If you are with a friend ... have one of you with the longer cd interrupt do innervate and the other one do dark infusion... dead sorc.

 

For those of you that dont know ... the ability of a sorc to not worry about resources hinges on getting a crit tick off the Innervate channel ... if you interrupt it ... you will oom the sorc fast.

============================================

On the subject of alacrity ... its worth about a fourth of what crit surge power is worth for my dps tree and the god forsaken stat is on everything.

 

As for its value to sorc healers... its valuable but at the same time I feel like if opportunity presents you should go power surge over alacrity power... having healed for a while as sorcerer it just feels like you are healing people so much easier with the extra crit surge power over alacrity.

[DeathPriest]

Iam a battle master healing commando that has healed through level 1 to where I am. From my PERSONAL experience note PERSONAL replacing alacrity mods on your gear with crit surge is better in pvp as most of the time your healing a target that if your heal doesnt crit you will not be able to heal him a second time as he will be dead. Sure it helps in fights where theres alot of aoe and no focus fire to heal different targets faster for smaller amounts but overall I find that in pvp the person your healing getting focus fired is alot more likely to happen than everyonet aking a aoe tic.

 

My 2cent remember this is my OPININION

 

 

Edit : I also have realised that my crit surge enhancement give more endurance than the alacrity ones. Even my battle master chest has 56 enhancement with crit surge that give more endurance than the 58 one I had in before

Edited February 4, 2012 by DeathPriest

[Treplos]

Did anyone test if Alacrity works as described in the tooltip?

 

Get your stop watches, get down to 1.7s cast time and tell me how fast your cast actually takes.

 

Do lots of tries to take an average ofc.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Treplos

[mistrfantasy]

Why in the world....do I want to be able to cast my heals more quickly.....yet also run out of my resources THAT much faster? Healing spells, to my experience, cast quickly enough as a commando healer (without taking the alacrity skills) to where I just want to stack power, crit, and surge.

 

I cringe when I see alacrity on my gear. I don't want it. Stop giving it to me.

 

Alacrity(haste) was/is one of the most important stats in PVP in SWTOR/WOW. The thing about crit/surge/power is that they are only effective IF YOU GET THE HEAL OFF. Alacrity/haste is what helps you get that extra heal off, and is what seperates the "geared" healers from the bad ones. That said, if you hate it so much, just remod it. The marauder PVP set has a crap ton of accuracy which is unneeded. Which is why I replaced all of the accuracy mods/enhancements with surge ones.

[Aidank]

Alacrity(haste) was/is one of the most important stats in PVP in SWTOR/WOW. The thing about crit/surge/power is that they are only effective IF YOU GET THE HEAL OFF. Alacrity/haste is what helps you get that extra heal off, and is what seperates the "geared" healers from the bad ones. That said, if you hate it so much, just remod it. The marauder PVP set has a crap ton of accuracy which is unneeded. Which is why I replaced all of the accuracy mods/enhancements with surge ones.

 

The thing is with the way lockouts work, if one spell of yours is interrupted you can simply use the other. most healers have at least 2 casted heals.

[xNonphixionx]

As far as I'm concerned every millisecond counts when it comes to healing inductions. As a Bounty Hunter healer I have zero issues with heat as a result of having -20% casting times. Sure you sacrifice some other stats but it's really nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

 

Sorry but a crit heal for 6k hp is completely useless if the target dies while you're casting it.

 

Honestly this is the first time I've ever heard of healers not wanting cast speed reductions lol...It just doesnt make sense to me.