Why is there so much alacrity on our healing gear?

[Oubliettes]

The Rakata set, for example, has 255 on it. It's on every piece. Now this is just speculation, I don't have any math to support this, but I'd wager it's our least beneficial stat (between power, crit, and surge[maybe not surge after the nerf]).

 

Haste's purpose in the long run is to pump out more heals over shorter intervals. It's exceptional, and without a doubt the best stat for a healer, when resource management is easy or a non-issue. But as an operative, with energy as our resource and the way it regens, spam casts are certainly not a viable option. Baseline, Kolto Injection takes a quarter of our energy, and talented it's already a fairly short cast. So not only is spamming out of the question, it doesn't receive a great deal of benefit to begin with.

 

The only ability that alacrity really shines for is Diagnostic Scan. Mine is down to about a 2.5 sec channel, which is honestly quite nice in an energy intensive situation. But it's nothing worth stacking alacrity over.

 

The way I see it is this:

 

We've got 6 healing abilities (7 if you count a talented toxin scan), 3 of which are casts. 2 of said casts we use often (K. Injection, D. Scan), one rarely if at all (K. Infusion). The rest are HoTs and an instant. As said before, D. Scan is the only one of 6/7 abilities that receives a true benefit. Hasted K. Injection's only benefit is for a clutch heal after a spike, and even then a power boosted, or crit heal would be more useful.

 

So if only one of our abilities, arguably our weakest heal at that, is receiving real benefit from it, why is there so much on our gear? Honestly, if you want to make Alacrity useful for Operatives, tweak it so that it also increases the rate at which our HoTs tick.

[Selais]

Another Alacrity post...?

 

How hard is it to look back a couple of pages at the previous dozen posts about the exact same thing?

[Xenthum]

Another Alacrity post...?

 

How hard is it to look back a couple of pages at the previous dozen posts about the exact same thing?

 

I don't know, Bioware doesn't seem to have noticed yet so that should say something.

[Oghier]

Alacrity encourages us to hurry up and reroll sorc

[KeltikTwo]

Alacrity encourages us to hurry up and reroll sorc

 

 

OooOOooo ! Topical.

[Sookster]

Maybe devs think we're that dumb to buy into a useless mod, you could still buy the armor for the 2/4 set healer bonuses, do Belsavis dailies for mods and replace them.

[Shroudveil]

i tried running with crit/alacrity for some time to see how it goes.

 

for sure, with said gear and the 4piece pve set i can burst heal with ease... and then be ooe in 5casts :/

 

if they ever fix DS to be moderatly useful, crit/alacrity wont be that bad, but in order for this to happen, they need to balance DS in such a way that a ki->infusion->ds circle will have both sustainability AND equal hps to simple ki->sp spam.

 

infusion for me, hits for like 2.5k and crits for 5k with said gear and it has a 55%to crit, its superior to sp which hits for ~1600 and crits for less than 3k, it also has ~1.25cast time instead of 1.5 which is also really nice for burst healing. ki is the same i guess, BUT DS hitting for ~200 and critting for something like 380 and requiring close to 2.5secs nerfs the whole rotation to the ground (also it only gives on average 4energy in those 2.5secs)

 

so as far as energy consumption goes, you spent 45energy in a 5.5sec cycle, and regenerate ~ 37energy. that is a -8energy/5.5secs so ~ -1.5energy/sec

 

ki->sp spam costs only 25energy in a 3.2sec window in which you regenerate ~19energy.

 

so, energy wise they are about the same. BUT ki->sp does ~ 1890hps and ki->infusion->ds closer to 1550 hps... which is like 20% less healing for the same amount of energy...

Edited February 16, 2012 by Shroudveil

[astrolite]

Do you really want to know why?

 

The reason is because the stat was NOT made for Operative healers. Medic ops came late to the game. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from there.

[HeavenlyBluE]

Because it's your 2nd best stat after power. L2P.

 

And if for some reason you're bad and don't like it. The game gives you the beautiful option to replace all the enhancements.

Edited February 19, 2012 by HeavenlyBluE

[AtomicSquid]

Because it's your 2nd best stat after power. L2P.

 

And if for some reason you're bad and don't like it. The game gives you the beautiful option to replace all the enhancements.

 

Can't tell if trolling or just stupid...

[Oghier]

Because it's your 2nd best stat after power. L2P.

 

This is true for sorc healers, for whom the gear is designed. Operatives have a very different set of spells and mechanics. Plenty of analysis has been done on this, and there is no reasonable conclusion that places alacrity anywhere but a distant last, when it comes to our stats. It's not useless. But power, crit and surge are all far better, even if past the softcaps of the latter two.

 

It's just another example of sorcs being the baseline class, with operative healers cobbled together and tossed in late in the development cycle.

[Sun-Runner]

Because it's your 2nd best stat after power. L2P.

You're adorable! ... and really, really, bad at math.

[AHouston]

I'll admit to being bad at math. Could someone please explain. No insults are needed.

[Sun-Runner]

I'll admit to being bad at math. Could someone please explain. No insults are needed.

I would suggest starting here -- http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Scoundrel-Operative-Healing-Compendium -- and then ask questions about the parts that confuse you.

[Drukoziz]

Need more alacrity to Diagnostic Scan harder!

[Vakyoom]

Because it's your 2nd best stat after power. L2P.

 

And if for some reason you're bad and don't like it. The game gives you the beautiful option to replace all the enhancements.

 

 

this is two different posts where you claim to know anything about the game.

 

I hope you love using diagnostic scan all the time at a 2.7 sec channel instead of a 3 sec one. All that alacrity is just helping you waste your energy faster, its not helping you heal for more.

 

If alacrity were to lower the GCD or if ops had a talent where alacrity increased their energy regen by a bit, then it would be worth having on gear. Guess bioware took a day off when it was time to implement the worst haste-wannabe stat ever created.

 

 

edit --- LOL you said power was the best stat for a healer? you saw the power ratios right??

 

healers get .14 actual healing power for each single point of power. So ~7.5 power = 1 actual healing done.

 

Damage dealers get .21 actual power for each single point of power. So 5 power = 1 actual damage done.

 

more math 4 u

Edited February 19, 2012 by Vakyoom

[mitigated]

the only way i would ever look at alacrity is if it made our STUPIDLY slow ticking HoT's tick faster, but since it doesn't it has been modded out of all my gear in favor of crit>power>surge Edited February 19, 2012 by mitigated

[HeavenlyBluE]

I hope you love using diagnostic scan all the time at a 2.7 sec channel instead of a 3 sec one. All that alacrity is just helping you waste your energy faster, its not helping you heal for more.

Actually my diagnostic scan is at 2.5s flat. And it's helping me complete unyielding in under an hour, so I'm guessing it works just fine.

 

I have made many many posts on alacrity, but I guess I have to make another. Real-world healing has absolutely nothing to do with on paper maximum throughput. You aren't a dps where all you have to do is figure out what stats yield the biggest numbers and then stack them.

 

The difficulty of healing is in keeping "that guy" who just made a mistake alive. The best tool for that is a sorc putting a shield on him and your heal landing as fast as possible.

 

Now if there were enhancements that were power/crit, I would probably feel differently just because the sheer throughput difference would be so dramatic and benefit our hots, but there aren't. The choice is between power/surge, crit/surge, and power/alacrity. Surge primarily benefits your overheal which is why I find it to be the least important stat - even moreso after it got severely nerfed. That said, I use the crit/surge relic when a pull goes horribly wrong and several people are low, the crit/surge on use gives us the highest throughput boost when it will all be useful.

 

edit --- LOL you said power was the best stat for a healer? you saw the power ratios right??

 

healers get .14 actual healing power for each single point of power. So ~7.5 power = 1 actual healing done.

 

Damage dealers get .21 actual power for each single point of power. So 5 power = 1 actual damage done.

What does how much benefit someone playing a different role gets from a stat have to do with how good it is for us? Power is our best stat because it's the only stat that consistently increases throughput on every heal.

[Vaipyr]

Can't tell if trolling or just stupid...

 

Me neither. Though I'm leaning towards the former tbh.

[MisterHardy]

all the people doing theorycraft and stating alacrity causes us to use more energy make me mindboggle.

if you have to cast a heal, casting it quicker is actually optimal in both pve and pvp. if you are in a vacuum standing in one spot chain casting, ok your point has merit. if you are in an actual boss fight and oh **** had to move and now cast a heal on that guy who is almost dead, the quicker cast could make or break the situation.

not to mention quick casts can free up seconds to toss a dart or grenade or autoshot (w/e it's called) on said boss.

don't get me wrong, i ripped all the alacrity enhancements out of my gear and replaced them with power/surge but still don't dismiss it as a moderately useful stat.

[Shroudveil]

Actually my diagnostic scan is at 2.5s flat. And it's helping me complete unyielding in under an hour, so I'm guessing it works just fine.

 

I have made many many posts on alacrity, but I guess I have to make another. Real-world healing has absolutely nothing to do with on paper maximum throughput. You aren't a dps where all you have to do is figure out what stats yield the biggest numbers and then stack them.

 

The difficulty of healing is in keeping "that guy" who just made a mistake alive. The best tool for that is a sorc putting a shield on him and your heal landing as fast as possible.

 

Now if there were enhancements that were power/crit, I would probably feel differently just because the sheer throughput difference would be so dramatic and benefit our hots, but there aren't. The choice is between power/surge, crit/surge, and power/alacrity. Surge primarily benefits your overheal which is why I find it to be the least important stat - even moreso after it got severely nerfed. That said, I use the crit/surge relic when a pull goes horribly wrong and several people are low, the crit/surge on use gives us the highest throughput boost when it will all be useful.

 

 

What does how much benefit someone playing a different role gets from a stat have to do with how good it is for us? Power is our best stat because it's the only stat that consistently increases throughput on every heal.

 

i disagree.

 

first of all your faster landing heal is, was, and will be sp which is not affected by alacrity. so your best bet to save someone is using that spare TA which you keep for the 6%more healing to gain that 1.8sec to cast your ki followed by a second sp.

 

secondly, alacrity has HORRIBLE scaling. i understand that if it scaled correctly it might be worth it, but atm raising alacrity from 150-200 to 450-500 offers about 3%more casting speed.

 

that means lowering your cast time of ki from 1.85 to ~ 1.7 tops. which is arguably worthless.

 

the MAIN problem with alacrity though is infusion and DS:

 

normally you heal with ki+sp spam because it offers the best hps/energy atm, it is good and stable and doesn't hurt your energy pool too much.

this "rotation" consist of renewing your hot (unaffected by alacrity), casting ki (you win ~0,15sec here) and casting sp (you win nothing here too).

 

the "secondary" healing mode for me at last is the burst healing mode which is ki->infusion->DS. Infusion has the added bonus that if you lower the cast time lower than 1.5sec it doesn't trigger GCD.

 

with 480alacrity tested (the highest i bothered testing) ki+infusion is slightly under 3secs (about 2.97 if i remember correctly, lets say 3 for ease). and DS is ~2.5secs.

 

in 5.5sec you have spent 45 energy and regained ~ 37energy which energy wise isn't bad. The real problem is healing though.

 

your main healing comes from ki+infusion, followed by 2.5secs of doing 250hps which is worthless at least. non-crit infusion hits for ~800hp harder than a non-crit sp and this is bad cause it means you just wasted energy for nothing serious but its main asset its its crit which hits for nearly 1.8k harder (and if you have pve armor it is semi-consistant) which is basically a second sp and does taht in less overall time (1.3sec vs 1.5gcd for sp)

 

all this would have been real great... IF there wasn't that stupid DS that in actual content translates to 2.5secs of not healing. in those 2.5secs, the normal rotation (ki->sp) would have already landed a second KI AND a second SP and would wait for the gcd to continue... offering in hindsight more "sustained" burst cause frankly when you need to burst heal, 1 heal is not enough, it usually means that you need to sustain this for a few seconds.

[ironix]

all the people doing theorycraft and stating alacrity causes us to use more energy make me mindboggle.

if you have to cast a heal, casting it quicker is actually optimal in both pve and pvp. if you are in a vacuum standing in one spot chain casting, ok your point has merit. if you are in an actual boss fight and oh **** had to move and now cast a heal on that guy who is almost dead, the quicker cast could make or break the situation.

not to mention quick casts can free up seconds to toss a dart or grenade or autoshot (w/e it's called) on said boss.

don't get me wrong, i ripped all the alacrity enhancements out of my gear and replaced them with power/surge but still don't dismiss it as a moderately useful stat.

 

... Alacrity is only remotely useful in that you can get power/alacrity mods once you've capped out on crit/surge.

[Xaearth]

The difficulty of healing is in keeping "that guy" who just made a mistake alive. The best tool for that is a sorc putting a shield on him and your sorc/merc heal landing as fast as possible.

 

Fixed.

Mercs have the better burst. Sorcs have the ability to burst without a strict management of resources.

 

Operatives have... ?

 

If you want the option of bigger burst healing, sure alacrity is nice, assuming you have someone to pick up the slack while you sit waiting for your energy to regen. But then you have to ask yourself why you bothered rolling an operative in the first place.

 

Granted, the rest of us have to ask ourselves the same question, but at least we can make use of lol-HoTs.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Xaearth

[Oghier]

'Burst' over how long?

 

If you restrict it to a 5 or 7 second window, Ops may well win. With probes rolling, KInj/SP spam or even KInj/Kinf spam is a pretty big pile of healing, and I would suspect that we can at the very least keep up with sorcs/ mercs. If you pile up alacrity, and narrow the time of the window (who can heal the most in 1.8 seconds..), you can probably 'win' this contest. The issue is what happens to us (or a merc) after that burst. Our resource regeneration takes a hit. The sorc's does not.

 

Apply it to PvP, and we're potentially the least bursty class, as we're the easiest to lock out with a single interrupt. Also, we're the only healer whose primary defensive cooldown prevents us from healing afterwards.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Oghier

[Brightglade]

still don't dismiss it as a moderately useful stat.

 

Alacrity is almost completely worthless. It has such severe DR that it isn't worth using.

 

Excerpt from an e-mail I sent to a friend.

 

"The 565 Alacrity Adrenal added 12.78% to my 7.22% (this includes 4% from talents) to give me 20.00% Haste. This took my 1.86 second heal down to 1.59 seconds. 565 Alacrity only gave me 0.27 seconds of haste."

 

I had 93 Alacrity at the time. Adding an additional 565 only gave 12.78%. That 16% haste is a atrocious return on investment for 658 Alacrity.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Brightglade