Why is there so much alacrity on our healing gear?

[HeavenlyBluE]

As I've said, I don't see the point to having more throughput in non-emergency situations. To pad the non-existant meters? Any healer with pretty much any reasonable gear can heal just fine outside "burst situations." I look for which stat helps me the most when I absolutely need it.

 

I guess I sort of setup the false dilemma myself, but there isn't a choice between alacrity and crit. If there were I would probably take crit. The choice is between alacrity and surge. You can do power/alacrity (my choice), power/surge (reasonable, possibly best for 16m or if you make extensive use of hots), crit/surge (not reasonable, inferior to power/surge), and crit/alacrity (not reasonable, inferior to power/alacrity).

 

I haven't calculated/looked around for the information, but it's possible that in theory there comes a point where you get so much power and surge that crit will equalize with power, but as far as I know that isn't possible in this tier of gear. (As obviously the more power and surge you have, the more valuable crit becomes.. Power scales linearly with each point improving you the same amount as the last, surge scales logarithmically, each point giving you less benefit than the last, but crit has a multiplicative effect with the previous 2 stats.)

Edited February 28, 2012 by HeavenlyBluE

[Xaearth]

As I've said, I don't see the point to having more throughput in non-emergency situations. To pad the non-existant meters? Any healer with pretty much any reasonable gear can heal just fine outside "burst situations." I look for which stat helps me the most when I absolutely need it.

 

Because more throughput in non-emergency situations is the only thing Operative healers can come remotely close to competing with the other two healers?

 

If we're talking multiple targets needing emergency healing, it's no contest.

 

If it's a single target emergency:

 

Sorcs have the bubble (the benefit of time can and does exponentially increase throughput with the number of people that can react in an emergency situation, like off heals from the dps) and the option of chaining casts with far less regard for resource efficiency.

 

Merc ST-heals tend to have a bit more kick with the downside of cooldowns tacked on to practically everything, but hey, since we're completely disregarding performance outside of non-emergency situations anyways, those cooldowns should always be available.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Xaearth

[HeavenlyBluE]

The discussion is about what stat you should get - power vs crit, alacrity vs surge. It has nothing to do with any other classes.

 

Have already explained many times in this thread why operatives are fine. If you want to understand, go back and read ^_^

 

Edit: Right now we're in the process of clearing 16m NM EV with 3 ops and a merc healing, just to say we can.

Edited February 29, 2012 by HeavenlyBluE

[Zunayson]

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.

 

Shhh You're not supposed to imply anything other than spamming Inj > Inf is the optimal rotation!!!

[stephenjohnp]

I never used to like Alacrity, but now that I depend on Diagnostic Scan for healing, I think it's a brilliant stat.