1.2 Healer Change Q&A Response and Feedback

[HellionX]

to OP's Bioware Interview.

 

All I seen after reading it was the following.

 

 

Translation

 

F-U Player base you will do what we say. I hate healers because it takes nearly 15 seconds to trash them. Also I like PVP and my Marauder is only getting 50 kills a WZ. I want MORE!!

Edited March 28, 2012 by HellionX

[oredith]

Analyzing those numbers you have a reduction of 5% of total heat under 40%, 3% from 40-79% and 2% from 80-100%

 

Guess what the standard Inquisitor regeneration rate is?

1.33% without the 4 piece bonus and it's even LOWER if you have the 4 piece bonus (+50 Force) of 1.23%. Our force is based on actively casting Consumption, as it stands right now not losing health based on Innervate crits allows us to cast consumption more often and thus increase our force regeneration rate.

i'm having a hard time understanding the relevance of your argument / numbers here.

 

your force regen rate is lower with the set bonus because you regen at a static rate, static quantity, so by enlarging your pool, of course you're going to have a lower %, but you're presenting that as if it's a negative? it's not. you are still dealing with a larger pool, it's not like like you WERE getting 4 force /s, and now you're getting 3.

 

the bigger picture you're missing is, you are allowed to use your ENTIRE pool of resources, because it regenerates at a constant pace, it doesn't matter if you unload all of it at once, or slowly, you'll still get it back at the same rate.

 

BH, however, go on a downward spiral. want to know how many heals it takes us to hit the 2nd threshold of 40 heat? 2.. yeah, 2 heals. and if we throw in a 3rd heal? you better love your free-heal of 3-400 ticks, because that's all you can afford, or else you're going to be full of heat if you cast another one.

Edited March 28, 2012 by oredith

[Shroudveil]

I am a noob when it comes to BH heat dissipation but from a simple google search I found:

 

From 0-39% heat, you'll be dissipating 5 points of Heat every second. From 40%-79% you're dissipating 3 heat per second. From 80%-100% heat, you'll only be dissipating 2 points of Heat every second.

 

Analyzing those numbers you have a reduction of 5% of total heat under 40%, 3% from 40-79% and 2% from 80-100%

 

Guess what the standard Inquisitor regeneration rate is?

1.33% without the 4 piece bonus and it's even LOWER if you have the 4 piece bonus (+50 Force) of 1.23%. Our force is based on actively casting Consumption, as it stands right now not losing health based on Innervate crits allows us to cast consumption more often and thus increase our force regeneration rate.

 

But we have to actively cast it, meaning less healing to the raid due to using a GCD on it. I know everyone likes to dump on the Sorc / Sage healers, but there are things not a lot of people are willing to admit and shortcomings that do occur.

 

If the nerf causing comsumption to always take hp from us, it has been mathematically proven that we would be a burden to the raids due to our constantly dropping health pools. It is not a good a good model for a healer to have to be killing themselves in order to heal others.

 

Sure every once in a while I get massive healing in a Void Star. Want to know why? People are able to sit in my AoE heal and I'm ignored, if not, I'm squishy and spend a lot of time in the time out box. See those big numbers in a Civil War? Guess what, I had a tank Guarding me and taunting people. Anyone can post a screen shot of OP Sorc Heals, but look at how many deaths they had. If left to free cast a healer can change the tide of battle, but if focused on smartly, a Sorcerer healers output drops exponentially.

 

don't count it like that.

 

count it in how many seconds of regeneach class needs for 1 heal.

 

op/merc are better marginnally when above 60%resource, sorcs have way larger pool and have better regen when the other two are less than 60%of their regen.

 

i have both classes (sorc, op) and managing force is laughable easy atm.

[Maglen]

i'm having a hard time understanding the relevance of your argument / numbers here.

 

your force regen rate is lower with the set bonus because you regen at a static rate, static quantity, so by enlarging your pool, of course you're going to have a lower %, but you're presenting that as if it's a negative? it's not. you are still dealing with a larger pool, it's not like like you WERE getting 4 force /s, and now you're getting 3.

 

the bigger picture you're missing is, you are allowed to use your ENTIRE pool of resources, because it regenerates at a constant pace, it doesn't matter if you unload all of it at once, or slowly, you'll still get it back at the same rate.

 

BH, however, go on a downward spiral. want to know how many heals it takes us to hit the 2nd threshold of 40 heat? 2.. yeah, 2 heals. and if we throw in a 3rd heal? you better love your free-heal of 3-400 ticks, because that's all you can afford, or else you're going to be full of heat if you cast another one.

 

Thanks for the education, like I said, I was a noob when it came to BH heals.

Edited March 28, 2012 by Maglen

[Dzhokhar]

i have both classes (sorc, op) and managing force is laughable easy atm.

 

One thing that Smugglers/Ops have that Commandos/Mercs don't is Pugnacity/Stim Boost. In terms of resource regeneration, Commandos/Mercs are somewhat dependent on the 2 ammo/16 heat (soon to be 1 ammo/8 heat) from SCC/SCG, otherwise they can't come close to keeping up with Smugglers/Ops (let alone Sages/Sorcs).

[RuQu]

One thing that Smugglers/Ops have that Commandos/Mercs don't is Pugnacity/Stim Boost. In terms of resource regeneration, Commandos/Mercs are somewhat dependent on the 2 ammo/16 heat (soon to be 1 ammo/8 heat) from SCC/SCG, otherwise they can't come close to keeping up with Smugglers/Ops (let alone Sages/Sorcs).

 

And let's not forget that Diagnostic Scans regen scales with both Alacrity and Crit, although it currently does half the HPS of Hammer Shot. With the new cast reduction talent the HPS will become much closer, and the HPS of DS will continue to scale with Alacrity while HS's does not.

[Amiable]

And let's not forget that Diagnostic Scans regen scales with both Alacrity and Crit, although it currently does half the HPS of Hammer Shot. With the new cast reduction talent the HPS will become much closer, and the HPS of DS will continue to scale with Alacrity while HS's does not.

 

Yeah, the changes to Op healing really are quite good, better than necessary honestly (speaking as a rank 69 Op healer). I don't think most of the complaints were about OP healing (other than making RN useful, especially considering it was an end-tree talent), they were about utility. ANY type of movement/positioning ability would have been a good start. Saying stealth is ridiculuous, because if you are spending any significant time as a healing op in stealth you are really doing it wrong.

 

In the new patch solo DPS (or even two dps) are going to have a VERY difficult time killing me. If I have a competent tank gaurding me it will be ridiculuous.

[Sinemetu]

No reason to be rude.

 

Shows how much I swing my melee lightsaber doesn't it? But the point still remains of why as a ranged class is my no resource cost spammable ability a melee ability? Operatives get Rifle Shots; ranged, Bounty Hunters get Rapid Shots; ranged, Inquisitors get Saber Strike; Melee. That's what I was getting at. I also find it kind of funny that of my whole post, you find that one thing to nitpick at. That's ok, I changed it.

 

And I never asked for a free heal. What I was agreeing on with someone else, is that it would be nice to have a long CD ability that would generate a moderate amount of force akin to the BH Vent Heat ability.

 

Sorcs complaining about the grass on the other side of the fence brings out the worst in me. I used to hear them talking about how they had this Consumption ability they could use to regain force, but the debuff reduced regen eventually to zero. The argument was that operatives can heal forever but inquisitors can run out. I thought they meant that this debuff lasted like two minutes or something... imagine my surprise when I played a sorc and found out that this awful debuff lasts a whole 10s.

[Kallti]

The main problem before the patch was very poor communication from the design team to their players. This patch has made that problem worse, or at least more apparent.

 

Please communicate your design goals with your players, Bioware. Please.

[Soshla]

Meh. I'm a firm believer in killing bosses as quickly as possible. Unless you're dealing with a raid-wide debuff, you're always better off letting the healers deal with decursing assuming you have the appropriate healing classes. Unless your healers are bad, people die from mistakes, not lack of healing. Killing the boss faster prevents that. Not asking the dps to split their attention also helps prevent that.

A big part of killing bosses as quickly as possible is to wedge more DPS in at the expense of healer slots.

 

Since the topic has since moved to regen ability scaling. Has anyone looked into how Noble Sacrifice scales with Health as compared to the ability to self heal as gear level increases?

 

A quick test shows that going from Nadia's gear to my own gear gains a healing done benefit of a ~2%. However, over the same gear change, my health increased 6.5%. My calculations were a bit lazy, but I would put a conservative estimate at Noble Sacrifice damage scaling about twice as fast as healing stats, assuming you're using Rejuvenate to self heal. This probably also increases as secondary and tertiary stats face DR.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Soshla

[Akiva_IC]

Huh. Have to say I like the tone of this thread a little more than the one in PTS. that said, I'd like to pose a question and see where you all stand. Follow me through on this:

 

- According to the log data that's been coming out of PTS, sorc healers are maintaing a fairly consistent HPS compared to ops and mercs. On my phone, so please forgive the lack of links.

 

- At the same time, it's been shown that consumption is often the single largest source of damage for sorc healers and, from what I've seen, is never lower than #3.

 

- That means that sorc healers are taking an extremely large portion of their damage from a source that never hurts ops or mercs.

 

-At the same time, it's reasonable to assume that the damage taken by ALL healers from combat sources in PVP or PVE is going to be fairly consistent, with some differences caused by armor type.

 

- PTS logs at this point have not been able to tell how much of a sorc healers HPS is directed at self-heals.

 

- Since sorc healers are taking a large percentage of damage from a sorc-only source, and assuming that combat-related damage for all healers is relatively consistent across all three(6) classes, it would stand to reason that either sorc healers have to divert more of their total healing output to themselves as a result of this additional damage OR require more attention from other healers than would a non-sorc not taking the consumption hits.

 

- This then translates into a reduction in the team-targeted HPS for a sorc or a dilution of the efficiency of any non-sorc healer who is helping a sorc deal with the hits from consumption.

 

- It is reasonable to say then that having a sorc healer results in a lower overall team-targwted healing output versus having a non-sorc healer who would not bri g along all of the consumption damage baggage.

 

- By rights then, since "total" HPS is relatively even on PTS and other healers do not suffer this additional damage, it could then be said that any raid group or PVP team would INCREASE it's healing effectiveness by choosing to bring an op or merc healer over a sorc.

 

TL;DR - Sorcs take more damage from consumption. Since all healers are healing basically equal amounts on PTS and the other healers don't require extra attention, any team increases its ability to keep tanks and DPS alive by replacing sorcs with other healers.

 

Thoughts? Again, on phone. Sorry for any typos.

[Sinemetu]

A big part of killing bosses as quickly as possible is to wedge more DPS in at the expense of healer slots.

 

/shrug. I run with a set group of players, not a set group of classes/roles. Especially once dual-spec appears, this will be a complete non-issue to me. It's also hard to imagine my guild dropping to a single healer on progression.

 

Since the topic has since moved to regen ability scaling. Has anyone looked into how Noble Sacrifice scales with Health as compared to the ability to self heal as gear level increases?

 

A quick test shows that going from Nadia's gear to my own gear gains a healing done benefit of a ~2%. However, over the same gear change, my health increased 6.5%. My calculations were a bit lazy, but I would put a conservative estimate at Noble Sacrifice damage scaling about twice as fast as healing stats, assuming you're using Rejuvenate to self heal. This probably also increases as secondary and tertiary stats face DR.

 

Interesting. I don't think I've seen this brought up before. Regardless of the exact numbers, it is clear that Consumption will become less and less efficient as HP outscales healing done--and you'll never get more force out of it.

[RuQu]

 

TL;DR - Sorcs take more damage from consumption. Since all healers are healing basically equal amounts on PTS and the other healers don't require extra attention, any team increases its ability to keep tanks and DPS alive by replacing sorcs with other healers.

 

Thoughts? Again, on phone. Sorry for any typos.

 

The logs do show who the heals go to. You can take a set of logs from the healers of a run and remove any heals directed at the healers (to remove any effect of an Op/Merc healing a Sorc after Consumption). Depending on how your team does healing, this could lead to a bias in favor of the tank-healer since they would have no healer-directed heals to remove and a raid-heals assigned healer would even without the Noble Sacrifice damage.

 

Or, if you know for a fact that the Sage always cast Rejuvenate on themselves to recover from Noble Sacrifice, you can subtract them 1:1 and leave in all the other healer-directed healing.

 

Or, if you know that the Sage/Sorc always healed themselves for that damage and the other healers did not, you could subtract the total damage done by Noble Sacrifice from the Sage's total healing numbers.

[Soshla]

Interesting. I don't think I've seen this brought up before. Regardless of the exact numbers, it is clear that Consumption will become less and less efficient as HP outscales healing done--and you'll never get more force out of it.

I know I've brought it up somewhere. I actually thought that it would be the opposite, with lower geared players being affected the worst. I expected heals to scale better. The clincher is probably in that a.) Rejuvenate doesn't benefit from Alacrity, and b) You reach soft caps at a fairly low gear level. Nadia's set has no no Alacrity (because it's useless for her), so it maintains very respectable Crit/Surge for its ilevel. I mostly gain Willpower, Power, and Alacrity switching to my gear, one of which doesn't affect Rejuvenate at all.

 

I also wear PvP gear, which has lower Endurance and Willpower. My guess is that it's likely a fair degree worse when considering PvE sets.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Soshla

[Akiva_IC]

The logs do show who the heals go to. You can take a set of logs from the healers of a run and remove any heals directed at the healers (to remove any effect of an Op/Merc healing a Sorc after Consumption). Depending on how your team does healing, this could lead to a bias in favor of the tank-healer since they would have no healer-directed heals to remove and a raid-heals assigned healer would even without the Noble Sacrifice damage.

 

Or, if you know for a fact that the Sage always cast Rejuvenate on themselves to recover from Noble Sacrifice, you can subtract them 1:1 and leave in all the other healer-directed healing.

 

Or, if you know that the Sage/Sorc always healed themselves for that damage and the other healers did not, you could subtract the total damage done by Noble Sacrifice from the Sage's total healing numbers.

 

Interesting. I haven't been copied, so it's tough to tell myself - just relying on the info posted by PTS 50s.

 

Still, though, it would seem that logic dictate the rest of it hold true. Sage/Sorc healers, and sage/sorc healers alone, are getting hit by a bus that doesn't target anyone else.

 

Imagine if a single raid boss had an ability that only targeted, say, Jugg/Guardian tanks and hit them for 15% of their life every 20-30 seconds or so. If you tank him with any other type, say shadow or powertech tanks, the boss never uses that move.

 

Would anyone bring jugg/guardian tanks along on that run?

Edited March 29, 2012 by Akiva_IC

[Sinemetu]

Interesting. I haven't been copied, so it's tough to tell myself - just relying on the info posted by PTS 50s.

 

Still, though, it would seem that logic dictate the rest of it hold true. Sage/Sorc healers, and sage/sorc healers alone, are getting hit by a bus that doesn't target anyone else.

 

Imagine if a single raid boss had an ability that only targeted, say, Jugg/Guardian tanks and hit them for 15% of their life every 20-30 seconds or so. If you tank him with any other type, say shadow or powertech tanks, the boss never uses that move.

 

Would anyone bring jugg/guardian tanks along on that run?

 

Um... exaggerate much? If you're going to go with that analogy, how about we say they lose 15% health but gain 8% mitigation or damage or crit or something for 10s. I'd say in that case that healing is fairly cheap and I'd be glad to bring them along. Besides, this is already in the game. It's called "melee dps" and contrary to all logic, they still get raid slots.

 

You're not getting hit by a bus. You're having to make tradeoffs for the first time, kinda like mercs and operatives have to decide if dipping below 60% is worth it. If we consider that by your own admission sorcs are not behind at all on healing and still bring unique utility (pull), a unique bubble, the only aoe heal that hits the entire group, and ranged utility that other healers don't bring (interrupt, stun, cc), I think you'll do more than fine.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Sinemetu

[Akiva_IC]

Um... exaggerate much? If you're going to go with that analogy, how about we say they lose 15% health but gain 8% mitigation or damage or crit or something for 10s. I'd say in that case that healing is fairly cheap and I'd be glad to bring them along. Besides, this is already in the game. It's called "melee dps" and contrary to all logic, they still get raid slots.

 

You're not getting hit by a bus. You're having to make tradeoffs for the first time, kinda like mercs and operatives have to decide if dipping below 60% is worth it. If we consider that by your own admission sorcs are not behind at all on healing and still bring unique utility (pull), a unique bubble, the only aoe heal that hits the entire group, and ranged utility that other healers don't bring (interrupt, stun, cc), I think you'll do more than fine.

 

Ok, so we'll go down that route:

 

CC? What do sorcs have that at least one of the other healers dont? Force slow. That's it. A 6-second slow that can be negated by a warrior/knights *rage builder.* Hmm. Not great. Take a closer look at some of the CC - sorc AOE knockback, for example, is actually a smaller pushback than the merc. You can test that yourself. I have.

 

What about escape? Ok, force speed. Except the op healer can go camo and ninja vanish. Hmmm...

 

AOE heal? Yeah, certainly better than the Kolto Missile. It's also a 31 point skill, so it's much later than the missile and reserved strictly for pure healers. Believe it or not, there are hybrid mercs out there with the kolto missile. It also has a 2-sec cast time and requires the target remain relatively stationary in order to get any effect. Saying that makes them the best is a bit counter-intuitive. They have to invest heavily and completely negate any chance of hybrid abilities to get it. There's a trade-off there, for sure.

 

The bubble? Yup. That's unique. It's also only good per-target every 17 or 20 sec. It's a heal spell - nothing else, especially since the damage it prevents is pre-mitigation, which means burst/spike eats it up pretty quickly. As it stands now with 1.2, it will be the ONLY sorc/sage burst spell of any kind whatsoever.

 

Extrication? Ok, that's cool. How about merc and his pair of "cast this for free" and "cast this instantly" spell. I don't see anything like that on the sorc list.

 

Saying "one class has this and the other doesn't" is a bit of a misleading argument, especially when the debate is about a core mechanic, like healing. People play sorc healers to heal, not because of force speed. That's no better than saying people play merc healers because of Rocket Punch.

 

One would expect the light-armor, no mitigation, no defensive CD, no free cast heal spell to equal out the the highest-output healer, which, sadly, just won't be true with 1.2. There's very little you can do to convince me that force speed, force slow, and extricate are worth running a sorc who

 

- has the worst potential DPS output (particularly relevant for PVP)

- has the lowest survivability, thanks to light armor and a total lack of defensive CDs

- has no free-cast ranged heal

- has the only resource management ability in the game, across any class, that requires him to take damage to restore resources.

 

If you take a look at a majority of the MMO's out there, typically the cloth armor guy has the highest output in either damage or heals, depending on what they're doing. It's the innate trade-off for being the easiest one to kill. The "Glass Cannon" philosophy - a lot of "boom" but a much quicker "bust" if anything comes after him. That's cool - you make the output vs. survivability trade-off. I've done it across many titles for more than a decade.

 

SWTOR doesn't do this, though. We make the survivability trade-off as sorcs/sages, but there's no "boom" in return for it with 1.2. I don't even play a DPS, but I can see from the tree what the changes will do to them. Why should they be so fragile if their damage is so much lower than someone in heavier armor? Why should I make the survivability trade off if a merc can stroll up and put up just as much healing as I do in heavy armor while simultaneously be able to defend himself better AND not slit his wrists in order to regen resources?

 

I'm a particular fan of the 60% argument for ops and mercs. The threads around this are making a pretty good point in regards to that, but there's one additional thing to consider there:

 

If you drain a merc or operative completely, he'll be back to 100% in 35 seconds. What's more, he can continue to output heals or damage while that recharges. While it's certainly not an earth-shattering number, it is roughly equivalent to our small HoT and at about the same pace. That's nothing to sneeze at - I've kept more than one person alive in their 1v1 with my merc using that in PVP.

 

If you drain a sorc completely, it takes ~75 seconds to recharge and any further actions during that time will slow that counter down even further.

 

And, please, don't try to mention saber strike. My tier-2 decked sorc has 105 strength. I'm not closing to melee range to whiff a bunch of double-digits in a HM.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Akiva_IC

[RuQu]

Interesting. I haven't been copied, so it's tough to tell myself - just relying on the info posted by PTS 50s.

 

Still, though, it would seem that logic dictate the rest of it hold true. Sage/Sorc healers, and sage/sorc healers alone, are getting hit by a bus that doesn't target anyone else.

 

Imagine if a single raid boss had an ability that only targeted, say, Jugg/Guardian tanks and hit them for 15% of their life every 20-30 seconds or so. If you tank him with any other type, say shadow or powertech tanks, the boss never uses that move.

 

Would anyone bring jugg/guardian tanks along on that run?

 

Your first point was valid...this is something we need to get log data on and analyze. I've yet to get a log from Sage or Sorc to look at, just Scoundrels and Commandos.

 

Depending on the result, we can post it in the PTS forum and as a report from Sages and Sorcs in-game on PTS saying that the trade-off is quantitatively crippling.

 

Right now, Ops and Mercs spend GCDs on really weak heals to allow for regen. This change has you spending GCDs to heal yourself to recover Force.

 

The Ops/Merc method can lead to over-healing, as an Operative might be wanting to cast Diagnostic Scan for faster regen even if everyone is at full health. Likewise a Merc might cast Rapid Shots to build CSC charges despite no need for healing. Conversely, this change will increase the effective healing done by a Sorc, because they are healing themselves for real damage, but it also increases the damage taken by the group (by hurting themselves). These differences need to be accounted for.

 

If the results show nearly identical HPS and effective healing, but a Sage is doing significant damage with Noble Sacrifice, then that means the Sage did less effective healing on the rest of the group than their partner did. That's a problem, and we should expect slightly higher Effective Healing values to compensate. However, that all depends on the ratio of NS damage to total raid damage, which we should expect to be fairly small. It may be #3 for a Sage, but it isn't hurting the tank or anyone else so the total percentage of raid damage from NS will be quite small.

 

In short, your concern is valid, but it is FAR too early for such alarmism. Let's work on getting some proper logs and analyze them first. Ideally from content that tests the healers so we can really compare their effective healing potential.

[Akiva_IC]

Your first point was valid...this is something we need to get log data on and analyze. I've yet to get a log from Sage or Sorc to look at, just Scoundrels and Commandos.

 

Depending on the result, we can post it in the PTS forum and as a report from Sages and Sorcs in-game on PTS saying that the trade-off is quantitatively crippling.

 

Right now, Ops and Mercs spend GCDs on really weak heals to allow for regen. This change has you spending GCDs to heal yourself to recover Force.

 

The Ops/Merc method can lead to over-healing, as an Operative might be wanting to cast Diagnostic Scan for faster regen even if everyone is at full health. Likewise a Merc might cast Rapid Shots to build CSC charges despite no need for healing. Conversely, this change will increase the effective healing done by a Sorc, because they are healing themselves for real damage, but it also increases the damage taken by the group (by hurting themselves). These differences need to be accounted for.

 

If the results show nearly identical HPS and effective healing, but a Sage is doing significant damage with Noble Sacrifice, then that means the Sage did less effective healing on the rest of the group than their partner did. That's a problem, and we should expect slightly higher Effective Healing values to compensate. However, that all depends on the ratio of NS damage to total raid damage, which we should expect to be fairly small. It may be #3 for a Sage, but it isn't hurting the tank or anyone else so the total percentage of raid damage from NS will be quite small.

 

In short, your concern is valid, but it is FAR too early for such alarmism. Let's work on getting some proper logs and analyze them first. Ideally from content that tests the healers so we can really compare their effective healing potential.

 

Please keep us posted with any data you can pull. I'd appreciate it.

[Wilow]

Ok, so we'll go down that route:

 

CC? What do sorcs have that at least one of the other healers dont? Force slow. That's it. A 6-second slow that can be negated by a warrior/knights *rage builder.* Hmm. Not great. Take a closer look at some of the CC - sorc AOE knockback, for example, is actually a smaller pushback than the merc. You can test that yourself. I have.

 

What about escape? Ok, force speed. Except the op healer can go camo and ninja vanish. Hmmm...

 

AOE heal? Yeah, certainly better than the Kolto Missile. It's also a 31 point skill, so it's much later than the missile and reserved strictly for pure healers. Believe it or not, there are hybrid mercs out there with the kolto missile. It also has a 2-sec cast time and requires the target remain relatively stationary in order to get any effect. Saying that makes them the best is a bit counter-intuitive. They have to invest heavily and completely negate any chance of hybrid abilities to get it. There's a trade-off there, for sure.

 

The bubble? Yup. That's unique. It's also only good per-target every 17 or 20 sec. It's a heal spell - nothing else, especially since the damage it prevents is pre-mitigation, which means burst/spike eats it up pretty quickly. As it stands now with 1.2, it will be the ONLY sorc/sage burst spell of any kind whatsoever.

 

Extrication? Ok, that's cool. How about merc and his pair of "cast this for free" and "cast this instantly" spell. I don't see anything like that on the sorc list.

 

Saying "one class has this and the other doesn't" is a bit of a misleading argument, especially when the debate is about a core mechanic, like healing. People play sorc healers to heal, not because of force speed. That's no better than saying people play merc healers because of Rocket Punch.

 

One would expect the light-armor, no mitigation, no defensive CD, no free cast heal spell to equal out the the highest-output healer, which, sadly, just won't be true with 1.2. There's very little you can do to convince me that force speed, force slow, and extricate are worth running a sorc who

 

- has the worst potential DPS output (particularly relevant for PVP)

- has the lowest survivability, thanks to light armor and a total lack of defensive CDs

- has no free-cast ranged heal

- has the only resource management ability in the game, across any class, that requires him to take damage to restore resources.

 

If you take a look at a majority of the MMO's out there, typically the cloth armor guy has the highest output in either damage or heals, depending on what they're doing. It's the innate trade-off for being the easiest one to kill. The "Glass Cannon" philosophy - a lot of "boom" but a much quicker "bust" if anything comes after him. That's cool - you make the output vs. survivability trade-off. I've done it across many titles for more than a decade.

 

SWTOR doesn't do this, though. We make the survivability trade-off as sorcs/sages, but there's no "boom" in return for it with 1.2. I don't even play a DPS, but I can see from the tree what the changes will do to them. Why should they be so fragile if their damage is so much lower than someone in heavier armor? Why should I make the survivability trade off if a merc can stroll up and put up just as much healing as I do in heavy armor while simultaneously be able to defend himself better AND not slit his wrists in order to regen resources?

 

I'm a particular fan of the 60% argument for ops and mercs. The threads around this are making a pretty good point in regards to that, but there's one additional thing to consider there:

 

If you drain a merc or operative completely, he'll be back to 100% in 35 seconds. What's more, he can continue to output heals or damage while that recharges. While it's certainly not an earth-shattering number, it is roughly equivalent to our small HoT and at about the same pace. That's nothing to sneeze at - I've kept more than one person alive in their 1v1 with my merc using that in PVP.

 

If you drain a sorc completely, it takes ~75 seconds to recharge and any further actions during that time will slow that counter down even further.

 

And, please, don't try to mention saber strike. My tier-2 decked sorc has 105 strength. I'm not closing to melee range to whiff a bunch of double-digits in a HM.

 

Sigh, it's posts like these that I just don't get. You are comparing the Sorc to both the Op and Merc healer put together. If you want to compare one healer vs another, do so, but don't say the Op can do this better, and the Merc can do this better. When filling in each of the many healing niches, someone has to play the middle of the 3 classes , otherwise the game will turn into 3 healers that do the same this, with different looking armour.

 

A few corrections. The Sorc hot ticks heal for more then the Ops "free" heals, not sure about the Merc "free" heal as I'm not sure if all three ticks heal for 400-500 or if all three added together heal for that. I can't see either of these "free" abilities every keeping someone alive in pvp unless it was out of combat and healing them with a bleed to they didn't die. Any dps (or tank or healer) can easily put out more then these heals assuming they are trying to kill you, or even just to pester you. Saber strike goes off Willpower, not Strength. While Strength will increase your melee damage (much the same as Aim increases the Op range attack skills), Willpower will also increase your melee attacks (and do a much better job then strength for the SI). Were this not the case, Assassins would not use most of their melee attacks ever. I'm not saying that you should now use saber strike, just a correction on what stat it goes off.

 

 

- has the worst potential DPS output (particularly relevant for PVP)

- has the lowest survivability, thanks to light armor and a total lack of defensive CDs

- has no free-cast ranged heal

- has the only resource management ability in the game, across any class, that requires him to take damage to restore resources.

 

-Ops and Merc have to choose to either heal or dps (outside lol free dps that is parried/deflected/miss alot of the time as is). If I (as an ops) start to dps you, each ability I use is one less heal i can cast without pausing to regen (2 dps abilities used drops us into a lower regen lv) I'm not saying merc/ops can't dps, but we have to be more selective in when we do dps.

-survivability is a questionable metric, as one can say having a burst speed ability can get you out of some situations (much as vanish can for ops), or a knock back might save you either in the time you gain from them getting back to you or knocking them off a ledge granting you temporary los, or a slow may let you get around a corner to give you enough time to pop of a heal or 2.

-granted, you are the only class without a free ranged heal

-true, you are the only one that takes damage to get a hit on your returned resource ability, you are also the only class that can free cast from Max force to very little force and not have a penalty on your resource regeneration rate. You are also the only class that can cast more then 4 main heals in a row and still be viable as a healer with no "down time" in which the healers output is close to 0 (or has to blow his 2 min cd to get some resource back)(I'm thinking of damage heavy phases when the healer (merc/op) has to abandon his standard resource neutral rotation in order to keep dps/tank alive)

 

 

-Sorc and Merc have in combat cc, Ops need stealth and no combat

-Sorc has 30m interupt, Ops have 10m interupt and Mercs don't

-Sorc and Ops have combat rez, Mercs don't

-Sorc has a 30m slow, Ops have a 10m slow, Mercs don't

-Sorc and Merc have an AoE knockback (different distances granted), Ops don't

-Ops have a vanish (10s no heal debuff attached) on a 2 min cd, Sorc have a speed boost on a 30s(?) cd, Mercs don't have any vanish/speed boost

-Sorcs have an AoE heal that hits 8 (stationary hot) on a cast, Mercs have an AoE that (will) target 4 with a heal buff added, Ops have an AoE heal that hits 4 (mobile hot) (both Sorc and Ops are 31 point talents)

-Sorc has an instant bubble that absorbs dmg every 17-20 sec, Mercs have an instant heal usable every 21s, Ops have an instant heal that requires TA proc (easily obtanable, but still requires us to cast our main heal to get, or 30% random chance off the hot)

-Mercs get a free cast every 2 mins

-sorcs get 30% for 2 crits every 1.5 mins

-Ops get...

-Sorcs get extricate

-Mercs get...

-Ops get stealth (out of combat)

 

 

The list goes on and on, but one can see each class gains the advantage over others in different areas. I do not agree with all the sorc changes (I've posted as much in the current 1.2 Sorc nerf thread). But nothing will come of one healing attacking another healer class (that's how I took your talk about merc or ops doing something better).

 

My main is a rank 68 Ops healer, and come 1.2 I will still take Sorc healers into pvp (extricate in pvp is a god send, but this isn't the only reason you are wanted). They have certain tools the other healers don't have. I'll also take take Sorc healers into operations/raids (fully cleared NiM 16 man) if only for your AoE ability. That alone in 16 man is enough to guarantee you at least 1 if not 2 spots (we currently run 1 Ops 1 Merc and 2 Sorc healers). You may need the occasional heal, but, like RuQu said, if that were enough to never take you, we also wouldn't run with 5+ melee in the group.

 

Bah, I really don't want to post this, but I've spent too much time not healing my WZ now not to...

Edited March 29, 2012 by Wilow

[Amiable]

Ok, so we'll go down that route:

 

CC? What do sorcs have that at least one of the other healers dont? Force slow. That's it. A 6-second slow that can be negated by a warrior/knights *rage builder.* Hmm. Not great. Take a closer look at some of the CC - sorc AOE knockback, for example, is actually a smaller pushback than the merc. You can test that yourself. I have. .

 

You have a 30 meter instant sleep (if traited) and knockback and a ranged slow. And a 30 m interrupt. ops lack the knockback and mercs lack the interrupt. Also all of the op stuns/slows are melee range only. That alone is enormous.

 

 

What about escape? Ok, force speed. Except the op healer can go camo and ninja vanish. Hmmm....

 

 

Which debuffs the op for ten seconds effectively taking him entirely out of the game (except maybe to stop a cap of something). It is usually better just to die and run back in those circumstances. Also sorcs can force speed 6 times more often than ops can vanish (30 second vs 3 minute cooldown).

 

AOE heal? Yeah, certainly better than the Kolto Missile. It's also a 31 point skill, so it's much later than the missile and reserved strictly for pure healers. Believe it or not, there are hybrid mercs out there with the kolto missile. It also has a 2-sec cast time and requires the target remain relatively stationary in order to get any effect. Saying that makes them the best is a bit counter-intuitive. They have to invest heavily and completely negate any chance of hybrid abilities to get it. There's a trade-off there, for sure..

 

Oh hi there, the ops group heal is 31 points as well and is total crap, even with the new buff, compared to sorc aoes. Sorcs will still be the preffered PvE healer based on this ability alone.

 

The bubble? Yup. That's unique. It's also only good per-target every 17 or 20 sec. It's a heal spell - nothing else, especially since the damage it prevents is pre-mitigation, which means burst/spike eats it up pretty quickly. As it stands now with 1.2, it will be the ONLY sorc/sage burst spell of any kind whatsoever.

 

It's amazing front loaded healing that can be applied any time, and is incredibly useful, especially talented. It gives you time to breathe to let your other skills catch up. The merc insta heal is for less and on a longer cooldown and the ops intant requires TA and is only spammable if the target is literally about to die anyway.

 

 

Extrication? Ok, that's cool. How about merc and his pair of "cast this for free" and "cast this instantly" spell. I don't see anything like that on the sorc list.

 

The merc and op "cast for free" heals are crap fillers only used for energy regen purposes, the amount of healing is literally negligible.

 

 

Saying "one class has this and the other doesn't" is a bit of a misleading argument, especially when the debate is about a core mechanic, like healing. People play sorc healers to heal, not because of force speed. That's no better than saying people play merc healers because of Rocket Punch.

 

It really isn't when you look at the class in total. Also comparing force speed (which is awesome in so many situations) to rocket punch really doesn't bolster your argument here.

 

 

One would expect the light-armor, no mitigation, no defensive CD, no free cast heal spell to equal out the the highest-output healer, which, sadly, just won't be true with 1.2.

 

Since most damage bypasses armor in this game you effectivley have the same mitigation as the other classes (and very close to operatives not-withstanding). No defensive CDs? Didn't we just spend a whole page talking about knockpback, force-speed and bubbles?

 

 

There's very little you can do to convince me that force speed, force slow, and extricate are worth running a sorc who

 

Listen, it sucks to be nerfed, but the pre 1.2 situtation where a sorc could basically free-cast forever and not worry about mana management while also having all these great utility tools was never going to stand. Even if Sorcs are no longer the best single target output healer they bring so much to the table for both PvE and PvP that they will still be the prefferred healing class in both situations. You are just now going to have to do what the other healres do and more carefully manage your resources. the fact that you can come here and claim that sorcs are eviscerated after Bioware literally gutted merc healing indicates to me that you probably lack perspective.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Amiable

[wrotruck]

The Ops/Merc method can lead to over-healing, as an Operative might be wanting to cast Diagnostic Scan for faster regen even if everyone is at full health. Likewise a Merc might cast Rapid Shots to build CSC charges despite no need for healing. Conversely, this change will increase the effective healing done by a Sorc, because they are healing themselves for real damage, but it also increases the damage taken by the group (by hurting themselves). These differences need to be accounted for.

 

I agree the the diffrences must be accounted for. However, as things stand on the PTS now, the cost of Noble Sacrifice is just to high for the force returned especially with our abililty to burst heal having been removed. IMO, Bioware has over compensated.

 

A log will never show how a class feels to be played. I have played on the PTS and I can say that I was uncomfortable casting NS. While I think that the health cost should be reduced by 7-10%, even a 5% reduction would make a huge diffrence in making it more playable.

 

 

[Rant] Everything I have said aside. It is just poor design, when in any encounter (PvE or PVP), any player's single largest source of damage is himself but it is especially so for a healer. It's counter productive, counter intuitive and utterly stupid! It makes me wonder if I am supposed to be PvPing against myself. The dev who dreamed this up should be taken out back and kicked in the groin and the manager who approved it should be fired as it is clear that they can not produce results greater than that of a trained monkey with a rubber stamp![/Rant]

 

That has been building up to a while, I'm better now...

 

I won't launch into the burst healing issue beacsue I am still untterly confused by the choice to remove it and I don't have a constructive suggestion...

[RuQu]

I agree the the diffrences must be accounted for. However, as things stand on the PTS now, the cost of Noble Sacrifice is just to high for the force returned especially with our abililty to burst heal having been removed. IMO, Bioware has over compensated.

 

A log will never show how a class feels to be played. I have played on the PTS and I can say that I was uncomfortable casting NS. While I think that the health cost should be reduced by 7-10%, even a 5% reduction would make a huge diffrence in making it more playable.

 

 

[Rant] Everything I have said aside. It is just poor design, when in any encounter (PvE or PVP), any player's single largest source of damage is himself but it is especially so for a healer. It's counter productive, counter intuitive and utterly stupid! It makes me wonder if I am supposed to be PvPing against myself. The dev who dreamed this up should be taken out back and kicked in the groin and the manager who approved it should be fired as it is clear that they can not produce results greater than that of a trained monkey with a rubber stamp![/Rant]

 

That has been building up to a while, I'm better now...

 

I won't launch into the burst healing issue beacsue I am still untterly confused by the choice to remove it and I don't have a constructive suggestion...

 

I don't play a Sage because I never liked the feel of the class. Being numerically over-powered can't change that.

 

That said, I've healed in various games for a long time, and I still always have to mutter the phrase "Physician, heal thyself" as a mantra while raiding or I completely forget to do so. I know for a fact that I would not be comfortable trading life for Force as a healer.

 

As for suggestions, luckily for you those are my forte.

 

Noble Sacrifice returning too much Force with Resplendence:

• Have Resplendence remove all the negatives, but reduce the Force returned.
  
• Reduce the proc chance of Resplendence from 100% to X% to get Force regen where you want it.
  
• Remove Noble Sacrifice from the healer routine. Decide on a medium-throughput rotation that will leave a Sage OOF at the end of the longest planned enrage timer, a high throughput burst rotation, and a low throughput regen rotation balanced so the high+low average out to ~= the medium in terms of Force use over a given time span.
  

 

For Burst Healing, I'll talk from a Commando viewpoint, but it can be applied universally.

 

Instead of removing burst healing, buff it, but reduce the throughput of neutral rotations.

 

For example, make Adv Probe / Med Probe combo spam (AP/MP) heal for 25% less. It will now no longer be able to keep up on its own. Now make Supercharge Cells (SCC) increase healing by 50+%, up from 10%. This seems like a lot, but it isn't when you do the math.

 

25% reduction = 0.75

10% buff = 1.1

1.1/0.75 = 1.46.

 

In words, that means you need a 46% increase to make a 75% strength heal hit for the same as a 100% heal with a 10% increase. Since it is actually weaker for the 15s out of every 25 that you aren't in SCC, you should increase it more than 46%, hence 50+%.

 

This change would leave Commando burst doing the same amount it currently does, but our non-burst would be weaker, and we would be required to burst more often to catch up. This would increase SCC usage, and encourage more dynamic play.

 

Similar adjustments could be made to the other healers. Make Kolto Infusion/Pack interesting and powerful enough to be attractive, even if it means casting a couple of Diagnostic Scans afterwards to recover from the cost. Perhaps increase the healing done and add a quality HoT. The HoT would let you feel secure enough to cast DS without fear of tank death, and the increase in HPCT would offset the high energy cost.

[oredith]

anyone besides me who feels that it's getting to be 'too late' to change anything now?

 

yes, the game has be delayed over and over again to be "complete" at launch, though this patch seems to be contrary to that. all that aside, the reality is that a company can only use the "will not release til ready" line before it goes to a live game. once there, every change has a ticking clock associated.

 

not to mention BW is not in its own little bubble here. there's expansions and new games coming out that will take away from the market.

 

the bottom line is, BW can not afford to push this patch too far (time-wise).

 

the problem i see, is that any of the solutions we're suggesting here, involves more than just adjusting coefficient / values of an existing ability. they generally require a rework of something, and that requires additional time, and additional testing (and hopefully, more than a handful of guilds testing them?).

 

all that combined to suggest to me - no significant changes will happen to the patch notes.

 

the absolute BEST i can hope for, is that SCG will revert to venting 16 heat.

[RuQu]

anyone besides me who feels that it's getting to be 'too late' to change anything now?

 

yes, the game has be delayed over and over again to be "complete" at launch, though this patch seems to be contrary to that. all that aside, the reality is that a company can only use the "will not release til ready" line before it goes to a live game. once there, every change has a ticking clock associated.

 

not to mention BW is not in its own little bubble here. there's expansions and new games coming out that will take away from the market.

 

the bottom line is, BW can not afford to push this patch too far (time-wise).

 

the problem i see, is that any of the solutions we're suggesting here, involves more than just adjusting coefficient / values of an existing ability. they generally require a rework of something, and that requires additional time, and additional testing (and hopefully, more than a handful of guilds testing them?).

 

all that combined to suggest to me - no significant changes will happen to the patch notes.

 

the absolute BEST i can hope for, is that SCG will revert to venting 16 heat.

 

April is nearly upon us, and they have yet to roll out the updated healer changes. Mid-late April at the earliest, even if the update hits Friday.

 

There is always Plan C: Revert the healer changes entirely and make some coefficient changes, saving more drastic changes until they have time to request feedback from the players.

 

It's funny, they have these threads where the Devs explicitly request feedback (ie this PvP one) from a community to see how to direct changes, but they make drastic healer changes without even giving us information, let alone requesting feedback on it.

 

Here's a suggestion:

1. Revert the Sage/Commando/Sorc/Merc healer changes.
   
2. Post a Feedback request here in the Healer forum with stickies in the 6 AC forums pointing people to it.
   
   • State your goals: ie reducing healer throughput, reducing healer burst, increasing resource management, increasing effort/skill required, making rotations more interesting, increasing difficulty, etc.
     
   • State some initial Dev ideas (optional)
     
   • Request community ideas to promote those goals.
     

[*]Review the feedback.

[*]Make changes to the healer classes.

 

They are asking the PvPers what type of playstyle they want, why not ask us healers the same question?