Post 1.2. "Crit & Surge" or "Power & Alacrity" ?

[AmblinAlong]

Hi,

 

OK. I recently got my long neglected Sage Alt to 50 as our Guild was in real need of Healers. So, anything that went on before 1.2 and the results of the nerf don't apply to me as I really won't be noticing the changes!

 

I'm just wondering how as an out and out squishy healer in the Seer tree, how should I be stacking my epic enhancements in all my gear?

 

So as the title says, should I be stacking "Crit and Surge" or "Power and Alacrity"?

 

And what in your more experienced opinion should I load my sabre out with? +41 Crit or Power?

 

All answers and advice appreciated.

 

Thanks everyone.

Edited April 18, 2012 by AmblinAlong

[XtremJedi]

Willpower and Power are the most important. Both are still linear contributions (whereas Crit/Surge/Alacrity have diminishing returns).

 

Also, HT crits are really not as important as they used to be and generally, predictable heal values are better than unpredictable crits - which have a tendency to overheal. You really don't want to be wasting force on heals that over-heal the target beyond 100% by much.

 

Also, people have been quoting alacrity as important because of Deliverance being so slow now... but all the rotations I've seen have been peppered with empty GCDs. If you plan to stop-cast Deliverance as a main tactic, then alacrity has certain benefits in allowing you to get it off quickly enough if needed just after cancelling the previous cast. I'm not sure that this makes a compelling case for alacrity though, really.

 

The choice really boils down to whether you're gearing for Heal per Force (HPF) or for Heal per Casting Time (HPCT). My own feeling is that HPF is the way to go, in which case you want to go Willpower > Power > Crit > Surge > Alacrity.

 

Goal values should be pretty much the same as before though - Highest possible Willpower/Power. About 350 for Crit/Alacrity and 300 for surge. These are based on the diminishing returns curves... that is, going higher than these values probably isn't worth the effort you're putting in, whichever approach you choose in terms of priority.

 

Just my opinion and I should stress that I'm not actually playing the game any more having quitted after 1.2. It may well be that other practical advice will come out of players actually playing the Seer now. But on the whole, the theory-crafting is fairly solid.

 

X

Edited April 18, 2012 by XtremJedi

[AmblinAlong]

Really great advice. Thanks for taking the time to write that up for me. Things are a little clearer now.

 

Thanks again.

[seektravota]

i'm a war hero sage done both pvp and pve. my opinion would be that it's not you need to pick one of the two, it's a bunch of stats you need to meet to reach a more comfortable play zone.

basically, as a sage healer, with gunslinger buf you need about 40% crit chance, over 70% surge, and very importantly must have around or more than 10% alacrity to be comfortable to heal (otherwise you'll find very often you are just about 0.1 sec short to land a heal that can save the person). when you meet those requirement, stack on power for the rest.

[Lucky_Slevin]

Thanks for the write up XtremJedi. Much appreciated.

 

I'd like to add a perspective that I used while making my decision on how to gear my healing sage.

1. As stated above, Willpower and Power are not impacted by DR so you can (and should) stack each with the full confidence that you will get the best (and most consistent) "bang for your buck".

 

2. Willpower and Power have direct impact on your bonus healing. Your bonus healing has a direct impact on all 7 of your healing spells. Willpower has a .14 conversion factor and Power has a .17 conversion factor. Willpower is impacted by the Sage buff (+5%), whereas Power is not.

 

3. If your goal is to increase your bonus healing as much as possible, there are certain mods that will be better for your then others. Taking the fact from #2 above, and assuming your goal is to increase your bonus healing, here are a couple examples of good mod combinations:

a. (45WP + 34P) is better then (57WP + 10P)

b. (36WP + 27P) is better then (48WP + 8P)

c. (57WP + 10P) is better then (36WP + 27P)

 

4. The impact of Surge on your overall healing is directly influenced by the overall Crit you have. If you don't have enough Crit rating, don't bother stacking Surge because you wont get the full benefit overall.

 

5. Haste (Alacrity) has some benefits, but it usually comes at a cost of Power and/or Crit. Taking that into consideration, Haste builds tend to cast smaller heals at a much faster rate compared to Power/Crit/Surge builds. The common factor is that force regen and force cost per cast is going to be the same for both builds. However, since the Haste build has smaller heals, they will need to cast more often to equal the healing output of a Power/Crit build and as a result, the Haste build will spend more in force. This could be a negative in long boss encounters.

 

6. In a chain-casting situation, Haste only impacts your big heal (Deliverance). This is due to the fact that all our other spells are either instant or have longer CD and thus, cant be chain-casted. Our small heal (Benevolence) isn't impacted from a chain-casting perspective because it is already the same speed as the GCD (1.5 second), and unlike that "other mmo", Haste in SWTOR does not impact the GCD.

 

I'm still learning so I'm interested in any feed back from our healing community. I love numbers and excel workbooks so any tips or advice or corrections is much appreciated. Great topic and great thread!

 

My only question is can anyone confirm that bubble IS impacted by bonus healing, but IS NOT impacted by the stat "absorb"? This has always been my understanding but have not actually had it confirmed.

 

Thanks!

Edited April 18, 2012 by Lucky_Slevin
spelling

[Lucky_Slevin]

There is a new thread that discusses what stats actually contribute to Sage's Force Shield. Now that we have a combat log, I'd guess someone will be able to back into the formula used to calculate the total absorb amount. Once it is finally confirmed, Power and Willpower and Force Power could be proven to be the only stats that have a direct impact on all 7 out of 7 of the Sage's healing spells.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=428684

Edited April 24, 2012 by Lucky_Slevin
added link

[DirtyBirdie]

Willpower and Power are the most important. Both are still linear contributions (whereas Crit/Surge/Alacrity have diminishing returns).

X

 

Wrong? if you have proof stating that willpower/any main stat is not on a deminishing return then i would love to see that. As far as i know, the softcap for Willpower/main stats is approximately 1500-1700ish? Once you've hit this cap you want to start pumping in other stats. Power and forcepower are both linear however, and not a bad option when you grab more gear in the game. You will quite often see people rocking power crystals/auguments in the end game stuff. Crit rating, surge, alacritiy all are on deminishing returns as well. All diminishing return values can be found on http://www.sithwarrior.com btw so i would highly suggest taking a look at what your optimal character should look like.

 

With regards to what you want though, it appears that end game rakata/black hole healer gear stacks in alacrity more so than the equivalent force masters DPS gear, so i would use those stats as a guideline.

[Lucky_Slevin]

Wrong? if you have proof stating that willpower/any main stat is not on a deminishing return then i would love to see that. As far as i know, the softcap for Willpower/main stats is approximately 1500-1700ish? Once you've hit this cap you want to start pumping in other stats. Power and forcepower are both linear however, and not a bad option when you grab more gear in the game. You will quite often see people rocking power crystals/auguments in the end game stuff. Crit rating, surge, alacritiy all are on deminishing returns as well. All diminishing return values can be found on http://www.sithwarrior.com btw so i would highly suggest taking a look at what your optimal character should look like

 

Here is the math behind why willpower/power/core stats are not impacted by DR. I'm not sure where/how you came to your conclusion. Overall, why would any game put a cap on core stats? Are you saying there is a DR cap for endurance?? Interesting thought though.

 

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Thread-SWTOR-formula-list

[Onager]

Wrong? if you have proof stating that willpower/any main stat is not on a deminishing return then i would love to see that. As far as i know, the softcap for Willpower/main stats is approximately 1500-1700ish? Once you've hit this cap you want to start pumping in other stats. Power and forcepower are both linear however, and not a bad option when you grab more gear in the game. You will quite often see people rocking power crystals/auguments in the end game stuff. Crit rating, surge, alacritiy all are on deminishing returns as well. All diminishing return values can be found on http://www.sithwarrior.com btw so i would highly suggest taking a look at what your optimal character should look like.

 

With regards to what you want though, it appears that end game rakata/black hole healer gear stacks in alacrity more so than the equivalent force masters DPS gear, so i would use those stats as a guideline.

 

The crit gained from Willpower is on a different DR curve than the Crit gained from Rating, and the increase in bonus damage and healing gained from Willpower has no DR, just as the increase in bonus damage and healing gained from Power also has no DR.

 

I do agree that if your WP is high enough to be hitting DR in regards to its contribution from Crit, swapping out some mods for high Power ones is prudent, just as juggling enhancements to strike a good balance is, too.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Onager

[Aurojiin]

As an aside from what you should be stacking (which has already been covered quite well above), I'll point out that (as far as I've found) you'll find that as you obtain higher tiers of gear, surge will be the difficult stat to balance out. Crit and alacrity you'll acquire easily enough.

 

The best solution, I believe, is to pick up Smuggler gloves with commendations; these carry power/surge enhancements.

[madtycoon]

yeah power/surge and power/alacrity all the way. Its easy to get ~40% crit with smuggler buff

 

There are more options for power/surge enhancements with the black hole gear. The good power/alacrity enhancement will be harder to get a hold of unfortunately. It was the opposite at rakata levels a patch ago.

[Aurojiin]

There are more options for power/surge enhancements with the black hole gear. The good power/alacrity enhancement will be harder to get a hold of unfortunately. It was the opposite at rakata levels a patch ago.

The Rakata itemisation changes got reverted, though...

[madtycoon]

What I meant was, you can only get the rakata level power/surge enhancements from HM/NM boss drops and now you can get better ones from the black hole gear. My bad.

[eventidephoenix]

What I meant was, you can only get the rakata level power/surge enhancements from HM/NM boss drops and now you can get better ones from the black hole gear. My bad.

 

What is the ideal level of crit/surge/power u suggest?

[DCVAN]

Our small heal (Benevolence) isn't impacted from a chain-casting perspective because it is already the same speed as the GCD (1.5 second), and unlike that "other mmo", Haste in SWTOR does not impact the GCD.

Alacrity can impact the GCD in this game. If an ability's cast time is reduced below the GCD by alacrity, then the GCD is lowered to that ability's cast time. I've heard of TK sages chain-casting .7 second Disturbances (probably with the 20% alacrity CD.)

Edited April 26, 2012 by DCVAN

[madtycoon]

What is the ideal level of crit/surge/power u suggest?

 

35% crit self buffed (40% with smuggler) 10% alacrity and then the rest power oh and surge at around 70%

 

after that, between the 2 that go with power on enhancements, I would go with alacrity over surge