HPS vrs HPCT gearing

[merchus]

Greetings:

I have seen in my research that the community has been split between those that advise HPS/HPF and those that advise HPCT. Arguments in favor of both seem valid. Without going into a text wall of detail, it seems that the HPS/HPF side is most valid for endgame Seer Healing.

Currently, I have 3 pieces of BM and the rest of my gear is purple 21s or better.

I'm doing my dailies to completely gear out with 23's in preparation for FPs and OPs. I was going to mirror Tionese,

until I realized Tionese gear is HPCT. BM is HPCT also...

So..

If I want to go HPS/HPF, and customize modable oranges with 23's... will they be seen as inferior because their not BM or Tionese? Mystic and Master are both HPCT as far as I can see.

Stripping out unwanted mods on BM/Tionese would seem to be the answer, but I don't know if that can even be done.

Comments and advice would be greatly appreciated.

[enoax]

Well HPF is probably what you'll want to do 90% of the time. During spike phases than HPS will be key i would think. HPS vs HPCT is more of a cast rotation thing than a gear thing. Your channeled heal is well ranked for HPCT, HPF and HPS and it's your bread and butter. Force armor and your hig heal are less force efficient but are your best HPS.

 

Basically how it works is any 61 (and 63) piece of armoring, the set bonus is on the armoring iteself. The black hole and the dropped armorings from ops do not have set bonuses. Any 'set' gear below 61 the set bonus is on the shell itself.

 

You want at least the 2 piece heal bonus on the pve healing set. The 4 peices is kinda meh. Get at least two peices of tionese or columi for the set bonus and replace all the armorings/mods/enhancements from BH and you'll keep the set bonus. For the other 1-3 peices you can wear whatever orange peice you like the appearance on and swap in black hole armorings, mods and enchancements.

 

Basically you'll need to buy one of each BH peice for the BIS armoring. Then you'll want to swap out all the mods for aptitude 26 (maybe one mettle) and the enchancements for mostly adept 26's and 2-3 quick savants (depending on what ears/ implants you are wearing. Shoot for approximately 8% alacrity (so your big heal is ~2.2-2.3s), 30-35% crit, rest in surge and power. If you get >75% surge you can kinda value alacrity = surge. Basically Crit competes with power and alacrity competes with surge. For mods/enhancements the non-lettered version is best (ex. 26 > 26A > 26B).

 

You're time is probably better spent farming black hole comms doing SM ops, flashpoints, rakghoul weekly and black hole weekly. You'll probably complete a set of columi doing that (56 level) in ~ 1 week. You'll get ~ 1.5 peices of black hole/ week

Edited September 26, 2012 by enoax

[tehjifbo]

What server are you on? If its Prophecy of the Five, my guild needs a sage healer so I can go back dps. We will get you full campaign in one night.

[Cleet_Xia]

I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean by HPF/HPS vs. HPCT gear. Yes all the endgame gear, both PvE & PvP, stacks large amounts of alacrity. But these are not so much ways to gear, but broad approaches to healing. Neither is the right or wrong way to heal, just different perspectives. And some fight mechanics favor one approach over the other. But having too much alacrity isn't beneficial to either approach. The endgame gear is just horribly itemized.

 

The real differences between HPF/HPS & HPCT in my mind is

1) How frequently you use Benevolence, Salvation, & Noble Sac

~These are the halmark abilities of HPCT, spamming Noble Sac is the only way to fund spammning those 2 heals. While a HPF/HPS approach tries to avoid the use of either Benevolence or Noble Sac.

 

2) Whether you favor Healing Trance or Deliverance ~ or if you use them both.

~Both abilities are similar HPF/HPS but the HPCT approach favors Healing Trance right after a Salvation.

 

3) How your skill points are alotted in your tech trees

~Did you spec for boosts to Noble Sac & AoE at the expense of speccing for larger bubbles in the Tele Tree?

 

4) How your group responds to the mechanics of a particular boss

~groups that just zerg a boss & attempt to face roll it without any tactics force you into a HPCT approach, but they must be above gear level for the content to dps the boss down before the healer runs OOF. Groups with solid tanks that hold aggro and dps who are adept at managing their own threat favor the HPF/HPS approach.

 

Your own gear doesn't have much influence over any of that. Some may advocate stacking power/ alacrity over crit/ surge, for greater non-crit throughput. I honestly havn't bothered to compare any combat logs. But I can't imagine how the boost to bonus healing and reduction in casting time, could possibly compensate for the lost crits. But that still isn't gearing for HPF/HPS or HPCT.

 

Things you might consider with your gear

1) compare your BM piece's stats to similar Tionese ~ they are very close.

 

2) If you carefully manage the Bubble debuff on your tank in PvE, and keep the tank bubbled or on debuff all the time ~ the 2 piece PvP set bonus is GREAT. 15% more uptime on your bubbles = potential to be extremely efficient. Managing the bubble and it's debuff is the biggest difference between PvE & PvP for sage healers. Bubbles are not terribly efficient in PvP because attackers will change targets, and players often die before the debuff expires, but in PvE the bubble is the king of single target heals. Rejuvenate with Force Shelter & Conveyance is still the queen.

 

3) The 4 piece PvE bonus is pretty worthless, because you're rarely going to get your resource bar that low once you learn how not to, and you will still have Noble Sac. But the 2 piece bonus is very nice for certain situations.

 

4) The relic of Ephemerial healing is junk ~ you'll see more effect from the power on a WH relic of boundless ages

 

5) You're trying to gear for the highest bonus healing possible, but there is only so much Willpower available. But don't stack power at the expense of crit. You're going to naturally have some alacrity from things like earrings, focus, and implants. Stacking huge amounts of alacrity will not save enough additional casting time to put out even 1 extra big heal per minute. 1 crit per minute (assuming 75% crit bonus) on a big heal will have the same effect on your throughput. You should easily land 2 crits per minute if you have a 35% crit chance. The only practical way to boost your throughput after you hit the DR is with crit / surge is power. ~edited to remove some bad information~

 

6) No one is going to look at your force tab to check out your crit chance & bonus healing numbers ~ even though those are the 2 most relevant metrics. And anyone afraid to do a tier 1 HM FP with someone in purple 50's isn't a good player.

Edited September 30, 2012 by Cleet_Xia

[Toraak]

I've also been trying to figure out my secondary stats for my Healing sage. I've gotten my surge up to 75.11%, my Crit is at 37% (after the 5% buff. above the cap atm.) power 900, and my Alac is at 10.07%. The last time I had heard there was no diminishing returns off of power, but that may have changed since I last looked. The one thing I've noticed for my character however is that my Willpower is only at 1851.

 

What is the DR from power, and if there is one, should I be lowering my power to add additional Willpower?

[enoax]

For bonus healing (and damage) there is no diminishing returns from either power or willpower. Willpower will contribute to your crit % and that relationship is subject to DR.

 

With your talented willpower % bonus, your sage buff and the crit bonus contribution, willpower will be always slightly better than power (for dps willpower is ~ 10% better than power; for healing it's probably about the same).

 

So switch your power augments to willpower. But other than that you really can't 'ditch' power for willpower. The only mod that would effect is aptitude mods... But in that case you want the higher power/ lower wp and endurance version. (because the power on the aptitude 26 is >10% the loss in willpower compared to the 26A version) Enhancements dont have primary stat and armorings dont have power. For implants/ ears you generally want the highest combined willpower/power version. For implants I believe itit the mk-1 black hole implant. For the ear the only black hole version better the rakata daily comm is a rare drop from EC HM. (and hazmat of course)

 

You could probably ditch a little alacrity for surge though. 10% seems a bit high to me.

Edited September 30, 2012 by enoax