Sage healer noob questions

[TheDuge]

Hey!

 

I'm fairly new to the game and recently a started a healer sage character, who is now at level 31, just got healing trance. I looked around some guides, tried to learn and practice, but I still have some questions for which I couldn't find any answers. My questions apply to pve battles, primarily to flashpoints, maybe heroics.

 

1. Do I understand correctly that the tank is the most important member to heal? If yes, then what exactly does that mean? For example what if some aoe hits the tank and the 2 dps and their health goes down to 30%. I should heal the tank first, right? But for how much? Back to 90-100% and only after that should I heal the 2 dps? Or if only the tank is taking damage then should I leave the 2 dps alone and just focus on the tank? What if a dps is down to 10%? Then I should heal him first, right? Or does the tank still get priority? Is it better to sacrifice a dps just to keep the tank alive? I guess there are no general rules for this, but some hints would be still welcome.

 

2. My biggest problem so far was actually taking care of myself. I tend to not pay enough attention to my health bar and heal only the other 3 group members. So what if for example we all are down to 30% health? Should I still heal the tank first and after that myself? What's the correct order here?

 

3. Sometimes when adds enter a boss fight they run directly at me and start attacking me after I cast a healing spell (any). Is that my fault? What should I do about it? Is it better to run around from these, or should I just stay in place, heal myself and wait for the tank to take them off me?

 

Edit: Also general question for point 3: If those adds aren't some low health ones, then what do I do? Let's say we fight 3 of them (they are roughly the same strength), everything goes well, then one of them decides do attack me. Do I run around? Do I stay in place and resume normal healing and hope someone will get it off me?

Edited January 14, 2013 by TheDuge

[DarthSeraph]

I suppose each healer has their own preferences on healing their group. Me personally what I tend to do is have the tank on main focus (Alt+F). Bare in mind by level 31 ish a tank spec should have some defensive cooldowns and should be able to mitigate some damage and take more than the rest.

 

In answer to who to heal my priority would still be Tank. Ask the tank to put a guard on one of the DPS so that they dont steal aggro and get unecessary damage.

 

If you cast a heal and an add comes to you thats just natural becuase your healing causes aggro, if you find this happening, call upon your dps to kill them, one of them should be fine to do this.

 

I know its not much but I hope it helped in some way

[redfurry]

Hey!

 

I'm fairly new to the game and recently a started a healer sage character, who is now at level 31, just got healing trance. I looked around some guides, tried to learn and practice, but I still have some questions for which I couldn't find any answers. My questions apply to pve battles, primarily to flashpoints, maybe heroics.

 

1. Do I understand correctly that the tank is the most important member to heal? If yes, then what exactly does that mean? For example what if some aoe hits the tank and the 2 dps and their health goes down to 30%. I should heal the tank first, right? But for how much? Back to 90-100% and only after that should I heal the 2 dps? Or if only the tank is taking damage then should I leave the 2 dps alone and just focus on the tank? What if a dps is down to 10%? Then I should heal him first, right? Or does the tank still get priority? Is it better to sacrifice a dps just to keep the tank alive? I guess there are no general rules for this, but some hints would be still welcome.

 

2. My biggest problem so far was actually taking care of myself. I tend to not pay enough attention to my health bar and heal only the other 3 group members. So what if for example we all are down to 30% health? Should I still heal the tank first and after that myself? What's the correct order here?

 

3. Sometimes when adds enter a boss fight they run directly at me and start attacking me after I cast a healing spell (any). Is that my fault? What should I do about it? Is it better to run around from these, or should I just stay in place, heal myself and wait for the tank to take them off me?

 

Edit: Also general question for point 3: If those adds aren't some low health ones, then what do I do? Let's say we fight 3 of them (they are roughly the same strength), everything goes well, then one of them decides do attack me. Do I run around? Do I stay in place and resume normal healing and hope someone will get it off me?

 

The tank gets priority, yes, but it depends a bit on the situation. If either the tank or the healer dies, most likely the rest of the group will fall, unless the fight was almost over; if a DPS dies the combat can usually be finished, but it is obviously not ideal. In your "all at 30%" example: if everyone is taking damage from multiple mobs, a continuous AoE effect, etc. then you should try to heal everyone evenly, starting with the tank. But if it was a one-off AoE attack, and after that only the tank will be taking damage, it's better to top off the tank first.

 

The tank and the rest of the group should try and keep mobs off you, but they may not react immediately. If you get attacked, you can:

 

- Use Force Wave (the frontal cone AoE you have since level 3) to knock weak mobs to the ground. By the time they are standing up again, the DPS should be killing them.

- Use Force Armor (your "bubble") on yourself. That should keep you alive long enough for the rest of the group to pick up the adds.

- Use Cloud Mind. This skill lowers your "threat" i.e. how threatening you are to the mobs. They will attack the most threatening of the team, so when you use Cloud Mind they will probably go for the tank.

- If all else fails, try to get near the tank so s/he can pick up the mobs without having to move - most tank abilities are short range.

- There's a skill that heals yourself instantly, but I'm not sure if you have it at level 31.

 

Hope this helps!

[Elmerpl]

Welcome to healing and good luck to you.

 

ad.1 First of all yes, tank and heal are the core and spine of all flash point groups, and if you have to choose between tank and dps, than sory friend but dps is going down, otherwise if you would have to choose between heal and tank... than it mostly doesn't matter since it's most certainly a wipe by that point. I usually try to keep tank fully healed most of the time, but do not get overly excited and do not overheal him too much (overheal is all the heal you give him over his maximum hp), it's a waste of resources. In tight situations such as mentioned AoE, put your bubble on the tank, than if he is still ~30% or above pop your AoE heal asap and than heal the tank up to ~70% than start healing others, don't be afraid to pop some of your cooldowns ("force potency" and such) on such occasions, after some time you'll get the hang of it and will know instinctively if they are needed or not. If you'll be able to keep you and tank alive in tight spots, even if dps wipes, the fight is not over, they might get back to med center and run back.

 

ad.2 go into preference and in user interface tab find and turn on option "show group as operation frames" than your hud should display all of the group members in one place, including you, it's much easier to keep check if someone need help or not, oh one thing, you will not see the companions health in that setting. If the display is still to small for you (it was for me) you can change the size in interface editor (click the "+" symbol next to your main quickslot bar and choose the "interface editor" option)

 

ad.3 first of all it's good to know if there will be any adds in the fight, before you start, as a healer you generate threat on all enemies in fight simultaneously so it's common that you become their first target, talk with your group and set a strategy either choose a dps who will be working as an offtank and killing the adds as they appear or set that if you get adds on you, you run up to tank, he uses AoE (damage or taunt or whatever) and gets the adds off you, than you get back to your position (that is as far from the danger as possible). Never, and I mean NEVER run around with mobs at your tail, it makes it really hard for tank to get them off you, you could also run into an unwanted danger/AoE and such but most of all running with sage = 90% less heal if any and that = wipe. Communication with your tank (better even a whole group) is the best way to go, otherwise it will be chaotic and painful.

[Heezdedjim]

Dulfy has a nice guide to sorcerer healing, which translates to sage if you just swap all the names for things around:

 

http://dulfy.net/2012/01/12/sith-sorcerer-healing-guide/

 

You'll find in this game that some classes tend to feel a bit weak up to a fairly high level, and sage / sorc as a healer is one of them. You won't really get your full toolset as a sage / sorc healer until you hit 40 (thus gaining enough skill points to get your 31-point AOE heal). I wound up leveling all the way to 40 in full Lightning (DPS) spec on my sorc, and only swapped to healing at 40 once it becomes more needed in PvE to get through the tougher boss fights with the companions. Heal specs before 40 tend to just slow things down in solo PvE, because you have lousy damage and don't really need the healing to survive.

 

That said, you can level up 100% in heal spec if you're doing primarily group content. I leveled my scoundrel as a full heal spec from 10 - 50 doing nothing but flashpoints and only doing my class quests to get companions. The benefit of it is you will know how to heal in groups very well by the time you hit the level cap, and you'll have a very long friends list if you're any good at it. The downside is you won't feel super powerful for most of the way; but in lower level FPs you're not taxed that much either, so it works out.

 

Once you hit 50, for routine content like hard mode flash points, you priority will be pretty simple:

 

1. Keep your bubble up on the tank and anyone else who is taking damage or will be soon (including yourself, when needed).

 

2. Keep your AOE heal going as long as at least two people (including you, if needed) are close enough together to stand in it.

 

3. Cleanse heavy DOTs off the tank and anyone else who gets hit with them.

 

After you set or refresh bubbles, your rotation will always start with the minor heal that procs the cost and crit benefits for your other major heals (for the sorc this is Resurgence; I'm not sure what the sage heals are called). You get this one pretty early on, and it's the core tool for managing force; never cast a major heal without casting this one first, except in emergencies.

 

The second thing you cast will usually be Revivification (the AOE heal), as long as at least two people who are taking damage are close enough to stand in it. Melee DPS are easy in this respect, since they're almost always right on top of the boss with the tank. Be careful, however, that you don't drop it right before the boss pops a big AOE knockback or starts running around like an idiot, making everyone move out of the heal radius. You may sometimes have to encourage ranged DPS to stand together so you can drop the AOE heal on them as needed; unless there are heavy AOEs they need to scatter out of, or it's a fight where the boss does only melee damage and ignores ranged.

 

After that, use Innervate to add on single target healing for whoever needs it most, usually your tank. This is your single target channel heal, and is the most force / HP efficient single target heal you have. It also procs the free Consumption (HP to force conversion), in case you need it.

 

I tend to cast Dark Infusion rarely, only when Innervate is on cooldown. I only use Dark Heal (the minor quick cast single target heal), when someone is near death and the extra second to cast DI might end them.

 

If I start taking damage, then I immediately bubble up, hit the aggro dump ability, and then hit my medium self-only heal if I need it. If I have lost aggro at that point, I will probably go back to healing someone who is taking damage and use my self-only heal on CD later as needed to catch up. If the tank doesn't manage to get aggro back pretty quick, then you can pop your medpack to buy a little more time, but you're going to die soon if the focus stays on you (light armor with no mitigation or HP talents to speak of is like that).

 

The tricky part comes in watching those four little bars and keeping aware of everything that is going on, so you know who is going to get hit and who is going to stop getting hit. Because your casts take a long time, making sure you don't waste them, and being preemptive where you can will make a difference. You have a lot of raw healing power, but you have to keep your bubbles up and take advantage of AOE heal efficiency to bring that power into play. If you just go around spamming single heals all day, you will go OOM in no time and wipes are sure to follow.

 

Also be aware of where you are and where you need to be; you can't afford to spend all your time healing yourself because you forgot not to stand in the fire.

Edited January 14, 2013 by Heezdedjim

[TheDuge]

Thank you all for the quick suggestions, I already learned new things from them, I'll be sure to try them out tonight

My first thoughts are these. I'm kinda afraid to use the force wave defense, because I found that it doesn't really help, it gives a bit space, but the mobs usually attack me again quite fast. I'm also afraid to use it because I might brake a CC with it if I don't pay enough attention and I guess I won't have time to look around and check.

Also I really can't imagine how you guys can type while in battle. I have to click with mouse and keyboard a lot and I really can't imagine me typing any text in chat. But I guess I'll get used to it then.

[Heezdedjim]

Also I really can't imagine how you guys can type while in battle. I have to click with mouse and keyboard a lot and I really can't imagine me typing any text in chat. But I guess I'll get used to it then.

I don't type anything during combat in groups. But in most cases it doesn't matter, since the fights aren't that complex. I've run entire hard mode FPs where nobody said a word other than "hi" at the start and "good group thx all" at the end. Where it does matter, like when running ops with your guild, then you should have voice comms. And even then, you usually just listen to what the raid leader or tank is saying; there isn't a whole lot that a healer needs to tell people to do during most encounters.