Merc heals going 0 crit build, do I still go for surge?

[AzlanWhite]

Greetings all.

 

Well my merc is currently running an all-out power/alac build (All quick savant enhancements) with main stat (talented +9%) augments. My surge is currently about 50% and my crit bout 23% (Due to aim I'm assuming).

 

The question: Is this a bad idea? Should I swap for some surge and get it to 75% sacrificing my rather high alacrity, despite going for 0 crit build?

 

Thanks in advanced.

 

Note: Am currently mix with 72s and 69s with 66 main hand at the moment.

[Jimvinny]

Greetings all.

 

Well my merc is currently running an all-out power/alac build (All quick savant enhancements) with main stat (talented +9%) augments. My surge is currently about 50% and my crit bout 23% (Due to aim I'm assuming).

 

The question: Is this a bad idea? Should I swap for some surge and get it to 75% sacrificing my rather high alacrity, despite going for 0 crit build?

 

Thanks in advanced.

 

Note: Am currently mix with 72s and 69s with 66 main hand at the moment.

 

You are probably banging into the DR wall on alacrity so hard right now.... yes, you should definitely go for some surge. Even with zero crit, you still crit sometimes.

 

That being said, you should probably just re-roll operative.

 

Kidding, kidding...

Edited August 30, 2013 by Jimvinny

[BigDumbViking]

So.... you basically just want to run out of heat faster? Are you opting out of the crit talents too?

 

I would highly recommend you do some math on the heat per heal you are going to be dealing with....

[AzlanWhite]

Alacrity can be very damaging pre 2.0, but the buffs it gotten at that patch improves energy regen and it can be very useful now.

 

That aside, I know something was wrong with that high-a-alacrity I'm having now, even though it cured my heat problem somewhat. Gonna start swapping some power/surge enchancements in the gear then. Thanks again for the insight.

 

P/S: I actually do have a scoundrel heals, but I prefer the challenge and fun being merc heals as compared to scoundrels/ops rather awesome but mundane healing. No offense though everyone have their own taste of fun. (:

[Phrase]

I run 50/50 quick savant/ adept enhancements and still get a decent amount of RS crits that hit for between 8.9 and 10.5 k each when specced into the crit boosts in arsenal and bg. When I went higher on alacrity, I really didn't notice much of an impact on cast times or regen tbh (I may have gained a few 100ths of a second).

[LordKantner]

Alacrity should be about 300, a little less is fine. Rest should be Surge, as it gives your heals far more in terms for output. Also by going pure power like me, the Crit Multiplier will be benefited more as well, since its a percentage, just another reason to go with Surge.

[cashogy_reborn]

No alacrity. Its a bad stat.

 

Power/Surge or bust.

[TimmehSolo]

No alacrity. Its a bad stat.

 

Power/Surge or bust.

 

Pre 2.0 I would have agreed with you, however going completely surge sends you into the cap, and it's just not worth it after a point. Since Acc does nothing for hesls, and a little Alac helps, you should be putting some tertiary stat into Alac. Surge is very important, don't get me wrong, but after the soft cap it's worth more to get the Alacrity.

[cashogy_reborn]

Pre 2.0 I would have agreed with you, however going completely surge sends you into the cap, and it's just not worth it after a point. Since Acc does nothing for hesls, and a little Alac helps, you should be putting some tertiary stat into Alac. Surge is very important, don't get me wrong, but after the soft cap it's worth more to get the Alacrity.

 

Going completely surge puts you at 75%, which is where the DR curve starts to get very very steep.

 

The DR curve for surge was not changed in 2.0, so it actually has the *least* amount of DR than any other stat.

 

 

Like I just said before, no alacrity. Ever.

[snaplemouton]

Like I just said before, no alacrity. Ever.

 

And you were chosen as the commando representative? Wow...

[PerinnAybara]

Cash isn't a number cruncher. It's not a big deal. Honestly with the way they reduced the multipliers without increasing the secondary stat budget the difference isn't as big as before between proper start allocation and poor stat allocation. For instance cash is trading four percent surge for four to five percent reduction on the Gcd, and increased resource gain of .2 energy per second. He'll have a stronger maximum burst for lower overall output.

 

Oh and his rail shot and unload will miss one percent of the time.

 

Not a big deal.

Edited September 8, 2013 by PerinnAybara

[znihilist]

I did some calculation on how much would surge and alacrity would contribute to total HPS. You can find the result here on this plot. The green curve is for alacrity and the red one for surge.

X axis is the rating or how many points in Surge/Alacrity.

Y axis is the increase in HPS.

 

Calculation is based around the fact that we have 23% crit chance and we have invested in the 2% alacrity talent from the pyro tree. Critical bonus from the Warden talent does not affect the calculation since the difference in critical bonus is what counts and not the actual value.

Effect of improved vents and critical reaction are not taken into consideration since the effect is brief but their influence slightly favours alacrity.

(This sentence is not entirely correct, check the "Edit" part of the post) Anyway it seem for best HPS would be to put 200 points in surge and rest in alacrity.

However, heat management will complicate things.

 

Clarification: These plots are not the Diminishing Returns plot, but they are closely related. You can think of them as weighted DR plots .

 

 

Edit: I will try later to do creat a plot for a fixed total budget for Surge and Alacrity to have a better clear idea of how to distribute the budget, since what is presented above is better interpreted in a shared budget analysis.

Edited September 8, 2013 by znihilist

[znihilist]

Edit: I will try later to do creat a plot for a fixed total budget for Surge and Alacrity to have a better clear idea of how to distribute the budget, since what is presented above is better interpreted in a shared budget analysis.

 

 

Before I start explaining the new plot, I think I need to explain certain things.

Since OP did not mention what sort of gear he posses, I decided to work on Kel Dragon gear.

Surge/Alacrity share a budget of 860 points. Tech crit chance (healing is mostly tech) is at 28.92% for a fully augmented gear with the ear piece having crit on it.

So for the following we have :

28.92 crit chance and 860 budget to distribute between surge and alacrity.

 

So now we have the following plot

 

X axis: Points in surge rating (alacrity will have the rest)

Y axis: Ratio of (1 + critchance X Surge) * [ 1 + Alacrity / ( 98 - Alacrity ) ] and [1 + critchance X Surge(860) ]

 

Term 1: (1 + critchance X Surge)

This term represents how much increase of HPS is coming from critical heals

Term 2: [ 1 + Alacrity / ( 98 - Alacrity ) ]

This term represent how much increase of HPS is coming from alacrity

The figure 98 is actually 100% minus the 2% alacrity we get from the pyro tree.

Term 3: [1 + critchance X Surge(860) ]

This term represents how much increase of HPS is coming from critical heals when all budget points are dedicated to surge

In this case, since it is not comparative anymore the Warden talent is included along with the 1% you get from legacy companion. So even if you don't put any point in surge, you will have at least 66% critical healing bonus.

So the Y axis actually a ratio of HPS increase for a specific budget over the HPS increase when all budge is in surge.

 

 

From the plot it would seem it is best to have 172 surge rating and 688 alacrity and it is 5.7% better than dumping all budget into surge. However, this is all without taking into consideration heat management.

 

 

Clarification:

Value of surge rating is not bin center on the plot, it is the left edge, so the surge rating for the first bin is 0 (last is 860)

Bins are as large as they are since there are 10 items on the gear that have surge/alacrity (7 enhancements + 2 implants + 1 ear) and they all have a budget of 86 points. So the 4rth bin means there are (4-1) pieces that have surge on them, 8th bin means there are 8-1 pieces that have surge on them etc etc.

Edited September 8, 2013 by znihilist

[PerinnAybara]

Before I start explaining the new plot, I think I need to explain certain things.

Since OP did not mention what sort of gear he posses, I decided to work on Kel Dragon gear.

Surge/Alacrity share a budget of 860 points. Tech crit chance (healing is mostly tech) is at 28.92% for a fully augmented gear with the ear piece having crit on it.

So for the following we have :

28.92 crit chance and 860 budget to distribute between surge and alacrity.

 

So now we have the following plot

 

X axis: Points in surge rating (alacrity will have the rest)

Y axis: Ratio of (1 + critchance X Surge) * [ 1 + Alacrity / ( 98 - Alacrity ) ] and [1 + critchance X Surge(860) ]

 

Term 1: (1 + critchance X Surge)

This term represents how much increase of HPS is coming from critical heals

Term 2: [ 1 + Alacrity / ( 98 - Alacrity ) ]

This term represent how much increase of HPS is coming from alacrity

The figure 98 is actually 100% minus the 2% alacrity we get from the pyro tree.

Term 3: [1 + critchance X Surge(860) ]

This term represents how much increase of HPS is coming from critical heals when all budget points are dedicated to surge

In this case, since it is not comparative anymore the Warden talent is included along with the 1% you get from legacy companion. So even if you don't put any point in surge, you will have at least 66% critical healing bonus.

So the Y axis actually a ratio of HPS increase for a specific budget over the HPS increase when all budge is in surge.

 

 

From the plot it would seem it is best to have 172 surge rating and 688 alacrity and it is 5.7% better than dumping all budget into surge. However, this is all without taking into consideration heat management.

 

 

Clarification:

Value of surge rating is not bin center on the plot, it is the left edge, so the surge rating for the first bin is 0 (last is 860)

Bins are as large as they are since there are 10 items on the gear that have surge/alacrity (7 enhancements + 2 implants + 1 ear) and they all have a budget of 86 points. So the 4rth bin means there are (4-1) pieces that have surge on them, 8th bin means there are 8-1 pieces that have surge on them etc etc.

 

Thanks Appreciate the work.

[cashogy_reborn]

And you were chosen as the commando representative? Wow...

 

lol

 

 

For starters, I know nothing about PvE.

 

For PvP, alacrity is a wasted stat.

[Michka]

lol

 

 

For starters, I know nothing about PvE.

 

For PvP, alacrity is a wasted stat.

 

Well, first, he's talking about merc healing, so all the responses related to rail shots and unloads are mostly irrelevant. Second of all, he talks about 69s and 72s as his gear, so we can probably also assume he is talking about pve. Someone is asking for advice and you are misleading them by talking about something completely different then they are.

[PerinnAybara]

lol

 

 

For starters, I know nothing about PvE.

 

For PvP, alacrity is a wasted stat.[/quote-]

 

Alacrity isn't a wasted stat. Especially on a healer that gets interrupted all the time.

Edited September 9, 2013 by PerinnAybara

[PerinnAybara]

Well, first, he's talking about merc healing, so all the responses related to rail shots and unloads are mostly irrelevant. Second of all, he talks about 69s and 72s as his gear, so we can probably also assume he is talking about pve. Someone is asking for advice and you are misleading them by talking about something completely different then they are.

 

Joking comment to follow.

 

I was under the impression merc healers had to dps in nightmare due to how tight the enrage timers are. In a suedo vent heat sort of situation.

 

And yeah I understood the original question. Was just replying to the replies.

 

Also addressing the original poster, you should still sit at 23% crit without any crit rating so you benefit by .23* whatever percentage increase on surge you get from surge rating. You should actually add some crit rating honestly. People used to stop adding crit rating when crit gave less than 2% per 100 rating. So 200 ish crit rating gives more than 4% which is actually more valuable now. Relative to power.

Edited September 9, 2013 by PerinnAybara

[CJNJ]

lol

 

 

For starters, I know nothing about PvE.

 

For PvP, alacrity is a wasted stat.

 

Alacrity isn't a wasted stat. Especially on a healer that gets interrupted all the time.

 

Actually in pvp it kinda is, because there is such little impact from alacrity in short fights like pvp and getting .2 off of a cast bar still leaves 1.3 sec to get interrupted, so unless the dps ain't bright u still will be interrupted

 

That being said. Only stacking surge does get pointless eventually as well. Really just a matter of opinion at that point as far as pvp goes. I personally wouldn't take alacrity in pvp for mandos unless I had too or it was talented

[PerinnAybara]

Actually in pvp it kinda is, because there is such little impact from alacrity in short fights like pvp and getting .2 off of a cast bar still leaves 1.3 sec to get interrupted, so unless the dps ain't bright u still will be interrupted

 

That being said. Only stacking surge does get pointless eventually as well. Really just a matter of opinion at that point as far as pvp goes. I personally wouldn't take alacrity in pvp for mandos unless I had too or it was talented

 

It makes a difference for especially our interrupts. We can't interrupt while casting which means between two mercs the one with more alacrity well get his cast of and interrupt the other provide same latency.

 

There's also the resource component and how it affects all abilities. Every twenty five seconds you can squeeze in an additional action. Not including the other benefit of an additional five resource. Using los jumping and instant don't hurt either. Getting your knockback off faster is a plus or getting off your stun.

 

Then again that's my opinion, I don't play on either of your levels.

 

You're going to get interrupted but it's a smaller window. Additionally and more importantly an interrupt is on a CD.

Edited September 9, 2013 by PerinnAybara

[AzlanWhite]

2 pages long!

 

Definitely didn't expect more to jump in and bringing in more 'advanced' explanations to help us merc heals. (:

 

Well then it is correct that I'm standing at at 23% crit with my 0 crit build, still trading away my alac enhancements for more power/surge. (Surge standing at a 63% IINW). I'm in fact PvE-heavy and merc heals is the one I love the most from all heals classes, yeah even scouns/ops bore me). Which is why I'm interested in bringing out the best in her.

 

Aside from the stats, I've been told that great healers also contribute to DPS, and I've been taking up that more seriously now throwing unload and DFA then burst a member back to good health.

 

Though I'm curious, what other abilities merc heals use to contribute to DPS?

[PerinnAybara]

2 pages long!

 

Definitely didn't expect more to jump in and bringing in more 'advanced' explanations to help us merc heals. (:

 

Well then it is correct that I'm standing at at 23% crit with my 0 crit build, still trading away my alac enhancements for more power/surge. (Surge standing at a 63% IINW). I'm in fact PvE-heavy and merc heals is the one I love the most from all heals classes, yeah even scouns/ops bore me). Which is why I'm interested in bringing out the best in her.

 

Aside from the stats, I've been told that great healers also contribute to DPS, and I've been taking up that more seriously now throwing unload and DFA then burst a member back to good health.

 

Though I'm curious, what other abilities merc heals use to contribute to DPS?

 

If you're high heat or there's a burst phase, use your support cylinder pop for you to have free power shots as well. You can even combine that with an attack adrenal to pull out some strong damage.

[periphelion]

Merc heals should not be going 0 crit. That is objectively a HPS loss. You want ~300 crit at the UW/Kell Dragon tier of gear. At that level of gear you will need 300ish surge and the remaining ~500points into alacrity.

 

Now, if you are really adamant about 0 crit (possibly for overhealing reasons, but I think that is not a well founded argument), that will naturally decrease the value of surge, so that you are better off going closer to 200 surge and a corresponding more points into alacrity. Going Power/Surge simply makes no sense both from a HPS standpoint or a reducing overheals standpoint.

Edited September 9, 2013 by periphelion