Can you explain these thresholds some more? I've scoured the internet looking for details on this stuff and can't find it. It had been my understanding that the diminishing returns after that low mark made it less important for alac and to boost Crit up to around 3300-3500 and then dump the rest into Mastery. I will admit that I would prefer to have more of a balance but again, just going off of what I'm reading from the community. To your other question, I don't ever run 16m content. Only 8-person SM/HM raids and the usual daily crap. On the gear set, I do run full tactician for now. Again, something there is virtually no good info about online. I'll check out what you're suggesting. I have no idea what the Toxic Haze heal puts out but having a free AOE heal that is also my best DPS skill seems at least to be selectively a helpful thing given that an operative is more of a HoT healer than burst like sage/sorc.

Thanks - these are good thoughts. I've been off and on with this game since launch so I've really done it all. Used to be in hardcore NiM raiding groups, so I believe I am a very competent healer. People rarely die in my grps/raids and I even find myself tossing patch heals to other grps because the other healer is lagging so bad. I've also solo healed many sm ops fights with cleanses etc. For me though, it's about continuing to improve. Where I'm at now is the stats game - trying to get better however I can. To that end, I would again welcome any feedback or tips. Thank you for taking the time to read this. As far as my current setup, you can see that here: https://ibb.co/BLX1B54 I used to have more in Alacrity but have read that it's kinda pointless after 1,213. I am rocking the 228 augments for the higher Crit/Alacrity. Have full set armor - working on second set to get the Toxic Haze AOE heal. Want to see how that one parses since it's a free cast. I've been working to get Medtech amplifier armorings on my gear items and the Crit/Alacrity clicky relics since the old Master/Power ones cap out on most content. Any other tips to squeeze more heals out?

I recently returned to the game so I'm out of date on some stats things. As an operative healer, what should my parse goal be for doing HM ops? I've been doing 5-7K on sm bosses but not sure if that's good or not. My rotation prob needs some work.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I've decided to go Tactician's. The biggest reason to go for Healing bonus over Mastery is that for the older raid content, Mastery is capped, so it wouldn't do anything for you in that content anyways.

That's a fair argument. But would you say that a 5% healing boost is better than a 5% mastery boost? And do you know if anybody has ever parsed that?

Hey all - I'm hoping to get some opinions about the best gear sets for an operative healer. Here are some of my initial thoughts: Best Option: Stimulated - if you rock the 480min stimpacks, you're really always under the effects of a stimpack...so this is essentially a permanent 5% mastery buff. It may not sound like a lot but at 10K mastery, it's 500 more to your primary stat that impacts every heal. Seems significant. Maybe Option: Tactician's - it sounds good but I'm not so sure. Unless they changed the soft cap on crit chance, then I am already maxed (or will be soon). So unless this 15% CC extends the cap, which I doubt, then it's useless. As to the 5% heal, it's only while you have a tactical advantage....which is microseconds when you're going down a heal rotation. So basically it's a 5% increase on a single heal. Say that's Kolto Infusion and it doesn't crit, then it's roughly a 700hp additional heal. Again, useless. Worst Options: Aggressive Treatment - sounds good but that "minor heal" is going to be so small it's useless. Amplified Champions - admittedly I don't understand what this one does. Avenger's - not for a healer Berserker's - not for a healer Debilitator's - just sucks Probe Tech - sounds good but I've read about parsing it and it's only like 5K - aka useless Quick Thinker - just sucks Rapid Response - sounds good but I'm almost never below 50% health Stationary Grit - not for a healer Taskmaster's - sucks The Slow Road - sucks Victor's - not for a healer Trishin's - not for a healer -- Please let me know your thoughts! Thx

I am level 70. I hit lvl 70 years ago. I'm a founder LOL. I'm wearing 248 armor, aka a couple tiers from max. Thank you all for the responses. I believe my question was answered.

Fair enough. I hate DPS anyways. I'm 246-248 geared, just returning from a break. I only need to do a DPS so I can plow through the storyline crap and unlock Ossus.

I'm hoping that it's a feature that I just haven't discovered yet, so help me out! I'm primarily a healer but I sometimes need to DPS. OK, no problem. Just switch roles between (Sage) Seer/Balance. Here's the issue: As far as I can tell, every time I switch roles, I have to manually setup my skills on the hotbar every time. This means not only having to do this annoying process but I have to remember how I usually set it up...which candidly, requires me to save a photo of each hotbar setup on my phone and use it every time. This simply does not make sense. I've never seen a game that doesn't allow you to be able to have saved hotbars/skills for each or something like this. The default hotbar that rotates between #1 and #4 - I've tried saving my healing layout on #1 and then the DPS layout on #4. But when I switch roles, it wipes out what I had just set. And I also checked with the UI - if you switch saved interfaces, that only impacts the UI elements (where things are on the screen) - it has nothing to do with skills on hotbars. Help!

Thanks for the link. Candidly, I'm finding all of that hard to digest. Looking for a more direct answer if someone wouldn't mind explaining!

Hey all - looking for some opinions: When looking into upgrading to the new tier of Augments, (I'm a PvE Operative/Medicine healer), I can either go Alacrity or Crit Rating. The way MMOs used to work back in the day was that crit % meant everything, especially for caster DPS and healers. Is that the case with SWTOR? I've tried to do the math on it and it seems like get better value with the crit % and crit magnitude by investing in that rather than going full alacrity and shaving a fraction of a second off cast times. But I've also heard talk of certain stats getting maxed at a certain percentage...so looking for feedback. Thx all

I've heard the debate regarding the Orbital bonus from the PVP gear being better for DPS than trading those 69 armorings for the 78 armorings that would give you 24 more Cunning and 21 more Endurance for each. Smarter people than me have supposedly parsed this and swear the 3 more sec of orbital is more damage if it's used in the rotation. BUT What about the PVE set bonus that shaves 15 seconds off the cooldown of Target Acquired? I'd wager that most well-geared snipers are just at or slightly over 100% accuracy. So is shaving 15 seconds off of a skill that boosts your accuracy really better than the 24 cun/21end (x2) you'd get for skipping the set bonuses and just rocking all 78 armorings? Appreciate any insights if anybody has actually tested this before.

Update: I just ran it with a sorc and destroyed it in about 5 seconds. This encounter is clearly extremely easier for certain classes than others. There's certainly some sort of balance needed here. Just a friendly suggestion for the devs who I assume are going to lock this post soon

Is there some trick to killing this guy? This is labeled as a solo quest but I don't see how it'd be possible to kill this mob without a full group. He's immune to CC, casts a snare on you, and his attack drains 30K HP in about 3 seconds. What's the deal here? Is this guy bugged?

I have a theory about this and it may not be a popular one... Snipers have a few AOE abilities, though they're not really sustainable depending on the encounter. However, for boss fights that have several mini-waves of adds, dropping those AOEs in all of those instances results in a significant boost on a parser. I know because I've done some encounters and boosted by overall DPS by several hundred. So, for the people who only look at Snipers and will only recruit them for example if they often top the parsers, that's one way to appease them. But, I'd argue that there's a difference between high parser DPS and good DPS. There are certain fights that the overall encounter is dependent on burning the boss down as fast as possible, rather than killing the adds that a Merc for example could easily handle. This will hurt my overall DPS but it's also me doing what's best for the raid overall. I have mixed feelings about this because it's annoying when an elite guild won't accept people who don't cross a certain threshold on the parser without considering what really best for the raid. Others experienced this or do you genuinely hit 1600-1800+ on parser without AOEs?