So everyone has their own take on building a character, and there is plenty of debate going on in the ops healer category between power vs cunning.

So I thought I'd post up my build (just got fully geared, all 63/dread guard relics/hazmat ear and implants) and compare to what others have. Please post a completely unbuffed - no stims, so we can compare accurately.

HP - 20 473

Cunning - 2097

Endurance - 1777

Bonus Healing - 658.9

(Cunning - 2097 + 293.6)

(Power - 803 + 136.5)

(Tech Power - 1346 + 228.8)

Accuracy - 100%

Critical Chance - 34.55%

(Cunning - 2097 + 13.01%)

(Critical Rating - 359 + 12.53%)

Critical Multiplier - 80.26%

((Surge Rating - 600 + 29.26%)

For me, I go for a bit of a balance between power and cunning, and you will notice I have a high surge rating. I don't stack any alacrity, because I think it does more harm than good. I've seen some graphs that show that increased alacrity will generally result in a faster depletion of energy, or having to have larger intervals between casts/popping cds more often.

Until there is some form of energy regeneration relating to alacrity, I don't think I will ever use it. A few tenths of a second is not worth it to me, and if it is that kind of emergency, we have the surgical probe, which is a free heal below 30%.

Remember, this is all unbuffed.

It's getting real repetitive explaining this over and over =[

You are trading 2.62% surge for 7.68% alacrity by stacking all surge. Almost triple.

That 2.62% surge amounts to about 1% healing, applied totally at random.

It's not about emergency healing, though it is worth noting alacrity is the **** when Kinj-Kinf is whipped out.

Alacrity frees up GCDs over the course of a fight giving you more guaranteed healing and regen via diagnostic scan.

Not ALOT more healing but better than the alternative.

Regardless, here's what I'm aiming at. Almost there on my live toon.

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/0b92fd2a-19a8-43c0-b620-b183ad13d690

In big fights, you hardly have the time to use diagnostic scan. I know I never do, and I generally don't have to pop the energy cd by maintaining my healing, and I am constantly casting as well. What I've seen with higher alacrity is that you have to either allow some time in between casts to maintain your energy, or you need to spam a few diagnostic scans here and there, which to me, is highly inefficient.

The global cd thing you mentioned is a nice perk to alacrity, but not worth the cost to me, personally.

In big fights, you hardly have the time to use diagnostic scan. I know I never do, and I generally don't have to pop the energy cd by maintaining my healing, and I am constantly casting as well. What I've seen with higher alacrity is that you have to either allow some time in between casts to maintain your energy, or you need to spam a few diagnostic scans here and there, which to me, is highly inefficient.

Casting a few diagnostic scans is not really inefficient if done right. Ultimately the weighing of addings stats to alacrity or surge comes down to the quantity of additional healing you will put out if you have a higher critical multiplier or the additional healing you could put out with lower cast times, diagnostic scan becoming a valuable tool in the second case to fill in gaps without using more energy. I have not done actual calculations on this myself, but my thought is that once you get so high in surge that the amount of crit multiplier gain is very small, the extra heals coming from the "gaps" created by alacrity will outweigh the extra surge benefit.

Might I just add that this is my PvE build. In my PvP spec (which I'm still working on), I do have a lot more alacrity, because I am pretty much spamming Kolto Injection/Surgical Probe on people, as well as Kolto Probes and AoE heals.

For PvP, it is all about getting the heal to the player ASAP, without too much consideration for energy expenditure (the surgical probe balances the energy regeneration anyway). The difference to PvE is that the fights are a lot more systematic in PvE, and you can generally see when damage is about to fall, making the need of speed heals not as necessary, in my opinion.

For PvP, it is all about getting the heal to the player ASAP, without too much consideration for energy expenditure (the surgical probe balances the energy regeneration anyway). The difference to PvE is that the fights are a lot more systematic in PvE, and you can generally see when damage is about to fall, making the need of speed heals not as necessary, in my opinion.

Technically in pvp you are also being aggressively interrupted and pressured into movement. You will generally cast much less than you would in a pve raid, relying more on instants (kolto/surgical/RN/shiv). If anything alacrity depreciates under these conditions.

As to the pve, it's not an issue of emergency or fast healing, though those are there too. It's an issue of throughput.

So what relics does everyone use for PVE healing? Aside from debating the cunning vs power and all that, is there a definitive these relics are best?

Two EWH boundless ages trinkets for me. I also have a dread guard on use relic for where and when I find burst necessary (Currently using this in addition to my rakata adrenal for Kephess NiM)

The only other choice is the proc relics, which are kind of awful for healing. They can't crit, they're applied randomly and they aren't terribly powerful anyway.

These are my current unbuffed stats for PvE (fully optimized 63):

2200 Cunning

1763 Endurance

902 Power

352 Crit rating

300 Surge rating

300 Alacrity rating

Which gives:

20 332 HP

690.1 Bonus healing

34.83% Tech crit

76.28% Crit multiplier

13.27% Activation speed

These are my current unbuffed stats for PvE (fully optimized 63):

 

2200 Cunning

1763 Endurance

 

902 Power

352 Crit rating

300 Surge rating

300 Alacrity rating

 

Which gives:

20 332 HP

690.1 Bonus healing

34.83% Tech crit

76.28% Crit multiplier

13.27% Activation speed

Do you have your build on Ask Mr. Robot? All your stats tower over mine, I'm wondering what I'm not using - mostly in terms of your increased cunning and power.

Here you go:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/b8b16e30-c422-4653-8c1e-3c9314866cb2

So here's a quick question; aside from everything else. Has to do with relics; now I agree that Elite War Hero is the way to go. But what about the Matrix Cube (RRR). it gives us some pretty good stats, though its often cast aside.

What I worked out is that you can either get a +.6% in crit, or +8 in bonus healing. The crit for the matrix cube and the bonus for the Elite WH.

What would you take?

So here's a quick question; aside from everything else. Has to do with relics; now I agree that Elite War Hero is the way to go. But what about the Matrix Cube (RRR). it gives us some pretty good stats, though its often cast aside.

 

What I worked out is that you can either get a +.6% in crit, or +8 in bonus healing. The crit for the matrix cube and the bonus for the Elite WH.

 

What would you take?

+8 bonus healing amounts to roughly 35 power, give or take.

0.6% crit is worth about 20 or so undiminished crit rating (ie your crit rating below your softcap)

It's not a perfect comparison but that's probably the easiest way to conceptualize the stat weight since power/crit rating share item space.