For a healing sage the one thing that we do not want to happen is to burn through our force especially on long drawn out fights that have many burst healing stages. What I have found is that alacrity is pretty much useless for me because I do not use that +2 second cast time heal at all any more. I only rely on Salvation, Healing Trance, Rej., and Bel on occasions. Instead of having a lot of alacrity, I've chosen to just stack as much power as possible and with that I have much more surge than the soft cap. I don't care about the dim. returns; I much rather have harder hitting heals than faster cast times (which even with a lot of alacrity your cast times do not get reduced enough to make them better). Thoughts on this? Each tick of my salvation usually crits for +930.

I don't care about the dim. returns

Unfortunately for you, they still exist :/

 

There's really no way around it: the difference between stacking only Surge and having, say, an equal amount of surge and Alacrity is around 3-4% crit multiplier versus ~9% activation speed. Having that alacrity will increase your healing output by more than the surge, it's as simple as that. Our resource system is far less affected by alacrity than Commandos or Scoundrels, as well.

 

Benevolence is just bad too. Incredibly inefficient and less than stellar HPS. Deliverance is a much better filler, despite the cast time. If someone is so close to dying that you don't have time for Deliverance, you either weren't paying any attention or the incoming damage is so heavy Benevolence won't keep pace anyway.

For a raid support healer though alacrity should not and does not matter for sages because no matter how much of it you have, it's not as good as stacking more power and surge to make your salvation and healing trance hit harder. Alacrity will not make my salvation any better for the melee or ranged standing in it momentarily. My main job is to aoe heal the melee or ranged (we decide before every boss) and to also bubble and cast rej. on my respective tank. Healing Trance is really the only single target heal I use and I don't mind throwing a couple bens. out as fillers because while they are less effective in the long run, it is much better than sitting there getting ready to cast deliverance (keep in mind that I hardly ever use it; only when after healing trance if the target needs a little extra). Also tanks take massive damage at certain times and if our main tank healers cannot keep them up then that's life and we (sages) must do more than bubble them and cast rej. every time its up. This coming from a healer that is part of a 16 man group that has TfB HM on farm as well as the first boss on EC NM already down, I think my opinion is more than valid enough. I just thought I would put this out their for other sages because while I wish we could be single target power house healers, you should accept that you are the best aoe and support healer in the game with your bubble and rej. being a extremely useful tool for adding extra armor and protection. Edited November 18, 2012 by bryceman

For a raid support healer though alacrity should not and does not matter for sages because no matter how much of it you have, it's not as good as stacking more power and surge to make your salvation and healing trance hit harder.

Because who cares about silly things like maths, right? Great debating style there. "It's better because... it's better!" Reducing Alacrity doesn't let you stack any more Power whatsoever, btw.

 

And no, in a game this easy those credentials don't mean a whole lot. Sorry.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Aurojiin

How does it not allow you to stack more Power? Removing the mods with Alacrity obviously allows you to put in mods with Power, thus stacking it.

 

Not to nitpick or anything.

 

Alacrity for Sages/Sorcs is useless in this game past 8%.

EC NM is no joke for healing; it has been by far the most healing intensive fights I have experienced. Second while the math points towards stacking too much surge and no alacrity gives you less healing output, it tremendously helps out on situational aspects of the fights. Having a harder hitting aoe heal and a massive hot is much more useful because of the nature of almost all the ops fights. The only fight I can think of that having no alacrity will hinder you is Karagga when he uses the drill attack on the raid which interrupts a long cast. And lastly, the thread is titled, "Thoughts on Alacrity" so its my opinion on the usefulness of alacrity biased on my countless hours of play time. I'm not saying its correct I just thought I would put it out there for other sages because of the role we play in support healing doesn't really call for faster cast times.

How does it not allow you to stack more Power? Removing the mods with Alacrity obviously allows you to put in mods with Power, thus stacking it.

 

Not to nitpick or anything.

Let's consider the enhancements available to you.

 

Power/Alacrity

Power/Surge

Crit/Alacrity

Crit/Surge

 

Now explain to me how you can trade Surge for Power?

 

Having a harder hitting aoe heal and a massive hot is much more useful because of the nature of almost all the ops fights.

Surge clearly benefits Salvation and Rejuvenate more than Alacrity, of course. However, you're still going to be casting Healing Trance and your filler spell of choice, whether it be Deliverance or Benevolence, quite a lot over the course of an encounter, and generally speaking the activation speed boost is going to outweigh the tiny benefit of Surge at that point on the DR curve.

 

Force Armor gains nothing from either, bemusingly enough.

 

And lastly, the thread is titled, "Thoughts on Alacrity" so its my opinion on the usefulness of alacrity biased on my countless hours of play time. I'm not saying its correct I just thought I would put it out there for other sages because of the role we play in support healing doesn't really call for faster cast times.

Fair enough.

 

I will add one note: stacking Surge actually increases the value of Crit.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Aurojiin

I did not understand the reasoning behind this until I read '16 man'. Sure if you are only running 16s and don't bother with tanks than I guess crit/surge and power outweigh ala. But in 8 man there are 2 tanks and 2 healers and I have to be as good at single target as the other healer. He may help me out or vice versa but primarily each is responsible for his tank. Alacrity at 8-10% really shines here.

 

As for Benevolence I use it either as an 'oh ****' button when HT is on cd or on trash pulls where I can just burn though Force since it won't deplete anyway.

I did not understand the reasoning behind this until I read '16 man'. Sure if you are only running 16s and don't bother with tanks than I guess crit/surge and power outweigh ala. But in 8 man there are 2 tanks and 2 healers and I have to be as good at single target as the other healer. He may help me out or vice versa but primarily each is responsible for his tank. Alacrity at 8-10% really shines here.

though Force since it won't deplete anyway.

 

Even on 8 man raids its still fine because force armor eats up quite a bit of damage giving you more than enough time to top someone off. Plus when healing trance is criting for more than 2300 its more than enough to single target heal a tank.

Even on 8 man raids its still fine because force armor eats up quite a bit of damage giving you more than enough time to top someone off. Plus when healing trance is criting for more than 2300 its more than enough to single target heal a tank.

If Surge made a linear contribution to crit multiplier, that would probably be a reasonable approach.

 

However, despite the fact you "don't care" about diminishing returns, the difference between 300 and 600 surge rating is going to be around 40 - 45 more HP on crit ticks (not a cent on non-crits, obviously). This versus the entire channel completing 9% faster? Not even close.

So out of curiosity the best stats to stack on sage healer then would be power/alacrity then ?

So out of curiosity the best stats to stack on sage healer then would be power/alacrity then ?

No, because the inverse is true: eventually you are getting so little activation speed from your alacrity rating that surge is much more beneficial.

 

Aiming for an equal amount of raw surge rating and alacrity rating on your gear is a pretty solid rule of thumb.

Edited November 19, 2012 by Aurojiin

No, because the inverse is true: eventually you are getting so little activation speed from your alacrity rating that surge is much more beneficial.

 

Aiming for an equal amount of raw surge rating and alacrity rating on your gear is a pretty solid rule of thumb.

 

Thanks

While I'm not in a top guild by any means I agree with the OP that I personally don't want to much alacrity. My heals are solid enough to keep any of our tanks up (our biggest problem clearing content is dps not getting the output and always hitting enrage timers or being stupid). I run just under 8% alacrity and can still get the heals out fast enough but prefer the bigger heals to faster cast times and running out of force.

I run with maximised alacrity in pvp (DPS), and max WP/Pwr/Surge in pve (Healer).

 

When I do DPS in pve, people are always impressed by the damage output of a max-alac sage.

 

Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. In fact, just try it already so that people will remember that sages do in fact have teeth. (Force in balance is equivalent to Lolsmash, why arent there legions of sage FIB'ers like there are legions of Lolsmashers?)

Edited November 19, 2012 by Ycoga

(Force in balance is equivalent to Lolsmash, why arent there legions of sage FIB'ers like there are legions of Lolsmashers?)

 

Because the are all running Bubble Spec and that prevents them from getting Mental Scarring =P. But ye when I DPS in PvP (and PvE) FiB is a sweet thing to use. Shame it's not auto crit like Lolsmash.

There have been many lively debates on the subject of Alacrity.

 

Some extremely vocal people have presented immovable opinions about healing with 0% alacrity being the best and only way to go. I had dabbled in low alacrity builds and didn't like it as much, as the math seemed to indicate that a moderate amount of alacrity was of benefit.

 

A while back, inspired by another player who did something similar, I decided to swap out all of my power/alacrity with crit/surge and power/surge to see if I could be a better healer without alacrity. Since I have 3 level 50 toons that use willpower gear, I figured I was willing to spend the BH comms as I could shlep the mods and enhancements around later on if I ended up not liking the results. (Disclaimer: I wasn't willing to buy another Earpiece, so I still had 57 alactiy, which is a +2% cast time.)

 

I usually heal HM EC with either another Sage healer or a Scoundrel healer. We use MOX and depending on the fight I can hold my own against the other two. After my Alacrity drop, there was a reduction in my healing (about 100-200 hps). I kept this gear for 1 8M SM EC run and 2 8M HM EC runs.

 

It is important to note that we were STILL able to handle the content. The low alacrity build worked. But I was dragging a bit according to the parse.

 

I swapped my gear back (running at 285 alacrity, which translates into +9% cast time) and next week's run had my parse back up to where it was before.

 

I've kept this build for my HM TfB runs, and it's been 100% fine. I haven't yet done NM EC, but I imagine that will ALSO be a valid build.

 

TL;DR:

1. A 0% Alacrity build will let you successfully heal a raid.

2. A moderate (e.g. 9%) Alacrity build will let you heal a raid BETTER.