This is still a work-in-progress as I have just compiled raw information, havent checked spelling/grammar, and have done 0 formatting. Hopefully it will be fixed up soon. This is for all the people who asked that I do this the last couple years. Hopefully it will help others as well.

Updated

2-19-2014

1) Changed some info about enhancements and alacrity/surge balance.

2) Added Augment section

3) Spec clarifications. Thanks Orderken

4) Relic clarifications about double procs. Thanks Orderken and Darth_Dreselus

5) Added in that 1 enhancement with crit is probably best.

6) Modified crit section to note lack of crit multiplier in sage is another (probably main) reason why sages want less crit. Also changes other healers to scoundrels when talking about static healing bonus multipliers on abilities being larger on the sage.

7) Changed some wording to specify non theory crafters have been sources of misinformation. This community has really good healing theory crafters that you can trust.

8) Started formatting to make this thing readable.

9) Change force armor from 6600+ to 6700+. No matter which augments you use, this will still be over 6700 in 78s.

PVE Sage Healing Guide

Spec:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/sage#113032221002122120221232-2000320-200

This will be good enough for just about every fight. Occasionally you will have something like 1st boss S&V Nightmare or 2nd boss TFB Nightmare where instead you might want:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/sage#113032221022122120021232-2000320-200

Also master speed is an option instead of Egress for dealing slow on lightning field (for those who wait a little too long to get in position) or dealing with the slowing adds in sandstorm. Barrier will also cleanse your slow.

If for some reason you really like deliverance, drop something else for egress instead.

Gear:

Hilt/Armorings: All Resolve. Willpower helps you heal more than endurance. You will get enough HP from your gear naturally. There is no reason to stack HP. Make sure you get the force-mystic set armorings to lower the cooldown on healing trance and give you extra force.

Augments: Willpower or Power? Definitely do not use anything else. Power used to be better. Now willpower is better. Barely. It is close enough that using extra force armors can make power better. The difference is so small that if you have the +32willpower/power +20 endurance purple augments already, then there is no reason to change. Lets assume a block of heals has 1 salvation, 2 healing trances, 3 rejuvenates, 3 force armors, 1 force wave and 1 force mend. Willpower becomes better when you hit 7 targets or more with aoes heals. Change it to two force armors and willpower becomes better at 4 targets. 1 Force armor and willpower is always better. The largest gap is only .09% when you do things like not cast force armor and hit everyone with an aoe (willpower better), or .05% when you only hit 1 with aoes and cast 3 force armors (power better). Those differences are things like 47 better out of 94703 total (.05%) or 124 better out of 144986 (.09%). So I dont think you can say one is better than another. Use a lot of force armor? Go power. Cast force armor less than 3 times per minute? Go willpower. Will you notice a difference either way? Not really. (All numbers based on BiS 78s)

Mods:

Willpower is your best stat, very closely followed by power. So you want mods with the highest combination of the 2.

Fill every mod slot with this when you can

(78)Advanced Aptitude Mod 34

82 Willpower

69 Power

62 Endurance

The 34A (99w/39p/69e) is 2nd best and is even better than the Aptitude 33. So the general rule is non lettered is best, but an A is slightly better than 1 tier below if for no other reason than you get slightly more HP.

So replace in this order where the farthest right are the best.

30->31A->31->33A->33->34A->34

Enhancements:

They have 1 secondary stat (power/crit/def/abs) and 1 Tertiary stat (alacrity/surge/shield) and endurance.

Since we dont need def, abs, accuracy, or shield, we are left with power or crit, and alacrity or surge.

Enhancements should be 55 Endurance/62 Secondary/94 Tertiary. The two or 3 you want:

(78)Advanced Adept Enhancement 34

55 Endurance/62 Power/94 Surge

(78)Advanced Quick Savant Enhancement 34

55 Endurance/62 Power/94 Alacrity

(78)Advanced Battle Enhancement 34

55 Endurance/62 Crit/94 Surge

A note about crit. Its not useless, but its not great for Sage heals. Sages get a bonus to healing bonus in the tree, force armor cannot crit, and the abilities themselves have a larger healing bonus multiplier than scoundrel healing abilities, and sages have no critical multiplier bonuses in the healing tree unlike the other healers. All of these combine to make crit a little worse than power. That gap is closing as we get better gear (since each crit would crit for more) but we are not there yet for sage healers. The ideal number to aim for is probably 1 crit enhancement, but enhancements are hard to get with power compared to crit. So use a few good enhancements with crit until you can replace them with power. I would probably leave 1 with crit unless you are averaging more than 5 force armors a minute. It is also worth noting there are more random hm drops with crit/surge than crit/alacrity enhancements. If you need enhancements with surge, crit is a good way to go.

Enhancement Gearing Strategy

Those will replace your lower level enhancements of low endurance / medium secondary stat / and high tertiary stat. Dont use and enhancement without a high tertiary stat. Sometimes low power can be better than low end if you are going up a level or 2. Like 69->78 or even 72->78. So where do we get these? Adept is rough. It will be on your 78 mainhand and that's about it. When you win an offhand, you can buy a different classes offhand that has the adept enhancement, but if you have any dps alts (or have a dps set on this character) Then get an enhancement with accuracy since only tokens have accuracy on them. After all, you can buy that offhand mod and armoring with comms. A few set bonus pieces have power alacrity which is nice. The rest of your power alacrity pieces can be bought with ultimate comms from the jedi knight vendor by buying pants. If you are going to heal and dps on this character, putting surge enhancements on your mainhand, offhand, and having surge on ears/implants lets you use those pieces on both specs.

Surge Alacrity Balancing

Enhancements are what you use to balance your tertiary stats (Alacrity versus Surge) (along with implants/earpiece). Some theory crafters say you should have 7 alacrity / 3 surge and other say 6 alacrity and 4 surge. A lof of people (non theory crafters) have told me Alacrity is useless. They are wrong. I personally use 5 and 5 because that gives me the best balance of DR on each stat and I personally dont think either stat has a huge benefit over the other. Some people (non theory crafters) forget that alacrity doesnt reduce ability cooldowns. I can still cast healing trance only once every 7.5s no matter how high alacrity goes, but do not discount the reduction in GCD, increased force regen, and ability to come closer to casting your best abilities closer to the exact cooldown. I think the balance of 5/5 works great. Because of the ease of getting Power/Alacrity enhancements, I recommend everyone getting 5 power/alacrity enhancements, 2 power/surge (mainhand and another classes offhand work, or use 1 crit/surge and 1 power/surge). And putting power and surge on your earpiece and implants for your other 3 surges. All three should be perfectly viable and the difference is minimal. I like 5/5 alacrity/surge, but there is no reason why you cannot go 6/4 or 7/3. Especially since alacrity is so much easier to obtain on enhancements than surge is. The consensus is to err on the side of more alacrity, not more surge if you go unbalanced.

Speaking of ear/implants...

Earpieces:

Token Piece:

(78)Dread Forged Force-Mystic's Device (203 endurance / 189 willpower / 130 power / 94 surge)

This is your BiS piece. Take it. One less surge enhancement to find.

Comms:

(78)Oriconian Force-healer's MK-1 Chip (227 endurance / 189 willpower / 110 power / 94 Alacrity)

This will work until you get the token. If it makes you 6/4 on alacrity/surge, then it's not a big deal.

Implants:

Token Piece:

(78)Dread Forged Stalker's MK-X Package (203 endurance / 189 willpower / 130 power / 94 surge)

Ignore that it looks like a shadow dps piece. It has all the right stats to be your BiS piece. You want 2 of these so you have 2 less power/surge enhancements to find, but in the mean time buy

Comms:

(78)Oriconian Force-healer's MK-1 Motivator (227 endurance / 189 willpower / 110 power / 94 surge)

Take this with those ultimate comms you have been saving.

Random HM Drop:

(78)Oriconian Force-healer's MK-2 Motivator (210 endurance / 203 willpower / 99 power / 94 surge)

Better than the one you can get with comms, not as good as the token piece.

Relics:

As far as relics,these are the best ones for PVE:

1)Dread Forged Relic of Focused Retribution (main stat proc)

2) Dread Forged Relic of Serendipitous Assault (power proc)

3) Kell Dragon Relic of Serendipitous Assault (power proc) (should not stack with 2)

4) Obroan Relic of Focused Retribution (main stat proc) (should not stack with 1)

5) Obroan Relic of of Serendipitous Assault (power proc) (should not stack with 2 or 3)

6) Underworld Relic of Serendipitous Assault (power proc) (should not stack with 2, 3, or 5, but does stack with 2)

7) Arkanian Relic of Serendipitous Assault (power proc) (should not stack with 2,3,5, or 6)

Clicky power relics (Boundless Ages) fall in there somewhere if you do not have a proccing relic yet AND actually click them. Healing is about sustaining a baseline level of healing, and the procs even out your healing curve more than a clicky. It is worth noting that 1,3,4,6 all proc on heals and damage, so if you regularly deal damage (keep weaken mind on a boss, deal damage with force wave to multiple targets) then those relics get slight bumps. If you can proc #3 with damage once every 40s or less, then it is better than #2.

Abilities:

Heals:

Benevolence - It doesnt heal for much, its not instant, and costs a ton of force. There is a reason why everyone agrees: Do not use this ability.

Deliverance - Like benevolence it costs alot. It costs a lot of time and force, or a lot of time and a conveyance. There are better things to use your cooldowns on. Basically everything except for benevolence. Exception: Someone needs a heal and rejuvenate, healing trance, salvation, force wave, and force armor (target has lockout debuff) are on cooldown. In this case, use force potency, mental alacrity and cast deliverance twice.

Force Armor - We are getting cheaper with only 35 force needed here. This is a must use. Keep it on your tanks on cooldown because it is useful even when they are at full health. 6700+ (assuming no relic procs in 78s) on an instant cast ability that is almost never wasted healing? I also use this as filler between the other 4 abilities.

Force Mend - Heal yourself. Instantly. For a lot of HP. For 0 force. Once every 30s. This was added as a sort of defensive cooldown, but it only occasionally ends up being used for that. It is usually used to counteract noble sacrifice. If you are low on health, use it. If everyone is fine and you are not topped off, also use it. The only cost is 1 global cooldown (and the 30s ability cooldown) so you are force positive anytime you cast this.

Force Wave - Psychic suffusion is on the bottom of the seer tree. This adds a heal to your force wave. Once every 20s you can cast this for 0 force and heal yourself and anyone in front of you and hit any enemies also in the blast. The 15m range is pretty good so correct positioning can have it hit everyone in your ops. There is no limit to the number of targets, so you can hit 16 if you do it right. Ive had this ability hit for over 60k healing before on a crit. This is almost always my second highest healing ability in a 16m ops.

Healing Trance - The bread and butter of healing your tank to full. It is a channel that hits 4 times including the first tick instantly. There have been so many times where the first tick heals someone, they take damage to under 1000 health, and the last three ticks gets them to relative safety over 10k. Rejuvenate procs conveyance which, when used on healing trance, increases the crit by 25%. This should put you at nearly 50% crit for healing trance which means you will average around 2 stacks of resplendence per cast. Also with the high crit rating, you heal for a lot more. You can use those resplendence stacks for cheaper noble sacrifices or faster salvation casts. More on this later.

Rejuvenate - Rejuv doesnt cost too much force, is an instant cast, leaves a hot on the target, and boosts the armor of the target when the hot is on them. Ideally you would alternate which tank you cast this on so both always have the armor buff, but you do what you have to do when healing. The only bad thing about rejuv is the cooldown is too long. Which means you have to pick and choose where to use your conveyance. Hint: always use it on healing trance and salvation. You should try to never cast either without it, but sometimes you do what you have to do. Just remember you pay for it later with a higher force cost on salvation or less healing and less resplendence from healing trance.

Restoration - This is your cleanse. Use it when you can cleanse something. Make sure you spec into it to make it cost less force, add physical to the types of debuffs it cleanses, and heals for a small, but better than nothing amount.

Salvation - This is why you are a sage healer. 1 cast and you heal up to 8 targets instantly and once a second for the next 10 seconds. There will be 11 ticks. This is generally between 50 and 60% of all healing done in a fight. Use this as close to on cooldown as possible. If you have 3 stacks of resplendence, it will be an instant cast. I recommend eating one of those before casting the salvation. 2 stacks of resplendence used to be ideal because the cast was only around .61s and that made your GCD .61 which added up to another 3.5s a minute of cast time. But they changed it recently (thanks for the stealth nerf bioware =/) and thats no longer the case. Still you are faster than the GCD and the force from 1 noble sacrifice each cast goes a LONG way toward keeping you from running out of force. Standing in your own salvation is also a good idea.

Utilities:

Cloud Mind - Threat dump. Ive used it before. Really I have. Important when you do things like have 8k hps a couple minutes into a fight. Not good when the healer pulls aggro.

Force Barrier - Your defensive cooldown. If things look bad, it can save your life, and give you a little bit of health back too. If salvation is down, you are even doing some healing. Bad things are 3 minute cooldown, you cant cast while channeling, and you cannot predict when the game says barrier doesnt work on this, you die anyways.

Force Potency - Increase your crit on the next two abilities by 60%. This is not quite an autocrit, but it is close. Don’t use this on rejuvenate. Do use this on deliverance and/or salvation. Unfortunately, this does not work on healing trance. This is a healing boost cooldown.

Force Speed - You arent a very mobile caster, so when you need to move, get there fast so you can use that healing trance.

Mental Alacrity - Another offensive cooldown, this increases your alacrity by 20% for 10 seconds. It makes casting deliverance tolerable. Great for healing in a burst or pairing with force potency.

Noble Sacrifice - A lot of people say this is how you manage your force. This is one way to manage your force. The other ways are: Use more abilities that cost no force. Keep alacrity high for a higher regen rate (you arent ALWAYS casting). Take the extra 100 force from the TK tree and have the 4 piece bonus. Speaking of the 4 piece bonus. Some people say it is not useful. Not only are they wrong (since thats probably an extra 2 casts) but it hurts your regen rate as well. So noble sacrifice restores 8% of your force. This is an extra 12 force when you have both combined per use of noble sacrifice. Intense fights might need as many as 2 noble sacrifices per minute. A nice long fight this adds up to about 2 less noble sacrifices. Which means you have that much less incoming damage and 2+ extra cooldowns to heal other instead of healing or injuring yourself.

Rescue - That DPS who says "Ive already dumped my threat but I am still pulling aggro", rescue him to prevent a wipe. Someone got moved really far from the group, get them back in the action. Pull someone out of a red circle. Move them into your salvation. Pull someone out of the walker on Kephess in EC. There are a lot of things you can do with rescue for GOOD. But it can also be used as a teaching tool, like “accidentally” interrupting a dps’s highest damage ability because they didnt move where they were supposed to to avoid damage. Or do it on purpose and tell them you will do it again until they do it right. Then you coincidentally get the boss down the next attempt. You can also use it for things like pulling someone just before they click on a door. Just make sure you dont make everyone hate you.

Rotation:

This is not DPS. There is no rotation. There is a priority system that kinda has a rhythm to it, but healing is too situational to ever have a true rotation.

Pre-Fight: Bubble the tank who is going to take the damage first. If you know someone else will also take damage right away, bubble them as well. Rejuv on your tank for the armor buff is not something I do. It gives you healing aggro and could cause you to pre proc your relics when you dont need to. It might not make a difference, but sometimes it does.

Priority

Rejuvenate -> Salvation

This does most of your healing. More than 50% in most fights if placed properly. Use it as often as you can. It even works great as a single target heal on your tank taking constant damage. Standing on the other edge of your salvation from the tank also makes your noble sacrifices hard to notice. If you can manage putting the tank on one edge of the salvation so others can be on the other side away from the boss you did a great job on your placement.

Force Wave

Doesnt use conveyance, so cast it when you can after salvation is up, or if salvation isnt going to get everyone full. It costs 0 force which means evertime you use it, you are doing a good thing for force management. It also heals you for 2k-3.5k and everyone else in front of you with no target limit. And it does some damage. In 16m this can be your second highest healing ability. You can have a heal be over 60k. Positioning is key. But if you stand just behind those dps on the edge of where salvation was you can hit them and the tank(s). Of course it does vary from fight to fight. Adding 100-400 dps on a fight from the healer is a bonus, especially if you have relics that also proc on damage.

Rejuvenate -> Healing Trance

This is your best single target heal. Crits also gives you resplendence stacks for force management (noble sacrifice without hurting your force regen). Use it to get your tank back up to full, or out of the danger zone. Use this on who ever is low, or a tank not quite full, or one about to take damage since it is channeled. Use it on cooldown when you arent casting salvation or Force Wave. You use rejuvenate first because it causes each tick of healing trance to have a 25% higher chance to crit.

Force Armor

Throw this bad boy on a tank to fill in the gaps on your cooldowns. Next gap in cooldowns it goes on the other tank. Next time, you are at 80% because of a noble sacrifice or two, throw it on yourself to negate future damage while it tops you off. Throw it on that dps who suddenly dropped to 10% so they dont die if you have to wait a second for healing trance to be ready. Also allows you to throw rejuvenate on them before that healing trance so they also have the armor buff and you crit more on that healing trance.

Noble Sacrifice (x2/x3) -> (Force Mend)

If you can manage it, take a noble sacrifice with a stack of resplendence before each salvation cast. If you can manage it every time, you will not run out of force. Sometimes you cannot and that is ok. When things slow down a little you can instead hit two or three stacks of resplendence to get force back and then force mend to get back the HP you threw away. Noble sacrifice and force mend are also 2 things you can do while being mobile.

Force Mend

If you arent having to use it after noble sacrifice because heals on you keep you full (force armor, salvation, slow-release medpac from a scoundrel) then use Force Mend as a reactive defensive cooldown when you take damage. You will do even if you are using it to top you off after noble sacrifice because you dont want to die. If it is a real emergency, you can use potency and heal yourself for a huge amount. 11k-15k on a crit depending on procs/adrenals/force shelter(the shadow circle of healing buffs) and the residue from commando healers.

Other Notes:

Biochem is great since it gives you a reusable stim and reusable healing adrenal. The non-reusables are technically better, but free-to-use-once-you-have-them resuables are easily good enough. Some Biochems will use the non reusable stims since they last 2 hours and have higher stats, but you probably dont want to do that for adrenals since the short time frame does not justify the one time cost. You dont technically need the adrenals, but they help when things look bad. Say the other healer died as you were going into the final burn phase of Nightmare Kephess in TFB. You just might pull off solo healing it with an adrenal.

Use the resolve stim that gives you willpower.

Use the Triage adrenal that boosts your healing. Nice bonus for biochems, an expensive emergency cooldown otherwise.

So many guides lately, and mostly very good.

Just one thing, theorycrafting definitely does not forget that alacrity does not reduce ability cooldowns.

So many guides lately, and mostly very good.

 

Just one thing, theorycrafting definitely does not forget that alacrity does not reduce ability cooldowns.

I suppose I should probably modify that part. The difference between moving 1 or 2 enhancements/ears/implants over to alacrity from surge or surge to alacrity is not very big. It is really more of a stylistic choice. And I really haven't noticed many, if any, good, in depth, sage healing guides on the forums here.

I suppose I should probably modify that part. The difference between moving 1 or 2 enhancements/ears/implants over to alacrity from surge or surge to alacrity is not very big. It is really more of a stylistic choice. And I really haven't noticed many, if any, good, in depth, sage healing guides on the forums here.

Ye, they are external sadly.

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-1199.html

http://swtorboard.org/2013/12/11/seer-sage/ (pretty much the same thing but prettier)

Ye, they are external sadly.

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-1199.html

http://swtorboard.org/2013/12/11/seer-sage/ (pretty much the same thing but prettier)

I dont have any major problems with either. The second seems to imply situations where you would need to get the force regen debuff by using a nable sacrifice right after a salvation or twice after a salvation. I only remember getting that debuff after something intense during a light healing phase when the other healer says they can cover for me, then I force barrier to purge the debuff. I would definitely take amnesty instead of master speed if those situations came up often enough for you to use it regularly.

Occasionally you will have something like 1st boss S&V Nightmare or 2nd boss TFB Nightmare where instead you will want:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/sage#113032221022122120021232-2000320-200

I wouldn't recommend Fadeout|Egress for PVE.

1. Fadeout|Egree isn't necessary to overcome Kel'sara's Leash.

2. For Dash'Roode, Corrupted Speed|Master Speed, which requires only 1 skill point, allows you to rejoin your group in record time after being lost in a sandstorm, and Force Barrier also removes the slow from the adds.

Augments: [...] Power used to be better.

For PVE, this is incorrect.

Willpower's contribution to Critical chance has a diminishing return. 78s have so much Willpower that Power has about caught up. The lower the tier of your gear, however, the more that Willpower > Power.

Augments: [...] Use a lot of force armor? Go power. Cast force armor less than 3 times per minute? Go willpower.

The breakpoint is 5 or 6 per minute, even assuming that each Static Barrier|Force Armor is 100% effective (an unreasonable assumption, by the way) and that you have a Dread Forged Focused Retribution relic.

A note about crit. [...] [sage] abilities themselves have a larger healing bonus multiplier than the other healing classes abilities.

 

[...]

 

The ideal number to aim for is 0 crit

The reason quoted above for why Critical < Power for a Sorcerer|Sage is incorrect. For example, the coefficients for the healing abilities of a Mercenary|Commando healer are slightly higher than those of a Sorcerer|Sage healer when weighting these by abilities' typical contribution to total healing. In fact, a Mercenary|Commando healer should benefit slightly more from 1 additional Bonus Healing than a Sorcerer|Sage healer.

BIS Critical depends on how often you use Static Barrier|Force Armor. For example, if you were to use Static Barrier|Force Armor as infrequently as 3 times per minute (which neither you nor I recommend, but as some may do because this ability isn't counted when parsing), BIS has 41 Critical with 3 Surge Enhancements or 82 Critical with 5 Surge Enhancements.

A lof of people have told me Alacrity is useless.

A lot of people (roughly 50%) perform below average. Their stats shouldn't cause you to doubt the good advice that you've provided .

Some people forget that alacrity doesnt reduce ability cooldowns (I have actually been told using alacrity as a healer is a waste).

No theorycrafter for Sorcerer|Sage healing posting in this forum or elsewhere, as I have, has forgotten this. In fact, higher Alacrity can allow you to use abilities with cooldowns, such as Resurgence|Rejuvenate or Innervate|Healing Trance, sooner after coming off cooldown.

Relics:

As far as relics,these are the best ones for PVE:

1) Dread Forged Relic of Focused Retribution (main stat proc)

2) Dread Forged Relic of Serendipitous Assault (power proc)

3) Kell Dragon Relic of Serendipitous Assault (power proc) (should not stack with 2)

#3 > #2 at this time if you regularly deal damage, such as by maintaining Affliction|Weaken Mind, because it has separate cooldowns for procs from healing and from damage. For more detail, see here.

Deliverance - Like benevolence it costs alot. It costs a lot of time and force, or a lot of time and a conveyance. There are better things to use your cooldowns on. Basically everything except for benevolence. Exception: Someone needs a heal and rejuvenate, healing trance, salvation, force wave, and force armor (target has lockout debuff) are on cooldown. In this case, use force potency, mental alacrity and cast deliverance twice.

Though it's not a great use for Force Bending|Conveyance, I wouldn't dismiss Dark Infusion|Deliverance. It's often appropriate when Innervate|Healing Trance is on cooldown, and typically accounts for about 10% of my EHPS.

Force Wave - [...] This is almost always my second highest healing ability in a 16m ops.

If Overload|Force Wave often contributes more to your EHPS than Innervate|Healing Trance for content that is challenging to heal, you're not using the latter well, which would be a serious mistake, or you're sniping the healing of your own Revivification|Salvation, which would be silly.

Rejuvenate - [...] Hint: always use it on healing trance and salvation. You should try to never cast either without it

Since the cooldowns for Resurgence|Rejuvenate and Innervate|Healing Trance line up, I rarely use Force Bending|Conveyance on Revivification|Salvation. I wouldn't delay Revivification|Salvation until Force Bending|Conveyance is available, especially if this would mean that Force Bending|Conveyance won't be available for Innervate|Healing Trance.

Salvation - [...] 2 stacks of resplendence used to be ideal because the cast was only around .61s and that made your GCD .61 which added up to another 3.5s a minute of cast time. But they changed it recently (thanks for the stealth nerf bioware =/) and thats no longer the case.

This is incorrect. It works now, and I don't expect this to be changed.

Force Potency - [...] Do use this on deliverance and/or salvation. Unfortunately, this does not work on healing trance. This is a healing boost cooldown.

1. Recklessness|Force Potency has no effect on Revivification|Salvation.

2. I'm glad that Recklessness|Force Potency doesn't affect Innervate|Healing Trance, because this would push this ability's Critical chance to about 110% (assuming that you have Force Bending|Conveyance available, which you should), wasting some of Recklessness|Force Potency's benefit.

Rotation:

Pre-Fight: [...] Rejuvenate on who has the boss and then refill your force before the pull so you go in with 100% force instead of 90%. It might not make a difference, but sometimes it does. Use that conveyance on a salvation.

This practice is common, but not prudent.

1. It puts any proc relics and Revivification|Salvation on cooldown for the pull.

2. While contributing no effective healing, you risk (a) starting the pull with less than full force if the tank doesn't countdown to the pull or has a faster countdown than you expect and (b) pulling threat. (Combat logging in SWTOR has many deficiencies, including with respect to threat. Combat logs record threat as though only effective heals contribute to threat, but experience shows that threat is slightly more complex. For example, at the moment Brontes is pulled, when healing from HOTs is 100% overhealing, the untanked fingers are likely to attack a healer whose HOTs are active.)

Rejuvenate -> Salvation

[...] Use it as often as you can. It even works great as a single target heal on your tank taking constant damage. Standing on the other edge of your salvation from the tank also makes your noble sacrifices hard to notice. If you can manage putting the tank on one edge of the salvation so others can be on the other side away from the boss you did a great job on your placement.

Since the cooldowns for Resurgence|Rejuvenate and Innervate|Healing Trance line up, I rarely use Force Bending|Conveyance on Revivification|Salvation. I wouldn't delay Revivification|Salvation until Force Bending|Conveyance is available, especially if this would mean that Force Bending|Conveyance won't be available for Innervate|Healing Trance.

I don't recommend using Revivification|Salvation on cooldown or prophylactically. It's too powerful to use simply because it's off cooldown when it could instead be synchronized with AOE damage. Similarly, I hesitate to recommend it as a single-target heal, even for a tank, without some qualification. A tank usually has so many HOTs on him without Revivification|Salvation that adding it doesn't materially improve his survivability or reduce his need for single-target heals. Revivification|Salvation on the tank is rarely prudent if this causes it to be unavailable to heal AOE damage to the raid.

Force Wave

[...] cast it when you can after salvation.

Why? Unless Revivification|Salvation is insufficient to top up the raid over its duration, your merely sniping it (not to mention your co-healers' AOE heals). Furthermore, several bosses, such as Thrasher, have AOE damage that occurs more often than every 15 seconds. For these bosses, it's more helpful to treat Overload|Force Wave and Revivification|Salvation as alternatives; use one when the other is on cooldown.

I wouldn't recommend Fadeout|Egress for PVE.

1. Fadeout|Egree isn't necessary to overcome Kel'sara's Leash.

2. For Dash'Roode, Corrupted Speed|Master Speed, which requires only 1 skill point, allows you to rejoin your group in record time after being lost in a sandstorm, and Force Barrier also removes the slow from the adds.

I dont change my spec at all, but some people find that useful.

For PVE, this is incorrect.

 

Willpower's contribution to Critical chance has a diminishing return. 78s have so much Willpower that Power has about caught up. The lower the tier of your gear, however, the more that Willpower > Power.

The DR from willpower is small. Smaller than the increase a crit has from the now much higher bonus heal. So the higher your bonus heal amount (higher gear tier) the more you get from each crit (higher willpower and higher surge).

The breakpoint is 5 or 6 per minute, even assuming that each Static Barrier|Force Armor is 100% effective (an unreasonable assumption, by the way) and that you have a Dread Forged Focused Retribution relic.

5 or 6 is about right. 100% effective is pretty close to correct in current HM ops when there is regular raid wide damage being thrown out. Not all fights are like that though. At this point I dont think anyone is realistically using enough force armors to justify power augments. The difference between willpower and power is really small however.

The reason quoted above for why Critical < Power for a Sorcerer|Sage is incorrect. For example, the coefficients for the healing abilities of a Mercenary|Commando healer are slightly higher than those of a Sorcerer|Sage healer when weighting these by abilities' typical contribution to total healing. In fact, a Mercenary|Commando healer should benefit slightly more from 1 additional Bonus Healing than a Sorcerer|Sage healer.

Both of the other classes have bonuses to crit multipliers in the healing tree. Sage has a bonus to bonus heals. The multiplier on crits is the largest reason why you want so much crit on a scoundrel and a commando. The slightly higher coefficients on a commando means the scoundrel uses more crit than the commando. If someone is in full 78s with 2 good proccing relics, then they probably want to throw in 1 crit enhancement now.

BIS Critical depends on how often you use Static Barrier|Force Armor. For example, if you were to use Static Barrier|Force Armor as infrequently as 3 times per minute (which neither you nor I recommend, but as some may do because this ability isn't counted when parsing), BIS has 41 Critical with 3 Surge Enhancements or 82 Critical with 5 Surge Enhancements.

That sounds about right. Though I recommend putting crit on enhancements since those are so much easier to acquire than power enhancements.

A lot of people (roughly 50%) perform below average. Their stats shouldn't cause you to doubt the good advice that you've provided .

I dont =þ. I was just throwing that out there since earlier that day someone on fleet was telling me I should dump all my alacrity on my sage healer for power. When I pointed out that was impossible they said use surge then. When I pointed out there is no reason to have 940 surge, they said alacrity is useless. So those people do exist, even if they have no idea what they are talking about.

No theorycrafter for Sorcerer|Sage healing posting in this forum or elsewhere, as I have, has forgotten this. In fact, higher Alacrity can allow you to use abilities with cooldowns, such as Resurgence|Rejuvenate or Innervate|Healing Trance, sooner after coming off cooldown.

True, but not all people are theorycrafters

#3 > #2 at this time if you regularly deal damage, such as by maintaining Affliction|Weaken Mind, because it has separate cooldowns for procs from healing and from damage. For more detail, see here.

Correct. Its definitely better for balance sagesfor dps. For heals, I think if you can get damage to proc once every 40 seconds or less then you have a net gain with kell dragon. So if you throw out weaken mind or regularly hit more than 1 target with force wave, then use Kell Dragon SA

Though it's not a great use for Force Bending|Conveyance, I wouldn't dismiss Dark Infusion|Deliverance. It's often appropriate when Innervate|Healing Trance is on cooldown, and typically accounts for about 10% of my EHPS.

I dont TOTALLY dismiss it. But I use force armor instead. If deliverance is the only option and I shouldnt wait for something more efficient (maybe once a fight) then i use potency and mental alacrity on deliverance.

If Overload|Force Wave often contributes more to your EHPS than Innervate|Healing Trance for content that is challenging to heal, you're not using the latter well, which would be a serious mistake, or you're sniping the healing of your own Revivification|Salvation, which would be silly.

Only in 16m, and only in total HPS. In terms of % healing trance is almost always #1 (unless it is force mend). In terms of pure ehps, healing trance is #2. With all the pulsing damage in ops now, I am always using FW between my salvations.

Since the cooldowns for Resurgence|Rejuvenate and Innervate|Healing Trance line up, I rarely use Force Bending|Conveyance on Revivification|Salvation. I wouldn't delay Revivification|Salvation until Force Bending|Conveyance is available, especially if this would mean that Force Bending|Conveyance won't be available for Innervate|Healing Trance.

Rejuv is 6 and healing trance is 7.5. There is some wiggle room for salvation to use conveyance. I will sometimes cast salvation without it, but I never cast healing trance without it.

This is incorrect. It works now, and I don't expect this to be changed.

I dont expect them to change it back either. But it definitely did work like that for a while. I wouldnt be able to prove any proof though. Im not going to go looking through old logs for that.

1. Recklessness|Force Potency has no effect on Revivification|Salvation.

2. I'm glad that Recklessness|Force Potency doesn't affect Innervate|Healing Trance, because this would push this ability's Critical chance to about 110% (assuming that you have Force Bending|Conveyance available, which you should), wasting some of Recklessness|Force Potency's benefit.

What kind of an idiot am I to have typed salvation when I clearly was thinking force mend.....

This practice is common, but not prudent.

1. It puts any proc relics and Revivification|Salvation on cooldown for the pull.

2. While contributing no effective healing, you risk (a) starting the pull with less than full force if the tank doesn't countdown to the pull or has a faster countdown than you expect and (b) pulling threat. (Combat logging in SWTOR has many deficiencies, including with respect to threat. Combat logs record threat as though only effective heals contribute to threat, but experience shows that threat is slightly more complex. For example, at the moment Brontes is pulled, when healing from HOTs is 100% overhealing, the untanked fingers are likely to attack a healer whose HOTs are active.)

I personally bubble the person pulling and that it. The first conveyance goes to salvation if the dmg is raid wide, to healing trance if it isnt.

I don't recommend using Revivification|Salvation on cooldown or prophylactically. It's too powerful to use simply because it's off cooldown when it could instead be synchronized with AOE damage. Similarly, I hesitate to recommend it as a single-target heal, even for a tank, without some qualification. A tank usually has so many HOTs on him without Revivification|Salvation that adding it doesn't materially improve his survivability or reduce his need for single-target heals. Revivification|Salvation on the tank is rarely prudent if this causes it to be unavailable to heal AOE damage to the raid.

As all things healing go, everything is situational. Things work better for me with using salvation on tanks for 8m, but that also includes a melee dps or two and a healer or two as well. Of course knowing your fight and when to use/not use abilities is important. Salvation during lightning field on a tank is dumb. Save it and use it on the whole group. But in "normal usage" I personally find it is beneficial to use it on cooldown more often than not.

Why? Unless Revivification|Salvation is insufficient to top up the raid over its duration, your merely sniping it (not to mention your co-healers' AOE heals). Furthermore, several bosses, such as Thrasher, have AOE damage that occurs more often than every 15 seconds. For these bosses, it's more helpful to treat Overload|Force Wave and Revivification|Salvation as alternatives; use one when the other is on cooldown.

Maybe adding the words "has worn off" would be a good addendum. Use force wave when you can after salvation has worn off. It does add decent damage to enemies and will proc relics like DF FR and KD SA with damage as well. Wasting it is not prudent, but if you know salvation isnt going to leave people around 70-80%, might as well throw the FW in there too so that it will comeback off of cooldown sooner. More force positive abilities means less noble sacrifice cooldowns.

Abilities:

Heals:

 

Force Armor - We are getting cheaper with only 35 force needed here. This is a must use. Keep it on your tanks on cooldown because it is useful even when they are at full health. 6600+ (assuming no relic procs) on an instant cast ability that is almost never wasted healing? I also use this as filler between the other 4 abilities.

I would disagree with casting Force Armor on tanks on cool down. Force Armor is the best OH S*** "heal" we have because it instantly prevents that @6500 incoming dmg whereas Healing Trance only gets 1 tick instantly. If a tank drops to say 6-7k and the next hit coming will land for 10k, but the force armor lockout is present, then if you only get 1 tick of Healing Trance means tank dies. If the Force Armor is not applied at or near full health and tank drops to 7k, then the Force armor still leaves the tank alive after the 10k hit and enough time probably for a rejuv followed by Healing Trance. If the tank is topped off and gets hit, eating the bubble, and proceeds to take a bunch more dmg in the following 14 seconds, you won't be able to cast another Force Armor when it's desperately needed while they have low health.

Granted I'm speaking from a raiding pve pov, not flash point pve. I'm sure people can make different strategies work for them because if they are good enough it may not matter much.

I would disagree with casting Force Armor on tanks on cool down. Force Armor is the best OH S*** "heal" we have because it instantly prevents that @6500 incoming dmg whereas Healing Trance only gets 1 tick instantly. If a tank drops to say 6-7k and the next hit coming will land for 10k, but the force armor lockout is present, then if you only get 1 tick of Healing Trance means tank dies. If the Force Armor is not applied at or near full health and tank drops to 7k, then the Force armor still leaves the tank alive after the 10k hit and enough time probably for a rejuv followed by Healing Trance. If the tank is topped off and gets hit, eating the bubble, and proceeds to take a bunch more dmg in the following 14 seconds, you won't be able to cast another Force Armor when it's desperately needed while they have low health.

 

Granted I'm speaking from a raiding pve pov, not flash point pve. I'm sure people can make different strategies work for them because if they are good enough it may not matter much.

I will answer in a PVE ops perspective. I dont remember the last time I ran a flashpoint.

Your way:

Your tank starts at 20k health and you wait to use force armor until your tank takes a 10k hit and now has 10k HP left and you cast a regular nor relic proc force armor. You prevent 6700 of a hypothetical 10k hit. You tank now has 6700 health left. You heal back to full from there.

My Way:

My tank starts at 20k health and I use force armor because it is available and one of my best heals. I prevent 6700 of the next 10k hit and my tank has 16700 health. Now the next 10k hit will take my tank to 6700. And I heal back to full from there.

Conclusion: We end up at the same place. The only difference is you decided to wait on using your force armor, and I used mine right away, which means I can use mine again sooner than you can use yours, which means I cast a great damage mitigating ability more often than you do. While I understand your reasoning, I believe my way is better.

I will answer in a PVE perspective only.

Your way:

Your tank starts at 20k health and you wait to use force armor until your tank takes a 10k hit and now has 10k HP left and you cast a regular nor relic proc force armor. You prevent 6700 of a hypothetical 10k hit. You tank now has 6700 health left. You heal back to full from there.

My Way:

My tank starts at 20k health and I use force armor because it is available and one of my best heals. I prevent 6700 of the next 10k hit and my tank has 16700 health. Now the next 10k hit will take my tank to 6700. And I heal back to full from there.

Conclusion: We end up at the same place. The only difference is you decided to wait on using your force armor, and I used mine right away, which means I can use mine again sooner than you can use yours, which means I cast a great damage mitigating ability more often than you do. While I understand your reasoning, I believe my way is better.

There are times when it's correct to delay it. The main thing to avoid is "overhealing" with it. By this I mean using it when incoming damage will eat it up, but there are hots or random easy heals around that would heal up that damage anyway.

Scenario:

1. Tank is hotted up, at full health. Force execution is coming soon. You use force armor because it comes off cooldown. Raptus's basic attacks eat it up, tank still at full health. Then tank starts to take some damage, force execution happens, (no tank swap possible because the other tank is running back from being ported or whatever, tank doesn't have cooldowns available, etc etc), and the tank eats several really big hits in a row. You can't heal these up quickly enough, and he dies.

2. Tank is hotted up, at full health. Force execution coming soon. Raptus's basic attacks do some damage, but hots mostly heal it up. Tank takes a bit more damage, force execution happens, ..., now the tank is at only very slightly less health than the above scenario (due to the "overhealing" from force armor) and you have force armor available for burst healing, and tank lives.

There are times when it's correct to delay it. The main thing to avoid is "overhealing" with it. By this I mean using it when incoming damage will eat it up, but there are hots or random easy heals around that would heal up that damage anyway.

 

Scenario:

 

1. Tank is hotted up, at full health. Force execution is coming soon. You use force armor because it comes off cooldown. Raptus's basic attacks eat it up, tank still at full health. Then tank starts to take some damage, force execution happens, (no tank swap possible because the other tank is running back from being ported or whatever, tank doesn't have cooldowns available, etc etc), and the tank eats several really big hits in a row. You can't heal these up quickly enough, and he dies.

 

2. Tank is hotted up, at full health. Force execution coming soon. Raptus's basic attacks do some damage, but hots mostly heal it up. Tank takes a bit more damage, force execution happens, ..., now the tank is at only very slightly less health than the above scenario (due to the "overhealing" from force armor) and you have force armor available for burst healing, and tank lives.

Or I use the ability twice while you use it once waiting for the perfect time to use it. Healing trance is a better single target heal than force armor. You dont have anything else that is better than force armor. There is not a bad time to cast it. Prevented damage is equivalent to damage healed. Just like it is better to cast a quick cleanse than use a good heal when it comes off cool down because cleansing prevents more damage, using more force armors means less healing for both healers in 8 man or all 3 in 16m. Everyone can have their own style of healing that works for them, and by all means do what works for you, but Ive never had trouble healing content because I mitigated too much damage with force armor.

Maybe the important question is: What are you filling gaps with if you are not using force armor? Benevolence? Deliverance? Id rather be using force armor.

Or I use the ability twice while you use it once waiting for the perfect time to use it. Healing trance is a better single target heal than force armor. You dont have anything else that is better than force armor. There is not a bad time to cast it. Prevented damage is equivalent to damage healed.

I force armor frequently, and agree that prevented damage is equivalent to damage healed; I was just showing that you can essentially "overheal" with it and then have it on cooldown when it's needed. In my example, the time frame is obviously supposed to be less than 17 seconds.

"There is not a bad time to cast it": Please read and understand my post above as a clear example of a bad time to cast it. I'm not claiming these exceptions are super frequent, but it is without a doubt a bad time to cast it. I don't care what you cast instead, but you might as well not put it on lockout with no real benefit in situations like that.

In case it wasn't clear: By overhealing I mean: If the damage you prevented with it would be healed up by some hot that already exists, and the hot would be overhealing if you cast force armor, you could consider force armor to have "overhealed."

Maybe the important question is: What are you filling gaps with if you are not using force armor? Benevolence? Deliverance? Id rather be using force armor.

It doesn't matter for my example; the key point in my example is not to "overheal" with it and then have force armor on lockout when it would be useful. (Which can be either for spike damage, or just for good efficient "hps".)

I force armor frequently, and agree that prevented damage is equivalent to damage healed; I was just showing that you can essentially "overheal" with it and then have it on cooldown when it's needed. In my example, the time frame is obviously supposed to be less than 17 seconds.

 

"There is not a bad time to cast it": Please read and understand my post above as a clear example of a bad time to cast it. I'm not claiming these exceptions are super frequent, but it is without a doubt a bad time to cast it. I don't care what you cast instead, but you might as well not put it on lockout with no real benefit in situations like that.

 

In case it wasn't clear: By overhealing I mean: If the damage you prevented with it would be healed up by some hot that already exists, and the hot would be overhealing if you cast force armor, you could consider force armor to have "overhealed."

I understand What you mean by "overheal", I just dont remember a time where I thought, I wish I had saved force armor. Even in the emergency scenario, it isnt like the other healer is doing nothing. Surely they wil be using something while I cast rejuv, healing trance, force wave or salvation.

It doesn't matter for my example; the key point in my example is not to "overheal" with it and then have force armor on lockout when it would be useful. (Which can be either for spike damage, or just for good efficient "hps".)

While I understand what you are trying to say with spike damage, you could argue that efficient "hps" comes from using force armor more.

I rarely use benevolence, but I do use a fair amount of Deliverance. I've never really bothered to compare my % usage of it for all my spell casts compared to other sage/sorc healers. In my opinion Deliverance definitely has it's place in a sage's repertoire of spell usage during fights. I also don't run the same stat distributions that are mathematically BiS for HPS/HPCT. I run with about 220 crit rating (comes to about 30% crit chance), 470 surge, and 470 alacrity. Like I said it comes down to if a player is good enough or not. Good players can kind of do their own thing and be just as successful in healing their raid to kill a boss. The healing comp of a raid and how those players heal together can also make a difference.

I also run with 470/470 alacrity/surge and while 220crit is a little more than I would like, I dont see anything wrong with that (I also would have thought 30% would be more like 250 for a sage healer in willpower augments). The difference wont be too large, especially if you dont use force armor as much. And deliverance also has a spot, it just happens to be with MA and FP active when other things are on CD. Every once in a while it also gets cast without those as filler when only tanks are taking damage, but thats really,really rare. Benevolence is something Ive only found useful on the healing challenge and only early on when the challenge was tougher, or a less geared healer was with me. The other healers in a group also make a huge difference to how you heal something. Some healers like to single target heal more, and I pickup the raid healing slack. When someone else is raid healing a lot, then I do a bit more single target healing and delay the use of aoe heals more. The thing about a guide is it really is just a set of guidelines. Healing is situational, and requires players to adapt. I believe what I presented to be the best or most optimal way for me. This doesnt mean what I say is the only way, or even the best way for you and your group. But I do think most of the info here is pretty good and, at the very least, gets people going in the right direction. Good healers and experts will know what here they can apply, and what they can deviate from. But the changes are generally rather small. New and struggling players may see something that is totally different from what they do and might notice a way to improve what they are doing alot.