Thanks so much for the guide!

Seer Healer help online is kinda in short supply, and I need all the help I can get!

I need to ask for some advice regards stacking/gearing/l2p/everything.

 

We've done all the HMs upto EC, and we do clear EC storymode sometimes, but Kephess is a bastard.

I'm really battling to keep the tank up, to the point that I simply noble sacrifice throughout the beginning phases of the fight to keep myself at 100% mana till the big robot dies.

In the last phase I typically spam the tank with Deliverance, even if he's at 100% hp, because he'll be almost dead by the time it lands.

 

And it's so untypical of my normal rotation.

I pretty much shield the tank, pop a salvation where the action is and wait for hp bars to start moving.

If I know a fight is mana intensive, I'll typically be close enough to my salvation, as to get benefit from it.

My rule of thumb is: If I'm at 100% health, I pop noble twice.

That pretty much gets me close to 100% mana if I'm standing in my salvation, I'll float between 83% and 100% health.

 

Typically I only cast deliverance if I have popped Force Potency. Which means I only cast Deliverance twice, maybe 3 times if it refuse to crit on a cast on rare occasions.

I typically only cast healing trance after rejuvinate, and the 2 might be used on different targets.

 

When a raid members is very low on health I use a couple of different rotations, depending on the situation.

If it's a tank, and he/she cannot get shielded I typically use a rejuvinate for the 1k instant heal, and try to keep him up with a crit stim and healing trance. If he's not quite that critically low on hp, but cannot be shielded, I typically use Force potency and 2x deliverance. If the tank is not critical, I typically just shield, drop a aoe heal, stand in it, noble twice, pop a rejuvinate on him. If required I'll finish off with a healing trance. Ops members that are just taking the odd bit of splash damage either get a split rejuv and healing trance, or just rejuvs, maybe the odd shield if there's random targetting involved.

 

Here are my current stats: Unbuffed / Buffed

WP: 1839 / 2050

P: 465 / 511

FP: 1261 / 1261

Crit: 377 / 377

Surge: 216 / 216

Alac: 312 / 312

 

Arulan's spreadsheet seems to suggest I might be low on alacrity, and I'm thinking it might have a point.

Also my relics. I have a matrix cube and a mending.

I tend to forget to activate activatable relics, but maybe I should just learn to use that as I do my crit stim.

Should I get the rakata alacrity stim? I have the power stim, but havn't found a use for it, as I always use the crit stim when things go pear shaped.

 

I really would appreciate any input as I feel I'm letting group down when we die repeatedly on Kephess. It almost feels like a fluke when we do actually down him. I don't like it when I encounter damage on our group that I simply cannot cope with.

Should I get the rakata alacrity stim? I have the power stim, but havn't found a use for it, as I always use the crit stim when things go pear shaped.

 

If you mean Adrenals (the short duration, long cooldown Potion-like effects), you should always be using Power ones. The sheer amount of rating given by these (even after the nerf) is sufficient to push ANY DRing stat so far along the curve that you'll end up getting only very minor benefit from most of it. Power is non-DR'd, and in literally every situation possible, it will provide you with more output.

If you mean Adrenals (the short duration, long cooldown Potion-like effects), you should always be using Power ones. The sheer amount of rating given by these (even after the nerf) is sufficient to push ANY DRing stat so far along the curve that you'll end up getting only very minor benefit from most of it. Power is non-DR'd, and in literally every situation possible, it will provide you with more output.

 

Thanks, and yes, I was talking about adrenals soz.

 

And though anural's spreadsheet seems to be suggesting Alacrity, I've played around with the numbers a bit, and I cannot get a substantial gain with realistic/attainable increases in Alacrity.

For instace, pushing alacrity to 400 from 312, and pretending that all my other stats will remain the same during this regearing, only yield a deliverance cast time reduction from 2.26 to 2.21. Something I don't really feel is worth it.

With a 475 adrenal I get it down to 2.03s, but as you said, that's a long cooldown to splash on something that yields this little benefit.

 

I will definitely try your suggestion on popping the power adrenal. It might just be the push I'm needing.

What about a relic? Power as well?

I personally recommend using a Power use-relic on fights you're still learning, or fights you know that require a burst healing phase you otherwise wouldn't be able to handle (or handling it would burn too much Force). On fights you know and don't need the additional on-demand burst for, use a pair of War Hero relics, as they give the best overall benefit from the slot.

Don't bother with the Mending Relic, even the campaign one isn't worth it in the end. After parsing, it usually only accounted for ~1.6% of my healing, less than Mend Wounds would do on some fights that required a debuff cleanse. Plus the Mending relic isn't always going to the target you wish it to be healing. Replacing it with an activated Power relic, as Daellia said, would be more beneficial in the long run. If you aren't against PvPing you should definitely look into the War Hero relics. A +113 boost to Alacrity, Power, or both is a massive gain and allows for some great itemization.

 

For your concerns about Alacrity, I try to keep it at least at or above 11.8%. Keeping Deliverance at 2.2 is ideal I find, and if you have your Alacrity a bit higher you can also get Salvation's and Trance's cast time a bit lower as well which never hurts.

 

I would also say your Power is a bit low, but that's coming from the healer who has it 1000+ unbuffed.

Edited July 12, 2012 by AngelFluttershy

For your concerns about Alacrity, I try to keep it at least at or above 11.8%. Keeping Deliverance at 2.2 is ideal I find, and if you have your Alacrity a bit higher you can also get Salvation's and Trance's cast time a bit lower as well which never hurts.

 

11.8% Alacrity would require 405 Alacrity Rating, which leaves you with no more than 165 Surge Rating (19.15%). That's extremely low, considering the fact that Corruption generally has 35-40% crit chance, and 60-65% crit chance on Innervate. You'd get a lot more out of it by swapping around 100-125 of that Alacrity to Surge instead.

11.8% Alacrity would require 405 Alacrity Rating, which leaves you with no more than 165 Surge Rating (19.15%). That's extremely low, considering the fact that Corruption generally has 35-40% crit chance, and 60-65% crit chance on Innervate. You'd get a lot more out of it by swapping around 100-125 of that Alacrity to Surge instead.

 

I have 228 Surge at the moment. I use the War Hero Relic giving +113 Alacrity rating and then swapped out Alacrity enhancements and my off-hand for more Surge rating. It's a balancing act for sure but I've found that the higher alacrity helps a ton especially due to the lack of burst healing we have.

I have 228 Surge at the moment. I use the War Hero Relic giving +113 Alacrity rating and then swapped out Alacrity enhancements and my off-hand for more Surge rating. It's a balancing act for sure but I've found that the higher alacrity helps a ton especially due to the lack of burst healing we have.

 

EW! Power is ALWAYS better than Alacrity, in EVERY situation. We're talking 2-2.5 times as valuable, in most gear setups. Should be using the Power ones at all costs.

EW! Power is ALWAYS better than Alacrity, in EVERY situation. We're talking 2-2.5 times as valuable, in most gear setups. Should be using the Power ones at all costs.

Tell that to the DPS on HM Toth and Zorn. Being able to drop a few heals a bit quicker helps with juggling between the tank and DPS during that fight. Alacrity has its moments just as Power does. I just hate it when someone dies when you're 0.1 second from finishing a heal.

 

If it makes you feel any better I am planning on dropping probably ~100 Alacrity. I need some more crit and surge darnit!

Edited July 13, 2012 by AngelFluttershy

Tell that to the DPS on HM Toth and Zorn. Being able to drop a few heals a bit quicker helps with juggling between the tank and DPS during that fight. Alacrity has its moments just as Power does. I just hate it when someone dies when you're 0.1 second from finishing a heal.

 

If it makes you feel any better I am planning on dropping probably ~100 Alacrity. I need some more crit and surge darnit!

 

Well, to each their own. Just understand that you're sacrificing a fairly significant margin of additional healing potency in order to drop those heals that much quicker. Honestly, if your DPS are taking that much damage (particularly on Toth and Zorn, where most of it is negatable by proper positioning and movement), the issue is on their end, not yours.

Tell that to the DPS on HM Toth and Zorn. Being able to drop a few heals a bit quicker helps with juggling between the tank and DPS during that fight. Alacrity has its moments just as Power does. I just hate it when someone dies when you're 0.1 second from finishing a heal.

 

If it makes you feel any better I am planning on dropping probably ~100 Alacrity. I need some more crit and surge darnit!

 

I agree with Daellia. Power and/or Willpower makes everything heal for more so you shouldn't need that emergency heal to begin with. If Salvation isn't enough to keep the DPS alive on Toth and Zorn they the DPS is doing something wrong. If you need an emergency heal, use force armor followed by Rejuvenate and then Healing Trance. None of which is helped much by Alacrity. Over the course of a fight, if you're stacking alacrity, you're losing out on a lot of extra healing you could have done.

On HM Toth and Zorn I have to usually help heal the ranged DPS during Toth's ice spike phases. I drop Salvation on melee and run over to hit ranged as typically the other healer (usually a Commando or Scoundrel) has a tougher time hitting them all due to having to dodge the AOEs.

 

So, what is the magical number for Alacrity you both would recommend? I see a lot a talk about its use in practice but not sure what I should be aiming for in terms of activation speed.

Edited July 13, 2012 by AngelFluttershy

I would wager that Seer's Alacrity balance is roughly the same as a Hybrid DPS, ie about 1:1 Surge to Alacrity (which is 285 apiece in BIS gear).

Sage healers don't really have true burst anymore. That's just the reality of it. We excel at sustained group healing, and our resource pool means we're not nearly as output-restricted as the other healing classes, but our weakness is single targets taking spiky damage.

 

It's tempting to try to compensate for this by stacking Alacrity, but even if you do, you still won't have good burst. And in the process, you've just slashed the effectiveness of your heals across the board. You're severely undermining our strengths to slightly improve our weakness.

I don't stack alacrity at all and I feel I heal just fine. What abilities are you hoping to get off faster? Half of our abilities are instant cast. A conveyance buffed Healing Trance is superior to deliverance and benevolance is still a dud skill. You can't really use salvation as an emergency heal so I really have a hard time seeing the benefit of alacrity (I think it's basically useless). Your goto rotation is almost always going to be Force Amror>Rejuvenate>Healing Trance with Salvation thrown in on CD. If these are going to be the abilities you use most often, why would you want alacrity over power/will power or any other secondary stat? Deliverance is the one skill I could see you needing alacrity for and it just isn't used often enough for me take away from other stats that give bigger heals.

To be fair, Alacrity does have some value. Partially that's because with the fairly heavy DR on Surge there's not really much point stacking past 300, but in a sustained casting scenario Alacrity certainly boosts output. Given the lockout debuff on Force Armor, your basic single-target rotation in high-damage phase should be:

 

Rejuvenate -> Healing Trance -> Deliverance

 

In an ideal world you'd have 9.1% activation speed, because you can cast that rotation with no idling time. So all in all, at BiS levels, 285 Surge and Alacrity seems like the best choice.

Currently I am looking to bump my Alacrity down to the 9%-10% range because my main thing is I like Deliverance at 2.2 cast time. I use it a lot as a maintenance heal as with Conveyance it is a really cheap ability Force wise. I'm not huge on spamming Force Armor as it tends to eat up Force and I don't find it that necessary on most occasions, so I like my cast times a bit short. My typical rotation is as Aurojiin put it, I only Force Armor when I need that buffer to restore a member's health. As long as I can keep 2.2 on Deliverance I'm fine as that leaves Salvation at 1.8 and Trance at 2.7.

First ~

GREAT guide !! good to see someone doing this.

 

Second ~

Should something be said in here about the 10% armor buff of Force Shelter that comes with Rejuvenate? While it's not healing in the traditional sense. The amount of damage mitigated over it's duration is considerable. Enough that I find myself casting Rejuvenate on a healthy tank just to refresh the buff.

First ~

GREAT guide !! good to see someone doing this.

 

Second ~

Should something be said in here about the 10% armor buff of Force Shelter that comes with Rejuvenate? While it's not healing in the traditional sense. The amount of damage mitigated over it's duration is considerable. Enough that I find myself casting Rejuvenate on a healthy tank just to refresh the buff.

 

In the guide it says to check for the Force Shelter buff in the healing priority flowchart and mentions it again in the extra notes. It's just implied that a Seer would be specced into Force Shelter and understand its effects.

5. Does tank have Force Shelter? If not, Rejuvenate. Otherwise;

 

Some notes on Seer abilities: Whatever the specifics of your approach to Seer healing and resource management, there should always be one core element: the use of Rejuvenate on cooldown (on the tank for at least every second cast, in order to grant Force Shelter). Conveyance is vitally important, and you want to minimise the number of abilities cast without it, because all of your primary healing tools are greatly improved by it.

<- tired person with tired eyes, should learn to read better

<- tired person with tired eyes, should learn to read better

Haha it is quite alright. In your defense I did use Ctrl+F just a little bit.

It's much more painful for those of us who played prior to 1.2 and enjoyed the godmode that was Sage/Sorc healing.

 

There's no question in my mind that the class needed nerfing (although in a perfect world the other healing classes would be been buffed and content made harder), but the stripping of our burst healing and the general reduction in choice and flexibility was very disappointing. Ultimately the class is less dynamic and engaging for the changes, imo.

 

Frankly, though, it's still definitively the best PVE healing class.

 

Actually, I think the scoundrel has a much better utility set as a PvE Healer or even an Off Healer than a Sage. The numbers are just horrible on the Sage post 1.2. They didn't nerf it so much as make it completely nonviable. Especially in PvP where I can't even keep myself up against a comparative DPS Sith. I'm not asking for godmode back. I am just asking to have the basic tools I need to heal properly (IE; Conveyance pl0x)

Actually, I think the scoundrel has a much better utility set as a PvE Healer or even an Off Healer than a Sage. The numbers are just horrible on the Sage post 1.2. They didn't nerf it so much as make it completely nonviable. Especially in PvP where I can't even keep myself up against a comparative DPS Sith. I'm not asking for godmode back. I am just asking to have the basic tools I need to heal properly (IE; Conveyance pl0x)

Sage healers have been hit too hard in PVP, and I don't think you'll find many people that will disagree with that.

 

In PVE we're still definitively better though. Our DPS is more useful than Scoundrel healers, we have a universal CC, and our healing is outright superior. Yes, we lack burst, but it doesn't matter all that much in reality. Two Sages can heal 8-man HM Kephess without sweating. Healing Trance is probably the best single target heal in the game, and Salvation is the best healing ability bar none. Force Armor is strong, efficient, and has utility direct heals don't. Our resource system actually offers us a big advantage in allowing us to sustain maximum HPS for much longer than Scoundrels.

 

Sage + Scoundrel is a nice healing synergy, but any raid composition without a Sage is inferior to one with.

The initial post build links show me a 2/18/7 build.

 

I assume it's due to a change since last patch. Can someone re-post a sage healer build please?

Thanks

The initial post build links show me a 2/18/7 build.

 

I assume it's due to a change since last patch. Can someone re-post a sage healer build please?

Thanks

@#$#$ Torhead has swapped everything back to how it was in the first place.

 

Someone over there needs a spiked boot planted in their face. I'll update the OP again.