Hi,

I want to get into healing but really never paid much attention to the different classes. They all seemed to make my health go up. One seems to have stealth, the other has heavy armor, and the other has shields. That's about as far as I've paid attention to.

Could someone explain healers in terms of WoW healers? I've played WoW for much longer and understand it much better.

They all seemed to make my health go up.

Sounds about right. =D

In a very basic comparison Sage/Sorc = Priest, OP/Sco is maybe kind of like Druid and no idea about Merc/Mando.

They obviously are different from WoW classes so have elements of more than one class (even if Priest is remarkably similar to Sage/Sorc).

In 'types' of healing the general consensus is that Sage/Sorc is the AoE healer, Op/Sco is the mobile HoT based healer and Mando/Merc is the burst ST healer. But they are all pretty well balanced and can do all the roles. Op/Sco is largely preferred for PvP.

You might find it useful to watch videos of each class or read their respective guides (Dulfy currently has a good primer on each and you can find more detailed guides on these forums.) Keep in mind that Mando/Merc is changing with 2.6 but the change is marginal (they can use their idle on themselves and 'bubble' [reactive HoT heal activating on damage taken] more than one target).

While I find the writers' personal biases to show through a bit too much, Dulfy's class guides are a good background for how each healer functions mechanically. Just take any statements with the words "most", "best", "least", and "worst" with a grain of salt.

http://dulfy.net/2014/01/03/swtor-seer-sage-healer-class-guide/

http://dulfy.net/2014/01/04/swtor-sawbones-scoundrel-healer-class-guide/

http://dulfy.net/2014/01/04/swtor-combat-medic-commando-healer-class-guide/

the ratings for mandos and sages are funny,

the spec rated the worst for Burst by an huge difference (unjustified if you consider double force potency Deliverance yea it takes longer but 2/10?) get's an proactive instant as their signature

... what about that AOE that's rated 10/10?

the spec that is rated worst for AOE gets their AOE as signature ability what about trauma probe? that's the mando signature that (together with ammo) splits good Mandos from the rest.

about the guides themselves they seemed okay, though i only skimmed them

about the guides themselves they seemed okay, though i only skimmed them

Yeah I think they do a great job when covering gear, specs, skills, buffs, procs, and how to throw out DPS in heal spec. But statements like "the all-around preferred healing class since the game's release" really diminish the work. There are tons of people who have a sorc or a sage, and a healer of a different class, and for some odd reason prefer healing with that "other" class in their progression raids.

Yeah I think they do a great job when covering gear, specs, skills, buffs, procs, and how to throw out DPS in heal spec. But statements like "the all-around preferred healing class since the game's release" really diminish the work. There are tons of people who have a sorc or a sage, and a healer of a different class, and for some odd reason prefer healing with that "other" class in their progression raids.

well I read "the all-around preferred healing class since the game's release" simply as the most commonly used healing class and be honest did you have even just two raids without at least one sage heal before 2.0?

before 2.0 I had one Denova run with double Mandos no double Scoundrel even after i had one myself and lots of the runs were double sage.

that doesn't mean they are superior just that most healers are sages scoundrels were nonexistent and most commandos were DDs for a long, long time.

also most sage Heals I know have two or more sages

even now, at least four out of our ~six runs a week have a Sage as healer

(well ok we have one healer/dd with 3 sages one healer-only with two and two DPS with sage heal twinks + me so I'm in a more or less fixed group at least we don't have to double up on sages since we got some more people)

It might be our server though, I don't know.

it's just my subjective Impression.

be honest did you have even just two raids without at least one sage heal before 2.0?

Back immediately after launch, yes, you could call sages the most popular/important healing class in the game, mostly because they were quite overpowered, and most of the content favored a bunch of people standing around not doing a whole lot, the classic example being the platform stage on Soa, which was completely trivialized by salvation. Heck, at that point in time, I didn't even know scoundrels /could/ heal. And commando's were overpowered as well in raids since their armor debuffs stacked, so it was rare to find a medic.

But to me, that didn't stay true for very long. Particularly after the nerfs to healers in 1.2, we started to see a *lot* more diversification in what healers people ran. The raid team I was in at the time Denova came out had scoundrel and commando healers. And when TfB came out and DG proved to be quite healing intensive, the commando switched to their scoundrel. So generally we would run 2 scoundrel healers both before and after 2.0, which worked really great. The only time we had a sage healer was if one of the scoundrels couldn't make it, or we needed them on their tank, and I'd respec my sage. Some fights got easier with my sage healing, but on balance, it didn't really make any difference.

But that's was all 8-man. I can see where a group running primarily 16m would consider having 2 sages an absolute requirement, and place more value on salvation than an 8-man group would.

And today, I'd have to say scoundrels are what I see the most of. Had a 16m DF/DP SM last night where all 3 healers were sages, and it was kinda shocking. Usually one of the 4 healers is a sage, but it doesn't surprise me anymore if we don't have one.