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Skank Version of Healer?


Buellzebubba

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I hear that the most successful tanks are skanks. I'm trying out a sage healer, but if I go telekinetics I still get some basic sage healing abilities plus dps bonuses. Can you be an effective healer in a group as a telekinetics sage that uses a lot of healing abilities? What should you advertise as? Healer or DPS?
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I hear that the most successful tanks are skanks. I'm trying out a sage healer, but if I go telekinetics I still get some basic sage healing abilities plus dps bonuses. Can you be an effective healer in a group as a telekinetics sage that uses a lot of healing abilities? What should you advertise as? Healer or DPS?

Always advertise as what you actually are. If you go TK, you are a DPS.

 

When people say that the most successful tanks are skanks, what they mostly mean is that the tanks still use the tank tree and still equip themselves with shields, but some (or even "many") of their gear mods are DPS mods. This is so they can balance damage reduction, survivabililty, and threat generation/damage.

 

This is very, very different from healing in a DPS spec. DPS healing is not very fun if you end up mostly healing (your abilities aren't very good at it and you don't get crucial cooldown and resource buffs that make Force management easier, so you spend most of your time waiting around for your Force to come back while your teammates die), and it's not very useful if you end up mostly DPSing (because why not just do more of the thing that you're actually good at and leave the healing to the real healers). Where tanks and DPS still both rely primarily on doing damage to enemies to fulfill their roles, healers...ah...do not. So if you try to heal out of TK, you end up playing a bizarre chimera that does nothing particularly well.

 

The equivalent to skank tanking here would be healing in Seer but with DPS gear. And if that DPS gear is properly balanced, that's not...the worst thing in the world. It's certainly inefficient. Your Accuracy will be mostly useless, but at least your interrupts won't miss (lol) and your Crit and Alacrity will be helpful. You can run most content in the game as a (good) healer in heal spec with high-end DPS gear, because the heal checks aren't that hard until VM operations. But I would not recommend healing out of the TK tree, especially once you start to get your real healing abilities around level 30 or so.

Edited by Euphrosyne
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Ruffian scoundrel / lethality operative is what you want. They can put out an incredible amount of off-healing while still putting out more than a respectable amount of DPS.

 

It's incredibly difficult to play it at a high level but it's possible to put out nearly the same amount of healing as a true healer and still be top DPS.

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Ruffian scoundrel / lethality operative is what you want. They can put out an incredible amount of off-healing while still putting out more than a respectable amount of DPS.

 

It's incredibly difficult to play it at a high level but it's possible to put out nearly the same amount of healing as a true healer and still be top DPS.

 

Wow, that sounds cool! What do you mean by off-healing?

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Wow, that sounds cool! What do you mean by off-healing?

 

Off healing is when a dps spec uses their heal abilites on other players.

 

A major perception problem is fthat for pvp the stats don't distinquish between actively healing others, healing yourself, or your passive heals from dcds/utitlies. Lethality, for example, can get up to 2k hps just from passive heals.

 

If you're doing pve I do NOT recommend trying to heal as dps spec. Every heal you actively use takes a gcd away from your damage abilities and your dps will suffer. You can do some minor off-healing if a lot of damage is going out, but in most cases you're better off just dps'ing.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The others have explained why there is no skank healer. So I'm just here to note how you should off-heal.

 

When you play a Telekinetic Sage, and when there is no Sage healer, your best "off-heal" is your bubble. You can bubble everyone before a boss fight, like a Seer. Your bubble does not absorb as much or last as long, so you should leave it to Seer if one is in group. Otherwise you can refresh it on the tank and it'll make a noticeable different. If you pick the counter-attack utility (good thing) you should bubble yourself always.

 

Also use your Force Mend to self heal - the healer will be happy to see that. If you switch to Balance, you can get great self heals without deviating much from your rotation, easily over 2k and can reach 3k, relieving healers and allowing them to off-dps more.

 

I must also remind you that Sage's fantastic soft cc is often your best damage control ability. If you disable one of the two bridge turrents on hammer station, you cut their damage by half. On harder contents where common mobs can one-shot your flimsy dps bubble, your stun and lift can easily be your greatest "off-heal". (No, don't push please. It makes everyone's job difficult.)

Edited by ElleSheepy
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force armor, and no there is no such thing as a viable skank healer, you can pretend or play your dps spec exactly as you like and pretend that you are some kind of "utility" player but in reality such players are just both a bad dps and a bad healer, rather you just be good at one thing at that point
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Me and a couple friends had the idea recently to play around with a dps sorc with the endless offensive set + storm succor tactical. Replace your fillers with volt rushes and get decent burst heals for a minor dps loss (at least, that's our theory). That's the closest thing to a "skank healer" possible.

 

We haven't really tested it yet, but the idea was to use it instead of a true healer in MM FPs (not Tython lol) or in OPs for stuff like HM Revan which really does not require 2 full healers.

 

But it's basically a meme and wouldn't help you clear content that you couldn't do otherwise

Edited by AUTChris
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  • 10 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

As others have said, the concept of tanks in dps gear somewhat works because tank stats are less important in the most challenging of content where boss (or player) attacks avoid the whole defense/shield system. This isn't exactly the case for healers ...

 

Except for the unique combination of a Seer Sage or Corruption Sorc using the Endless Offensive set with the Storm's Succor/Metaphysical Mender tactical. (The tactical used to be called Storm's Succor but was renamed to Metaphysical Mender, but the renaming was incomplete and on the imperial side you can still buy it from the static tech fragment vendor as Storm's Succor.) Since no one else has mentioned it, it is important to note that while your regular heals will never miss and do not require accuracy, the heal associated with Telekinetic Blitz/Volt Rush attack does. If you miss on the damaging attack portion of TK Blitz/Volt Rush, then the heal will never be triggered. At any rate, I actually find the EO sage to be fun to play. I use it for most of my general casual gameplay, like heroics or dailies, group finder veteran flashpoints, or story mode operations with my guild. I do not use it for pvp or master mode flashpoints or other harder content. I typically don't use it for random pick-up story mode operations, at least until I know the quality of the group members and of what they are capable. I carry full accuracy on that set for the obvious reasons stated above, but it does require me to sacrifice some critical rating and go down to the 1.4 second global cooldown. I chose to drop the alacrity for the 1.4s GCD to reduce the impact to my critical chance. On the flip side I never miss an interrupt or stun when I need to, and my Projects and two dots always land.

 

Apex Predator and Concentrated Fire all trigger off of damaging attacks or heals, so I can use them as an off-dps sets in the same type of situations that I use Endless Offensive, but Commandos/Mercs lack an equivalent to the Sage/Sorc tactical. They still have more dps abilities than Sages/Sorcs anyway. Perhaps ironically, I find Concentrated Fire to be more useful in pvp than Tech Medic, even as a healing commando/mercenary, for precisely those reasons. Being able to use my basic attack to build supercharge instead of a casted ability to build 5 stacks that I may or may not burn on a casted heal just makes more sense to me in the highly mobile environment of pvp. Fortunately, I can carry just a little accuracy in that scenario (only the stim and one augment) and still be successful. Much like I use Endless Offensive on my sage, Apex Predator is fine for healing veteran flashpoints, or story mode operations with my guild.

 

Scoundrels/Operatives are recommended to use Tactician set for either dps or heals, but again they lack the tactical item equivalent of Metaphysical Mender to add healing to a damage ability. However, they do have the Aggressive Treatment set. I do use that for general casual gameplay like the other examples, but swap to Tactician for harder content. The synergy between healing-focused tacticals and the Tactician set is just very powerful for the Scoundrel/Operative, and it makes the dps gain from Aggressive Treatment subpar, in my opinion. I also haven't found the best amplifier to make Aggressive Tx super useful, whether its Aural Rejuvenation, Periodic Restoration, Periodic Intensity, or Aural Command. If someone has an opinion on this I'd love to see it. I currently use Periodic Restoration, because its what I use for my Tactician set. Bushwhack/Toxic Haze is not easily spammable due to still having a cooldown and requiring an Upper Hand/Tactical Advantage, so I wouldn't think stacking PI or AC would make a big difference. It really requires some tactical to make it work, something like "Reduces the cooldown of Bushwhack/Toxic Haze by 1 second every time you critically heal a target" maybe? At least it does not require any accuracy to achieve the goal of off-dps as a healer.

 

I'm not sure my usage scenarios were exactly what the devs had in mind for horizontal progression. They make it seem like I ought to be viable as a healer in the hardest levels of content with pretty much any set, and perhaps that's true for more skilled players at the top of ranked pvp or nightmare operations. But its not true for me: when I am really needed as a dependable healer I need to go for the healing-focused sets.

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