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Quick Start: Sage Healing


eventidephoenix

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I created a short guide for a fellow guildie, and I thought this might be a suitable "Quick Start" guide to healing as a Sage. My advice may not be the best, and for comprehensive information please go to Aurojin's sticky-ied guide. But if say you decided that "I've got enough of DPS and I wanna respec and need a quick guide" or "I wanna see how it's like to heal as a Sage" this is it. So I hope this will be somewhat helpful with a video guide.

 

Also remember: All fights are different. When I have more spare time I will try to upload more healing guides on specific bosses.

 

As a Sage healer, we are powerful predictive healers. That doesn't mean we are not good at reactive healing, we just have to adopt different steps.

 

Rotation:

Sages have very easy rotations. You put a rejuvenate down (so you proc conveyance), and choose 2 heals next which conveniently finish casting by the end of rejuvenate.

 

Low Alert Rotation (Tank at 60~100% Health):

Rejuvenate -> Healing Trance -> Salvation (or vice versa, Salvation first if tank is healthy) / Deliverance (pre-cast) -> Noble Sacrifice -> Repeat

 

Salvation is a very powerful predictive heal. Think of it as a very powerful Deliverance (at my gear, potential of healing up to 8k) over 10 seconds. It requires to be pre-cast for tank application purpose, and should only be used on low alert if the purpose is just to keep the tank healthy. Noble sacrifice should and can be used when Resplendence procs. You should try to keep your force up in case you run into Medium/High Alert situations

 

Medium Alert Rotation (Tank at 40 to 60% Health):

Rejuvenate -> Healing Trance -> Deliverance (once again, or vice versa) -> Noble Sacrifice (discretionary use) -> Repeat

 

Depending on whether your tank is above 50% or below 50%, you can change the order of your cast. More urgently requires top up? Healing Trance first. Less Urgent? Deliverance first. This rotation should be repeated until tank is full, it is one of the highest HPS rotations. Use discretion on Noble Sacrifice.

 

High Alert Rotation (Anyone <40%)

Force Armor -> Rejuvenation -> Healing Trance -> Deliverance -> Rejuvenation -> Deliverance/Healing Trance (until in Safe Region of health)

 

No Noble Sacrifices here. I call this the chain cast rotation - your heals are cast instantly one after another. This obviously consumes a bit of force, so you have to return to the earlier rotations. Use your judgement here.

 

 

 

Note 1: I do not use trance before deliverance usually because of latency. By spamming trance after deliverance I may be able to save a split second, sometimes that's all it takes.

 

Video with pointers: (Note: this is Phase 1 of terror from beyond, no prizes for guessing why I couldn't get Phase 2 down if you see that nice decal at the top of the screen, couldn't afford it but it's an AWESOME in-game recorder!)

 

 

 

 

Welcome all constructive criticisms on my own healing, I'm not the best healer, but I'm working on it ;) Thanks in advance!

Edited by eventidephoenix
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Coming from someone that decided that alacrity was useless for sage healing, I find Deliverance is too costly to use in TfB HM and EC NM. I find stacking more power and surge and relying more on healing trance, salvation, and your force armor is much more effective for us than the benefit of having alacrity and less powerful heals. Keep in mind though this is coming from someone who views the sage as support healer rather than a single tank target burst machine. We can do ridiculous burst if we wanted to but its real easy to screw our self over. Edited by bryceman
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Coming from someone that decided that alacrity was useless for sage healing, I find Deliverance is too costly to use in TfB HM and EC NM. I find stacking more power and surge and relying more on healing trance, salvation, and your force armor is much more effective for us than the benefit of having alacrity and less powerful heals. Keep in mind though this is coming from someone who views the sage as support healer rather than a single tank target burst machine. We can do ridiculous burst if we wanted to but its real easy to screw our self over.

 

I be honest, Deliverance didn't use to be my favourite skill... I used to have the same opinion as you. That was at the initial stages of starting off as a Sage healer. My honest opinion then was "this is disgusting, by the time I got off Deliverance the tank will be dead!"

 

I was, alas, wrong. It is a very powerful heal. It takes time, but that time is worth it. Force armor is precisely to buy us time. It all boils down to a healer's judgement, when and when not to use it. Using it at the wrong time results in disasters, using it at the right time results in, well, good results. This is the crucial bit. Do not discount Deliverance, take it from most Sage healers around here.

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It is a hard hitting heal but what I have found is by the time you cast it, another healer has already healed them back up to close to max health and then we overheal. You are right about force armor though it is the most useful skill we have that can save multiple people who are taking damage.
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It is a hard hitting heal but what I have found is by the time you cast it, another healer has already healed them back up to close to max health and then we overheal. You are right about force armor though it is the most useful skill we have that can save multiple people who are taking damage.

 

I understand where you're coming from. However, well coordinated raid teams don't face such problems. My team runs two sages, we always talk to each other about who we're topping up so we don't over heal :)

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Assuming that is an 8 man? Its much harder for us to do so in 16 man but nevertheless your guide is pretty sound.

 

You're right ;)

 

16 man I believe is a very different experience, and since I haven't organized one I am in no place to comment. It's an interesting insight that you've got there on the role of a Sage healer in 16-man :D

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This guide was EXACTLY what I was looking for!! I have a sage healer alt and was looking for rotations. The rotations I do are in PVE, SM and HM's on flashpoints and 8 person teams.

 

I also appreciated the feedback conversation between you about 16 person, which I have done twice, but as the tank, not the healer.

 

Anyway, thanks :)

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Coming from someone that decided that alacrity was useless for sage healing, I find Deliverance is too costly to use in TfB HM and EC NM. I find stacking more power and surge and relying more on healing trance, salvation, and your force armor is much more effective for us than the benefit of having alacrity and less powerful heals. Keep in mind though this is coming from someone who views the sage as support healer rather than a single tank target burst machine. We can do ridiculous burst if we wanted to but its real easy to screw our self over.

 

What's your pvp build like? I would tear you apart if you had 0 alac because you'd be so interruptable.

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This guide was EXACTLY what I was looking for!! I have a sage healer alt and was looking for rotations. The rotations I do are in PVE, SM and HM's on flashpoints and 8 person teams.

 

I also appreciated the feedback conversation between you about 16 person, which I have done twice, but as the tank, not the healer.

 

Anyway, thanks :)

 

you're very welcome :)

 

What's your pvp build like? I would tear you apart if you had 0 alac because you'd be so interruptable.

 

Indeed, but since we're talking PvE, let's stick to the topic? I do not recommend any of the above for PvP healing. In fact now in PvP, hybrid specs are wayyy better. I still run full healing spec (at least, until dual speccing kicks in), and it works, but hybrid gives u a lot more survivability without a tank.

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What's your pvp build like? I would tear you apart if you had 0 alac because you'd be so interruptable.

 

I don't pvp as a healer (or really at all as a sage). Pvp has gotten to a point where if you are not full wh augmented then its not even worth queuing up .

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