It's been my observations that alacrity is far-and-away the most misunderstood stat for Scoundrels. This guide hopes to demystify the effect of Alacrity, and dispel much of the inaccurate information floating around.

A few notes about itemization

To discuss the merit of Alacrity, we need to understand our options. The most common erroneous statement I see about Alacrity is "You should get more power or crit instead". I want to emphasize that this is not how stats work.

The way that SWTOR gear is itemized breaks down stats into three categories: Primary Stats (Strength, Willpower, Cunning, Aim, Endurance), Secondary Stats (Crit Rating, Power, Defense) and Tertiary Stats (Surge, Alacrity, Accuracy, Shield). We all agree that Accuracy and Shield Rating have no value for healers, so that leaves us a direct choice between Surge and Alacrity.

I'm going to repeat that for emphasis: You cannot dump Alacrity in favor of Power or Crit. Your only choice is between Alacrity and Surge.

There are a lot of different enhancements, but ideal optimization generally comes down to a selection between Adept, Quick Savant, Insight, and Battle. You'll note that all of those have either Surge or Alacrity.

Some other items (Earpieces and Implants) might give you a choice between some secondary stats (Power/Crit) and tertiary stats (Alacirty, Surge). In these cases, you should always take the more valuable secondary stats when possible. You will get more than enough tertiary stats on the enhancements on the rest of your gear.

Okay, which stat do I stack?

Surge is a great stat. In fact, it was so good that they nerfed it in patch 1.2 . It's still a very powerful stat, and if you don't have at least 200 Surge Rating, you need to stack more surge ASAP!

In patch 1.2, they severely sharpened the drop-off due to diminishing returns. Take a look at this blog post to compare the diminishing returns graph both before and after the patch. Note how the new Surge curve (the blue line) starts to taper off pretty quickly after 200 surge rating. This means that the more points of Surge you stack, the less return you get.

Now let's compare it to Alacrity. Alacrity actually has one of the least punishing diminishing returns curves in the game. Despite this blog's harsh analysis of Alacrity (from a Sage perspective), the graphs show that Alacrity has a near-linear slope. What this means is that if we're stacking a bunch of Alacrity, we don't really have to worry about diminishing returns.

The big drawback of Alacrity is that it doesn't effect all of our abilities. It speeds up the casting time of Underworld Medicine and it also speeds up the channel time of Diagnostic Scan, but it has no impact on Slow-Release Medpack, Emergency Medpack or Kolto Cloud.

So is Alacrity any good?

I shall preface this section saying that we're about to enter a realm that's part mathematical, part philosophical. If you're not a super-nerd like me who finds this stuff interesting, skip to the bottom.

Surge is very easy to evaluate mathematically. All the formulas for this game are readily available. Just dump them into a spreadsheet and play with various Surge values to see how it will impact the outcome of all your heals.

Conversely, Alacrity is very difficult to analyze. I'm very much opposed to modelling alacrity as simply a measure of throughput because that doesn't reflect the way that healing actually happens in-game. Healing is, by definition. reactive. There's no fight where you're methodically casting a static healing rotation nonstop. Different events require different responses, and that dynamism that can make analyzing alacrity in a vacuum very difficult.

To give a broad example - there's some fights where a scoundrel will do a majority of his healing with Slow-Release Medpack, topping off the raid as a fair amount of AOE damage is going on. A good example of this might be the Karagga the Unyielding encounter. He throws out a drill that hits every raid member sequentially for a fairly minor amount of damage. Slow-Release Medpack is just what the Medical Droid ordered, and in this scenario alacrity has very little value.

A contrasting example would be the Kephess Undying fight. At some point he's going to point a laser beam at someone, and do a massive amount of damage to them for a few seconds. The appropriate response here is Underworld Medicine followed by Emergency Medpack, probably a few times each. This situation values maximum healing throughput, and Alacrity is incredibly valuable here.

A general way to sum up these scenarios would be:

                                                  [u]Surge[/u]                           [u]Alacrity[/u]
HoT-Heavy Fight                 medium impact                 low impact
Burst Heavy Fight               medium impact                 high impact

Here's some math stuff to support what I've been saying:

What does this all mean?

Okay. So here's the point: The Surge stat affects all of our heals, but stops giving you a decent boost beyond about 250 Surge Rating. The Alacrity stat only helps a few of our heals, but always gives a decent boost no matter how much of it you have.

Since you can only replace one of these stats with another, you should aim to have approximately 250 points of surge, and dump all the rest into Alacrity.

Questions & Answers

Q: What about the other mods? There are more mods than the 4 you listed that have Surge or Alacrity on them.

A: If you're looking to refine your itemization for maximum healing output, Endurance is valued below all other stats. The 4 enhancement that I referenced above are the 4 with the lowest endurance, and therefore highest healing stats. If you really feel like you need more endurance, feel free to consider some of the others! However, the choice of tertiary stats is the same: Alacrity or Surge.

Q: Aha! What about Reflective Enhancement?

A: Okay, you got me. There's one exception to the Surge or Alacrity rule I've outlined above, and that's the Advanced Reflective Enhancement. This enhancement is bugged, and has an additional stat allocation of Power where it shouldn't be. Therefore, it is technically possible to get enhancements with Power and Crit Rating in place of Surge or Alacrity.

It's important to note, however, that high level versions of this enhancement are not available. The decision you face is trading something like 11 Endurance, 60 Alacrity and 17 Power to get 27 Crit Rating and some useless Glance rating. In most cases, the Reflective Enhancement is a downgrade.

Q: What about energy consumption? Doesn't Alacrity make you go out of energy more?

A: Alacrity gives you the option to cast spells more quickly, but doesn't force you to do so. In most cases, you'll complete your channelled casting a little faster, and have a little extra time to regen energy afterwards. It's true that you can get yourself into trouble with it, but this is simply a case of "With great power comes great responsibility". If you hit an emergency situation where you need to chain heals as fast as you can, then you'll be glad to have the alacrity - even if you drop into low energy. You can always pop Cool Head or use Diagnostic Scan to recover.

Q: What about PVP? Everything you reference in your guide is about PVE!

A: The same principles apply to PVP, although the enhancements are a little different. For example, the War Hero's verion of the Adept Enhancement drops a little Endurance, Power and Surge in order to add some Expertise. This means you might need an extra surge enhancement to hit that 250-ish target rating before you start stacking Alacrity.

Q: Who are you anyway?

A: I've mained a Sawbones Scoundrel since the beta. I'm the raid leader of a successful PVE progression guild that's cleared all raid content. While PVP is not my focus, I do play Warzones quite a bit and my valor ranking is in the mid-70's. I've levelled 4 other characters to 50 which just means I've spent way too much time playing SWTOR. Min-maxing and mechanical discussions are probably my favorite part of MMO gaming, and I've spent a lot of time fiddling around with spreadsheets of healing data. I've just seen too much misinformation about Alacrity in this forum, so I decided to put together a guide.

Reserved, just in case.

Have questions? Post away!

Good info. I've seen elsewhere that when optimizing one should go for 300 surge and 450 crit ratting. Since you recommend 250 surge how much crit would you pair with it before switching secondary stat to power?

My calculations suggest that 300 Surge and 450 Crit are too much - but only as far as "perfect min-maxing" is concerned. If those are your stat levels, I wouldn't necessarily go to great efforts to switch things around. We're talking about a fraction of a percent difference.

My preferred stats right now are 350 Crit (rest into power), and 240 Surge (rest in Alacrity). I find this gives me the best balance. (These numbers were calculated with 2300 cunning and 2200 Power. The numbers would be a little different at lower gear levels)

Something to keep in mind is that Underworld Medicine and Kolto Cloud both benefit from Crit Rating more than SRMP and EMP do (due to the talents that give them bonus surge). So, if I calculate the effect of -50 power and +50 crit, I project a 0.09% boost to UWM and KC, but a -0.11% loss to SRMP and EMP. Like I said, extremely negligable and well within the realm of personal preference.

As far as +50 Surge goes, it would add roughly 0.58% output to all 4 major heals. As mentioned in the guide, it's much harder to calculate the loss of -50 Alacrity. The +50 Alacrity would give about +0.89% to an UWM->EMP rotation, which I prefer to the extra bit of surge. I wouldn't blame anyone for preferring to stay at 300 surge.

My calculations suggest that 300 Surge and 450 Crit are too much - but only as far as "perfect min-maxing" is concerned. If those are your stat levels, I wouldn't necessarily go to great efforts to switch things around. We're talking about a fraction of a percent difference.

 

My preferred stats right now are 350 Crit (rest into power), and 240 Surge (rest in Alacrity). I find this gives me the best balance. (These numbers were calculated with 2300 cunning and 2200 Power. The numbers would be a little different at lower gear levels)

 

Something to keep in mind is that Underworld Medicine and Kolto Cloud both benefit from Crit Rating more than SRMP and EMP do (due to the talents that give them bonus surge). So, if I calculate the effect of -50 power and +50 crit, I project a 0.09% boost to UWM and KC, but a -0.11% loss to SRMP and EMP. Like I said, extremely negligable and well within the realm of personal preference.

 

As far as +50 Surge goes, it would add roughly 0.58% output to all 4 major heals. As mentioned in the guide, it's much harder to calculate the loss of -50 Alacrity. The +50 Alacrity would give about +0.89% to an UWM->EMP rotation, which I prefer to the extra bit of surge. I wouldn't blame anyone for preferring to stay at 300 surge.

Much appreciated. Now to go reoptimze at the EWH level to see if it works better for me. Grind time.

You could mention in the OP that this is mainly a PVE post.

I take other priorities in PVP. Topping everything and lastly alacrity

You could mention in the OP that this is mainly a PVE post.

That's already been addressed in the Q&A.

The principles of the OP don't really differ much in PVP. The enhancements are slightly different, meaning you'll spend an extra slot getting to the Surge levels you need.

If you play mostly against PUGs, then maximizing for SRMP makes sense. Alacrity becomes more important as you play against competition that is better at focus fire.

Are you listed on Mr. Robots Armory? I'd love to see your equipment and build information there.

What are your current stats?

I've been playing around with my Scoundrel healer lately to see if I can optimize him a bit more, and was also looking at Alacrity.

Right now I'm at 170 ish alacrity with 9.40% speed boost, giving my UWM a cast time of 1.81.

Tech crit is 38'ish and Surge is 78 something.

Looking at source for Alacrity it seems like I have to compromise power and crit too much, and I can at most get perhaps 100-120 points of Alacrity without compromising other stats too much. This would put my UWM at a casttime of 1.72 or thereabout. So one tenth of a second quicker cast time for around 2% surge and 3% crit.

I just simply don't see which fight that one-tenth comes into play for real. It's the difference between where my mouse pointer is at the exact time the heal is needed, compared to a general buff to my HoT's..

I'm not sold on alacrity just yet.. If I could shave .5 seconds off my UWM, then we could talk..

Looking at source for Alacrity it seems like I have to compromise power and crit too much, ...

Maybe we should try swahili?

Edit: Nah, i just realized, maybe they should try reading the whole guide, and not just skimming through it then commenting without a clue.

Maybe we should try swahili?

 

Edit: Nah, i just realized, maybe they should try reading the whole guide, and not just skimming through it then commenting without a clue.

Maybe you should learn not to quote out of context.. I GET the jist of the math supporting a better UWM.. But operations healing is not math.. And I do explain that yes I can see I could go a few % down on crit and surge, but it will only get me 0.1 second faster casttime.. If I have to get what I find useful for alacrity, then my crit would dip into low 30's and surge near 70.. And that is too much for too little..

First it was comprimising

... power and crit too much, ...

too much.

Then it was comprimising

... go a few % down on crit and surge ...

too much.

You missed the whole point of this article completly.

Show me how swapping these enhancements out affects your crit or power at all:

...

 

There are a lot of different enhancements, but ideal optimization generally comes down to a selection between Adept, Quick Savant, Insight, and Battle. You'll note that all of those have either Surge or Alacrity.

And before you say "oh there are other sources of alacrity":

 

Some other items (Earpieces and Implants) might give you a choice between some secondary stats (Power/Crit) and tertiary stats (Alacirty, Surge). In these cases, you should always take the more valuable secondary stats when possible. You will get more than enough tertiary stats on the enhancements on the rest of your gear.

 

I GET the jist of the math supporting a better UWM.. But operations healing is not math.. And I do explain that yes I can see I could go a few % down on crit and surge, but it will only get me 0.1 second faster casttime.. If I have to get what I find useful for alacrity, then my crit would dip into low 30's and surge near 70.. And that is too much for too little..

What GHoppa is getting at, is that you cannot replace Alacrity with more Crit. Crit is a secondary stat, and Alacrity is a tertiary stat. You can only replace Alacrity with Surge (or a useless healing stat like Accuracy or Shield Chance).

Theblaznee: Did I fail to make that very clear in the original post? This point is very commonly misunderstood, and was actually the catalyst for me writing this guide. Do I need to make this point more clear in the original guide, or did you just skim the post and miss that part? I mean, I did devote the entire first section to this exact issue...

Are you listed on Mr. Robots Armory? I'd love to see your equipment and build information there.

 

What are your current stats?

This question brings up a point that I'd like to make. There's definitely a 'best stats' configuration, but there's several ways to reach it.

For example, my implants have Power and Surge on them. (I prefer this, because then I can use them in my DPS set too!). But if I had Power / Alacrity on my implants instead, it wouldn't make a difference. I'd just remove a two of my alacrity enhancements and replace them with power enhancements to arrive at the same stat total.

So the larger point is this: There are multiple ways to arrive at a best-in-slot configuration.

So with that in mind, here's a link to one possible best-in-slot configuration.

This would put your stats at roughly:

• Bonus Healing: 770
  
• Crit Rating: 349 (42%)
  
• Surge: 240 (74.2%)
  
• Alacrity: 360 (14.7%)
  

Some people will argue with me about relic choice. That's fine. I personally believe that the proc healing relics waste too much on overheal, and that clicky relics are a bad fit for healers. This is personal preference, and if you prefer one of those, go for it.

My personal gear matches this profile with one exception: we haven't had that Hazmat earpiece drop yet, so I'm still using a Black Hole version.

If you're curious why I've chosen to itemize with those particular mods (instead of a different best-in-slot configuration) it generally has to do with my guilds luck reverse engineering certain mods. If you have easier access to other parts, such as Insight Enhancement or Battle Enhancement... definitely feel free to use more of those and less Keen Mods.

So one more time, to repeat the most important point: There's multiple configurations that can maximize your stats. The common denominator among them is minimizing endurance so that you can maximize healing stats.

General recommendations:

• Primary Stats: Cunning is better than everything
  
• Secondary Stats: Crit to 350, rest into Power
  
• Tertiary Stats: Surge to 240-280 , rest into Alacrity
  

I'm gonna go ahead and bump this post. Several reasons for this.

Number One: I would like this sticked please. It needs to be listed at the top and stickied!!! DOOOOO EEEEEEEETTTT!

Number Two:

The reason it needs to be stuck is because every single thread about stats or gear as a scoundrel, or healing with a scoundrel, always ends up in discussions/arguements/trolls about alacrity.

People's levels of understanding is just not there.

Guys like myself and Az have been trying to get the word out there for a long time, and this guide will really help too.

OK since the two of you who know about alacrity are posting here, I would like to ask whether either of you also spent two skill points increasing alacrity in the dirty fighting tree.

I think I asked this question earlier in a different thread but would like to hear what you think. Thanks for helping!

OK since the two of you who know about alacrity are posting here, I would like to ask whether either of you also spent two skill points increasing alacrity in the dirty fighting tree.

 

I think I asked this question earlier in a different thread but would like to hear what you think. Thanks for helping!

Yes, in my 'go to' build, i certainly do. I tend to switch things up alot, but when my guild runs rateds this is the build i would use, including the 2 points on alacrity. (Please note, while i have comepleted most pve content, i am primarily a pvper).

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701MffrzGoRzsZMIZM.2

My personal philosphy on alacrtity is take as much as you can get. I've said it before and i'll say it again; You control your energy use, do not let your energy usage control you. My surge presently sits at around 260ish. After that is all alacrity.

While math and numbers play a large part in character gear design, some metrics just cannot be measured. One of those is actually getting the heals off in time to save people. People say 0.1 of a second isn't much and you don't notice it. I notice it. Imo its a lifetime in pvp.

wow thanks for shairng your build!

I am surprise that you skip the 3% increase in critical. Well I guess there are only 41 skill points to go around. What is your total critical %? Maybe when I get enough criticals from mods & enhancements (now they are just 260), I will skip those critical-increase skill points and put them in increasing movement speed in scrapper tree.

I only do PVE contents and in some difficult OPS, I would very much like to move faster. The smuggler seems slow.

wow thanks for shairng your build!

 

I am surprise that you skip the 3% increase in critical. Well I guess there are only 41 skill points to go around. What is your total critical %? Maybe when I get enough criticals from mods & enhancements (now they are just 260), I will skip those critical-increase skill points and put them in increasing movement speed in scrapper tree.

 

I only do PVE contents and in some difficult OPS, I would very much like to move faster. The smuggler seems slow.

Without the 3% buff, my crit is close to 37% i can't remember exact numbers. The buff puts me just under 40%.

It's important to note that the build i listed was for PvP, where movement is much more important than 3% critical. For PvE, i would be running something a little different, and would take the 3% crit buff. Back in the day when you used to get 6% crit instead of 3%, the choice was alot tougher to make for pvp.

In either build though, i would take the alacrity bonus.

I keep going back and forth on this.

My own Op is fairly new to 50, and as I'm usually tanking (or occasionally DPSing on my Marauder), the hardest thing I've healed to this point is TFB SM. I only have 3rd party data on anything harder, and don't claim to speak from firsthand healing experience in anything HM EC and up.

Channeled heals rarely exceed 15% of my total output, and even on harder content, the gents I run with rarely break 20% (maybe as high as 25% on Warlord Kephess or Kephess the Undying).

The marginal benefit of Alacrity is much lower when the percentage of healing impacted is accounted for.

I still want to test with higher values to get a subjective impression of the impact, but the math breaks down a bit with actual raid data factored in.

I don't necessarily agree that there is a strong mathematical case one way or another (based on raid data rather than formula optimization), but healing style and subjective preference most definitely have important roles in deciding Smuggler/Op healer gearing.

I *do* think that current game design doesn't reflect a world where Alacrity is clearly superior, and that there are very, very few situations that stress the output of multiple healers simultaneously (though Warlord Kephess in EC NiM is an obvious exception on that front). DTPS just isn't that high for the most part, and most burst healing phases are predicable and widely spaced. Plus, they tend to be configured in a way that 2 healers can dump healing into a single target in the vast majority of cases, which deflates the necessity for either to hit or maintain insane throughput.

Channeled heals rarely exceed 15% of my total output, and even on harder content, the gents I run with rarely break 20% (maybe as high as 25% on Warlord Kephess or Kephess the Undying).

This requires a little bit of a lengthy explanation:

Total healing output is actually a very poor measurement of a good healer. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but the actual question needs to be "Did anyone die?". Our class has several very efficient, moderate heals, which makes healing fights with low-level AoE or moderate incoming tank damage extremely easy. The important measuring stick for a healer should be how well they heal when things get crazy.

The same should be true for optimizing your gear. You shouldn't be optimizing to heal the easy parts of a fight. You should be tailoring your gear such that you can better heal the hardest healing encounters in the game. (Right now, the hardest thing to heal in the game is Nightmare EC Kephess - specifically the phase after he's left the walker, but before the big purple circle at 60%. During this phase, his sheer damage output - both on the tank, and the dot on the off-tank - is ridiculous. I honestly doubt that a Scoundrel with 600 Surge and 0 Alacrity could clear this phase)

During easy healing fights, I find that SRPM, KC and EMP make up like 80% of my total healing, and obviously alacrity doesn't matter there. I don't care though, because those are easy healing fights. However, as the healing demands of a given fight increase, you'll find that Underworld Medicine, Diagnostic Scan and even Kolto Pack become larger and larger percentage of my healing output. (Yes, I said Kolto Pack).

tl;dr - Alacrity is worthless till you need it, but when you need it there's nothing else like it.

I *do* think that current game design doesn't reflect a world where Alacrity is clearly superior, and that there are very, very few situations that stress the output of multiple healers simultaneously (though Warlord Kephess in EC NiM is an obvious exception on that front). DTPS just isn't that high for the most part, and most burst healing phases are predicable and widely spaced. Plus, they tend to be configured in a way that 2 healers can dump healing into a single target in the vast majority of cases, which deflates the necessity for either to hit or maintain insane throughput.

I respectfully suggest that if the limit of your PVE Healing Experience is, as mentioned earlier, Story Mode TFB, you're not really qualified to comment on end game encounter design as it relates to healing needs. (Apologies if I misunderstood your earlier point)

I think you also fail to suggest a more reasonable alternative. The whole premise of taking roughly 300 alacrity is based off the math behind Surge being such a terrible stat. That's crucial to this discussion.

Let us take an extreme example of a HoT heavy rotation: 1x Kolto Cloud, 4x SRMP and 1x Diagnostic Scan. At current Best-in-Slot gearing levels, this block of heals averages 33030 (assuming KC hits 4 targets and there's no overheal - a best case scenario). Now, let's drop all 350 alacrity and add 350 more surge. Total average healing output of that same rotation: 33641.

Think about that for a second. By dropping 350 alacrity and picking up 350 more surge, you're gaining maybe ~600 total healing done across a ~10second window. And that's a nearly worst-case scenario for Alacrity. I think that's what people don't understand about this discussion. In patch 1.2, surge was nerfed so hard that stacking anything above 300 is very much a waste. I think anyone with an open mind would look at that data, and conclude that Alacrity is a far more sensible investment once you've hit ~250 surge.