Do any other Sage/Sorc healers wish that you didn't have to spend so many GCD's casting Vindicate/Consuming Darkness to manage your energy?

My proposal: a tactical that takes Vindicate/Consuming Darkness off the global cooldown but gives it its own cooldown (maybe something between 5 to 10 seconds?).

You'd still have to be somewhat active about managing your energy, but you'd be able to do it between GCD's. The tactical itself won't increase the raw healing of any specific abilities, but the healing gained from replacing energy management GCD's with casting healing abilities should make it at least competitive with other healer tacticals.

Thoughts? Ideas?

There already had been a suggestion like this (don´t remember the thread, sry) with arguments pro/contra.

It could be useful offGCD but with the way the game sometimes bugs with GCDs ...

I´m open for everything that buffs sorc healers, as we are currently at the bottom in all endgame contents

Ah, I shoulda done a more thorough search before posting then

I think I found the thread you're talking about: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=974340

Specifically this reply on the second page of that thread:

I'm going to reply to myself, and everyone else. I do not think the problem here should be addressed using gear. I believe the problem of heals not keeping up with the considerable increase in the amount of health and damage we are asked to heal, is a problem of the base stats healers have.

 

You've made each heal too expensive, you've made energy/force management more difficult, and on top of that, the amt per heal is not balanced with the increased amt we NEED to heal. this isn't a gear issue, gear sets do need to be considered AFTER the base heal stats and energy management issues are addressed.

 

Look first to the real problem, you've nerfed the classes too hard, too often, and forgotten that we have an ever-increasing burden that has not been addressed. I don't need sage heals to go back to 3.0. But we do need things changed.

 

Take , for instance, one thing. Take Revification/Vindicate back off the GCD, as it used to be. Now we are having to sacrifice a GCD that we need for healing, to make sure we can make the next cast. This is not the way it's always been, and it's just plain stupid. IMHO. Simple change, big lifestyle fix. Stop charging more and more for less and less.

 

Then update/fix the gear. You have to fix the underlying issue first. When our heals and our ability to heal is commensurate with the growth in total health pools and incoming damage, then you can do whatever you like. Until then, you are missing the entire picture. This goes for EVERY HEALER IN THE GAME. Not just Sage/sorc.

 

You also need to fix broken content like Walker fights and turret fights. Nobody in their right mind can heal through those. It took 2 heal spec and one tank (the dps got launched from the platform) on the Battle of Rishi last boss... because of unbalanced Damage output on Walkers.

 

Most importantly, I'd love it if BIOWARE would even READ these notes! I have my doubts that they do. I hope I'm wrong. But please get back to basics, to math, to logic, and look at this from a clinical, non-emotional point of view. Do the numbers make sense? I don't care who cries in Pve or Pvp... DO THE NUMBERS MAKE SENSE?

Also this reply on that thread:

By now I would even use a general tactical item based on :

 

Overwhelming Offense

Dealing damage increases all damage done for 2 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

 

something like:

 

Overwhelming Treatment

Healing an ally or yourself increases all healing done for 2 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

 

See, it is a general tactical, not a sorcerer specific, so maybe if everyone can have it then sorcs can have something useful too?

 

The idea of voltaic rush tactical change is great, I tried so much to get it working as it is now, but even on "easy" bosses like nim nefra - where people are kinda static with positioning, so you should be able to make it heal the person you want - it usually healed no one (4 out of 6 volt rushes did nothing) and the 2 times it worked it decided to heal my co-healer, who was not really damaged, instead of tanks that were below 80% of health... so I cannot justify using it anywhere where tacticals should matter.

 

For the Revivification ones - both would be welcome changes, but... All for One is usually better than One For All already when not in ops group, and in ops group I am usually happy if I manage to hit 4-5 people with Revivification, so the cut point imo should be that both perform same at 4 people cap, with All for One drastically increasing effectivness for 2 and 1 target, while One for All being a bit more linear.

For example:

All for One - (1) 500% (2) 250% (3) 150% (4) 125% (5) 100% (6) 90% (7) 80% (8) 70%

One for All - (1) 50% (2) 75% (3) 100% (4) 125% (5) 150% (6) 175% (7) 200% (8) 225%

But the idea of them not using the Reverse Corruption stacks is neat.

 

A food for thought - how about a tactical that just makes Consuming Darkness be off GCD when player has Force Surge stack? It would not affect healing output directly - no heals would heal for more, so it would not make for example Raptus challenge less challenging - but it would eliminate "downtime" when you spend up to 3 GCDs not healing, just standing there and creating some force, while it would still retain the mechanics of the Innervate used a lot to create those stacks and would not completely trivialize Force management (because we would need those stacks, and being able to use more skills means more Force lost). It would be possible to heal during time when we now do nothing except for creating some force, which would directly increase our hps without actually increasing any of our healing skills specifically. It would also synergize with the Empowered Restorer set - it would be possible to burn down Force Surge stacks to create a stack of Consuming Darkness "on demand" just before using Dark Heal could make this set much more viable.

 

Oh well.. I guess I will stop here, we could think up so many nice tacticals, and it makes me only sad when playing the game knowing what we have and what we brought up as improvements...