Hi! Been playing for a couple weeks as a Jedi Sage (level 57). In preparation for getting proficient in raid healing, I'm looking for someone to learn from who really knows their stuff. Some prelim questions I've got are as followed:

1. When in a raid, how do YOU typically use your Jedi Sage healer? It seems like they can do both AOE and single target healing....but do you focus on one kind over the other?

2. How do you have your screen set up to make raid healing more efficient? I use a great mmo mouse that has 12 buttons on the side. That definitely helps, but of course not all active abilities can be used this way. Wondering how some of you have your screens set up for economy of clicks.

3. Having been a long-time single target (usually on the tank) healer in WOW, I remember almost never doing dps in raids. The healing responsibilities were simply too steep to have time for anything else. I'm guessing in SWTOR its the same thing?

Thanks in advance

VicMackey

1. When in a raid, how do YOU typically use your Jedi Sage healer? It seems like they can do both AOE and single target healing....but do you focus on one kind over the other?

Like you mention in your third question, you will generally mostly be healing the tank. Ofcourse there are plenty of times you single/directheal other members when necessary or mechanics make that happen.

AOE healing will mostly be done when multiple people all need healing, and usually decent groups group up for those and will happen after aoe incoming damage mechanics of the boss.

You learn to focus one kind over the other by experiencing, learning and starting to predict the mechanics of the fight. You'll know when to aoe heal vs when to focusheal the tank by expecting the boss' abilities and future incoming damage.

Salvation is obviously your group heal and requires 4+ people to stand in it to be a better heal than others. Roaming mend (might be called different for sage) is a good skill to heal other targets of your party. It's also a smart heal that goes to the lowest hp targets with you not having to do much. A slightly different but still aoe heal that can be used nearly on CD, as the best Tactical also affects this skill.

Rejuvinate should almost always be cast on the tank, even if you plan to heal another player with your buffed next ability.

2. How do you have your screen set up to make raid healing more efficient? I use a great mmo mouse that has 12 buttons on the side. That definitely helps, but of course not all active abilities can be used this way. Wondering how some of you have your screens set up for economy of clicks.

By screen do you mean UI?

In this case, I myself use a 12button mouse as well. I do however have all active abilities keybound with 1-12, Shift+1-12, 9 letters around the WASD and Shift+again a few of those letters.

Keybinding everything and getting used to it is vastly better than clicking your skills. It takes time to get used to it all (and very overwhelming at the beginning). Taking some hours when you hit 75 to plan your quickbars and keybindings out to find your own logic inbetween all abilities and practicing your memory to know where everything is (and create muscle memory with your fingers) is something I'd definitely suggest.

Combinations of -for example- Polarity Shift on SHIFT+3 and Deliverance on 3 means in PVP you'll very quickly be able to pull off safe burstheals on a target. There are plenty of combinations of keybindings you can set up that fit your playstyle and how the class is played. You can build on to that with putting offensive cooldowns together on a quickbar, defensive on another. Wherever you train your eyes to go to look for certain cooldowns or ability combinations.

If you do plan on clicking. I can't help you with that.

3. Having been a long-time single target (usually on the tank) healer in WOW, I remember almost never doing dps in raids. The healing responsibilities were simply too steep to have time for anything else. I'm guessing in SWTOR its the same thing?

Unless you're doing Story Mode ops, you won't be doing much DPS either. The harder the difficulty, the less chances you'll be DPSing. There are some bosses where you don't have to heal for 1-30seconds because of mechanics and the little bits of damage you do can help, but they're rare.

Most of the time, if your raid is trying to hit the DPScheck at the end of a NiM boss, **** usually starts hitting the fan incoming damage wise as well and you'll prefer to heal to keep them all at the brink of alive rather than do a 3-5k DMG skill on the 1-2million hp still remaining.

So yes, very similar to WoW when it comes to progression raiding.