Based on my time as a sorcerer on the beta this weekend, I made a talent spec for Consular healing. Based on my knowledge of WoW and how the class seems to play, I think some form of this spec will be ideal for healing.



http://www.torhead.com/calculator/skill#600GGoRrdMdGzZf00MZ0M.1

Any thoughts?

looks good should be a really good spec once your capped

Here is what I just whipped up.

Fluttershy's first healer spec.

Two points in Psychic Suffusion is very important. AoE healing in end game content is pivotal for the main healer, and every point counts! Also, I find Egress a little pointless. Putting the points into Confound is better for a tank who is kiting a boss. It will do DoTs on the enemy and slow them down for a longer duration rather than just three second burst for the armored ally.

between the dps and tank they should have the mobs debuffed enough the healer should focus on healing and shouldnt waste rescourses on debuffs that only slow the target down AOEs are only useful if your the raid healer if you plan on going as the tank healer you'll need more single target and shield spells and egress defenetly has its moments if there is a person who needs to move out of the raid or fire then it will give them an extra boost

I cannot tell you how often Body and Soul from a disc priest saved my bacon. If encounters are anything like wow, mobility will be huge, and some people are just slower at moving than others. Any little bit to help is huge. And like AJ said, debuffs are not a healers priority, and Weaken Mind is a minor DoT. And since most bosses in MMOs tend to be immune to slowing effects, those points don't seem to be very important.

On the topic of Psychic Infusion, I don't know how many aoe heals the class gets, but if its only the one 31 point talent, it seems that 5% more on one heal isn't worth 1% total crit, or even 1% hit if you need to CC something. Of course that completely depends on encounters, and how much overhealing the aoe spell does. 5% could be crucial, and it might not be. Seems that salvation is indeed the only AoE heal. We have to wait and see what bosses do to see if its worth it or not

Jedi Consular/Sith Inquistor are the only healers that possess a instant AoE heal. The closest to them are the Smugglers/Agents with Kolto Cloud, but it only affects a max of four people and is a HoT. AoE healing for the raid healer is very important in my experience. I have found myself rotating between healing tank and others because the second healer wasn't quite quick enough or geared correctly.

I also lean on Weaken Mind over Egress because in SWG most, if not all, bosses could be affected by snares and I was one of those people who did 8 man raids with three people as a challenge, so my last train of thought was that I had to juggle debuffs and heals. I can see if you were the raid healer how Egress could be very helpful, but on the tank not so much. I guess I just need to get the two healer roles straight!

Again, it will pretty much entirely depend on how raid bosses and heroic flashpoints turn out to be. There is a good chance that taking one point out of the +1% crit/hit talent to put in the 5% aoe heal talent is worthwhile. Once I'm 50 I will try out those two talents and see what happens. It might be more beneficial to have the 5% more aoe healing in raids but not flashpoints.

WarlordSparkle wrote:

Again, it will pretty much entirely depend on how raid bosses and heroic flashpoints turn out to be. There is a good chance that taking one point out of the +1% crit/hit talent to put in the 5% aoe heal talent is worthwhile. Once I'm 50 I will try out those two talents and see what happens. It might be more beneficial to have the 5% more aoe healing in raids but not flashpoints.

Agreed. So many details it is almost overwhelming! Has anyone thought of stacking mostly crits to maximize critical heal chance?

That will depend on what the crit chance to crit percentage rate is, how easily acquired on gear, and what the crit heal multiplier is. As it stands right now, there don't seem to be talents or spells that work well with crit, unlike some classes in WoW, which have bonuses from talents when a heal spell crits.

Willpower will be primary stat, Force power will be the prime secondary stat ( i think) and crit will probably be lower priority. With a class such as Paladin in WoW, they gained synergy with talents when certain spells crit, or the crit heal % modifier was so great, that crit was insane.

One thing that i'm not too keen on is the limited resources, but I'm sure i can grow to like them. I gotta try out healing at max level to really make any judgments.

I think what should be focused on is Willpower and Presence. Force only effects damage and not heals. Check it.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1030602-SWTOR-Attributes-and-Damage-types

Presence only effects your companions which might be good for soloing but in a operation is completely useless as a healer at end game you'll want Will power, Crit, alacrity, and possibly power/force power depending if they effect all force spells or just offensive ones.

alacrity increases how fast you cast
crit increases your chance to crit obviously
will power increases your spells power
not sure if power/ force power effect all spells or not

I have a feeling Power/Force Power will translate to healing, otherwise dps would scale where heals would not. At least that is my assumption.

I was wondering if presence was only a companion thing. I couldn't find anything that said otherwise. Alacrity is important, but more so for Smuggler and Trooper because of their greater reliance on channeled powers. It is still an important stat for Consulars though. I would also count crit chance very important due to the reliance of burst heals in the class.

On the stats side of the discussion, from my experience healing in the first 3 instances, I found crit to be extremely important. I am not sure how this scales into late game, but I was sitting at a 18% crit chance from buffs and talents, and managed to get crit heals enough that I was expecting them and glad when they came. I actually kept our tank (Pinkie) alive a few times thanks to some handy crit heals. I am not sure if it was just because I was low level, but heals seemed fairly low in power, and the importance of crits became evident.

Alacrity will increase in value if the GCD is lowered by alacrity ala WoW. Cast speed is always valuable for healers, specially when you have a massive heal that takes 2.5 sec or whatever it is. 3 untalented. The longer a spell cast time is, the more value you get from speed effects.

Best estimate would have a natural crit rate around 10-15 based on experiences in WoW, with gear from early endgame probably capping around 25 if you gear for crit. The problem with gearing for crit is that people get into a mindset where they expect crits to happen and save them, when that is not the case. Critical, unless you have talents or spells that modify it, is an unreliable stat. Generally for healing, stable stats are more useful, like cast speed modification, or more healing power.

Unfortunately, I need to spend more time in the game to determine more. But once I do, I may be able to do some theorycrafting of my own. Or would that be something different since there is no -craft suffix?

After leveling a bit and getting to play with these abilities this is my new build (which happened to be the exact same as Rydel's idea for a healer after talking it over this morning).

Fluttershy's Healer Build

First of all, the two points into Valiance isn't worth it at all. At max it only reduces 2% of health spent by Noble Sacrifice. That's a waste of 2 points especially since you can get Resplendence higher up in the tree that will proc 100% of the time with two points and make Noble Sacrifice cost zero health and not degenerate your force revival.

I tried out Egress and found it completely pointless for anyone but myself. Since the buff only lasts 3 seconds a lot of players failed to see it early enough to make use out of it. It has only helped me get through areas slightly faster, out of AOEs a little quicker, and dodge PvPers for a short time. It has only assisted others when they were already running away from a target. Considering I buff people when they standing still, or not retreating, it isn't worth the two points and the other two points to get there.

With this build you do have a an extra point, so I dropped it into a slight defensive increase.

So does power not improve your healing? Earlier today I was pondering whether I should make crit or overkill gear, so far I have used and preferred crit which now sits at 20% and I get my 1/5 attack/heal to crit quite reliably. I am wondering whether to combine this with alacrity or surge, or balance of the two.

Unrelated: are relics just drops and/or mission rewards or must something specific be done to obtain them. I'm 31 and haven't seen one yet.

Darth Dreselus wrote:

So does power not improve your healing? Earlier today I was pondering whether I should make crit or overkill gear, so far I have used and preferred crit which now sits at 20% and I get my 1/5 attack/heal to crit quite reliably. I am wondering whether to combine this with alacrity or surge, or balance of the two.

Unrelated: are relics just drops and/or mission rewards or must something specific be done to obtain them. I'm 31 and haven't seen one yet.

Power is the super stat, it increases both damage and healing.

Alacrity is a healer stat. I can get mine to about 17% reduced activation time with my relic.

Also relics can be bought at the LS/DS vendor, the auction house, from datacron shards, or by crafting them yourself.

The recommended minimum for crit chance is 20%, and then after that you can do what you want. I love to stack alacrity but it isn't pivotal to PvE, but more so PvP. My main question is if Willpower or Power more important? I can't seem to find complete information on either stat so I would really like to hear what you all think. I would assume power would increase potency more, but Willpower is a core stat and should be stacked fairly high.

U can stack both because one is a primary stat while the other is secondary so you should be able to find mods with both of them on it

Power seems to give a bit more bonus per point (a quite small amount) but Willpower also gives bonus to crit. I would probably go for Willpower over Power.

You really won't find points where you have to choose between them except possibly on relics, so which is better won't really matter

Well it comes down to situations where I have a helmet that adds +50 Willpower to my current, but sacrifices +30 power and +39 Alacrity for +48 Crit and Surge. I have been prioritizing Willpower above all, and think that it is more crucial than power at this point for me.

I know 5 Willpower gives 1 Power, but I don't know how much crit it gives. I can try to check when I get home.

The harder thing to tell will be alacrity since it depends on your rotation, there are no combat logs, get getting the heal on someone a bit earlier has a value that's hard to quantify

I was playing around with my gear and power is a definite increase over willpower but not by much. 5 will for 1 power sounds like a lot, but when I started swapping 7 Willpower for 12 extra power, my bonus healing only changed by 001.1 when the power was added. It isn't a big difference but will count a lot in the end. I'm not too concerned with that small a difference when my crit chance is somehow 40% :p.