I may have borrowed (read: shamelessly stolen) Pinkie’s layout and style. First bit will explain basics of healing and second part will be about Sage healing in PvE.

Healing

Healing is the art of making things (health bars) grow larger, kinda like Viagra. Your main concern is making sure that people don’t run out of health and start dropping like planes over Icelandic Volcanoes. In your arsenal you have abilities called ‘heals’ (the green ones) which serve just that purpose. Obviously you can’t just roll your face over your keyboard and call it a day (unless you are a Scoundrel), but healing does not generally have set-in-stone rotations like DPS. You will need to be reacting to the flow of the fight and prioritising who needs to get healed when. While ‘that one guy with the lowest health’ is generally the right answer, it helps to have a little priority list:

1. Yourself – hey, if you’re dead who is gonna do your job.
2. The tanks – tanks are your best friends, they make sure that the damage you have to deal with is minimal and not all over the ops frame.
3. The other healers – healing in operations is a team effort, healers live and die together. You want your buddy to stay fit but since he is not a pussy he can take care of himself so he is lower priority that the tanks.
4. DPS – lol DPS, these things are just annoying in most fights.
5. Amorphic

Once you have established who needs to be healed you need to figure out what button to press. Since all healers have different abilities there is no point trying to get a rule going and I will discuss the Sage abilities in greater detail later. Generally you need to ask yourself if you need a quick heal, slow but large heal and whether you have reserves of resource that you can burn through and build up later or if you are already running on vapours. Oh, did I mention that all this plus actually moving your mouse, clicking a name and pressing a button needs to be done in about a second? No? Well I have now.

The key to becoming a successful healer is, you guessed it, practice. Knowing the flow of a fight will eventually make you predict incoming damage. You will learn to foresee when the tank will be hit for a metric shit tonne and when the boss decides to play with the DPS like Hulk with Loki. You will know exactly when to use which heals and on whom, where to place your AoEs and where to stand. In fact you will eventually know where the tanks and DPS should be standing and constantly shout at them when they don’t and get hit for half their health bar just because they couldn’t be bothered moving their arses.

As a beginner healer (and as a veteran healer in very difficult fights) you will experience something called ‘tunnel vision’. You will be focused on those 8 health bars and nothing else in the world will matter to you. The problem you will face is not looking at your screen and potentially missing make-or-break fight mechanics. You will also be the last person to know that a fight is over and hectically heal everyone up even after the boss has been lying on his stupid face for over half a minute and all the loot has already been distributed making you miss those trousers because who the fuck calls them greaves. Again this is something that only experience will solve, but you can help it by changing your UI. Having the ops frame in the bottom middle of the screen usually allows you to see most of the important stuff, like where your avatar is standing but you need to figure out the best UI for yourself, no one will be there to hold your hand when Toth is using the Sentinels as a trampoline.

But rejoice, it is not all bleak. As a healer you have a hidden power that every tank and DPS fear, a power that gives you authority and a power that should never be used on your friends. The power to not heal. Are your DPS breaking CCs? Let them die. Are your DPS standing in shit and taking avoidable damage? Let them die. Are your tanks pulling before you have had a chance to wipe the sweat from your forehead from the last fight? Let those fuckers burn. If they don’t get the message simply wish them good luck and go do something relaxing, like watching Ponies.

SAGE HEALING IN PvE

There are three types of healers in ToR, Sages (the skirt wearing trannies), Scoundrels (the overpowered ones) and Commandos (the ones devs forgot about), each with distinct strengths and weaknesses. The Sage has the following up his robes.

Strengths
- Can prevent incoming damage and lower big hits
- Has the best fucking AoE heal in the game
- Has the least reliance on natural resource generation
- Has an awesome free self-heal
Weaknesses
- Immobile, most heals have to be casted or channelled.
- Has to hurt himself in a very S&M fashion to regain resource
- Does not have any ‘oh shit’ buttons to quickly gain a lot of their resource back

Skill Tree

Here is what I run (there is a mistake on Torhead, you get 6% WP from Balance tree). Sage healing builds are pretty much all the same, the only options you have is switching between Master Speed and Amnesty. I prefer MS as it allows for quicker escapes and running between trash pulls. If you find yourself in a fight where you are constantly on low force do take Amnesty instead as I will explain below.

Force Management

Force is the resource Sages use. For whatever reason the amount of Force you can call upon is limited, I guess the Galaxy gets annoyed at you playing god all the time. A correctly specced and geared healer will have 650 Force, which is a sizeable pool but it is still gonna disappear before you can say May the Force be With You. In order to get some back you need to hurt yourself with Noble Sacrifice because the Galaxy gets off on that or something. For every 15% health you give away you will be rewarded with 8% Force but your natural generation will drop from 8 to 6 (25%) for 10s (7s with Amnesty). If you use Noble Sacrifice four times without waiting for the debuff to wear off you will not regenerate anymore, because the Galaxy has just had an orgasm from watching your pain and cannot be bothered giving you any more Force at this time. You can cheat around this every 3 mintes if you spec into Amnesty and NS four times and just tap Force Barrier to get rid of the debuffs. You can get rid of the regen debuff when specced correctly by using a Healing Trance before, I will go into detail on how this works when describing the healing abilities. In your normal rotation you should use NS every time you have spare stacks of Resplendence and more often if Force is needed because the DPS preferred finishing their casts over moving away from the big red circles. Sages can operate well on up to two stacks of the regen debuff (4 Force per second natural regen).

Abilities and Rotations

I will now describe what your heals do in case you are lazy reading the tooltips yourself, but then why would you be reading this. Nothing quite like being redundant.

Benevolence: 1.5s small heal. Mostly useless but serves as an ‘oh shit’ button in certain fights when you just know that the tank would die if your cast took longer than 2s and all your other heals are on cooldown. Should only be used in emergencies as it will eat up your Force.

Deliverance: 2.5s large heal. This is your largest single heal and it will form a massive part of your overall healing. Crits like a motherfucker (over 7k in DG gear without any boosts, can go as high as 8k) and if you have time to cast it makes you look amazing and gain a deep sense of satisfaction at how much the health bar has moved.

Rejuvenate: A small HoT which by itself isn’t brilliant at all, where it shines is what it does for you. It gives you a proc which makes the rest of your healing better. It increases the crit chance of Healing Trance and Benevolence and lowers the Force cost of Deliverance and Salvation. It also increases the targets armour by 10% and due to its low cooldown can be kept up indefinitely on two targets. It should always be the starting point of any healing and is best followed by a Healing Trance or Deliverance if HT is on cooldown. Situational use is with Salvation.

Healing Trance: 3s channel of healy goodness. Your most important heal which can heal for upwards of 8k and your Noble Sacrifice will not degenerate Force regen if HT crits, but ever since 1.2 it will still hurt. HT should always be used in combination with Rejuvenate for pretty much guaranteed crit. Gives up to 3 stacks of Resplendence to be used with NS or...

Salvation: The Sage’s Ace in the sleeve, the pièce de résistance. AoE heal, with 2s activation time or less depending on how many stacks of Resplendence you have (can be instant) which heals up to 8 people over 15s for about 4-9k depending on crits. Best way to steal that top position in a parser. This heal is so potent that some fights can be healed exclusively by salvating*, allowing you to browse the internet and simply refresh it every 18s. Costs a lot of Force and should only be used if there are at least 3 people standing inside it. Be careful with placement as everyone may need to move out of it making it pretty useless.

* to salvate, verb, ‘to heal someone with a Salvation’

Force Mend: Awesome self-heal, costs no Force, is instant and has a 30s cooldown. When specced it heals more than a Deliverance, mostly used as a defensive cooldown and to heal yourself up from using those Noble Sacrifices.

Now I will list the abilities which aren't heals per se but still are very useful to a healing Sage.

Force Wave: You spec into having a nice little free heal on this ability. Mainly a PvP utility but can be used to great effect in PvE, just throw it in there when Salvation just isn't enough. Can also be used to heal yourself up from using NS and if you manage to catch anyone else, well, more healing is more healing.

Force Barrier: The Biggest Fuck You Game, in the game. 10 seconds of immortality. Kephess shooting you? Force Barrier. Titan's Launch? Force Barrier. Standing in fire? Force Barrier. Need to pee? Force Barrier! The list if when it can be used goes on and on. Great both in PvE and PvP. When you have it up it also heals you and it also works as a threat drop so you can get those Flashpoints adds of your arse and hitting the DPS as they should. The only problem is that you need to channel it and thus cannot heal while using it. It also purges Force regen debuffs or refreshes Force Speed if specced into.

Force Armour: This puts a shield on your target essentially giving them additional health pool. When ou have it on you it also heals you which is a great way to get some health up after using NS, in fact it should be up on you all the time. While it has no cooldown it can only be used on a single target every 17s (less if using PvP 2pc, see Gearing) due to a debuff called Force-imbalance, going on the old symbol, there is a bureaucrat somewhere who has to make sure that Force is balanced all the time.

Force Speed: (BW are bloody creative with ability names) makes up for your low mobility with a cool sound effect and lets you sprint for a short time to get into position and resume healing.

Rescue: Used to grief people by pulling them back after they have used their speed boosts or off ledges into deep pits. Alternatively, as the name suggests it rescues people out of harm’s way and pulls them to you, so you can give them a nice hug. Lowers threat so careful when using on tanks.

Noble Sacrifice: Read the Force Management section I’m too lazy to repeat myself.

Force Potency: Makes your lightsaber glow like Luke’s on the Star Wars posters and increases your crit chance by 60% for next 2 abilities. Best used with Deliverances as it does not affect Healing Trance. It is your only burst cooldown.

Revive: Since you have failed and let your comrades die you get a combat res for a second chance. Only 1 res per 5 minutes though.

Restoration: The Sage's cleanse. When specced it heals a little and cleanses Physical, Mental and Force effects. With Tech effects you are screwed.

You also have a 4s stun, a 60s combat cc, a threat drop, an interrupt, a stun breaker, a slow in your arsenal, along with some attacks and a shitty knockback.

As I said before (but you have forgotten by now) there isn’t a set-in-stone rotation but I found one rotations that can be used most of the time. Both require the Force Mystic’s 2 piece (which you should have as I will explain in the gearing section).

Rejuvenate – Healing Trance – Deliverance – Noble Sacrifice and repeat

Very high HPS, is resource neutral but you will need to heal yourself every now and then (what Force Mend, Force wave and Force Armour are for).

Throw in Salvation and Force Wave when AoE healing is needed.

In a real fight there will often be times where the bosses take mercy allowing you some idle time to regen. Force Armour should be used often.

Gearing

First of all get the set bonus, the lower cooldown on HT (2 pc) and extra 50 Force (4 pc) is worth every penny. You can get the set bonus as soon as you hit 50 with the free Tionese and you can just mod up your Tionese shells to keep the bonus or replace them with Columi and Rakata. And yes I know that they are ugly but once you get Campaign/Dread Guard gear and Black Hole comms you will be able to buy and transfer armourings with the set bonus on them allowing you to sport whatever fashion you like. You can also take the PvP 2pc instead for lower lockout on Force Armour but you will be losing out on some WP. I have not seen enough math to decide which is better.

As for individual stats here is what I would recommend (I do not know the actual numbers of rating or percentage yet, will update later):

0 Crit Rating
It has been nerfed to the ground and is worthless. 'Nuff said.

40% of your tertiary rating to Surge
I believe this will be around 316 Surge in 72s

60% of your tertiary rating Alacrity
Should be around 474 alacrity in 72s

Everything else to Willpower and Power. Due to tree and skill buffs as well as WP’s contribution to crit rating, WP should be preferred over Power on 1:1 basis.

Any other stats are useless. Well you also use Endurance but think of that just something that comes on your gear.

You can heal with the spread that Bioware gives you but I do suggest modding your gear if you want to excel like me. The stock gear is far from optimal, below is the list of mods you should take with names.

Armourings/Hilt: Always take the Willpower heavy ones (Resolve Armouring/Hilt)

Mods: Take the ones with lowest Endurance and a lot of Power (Aptitude) or Crit (Mettle) without any letters at the end.

Enhancements: Low Endurance and plenty of Power/Crit & Surge/Alacrity (Adept(P/S), Quick Savant(P/A), Battle(C/S) or Insight(C/A))

Augments: Take the Willpower (Resolve Augment), I can make these for you if you hit me up.

Crystals: Power

Non-modded gear: Same rules apply to Implants/Earpiece, low endurance and high Power & Surge/Alacrity

Relics:
Slot 1: Underworld Relic Of Serendipitous Assault
Good for all healers. Most useful for Scoundrels and least for Sages but still the best choice.

Slot 2: Underworld Relic of Boundless Ages or Elite War Hero Relic of Boundless Ages.
The clicky is better when used on cooldown providing 138.25 power per second. If you are not used to it or do not want another cd to watch you can still do just fine with the EWH if you have obtained it before 2.0.

Now you have all the knowledge you need to heal like a real champ. Now get out there and test it out yourself. Just one last thing; healing in this game is piss easy.

Updated with 2.0 relics