Advanced Classes
Assassin
Speed and deception are the tools in the Assassin’s arsenal. Whether using stealth to infiltrate a Republic base and remove a high-profile target or tactically entering a large-scale battle, the Assassin’s dual-bladed Lightsaber flashes with deadly precision to provide a relentless offense and when necessary, a formidable defense. The Assassin can channel the Force just as easily, mentally assaulting an enemy and manipulating a confrontation to ensure his side maintains the upper hand.Tactical Role(s): Melee Damage, Melee Tank
Assassins leap from the shadows, channeling Force lightning through their double-bladed Lightsabers to disable and drain their enemies. They are masters of subterfuge, feared by even the most terrible opponents.
Sorcerer
The Dark Side holds dangerous secrets – and immense power for those who dare to uncover them. The Sorcerer reaches into the darkest corners of the Force to harness volatile energies that can wreak devastation on his enemies and bolster or even heal his allies. The air around a Sorcerer crackles with dark energy, and those foolish enough to get in a Sorcerer’s way soon learn a new definition of suffering.Tactical Role(s): Ranged Damage, Medicine/Healing
The Sith Sorcerer draws energy from the forbidden depths of the Force, mastering techniques that sap and drain enemies as they invigorate allies--or simply wreak utter devastation.
[Guide]Healing as a Sith Sorcerer
Preface This Guide is written with new MMO players, and players that are new to Healing, in mind. While experienced healers might learn things from it, it is not intended for advanced tactics or rotations. It does not cover healing in a PvP setting. PvP healing is more about teamwork and situational awareness than anything else, which means you can't really have a set way of healing every PvP fight. Healing can be a very rewarding aspect of MMOs. Alas it can also be a very stressful one too. Being a healer is something you are basically 'born' for, you either love it or hate it. Healing as a Sith Sorcerer in Star Wars: The Old Republic has the same basic principles as other MMOs, but Bioware has made sutble changes to try and increase the fun-factor of healing. That being said let's dive right in to how a Sith Sorcerer heals!
Class Mechanics As a Sorcerer you have a resource pool known simply as 'Force'. Upon choosing your Advanced Class(AC) at level-10 you will be given a 500 Force pool (compaired to 100 force pool our Assassin AC gets). With certain talent tree points you can up this to 600. Sorcerer's regen force at 8-force per second. Star Wars: The Old Republic has a Global CoolDown(GCD) of 1.5 seconds which means once you use most abilities you cannot use another until 1.5 seconds has elapsed. There is a difference between ability cooldown and Global CoolDown. An ability cooldown is how long until you can use specific ability again, a Global CoolDown is how long until you can use any ability.
STATS: Sorcerer's have important stats that should be used above others. We will focus on Willpower, Force Power, Alacrity, Force Crit and Surge.
Willpower is the basic stat that increases how much we heal for, and also give an increase to critical chance.
Force Power increases the bonus Healing of our abilities, while it isn't better than Willpower it is another stat we will see on gear that can improve our performance.
Alacrity will decrease how long it takes to cast an ability. This does not reduce the GCD, only the cast times of the abilities themselves.
Force Critical is simply as the name implies. This will directly increase the chance of your heals critically healing.
Surge is closely related to Force Critical. Surge will increase how much extra healing is done by those critical heals.
Abilities/Heals:
Dark Heal Force Cost:50 Cast Time: 1.5 Secs (no ability cooldown) This is our fast casting heal. It will not heal for as much as other heals, but it is useful for getting players away from "The Brink of Death" allowing for a bigger heal. Its also helpful for when you just need a small heal to get a players health pool to 100%.
Dark Infusion Force Cost:55 Cast Time: 3 seconds (no ability cooldown) This is our slow casting big heal. The heavy hitter if you will. This heal will likely be the one you cast most often.
Resurgence Force Cost: 30 Cast Time: Instant (6 second ability Cooldown) This is our Heal-Over-Time(HOT) ability. This is greatly useful and should be used often. It will heal for a small amount upon casting it on the target, then it will heal for a certain amount every few seconds. This will be used if someone is not at full health, but they are in no immediate danger of taking more damage or dying soon. You will also keep this up on the Tank during PvE situations.
Innervate Force Cost: 40 Cast Time: Channeled for 3 seconds (9 second ability cooldown) This works like our HOT ability but healing for more over a shorter period of time. The difference between this and our HOT is that Innervate requires you to channel the spell for 3 seconds, it is not instant cast.
Revivification Force Cost: 100 Cast Time: Instant (ability cooldown 9 seconds) This is an Area Heal (AE). When you cast this ability you will see a ground targeting marker appear. Anyone standing in that area will continue to receive healing for 10 seconds.
Purge Force Cost:30 Cast Time: Instant (4.5 ability cooldown) This ability will remove certain negative effects from friendly players.
Static Barrier Force Cost: 65 Cast Time: Instant (ability cooldown 6 seconds/Debuff 20 seconds) This is not a heal, instead it PREVENTS damage to the player. This is very useful and should always be put on the Tank before he engages the mobs in PvE situations. At a force cost of 65 you will not be able to cast this endlessly, so intelligent use of it is needed. Also anyone who has Static Barrier cast on them, cannot have it cast on them again for 20 seconds
TALENTS: Every level after you reach level 10 you get a talent point to spend. These let you customize your character to better fill certain roles. For Healing most of our talent points will go into the Corruption tree. Thankfully our talent tree choices have good synergy between them and we do not have to 'waste' talent points to advance higher up the tree. A good beginner talent spec will look like this. http://www.torhead.com/calculator/skill#201GGrRbd0dGzZf00M.1 You will notice there are 3 talent points left over. You can place those as you see fit. Putting points into Will of the Sith (Madness tree) or Subversion (Lightning Tree) are both viable options.
Resurgence Talent:Lets you cast our HOT ability. A Must have for any serious healing build. Also required for 2 other talents that you will wants
Force Bending: Everytime you cast Resurgence, you gain a buff enhancing one of our other healing abilities. A Very nice talent that is well worth 2 talent points. A must have.
Innervate: Lets you cast our channeled heal ability. Our channeled heal is very helpful and pretty powerful in itself. Also required for another talent you will want. Must Have
Efficacious Currents: Reduces the force cost of Static Barrier and the Cooldown. Makes using Static Barrier during fights easier. And that is a good thing. A must have
Force Surge: Anytime Innervate lands a critical heal you gain a buff. This buff lets you cast Consumption without the normal negative effects of casting Consumption. Consumption normally takes away health and converts it into force, it also slows your natural Force Regen for the next 10 seconds.
Revivification: Lets you cast our AE heal. While this ability is viewed as somewhat weak for a top of the tree ability, it can still be useful with intelligent use.
Madness Tree The points here will decrease how much force you use to cast heals, increase your total force pool to 600 and increase how much damage your static barrier ability will absorb. All very nice talents and well worth putting points into.
Healing Guidelines: Here are some tips for healing as a Sorcerer- Remember you do not have a large resource pool like in other MMOs. You have to learn to manage your healing output and force usage. Simply spamming Static Barrier or Dark Infusion will work wonderfully, for about 20 seconds. Then people will still be taking damage and you will not be able to cast a heal until your force regenerates.
Learn what abilities do what, then you will know how to use them best.
Do not stress yourself if you are in a group. Sometimes you group with players who dont know or dont care. They will run ahead and engage mobs when they shouldn't, and take unnessecary damage and expect you to keep them alive. If they do this, politely ask them to stop. If they wont, let them die once or twice and they will learn to play as a team and not as a Rambo.
Preventing Damage is always better than having to heal damage. Use your Static Barrier, especially after you have 2 talent points in Efficacious Currents.
Sometimes people will die. It might be because too many people were taking damage, it might be because the mob used an ability that simply did too much damage at once. No matter how good you are, or how fast you spam those heals, sometimes its just not enough. Learn why it happened, think about anything you could have done differently and then be better because of it.
Let your group know if you are low on Force. Whether it is before the mob is engaged or during. It is important. If it is during a fight then players can be ready to use a stim-pack to heal themselves or defensive cooldowns to help prevent the damage they will take.
A good beginner style of healing is to put Static Barrier on the Tank before he engages the target(s), then a few seconds after (to ensure he has all of them focused on attacking him) you put a Resurgence HOT on him. Then you can judge for yourself, is he taking BIG damage or small damage? Then cast the right heal. If he begins taking more damage than you can heal, cast another Static Barrier on him to allow yourself time to heal him back to full.
And finally, if the tank loses control of a mob and it begins attacking you. DO NOT run around senselessly. Run towards the Tank so he can get the mob off of you ASAP. If he has to chase you it will take longer. And dont forget, as Sorcerer's we have Whirlwind which prevents the target from taking any action for 1 minute (unless the target receives damage). Dont be afraid to use this on fights with large groups (or small groups of stronger enemies).
Healing can be vary rewarding. And good healers are highly sought after for groups. If you take the time to get to know your abilties and what they do you can be a very successful healer. And it is always great to have people asking you to join their groups because they know you are a good healer.
Preface This Guide is written with new MMO players, and players that are new to Healing, in mind. While experienced healers might learn things from it, it is not intended for advanced tactics or rotations. It does not cover healing in a PvP setting. PvP healing is more about teamwork and situational awareness than anything else, which means you can't really have a set way of healing every PvP fight. Healing can be a very rewarding aspect of MMOs. Alas it can also be a very stressful one too. Being a healer is something you are basically 'born' for, you either love it or hate it. Healing as a Sith Sorcerer in Star Wars: The Old Republic has the same basic principles as other MMOs, but Bioware has made sutble changes to try and increase the fun-factor of healing. That being said let's dive right in to how a Sith Sorcerer heals!
Class Mechanics As a Sorcerer you have a resource pool known simply as 'Force'. Upon choosing your Advanced Class(AC) at level-10 you will be given a 500 Force pool (compaired to 100 force pool our Assassin AC gets). With certain talent tree points you can up this to 600. Sorcerer's regen force at 8-force per second. Star Wars: The Old Republic has a Global CoolDown(GCD) of 1.5 seconds which means once you use most abilities you cannot use another until 1.5 seconds has elapsed. There is a difference between ability cooldown and Global CoolDown. An ability cooldown is how long until you can use specific ability again, a Global CoolDown is how long until you can use any ability.
STATS: Sorcerer's have important stats that should be used above others. We will focus on Willpower, Force Power, Alacrity, Force Crit and Surge.
Willpower is the basic stat that increases how much we heal for, and also give an increase to critical chance.
Force Power increases the bonus Healing of our abilities, while it isn't better than Willpower it is another stat we will see on gear that can improve our performance.
Alacrity will decrease how long it takes to cast an ability. This does not reduce the GCD, only the cast times of the abilities themselves.
Force Critical is simply as the name implies. This will directly increase the chance of your heals critically healing.
Surge is closely related to Force Critical. Surge will increase how much extra healing is done by those critical heals.
Abilities/Heals:
Dark Heal Force Cost:50 Cast Time: 1.5 Secs (no ability cooldown) This is our fast casting heal. It will not heal for as much as other heals, but it is useful for getting players away from "The Brink of Death" allowing for a bigger heal. Its also helpful for when you just need a small heal to get a players health pool to 100%.
Dark Infusion Force Cost:55 Cast Time: 3 seconds (no ability cooldown) This is our slow casting big heal. The heavy hitter if you will. This heal will likely be the one you cast most often.
Resurgence Force Cost: 30 Cast Time: Instant (6 second ability Cooldown) This is our Heal-Over-Time(HOT) ability. This is greatly useful and should be used often. It will heal for a small amount upon casting it on the target, then it will heal for a certain amount every few seconds. This will be used if someone is not at full health, but they are in no immediate danger of taking more damage or dying soon. You will also keep this up on the Tank during PvE situations.
Innervate Force Cost: 40 Cast Time: Channeled for 3 seconds (9 second ability cooldown) This works like our HOT ability but healing for more over a shorter period of time. The difference between this and our HOT is that Innervate requires you to channel the spell for 3 seconds, it is not instant cast.
Revivification Force Cost: 100 Cast Time: Instant (ability cooldown 9 seconds) This is an Area Heal (AE). When you cast this ability you will see a ground targeting marker appear. Anyone standing in that area will continue to receive healing for 10 seconds.
Purge Force Cost:30 Cast Time: Instant (4.5 ability cooldown) This ability will remove certain negative effects from friendly players.
Static Barrier Force Cost: 65 Cast Time: Instant (ability cooldown 6 seconds/Debuff 20 seconds) This is not a heal, instead it PREVENTS damage to the player. This is very useful and should always be put on the Tank before he engages the mobs in PvE situations. At a force cost of 65 you will not be able to cast this endlessly, so intelligent use of it is needed. Also anyone who has Static Barrier cast on them, cannot have it cast on them again for 20 seconds
TALENTS: Every level after you reach level 10 you get a talent point to spend. These let you customize your character to better fill certain roles. For Healing most of our talent points will go into the Corruption tree. Thankfully our talent tree choices have good synergy between them and we do not have to 'waste' talent points to advance higher up the tree. A good beginner talent spec will look like this. http://www.torhead.com/calculator/skill#201GGrRbd0dGzZf00M.1 You will notice there are 3 talent points left over. You can place those as you see fit. Putting points into Will of the Sith (Madness tree) or Subversion (Lightning Tree) are both viable options.
Resurgence Talent:Lets you cast our HOT ability. A Must have for any serious healing build. Also required for 2 other talents that you will wants
Force Bending: Everytime you cast Resurgence, you gain a buff enhancing one of our other healing abilities. A Very nice talent that is well worth 2 talent points. A must have.
Innervate: Lets you cast our channeled heal ability. Our channeled heal is very helpful and pretty powerful in itself. Also required for another talent you will want. Must Have
Efficacious Currents: Reduces the force cost of Static Barrier and the Cooldown. Makes using Static Barrier during fights easier. And that is a good thing. A must have
Force Surge: Anytime Innervate lands a critical heal you gain a buff. This buff lets you cast Consumption without the normal negative effects of casting Consumption. Consumption normally takes away health and converts it into force, it also slows your natural Force Regen for the next 10 seconds.
Revivification: Lets you cast our AE heal. While this ability is viewed as somewhat weak for a top of the tree ability, it can still be useful with intelligent use.
Madness Tree The points here will decrease how much force you use to cast heals, increase your total force pool to 600 and increase how much damage your static barrier ability will absorb. All very nice talents and well worth putting points into.
Healing Guidelines: Here are some tips for healing as a Sorcerer- Remember you do not have a large resource pool like in other MMOs. You have to learn to manage your healing output and force usage. Simply spamming Static Barrier or Dark Infusion will work wonderfully, for about 20 seconds. Then people will still be taking damage and you will not be able to cast a heal until your force regenerates.
Learn what abilities do what, then you will know how to use them best.
Do not stress yourself if you are in a group. Sometimes you group with players who dont know or dont care. They will run ahead and engage mobs when they shouldn't, and take unnessecary damage and expect you to keep them alive. If they do this, politely ask them to stop. If they wont, let them die once or twice and they will learn to play as a team and not as a Rambo.
Preventing Damage is always better than having to heal damage. Use your Static Barrier, especially after you have 2 talent points in Efficacious Currents.
Sometimes people will die. It might be because too many people were taking damage, it might be because the mob used an ability that simply did too much damage at once. No matter how good you are, or how fast you spam those heals, sometimes its just not enough. Learn why it happened, think about anything you could have done differently and then be better because of it.
Let your group know if you are low on Force. Whether it is before the mob is engaged or during. It is important. If it is during a fight then players can be ready to use a stim-pack to heal themselves or defensive cooldowns to help prevent the damage they will take.
A good beginner style of healing is to put Static Barrier on the Tank before he engages the target(s), then a few seconds after (to ensure he has all of them focused on attacking him) you put a Resurgence HOT on him. Then you can judge for yourself, is he taking BIG damage or small damage? Then cast the right heal. If he begins taking more damage than you can heal, cast another Static Barrier on him to allow yourself time to heal him back to full.
And finally, if the tank loses control of a mob and it begins attacking you. DO NOT run around senselessly. Run towards the Tank so he can get the mob off of you ASAP. If he has to chase you it will take longer. And dont forget, as Sorcerer's we have Whirlwind which prevents the target from taking any action for 1 minute (unless the target receives damage). Dont be afraid to use this on fights with large groups (or small groups of stronger enemies).
Healing can be vary rewarding. And good healers are highly sought after for groups. If you take the time to get to know your abilties and what they do you can be a very successful healer. And it is always great to have people asking you to join their groups because they know you are a good healer.
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