1.2 Changes to Sorcerer Healing

[Narny]

Lets have a look at how 1.2 will affect Sorcerer healing :

Force Bending no longer unintentionally allows its buff to be applied to more than one healing ability. Its effects have been slightly redesigned. It now increases the critical chance of Dark Heal by 60% and reduces the Force cost of Dark Infusion by 30%.

OK this I understand. It was bugged. This is a fix. Also the changes to force bending as far as I can see are prompting us to actually use Dark Heal. This isn't too much of a bad thing. It was an underused talent anyway. And from what I can see the changes to Dark Infusion are to help with Force issues. You are now forced to decide whether to get off a quick life saving heal (Dark Heal) or a longer and riskier big heal (Dark Infusion). I'm quite happy with this.

Force Surge no longer removes the health cost from Consumption.

This is the big one. And WHAT? So if force surge no longer removes the health cost. What in the holy hell is it now supposed to do? Sit there and look pretty? I've seen nothing to say they're removing it. Just that it now doesn't do anything at all.

What's more. This is going to affect our regeneration abilities vastly. Unless I'm reading something wrong. I mean agents have tactical advantage to help them regenerate their resource in combat. Bounty Hunters have Supercharged gas to aid them with regeneration, and we have... well. A lot less now? We are now the only class that has to sacrifice our health to retain our ability to heal over a long period of time. As far as I see it anyway.

Consumption also has (as far as I was last aware) diminishing returns. So if we tap tap tap on it, we get less force per consumption for the same amount of health loss. Am I the only one seeing a problem with this?

Maybe if the diminishing was taken away from consumption, or if force surge lowered the health loss somehow, or removed its diminish? But this just seems a huge kick in the teeth for us. I'm a PVE'er, so please keep the PVP related discussions to another post. And this is by no means a "I'm quitting" or "I'm re-rolling" thread. I just honesty do not get how this is either balanced or fair by any means.

I've been 50 for a few weeks now, waited patiently for my guild members to also start hitting 50, and we've just started getting into Heroic mode flashpoints. Black Talon is very easy, and I do have time to sit about waiting for regeneration. But the harder heroics I find myself casting constantly, and more often now, especially on the harder one's I don't get chance to hit consumption after every Innervate. So my force isn't always up at 90% like it is in the easier heroics. I see this hurting us big time. I've obviously not had chance to do any operations yet, those are up and coming for us when more of us hit 50.

What do my fellow sorcerer healers think of this? Is it as big a tragedy as they seem to think on the official forums (and yes they are very very dramatic I know). Or is this something that won't affect us a whole lot. And what in god's name is force surge supposed to do now

Please try and keep this on topic and friendly. And to PVE content.

[Narny]

Innervate critical hits have a [50 / 100]% chance to make the next Consumption activate without degenerating Force or consuming health.

I answered half of my own question here. lol, the benefits of reading the tool tip twice I guess.

[alexe]

Ugly nerf, even with the "the next Consumption activate without degenerating Force". May not even worth the 2 talent points now, but who knows how this will look like when the patch will pass PTS.

[Surfacing]

Don't be worried that much. We, BH healers, got hit the most. Reducing the power/efficiency of our abilities by 50%. One of our heals got resource cost doubled, supercharged gas has been made almost completely useless (dropping twice less heat, boosting healing and damage by 5% down from 10%, kolto missile extra effect reduces 5% damage taken down from 10%).
We're doing HM operations, and I've seen myself doing rather well on my resource compared to my operative and sorc fellas (they swap from time to time). Except for Soa HM where I'm completely drained, and they manage to keep people up without much resource trouble.
Overall, sorcs got more or less untouched, BHs nerfed and Ops buffed?

[Narny]

Just had a look on the PTR. The fact I cant copy a 50 is bloody annoying, and I am damn sure not levelling to 50 to test stuff out. But the UI changes are amazing. The only thing going off in local was people ripping each other apart over sorcerers and operations.

I'd consider the 2 talent points now, atm I don't use them, as let's face it, why would we. I just tried a BT HM without using consumption, just to see how much it affects things overall. Now I am worried slightly. Ending on 50% force rather than 90% is quite a difference. And that's on content I over gear now.

[Naxy]

The devs have a better overview of this than any of us could possibly have. I give them the benefit of the doubt until I see the effect of this for a while.

[Zanthius]

I've got to agree with Naxy completely. More than anything, I'm posting to say thank you to all of you for being intelligent and thoughtful 99% I of the time.

I just glanced at the official forums to see what people were saying about this. The resulting IQ drop and desire to punch a small child will diminish with time hopefully...

[Narny]

I tend to try and totally ignore the official forums now, the General forum in particular. It's horrific how the community I love so much in game, turns into a bunch of utter morons as soon as they log into the swtor website. I have a feeling 80% of those on the forums are not playing. The in game community at the moment is one of the best.

[Kon'trola]

I just glanced at the official forums to see what people were saying about this. The resulting IQ drop and desire to punch a small child will diminish with time hopefully...

.....rofl

[Traxex]

While you get a nerf i get a smile on my face, that might leave me a semi-chance to kill a sorc after all. Oh wait the most underpowered of all classes also gets nerfed in PVP.. hmm 1m 25days to Diablo 3 .. can't wait. ohh f0ck no PVP in diablo 3, what to do?

[Naxy]

Traxex, stay with us so that we have something to kill!

[semper]

any healer should be able to survive 1vs1 even if he is bad one..
And when some1 comes to me, with all those stuns and interrupts, with that nerf, i cant outheal any dmg done on me. Just now i was in WZ, against commando who did 5,5k crit with grav. shot. Probobly full of surge, but im in BM just to clarify, and how to survive that if my crit heal in 1,3 sec is 2,2k ?!?!
Well, they wont see any € from me if this nerf goes alive. My € doesnt do much, but i wont get pissed in WZ anymore, and will go to D3 and GW2...

[Thornstar]

I have both an Operative healer and a Sorc healer at 50 now. Both decked out in Rakata and I can say that in all Sorc regen is going to be more annoying now. The buffs and nerfs I understand but having a sorc hurt themselves to stay at maximum efficiency is going to annoy the crap out of me. Operatives can spam heal so long as they have diagnostic scan going to help their regen. Sorcs now have to jump through another hoop this time and we're now on par with other healers in terms of output. So my question now is...why? ><

My only real complaint with the nerfs.