7.4 Seer / Corruption SWTOR Guide
Sage Seer is perhaps the hardest of the three heal specs to master. The class excels at single target burst healing and can easily keep a single tank up through burst damage. The difficulty comes in to play with its troublesome force management, as it has no healing ability that helps to restore force in its use (diagnostic scan - scoundrel/ med shot - commando). As such, our force use must be leveraged with uses of Vindicate to maintain our effectiveness. Getting a sense of how and when to "recharge" will keep you healing and your team in the fight.
Gearing up for Seer
Below are the gear selections, legendary implants, tactical and skill point choices I recommend for this class.
For more on gearing, visit the pages under gearing your character in the basic training tab. Gearing to 340.
Healing Patterns
Healers do not have what I would call "rotations" like a DPS. In fact, I find their ability usage to follow more the flow of a tank by comparison. There are abilities we will string together into a pattern, but which pattern we choose for healing is often reflective of how we need to react to damage, or a damage phase to keep a single player (tank for example) or the group alive. Healers have the responsibility of cleansing as well, though all specs that have a self-cleanse should know where it is at to help when many players in a group need to be cleansed of an affliction.
Force Armor
Force Armor is the signature ability of the Sage Seer. It is much like the Scoundrel's Slow Release Medpacs or the Commando's Trauma Probes. Force Armor shields the target for 30 seconds, absorbing incoming damage as it hits the player it is protecting. In parses, sages can seem lower versus the other healing counterparts. With a seasoned Sage Seer this will almost always be the case as they are shielding targets with Force armor, and they are decreasing the overall damage taken. The sequences below open up with force armor, assuming it is not already on the target. Try to keep force armor up at all times on the tank(s) or other players taking high amounts of damage.
Basic Single Target Sustained Healing
This is best used on a group member taking moderate to high damage and is my default sequence.
Single Target Burst Healing w/Hastening Call passive (@level 23)
This is for healing a single target taking High to EXTREME damage
Emergency Force Building Sequence
There is usually a 1-2 GCD window when ending a pattern as we wait for Rejuvenate to come back off cool down to start or repeat our next sequence. I use this GCD window to either consume some additional Vindicate stacks for force, Force Armor a DPS/Heal that is taking damage, or use abilities like force speed to lower the CD of Mental Alacrity (with Legendary implant)
AoE Healing Mini Sequences
Best used when you are focused on single target (tank) healing, but need to throw out a little AoE group healing to support your cohealer or top off some group members.
With Rejuvenating aura @ lvl 39, this heals 4 players. Be certain that the player you have rejuvenate on receives the healing trance. I like to use this once on myself when I need patched up. Rejuvenate myself and healing trance myself. The healing trance will spread to up to 4 players around me. When I do this, I make sure I move into the group to spread the healing.
Rejuvenate Makes Salvation instantly cast. Salvation is on my lower end of the priority spectrum. Its AoE heals are well below what we can pull off single target. I usually rely on my cohealer for AoE heals and I focus the tanks. In situations where the entire team is stacked, and I know I can hit 6+ party members with salvation, I use this pattern. Note that the circle on the ground for Salvations aura is far smaller than its effective radius. From my observations, its healing aura is about as large as a Force Quake. Party members need only to step into the Salvation puddle to get the full effects of its heal as well. The Commando and Scoundrel's AoE heal requires that the party members stay inside for healing. Ours sticks to the player and continues to heal them even if they run out of it.
Rejuvenate makes wandering mend bounce immediately. This can be handy to quickly heal 20-30k hp on 4 (up to 5 with the tactical) party members.
Full AoE Healing Sequence
For when you are on AoE healing detail, or everyone's taking very high damage and your cohealer needs support.
Be sure to cast Healing trance on the target with rejuvenate, and always drop your salvations in the group, not on your single target
Be sure to insert a proc'd Vindicate often to keep your amnesty stack up. It's easy to fall behind on force when AoE healing
Hybrid Single Target/AoE Heals
Putting Force Armor, Rejuvenate and Benevolence and Salvation on the group will give some moderate burst healing mixed with some moderate AoE healing.
Force Management
Using the above rotation without using Vindicate fillers to maintain your Amnesty stacks will likely lead to exhaustion (0 force/yellow bar). Sage/Sorc rely heavily on maintaining Amnesty stacks as they heal to offset their force usage. Space your Vindicates, avoid spam.
Rejuvenate grants the Conveyance buff, which will add the effect to the side to the healing ability used after your Rejuvenate. Pairing Rejuvenate with your other heals will make them much more effective and aide in force management.
Notable Abilities
Restoration is your cleanse ability. You will have use of this on quite a few fights. Have it handy.
Revival is your battle revive. This is usable on any dead players and will rez them with low health and no energy.
This increases our alacrity by 20%, so use this when you are ready to cast and channel continuously to take full advantage of its window. I sometimes use this to help regenerate force, as higher alacrity means more force regeneration.
This increases the Critical chance of your next 2 heals by 60%. I use this with my big hitters, like Deliverance or Benevolence. I will typically only use this for burst healing and often save it as a safety net.
With the unmatched haste Legendary Implant, force speed becomes something we want to hit on Cool Down to get our Mental Alacrity back up faster. Otherwise, save it for a burst of movement to avoid damage.
This is the sage's staple DoT ability. It’s an easy option to do a little dps as you heal. With an 18" or roughly a 12 GCD duration, it's easy to reapply it in between sequences. Consider its use if your team's dps is struggling.
Our raid buff, for whatever ridiculous reason is not with us by default, we have to pick it at level 43. Again, if DPS is struggling, it can save the day. I largely do not recommend taking a 10% buff for 10" every 5 minutes.
This is the one you use to pull all of your friends into lava, I mean save them from certain death. Very low actual utility, but if you react fast enough, you can pull a dps out of a bad spot. Do not use on tanks, it drops threat.
Notable Buffs
These 3 buffs can be tied together for purposes of discussing our force regeneration. It is vital to keep the amnesty buff up as much as possible. It has a 10" duration. We start with rejuvenate to get our conveyance stack. This makes healing trance critical hit like mad. Healing trance has to crit for resplendence stacks to accumulate. Most channels will result in 3 stacks (results may vary). Vindicate will not make us weary if we have a stack of resplendence available. The key is to keeping stacks of resplendence up by casting rejuvenate then healing trance every so often to keep them refreshed. Pace out our uses of vindicate to consume resplendence charges right before amnesty expires to take maximum effect of our buffs.
Salvation, Deliverance and mind crush give us the altruism buff. This allows us to give a free cast of benevolence (our biggest heal). Use it when you have it. Try to get a rejuvenate in first for the extra 60% crit on benevolence.
When we cast force armor, our target will get 10 stacks of soothing protection. As we heal that target, the stacks are reduced. If force armor concludes before those stacks are used, it heals the target. This makes force armor very useful on targets that we are not healing. They will get the benefit of the absorb, then healed as it collapses.
A Seer's Defensive Abilities
Also known as the "god bubble" we become pretty much immune to everything for 8". Keep in mind, some damage is untyped and will hit you anyway. (Izax omnicannon). I sometimes use it for a second stun break.
Our threat drop and a 25% DR for 6", should you want to take it @ level 27. It's helpful for damage intense fights. I typically do not take this one though in favor of other passives that support healing. But it can have some utility.
Force Mend is a quick self-heal that is off the Global cool down. You can use this to quickly heal yourself as it comes off of cool down, or if you have the utility point chosen, this can be a 15% DR as well.
Don't forget to force armor yourself when you know damage is incoming. The extra absorb and DR can make all the difference when paired with cloud mind and/or force mend.
Heal thy Self Healer!
Of the 3 heal classes, we are the "squishiest". We have light armor and not a stellar defensive tool kit. Sometimes we have to be selfish with our healing and rely on our tank to use their defensive abilities appropriately. A tank and their healer should communicate 2 main points:
Tank - when you are running low on your defensive abilities and will need more of the healer's focus.
Healer - when you are running low on force and need a moment to recharge yourself.
This is more urgent as a sage/sorc healer vs any other heal/tank spec, as it is very easy for the sage/sorc to get into trouble with force management.
We cannot heal if we are dead. Tunneling a DPS that is stepping in all forms of avoidable damage will keep enabling them to want to do that and have you heal them through it. This takes heals away from you and the tank. Train your DPS to stay out of damage by not healing them if they do. They need to be a lower priority than you and the tank.
Priority 1 - You
Priority 2 - Tank
Priority 3 - Your cohealer
Priority 4 - Melee DPS
Priority 5 - Anyone who is too far away from your healing
Tacticals
For starters, I am not an overwhelming fan of the sage seer tacticals. I find them all to be a bit underwhelming compared to other class's options. I have my favorite, but it is generally thought of as a bad option (but this is my guide :P)
Begin the hate, but this is my top pick for sage healing. This turns an otherwise completely worthless ability (Telekinetic blitz) into one heck of a burst heal. Be sure to pick TK blitz from the skill tree if you go this route. We have to give up either whirlwind or phase walk (both equally useless in PvE). TK Blitz gets three charges that regenerate, 1 charge regenerates every 10". I wait and fire all three charges back-to-back. Firing one charge makes the next one stronger (both in dps and heal terms.) You are a healer, you have a chance to miss the hit (we typically don't use accuracy), but unless your luck is really off, that'll happen maybe 2–3 times in a 5-minute battle. If you fail to hit, you fail to heal, which is why most folks give this one hate. I look at the number, though. My first TK Blitz heals for around 25k, second for around 30k and last for about 45k. I have seen this ability heal for as much as 65k. I love to use force potency for my last two charges as well. The tactical and ability can clearly be the sages biggest and most powerful burst heal. Did I mention it smart heals, targeting the lowest player within 20 meters of the baddie you hit? Fire and forget healing at its finest. See the pattern below. Note this tactical changes name on imp side to storm's succor.
Metaphysical Mender Burst Sequence
This one is noteworthy, only because folks inevitably ask about it. Our cleanse has a roundabout 11" cool down. I have only seen this tactical used to full effect in HM Revan. Outside of that, I do not recommend it for anything. Vindicate will make us weary if we do not have stacks of resplendence to consume. That makes us want to hit a quick rejuvenate/healing trance to build those stacks before using vindicate to lower the CD of our cleanse. The whole idea of this tactical is for quick cleansing, so we are likely to skip that and use hard Vindicates to get our cleanse back up. Hurting our force management and compromising our ability to heal in the long run. Maybe if your entire team were power techs, and you're doing HM draxus and need to remove 8 grenades/mass afflictions from the group would it make sense. Most notable fights with cleanse heavy requirements (NiM nefra, HM Dread council's death marks), reduce the CD of our cleanse by default. This simply doesn't make sense to use.
This tactical is useful for fights where your entire raid is guaranteed to be stacked together for most of the raid. Examples would be corruptor zero, lady dominque, malaphar. The bonus healing to salvation is minimal and outside of those extreme situations where your entire group can stay stacked, this tactical falls toward the the bottom of the list.
This is the tactical most healers gravitate towards, and maybe they are on to something. Wandering mend seems to hit for about 20k as it bounces around. I am just not sure that 1 extra tick of 20k will beat the 100k plus healing potential of TK blitz. Wandering mend is also a fire and forget healing ability that gives up our control of who it heals. It can jump around healing the same target multiple times, or it can jump to potentially 5 party members. (+1 from before). I am just not sure that it is the clear winner when it comes to increasing our healing numbers or effective heals.
Legendary Implants
Much like our great choices of tacticals, our options for Legendary implants are anything but Legendary. Below are my top 3 choices.
This one requires using force speed on CD to see any real benefit. The increased time of mental alacrity makes it one of my two picks. Otherwise, it just doesn’t do much for healing.
This one is supposed to be the staple for healers, I do not see the benefit from a mighty 15% chance that my target gets an extra 1-2k healing. Just doesn’t get us anywhere in the ballpark of what commandos and scoundrels get.
Faster and more uses of force potency, honestly this one might out pace the revitalize package in healing, though I have not used it with healing (yet). Could be a nice pair with meta mender :).