Hi Everyone, I created this thread because I wanted to start a conversation about the healing side of Sorcery. I’ve played this game off and on for quite a few years and always as a healer. I’ve played every healer for a decent period of time, and I’ve noticed Sorcery has the short end of the stick- particularly with their overtime heals with circle of protection and soul well. Artifacts make anything technically viable endgame as we know, but Sorcery is consistently ranked lowest among the healers and I feel it’s because of those two powers. Soul well ticks are slow and the heals are abysmal, and circle of protection simply doesn’t have the range required to be viable in raids/alerts where mechanics require movement of any kind (which is most). Also, watcher is a fun mechanic that could be great… however the heals are relatively inconsistent compared to what they should be when taking damage, it dies very quickly, and offering offers no heal of its own so the only real way of giving it power back without wasting a slot would be to just spam the group heal. My goal isn’t to just sit and be negative but rather point out some issues that I feel are really holding the power set back from being great. Maybe we could see some new abilities added on the powerset(s) in the future? Im not too caught up on the timeline of balancing powers (if there is one) but I guess my question is if it would be possible to see tweaks like this to powersets that need them in the somewhat near future, and if so, is there some sort of time frame? I’ve been told by friends that we aren’t expecting any new powers- so my main concern is starting to shine light and attention to powers that could use tweaks and buffs, and I wanted to start with a thread on Sorcery. Does anyone else feel the same way? Differently? Would small changes like increasing range on circle of protection or increasing the heal output of soul well really need to wait for a full on balance pass of all powers?
My friend who's been Sorcery for a long time just made the switch to Nature. Sorcery healing needs an overhaul.
Hello fellow Sorcery Healer I highly disagree with your statement of sorcery being a bad / the worst healing power! Quite at the beginning of the Flashpoint DLC I switched from Electricity to Sorcery. I did that to see how bad it is since people say Sorcery is a bad healing power. And holy Sh*t they were wrong. Sorcery Healing can be a beast! I managed to heal every elite content (FVe / FFe S5 / Fos2E) as a solohealer. And it wasn't even hard. It feels super easy. So here are my 2 healing approaches that might help you: 1) Forget about SW and CoP. You don't need those slow HoTs. Weapon: Brawling WM (tap hold). - You can use every other weapon, I just use it from old WM habbits SP: - Spec into Superpower Focus, because you will get some nice power back with a big powerpool (more later) - Healing Crits - 100sp into Restoration, 100sp into Might & Power. Then fill the rest up with either resto or might&power. It doesn't really matter. Both ways have pros and cons. Mods: - Reserve Tank for your Chest. Gives a good boost to your powerpool and that gives you better passive regeneration. - Arbiter SC mod (or any other SC you use, doesn't matter too much) Loadouts: So I tried a few different loadouts and it also depends on the content of course Watcher approach: Prio Heal Group Heal Offering Shield Watcher Arbiter of Destiny You can do all the content with this loadout. Basically you only need Prio, Group, Shield to heal content. Watcher is just nice to have. Non-Watcher approach: Prio Heal Group Heal Soul Bolt Shield Invocation of Renewal Arbiter of Destiny EoG-Spam: Prio Heal Group Heal Shield Soul Bolt (or 3rd SC) 25% SC 25% SC This is what I currently run. Soul Bolt is a quick nice burst heal and even in grey range to boss the projectiles heal groupmembers on the way. Can be clipped with Prio or Group Heal. I use Invocation, but don't really need it tbh. Whenever I soloheal S5 I use Dashattack as a Supercharge to get away from the Brainiac Pulse Beams. Those are the 2 setups I easily heal everything with. Never had issues healing. NEVER! Let's talk about artifacts. As for the classic approach I run PHR / PoD / Trans. You can make an argument to replace Trans with either Scrap or EoG for more SCs or helping the group. As for the EoG loadout I use Scrap / PoD / EoG. If you only go 2 SC spam then you can replace Scrap with PHR. But with 3 constant SC spam you want Scrap and EoG.
I’m glad you found loadouts that work good for you, artifacts definitely make any powerset usable in endgame content. I have a loadout as well and my arts are maxed. However sorcery is not in the same ballpark as powers like celestial, water, and electric (Speaking from own experience). Sorcery will be left in the dust a good amount of the time by someone with one of those powers with equal skill levels and equal leveled arts. As I said before, watcher’s heals seem to be relatively inconsistent. I’ve noticed sometimes it won’t heal right away even as my group is dropping even at max power, and other times it’s healing unnecessarily and losing all its power when my team is fine. (ObsidianChill has a video explaining that further) I feel we shouldn’t be forced to forget about two key abilities that sorcery has (SW and COP) when adjusting them to make them more viable is a much better solution. Sorcery has all the key components that could put it over the top, it just needs some adjustments to make it more viable, which is why I was wondering if waiting for a full on balance pass for all powers was necessary for a power like sorcery. Do you feel as though it doesn’t need any buffs at all? Either way, I appreciate your opinion
I would say sorcery healing is on par with Celestial and Water. Water depends a bit on the content with the shields (usually run SC + 2 shields + 3 bursts). Elec might have a little edge over the other powers, but only when you can make use of Galvanize. (grouped up fights). The safety net from Bio-Cap is more or less replaced by Page of Destiny. Elite content mostly needs quick burst heals rather than HoTs. (Every healing power can soloheal elite content!!). With sorcery I never (!!) have power issues (thansk to my spec).. also with "only" buff trolls. Whenever I feel I will struggle with power I go to arbiter form. For power consumption I go like this (i don't rank nature, because I haven't played it since DWFe times back in the days) Elec > Sorc + Celestial > Water. I get your wish to buff CoP and SW. Water has this huge AoE Heal. So I see why you want to Buff CoP. CoP is very situational and depends on the fight if you can use it or not. It needs smart positioning, but I don't like it (never did). SW with smart positioning is nice, but I just prefer burst heals. All a healer needs these days to heal any content is: Prio, Group, Shield. Not more needed Also I don't think buffing up SW or CoP would break Sorc (or make it OP). Honestly Sorcery has alot of different options that actually can be used in loadouts. Elec more or less only has 7 healing skills that are used. More like 6 + arc as situational power. The rest is not vailable. Celestial has basically only 1 loadout and no really good options (WotPcCS is a nice burst but on the combo part and hart to time, same as BcA). Water basically has 3 bursts, 2 shields + Flood of Power SC + Riptide / SoS Sorcery has: Channeled heal, prio, group, shield, Soul Bolt, Shard, Transendence, Arbiter of Destiny, Offering, Watcher, SW, CoP. It has more than this one cookie cutter loadout.
While I agree that CoP and soul well need help (at least turn soul well back to the old setup) I gotta throw my hat into the healing end game elites solo fine camp. I use priority heal, boon, group, watcher, bloom, invocation and have no issues. Hybrid spec for me, arts are orb, phr, and page and tac swap phr. If I'm lazy, I'll not green spam and either run circle or shard in blooms spot. 515sp, maxed resto then 70 in dom 70 in power. Easy peasy. I still think water is the easiest since I also have an end game water healer and don't even use a single healing artifact on her and she does fine with just 2 puddles, 2 shields, priority and group. And the reset power. But it lacks that awesome 8 man that is invocation. I just can't live without that one. Like in PCe with the tornadoes. It's just so good. Make sould well double tick or put 3 out and make it so CoP is either bigger or applies when players walk thru and I think it's golden. With allies added, power is a non issue so I continue to hate arbiter
I have not used him very often lately, and I will not claim to be an awesome healer, but the one I have closest to end game is my sorcery healer, and while I have had a couple close calls, I have not lost anyone yet to poor healing (I don't count the handful of idiot DPS's I lost cause they wanted to spoon the tank during combat...hahaha) Is it the best heal out there no, but it is not the worst either. I do like CoP, and my motto as a healer is "you wanna live, stand in the dang circle" I also like watcher (or as I call her, Iris) more so as a safety net, she can be inconsistent, but she has done a few good saves for me when I have had to stop to do a pick-up or work a cog.
Sorcery IMO is a good healer. As said above the main 3 abilities that are used these days are priority heal, group heal, and a shield. 4th slot is normally reserved for a gimmick slot. And last 2 slots are usually play style slots. For example: Electric will have priority, group, and shield. Bio cap is it’s safety net which is its gimmick. Water has PGS (priority, group, shield), with tempest as its gimmick. Celestial has consume soul as its gimmick which it’s a full strength ally HoT Nature is basically the same as celestial with savage growth which is a full strength group heal. Sorcery doesn’t have a clear gimmick slot ability that’s obvious. It’s sc is it’s gimmick. AoD is arguably the best healing sc in the game. Greatly reduced cooldowns and a massive power regen. You can add your sc generator into your extended loadout and help regain you sc faster so that you go back into this form faster. With this sc you can get your stacks up fast for page of destiny. You can charge up your purple heal. You can spam your orb priority. You can set up 3 soul wells to support your human form. With that said however. There are 3 abilities that do indeed need a buff. It’s CoP, soul well, and watcher. Circle of protection has such a small area of effect that it’s basically useless in a game that makes you have to stay mobile. The easiest fix for this is 1 of 2 options. Increase the range of it so that it’s worth using. Maybe even make it the size of waters solace and make it spawn on the caster. The second option is to make it do what it’s name says and have it mitigate damage of those in its PROTECTION. Doesn’t have to be a lot. But making it stop some damage would justify its small radius. Soul well does a small heal every 2 seconds. This is terrible. Solace single tick is stronger than 2 ticks of soul well which also ticks 1 per sec. so a single tick of solace is worth 4x as much as a single tick of soul well. If you keep the tick as weak as it is than it needs to tick 2x as fast. Or double it’s tick.this way you will want to have it up and try to get 2-3 wells up at all times. Watchers biggest issue is that it will use its power bar to deal damage. It’s already bad enough that it has a slow AI. At the very least it shouldn’t be able to waste power to attack. Especially not in healer role.
I wanted to post an updated response just to be clear- I know Sorcery is a good healer powerset (thanks to artifacts really). I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad healer powerset in their current states, just a bad healer themselves. I just think there’s huge wasted potential with the powerset that are relatively easy to fix and it ranks lower than the others currently (in my opinion). Buffed soul well and CoP+range ticking sounds amazing. It wouldn’t be broken and adds a layer of HoTs to Sorcery that it needs. I feel it’d bring so many people over to the powerset, especially given that the dps side can already hit pretty hard as well.
