Balance Sage mini-guide

[Dansker]

Had a sage on Fleet ask me a lot of questions about Balance Sage and it got me thinking about all the things I'd let someone know. So I figured I do a mini-guide with what I do. Not going to claim its the best, there maybe some tweeking on this as I learn more

 

 

Balance Sage (2.7)

There's several aspects to any class that makes up a good build and good play. The ones I feel should be addressed here are the Following:

 

1. Skills

2. Stat Allocation & Gearing

3. Ability Rotation

4, Strengths and Weaknesses

 

1. Skills:

For Spec, I've found the 3/7/36 to be the best dps:

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/Sage#30-20320-1202232211101312230223

 

I'm not going to go over each skill individually at this time as most of them are pretty self explanatory. If there are any questions about how skills work or why they are important, just ask in replies and I'll be glad to address them.

 

The only thing I want to address now is this: there was some discussion early on about using Force Gift in the Seer tree for the 2% alacrity. That bonus doesn't seem to do anything for a Balance. The theory behind it was it can reduce your throw enough to let you get your rotation smoother. It didn't make enough of a difference to effect Throw at all. The 2 points are much better spent in Clamoring Force in the Telekinetics tree.

 

 

2. Stat Allocation and Gearing:

The main stat for Sages is Willpower and is always the most important stat at this point. There maybe a point where Power starts to give better dps boost over willpower as the crit bonus from willpower diminishes and Power gives more bonus damage even with the 11% bonus Willpower from buffs/skills. The Stat Priorities for Sages should be as follows:

 

Willpower > Accuracy (110% Force for ops) > Power/Surge > Crit (a little bit seem to help, but don't go crazy. I'd recommend getting no more that 200. Probably only 2 mods/enhancements) > Endurance

 

Do NOT get any alacrity for Balance spec. Its a junk stat that you want to replace asap.

 

That being said, there are a few things that should be done with gear to get the best mix of stats:

 

Always use the low Endurance Mods/Enhancements. The additional 1,000-1,500 health you may get from using higher endurance gear will not keep you alive any longer in an op. Your role is damage, do as much as you can, kill the bosses as fast as possible, that's your best survivability.

 

The following is a list of mods/enhancements you want to use for min/max'ing your gear.

 

Mod

Willpower/Power - Aptitude (Available on Makeb mod vendor at lvl 50 and on Elite and Ultimate comm gear at 55, so no reason to have anything else)

 

Enhancements

There are only 4 Enhancements to consider using to get your balance of stats:

Power/Surge - Adept

Accuracy/Power - Initiative

Crit/Surge - Battle

Accuracy/Crit - Acute

 

These aren't as easy to get as the mod is unfortunately. The Makeb vendor has the 156's of each of these for purchase with planetary comms at lvl 50. For lvl 55 though, the only place we get these is raid token turn in gear or crafted. Keep in Mind that just because your raid token turn in gear doesn't have any of these enhancements on a particular item doesn't mean you can't get one of these enhancements with that token. Enhancements aren't main stat items thus Jedi Guardian boots may have an enhancement you want even if your boots don't have any of them.

 

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Note: There area plenty of crafters about that will craft the 180's for the rare mats only. They are able to offer this for free because they can sell any doubles that proc, so don't ask for the doubles unless you're wanting to pay a hefty tip or fee for the service. The crafters are assuming any risk with getting paid as they make nothing on a craft that doesn't proc.

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As far as augments go, always use resolve. You don't want to sacrifice main stat to get accuracy or power or surge. Those can be found on enhancements without giving up Willpower. Main stat is most important.

 

With regards to Implants and Earpieces, I've found the Force-Healer's MK-2 is the strongest Implant for a Power Surge and the Force-Lord's MK-2 for Earpiece to get Accuracy and Power. None of those are Token items, just normal drops, thus making it easier for your groups to get geared and easy for you to get stat allocations how you want. These are not hard rules of course, as several other combinations can be used, but don't get stuck on the token drops as they aren't the best allocated for dps.

 

For some generic target numbers under your force tab:

 

110% Accuracy or as close as you can. I didn't notice hardly any dps loss being at 109.5% which allowed me to have another surge enhancement at the time of Underworld gear. With Oriconian level gear however your going to be over 110% with the same number of enhancements.

 

25% Crit. Don't need more than that. Once your there, points are better allocated to power. If your still dealing with lower level gear, don't worry about this till last. Power is much more important.

 

70+% Surge. Want this number as high as possible, but your going to be limited from needing Accuracy. With full 180 gear, I'm able to get to 72.96 while keeping 110.43% Accuracy. Gonna do some testing if dropping to 109.27% accuracy to increase surge even more is worth it or not, but typically the 109.5% is a minimum.

 

 

3. Ability Rotation:

Balance dps is an 18 second rotation!

 

That's the most important thing to know. Balance dps is a combination of dots and direct damage, neither of which is dominate over the other. The main abilities you will use are as follows:

 

Force in Balance (on cooldown)

Mind Crush (on cooldown)

Sever Force

Weaken Mind

Telekinetic Throw

Disturbance

Force Potency (on cooldown)

Mental Alacrity (on cooldown)

Force Mend

Force Armor

Force Speed

Force Barrier

Cloud Mind (on cooldown)

 

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Note: Why the last five? you do 0 dps dead, simple as that. Its your job to stay alive in an ops, not the healers to keep you alive, they are there to heal you as they can. If you don't see it that way your most likely impeding your op group.

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Starting a fight:

Weaken Mind -> Sever Force -> Force in Balance -> Telekinetic Throw -> Mind Crush ->TT -> Dist -> TT -> Dist -> TT -> {Standard 18 Sec Rotation}

 

The standard 18 second rotation is as follows:

Weaken Mind -> Sever Force -> Force in Balance -> Mind Crush -> Telekinetic Throw (interrupted at 3 stacks of presence of mind) + Mental Alacrity + Force Potency + Adrenal -> Disturbance -> TT -> Dist -> TT -> {Repeat}

 

Interrupting the Telekinetic Throw at 3 stacks will cause you to lose force, so be mindful of it during the fight. In a straight turreting fight (like Nefra) you may run into force issues. However, in order for the rotation to work without losing your dots on the boss you must be interrupting TT when presence of mind reaches 3 stacks every time. I find myself counting every time I hit the TT button waiting to hit the disturbance or sever force depending on where I am in the rotation.

 

This rotation should work to where you are interrupting the last TT with Sever Force when Force in Balance timer has 2-3 seconds left on it.

 

With a bit more testing, I've found we can let the third TT just before Sever Force complete and we will significantly slow our force depletion if force is becoming an issue. The dots will not fall off yet, however your Force in Balance and Mind crush will be off cooldown for almost 1 sec before either gets applied again. This isn't an ideal rotation, but doing so allowed me to do a 1 mil ops dummy parse without running out of force power.

 

We always want to do our dots before force in balance and mind crush so you can get the most out of each cooldown timer. Doing them after shortens your rotation to a 15 second rotation and causes you lose one TT and one Dist per rotation. Best dps is achieved by maximizing the 18 second dot timers on the boss and not reapplying early.

 

For this to work best, you need to make sure you have "Quick Ground Target Activation" turned on in your controls tab of the preferences. Not having to place the reticle on the ground will increase your dps by quite a bit

 

The one adjustment to the rotation is Mental Alacrity. When activated on the first TT after Mind Crush you can squeeze in 4 TT's and 3 Dist's in the rotation. obviously a bonus to dps, so use it on cooldown or in a burst phase if the boss has one.

 

Also, use Force Potency and your Adrenal's on cooldown to maximize your dps as well. Watch the cooldown on them. I've found the last ones i can hold for the final Mental Alacrity and maximize the attacks benefiting from them without reducing the number of times per fight I can use them.

 

 

4. Strengths and Weaknesses:

The first misconception I ran into when playing balance sage was that we were the AOE spec. That is actually opposite of the truth. TK spec has much stronger aoe's than Balance. AOE is in fact one of the weaknesses of the Balance spec. The only aoe abilities we have are Force in Balance on a 15 second cooldown, Force Wave (Have to use at the right place and time only to control knock-back) and Force Quake.

 

Another notable weakness of the Balance spec is quick dying multi-target fights like Draxus. Balance is a ramp-up style dps spec and takes about 5 secs to get everything going. Most targets on those fights die about the time your getting ramped up.

 

Balance is not without its strengths though. Balance is a very mobile dps spec and doesn't lose a lot of dps on fights that require movement. In the 18 second rotation, only 7.5-9 seconds of it is channeled, the rest is instant casts. This allows for a lot of mobility time.

 

Balance also has a good amount of self heals from abilities. This allows you to not need as much healing from the healers, and we shouldn't ever really need to be topped off from just a small aoe damage. It appears as though I'm getting about 300 hps from the healing abilities in Balance spec. While this doesn't compare to a healer, this is a very nice bonus for extra survivability.

 

The other thing about Balance is its not a huge bursty damage spec, so you can maintain your dps at a high level for sustained durations. This allows for more predictable threat generation. Using Cloud Mind on Cooldown will allow you to not pull agro off tanks very easily.

 

Conclusion:

Using these methods, I've been able to hold over 3450 dps on an ops dummy with the armor reduction for well over 4 min. Not sure why, but the last min of that parse before the dummy died, the dps dropped to 3235. Best parse to date at conclusion was 3426 on Parsec & 3419 on Torparse (killing the ops dummy in 4m52s) with several in the high 3200's and low 3300's. Here's a link to a few of my parses (shorter ones were trying specific things in the rotation):

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/651297

 

I'm not going to claim this to be a best way to play, but its a very viable way to do Balance dps. As I learn more or hear back from you guys, I'll keep this updated. Next tests: Power vs Willpower Augments and 109.27% vs 110.43% Accuracy

 

 

to be continued..........

Edited April 21, 2014 by Dansker