in your previous post you said elemental. and you said your main reduction applies only to blasters and lighsabers. thats incorrect. you were confused, and its ok. this quoted post is very subject to criticism as you now claim to have known all along that our damage is not elemental, and now claim somehow that YOU alone are experiencing our damage bypassing your mitigations? please stop. the hard evidence is that we have decent damage most of the time, but horrendous damage against heavy. im trying to have a clear, informative thread here where i can help to dispel some of the falsehoods and misconceptions people have about sorc/sage damage and utilities. ty.g'nite.aud

sorry to break it to you, but i have 17.34% energy/kinetic mitigation on my sorc in my pvp gear. a well geared, hard to kill vengeance jugg i pvp with/against (grr huttball) just told me hes at 45.41%. the buff only affects internal/elemental. sorcs dont do elemental (is this tech dmg type?). we do energy, kinetic, internal. so, maybe now you can see that perhaps you kinda possibly may have slightly sorta misunderstood just exactly where everything is at?????? tanks are stong in pvp. many know this already. many more will know. especially when they all have 4pc set bonus: 5% dmg increase across the board for them when they have a target guarded. nerf tanks?? no. apparently tankin in pvp is actually fun for tankylove players. i say let them be..... for now. let it all be. its too soon. even for those pesky stealthers.... ty.aud.

i really appreciate seeing alot of the usual sorc/sage complaints that came up, and then how those complaints are diffused with corrections and hard numbers. for all of the cc talk we havent touched on a very important point: resolve. this game mechanic makes any class with more than 2 cc's stop and reconsider their uses. example: previous poster outlined how a talented whirlwind, when broken, will stun the target for 2 seconds. thats 2 cc's. that will basically fill a resolve bar. that means in 2 seconds that target is about to become one unstoppable force. this also works for operatives and their now criticized opening damage. after their knockdown stun they also mostly fill a resolve bar and must wait for it to cooldown before applying their next major cc. so since resolve affects these abilities, which also stated are not unique to sorc alone, we find that its not really that they can be used to dominate 1 opponent, but instead to manage the flow of the GROUP's targets. GROUP...... in 1v1 sorcs are ok. if the conditions are right, if we dont get tore up before we can set up, etc. but in group play we shine because even though we cannot burst a player in short order, we are the very definition of dps if such a thing can actually be applied to pvp. pvp is typically measured in burst, while a 10minute boss fight in dps. we just keep on going. sorcs arent bam! here it is!! wait, now what do i do between blowing people up. we are here, and there. everywhere? our lightning draws attention and our heals hide our threat. both types are equally focused, and ignored. lastly. the burst argument. jacked up gear, stims, buffs, procs, stars aligning, all that junk aside (along with the 5k crit club post). here are actual numbers more than the ones i included in the original post for the main damage dealers in a standard 3-7-31 madness spec: creeping terror: 31pts this better rock my sox..... or maybe just provides a nice root. causes a 2 second root and 1508 internal dmg over 18seconds. thats some sad damage. 9 second cooldown, and not adding resolve is its greatest strengths. i subscribe to the school of thought that this ability has no damage component. it is only an instant cast root that like all snares and roots does not add to resolve. to be used for cc purposes only. i have cast it too many times for damage purposes to have it not be available before its off cd and needed for that root on a full resolve target (either by my doing or that of the cc spammers on the team). affliction: our "main" dot. no cooldown. 1532 internal dmg over 15 seconds (this is with talents that buff this turd). most classes have a 1.5 second cast (same as the global this instant takes up) that beats that damage. not very impressive is it? tiny heals on crits only. force lightning: u know it u love it. 2534 channeled energy dmg over 3 seconds. this suffers hugely from mitigations as most people in decent gear have upwards of 20% energy mitigation, some tanks push 50% base. once again, though this is bread and butter for a madness spec, its not really very stellar dmg. death field: this makes the dots leet?? 1170-1201 internal damage (helps its damage) targeted aoe with a laughable heal (85 health per target, max 3 targets). this with talents can crit for 2500, but more regularly hits from 900-1200. low side if player is affected by our inq/cons class buff. 15 second cooldown so its not really on-demand burst. talented this will increase 20 TICKS of any dot(s) on target by 20%. so bad dots get less bad for short time. shock: stun is for pve only ppl. 1085-1149 energy dmg. instant, 6sec cooldown. still not very bursty for taking up a global. also highly mitigated due to energy dmg. talented it will deal 50% more damage 45% of the time. (could be an anchorman sex panther joke by the devs with those % like that, look it up) crushing darkness: u best have a wrath proc. 848-912 kinetic dmg plus 1267 kinetic over 8 seconds (talented to tick longer). at 2 seconds of casttime this is borderline decent to highly questionable as it is clearly out dps and utilitied by lightning, but as an instant when the wrath talent procs off our force lightning, this becomes a real go-to ability as wrath makes it both instant and deal 20% more damage. what does all that yield. for madness, mostly lightning spam. deathfield every 15 seconds. affliction only on main target as spreading it around will only buff the wz chart, blow your force pool, does almost no noticable damage to its target alone, and on crits only, will heal the caster with talents for 1% of total health. nice, but also not enough to save our tails. so where is all this mysterious burst? not from our ghetto dots. not from our average instant. from our 15 second cooldown targeted aoe? no. even with dots up, deathfield every cooldown, crushing darkness, shock, lightning. it takes us an average amount of time to whittle down oponents. if left alone, sure we can be deadly, but not in the same way as a sniper. much less so in fact. some say that it comes in the form of a 0-11-03 build to get chain lightning instead of creeping terror, then to use chain on the wrath proc. i havent used it, but the talent tree says it does 1265-1297 dmg. that sounds like it could hit hard on wrath proc as instant and 20% buffed. however, i personally feel like i need creeping deaths root to help my group more than to blow stuff up blow stuff up. hope this is informative, especially to non-sorc/sage types. please compare this to your abilities. feel free to consider our bag of tricks, etc as part of the package and also everything the other classes bring to the table. we are apparently a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type of class and im ok with that. i do just fine thank you, but i do not appreciate all the misinformation that goes around. likewise, i have not thrown gas on the fire of other percieved balance issues. ty.aud.

more interesting points. ty. firstly... the cardinal sin in pvp.. not attacking the healer first. yes this unfortunately happens all the time and leads to more false information due to the silly ole WZ stats board. secondly... the stat board... damage and healing numbers dont matter. i have had too many 250k+ dmg WITH 150k+ healing wz to remember. too bad i cant say they were all wins. please dont say well they were probably pugs. we arent arguing about 8 man operation pvp here. sry. im trying to make a point that sometimes the wz board lies. some of my best wzs are when the top medal winner on my winning pug team had 4 medals. but we still rolled 6-0 in hutball because all we did was focus on objectives. lastly.... i will be back after work to try to reply to as many posts as i can so please lets keep this thread productive and informative. if anyone can speak for their high level play as a sorc/sage, or as a geared (400+expertise), seasoned (valor... lets say 40+?) player of any class vs sorc. please contribute to this discussion in a flame-retardant way. ty. bbl. aud.

actually many people, such as myself have so far in beta and live played certain classes because we like them or the idea behind them. since MOST people in live did NOT play in beta, it is unlikely they could have know what level of strength any class would be. if your argument is true however, we should realize a huge boom in what? operative population?? since the QQ on their burst is starting to eclipse sorc QQ. i find it hard to believe in a sorc rolling op conspiracy as the main reason the majority of people rolled a sorc. lightning and a saber. you dont get much more iconic that that right? or is it harder to believe that people want to emulate palpatine? hmm.

sorry friend, but all healers can be tough to kill. sorc/sage heals can actually be argued to be the stongest though, ill grant you that. and if you didnt read the post its ok, i know its long-ish. but i think i stressed waiting on all classes. i did not call for guard nerfs, stealthie burst nerfs, tank dmg nerfs, healing nerfs or any other nerfs. i DID highlight some weakness of sorc gameplay that many people, maybe youself, do not see or consider. we tend to see things most easily from only our point of view dont we? fyi. i had a 50 jugg in beta so i actually appreciate how viable they are in WZ now. even if sometimes they are infuriating. notice also if you will i mentioned well-geared pvpers. 17k tanks.... not the freaks with 20k+, not the dps ACs with 16k. so i would appreciate some understanding from you. ty.

misconceptions again. but at least youre seening that youre missing something. its called resolve. you can be stunned twice by these sorts of stuns before your resolve bar is capped. this is how a person can be stunned to death, or stunned then knocked back. watch your resolve bar. if this happens to you alot theres not much you can do about it. but its really not a sorc-only thing. its how cc immunity works in swtor. ty for bringing up this excellent point.

ive held off for quite a while to see how things would pan out. however, after pvping for most of my leveling xp (valor 47 when i hit level 50) and now at valor 53 with 10% expertise (geared in mixed Grand sorc which was removed last patch, champ and centurion), i have a few thoughts for all the whiners. maybe a few whines of my own? 1) our dots are WEAK. use them or not. they have benefits beyond their damage but those benefits do very little to save our skin. 2) we need to cast to kill. duh! now heres the surprise: force lightning aint all that. tanks have roughly 50% dmg reduction so it ticks on 17k+ tanks for 350ish x 4 ticks. lackluster. on non tanks: normally 700 crits with 1k on lowbies. so.. 3k on level 50 equal geared opponents every 3 seconds is ok at best. our burst is non existant. 2500 damage from deathfield every 15seconds is NOT reliable burst. 3) kiting is the name of the game for us, but fleeing does nothing for objectives. i dont mean fallback and regroup, because with all the ranged classes and even tanks with significant damage that can close the gap or pull us back stopping anywhere close is many times equal to death anyway. 4) hard counters. we have plenty so stop saying we are op. stealthers, high dps tanks, snipers, mercs, pretty much any class can actually hang in a fight vs us at endgame. getting dropped before or shortly after a stealther opens or blown up by juggs 4500 smash followed by deadly throw is not uncommon. 5) winning by attrition. thats what we do. we need to be mindful of position, kiting, cooldowns and all the other junk every other class needs to do. how does that make us OP? because we have what some percieve to be a huge bag of tricks? every class has tricks. 6) zomg i was killed in 1 lightning!!! sorz r OPz! if all you saw was lightning, then you sir did not see what actually killed you, nor did you see the non-sorc that hit you. again. we dont do burst. even with dots up before hand, deathfield, lightning to proc instant crushing darkness we just cant drop people at rates that meet these ridiculous claims. 7) too many sorcs. <-------this. leads to misconceptions. theres not nearly as many of the other up-and-coming pvp classes so we and our graphically extravagant lightning are the most visible. if you feel like its always a sorc killing you, keep pvping. you havent pvpd enough yet if you dont know about the real classes that own WZs. 8) too soon to tell? probably. unless everyone, of relatively equal skill in full battlemaster fights 1 thousand matches against each other then how can we really know who is and isnt OP? do i think op/smug does too much on a stealth opener? heck yes. but im not gonna go take a squirt in their forums because its too soon. maybe more gear will help, maybe not. TLDR: If you think sorc is OP then you clearly havent pvpd enough. lighting up the WZ scoreboard can be done by any class. this does not mean that a team of sorcs is a real game changer. tanks are looking insanely strong right now, will this be true in 2 weeks. lets just wait and see.

troll? if not, then oh my!! @4. jedi council in pvp???

shii-cho server: drex ole just to name 2 that can drop people in the opening stun. yes they must have epic gear because drex for sure has like 14k+ health. other than that most concealment operative and smug equivalents can drop people ridiculously fast. usually in the first stun. as long as they are 20+ so they get lacerate/equivalent. the only way to know how this really will play out is when they try to do that to an equally expertise geared 50. will they still perform the 6 second wonder? ps. i no longer believe sorcs are strong after witnessing the stealth classes openers, merc tracer missle spam, and near invicible tank play. the balancing is very close so lets not start a mess with nerfs all over the place.

resolve is not affected by snares and, if i recall, knockbacks. it only goes up from stuns and mezzes.

i almost died laughing. after a mere 2 weeks live, if you count early access, this game is fairly balanced for pvp. all the sorc/sage QQ will die down once they see how much burst stealthies do after opening on them. sheesh!! impressive. also, 50 melee is much a more complete package than while leveling. so fear not jc/sw types!! once you can throw that saber youre significantly more deadly. but seriously? you think you should just own everytime youre outnumbered? by 2 players who will no doubt be spamming a 3second, decent damage, channeled 50% snare on your melee butt? lolololol. next thing we may hear people saying, "why cant my [insert ranged AC here] solo 2 snipers at the same time?"