But sadly no one looks at raid dps =/ And it too many death marks into affliction that could be used for crushing darkness

Then I feel bad for you in 1.2 mate. I personally have no trouble with them...I only ever seem to die from a bounty hunter that gets the drop on me or an operative/smuggler. Guardians and warriors tend to be fairly easy for me as long as you keep them away from you (utilize whirlwind, electrocute, force slow, and your knockback)

How is this possible you might say? Simple...death mark is not specific to just you; it will be consumed by any sorc's DoTs. I found this out while running NMM EV and my death marks were disappearing before I could renew crushing darkness and my affliction had just run out. I test this again. I had my fellow hybrid dot up another mob without DF while I put my DF on the target. Sure enough, my death marks were consumed. I don't know if Bioware intended this or if others have noticed it but this is ultimately stupid. It takes away from both of your dps (the double affliction ticks will drain it fast and did I forget to add that when a DoT ticks with 2 sets of death marks on the target it will take a tick from both stacks?) Please...fix this....

Am I the only sorc that can go lightning and never run out of force (even never going slow 60-70%?)

You usually want to get crit up to 30-33%...after that it's useless. Surge is the same way but the number is roughly 75% or something like that. Power is always always always a must. The only stat that you should be trying to find as a "filler" after reaching the crit surge ceiling is alacrity, which barely boosts force lightning.

This is now copied and pasted in a special place on my computer. Terrific explanation and thoughts and I. Agree completely.

This 0/20/21 spec I am seeing doesn't quite work for two reasons: you rely on far too many procs and you also have to rely on lighting strike. Too many procs are never a bad thing (look at ret pallies) but this case is just bad. When you have to constantly cast two different spells to proc two different abilities, that is a bit over the line. While you could alternate between the CDs of Crushing darkness and Chain Lightning, to accomplish this you sacrifice (IMO) far too much. First off, lightning strike is absolute crap. It's so bad it's a dps loss; might as well be our "ranged saber strike" to quote another thread. It's sole usefulness would be to proc lightning storm to insta cast chain lightning. But if you look, lighting strike cast is 1.5 with no alacrity (basically 1.3-1.4 for everyone); chain lighting is roughly 2.6-2.8 with the average alacrity. The proc chance of lightning storm is 30%. In the time it takes to cast 2 lightning strikes (which may or may not proc LightStorm) I could have already costed chain lightning and moved on with my rotation. "oh but I did damage while doing it!" you mean that damage that can be healed thru with one HoT or a 2 sec heal? Second of all, you are sacrificing two of your main dps buffs for one 3k burst attack (if that). You drop 15% damage for affliction which (believe it or not) is one of (if not our highest) dps dealer if fully buffed. The other sacrifice comes from the reduction of crushing darkness' time. Considering how little its duration is already and it's comparatively long cool down, this is not a good trade off for me. Especially with the buff crushing darkness is getting from wrath. I give you guys credit for whoever made this spec but it just doesn't work. It will give you more burst dps (sorta) but at the cost of dps overall. Face the facts that the hybrid dps spec is dead and either roll full madness/lightning/hybrid heals.

We do it's called lightning strike.

I laughed. But not every healer got nerfed...Operatives actually got a very nice buff. If you see any operative heal QQing....shoot them for me please. Their tactical advantage got buffed to hell, which is what they are the most dependent on. It is now a longer duration and you can now have one extra, resulting in a stack of 3 that last 16 seconds until refueled instead of 10 secs. Not to mention they get a 6% increase from having at least one on. Also, their AOE got buffed; it is now shorter and heals more, all for the low cost of 3 more seconds of waiting. In addition to that, diagnostic scan is actually somewhat useful now.

I'd like to take some time off from the whole 1.2 nerf to ask some serious questions to help in the future and the now. What does everyone try to get the most of in regards to secondary stats? Comments and thoughts and experiences on this? (I would like both PvP and PvE to respond to this and not just the PvPer's.

Affliction actually gives us the most dps. But I agree completely...chain lightning is insta cast able by two means, one deep in lightning and the other deep in madness. The fact blizzard got rid of the madness one was to simply kill the hybrid spec.

While I agree with all your points, I will argue one thing...the 31 point talents. Creeping terror as it stands is absolute garbage. If speced into lightning to benefit from thundering blast, it is far better than creeping terror. Creeping terror gets no buffs (correct me if I'm wrong) from any of madness' talents unless you use deathmark (which is better used for crushing darkness anyway)

Unless this new spec that relies on lightning strike is good, I'm going back to lightning. Creeping terror is terrible.

And lightning strike.

I've seen this spec and I will say the same thing as I've said before. This spec relies on lightning strike. An ability which is absolute garbage. A cast time of 1.5 secs to get the same damage of one crit affliction tick. And I have done my fair share of lightning....lightning storm does proc often but you gotta shoot the guy about 5 times before it does. But as first commentor said...it's bad to rely on 20 zillion procs.

Ok first off, sorcs are not fully OP....not even close. Put us in a 1v1 Match against any other class and we will most likely lose (unless fighting a healer). To even win a match, we have to pop basically all of our cool downs, resulting us being very vulnerable indeed when the next enemy comes around. Disagree? Do your next 10 WZ without using bubble, our knock back, or the stun, see how well you do. And you wanna know why I can easily get 500k dmg in a WZ? Because I spam affliction and death field before I even focus on one guy. So naturally my "dps" shoots up. In regards to that let me switch over to what sorcs truly lack: raid dps. You cannot use that damage number in WZs to tell the dps of each class....you simply can't. First off there's expertise....then expertise again.....and don't forget boosted stats. You are not put on the same ground if you are fighting Karraga or if you are fighting a fellow Juggernaut while you are in full battle master. And have any of you done a poor mans dps test yet? My guild did; sorcs were all at the bottom. Coincidence?

For healers this might not be true but alacrity is useful to dps. Right now? No. But seeing as we have to convert back to casting all of our spells instead of insta casting/ channeling everything, alacrity is actually beneficial to have (right up there with crit). Now to address the regen issue that you posed, I can't seem to help much there. There seems to be no true way of fixing it without going thru Bioware. They need to either p change a stat to help ( like you suggested) or make an ability that does so. So far, all I'm seeing is a cautious approach to consumption (which in frantic raid times will not be pretty). (or you could always take the strange/retarded way of doing it and actually dps while healing....how? Spec into 31/8/2 so that you have subversion and just keep the stacks up. As I said, non professional and reetarded way of going about this)

There's one problem with this spec: it relies on lightning strike. Otherwise this would be an amazing spec. But for now, we can dream of a lightning strike buff while all other classes around us get buffed.

Have you seen the OP buff?

Your point being? There are about 99% of all sorcs raging right now...obviously you are either a casual sorc or are not a sorc since you seem to not be effected by this at all lol

So yea this spec is basically dead....

You are my new favorite person salty. I don't plan on rerolling Mara just yet because look...MORE LOOT FOR ME!!!

What dots? One decent dot, another that you can't even maintain on a target, and an extremely weak dot that requires 31 points? As a former Warlock...I laugh at YOU. Our increased dps came from this combo. Without this we have crushing darkness and lightning strike that would benefit from wrath. Considering lightning strike is absolute garbage, that means you get to sit there with wrath while you with for crushing darkness to get off its now increased cool down. Wanna try again mister "I say sorcs are a DoT class because they have 2(3) DoTs"?

I believe their intention with this nerf is to switch all sorc dps to Lightning the "only true PvE dps spec". Why else would they not touch anything in lightning but nerf everything in madness that the hybrid spec depended on?

Yes but force lightning exploit was also something we knew would be fixed but its one of the few edges that made us actually comparable to other dps...now that merck and maras got buffed and we got nerfed...there's no comparison... And we get combat logs to prove it!!! Horaay!