This is mine. http://i.imgur.com/omjxZ.jpg Consumables go on the tiny bar on the left.

If you have set power/surge/crit/accuracy targets that are achievable without mod-swapping you are lucky. As a Sorc I have already ground out 5 new WH pieces ( + BM) for the enhancement swapping and 2 new WH pieces (+ BM) for the mods. Still have 2 more WH piecs to go for the mods. It really is not such a major issue. The base itemization of the gear is not what a lot of people want so you would have to min-max it anyway to get the best out of your gear (i.e. extra WH pieces). Figure out what power/crit/surge level you want to hit and make a plan to achieve those along with the 3% accuracy if possible. Typically (35% Crit/75% Surge). It will be even less of a grind with ranked war zone comms. They are buffing your class up and you are complaining about having to grind one or two extra pieces for the 3% accuracy loss?

I think they should have left the On Use Relics there and tweaked the amount they give. I am fine the adrenal changes. For the longest time grinding for WH gear I was restricted to recklessness + relic usage anyway. Its good enough without being OP.

Its how every other competitive league works in other game genres.

*twiddles thumbs*

I feel like coming from competitive shooter I can master most gametypes with the exception of one: Starcraft 2. Those guys are specimens of ridiculousness. The skill and talent needed to play that game is INSANE.

Honestly if you came from any other competitive gaming background, competitive MMO is one of the easiest ones to pick up.

I dont believe in this mythical statement that good players find the need to not post on forums. There is nothing else to do nowdays in SWTOR. You will notice I only started posting here in the last week or so because of complete boredom in PVP q times. Anyway since this top 1% moved on to Tera/GW2 and Diablo does that mean now I can be part of the NEW 1%?

Lets leave it at that then. I am of the belief that you cant isolate abilities from builds and isolate builds from PVP environments. Its like a Matryoshka doll in my eyes. I cant talk about one without grounding it in some form of situational analysis.

Exactly i have made sure that my team emphasize communicating what THEY ARE DOING over what the ENEMY is doing. Calling enemy using their resolve breaks, incs, their movements is very very basic communication skills. Calling out what you are doing and through build up chemistry automatically making all your teammates understand why you are doing that is way more important. Little something I picked up playing competitive cs at a sponsored level.

If you read through my previous posts you will notice I already addressed that. I said I will not ALLOW my teammates to fill resolve because I run my rated team with an iron fist. I criticize them when we are winning perfect games and point out every single tiny detail that can be altered for better performance. So not it will happen very rarely in a rated environment. It rarely happens with my pre-mades currently and it will damn sure not happen in rated environment because you know why? because we have sophisticated communication systems in place to communicate effectively and efficiently while relaying the most information possible to each other. Go back read my post you will notice i mentioned it already. Balance IS a superior spec in DPS terms (right now). In a rated environment you will spending more time in spawn than actually DPS-ing whereby my spec will be superior in DPS. Even now my spec is not that far behind in DPS than balance because I stay alive longer, I dont waste second seething or life tapping to get my force back to consistently stack various abilities. Most of your team is sitting in a pool of CC getting *****slapped by my DPS. I was amazing at using madness, consistently top DPS pre 1.2 but I was not stubborn, I realized what is needed for the greater good of my team and went with it. I do not care about my DPS or my HEALS all I care about is how effective I am within my team's composition, what do I bring most to my rated team in order to at the end WIN EVERY GAME. You telegraph your view on rated in every post you make obsessing over DPS this and 1v1 there. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to deduce the way you think about WZ's and Rated. P.S your anger is now leaking into your posts, calm down good sir.

This is why you will always be behind in the rated curve. The way you think about rated and approach it is all about "ME ME ME". Thats not how it works. You won't last 5 seconds against me because wait for it....my teammates would wipe the floor with you before you could even touch me. Why in the world would I go one on one against most DPS builds. I simply woudn't. I always move in a pack. I enter and exit. I peel players off my healers. Why would you be focusing me instead of my healers anyway? Who will be in the pack with me. Oh thats right because you don't think about Rated in the correct way. Keep trying to DPS me while my healer heals me and I just ignore your lousy DPS and peel your key DPS-ers off my healers. We will win that battle and then your teammates will Q.Q at you for not targeting the healer. Get this out of your head. A Warzone is not multiple separated dueling scenarios where you 1v1 a 100 times. Its not. Its constantly moving chess board with lots of variable pieces that keep changing on the fly. If you support your arguments by using closed-system dueling parameters you will always fall behind against top rated teams because at the very foundation your philosophy on rated is flawed. The sooner you get that way of thinking out of your head the quicker you will start improving at a rapid pace. I will start you off, say it with me "I am a support class".

A smart tankassasin will just pull the healer out of healing range and then keep him locked up. You don't always have to kill the healer if you stop him from doing his job you are achieving the same goal. Madness DoT's do not do as much damage as anhilation DoT's. Its not like closing the range is that hard for all those classes against merc healers (turret like). Operative healers are slightly harder to close the range upon but thinks like vanish, stealth, sprint, predation, force charge and various snares allow them to close range pretty effectively.

Exactly as the user stated above. I still do 400-575k DPS in a decent length voidstar game. Albeit its also because I am a valor 92 Sorcerer with pretty much fully min-maxed WH gear. I can pull these numbers because I know how to choose my targets wisely and how to mitigate defenses such as guard/static barrier and other defensive cooldowns. Through my massive tools of CC I can keep people out of guard or heal radius, I can CC marauders before they pop undying rage, I can kite them extensively when they have cloak of pain. Its simple really. The Less You Die -> The More You DPS. I can guarantee you that I die less than your silly self-heal madness build. I played madness build for the longest time before 1.2 , switched to this utility build a few weeks before 1.2 hit because I wanted to make a huttball build. Saw that it was super viable in other WZ's as well. Then 1.2 hit and it became THE build to run.

For the last time, I do not play full lightning. Read through my other posts in this thread or other sorcerer threads and you will know I have been preaching utility > pure DPS and pure HEALS for ages. Full Madness is NOT the best utility build. A hybrid utility build such as this has the highest utility http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/sorcerer#0-e2ce23d-7298f23 I get instant WhirlWind but I also get a 15 second reduced cooldown making it more viable. I get 2 seconds off my interrupt. I get electric bindings of my overload I get an AOE blind from my backlash I get a 20 second sprint I get unlimited force. I have cybertech grenades for more AOE Utility. I have some self-heals I have force slow I have electrocute In total that is: 6 base CC's with reduced cooldowns. A lot of them being AOE CC's that I can utilize for my Juggernauts and other AOE DPS teammates. Most of my DPS is still done via DOT's (CD and Affliction) and mobile abilities like Shock and Deathfield. Only time I am turret like is when I am doing force lightning to proc CD. The idea about filling up little resolve is again a skill that playing this build has to master. Knowing the rate at which resolve desolves, knowing EXACTLY how much each CC fills up resolve and stacking them appropriately with delays means the guy will have high resolve but NOT FULL. Ask all the people who hate my guts on my server because I bring them to 90-95% resolve but never full. When I play rated my teammates will not be idiotic enough to fill their resolve past that. I run my ship with an iron fist in terms of mistakes. Full Madness gets CT/Force Slow and Instant Whirlwind (on a longer cooldown). If you want to pickup the lower cooldown on electrocute that helps you but I can do the same by sacrificing 1 point of Parasitism and 1 point of Shock but I dont feel the need to put points in something that JUST reduces the cooldown of electrocute as compared to something that reduces the cooldown of both my Whirlwind and my interrupt. You slow one enemy maybe two using the god awful tab targetting system in SWTOR and say that helps your rage juggernaut. I blind a clump of enemies and give him more DPS. I knock outlying enemies into a PT's clump of enemies giving him an extra binded target to DPS. I throw cybertech grenades giving another instant clump for my AOE DPS to abuse. I knock away outlying healers keeping them out of heal range (binded) while my teammates wipe out their DPS and tanks. Which build is more useful for your team-mates AOE DPS? Please if you agree with me that utility is the way to go why go for a half-baked DPS build that has some utility. Just pick up all the damn utility in a hybrid tree. I am done trying to explain the game to other Sorcerers now, go ahead play your full madness and full lightning builds. I will see you in cross-server WZ and give you a live lesson in how to play a Sorcerer. My primary objective in a WZ is to become annoying to such a degree that they are forced to focus fire me instead of my healers. Once they do that, the game is won (if it wasn't already). I also have much more tools to peel people off my healers unlike you.

See your problem is you start talking without really reading or thinking out the posts. I said lightning is possibly viable in rated. Madness is a no go. You jumped to the conclusion that I play lightning and run round like an idiot trying to turret stomp people. Nope, I already previously mentioned I play a 0-21-20 UTILITY SPEC. That means no thundering blast, no chain lightning. No turret like qualities. Most of my DPS still comes from the madness tree. I would love for you to send your DPS to focus fire me. I will clump them up and AOE stun them so many times that my other DPS-ers will finish them off. Also really curious which competitive FPS did you come from. If its from the source/1.6 community I might know you since you claim to be so good? . If you came from BF3/COD, please, those games are inferior and cant be classified as COMPETITIVE.

I was just guessing at your nationality it was not meant as an insult but then again its easy to misinterpret things over message boards. I have played with a bunch of french canadians in other games so I was guessing that you were one based on the few posts I had read cause they have a similar writing style. Wasnt meant to be an insult btw.

Meh Ill admit it when I am wrong about something. I always classify all abilities that require an activation time as channeled thats just how I classified them. I guess in MMO lingo that is technically not a channeled ability. Still instead of being a nitpicking grammer nazi why dont you argue against the basis of my initial argument. Which is that our 31 ability on lightning has an ACTIVATION TIME and does not do close to as much damage as SMASH or RAILSHOT even when the other two classes are less squishier than us.

I think you got channeled and DOT confused. Channeled = Has an activation time instead of being instant. DOT = Damage Over Time. Are you perhaps French Canadian?

Lightning has a better chance than full madness. Because you get 20 second sprints, AOE BLIND, AOE BIND, unlimited force and are quite bursty. No Instant WW sucks though and no self heals as well. Too much channeled burst damage kinda negates having 20 second sprint as well. Honestly they need to fix Thundering Blast, if they fixed Thundering Blast to make it more bursty or gave it like a single-target knockback etc then Lightning could displace one of the other DPS classes. The fact that our top 31 level DPS ability is CHANNELED and does not do as much DPS as a SMASH or a RAILSHOT is a joke considering we are squishier than both those classes.

You guys are starting to sound like the one deception assassin I keep killing 20x in a WZ and then advising him to go tankassasin but him refusing to do so because he 'has fun with his build' and thinks it has viability in rated.

So you are saying you can pressure healers better than Pyro PT's, DPS Operatives, Anhilation Marauders and Tankassasins? Full Lightning is potentially viable. It still has to much RNG and turret like quality to really be better than the above-mentioned DPS classes. But full Madness no way. Force depletion is not a minor problem. Your friend above you does not realize that Force Lightning Proc Lightning Strike is a DPS LOSS over pure Force Lightning (even more so with Lightning Barrage picked up), its all I am going to say.

I <3 You. Disclaimer: I ran full madness 3-7-31 for the longest time PRE1.2. I know how it works and what its capable off. Exactly all these 31 build sorcerers talking about how much DPS and kiting and objectives they can accomplish. Its simple really and I have posted this in a bunch of places already without a real counter. If you were designing an elite PVP 8 man rated team. Would you take a FULL DPS Sorcerer over a PT/Juggernaut/Mara/Sniper/Operative/Tankassasin? Would you take a Sorc Healer over a Merc Healer/Operative Healer? The answer to both those questions are no because they simply do not bring as much as the other classes do in both those categories. Therefore the only viable build in rated PVP is as a unique support utility role where one picks up as much utility as he can in a hybrid utility build. (1-19-20) or (0-21-20). Thats the only way a Sorcerer displaces other classes in a rated team.

Electric Bindings is great and I would rate that higher than Creeping Terror as well but not Backlash. Simply put when your ranked team has good AOE DPS like PT's and Rage Juggernauts you do not want to knock them out of a clump with your overload you would rather blind them with Backlash instead. I have the privileged of playing with one of the two best Rage Juggernauts on my server and we usually work together so that's why I prefer Backlash. And about not having control of enemies resolve because of it auto-exploding that just comes from experience, movement, environment awareness etc. Agreed there are a few scenarios where they still go off at inopportune moments. But having an internal clock in your head from static barrier start to end becomes second nature and you know when you want to utilize your other CC's closer to the beginning than the end of the static barrier.

Same here, just transferred over to MMO's for SWTOR. Been playing source for 10+ years. You are stating all this assuming no other secondary variable will play a part in all of this. No one has this much freedom in a WZ , rated environment. You do not go around 1v1, 1v1, 1v1 dueling every class. Even if they are not focus firing you there will be other variables from other enemies thrown into play that won't allow you to execute your very well thought out kite rotation. These variables might not be them targetting you but could be simply a snare or a stun or the fact that one of the others starts capping on Novare Coast or Alderaan. Its not always that straightforward to sprint away or LoS based on the kite rotation against a vengeance juggernaut and in doing so mess up objectively speaking. Every kiting decision you make has to be objective minded. In LoS-ing the Juggernaut you might be LoSing yourself from the node etc. What I am trying to get at is that its easy to come up with a kiting rotation in a closed system however because the amount of effort and moves/decison making that a kiting rotation requires against a PT and especially Juggernauts that more often than not one or the other is sacrificed (Objectives or Kiting). I also think your argument against a PT is a joke. If you are able to kill PT's on a consistent basis as a Sorcerer I am sorry you have not faced good PT's. It might be also cause you do not get focus fired in your server as your server might have a higher population but I call complete BS on that. I can survive against 75% of the WH PT's on my server, I can probably beat only 20-30% of them on a straight 1v1. The elite 25% (like the PT's on my team) I do not even stand a chance. Its just how the classes work against each other.