I'm surprised no one has put forward Provacateur. Agent Provacateur is basically what you are for the first two acts of the story, after all.

I put forward Ascension Day.

Definitely Gunslinger. There's nothing even remotely Scoundrel-ish about any of the chapters. They seem to make mirror classes' story work better for opposite ACs - Agent story only really works as an Operative, Trooper story makes more sense as a Vanguard but BH makes better sense as a Mercenary, etc.

Reposted from the Sorcerer forums for a wider audience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To preface this, I'd like to congratulate the developers on what they have done with the Sorcerer class. I find it extremely fun to play; it's interesting, the mechanics are unique among all of TOR, and the story is excellent. However, it is lacking in several areas in PvP. Most of us are aware of this, and after playing the class to 55 finally during double xp and gearing, I realized why: (Warning: there WILL be heavy comparisons to World of Warcraft in this post, for a couple reasons. 1. It's a successful MMO. 2. I have a lot of experience playing it. 3. The Sorcerer class is very, very similar to certain classes from WoW.) There's a heavy disconnect between design and reality, and most players are trying to fix the reality without seeing the design. This post will be directed toward Madness and Lightning, because I do not heal, but feedback from others who do is welcome! The Sorcerer Advanced Class plays very, very much like a Warlock from World of Warcraft. It's not a clone, by any means - I actually prefer Sorc to my old Lock - but it's undeniable that the base mechanics are there. The problem is, the devs seemed to decide they wanted a Locklike class, made the skeleton of one, and expected it to perform as they wanted without really giving it the toolset that made Warlocks so successful in WoW PvP. To begin with, Warlocks have one major advantage over Sorcs: they can tank damage. They're no Warriors or Paladins or whatever, but they are relatively immobile and do damage over time, so in return, they can soak up hits on their own and deal with damage relatively well. Sorcs cannot do this. We are squishy, and we have very, very little to mitigate this. There's clear evidence that Sorcs are supposed to follow in their footsteps with tools like Static Barrier, but it isn't enough. I will now break it down by spec, as I see it, with generalities posted after. A TL;DR will be included after each section, in <<< these >>>. Madness Ah, Madness. My favorite spec of the three, relying on DoTs for damage and supplementing it with proc-fishing, Madness actually plays fairly well, but it suffers from a huge Force problem, especially in PvP, and heavy healer reliance. Madness is not at all self-sufficient, and that's a shame, because it should be the spec that is most so. It has the tools, the intention is there - it's just not enough. Madness is quite similar to the Affliction spec Warlocks possess, and it's clear the inspiration is drawn from such. The problem is, Affliction never had mana problems. Why? Life Tap. Oh wait, we have that! It's called Consumption, and it does the same thing... except its useless, for three reasons. 1. The health-force ratio is terrible. Life Tap had a much better base ratio than Consumption's ridiculous 15% for 8%, and it could be improved easily via low talents in the Affliction tree to be even better. We're literally killing ourselves for paltry Force gains, and while that's borderline acceptable in PvE, it DOES NOT WORK in PvP. I'm not a fan of doing the other team's job for them. 2. We have no real way to recoup the damage we do to ourselves in this fashion. It's downright obvious to me that Madness isn't getting any Force regen mechanics because we're not supposed to have them,. The design is that we use Consumption to get Force back, and then our passive self-healing restores that health so we can reasonably use Consumption to get Force back whenever needed, to make up for the spec's subpar regeneration elsewhere. Problem is, we have crappy self-heals. Fully talented, we regen 2% of max health on crits only. It's paltry, pathetic - a nice little fringe benefit but usually skipped because it's just not meaningful. It's certainly not enough to counteract frequent use of Consumption. 3. Consumption isn't spammable. It's absurd that Consumption reduces our base Force regeneration - to get Force back, we lose our ability to get Force back? It's shooting ourselves in the foot, and it's stupid. This honestly needs to go across the board, but especially for Madness, which relies so much on it. What Madness Needs: In light of this, what do we need? Not a lot, but definitely something. We need to improve Consumption, and increase self-healing (mostly this one. A lot.); that's really it. This could be easily accomplished with just two changes: Modify Parasitism. New effect: All damage over time effects have a 25% chance to heal you for 2% of your health. Critical hits guarantee this effect and increase the healing by 50%. Cannot occur more than once per second. New talent, high up (or bake effects into Devour). Same level as Devour and Creeping Death. Scion of Darkness: [2 pts] Reduces the heath cost of Consumption by 25%/50% and increases the Force returned by 12%/25%. In addition, Consumption no longer reduces Force regeneration OR reduces Force degeneration caused by Consumption by 25%/50% and reduces maximum stacks by 1 stack/2 stacks. There, you didn't touch our damage, and yet our problems are solved and we're more interesting. Funny how that works. <<<TL;DR: More self-heals, better self-heals, make Consumption suck less.>>> Lightning I confess I am far less proficient with Lightning than with Madness, but it's main issue as I see it is a crisis of identity; it plays like it can't decide if it's a Destruction Warlock or an Arcane Mage. What it needs is to decide if it wants to totally divorce itself from the Sorcerer image and become a glass cannon (in which case it needs mobility and control) or if it wants to embrace the heavy turret it seems to want to be (in which case it needs survivability and also a little control). Lightning has excellent damage; no one disputes this. The issue arises that it has no way to keep melee off it reliably, even with the extra control the tree has, which exacerbates the utter lack of damage on the move and pointedly lacking tools to kite. What Lightning Needs: Contrary to strangely popular belief, interrupt protection (at least beyond Polarity Shift) isn't one of them. Interrupts are much less punishing in this game than most due to no school lockouts, and juking is extremely effective. The fact that melee have too many non-interrupt ways to shut down casts is a different matter. Instead, we need to go one of two routes: Mobile Cannon. If we go this route, we need to change a few things. First, we need mobility. We have terrible mobility and no real gap opener. I won't advocate for Blink - it's not what we need and it's too direct a poaching from WoW - but if we're squishy, we have to stay alive by keeping them off us. First off, Force Speed needs a reduces cooldown or increased duration in this route, and needs to remove movement-impairing effects like it does for Corruption. Overload's already pretty good for Lightning. Force Slow needs to be improved. Finally, with decent ways to get away and keep them away, we need some actual, decent off-control. I propose Lightning have a cooldown reduction on Whirlwind to 15 seconds or less (not less than 8). It still breaks on damage and affects only one target, and is still hardcasted, but it will actually provide useful control now. I think it's a fair deal to be able to soft-CC someone every 15 seconds or so in exchange for easy prevention of said CC. With control and mobility addressed, Lightning would be in pretty good shape. I think only one more change would need to be made: cause Lightning Strikes against targets affected by Affliction to reduce the casting time of the next Thundering Blast by 25%/50%, stacking twice. (An alternative for more mobile damage would be to instead case Shock to make Lightning Strikes within x seconds faster, or the next LS instant.) In total, the changes would look something like this: Suppression [modified]: In addition current effects, reduces the cooldown of Whirlwind by 20/45 seconds. (Possibly replaces cast time reduction.) Force Haste [modified]: Reduces the cooldown of Force Speed by 3/6 seconds and Force Slow by 2/4 seconds. Furthermore, increases the potency of Force Slow's movement-reducing effect by 10%/20%. Ride the Lightning (or Stormrunner) [new talent, same tier as Forked Darkness, 2 pt]: Force Speed has a 50%/100% chance to remove all movement-impairing effects and provide immunity to such effects for 2 seconds. When Lightning Strike hits a target affected by your Affliction, reduces the cast time of the next Lightning Strike or Thundering Blast within 8 seconds by 25%. Stacks once/twice. Heavy Turret: This route is simpler to achieve. All we would have to do is increase damage reduction, modestly increase control, and perhaps add a dash of healing. My suggestions: Increase Lightning Barrier's bonus absorb from 5%/10% to 7.5%/15% (or 10%/20% if that's not enough). Apply the Whirlwind change proposed above. Bake about 10% damage reduction into the tree somewhere. Alternatively, implement a new talent that gives Force Lightning/Chain Lightning/Lightning Strike a chance to give a buff that reduces damage taken by 10-15% for a moderate amount of time. Finally, allow Lightning Barrage to affect certain healing abilities. The changes would look something like: Lightning Barrier[modified]: Increases the amount absorbed by Lightning Barrier by 7.5%/15%. Solid Thunder (or Crackling Shield)[new talent, same tier as Lightning Storm, 2 pt]: Gives 4%/8% damage reduction plus an additional 11%/22% reduction against AoE damage OR gives Thundering Blast, Force Lightning, and Lightning Strike a 20%/40% chance to grant Solid Thunder (or Crackling Shield), reducing all damage taken by 10% for 10 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds, but critical hits from these abilities reset the rate limit. Additionally reduces damage taken from AoE attacks by 15%/30% at all times. (optional) Lightning Barrage [modified]: Lightning Barrage also affects Dark Heal and Dark Infusion, and increases the efficacy (or crit chance) of these heals by 10%/20%. <<<TL;DR: Lightning needs to make up its mind. Either give it escape tools, control, and mobile damage, or give it survivability, more pushback protection, and some control.>>> Thank you all for reading, and I welcome suggestions and feedback. If you have ideas(especially about Corruption and general Sorcerer QOL improvements), please post them! This is a community effort to make us an appropriate strength in PvP and address the issues holding us back from such, allowing us to reach the full potential we were designed for, even if that means slight paring down elsewhere (reversion of Madness uncleansable DoTs, possible reduction in Lightning's burst damage). Go in strength, and may the Force be with you.

To preface this, I'd like to congratulate the developers on what they have done with the Sorcerer class. I find it extremely fun to play; it's interesting, the mechanics are unique among all of TOR, and the story is excellent. However, it is lacking in several areas in PvP. Most of us are aware of this, and after playing the class to 55 finally during double xp and gearing, I realized why: (Warning: there WILL be heavy comparisons to World of Warcraft in this post, for a couple reasons. 1. It's a successful MMO. 2. I have a lot of experience playing it. 3. The Sorcerer class is very, very similar to certain classes from WoW.) There's a heavy disconnect between design and reality, and most players are trying to fix the reality without seeing the design. This post will be directed toward Madness and Lightning, because I do not heal, but feedback from others who do is welcome! The Sorcerer Advanced Class plays very, very much like a Warlock from World of Warcraft. It's not a clone, by any means - I actually prefer Sorc to my old Lock - but it's undeniable that the base mechanics are there. The problem is, the devs seemed to decide they wanted a Locklike class, made the skeleton of one, and expected it to perform as they wanted without really giving it the toolset that made Warlocks so successful in WoW PvP. To begin with, Warlocks have one major advantage over Sorcs: they can tank damage. They're no Warriors or Paladins or whatever, but they are relatively immobile and do damage over time, so in return, they can soak up hits on their own and deal with damage relatively well. Sorcs cannot do this. We are squishy, and we have very, very little to mitigate this. There's clear evidence that Sorcs are supposed to follow in their footsteps with tools like Static Barrier, but it isn't enough. I will now break it down by spec, as I see it, with generalities posted after. A TL;DR will be included after each section, in <<< these >>>. Madness Ah, Madness. My favorite spec of the three, relying on DoTs for damage and supplementing it with proc-fishing, Madness actually plays fairly well, but it suffers from a huge Force problem, especially in PvP, and heavy healer reliance. Madness is not at all self-sufficient, and that's a shame, because it should be the spec that is most so. It has the tools, the intention is there - it's just not enough. Madness is quite similar to the Affliction spec Warlocks possess, and it's clear the inspiration is drawn from such. The problem is, Affliction never had mana problems. Why? Life Tap. Oh wait, we have that! It's called Consumption, and it does the same thing... except its useless, for three reasons. 1. The health-force ratio is terrible. Life Tap had a much better base ratio than Consumption's ridiculous 15% for 8%, and it could be improved easily via low talents in the Affliction tree to be even better. We're literally killing ourselves for paltry Force gains, and while that's borderline acceptable in PvE, it DOES NOT WORK in PvP. I'm not a fan of doing the other team's job for them. 2. We have no real way to recoup the damage we do to ourselves in this fashion. It's downright obvious to me that Madness isn't getting any Force regen mechanics because we're not supposed to have them,. The design is that we use Consumption to get Force back, and then our passive self-healing restores that health so we can reasonably use Consumption to get Force back whenever needed, to make up for the spec's subpar regeneration elsewhere. Problem is, we have crappy self-heals. Fully talented, we regen 2% of max health on crits only. It's paltry, pathetic - a nice little fringe benefit but usually skipped because it's just not meaningful. It's certainly not enough to counteract frequent use of Consumption. 3. Consumption isn't spammable. It's absurd that Consumption reduces our base Force regeneration - to get Force back, we lose our ability to get Force back? It's shooting ourselves in the foot, and it's stupid. This honestly needs to go across the board, but especially for Madness, which relies so much on it. What Madness Needs: In light of this, what do we need? Not a lot, but definitely something. We need to improve Consumption, and increase self-healing (mostly this one. A lot.); that's really it. This could be easily accomplished with just two changes: Modify Parasitism. New effect: All damage over time effects have a 25% chance to heal you for 2% of your health. Critical hits guarantee this effect and increase the healing by 50%. Cannot occur more than once per second. New talent, high up (or bake effects into Devour). Same level as Devour and Creeping Death. Scion of Darkness: [2 pts] Reduces the heath cost of Consumption by 25%/50% and increases the Force returned by 12%/25%. In addition, Consumption no longer reduces Force regeneration OR reduces Force degeneration caused by Consumption by 25%/50% and reduces maximum stacks by 1 stack/2 stacks. There, you didn't touch our damage, and yet our problems are solved and we're more interesting. Funny how that works. <<<TL;DR: More self-heals, better self-heals, make Consumption suck less.>>> Lightning I confess I am far less proficient with Lightning than with Madness, but it's main issue as I see it is a crisis of identity; it plays like it can't decide if it's a Destruction Warlock or an Arcane Mage. What it needs is to decide if it wants to totally divorce itself from the Sorcerer image and become a glass cannon (in which case it needs mobility and control) or if it wants to embrace the heavy turret it seems to want to be (in which case it needs survivability and also a little control). Lightning has excellent damage; no one disputes this. The issue arises that it has no way to keep melee off it reliably, even with the extra control the tree has, which exacerbates the utter lack of damage on the move and pointedly lacking tools to kite. What Lightning Needs: Contrary to strangely popular belief, interrupt protection (at least beyond Polarity Shift) isn't one of them. Interrupts are much less punishing in this game than most due to no school lockouts, and juking is extremely effective. The fact that melee have too many non-interrupt ways to shut down casts is a different matter. Instead, we need to go one of two routes: Mobile Cannon. If we go this route, we need to change a few things. First, we need mobility. We have terrible mobility and no real gap opener. I won't advocate for Blink - it's not what we need and it's too direct a poaching from WoW - but if we're squishy, we have to stay alive by keeping them off us. First off, Force Speed needs a reduces cooldown or increased duration in this route, and needs to remove movement-impairing effects like it does for Corruption. Overload's already pretty good for Lightning. Force Slow needs to be improved. Finally, with decent ways to get away and keep them away, we need some actual, decent off-control. I propose Lightning have a cooldown reduction on Whirlwind to 15 seconds or less (not less than 8). It still breaks on damage and affects only one target, and is still hardcasted, but it will actually provide useful control now. I think it's a fair deal to be able to soft-CC someone every 15 seconds or so in exchange for easy prevention of said CC. With control and mobility addressed, Lightning would be in pretty good shape. I think only one more change would need to be made: cause Lightning Strikes against targets affected by Affliction to reduce the casting time of the next Thundering Blast by 25%/50%, stacking twice. (An alternative for more mobile damage would be to instead case Shock to make Lightning Strikes within x seconds faster, or the next LS instant.) In total, the changes would look something like this: Suppression [modified]: In addition current effects, reduces the cooldown of Whirlwind by 20/45 seconds. (Possibly replaces cast time reduction.) Force Haste [modified]: Reduces the cooldown of Force Speed by 3/6 seconds and Force Slow by 2/4 seconds. Furthermore, increases the potency of Force Slow's movement-reducing effect by 10%/20%. Ride the Lightning (or Stormrunner) [new talent, same tier as Forked Darkness, 2 pt]: Force Speed has a 50%/100% chance to remove all movement-impairing effects and provide immunity to such effects for 2 seconds. When Lightning Strike hits a target affected by your Affliction, reduces the cast time of the next Lightning Strike or Thundering Blast within 8 seconds by 25%. Stacks once/twice. Heavy Turret: This route is simpler to achieve. All we would have to do is increase damage reduction, modestly increase control, and perhaps add a dash of healing. My suggestions: Increase Lightning Barrier's bonus absorb from 5%/10% to 7.5%/15% (or 10%/20% if that's not enough). Apply the Whirlwind change proposed above. Bake about 10% damage reduction into the tree somewhere. Alternatively, implement a new talent that gives Force Lightning/Chain Lightning/Lightning Strike a chance to give a buff that reduces damage taken by 10-15% for a moderate amount of time. Finally, allow Lightning Barrage to affect certain healing abilities. The changes would look something like: Lightning Barrier[modified]: Increases the amount absorbed by Lightning Barrier by 7.5%/15%. Solid Thunder (or Crackling Shield)[new talent, same tier as Lightning Storm, 2 pt]: Gives 4%/8% damage reduction plus an additional 11%/22% reduction against AoE damage OR gives Thundering Blast, Force Lightning, and Lightning Strike a 20%/40% chance to grant Solid Thunder (or Crackling Shield), reducing all damage taken by 10% for 10 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 15 seconds, but critical hits from these abilities reset the rate limit. Additionally reduces damage taken from AoE attacks by 15%/30% at all times. (optional) Lightning Barrage [modified]: Lightning Barrage also affects Dark Heal and Dark Infusion, and increases the efficacy (or crit chance) of these heals by 10%/20%. <<<TL;DR: Lightning needs to make up its mind. Either give it escape tools, control, and mobile damage, or give it survivability, more pushback protection, and some control.>>> Thank you all for reading, and I welcome suggestions and feedback. I may post this elsewhere, in hopes that devs will see and read it. If you have ideas(especially about Corruption and general Sorcerer QOL improvements), please post them! This is a community effort to make us an appropriate strength in PvP and address the issues holding us back from such, allowing us to reach the full potential we were designed for, even if that means slight paring down elsewhere (reversion of Madness uncleansable DoTs, possible reduction in Lightning's burst damage). Go in strength, and may the Force be with you.

Now, I should preface this by saying that I don't have a whole lot of experience with arenas in SWTOR because I have awful lag where I am currently. But I do have very extensive experience with arenas in WoW (as a Warlock and a Warrior) and tPvP in Guild Wars (as a Necromancer and a Warrior), as well as personally playing a Vengeance Juggernaut, various-specced Commando, and Combat Sentinel (though more casually than the other two), which are classes that have come up a few times in this thread. I, personally, feel that we should have gotten the ability to use Ravage while moving instead of rooting on Ravage, but this works. And I can 100% attest to the fact that melee are not currently overpowered (though some, such as Marauders, are certainly very strong). easeyway, you're displaying a mentality common among mid-level ranged players in PvP in any game: trouble dealing with high-mobility melee. In this case, I find the phrase "knowledge is power" to be appropriate. If you know your own strengths and weaknesses, and you know the enemy's tools, you can predict how they will use them and plan accordingly. (TL;DR's will be listed after ">>>" for the lazy readers, but I recommend reading the whole thing.) Melee classes are always made easier than ranged classes, on purpose, because ranged classes have an inherent, huge advantage: they can attack from range. They can start their damage and CC sooner, and they can shut melee down more effectively. Consider this: a ranged class with a melee sitting on them is vulnerable to interrupts, so they have to juke/plan, and their damage is only about 30-70% of normal, depending on class. A melee being kited endlessly by a ranged class can do no damage. None at all. Not even any potential for damage. We have to connect to do absolutely anything, and ranged classes have a multitude of ways to keep us from connecting. Therefore, melee is designed to have more ways to get to you than you have tools to keep them away. They have to, or else they become useless. >>> TL;DR: The goal isn't to use your tools to shut down their uptime; it's to use them to minimize their uptime. They're GOING to hit you, assuming roughly equal skill levels, and that's okay. Your job is make sure they hit you as little as possible, and your teammates should be helping. As Gunnery versus Vengeance, you want to drag them out of position. If they run towards you, you've got time to start your rotation, get Grav Round going, and your first Full Auto, which will probably be pumped out before they get to you, will snare them and make them take even longer to get to you. If they leap to you (as most Jugs of any spec, but especially Vengeance, will), you can generally see it coming and hit Hold the Line preemptively. Boom, no leap root, no Ravage root. Just strafe away when he Ravages you, and you've survived his opener with flying colors. If he pushes you and re-leaps, he can't Ravage again without a proc, and he's now way out of position. Take advantage of this. Have your healer keep you up, have your tank Guard you if you're running with one as needed, and unload on him while he's outranged/LoS'd from his teammates and healer. It's painfully easy to drag melee out of position. Remember what you have: a root to use as soon as Unstoppable ends (Stockstrike), a good knocback on a relatively low CD (Concussion Charge), a pretty good mezz, again with a relatively low CD (Concussion Round), a ranged stun on a long cooldown (Cryo Grenade) - this is just control. You also have better than average survivability (especially with a few points in Combat Medic), and, of course, extremely high damage if you can get a couple of casts off. >>>TL;DR: Play to YOUR strengths, not his. Coordinate with your teammates to get him out of the position or out of commission, then put them on the defensive with an all-out assault on whoever is most vulnerable (probably him). Helig's comp sounds like an excellent one, and he plays it exactly as he should (it helps that he has patient teammates, of course), and it reminds me of an arena comp in WoW that I really enjoyed running on my Warlock: LSD2 (damage Warlock, damage druid, healing shaman, all ranged). This was not an easy comp to play, at least in recent seasons; it requires a lot of communication, cross-cc, clever use of LoS, and setup - but if you played it well and properly, you were a god of death. "Easier" teams could do nothing against an onslaught of well-coordinated control, slow, insidious spread damage via DoTs on multiple targets, and then the final phase of panic when the healer realizes that you're both unloading on his teammate, who is vulnerable and exposed, everyone else is at 50-60% health from consistent DoTs, and he's running low on mana. This sounds much the same, but with four people. The setup's different (dragging your preferred target to a location where you can quickly and ruthlessly gut him while the healer is helpless or otherwise occupied, instead of spreading damage around to sap their healer down), but it requires skill to set up properly, more skill to execute than the average, currently popular composition - but when done properly, with communication, coordination, and cool heads, it's devastatingly effective. Helig, I salute you for playing a comp few would try because you like it, and understand its potential. easeyway, I hope you've learned something, and you could do worse than to take Helig's advice. Hope I've helped. /bowout