I honestly think if you changed Conduction to something that provides a very significant boost to Force Storm, on par with the way Creeping Death buffs Death Field, a deep Lightning build would be viable. If that change occurred, Force Storm would be a useful spell. With Force Storm being useful, it can be used to proc Lightning Storm for instacast CL. The force cost is negated by Lightning Effusion. You'd basically replace Death Field with Force Storm and Wrath would be replaced by Lightning Storm, with the trade being that you use an AoE to proc instead of ST force lightning but LS only works on CL as opposed to Wrath working on everything. Would be a potentially valid build, assuming Conduction got that change. As it is, it's pretty much worthless, and it's high enough in the tree that giving it this change would not be OP because you can't hybrid with it.

It's either too much focus on DoTs or too little. If you go into Madness beyond getting Wrath and Haunted Dreams then you may as well pick up Lingering Nightmares and Creeping Death. Creeping Death in particular is very potent. If you don't want to go that deep then you honestly may as well go ahead and get Forked Lightning. Lightning Storm without Forked Lightning is pointless, BTW. You shouldn't be using Lightning Strike period, in either PvE or PvP, and with a Madness build like this you'll probably just want to use Wrath for your instacast procs instead of using the extremely expensive Force Storm to try to get a Lightning Storm proc (which only works on Chain Lightning). The thing is, if you put more than 13 points into Lightning, there are only a few keepers that far up. Namely, Electric Bindings (only reason most pass on it is to have enough points to get Creeping Death), Lightning Effusion (makes you amazingly force efficient and probably the biggest attraction to putting more than 13 into Lightning), and Forked Lightning (if you're spamming AoE then you may as well go ahead and embrace that). This should be your essential starting block for a DPS build: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201ZbsMMdZcMcRsMz.1 This basic starter should not really be tampered with. The only change you MIGHT make is to take 2 points out of Sith Efficacy to put into Oppressing Force, and ONLY if you choose to get Lightning Effusion, since with that build force efficiency is no longer an issue. But even that is up for debate, you could stick with 3 point SE and it would be totally valid. From this basic build you choose to spend the rest of your points either building up your DoTs and Death Field damage (the classic 0/13/28) or go deeper into Lightning to get better utility and force efficiency (0/23/18 in most cases). So far as DPS, 0/13/28 has better short term DPS, 0/23/18 has better sustained DPS in group PvP simply because you will never run out of force. With an 0/13/28 you will eventually be reduced to spamming FL, which is great vs a single target that isn't trying to kill you, but terrible when you're looking to keep up AoE pressure or being pursued. Anyone who says they never run out of force with a 0/13/28 in warzones is either dying so frequently that they get "free refills" that way or is spamming Force Lightning even when other spells would be a better choice at that moment (or they're just not getting into combat as often as they should). That said, the damage output of Death Field alone in a 0/13/28 is amazing, and if you go with that build DF should always be your top priority spell. I'd also comment that 0/13/28 works just great in PvE settings where any long fight will probably be against a single target (boss) where spamming FL is just fine so force isn't an issue. In warzones you will quickly find you are using FL more than you really want to (like when you already have a Wrath proc waiting to be used but not enough force for CL or CD) just to build up force. This is not much of a problem in Hutt Ball, where you can more easily pick and choose fights and retreat to rebuild force, a mild problem in Civil War where fights tend to be short but sustained defenses do happen, and a major issue in Void Star, where you SHOULD be spamming as much AoE and DoTs as you possibly can and FL is nothing but a filler spell for proccing Wrath (in fact on Void Star even using Force Storm can be valid). I hope that clears up any questions you have.

Your build isn't actually that bad. I'd drop both polarity shift and conduction. 1 pt polarity shift is meh at best, conduction is worthless. Put them into Haunted Dreams, it's obvious you want a build with survivability + AoE and high force efficiency, this would pretty much do it. Yes, it's a trade, but it's a valid one. 0/13/28 is not the only worthwhile build, believe it or not. I ran a build like this for a while, it's not that bad. You get decent utility, and my DPS did not feel that much lower.

The ridiculous outcome of putting Yoda in the prequels as some kind of urbanite on Coruscant. There is no logical way to resolve this and the way they chose to do it, while no more illogical than any other option, is still profoundly illogical. In fairness, the original trilogy doesn't have a very sensible background. How Luke has escaped Vader's notice is already perplexing in light of Vader being his father (further evidence that in the original, he wasn't). So yeah, the insanity began right in the second movie, which was great, but still introduced plot holes.

I can't recall ever losing to a sorc 1v1 on my PT. PT demolishes a sorc because a PT does indeed mitigate most sorc damage, can interrupt casted abilities, can close the gap multiple times, and does quite good ST damage even in tank spec. At worst it's a heal spec sorc in which case I just yank him into an obstacle or crowd rather than beat my head against the wall - although sometimes I can indeed burst him down, something actually hard to do with a sorc. This isn't to say a PT has the same DPS as a sorc or is much better than a sorc, but it is a fact that sorc isn't the hottest class around for single target damage. The tradeoff is that you can cause collateral damage to everyone around your primary target, softening them up to be killed shortly after, either by you or others.

They are both your apprentices. Several storylines specifically refer to multiple apprentices - the SW class story for example. The difference is that, assuming you are dark side (not sure about light side), Xalek is willing and grateful to be your apprentice and fully approves of you, the Sith, the Empire, and the gospel of strong trampling the weak. Ashara is essentially a neutral Jedi whose chief dark side trait is her high opinion of herself. She has all the makings of someone who can be turned, but she does not wholly endorse the Sith (yet). I, for one, have hopes that at some point BW will permit the option of fully turning her to the dark side so that she gleefully participates in destroying the weak and the Jedi.

Sorcerors are probably the least able to tank of any class in the game.

So in summary, your sole interest in raiding is your personal DPS, not the end result for the team. I like Deathmark the way it is. PvE is a joke, competing over that is an absurdity, and in PvP it means more damage faster for whoever I put it on. Not like I need help getting top damage in warzones, that happens most of the time regardless, so I'd rather affected targets just take more damage period. Plus, it's an AoE. You're not going to get all your DoTs applied to every affected target. Leaves some spare marks for use by whoever is targeting them.

You want an ability belonging to a class you don't play removed from the game because it's possible for a moron to screw up your channelled ability with it once every couple minutes? Well, that certainly sounds reasonable and not at all like a drastic overreaction to raging. Extrication is an amazing ability. If you can't handle puggies doing stupid things, don't pug. If your guild griefs you with this, get a new guild. Simple as that.

While AoE spammers get hate, it's actually not a bad contribution. Consider that it's providing constant interrupts to objective caps and softening whole groups up. Even if your CL+DF spam doesn't kill them all outright, dealing 5-7k damage to 3-5 people in a matter of a few seconds is NOT a small thing. Three sorcs doing that will easily wreck their team. Just look at the survival time in Void Star...anyone who is not ranged tends to rack up a ton of deaths. That said, it's simply the case that a 13/28 sorc is not very good in 1v1. Most classes will easily defeat you unless you happen to have advantageous terrain. A heal spec sorc is actually far more dangerous in a 1v1 and I'd actually say that for pure duelling, heal hybrids or tribrids are the best.

Update on this: I think I found a fix. http://sourceforge.net/projects/mumble/forums/forum/492606/topic/4933953 Basically you have to use regedit to fix this. Seriously a PITA and new players are unlikely to solve this on their own. Not sure if this is solely a Mumble issue or what.

I have kind of the same problem described in this thread but I've noticed a unique twist. If I shut down ALL other programs, put my Naga at 1800 DPI, and in game camera sensitivity at 0%, the camera is managable. Slightly on the touchy side but playable. If I start up another program, say, Mumble, the camera turn becomes EXTREMELY sensitive even at the same settings as before. Shutting down Mumble fixes this (though sometimes it still feels kinda oversensitive so I may restart client, which fixes it). Adjusting mouse settings doesn't particularly "fix" this issue. Yes, if I turn down DPI the camera will not spin as fast, but the tradeoff is that the mouse pointer itself is now stupidly sluggish, which is obviously a no-go if you're trying to heal, nevermind the basic quality of life of having to laboriously drag your mouse across the pad multiple times just to move the cursor over a doorway or other interactable item. It's not a graphics issue. Adjusting my settings does nothing, it doesn't matter if graphics are maxed out or minimalized, the issue is present. It kinda sorta feels less sensitive if FPS drops a lot, oddly enough, but that's just lag countering the oversensitive mouse and is NOT a fix. So basically the game is playable if all I want to do is PUG. If I want to get into guild premades I'm basically looking at being a gimpy player because either a) my mouse is so sensitive that I have difficulty just walking straight, much less targeting effectively; or b) turn down my DPI and I'm incapable of healing, or targeting, or doing anything else, though at least I don't spin out of control. Hours spent trawling the net looking for issues with Mumble, the game, workarounds, etc, have produced no real results. The only "fix" I know of is to manually adjust the user profile as described in this thread to turn camera sensitivity below the game's own minimum settings, which produces a slightly jerky but mostly usable result. Also note that the results are slightly inconsistent, fine tuning requires multiple client restarts, camera is still jerky, and obviously camera turn speed is actually too slow if for some reason you turn off Mumble. Polling guildies produced mixed results. Some reported zero issues. Some knew of the issue and had permanently adjusted camera sensitivity using the method described in this thread and just keep Mumble on at all times, which is workable but extremely imperfect, especially since it requires numerous client restarts to tune and doesn't really address jerkiness. Some could not fix it period, and just kinda dealt with it but hated it. Also note that NOBODY had camera sensitivity above 10%, most had it below 5% and many were at 0% and felt it was still kind of fast. Even the ones who reported "no problems" had very low camera settings. Not sure what would fix this permanently. Probably enabling raw mouse input would be a huge help, as would normalizing the camera sensitivity slider so that your average player using default Windows settings would be around 50%, giving us more play room to compensate for any alternate settings as well as fine tune to preference (assuming you're one of the lucky ones not using 0%, even if you're at 5% that gives you a few percent points in either direction for "fine tuning" if you call anything about this "fine"). Obviously this is on top of the other issues camera has in this game, like sluggish auto-zoom out, smart camera, etc, unrelated but just compounding the general interface screw many of us feel like we're swimming upstream against. PS - What makes it double weird is that I ran numerous flashpoints using Mumble while levelling and didn't really notice a big problem back then. Possibly my memory is fuzzy but I think I'd have noticed if it were as bad as it is now. Sometime between then and now it started being funky. I don't even remember the exact time frame, a few weeks ago or so, but I could swear that I wasn't spinning like a top in Cademimu a month ago.

I'll give you the quick and dirty on 50 gear. For PvP, there are currently only three relevant sets: Centurion, Champion, and Battlemaster. They are, in that order, T1, T2, and T3. Centurion is bought with Centurion commendations Champion is bought with either broken champion pieces or champion commendations. Battlemaster is bought with battlemaster tokens. At 50, you can win or buy Champion bags either from dailies/weeklies or with warzone/merc commendations. Dailies give 1 bag apiece, weeklies give 4. A champion bag has a chance of giving you a broken champion piece which allows you to outright buy a specific piece of champion gear with it. Otherwise it will contain 3 centurion commendations which can be saved up to buy your choice of centurion gear. When you get to valor 60 you can start opening Battlemaster bags. You can get 1 bag per daily or weekly quest (weeklies still grant 3 automatic champion bags). Battlemaster bags will either contain a battlemaster token which can be used to buy a piece of battlemaster gear, or champion commendations which can be used to buy champion gear the same way you could buy centurion gear before. Set bonuses overlap across all three sets so you can safely drop any older piece for an upgrade without losing set bonuses. For example, if you have 2 pc centurion and 3 pc champion and just won a battlemaster pc, you can replace any part of that and not lose your existing set bonus. Any combination will do. Besides each tier having better stats than the last, they also have more expertise per piece, which is a universal boost to all PvP stats (damage, mitigation, healing). All those other sets like Rakata, Columi, Tionese, etc, are PvE sets from hardmodes/raids. They have nice stats and set bonuses but zero expertise. Expertise is VITAL for PvP. Under no circumstance should you really preference a PvE set piece over a PvP set piece; if the PvP set piece has less desirable stats you should wear it anyway and consider using duplicate items (yes, you can and will get duplicates due to not getting to choose your piece from champion bags) to strip mods and improve your existing gear. Of course, if you don't have PvP gear yet, PvE set pieces are probably the next best thing. Certainly beats PvPing in vendortrash blues. That said, it will take you a good while to get full PvP sets due to the random nature of the system, so you'd be wise to invest in the best quality crafted purples you can find. You will fortunately have all the money you could ever want at 50 since dailies and weeklies give decent money, bags contain money, warzones give money, and daily PvE quests on Ilum and Belsavis give plenty of money, nevermind space dailies. You can easily make 200-400k a day without any external income but quests and vendortrash and warzones, so feel free to trick out your character with crafted gear or raid gear until you can get PvP set gear.

Here's how to play 50 WZ as a fresh 50: - Buy the absolute best armor you can afford. You have nothing else to spend money on, you might as well spend a few hundred thousand on purples. - That guy with the red and black lightsaber? Don't 1v1 him. - Just zerg it up. Stick with the group and try to help kill someone in tandem with someone else. You don't specify your actual class. A jug could taunt, guard a healer, etc, all valid contributions. A marauder...well, it's a class with an infamously steep curve that gets awesome after you gear it out. Sorry.

Going to lay down some cold reality here. Operatives and scoundrels are in for a long, bumpy ride. While it's true that a nerf was necessary, it is also a fair assessment that their sustained DPS is not that impressive. I guess it's not that far from the truth to say that stun instagib was the signature move, but that's not really how most people like their PvP these days. Reducing stealth damage and boosting sustained DPS would be pretty reasonable, but you're looking at a full class rework for that to happen. I would guess best case scenario is that BW decided the small minority of players with ops/scoundrel getting upset over this would be less loss than the masses of players continuing to be irritated by the instant deaths, and implemented this nerf as a stopgap while they churn out a better class rework. Worst case, you will get a cycle of nerfs and buffs until some kind of balance is accidentally stumbled on. Good luck.