It is good enough that is should be included in a list of potential specs and far from useless like some people would like to claim. It seems like the 0/21/20 spec would be much better as 0/20/21 with Deathmark instead of Polarity shift.

31pt Madness is also perfectly viable.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201GhMRMdrzZZcMcRsMz.1 (Dark Resilience is Efficacious Currents in 1.2) This is the version of the 23/0/18 I will be playing in 1.2

The force drain can be an issue on a map like voidstar. We have a few efficient ways to heal so consumption and forcebending + Innervate or recklessness + dark infusion, will gain you force. Draining your health before picking up the heal power-ups are also useful. Sure, root on knockback is nice, but I think sith purity and haunted dreams are both superior for pvp. Come rated WZ's I will also have the benefits of peels, guard, and offheals, which is a luxury I very rarely receive the benefit of now. Survival really isn't an issue for me unless I am charging into a group of 5+ to stop a cap in Voidstar/Alderan. I swear some people on my server treat me like elusive game that needs to be hunted so their head can be mounted as a trophy. It's not uncommon for me to be hounded for 2-3 players for the entire duration of a game. Belief it or not, some of them actually know what they are doing. Point being, I disagree with the notion that we'll suddenly die a bunch more in rateds, sure we will be playing against better players, but we will also be playing with betters players.

or use Innervate with Force Bending up and heal for 5k in 3 seconds? 6k+ if you crit all ticks. Then follow up with recklessness and Dark Infusion for another 10k in 5 seconds.

And which one of these class that also have an interrupt, stun, mez, knockback and sprint can also heal and dps in the same spec? You cannot discount dot damage purely because there are heals in the game. Is burst damage better than dot damage? Yes, most of the time. The advantage dots present are that a players effective HP are actually lower than their current HP, which leads to people not realizing they are in trouble, and healers reacting slower. We have more utility than any class, and as such we have lower armor and less burst. Seems fair to me.

If you are pvping without an instant whirlwind you are simply doing it wrong.

Glad some people find my posts helpful, sometimes I feel I'm talking to deaf ears.

Yes, two consecutive CCs will give them a full resolve bar, but it also slowly drains. I think I do a fairly good job of demonstrating it in the video I linked. Lead with force slow and they will be forced to jump to you to get in range, follow this up with Overload. Now you have a gap to apply some pressure, when they reach you again electrocute. Depending on time this might white-bar them. Get some distance and reapply force slow, forcing another leap, when the root ends, Force Speed. Once again you have a gap, by the time they reach you their white bar should be gone. Reapply the above approach, this time using Overload and Whirlwind. Obviously it's impossible for me to theorycraft an entire pvp encounter, but managing your opponents resolve bar (as I illustrate above), is one of the most important pvp skills in this game. This is pretty accurate.

With proper alternation of Force Speed and CC you can keep a marauder off of you for extended periods of time. The only "casted" spells you should be using are Force Lightning and Innervate, even if interrupted these will give you some effect. Ideally Innervate is still only used out of LoS so that you get full value. Snare can be dispelled with talented Purge. This also dispels their dots and heal debuff.

All viable post 1.2: Basically you either want Corruption/Madness, Full Madness or Lightning/Madness. The specs below might not be completely optimized, but should all be solid builds. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201ZccMMoMZcMfRsMkrc.1 http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZMcMZcMfRsMkrfz.1 http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201GhMRMdrzZZcMcRsMz.1 Dark Resilience is Efficacious current in 1.2. Until then you need to spend points slightly different.

If groups are no longer taking sorcerers they either believe the player is not sufficiently skilled, or their are ignorant of what the changes mean. Everyone complaining about sorcs being broken are only hurting their own cause. The parsed DPS loss is minimal. Yes, the Wrath/CL burst is gone, but dot's still kill people. Purge only removes 2 debuffs, we have affliction, force slow, crushing darkness, and creeping terror. That's a GCD that could have been used for a 1.5k to 3k dark heal, a bubble, resurgence. The Madness tree also has skills that ignore armor in Affliction, Death Field, and Creeping Terror. We can kill, we can heal, and we are a royal pain to try and kill 1v1. We can even to a decent job of shutting down a healer...Interrupt...Electrocute...Whirlwind....Interrupt. Thats 15+ seconds of no casted heals. What more do you want?

There are too many fallacies in the initial post for me to spend the time debunking them all. Pre 1.2 we had plenty of burst. This was post 1.1 but pre surge nerf, this hit would be about 4.6k now. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/24/screenshot2012020520080.jpg/ Post 1.2 things will be more difficult for some, but I'm hoping it will force sorcs to actually learn how to play their class properly. We still have several viable specs, but the two I would suggest are full Madness or Corruption(23)/Madness(18). If you want to have a constructive discussion of post 1.2 pvp feel free to post in this thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=368522 and I will do my best to help you.

Deep Madness is also perfectly viable and a good spec for 1v1 and team play.

YOU have zero chance; I know how to play. Force Slow, Shock, Overload, Affliction, Deathfield, Static Barrier, Resurgence, Purge, Electrocute, Whirlwind(talented, which it should be if pvping) are all instant cast. Force Lightning and Innervate are both channeled so even if interrupted you will get a few ticks. Force Charge has a dead zone, if you stay in that zone using instant cast spells they can't leap to you and are too far away to hit you. Their dots can be dispelled if your dispel talented. This is a marauder video from my server, he is one of the best: Near the end are duels against full balance(madness) sages and me fighting him in Ilum. I am sure the sages have won duels against him before and our first fight(not in vid) I was winning before getting jumped by other players. In the fight shown he kills me, but it takes him close to 2 minutes. This is without a good LoS object and a few mistakes on my part.

You can kill an average to good marauder with a heal/dps hybrid. It requires the talented dispel, and probably Innervate. An exceptional one should be able to kill you eventually, but you can kite them for a long time assuming you have something to LoS with. 31pt Madness also has the ability to kill them, but I don't have a ton of experience with that spec.

I think we will find that the next round of major balancing updates will provide improvements to the lightning tree. My guess is that this will change force storm(reduce force cost?) and lightning strike(improved damage, decrease cast time, add debuff?) to improve the viability of the lightning tree as an AoE damage tree.

Its not my place to say what the class should be able to do. Obviously the devs don't think we should be playing an AoE DPS role, or that it was too strong. I fundamentally disagree with the line of thinking that "we were glass cannons but 1.2 turn our cannons into pistols, so now we are screwed." I don't think we are glass cannons, not because I have a drastically different view of what a glass cannon is, but because I don't think that is what the class was designed to be. Light armor can also imply high mobility(opposed to high damage). Most of our skills are designed to give us increased mobility and control, which allow us to move around the battlefield more freely, not be stationary like a cannon. The tools are all there to play an effective dot-based kiting class (either hybrid to lightning barrage, or full madness), full healer, or hybrid corruption/madness.

We have a difference in philosophy that means we are talking by each other a bit. I use defensive abilities in a much broader term, basically anything that can be used to prevent you from taking damage. To me, avoidance and reduction are both defensive. Windshields are made of glass, they get hit with rocks and chip or crack, but don't shatter. You seal the crack with resin and they are[almost] as good as new. Sure they will break if you drop a boulder on them. But so will a sorc with 3 or 4 people on them. It takes two good players to kill me in a WZ, and it won't happen quickly. Some people certainly try to play sorcs like glass cannons. But are they playing the class how they want it to be, or how it actually was, designed? If we don't have big guns maybe we should stop pretending like we do? I also don't like the artificial ceiling on the medals. Diminishing returns on valor/comms received would probably work. I think it would be difficult for them to add new medals such that if every class was played optimally they would receive the same rewards. I am not against gear upgrades. I just think the progression should be more gradual; the difference from a 49 purple to centurion, or centurion to champion are huge. The difference between champ and BM are much better IMO. I also prefer the ability to have a ton of customization. For example, the ability to buy a Power/Crit(doesn't exist) enhancement with my champion coms. Even if it had the same item rating as another mod of its level, it could be considered an upgrade as its a better stat pairing. Pre 1.2 We can spec to Resurgence, Force Bending 1, Chain Lightning, Wrath and Haunted Dream. That gives us mobile heals, proc for a burst heal, additional 10% AoE damage(force suffusion), instant CC as well as instant CL. That was too much. Post 1.2 we can still do good damage(little burst) and good heals in the same spec. I pay $15 a month for 3 WZ's and one of them sucks(Voidstar). To me that's cheap, but to each their own. I will play the game as long as I enjoy it, and I expect others do the same.

Against a good team, your damage is going to be very low, you no have no mobility and most of your damage requires cast times. Against a bad team you could wrack up a ton of damage with AoE. Surge, Power, Crit, Alacrity. All my enhancements have Power on them, due to the surge nerf I switched a couple mode from surge to alacrity cause I was hitting DR hard. Crit I get from Recklessness and force Bending before Innervate, so its not terribly important IMO. I decided on this spec because I play to win. I can take on either roll for the team, which is important as I often solo queue. In game like voidstar DPS is more important attacking, heals defending, etc. Its nice to be able to switch depending on what you need to do. I only use Wrath procs on Crushing Darkness. I really think any pvp sorc should be using Haunted Dreams, it will save your life way more than electric bindings or backlash. Madness also gives you deathfield, a high damage spell you can cast while kiting(jump, mouselook, cast, mouselook) and more mobility in general as you can cancel for lightning at any time for at least a partial effect. This is also the same benefit Innervate gives you, you always get something out of it. Hopefully I answered your questions somewhere in the above points.

Tough to give too much advice without knowing your spec. Purge snares, snare them before knockback, use stun, force speed, and instant whirlwind to generate space. Snare and run around corners to heal. Slowly drain their health with, dots, force slow, shock. Ideally, be annoying enough to kill that they give up and attack someone else, otherwise it takes a long time to kill them.

If you go as high as Innervate and get Haunted Dreams, you have 2 points to spare. Electric Induction and Reserves are both good skills. I think you end up getting more benefit from reserves, but I never do the math on these things.

I was half heal/half dps in that vid, weird watching yourself in a video, don't think I've ever been so prominently focused. As for purge, it has to be specced to cure physical which is half way up our tree. If spec'd the force cost is reduced to 15 and it also heals equal to our healing bonus (500-600) on a geared sorc. The Force pool for sorcs is 500-600 (depending on talent points). That said, if I am forced to use 1/3 of my GCD's on purge it doesn't give me a lot of time to do much else. As a healer should always have a hot ticking you are always getting value out of the heal debuff. I would love to face these other people who don't debuff, would make my life a lot easier!

First off, I can't take an "PVP" spec seriously that does not include 2 points in Haunted Dreams. It's that good. Corruption/Madness is the best hybrid spec going forward IMO. I think you will also benefit for going deeper into the healing tree to get Innervate than the 20% bubble increase. Innervate will be very important with the change to Force Bending. This is my 1.2 spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201GhMRMdrzZZcMcRsMz.1 (Dark Resilience will be Efficacious Currents) The two talent points I put into Conspiring Force can go anywhere. I've been playing this spec since the announced changes and it's exceeded expectations. Ask away if you have any questions.

Well written post, but I have to disagree with several of your points. Some of this is in response to your post, other stuff is directed at sorcs in general. I decided to play this game about two weeks before live after my friend convinced me to play. I knew I was going to play a sorc/sage before I knew anything about the game because I really enjoy playing casters. The first thing I noticed when looking at the skill trees was Wrath + Chain Lightning, my first thought was, "this is broken, there is no way this can work." But it did. Then I knew it would just be a matter of time until it was fixed. Not nerfed, fixed. I actually also expected a change that would prevent us from being healers and dps at the same time. Maybe in a future update. Sorcs are far from glass cannons. We have all the standard ranged caster abilities: a shield(bubble), gap creator(force speed, overload),snare (force slow), CC (whirlwind), all of these are baseline. We get even more control from talent points. But wait, we can heal too! Not tiny lifetaps, but full on heals. So much inherent power in one class. People's problem? They don't know, or forgot, how to kite. PVP content? I guess I still have the old-school thinking where you pvp because it is fun and challenging. A few different hutball maps which different obstacles would be fun, but I could play hutball, as is, all day long. I'd roam Ilum if I knew people would be there. Unfortunately too many people require incentive. What are you looking for in the way of "PVP Content"? What is wrong with all pvpers being on the same level of gear? When I beat someone I want it to be because of skill and not gear or class deficiencies. If there is a certain amount of Rock/Paper/Scissors, I'm fine with that, as long as it's an uphill battle and not an impossible climb. I'd prefer more lateral customization so I could build my character as I prefer. You can't always balance upwards, or else you have escalation problems. Sometimes you bring classes up, sometimes you bring them down, I expect changes to some of our abilities in the future, Lightning Strike being the main candidate. If it got a 100% damage bonus when used with Wrath I MIGHT use it. Creeping Terror is already incredibly powerful, 2 second root on 9sec CD is amazing. It would still be awesome if it did no damage. The 4 medal change was a step in the right direction (I would have made it 5 or 6). Why should a pure dps cap at 8-9 medals, when I can get 11-12 and tanks can get even more? This way everyone can get the same rewards and others can do more for the epeen. I'm looking forward to 1.2 so I can prove to all the naysayers that sorcs still have the goods.