I have a couple thoughts. First I think its right to think we could use a small increase, but lightning really is not that far off. I have had a lot of fun in 4.0 so far on my sorc. I missed the night my group killed Calph and Raptus, and we haven't done Sryrak and Brontes yet, but I played lightning on every other fight and haven't embarrassed myself. The movement and force management really are amazing! The AOE is alright, but its not enough to be top dps in any fight I came across. Carnage and virulence are always gonna get more from aoe than lightning. So I like the idea of adding in the extra dps in the polarity shift window, but thats also a buff in pvp. I think lightning in pvp uses less lightning bolts than in pve, so would it make sense to put the small buff there?

Recklessness - Increases the critical chance of your next 2 force attacks by 60 percent. Makes your Thundering Blast hit that much harder. no it dosn't... Also in your opening rotation you want to use recklessness first? why? You also NEED to use polarity shift before you cast affliction. This is my opener, and i think the only thing that could go a lot of ways is me using lighning bolt with recklessness. The goal is to make sure recklessness charges are NOT used on TB at all costs. By using it right after a lightning bolt there, I will use its charges on hopefully the following CL and LF. The Opening Rotation Crushing Darkness - Precast Polarity Shift Affliction (Pop offensive cooldowns) - Unlimited Power + Adrenal (Don't use a click relic ) Thundering Blast Lightning Bolt + Recklessness Flash Lightning Chain Lightning Lightning Bolt -> into regular priority list

What Sion said about HM fights not having serious dps checks is pretty important. It means on most of those fights you can play either and commit each fight to trying to maximize your dps. My opinion is very similar to Gem, except on the the lightning side of things!! I can play both and have parsed decently on both, (6600 lightning, 6400 madness) but lightning is my 1 true love. I prefer it mostly because I have practiced it more and I can play it without thinking about it. If I try to break it down though, in madness you are stationary for force lightning and for lightning you are stationary for mind crush and lightning bolt. But lightning bolt you can make instant with force speed. and mind crush doesn't come around all that often. Now I think I just convinced myself that both specs are near equal in this way also. I have started running NiM on my sorc, and it is still mostly the same story. Both are great, but "I'll" always do best with lightning.

http://dulfy.net/2015/11/26/swtor-corruption-sorcerer-pve-healing-guide-by-kalizo/ This is the Sorc healing guild, which mirror's your Sage one exactly. This might be the place to answer many of your questions.

Duuuuuuude, I had no idea about the whole using polarity shift before Affliction thing. I am sure that made a big difference as I have nearly caught you Sion. So close! http://parsely.io/parser/view/139882

I get the idea that the few of us that have really stuck with TK feel this way. I feel like I can go into any fight and compete with other classes. Also, I don't have quite the gear or practice on other dps specs, but I still have yet to be better at anything then TK.

Do you perhaps mean 2300 power? because 3300 power is more than you can get without augmenting for it.

sorcs liked it. and everyone else hated it. sooooooo they did what the masses wanted in that respect. you confuse me.

A sage can clear all the HM content without much drawback. If someone were to deny you for just that, its a bit unfortunate. And NiM content is only worth doing if you are in a group you are familiar with, so that shouldn't impact your decision at this point.

The simplest suggestion is to practice your rotation because that will make a far bigger difference than any small tweaks in gear. I think it may be helpful to know what I look at when i open your parse. I go to the ability usage tab and compare the Avg Time of some of your more important abilities with a better parse. So for example you used Thundering Blast once ever 11.1 seconds, but on my sage parse I did a Turbulence once every 9.0 seconds. (my alacrity is maybe 100 more than yours. not much) So you were missing out on about 4 casts of our most important ability over the 3+ minute stretch. Check out Sion's guide, he is spot on. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=861008

I would still rather use Lightning. In that spec you have so many options for instant casts that you can still keep up your damage while popping out from behind a rock. Madness self-heals help you stand out in story mode, but Lightning will have 9% of dmg reduction that madness doesn't, so it is still fairly close. And of course you cannot stand out in the storm on hard mode at all. Also, if you are doing that fight with a single target rotation instead of forcequake, it is helpful to have to boss near the add you are dpsing, so that both your weaken minds will keep refreshing.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=847112

You look to be on the right path! just practice and compare to other parses, and the comfort with it will come. Its like everything else, what you get out comes from the research and practice you put in. I think he means that they (his guildies) use the correct accuracy, and he uses more. Anything udner 110% risks misses, and having over 110% accuracy does literally nothing. So I dont know what "mking Your attacks hit more, thus..." oh... he means attacks hit more often. Ya. No idea why anyone would think a low accuracy strat is good for pve.

I definitely find that use of TK Wave strange. If you have noticed, he put up a new mark of 6773 today using the same method. I imagine he just got lucky with the bugged procs. I dabbled with Balance, but its not substantially better than TK by any means, and I find TK easier. I dont have to think about it anymore. Ill keep those four 224 armorings close by. but I guess I am going to roll with that old 4-piece for a while. How absurd that it very well could STILL be BIS, what? 2 years later?

For some reason I didn't realize this guide and thread was here, but this is great. Thanks Sion for this. First, I have been interested in trying out the old 4-piece, but mine is not a complete 186 set. I only have 2x186, x1180, 1x174, which results in 27 less mastery and 23 less endurance than yours. Seems small, but since it is already close to, if not, worse than the new 6-piece I will probably stick with what I'm doing. Since I am interested in this and what people are doing I browse parsley a lot, and there are some weird things at the top of the TK/Lightning leader boards. Yanto-telrac's top parse for instance uses a crazy amount of TK Wave. I suspect there is some glitch going on that lets it proc more than it is supposed to? Then there is Aynhand's parse which uses project 42 times. Any idea how that has worked so well? Through all this I find is nice that your rotation is almost exactly what I have been using with pretty awesome success! Edit: I decided just to try out my old 4-piece and in on my 4th attempt I bested myself by 141 dps. Maybe it is better on a dummy, but is it better on a boss? uggggh 315 mastery less and about 3k HP less