Nightmare Pilgrim is the only fight in current level of raid content that would be unpredicatble. Everything in Denova was predictable movement. We killed NMP about ....3 times. And then the people who needed their boots were done and we never bothered again. Suffice to say I doubt you really have to worry about min-maxing your dps for NMP...

All I'm saying is anticipating movement is key. I never had issues moving, if I had to move while I was still raiding as a Lighting Sorc. Planning ahead of time and refreshing Affliction or using a CL procc while I moved was simple enough.

People still like to debate these topics huh? Well good to see people still plaing TOR in any case. Here are parses I did shortly before I quit. Madness Lightning As you can see geared and played properly the difference between each specc in my case was....8 DPS. Now Lightning will benefit more from Armor Debuffing in a raid, so the gap might be slightly bigger in a raid setting. Madness is obviously a lot easier to play and thus most people see better results. It is a lot easier to avoid mistakes and more forgiving if you do make a mistake. If interested I can post my Denova parses from the month of July showing what I was able to accomplish as a Lightning Sorc. I've quit the game so I do not have any more recent parses. Lightning and Madness are both immobile. You spend over 50% of your time channeling force lighting as Madness, which requires you to stand still. The key is to anticipate movement with either specc and make sure you're casting DoTs, instant-casted Proccs, or if nothing else Shocking when you are required to move.

Madness is alot easier to play in general as well. DPS checks aren't so strict in this game you have to run the best DPS specc with min-maxed gear to succeed.

I'm aware of the math. But I don't think it would be a big issue to be honest. Arsenal blows alway Pyro for Mercs, but trying to PVP as Arsenal is like....trying to PVP is Lightning. Having trees balanced for PVE and PVP are fine with me....or would have been fine if I was still playing. Sadly I'm not. More damage on Lightning Strike would also help reduce the skill-cap required to properly play a Lightning/TK Sorc/Sage, which imo is one of the harder speccs to play in game.

Lighting Strike is pretty bad. When I was still playing my mantra in my head during a boss fight was constantly "How can I continue to do damage without casting LS?" Its your worst ability unfortunately. They really need to add it to the Reverberating Force talent.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=506443&page=5 First post at the top of the page were my parses for the month of July. All of them were for 16m, HM. Depends on your strategy really. If a Lightning Sorc isn't anticipating his movement his DPS will fall. He should be dotting both mobs, for more DPS. So yeah, Sorcerer DPS is competitive as shown, but can't tell much without parses.

Yes I agree with these points. A Sniper and a Merc can outdps a Sorc. I consider myself a highly skilled player and was always able to keep up and many times beat the best Merc and Sniper in our guild. (They were not slouches trust me). Why is this? Because people aren't perfect and classes are rarely played perfectly like a Sim can do. So while a Sorc's maximum DPS isn't as high as another classes maximum, its unlikely that either player is going to come close to those numbers. Furthermore even the most skilled players screw up in their rotations sometimes. Furthermore its not like any class is just completely outclassing the others. I've rarely seen anyone of who I believe to be similar skill outdps by more than 100 DPS, which in Campaign Gear is at most a 7% difference. Any class I've played is capable of hitting in the 1400-1600 range given optimal up time. In fact most of our DPS was usually in the same 100 range. 1300's for Toth and Zorn due to the percent based mechanics (and stopped of DPS). 1400 and 1500's for FB/SC. Minefield and Kephess were usually all over the place due to Ranged and AOE classes inflating their numbers. Irregardless HM Denova can probably be cleared in Columi gear. If say a 8 or 16m guild that was farming it on their made had 8 or 16 alts with Columi gear, they could probably clear it. Its not that hard, and raiding in this game is far from the point in which you must stack certain classes because of 10s or 20s of DPS gains. TL:DR. While there is a hierarchy of DPS, its not that severe and player skill can more than make up for it. Learn your class and play it to the best of your ability and you'll be fine. Sorcs need some tweaks at most and they are far from unplayable.

Perhaps as Madness or Hybrid, but Lightning was by far the most difficult of the classes I played. I had Sorc, PT, Operative, Commando, Jugg and Mara all at 50 and (because I'm a DPS junkie) tried DPSing on them at some point or another. Powertech and Commando for example, I simply found them so boring because the rotations were so easy and eventually respecc'd them to tank and healer respectively. Operative and Jugg were the hardest on resources that I played, but the rotations themselves were not difficult. As long as you properly managed your resource it was easy. Marauder was probably the smoothest rotation of those 6 by far.

My last 4 Denova Clears. 7/10 7/17 7/24 7/31 Please note attempt 3 and 4 for 7/31 on Kephess are the same attempt, I was just a noob and died early and AMR counted it as 2 attempts. Woulda been beautiful kill had we won, was sustaining 1600 the whole fight :X. Oh well, had some recruits that night and wasn't our cleanest clear. I don't have one for 8/7 as my guild has stopped playing SWTOR. I played 3/31/7 Lightning. More or less BIS except for earpiece which never dropped for me. I'm particularly proud of 7/31 Firebrand and Stormcaller. I was very rarely receiving Blood thirst in any of those parses linked either, as you can see if you go through them. In short, Lightning is perfectly capable of producing top-notch DPS. The skill-cap is probably higher than many other classes, Arsenal Mercs and Pyro PTs for example can produce excellent dps with laughably easy rotations, but I enjoyed played Lightning much more than any of the 6 other classes I had at 50.

In a raid environment a Lightning Sorc can sustain 14-1600 in Denova. I've seen every class from Marauders, Snipers and even Operatives in that same window. I'd say they are more then fine and at most could use some minor tweaks for quality of life. PVP is another topic however.

This is incorrect. Lightning Strike, Force Lightning and Shock are all energy damage, which is mitigated by armor. As for the topic: Sorcerers in their current state (DPS) are a sustained DPS class. The problem is that they are extremely squishy (ESPECIALLY under focus fire), not to mention most of their DPS can be shut down via interrupt. As it stands Sorcerers either needs an increase to burst to offset their low uptime, or an increase their survivability so they can keep sustaining DPS. A defense CD would be really nice for this, as 2-3 people focus firing you is going to assure your death, unless you have just as many healers spam healing you. (Even then, I'd still say proper DPS would wreck the Sorc.) I think overall the class would definitely benefit from a 2m Defensive CD. Adding interupt immunity to say, Polarity Shift in the Lightning Tree (which can Burst, but is easily shut down by interrupt) would go a long way to help DPS Sorcerers. My 2 cents, feel free to bring up how I can magically absorb 10k damage via my Bubble and Heal as well as a pure-heal specc Sorcerer and CC 30 people at once that justify DPS Sorcerers in their current state.

If the OP is going to be solo queueing, half the time he won't have a healer anyway so your point is situational at best. I wouldn't bother with Recruit gear if you have Rakata or Black Hole. Recruit is BAD. PVE Gear is BAD. You're probably not going to be effective in either gear, (especially if you're new to PVP). People like to keep beating this topic to death and ignore the fact that neither set of gear is very good. Full BM can take as little as 2 days to get depending on your play time. Even casual players can get it done in a week or two. You're going to die a lot until then either way.

Reserves is better. EI still doesn't affect of number of Sorcerer spells as it should. Even then Reserves would be better.

Your force lightning damage is really low. Only 38%...it should be about 45%. Are you clipping it?