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?

There is no issue with the game. This is a Madness parse I did. My gear is not even properly itemized for Madness. (Ignore the "Sith Assassin" thing, I'm a Sorc.)

Opening Rotation should be Crushing Darkness > Affliction > Thundering Blast > LS till Proccs You can almost always get a Lightning Barrage and Lightning Storm Procc up in your opening rotation, at which point use recklessness and cast them both. If one isn't procc'ing though make sure you use the procc within 10s of it happening or its a dps loss. Also, keep in mind SimC is taking into account an armor pen debuff on the target. As Sorcerers cannot put one up by ourselves, you won't be able to hit SimC numbers unless a buddy does it for you. SimC also doesn't account for lag and human error that sometimes happen, so I'd say its almost impossible to reach SimC's numbers exactly. Its really just something to shoot for. Heres a solo parse of mine you can look at. (Drag the bottom dropbox to 10:17:20 and click view) When I make one of my buddies put up armor pen for me I can sustain 1750-1800.

This is a better DPS Specc. Chain Shock is useful when you have to shock on the move. Convection is better than Electric Induction. Rest is fine. For Toth and Zorn its all about maximizing up time. Find a way to keep DPSing despite all the various mechanics going on. I would link you some parses of mine so you can compare but I play Lightning so they wouldn't be of much help. I can't find any wrong per say with what you're doing based on the information here. If you can do a dummy parse and upload it to torpase.com I might be able to help further. His CD is fine. Crushing Darkness on the parse is just the Direct Damage part. Crushed (Force) is the DoT. Add both together and they're 18-20%. Which is what it should be.

After their bonus via talents Strength willyield just as much Power as Power....and give them crit for other abilities. Main Stat is always going to be BiS.

Open like this Affliction > Death Field > Creeping Terror > FL till Wrath > Wrath CD > FL Never clip your dots, Wait for them to fall off before reapplying. Use DF and CD immediately on cool down. Never use Wrath with Lightning Strike for a dummy parse. Mind linking your specc and a parse? I could probably help you more.

This would basically double the DPS of both DoTs. I think thats pretty far-fetched. Other ideas are interesting and would help burst as you say. However I find extensive overhauls rare until an expansion or new level cap, in which more talents are added. I agree DPS Sorcerers are in need of some love though. I am a (mostly) raiding Lightning Sorc, so I have my own set of wishes. I assume by your post you're a PVPer and thus the changes you've suggested. Again interesting ideas, but overhauls to the design of classes are rare until new level caps. I think minor tweak/suggestions are more valid.

Thanks! A bit fail on my part. Apparently I need to work on my forum trolling skills D:

<_<. Apparently I missed this, mind posting a link for me?

So when does each Destination Server (at least) get its own Server forum? The Server Group Forums are a mess quite frankly. Would be nice for each server to have its own place instead of having to share with others, especially now that the populations are larger and have more people actively posting. Who agrees?

So I guess using grapple before you full resolve your target never occurred to you huh? Oh man you have a disadvantage vs 1 other AC in the game! (That you can still attack at range!) I feel bad for you. And no thanks. Powertechs may be powerful in PVP but I find the play style boring (and too easy). Cheers