Er...then the parser you're using is screwed up, or you're remembering incorrectly. DPS is defined as total damage done divided by total fight length (or total active time, depending on the parser). You can't increase your total damage and also decrease your DPS without changing the fight length. DPS is the invariant measure, as it is a rate measure, independent of time (as it has the timestep built into the units). It is the proper comparison. Total damage done, since it depends on fight length, is a function of DPS and time, rather than the other way around (despite the calculation dependency order). This is also one of the reasons that using Warzone damage totals is also a near-worthless measuring stick for comparing specs and classes.

DPS yo. 6 seconds at 1650 DPS is nearly 10k damage, so he LOST 7k. DPS is the comparison you make between trials of different length. Comparing total damage is silly. If I do 1000 DPS for 10 minutes, then do 3000 DPS for 2 minutes, I'll have done 240k more damage in the first trial, despite doing a THIRD of the DPS. DPS is what kills bosses.

You did it wrong then. Not my fault you can't implement a simple change to your rotation, or can't understand the fundamental concepts of statistical variance (or the fundamental concepts of basic algebra that I used to calculate that damage). That said, you'd be surprised how many people DO care about my numbers. About how many PMs I get weekly asking for my advice on a breadth of SWTOR topics (and actually a number of Diablo 3 ones now too). People asking me to evaluate gear, to recommend rotation changes, to clarify information or math I've posted. You, on the other hand, are just shooting randomly in the dark and assuming your anecdotal results MUST be the absolute best possible, just simply because they are yours. However, this right here is why NO ONE who has even a slight bit of a clue gives you even an ounce of credence: In fact, I may put that in my sig.

No, NOT for just Madness spec. Do I have to do the math for you again? With 977 Bonus Damage, 34.94% crit, 75.95% crit multiplier, and 8.63% Alacrity (and assuming a single armor debuff, though it doesn't matter for these two, since they are bonus armor mitigated), Crushing Darkness will average 1802.10 DPCT, while Lightning Strike averages 1193.15. Every time you cast Lightning Strike instead of Crushing Darkness, you're dinging yourself 1217.9 damage. As above, Shock deals 1131.27 DPCT, compared to Lightning Strike's 1193.15. It's only a small DPS loss, but considering the low force efficiency and the lack of scaling with Alacrity, there's ZERO reason to ever use it while stationary (unless you're trying to execute a target). 204 Alacrity Rating, actually. The tooltip will flip over at about half that, because tooltips round (so as soon as the cast time is 1.4499999 seconds or less, it'll show just 1.4), but to actually get to 1.40 seconds, you need 6.67% activation speed, which requires 204 Alacrity rating. Still, best to annotate it in base cast time terms, since people will have varying levels of Alacrity, and new low-level Sorcs may get confused as to what skill point they are missing to drop theirs down to 1.4 seconds.

Actually, assuming ~1000 Bonus Damage, ~35% crit, and ~76% crit multiplier, Crushing Darkness will average only about 3250 damage (including averaged crits) per cast for Lightning. That does, however, give it a DPCT nearly twice that of Lightning Strike.

As I've noted in your Lightning Guide thread, Crushing Darkness is a noticeable DPS increase over Lightning Strike. You should be using it on cooldown (assuming other higher priority attacks aren't available at the same time), doing otherwise is an unmitigateable DPS loss. Shock does less damage per second spent casting (the 1.5 second GCD for Shock) than Lightning Strike, and since LS's cast time scales with Alacrity while Shock's GCD does not, this gap only gets wider as your gear gets better. Shock is also not on Reverberation, so your choice at that point is between a 2465 crit Lightning Strike in 1.4 seconds for 13 Force, or a 1990 crit Shock in 1.5 seconds for 19 Force. Take your pick (also, LS has a 6% higher crit chance to add to that, plus a large number of procs off of it).

We've been over this, Onaga. Both Force Lightning and Crushing Darkness deal more damage per second spent casting than Lightning Strike. Crushing Darkness in particular does more than half again as much. Avoiding Crushing Darkness is a fairly significant DPS LOSS. Yes, at a 2.0 second cast, it feels slow, but the math is very clear, it is unquestionably a DPS increase to include it in your rotation. Same with Force Lightning, though that one I'll let you slide on a bit more since we've not really nailed down precisely when is should be cast in the Lightning priority list. Still, the math is clear, casting Force Lightning even outside of Barrage procs is a DPS increase, unless you cast it so often that you're keeping it nearly 100% on cooldown (in which case reduced LS-based procs negate the benefit). And yes, before you challenge it, the above includes ALL procs and effects already. You can test it with SimC yourself if you'd like. Lastly, just some nitpicks. Lightning Strike has a base cast time of 1.5 seconds, not 1.4, and Shock should probably be notated as ONLY being used while moving, as it is not only hideously force-inefficient, it's also a DPS loss over Lightning Strike (and more of a DPS loss the more Alacrity you get). On that note, I might also recommend including a section on stats.

For the purposes of others finding this thread in their search, no, it does not. Players do not count as "weak" or "standard" enemies.

I've been saying for months that one of the single core weaknesses of the Sorc class is a lack of an on-demand defensive cooldown. In traditional RPG game design, dating back to P&P RPGS, squishier characters had less inherent defensive options, more mobility or more DPS (though usually not both), and usually some form of limited use but potent defensive option. Assassins could use a defensive CD as well, to be frank, particularly after their self-healing nerf. It's one of their major weaknesses as a tank. Replace our lost level 46 ability with a solid off-the-GCD Shield-Wall-like ability on a solid cooldown. Or hell, even more fun, have it reflect the damage it absorbs. That'd be a really good "****" button. Edit: Seriously, Bioware?! You censored the self-censoring acronym G T F O?

Shouldn't be needed for Lightning, to be honest. Will help, though, you're right in that. That said, keep in mind that Force costs are ceiling'd after that skill is applied, so you actually get an average of around a 7-8% cost reduction, rarely the full 9%. In addition, that skill still doesn't affect Crushing Darkness or Static Barrier, among others.

Why change it? Give us both.

Stats look fine. What's your spec (I mean precisely)? Are you bubbling yourself regularly?

Wrath + Lightning Storm builds never do well in PvE. You simply lose too much DPS using Wrath on LS then hoping for a CL proc for it to be worthwhile. Every time I sim one, it consistently clocks at 10-15% lower than the 3 cookiecutter builds.

Pushback occurs when you take damage while casting or channeling an ability. There are actually two flavors of it. If you take damage while casting an effect, it pushes the cast back back toward the beginning, effectively adding time to the final cast. For example, if you were 0.7 seconds through a 1.5 second cast when you took damage, it might push you back to being only 0.2 seconds into it, requiring another 1.3 seconds to finish the cast, and thus making the total cast time 2.0 seconds. Pushback effectively reduces the DPS/HPS of casted abilities. If you take damage while channeling an effect, it instead pushes the cast bar forward toward the end, effectively clipping time off the channel. For example, say you were 1.2 seconds through a 3.0 second channel, it might push you forward to 1.7 seconds through the channel, effectively clipping 0.5 seconds off the end. Since this "pushback" on channeled effects doesn't change the tick timer, you effectively just lost the last tick of the channel, but didn't really lose any DPS (since the ticks are still occurring every 1.0 seconds). Thus for channeled effects, pushback reduces the effective resource efficiency and forces you to recast it more often (plus has a chance of giving you a bit of DPS downtime while you're finishing the channel with no tick at the end). Effects that reduce your pushback by a certain percent reduce how much you're pushed back (or forward). If you have 75% pushback resistance, the pushback in the first example (which was a 0.5 second pushback) would instead have been only a 0.125 second pushback. I'm not entirely certain on the mechanics of pushback in regards to how much you get pushed back on damage (whether it's a static amount, a random amount within a range, or based on the damage taken, etc), or if there is a cap to pushback on each ability (for example, in WoW, each pushback was 0.5 seconds base, capped at 1.0 second total), but the above at least should give you a qualitative idea of how it works.

Ya, I've been putting off updating the OP until 1.3 hit and we have updated SimC numbers, which should be any day now.

When was this EVER possible? Bubble lasts for 3-4k damage, and it takes in the ballpark of 3-4 DIs to fully heal a Sorc from near-death. Even assuming a Corruption spec, it would take a minimum of 7 seconds for that to happen. If 3-4 people can't break a 3-4k bubble on a stationary target in 7 seconds (and if they let the Sorc freecast while doing so), they don't deserve to kill someone, Sorc or otherwise. Seriously, hyperbole like this just weakens your argument.

Actually, the latest Simcraft results show Lightning ahead of Madness by about 3%, and Hybrid behind Madness by about 1%. This does, however, assume 3 armor debuffs, which is no longer possible in 1.3 I suspect the specs are relatively even, though Lightning might still have a slight edge on raw DPS. That said, Lightning has a massive advantage when it comes to burst, force efficiency, and AoE, all of which are very important for current raid fights.

Makes sense that Madness would be ahead without any armor pen, given that we've established that Lightning scales significantly better with armor debuffs. The SimC that showed Lightning ahead by 3% assumed 3 armor debuffs. We don't yet have sample reports released for 1.3, but I'll try to find time to download and run a sim myself later tonight.

Nope. There seems to be a persistent rumor that crit "soft-caps" at 35%, or that you no longer need any crit after 35%. This is woefully incorrect, and completely unbacked by the math. Willpower is effectively universally superior to Power (at least in all practical gearset). It would take slightly more than 9k Willpower (yes, OVER 9000!!!) to make Power superior to Willpower for raw DPS. I've tested this up to 50% crit chance (which is about 800 Crit Rating, and 2500 Willpower, plus Coordination and 5% crit from skills), and Willpower is still superior for DPS.

Excellent =D Side note: Please use THIS THREAD or THIS THREAD to discuss SimC, the current version, and further updates (Sorc-specific commentary in the latter of the two). Please use THIS THREAD to discussion BIS item sets for inclusion in the default profiles.

More precise short(ish) answer: Assuming you have Will of the Sith (and you should), Willpower is fairly stable at 10% better than Power, point-for-point, in essentially all currently possible gear configurations.

I think he means that you get full force after you helped kill yourself and then respawn...

Negative. Willpower gives you less Damage Bonus baseline than Power does, but it has two very important boosts that help it out. Firstly, it also increases your crit chance (at a slower rate than Crit Rating, but on a separate and far shallower DR curve), and secondly, it gets boosted by 11% by buffs and skills (specifically, Mark of Power and Will of the Sith, which are additive with each other). This means that Power grants a whole 3.6% more Damage Bonus per point than Willpower, while Willpower grants Crit chance in addition. For essentially all gear levels currently in game, Willpower is fairly stable at 10% better than Power, point for point. You should always be using Resolve augments.

Oh, get off your high horse. Functionally speaking, Force (for a Sorc at least) operates very similarly to Mana in other more fantasy-themed MMOs. "Mana" has become the default term for any resource system that defaults to full, has a large capacity compared to ability costs, and has a slow regen rate compared to maximum capacity (both because it's used in a massive percentage of the genre, as because it's short and easy to type and vocalize). It's the same thing as people referring to Force for assassins as "Energy", or referring to the Action Point system for both Warriors and Knights as "Rage". They may have other thematic names, but functionally speaking they are nearly identical to the fantasy archetypes they are often referred to as. Seriously, can we please stop trying to pretend WoW never happened, or that it didn't revolutionize MMO design? I really don't care whether you enjoyed the game or not (though most people adamantly against WoW are former players, whether they admit it or not), as it makes no difference to the final point. Every MMO made since about 2007 was made in WoW's shadow, and nearly all mechanics from these newer MMOs are either close clones of WoW mechanics, or mechanics intended to be the diametric opposite of WoW mechanics. WoW's mark on the MMO genre is impossible to deny with a straight face, so stop pouncing on people that make references to it like they've committed some sort of crime. That's like yelling at people for saying they are going to "video tape" something on their digital phone camera (which of course, has no tape, video or otherwise). It's a relic of the technology's origin, and you'll never be able to eradicate that.

How about we just make every class the exact same with the same abilities, same resource systems, and just different graphics, eh? Homogenization is the death of an MMO. Most player enjoy the fact that certain classes are stronger at certain things than others, as long as it's not always the same class being stronger in every situation. Different classes having different strengths is good for game longevity. On a side note, every class has a resource-stable rotation for any role they can fulfill. Sorcs are balanced around consuming resources 100% of the time and regening them at an equal or superior rate due to cost reductions, proc-based resource regen, etc. Other classes have more limited resource regen rates, but are balanced around regular use of their free attack. I do believe it is a serious design flaw that Sorcs don't have a free attack/heal like other classes (hell, making them do just a quick jolt of lightning, similar to Lightning Strike's graphic, would work thematically for both Sorcs and 'Sins), but they doesn't mean that Sorc's resource longevity is an issue. If they didn't have a resource-stable rotation, they would have to spend part of their time either standing around doing nothing, or being in melee range using Saber Swing (without ANY damage bonus benefits from Willpower, another uniqueness of the Sorc AC). Other classes fill that regen hole with their free attack instead, so it makes sense for them to have a resource-negative rotation augmented by a free attack/resource generator.