In PvP, energy and kinetic damage obviously suffer. This is one reason Madness is preferred there. That said, this entire discussion has been on PvE, not PvP. I tend to avoid most PvP discussions if I can, it's significantly tougher to actually theorycraft a PvP discussion.

Jolt is only really used in PvP, ops bosses almost never have interruptable effects. Shock is only used on the move if everything else is already active/on cooldown, not in the standard rotation (if you're using Shock, THAT is why you're having Force issues, it's HORRIBLY inefficient force-cost-wise). Lightning, even without maintaining Subversion 100% uptime, has a force-stable rotation (unless you're using Shock, which you shouldn't be), so keeping 100% uptime at the cost of cooldown active-time or DoT uptime is just lost DPS with no purpose. It hurts you, or more precisely, your DPS. If you're spending sufficient Force that you have to use a less ideal rotation to ensure 100% uptime on Subversion to maintain resource stability, you're sacrificing DPS and thus making the entire fight take longer (further taxing the healers). If they don't need your help to keep people alive, you're better off saving the Force for DPS attacks and using the downtime to regen. In a standard rotation, you'll see about 97% uptime on Conduction, with an average stack count between 2.5 and 3.0. You will see downtime on it, though (just not every fight). I doubt you'd notice it, though, it's not that big of an effect anyway. Except...the fact that it does superior DPS (for less Force!)? It costs you twice as much force to cast two LSs instead of one FL, and you'll do around 91% the damage that that FL would have done. If you don't want to use it, fine, but you can't argue with the math. FL is simply superior to LS in terms of DPS. Using it regularly (but not on cooldown!) will increase your DPS, period. If you're making the fight take longer than it should because you're sacrificing DPS to "help" a healer that doesn't need the help, you're hurting the entire raid. Emergency off-healing is one thing, but throwing in heals just because it "helps" the healers is counter productive. Force Lightning gains the same additional crit chance that LS does (from the same skill, I might add). I would, except every post you make is blatantly contradicted by the cold hard numbers. You might prefer to do things differently, but don't try to claim your way is the "right" or "optimal" way without something to back that up . That is, other than the fact your guild has ops on farm. Players can be carried, being in a guild farming ops does NOT automatically make you an expert or authority of any kind. I, on the other hand, have been lending my mathematical expertise and game knowledge to these forums for nearly a year now. Just sayin'. On a side note, I was 3/4 HM EC before my guild stopped raiding for Tera (and later D3). Yes, I didn't clear the place before I quit raiding, but I'm hardly inexperienced with this stuff. If you want a look at my research, check out this forum section and this forum section (though I've contributed to almost all of them). Lastly, stop claiming I've yet to refute your posts. I've refuted every single one, with math backing it up. All you've done is state "such and such is the right way", then implied you shouldn't be questioned purely because you're in one of the hundreds of guilds that has cleared HM EC. You appeal to authority and false prestige. I appeal to math and cold hard facts.

Sith Efficacy is a far higher priority for stabilizing Madness force levels. Electric Induction is honestly pretty crappy, as it still doesn't affect a number of major abilities (Crushing Darkness and CT being notable ones). Reserves is solid, but Sith Efficacy is FAR more important to get quickly.

The 2:1 Power to Crit ratio is definitely most pertinent at higher gear levels. At lower levels, you can go closer to a 1:1 ratio. Try not to focus on the percent crit chance too much, it doesn't matter as much as you think. There are no soft caps in crit chance, so aiming specifically for a particular percent and refusing gear upgrades in order to hit it is just counterproductive. On Surge and Alacrity, focus on getting around 250 Surge initially, then try to work Surge toward around 330 while boosting Alacrity to about 220 (300 and 250, respectively, if you're playing Lightning instead of Madness or Hybrid). Good balance point.

PvP isn't my strongest area, but the most commonly recommended specs (which also jive with the calcs I've done) are Madness, a Corruption/Lightning build (really hard to kill), or a Corruption/Madness build (near-infinite Force and a really fluid swap between healing and DPS, plus more control).

Crushing Darkness only lasts 6 seconds, not 8 (you're Lightning, remember?). However, it only takes 2 seconds to cast, and that's the part that matters. Unless you're concerned with burst damage (which has very limited bearing on PvE, and honestly, you almost never need faster burst than a 6 second interval), DPCT (damage per second spent casting, or literally Damage Per Cast Time) is far more important than DPS (to the tune of DPS doesn't matter in the slightest, DPCT is all that matters). Baseline, CD deals an average of 198.03 + 123% Bonus on the direct damage, and another 47.495 + 29.5% Bonus per tick for 6 ticks, for a total of 483.0 + 300% Bonus. Lightning Strike deals an average of 212.52 + 132% Bonus. Let's assume the following stats, as a comparison set: 750 Bonus Damage, 35% Crit, 75% Surge. CD will deal 1120.53 non-crit direct, then tick for an additional 268.745 noncrit 6 times, for a total non-crit of 2733.0. Lightning strike will non-crit for 1202.52. Now let's factor in crits. The formula for determining the average benefit of crit and crit multiplier is to multiply the average non-crit damage by (1 + Crit% * CritDamage%). Lightning Strike gains an additional 6% crit and 50% crit damage from skills, CD gains no bonuses to either. This leaves the final average damage of CD at 2733.0 * (1 + 0.35 * 0.75) = 3450.4125. Lightning Strike is left at 1202.52 * (1 + 0.41 * 1.25) = 1818.8115. Lightning Strike requires 1.5 seconds spent casting to deal its damage. This means that for every second you spend casting Lightning Strike, you're dealing an average of 1212.541 damage. Crushing Darkness requires 2.0 seconds spent casting to deal its damage. This means that for every second you spend casting Crushing Darkness, you're dealing an average of 1725.206 damage. This means that every time you cast Crushing Darkness instead of Lightning Strike, you are dealing an additional 1025.33 damage (with the stats above) that you otherwise wouldn't have dealt if you had cast Lightning Strike instead. In other words, Crushing Darkness is definitely worth casting. Given the amount of armor debuffs normally present in a raid situations, being internal damage is actually a bad thing. Abilities were balanced assuming a single armor debuff, so having 5 means all the Kinetic and Energy damage abilities are doing around 38% more damage than they were balanced around doing. Assuming 3 armor debuffs, Crushing Darkness is roughly 72% the DPCT of Thundering Blast, and roughly 142% the DPCT of Lightning Strike. These values include skills affecting any of the above abilities. Crushing Darkness does not have a "way reduced crit chance". Lightning Strike gains 6% (though as I demonstrated above, this still doesn't put CD higher), and TB is higher DPCT (I never stated otherwise). CD has the same crit chance as the rest of your abilities, except LS and FL (which gain 6% from Disintegration in the Madness tree) and TB (which is auto-crit if you're playing correctly). By the way, if you have enough Surge to get 78% Multiplier (or 128% on Thundering Blast), you have WAY too much Surge. That would take around 450 Surge Rating to hit that much. The optimal balance point is at around 300 Surge to 250 Alacrity. First off, get the thought of a "rotation" out of your head. Lightning has too many procs and disparate cooldown intervals to use a static rotation. Beyond that, Shock is both hideously inefficient for Force, and deals about 96% the DPCT of Lightning Strike (ie. you're better off using LS instead, always). Lightning Barrage is a higher priority than Chain Lightning, as it has a much shorter duration on the buff (equal to the ICD rather than 3 times the ICD), and deals a LOT more damage (for a much cheaper Force cost, too). However, Thundering Blast, Crushing Darkness, and Affliction all take priority over them because while Barrage and CL may both deal more DPCT, they can't reproc during that 10 second interval, and it's categorically impossible to take more than about 5.5 seconds to refresh those three, leaving plenty of time on the ICD duration. As long as both effects are used before the end of the ICD, no DPS loss is sustained, so it's more beneficial to have a higher uptime on Aff and a higher on-cooldown time for CD and TB.

I don't think it'll grow at all, to be frank. It's already peaked. Now it'll settle down to a relatively stable couple-hundred-thousand, until they go free-to-play (though I doubt they'll have any more true subscribers at that point, probably less).

Note that SimC assumes the player is performing the rotation perfectly. Madness is rather hard to perform perfectly. Also, Lightning benefits significantly more from armor debuffs, so if you're running in a 5-debuff group, Lightning is going to be much farther ahead. Crushing Darkness is one of your highest DPCT abilities, even as Lightning. For the cast time, it out-does LS by more than half, and comes close to challenging Thundering Blast for raw damage done. It's definitely a DPS increase to include it in your rotation as Lightning. On a side note, the proper priority list for Lightning is as follows: Affliction Thundering Blast Crushing Darkness Lightning Barrage Force Lightning Lightning Storm Chain Lightning Lightning Strike (with Force Lightning weaved in, roughly a 2:1 ratio in favor of LS) Shock (if moving) Crushing Darkness is one of the worst things to use Recklessness on, as the crit boost only affects the direct damage, not the DoT. Ideally, you should use the charges on a Lightning Barrage Force Lightning and a Chain Lightning, or failing that, a Lightning Strike.

Subversion is a 30% increase to Force regen, if kept at 3 stacks constantly. That means it is responsible for 23.1% of your regen, or 2.4 Force per second. Even assuming your rotation is only just Force-neutral with Subversion (which if it is, you're doing something very wrong, as Lightning's standard rotation is force-positive), it would take you a full 4 minutes to run out of Force (starting at 600) if you never once triggered Subversion. Thing is, Subversion is actually more efficient the less often you proc it. If you're spamming Lightning Strike, your Subversion is negating an average of 3.6 Force per Lightning Strike. If you cast Lightning Strike every 9 seconds instead, your Subversion is negating an average of 21.6 Force per Lightning Strike. This is why filtering in Force Lightning casts is useful, as FL is significantly more efficient than LS, and doesn't harm your Subversion regen. Subversion is useful, but letting it fall off isn't the end of the world by a long shot. If you're dropping than many heals, I'd recommend checking on your healers. They shouldn't need that much help. Occasional shielding is fine, but if they actually legitimately need your off-healing, they are doing something very wrong. If you're just helping them heal when they don't really need it, well...you're doing it wrong instead. Helping heal is a useful utility skill of Sorcs, but ensure it's actually needed before you waste Force on it. Force Lightning is approximately 10% more DPCT than Lightning Strike, even without Barrage (and that's including the chance for Forked Lightning, which equates to a 9% damage increase on LS). It's very clearly a DPS increase to filter it into the rotation even outside of Barrage procs. Don't make the mistake of just adding numbers together. 27 Bonus Damage may by nice, but FL is nicer, mathematically speaking. You still want to use LS, and you don't want to use FL on cooldown (Conduction is definitely a decent perk to have), but using FL only on Barrage is a definite DPS loss. Keep in mind that even at 3 stacks, Conduction is only around a 2-2.25% increase to damage done, and it is mathematically impossible to have 100% uptime on it, even if you were spamming LS nonstop. Handy, and mostly important, but far from crucial unless you're acting far outside the scope of your role (and you should only need to do that if someone else is very much not doing their job). Completely incorrect. Mathematically, FL is generally superior to LS. Generally. Cast it often, but not on cooldown. SimC shows a good ratio to be about 2 LS to 1 FL, on average. Biased towards or against what? I don't even regularly play SWTOR anymore, I have zero vested interest in any one spec. I'm calling it like I (and my extensive calculations) see it.

I'd recommend checking out my Sorc/Sage DPS Compendium out at MMO-Mechanics.com, to be frank. All 3 major specs are linked there, along with notes on optional/utility talents, gameplay hints, rotations, stats advice, etc.

Lightning is definitely more DPS (though only by about 3%). On the mobility side, Madness's mobility is greatly overstated, as more than half of their damage still comes from Force Lightning (and aobut 70-75% of their active time is FL). Lightning is plenty mobile for current content if you aren't snoozing at the wheel.

Doesn't scale in what way? It scales with Healing Bonus, at quite a prodigious rate I might add (it has one of the highest Bonus coefficients in the game), as well as level (as all abilities do). As far as we can tell, it also bypasses Trauma innately, meaning it scales better than it should in PvP. Also, "best" is rather subjective. From an efficiency standpoint, Bending Innervate is actually superior to Static Barrier, as is it from a healing-per-execute standpoint (though Barrier is still half again as good on the Healing-per-Cast-Time front).

I'll be honest, it's tough to judge when to use FL properly. Our testing has shown that using FL on cooldown is a DPS loss, but so is only using it on Barrage procs. The ideal is using roughly one FL per 2 LSs you cast, on average. Tough to actually judge that, though.

Ticks of Resurgence cannot benefit from or consume stacks of Recklessness, so that worry may be ignored. Otherwise, the primary benefit is that it makes the duration equal to a bit more than twice the cooldown, allowing you to keep the HoT (and therefore the armor buff, which is really good) active on two targets simultaneously. In solid gear, Resurgence will be ticking for around 300-350, so the skill increases the healing by around 700 total. That's roughly a 35% increase in the total healing done by the ability.

If you're looking for a PvE spec, 3/31/7 is currently top of the heap (the above noted spec is terrible for PvE, only good for PvP).

Subversion's regen is largely irrelevant on most current boss fights. Keep it up if you have the occasion to, but don't focus on it. Lightning Effusion provides the majority of your force efficiency, particularly as you get into upper tiers of gear (with higher quantities of Crit). Testing has shown that for Lightning, using Force Lightning often by not on cooldown is a DPS increase. I generally will use a Force Lightning in place of a pair of Lightning Strikes if I'm currently in a position to cast 3+ LSs back to back.

Well, it is in fact the point. WoW is often hailed as the epitome of crap design, yet was also responsible for many a life-altering addiction. Can't have it both ways...

What, of 40%? The softcap is on the rating, not the percent, and it's based on it's relative value of the rating to Power. Fixing on percentage caps is a habit from WoW.

What cap would you be referring to?

First off, a Choke would have ended this pretty early (would have absolutely neutered your force speed), and the inevitable snare he drops on you after the charge would also seriously curb effectiveness. They could also have destroyed this combo with a Force Camo right after your Force Speed (preventing the CT and catching up to you quite easily during the duration). He could also have Predation running for additional gap closing. A competent Mara still would have been mauling your face far more than your intermittent Shocks and Deathfields would have been mauling his, and you'd also be at maybe 100-150 Force by the end of this combo, and that's assuming you started at full and used no shields. This is also Anni, the most kiteable of the 3 Mara specs. Try that against a Carnage/Oblit spec'd mara, you'd have been respawning by 15 seconds in.

Bah, plague. What's with this abject hatred of WoW anyway? It was a good game, and based on subscription numbers, still is. I think perhaps to a degree that much of the hatred comes from gamers that were used to having the "martyr" badge from the sigma of being a gamer, and later from being an MMO player. However, as gaming became more and more acceptable in the 90's and Aughts, this gamer stigma started to fall off. As WoW then made MMO gaming much more mainstream and acceptable to the "casual" gamer (ie. ones that don't devote themselves to the hobby, like said gamers often do), these gamers lost the final piece of that specialness. Frankly, I feel this is absolutely ridiculous (and I certain qualify as a devoted gamer myself). WoW reshaped the genre, and improved the design of MMOs by leaps and bounds. One may not agree with every decision Blizzard made in that department, particularly in more recent expansions, but you really can't legitimately deny their success or their resounding effect on the genre (and even to an extent on other genres). I played WoW for 7 years, from patch 1.4 through 4.3. I enjoyed it greatly (though obviously less so near the end), particularly during Burning Crusade (the first xpac) and the latter half of Wrath (the second xpac). I've yet to find another game that has sucked me in to that level (though, honestly, that's probably a good thing, it did very nearly ruin my life at one point), even TERA which I've been citing intermittently on these forums. Denying that success (and particularly that influence, which for some insane reason many gamers like to do) is just lunacy. WoW has made a permanent mark on MMO history, in much the same way as Diablo, Balder's Gate, Might and Magic, and Elder Scrolls for RPGs, Doom, Counterstrike, and Halflife for FPS, and Warcraft, Starcraft, and the Civ series for RTSs (yes, notice that Blizzard games are on 2 of those 3 lists). Sorry if I've put words in your mouth a bit, but I have a serious gripe with this WoW-hating that has developed lately, particularly on the forums of competing MMOs. It's as if players of these other games have to convince themselves to hate their previous game in order to feel justified in playing another. It's like a bad relationship breakup...

How do you plan on keeping a Mara out of attack range for 40 seconds straight with a 2 second root on a 9 second cooldown? CT means your Whirlwind won't last more than 3-4 seconds (including the stun from the instacast skill), and Whirlwind will instantly fill the Mara's Resolve, meaning Overload and Electrocute are no longer options. Force Slow has a maximum of a 50% uptime, and Force Lightning roots you. Maras have Force Charge on a 15 second cooldown (compared to your 30 second Force Speed), Obliterate if they are Rage spec, a spammable snare if they get in melee range of you, and a half dozen abilities with a 10-yard range, at least a couple of which will close the gap on their own. If you can get me a video of you keeping a competent Mara out of melee for 40 second straight, I'll concede the point, but otherwise this is the most ridiculous hyperbole I've seen in a very long time. I'd say at the most you'd be able to keep a Mara occupied and having no more than about 25% uptime for maybe 10-15 seconds, but after that you're still pretty much screwed, even with the CT root.

Yes, Blizzard. I was referring to the 1% rule often cited by Blizzard in dev posts addressing spec balance in WoW. To my knowledge, Bioware has never made a similar postulate, but Blizzard's makes sense and fits the data, so I thought it appropriate to reference. Force Storm is used for nothing but node cap interrupting in PvP, and it's proc rate for instant CL's is pretty low anyway. The CL proc's primary driver is Lightning Strike, not Force Storm, and Lightning Strike also has the advantage of having a far shorter and more subtle graphic than Force Lightning does (thus acting as less of a bulls-eye on said Sorc). Also Lightning has a root that, while having roughly double the cooldown of Creeping Terror, also includes a knockback, lasts more than twice as long, and hits everything in range rather than just a single target. This, combined with Backlash (if used properly) and the reduced Force Speed cooldown means Lightning has quite a bit of mobility and escape. Sure, Madness still is a bit superior, but the utility of instant Whirlwind is mitigated by the fact that said Whirlwind would be broken very rapidly by the 18 second DoT left behind by that 2 second root, and Whirlwind also generates a minimum of 1400 Resolve for a total lockdown of only 3-4 seconds (1-2 seconds from the Whirlwind before it breaks from DoTs, and another 2 seconds for the stun effect), instantly pushing them into immune territory for a full 14 seconds, which is a horrible CC time to Resolve ratio. Thing is, Force Storm has only a third the proc chance that Lightning Strike does. The 13/28 spec of olde used a single target effect, Force Lightning, to fish out their instant CLs, and this spec can as well. Just as with Wrath, you can hold onto a Storm proc for a full 30 seconds before it falls off (and the internal CD starts when it procs, not when it's used), and unlike Wrath casting other spells won't consume it prematurely. Is it as potent as 13/28 was? Hell no, but that was the point of the CL-Wrath nerf. However, many people that swear off Lightning in PvP just don't look at the potential it has. Sure, it's a turret spec, but in a game where burst is a primary component of success, Madness is little more than an annoyance. It has a bit more survivability than Lightning, particularly against the FotM marauders, but it contributes significantly less to the goal of killing the enemy team. Lightning is particularly good at killing healers, for example, due to the burst, the increased lockout duration, and if necessary the Resolve-bypassing Backlash effect.

>.> <.< Pop.

The 1.2 hybrid 13/28 spec that was considered the only option for Sorcs, with anyone that went full Madness or Lightning being considered complete fools, was only 3.5% ahead of Madness and 4% ahead of Lightning. At one point, Blizzard postulated that the gaming community was sufficiently polarizing that a 1% advantage was all that was necessary to make a spec the only "viable" option. That said, as pointed out above, 3% really isn't that much. Pick your spec based on playstyle and utility. If you DPS correctly for that spec, the difference will be negligible.