Thanks for the reply, it makes sense with madness being a DoT spec for that to be the case I guess.

Why are the madness/madness hybrid using the relic with 30% proc for extra damage and lightning flat out more power?

and? If everyone was objective and admitted the game was unbalanced, and Bioware actually went about fixing stuff then you'd have a point.

You know like force camo, GBTF etc This would help combat the stupid OPness of some classes. Doesn't change the fact that some classes still need a buff (sorc, merc), but would help go along way towards balancing this current mess.

Ain't that the truth.

1. How do you think your Sorcerer spec is perceived by other classes? Free kill in PvP. Easy target to focus fire. Bubble is a joke. Poor sustained DPS. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? Levelling up my sorc was a breeze, they are just champs at under level 50, PvE and PvP. Level 50 PvP was a rude shock. I love this class, but it's only barely viable. I only held a DPS spot because I had better gear than other DPSers in Raids. Positives - Creeping Terror and Pull in Huttball. Negatives - No burst in either DPS spec. Even Assassins in tank stance have better burst. No defensive cooldowns No ranged execute move No way to gain decent damager reduction No way to gain interrupt immunity Far too squishy Force speed far too easy to negate. Should remove impairing effects with talents. 31 talent points rather weak. Madness tree has little synergy (cf Pyro tree in pyrotech). Dot spec with an instant whirlwind that breaks on damage. Parasitism is a joke. DoTs don't hit hard enough and easily purged, even Pyros get a talent that increases their DoT damage when target is under 30%. And anni marauders just laugh at how little our DoTs do compared to theirs. DPS on the low side. Pull doesn't work on hostiles (why not?) You gave force shroud to Assassins. Bubble should be a damage reflection shield too. Whatever the damage metrics say, AOE damage is weak. We need proper 1v1 damage and burst for PvP. Just look at pyrotechs and maras, they have proper damage and proper tree synergy. Then after all that, and the fact you make some classes "3 button- I win" machines and truly amazingly unbalanced in the hands of really skilled players, we're told to "L2P" by the devs. Insult to injury. And lastly, my own perception is that this is a class that has gone through far too many nerfs. Removed level 46 ability and didn't replace it. Removed wrath CL proc. Removed ranged execute (all the other DPS specs have an execute move) Healing nerfed - cf Op/Scoundrel healers that are near impossible to kill with stealth, heals on the move and no loss of upper hand/tactical advantage when under 30%. Sorcs get a trickle heal. (and worst of all you'll read this, and it isn't anything that hasn't been brought up in patch 1.2 and 1.3 when on PTS, and ignore it)

Yes, all good stuff, and the only reason we HAVE to do that is because we have no proper burst, no ranged execute move, or a proper defensive cooldown where we can take a little focus fire to get a spell off. We're supposed to the "force masters" but our assassin cousins get force shroud - can you say whaa th f? You got marauders that can use the force to make themselves invisible - and they are just meatheads that wave two sabres around. Hell, apparently they can even use the force to give themselves 99% damage resuction. You got juggernauts that can leap and make themselves immune to cc. Hell their smash AOE is TONS better than death field, and they along with maras can aoe mez. Now what class is called "force master" in this game. Oh right, I can tickle people with force lightning. Yay for me. I'm sooooo glad of that. Why does our pull only work on friendlies? And hell, lets not forget our techie powertechs that can just melt anything in 3 GCDs, or snipers - you know proper ranged killers with proper defenses. Or conceal ops that can really mess up your day. Sorc is a gimp class.

After being nerfed near to the point of no return? Yeah I'm giving up suggesting stuff because it won't happen. Probably unsub soon over it. probably a month or two tops, once I wind up doing the last endgame pve content.

Indeed, cheers for all your hard work on the forums.

Ah ok, well that's even more lulz worthy. So you need an op or merc healer to cleanse the dot.

Really, you call people bad, and yet here you show your ignorance of basic sorc abilities. 1) Sorc without corruption talents cannot cleanse a tech dot like CGC 2) it can be reapplied instantly, so why bother?

3 dots at 30m and slow all the way there. Wow, what assassins let you do that? Most of em I know will force speed to me and spike me. That's if they haven't got to me by stealth. And as for slowing them all the way there.... their speed breaks the slows... not going to happen. Sorry, dude of course I can beat the bads, but the good players will not let you place 3 dots on em that easy. As for marauders, the good ones use camo to get to you, and once you're in melee range, good luck getting away, they have a counter to everything you can try. And you're going to eat two hits of ravage when they leap to you, which is nasty enough. I imagine you'll tell me that every powertech is scared of you too....

Ability to stealth, mind trap and seethe when one on one useless too? Heck even just stealth when a fight goes south. You play a balance sage, how many times when you're beating on an assassin and they shock you, quite likely getting that 3rd stack of harnessed darkness, pop shroud (on 45s cooldown must be nice) so all your dots are cleansed, your current attacks/cc will do nothing and then to top it off the start pelting you with a force lightning that hits harder than your own telekinetic throw, and the shock most certainly hit harder than your own project? Yea that hurts. Big time. I won't even go into the rakata med pack/overcharge sabre, 15% extra health abuse either that comes from % of total healing based abilities. You said it. Envy. And since their dps abilities are hitting harder than mine, even though I have my talents in a DPS tree and they don't. Nerf? What nerf. I don't see it, they still OP Oh and you talk about kiting - how do you kite something that probably has lower cooldown force speed, a force speed that breaks snares when yours doesn't, and they can pull you back, since you know unlike them you don't have shroud to stop that stuff happening.

That's just a start, they need an "oh ****" button too.

Good thing I have combat logging then: [16:42:06.885] [@Shadow] [@Me] [Project {876461091192832}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (4905* kinetic {836045448940873}) <4905> [16:48:21.084] [@Shadow] [@Me] [Force Breach {964675424485376}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (3921* internal {836045448940876}) <3921> I can assure you this Shadow was running Combat Technique. Yes Powertechs and Vanguards are a huge problem too, but I'm posting this because as a sorc DPS I should not be outdpsed by a class running a tank stance with tank talents, even with dps gear. Basically, our damage is no where near on par with how fragile we are. I can't for a single moment fathom why Bioware seem oblivious to this rather glaringly obvious point.

The shadow was running Combat Technique. I checked. And I'm more than capable of identifying which stance a shadow or assassin is in, and on a side note rather presumptuous of you to tell me what stance a Shadow was in, in a game you weren't part of. Even if alot of their damage is multi-target - hmm let me think, kinda like sorcs, they can still hit a single target far harder than we can. What damage is a sorc putting out that is actually useful then? You know the sort of burst that maras, pts and sins are doing? And I'm sure us sorcs would love to be able to dps and get some ability that buffed our passive mitigation up to heavy armour levels. Never mind the self heals through uninteruptable harnessed darkness/shadows coupled with a damage buff, force shroud, pull, aoe slow, taunts, spikes, stealth, mind trap etc. Keep saying sorcs are a utility class, but Assassin have alot more than sorcs do. Heck don't even have an execute move. Sick of being told we're a kiting class when the other melee classes have the tools to counter everything we can do to kite them.

Sins and Shadows supposedly got a nerf, and in PvP they still can run in tank stance, and do MORE dps than a DPS Sorc. I have 1250 expertise, almost full WH yet I still see TANK stance Assassins outdps me by a fair margin. I got hit today by Project ~4600, and Force Breach ~3900. I'm lucky if my hardest hit, a death field crit does ~3.5k. How come the metrics are not picking this stuff up? Is it because Sorcs do loads of AoE damage, so the numbers look good when in fact they are useless at burst and single target focus? Either way, sorcs are a joke. At least let us change our advanced class so I can have tank survivability and good dps. Because currently, I have neither.

Thanks, yeah that's the salient point I was missing, and convinces me alacrity isn't quite as worthless as people make out. Cheers for the help.

I'm up to Hoth on Consular, finished Inq twice with both Sin and Sorc. Played LS Consular story is dull, but man, I feel like I want to vomit over it all, it's so nauseatingly good. Wish I'd gone DS now lol, but I want to unlock the LS legacy ability.

Thanks, yes, not casting Crushing Darkness so often did seem to provide a slight increase in dps. Would you mind explaining how the 4 set bonus would help? I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head round this. As I understand it, you can only cast one thing per GCD or 1.5s. So, currently I'm running the madness hybrid, and it is doubtful I'll switch back to lightning, not least because I couldn't make it work in PvP, and all my casts other than FL are instant, why would I need any alacrity at all? The only thing it does provide is a tiny fraction of a second to move after the FL cast to reposition if need be. Nice but not essential - in boss fights you have to move as and when, you can't wait always wait for casts to finish, lest you end up being killed by AoEs etc. One reason I prefer madness to lightning, losing a thundering blast is annoying, so I can see why on paper lightning might be better, but I find in practice, not so due to movement. I can see how alacrity helps healers because they really do need to get their casts off quickly, but I'm struggling to see how the 4-set PvE would help my current build. From my testing it's clear not worth keeping the 2 and 2 set up, and I have the pieces to get the 4 set pve set, so no biggie, but I do like to understand the underlying mechanics of these things.

Fair enough, I don't have creeping terror, so crushing darkness will always be eating around half of my death mark ticks. I suppose I might just have to get on a training dummy and run some tests with and without the PvP set bonus.

Hi, I'm running a 1/12/28 build, and currently using the 2 piece set bonus (Force Master) from both the PvP and PvE sets. The current reason for this is that I am nearly full War Hero, and having switched mods around, I come out ahead in damage over the other rakata/columi pieces I have. Anyway the question is, is it worth keeping the 2 set PvP bonus (1.5s reduction in cooldown of Crushing Darkness and a little bit of trickle healing), essentially allowing me to cast it more often, or is it actually hurting my DPS? I'm not entirely keen on the 4 set PvE bonus, and my alacrity is already a touch on the high side, so I'm going to be replacing power/alacrity for power/surge mods as when I get better ones. This is strictly with regards to PvE environment, PvP I switch back to the higher expertise items I have. Thanks.

Yeah been caught out with the blurb saying that they would be upgraded. heck even level 50 crafted boots, only got an mk-5 slot with a purple 22 in it. Lame

Oh and the one defending his OP class continues to defend it, knowing full well they are OP. Really, and what would they be? No stun.. or defesnsive cooldown? Hmm let me see Energy Shield can be specced to remove snares, and reduces damage by 25%. Longest knockback in the game. And there's nothing to interupt... so not much to exploit really. And it seems to me PTs are doing just fine without a stun, they have grapple, which has plenty of utlity. Yes, lots to exploit there

Yeah, it's depressing fighting a vanguard as a dps sorc. Perhaps if I'm on full health and they are under 25% I might come out of it, with more than 50% of my health left.