Yes you're right It's about the destruction buff. It's the charge and/or obliterate that make for auto-crits. Still I prefer not to waste the destruction buff If I can help it.

For a face to face class who jumps into the thick of things, and for a class whose damage increases as it's attacked (rebuke/cloak of pain + talent that increases fury/centering while attacked,) we should be able to take a little abuse before we die in pvp. As it stands now, we are practically glass cannons. I'm not asking for additional cooldowns, but lets be honest here. Rebuke/cloak of pain doesn't seem to help that much. I like that the class revolves around that particular cooldown for pve, but in pvp more defense is needed elsewhere. For the sake of argument, I will be comparing our class to our cousin classes Guardian and Juggernaut. Guardian/Jugg's cooldowns are significantly better. Over a year ago, a patch was released that let Undying/Gaurded by the force got nerfed so that the 50% damage reduction comes after the effect ended with the logic that "healers could heal them to full during the effect." Around the same time, you gave Jugg's/Guardian's Enraged/Focused Defense, which let them heal to full all on their own, while stunned no less. (I'm still trying to figure that one out Combat Team). And while i'm glad that Undying/Guarded by the force has no health cost now, it only lasts 3-5 seconds, and 9 times out of 10 when you pop it you're stunned immediately after, and get practically no use out of it unless you have a white bar. If we compare this to say, our cousin Juggernaut/Gaurdian class, they can pop their Enraged/Focused Defense, while stunned, making full use of it in any situation. Now let's look at Saber Reflect. Saber reflect is unlike any cooldown the sentinel/marauder has. It is basically 3-5 seconds of immunity from 90% of attacks. It is essentially a mini-undying rage/Gaurded by the Force that has the added benefit of sending damage back to the attacker, at a much higher magnitude than rebuke. The only cooldown that sentinel/marauder has that is close in any way is pacify/obsfuscate, which only makes 90% of white damage attacks miss. Sadly most hard hitting abilities are force and tech, and so this cooldown is really only good for much less than half of the attacks that will be thrown at you, and it has the added decrement of only being able to target one person with it. Now an argument can be made that Jugg's/Guardian's are supposed to be more survivable than sents/mara's because they may parse lower (pve), or they tank, or whatever. I'm not asking to make Sent/Mara survivability the same as Guardian/Jugg, but simply to close the massive gap between the two classes. In order to do this, I propose the following changes: 1) Make Undying Rage usable while stunned. Other classes, sorcerer's, juggernauts, powertechs, have a defensive they can use while stunned to save their hides, sentinel's and Mara's need one too. It's all to easy to chain stun a sentinel/marauder and blow him up faster than any of the previously mentioned classes. The ability to activate rebuke while stunned is USELESS. Guarded/Undying usable while stunned will prevent or limit the classic chain/stun death. To balance this, I suggest altering the Undying/Enduring talent in the Heroic tier that increases the duration and lowers the cooldown, to simply increase the duration and allow it to be used while stunned. 2) Make Brazen or Stoic passive abilities! Having this in the talent tree pretty much ensures that all sentinel's marauder's are stuck choosing this talent for both pve and pvp, and this limits other talent choices. Seriously, this would allow for other seletion in the skillful tier, increase the defense of the class (baseline), and be a huge quality of life improvement. 3)Make Pacify/Obfuscate lower the target's chance to hit you with Force and Tech attacks. This will actually make the cooldown useful for things other than blocking a Ravage or Blazing Bolts. The cooldown is useless against sorcs and sages, and this change would also alleviate that. Changing the cooldown in this manner will fix these things, and won't be overpowered as it still won't be as good as saber reflect, which reflects and prevents damage from multiple attackers instead of the single target that pacify/Obfuscate does. Just those three things, that's all I want. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? Or should I just l2play and reroll Jugg to pvp on?

You don't want to pop beserk before you engage, leap and then force crush, that's a waste of a free destruction buff that makes your smash or raging burst do 15% more damage. Also, if you pick up the Inexorible talent in the skillful tier, you can replace your auto attack on your bar with force scream, and simply force scream after obliterate or charge for a free rage generation. You'll get knocked back and stunned so much in pvp that between Inexorible, berserk, and battering assault, you will never run out of rage. For my opener: Frenzy-Berserk-Force Charge-Smash-Obliterate-Force Crush-Raging Burst-Ravage-Furious Strike. From there use Battering Assault, and force scream to build rage, and then spam Vicious slash until all the above come off cooldown. The reason you smash after force charge is it increases all your damage for 8% for 6 seconds, which will carry over into your Raging Burst auto-crit. The reason you Ravage after Force Crush and Raging burst, is because you will have hopefully chosen the ravage root talent, which make the opponent rooted and you immune to stuns while ravage their face off. Furious Strike comes after ravage for the auto crit. with the vindicator's set bonus.

Well guys good luck in your solo queues I've given up. I just deleted my sorcerer (only character) and unsubscribed. I'll find a game that acutally knows how to balance classes.

I'd donate big bucks for a new dev, whoever is in charge of the Sorcerer class obviously only cares about PVE and/or they are retarded.

Yeah Bioware is horrible at balancing classes. It's been what 3 weeks since this brainstorming thread started? Not only have we been ignored this entire time, the 2.5 patch notes are on the PTS and the devs has done nothing to fix sorcerers. We are sub-par in pve and sub-par in pvp. Bioware, I don't know why you favor Warriors and Agents more than other classes, but whatever the reason, you have continuously failed at making Sorcerers anywhere close to the level of viability as these classes. You're done, good game dev team. Just delete the Sorcerer advanced class from the game and give sorcerers a choice to have all their gear/datacrons/quests completed in the equivalent of another Advanced Class. Honestly, I would re-roll but I can't force myself to give up over 1500 hours of gameplay, 100 valor ranks, social X, all datacrons, all companion affection maxed, and all quests done. I should not have to sacrifice all of that because you can not balance your game. I'm at the point now where I'm seriously considering unsubscribing from the game, rather than doing all of that grinding all over again. Why should I redo all of that work because we have incompetent developers?

They should modify static barrier so that while it is active, you can not be leapt to pulled, or interrupted, like a sniper's cover.

(Cooldowns are reset between rounds, so you'll have Force Barrier again in round two. However, Round 2 will simply be a repeat of Round 1.) This is EXACTLY how 90% of my arena games go. Sage doesn't really have a problem in objective based warzones, because the other team's focus is (or rather it should be) capturing the objectives instead of farming kills. However, when the warzone's objective is strictly to eliminate the other team, it becomes clear that having a squishy, easily zergable class is simply not favorable to other classes who can do the same (or more) damage while surviving much longer. This is an inherent design flaw for arenas, and it seriously needs to be addressed. Sadly, I doubt Bioware will recognize this or do something about it. I suggest rerolling a melee class for arenas.

Better yet, just remove pushback and interrupts (against players) from the game. Inb4 then cover for snipers and gunslingers would be useless. No they would still have immunity to pulls and leaps.

PVP Changes: 1) Adjust weaken mind so that it doesn't break CC from Force Lift, Force Wake, and Kinetic Collapse, this will improve Telekinetic's survivability in pvp. 2) Increase the cooldown of Turbulence from 9 seconds to 12 seconds, and make it instant cast, this will allow Sages to actually use the ability in Arenas without it constantly getting interrupted. Do not decrease the damage done by this ability in the process. 3) Redesign the Jedi Resistance talent to instead give 15% (1 point) and 30% (2 points) of damage reduction from area attacks. Smash/Force Sweep does 9k damage to sages. It is not fair that they can reduce our overall health by almost 1/3 in one global cooldown. Reworking this talent will help Sages better perform against Rage/Focus which is the number 1 dps tree in pvp right now. This change will not be game breaking either, as sages will still be squishy (as intended) to all other attacks. 4) Finall, swap Psychic Suffusion with Egress in the healing tree. All sages, especially Telekinetics, should be able to use their Force Speed to escape. Currently Force Speed is a terrible escape tool, as it is so easily rooted by Force Charge, Obliterate, Leg Shot, etc, etc. PVE Changes: 1) Take Force Mend and Force Armor off the Global Cooldown. This will benefit Telekinetics Sages dps in pve, as they do not have to waste valuable GCDs to heal/protect themselves, which decreases their dps. 2) Adjust the Concentration talent to reduce the pushback of Mind Crush. In almost all pve fights, when the Sage takes damage from the boss or from mechanics, this ability takes too long to cast, and the pushback is a significant dps loss.

I don't heal much, and so I will be focusing my discussion purely on the lightning tree in pvp, which is horrible in arenas, so much so that I am forced to play only madness in pvp. It is my understanding that the developers want sorcerers to survive, not with passive mitigation, but through LoS, CC, and healing. Therefore, I will not suggest adding more passive damage reduction, but instead I will suggest ways to improve sorcerer's survivability via talents in the talent trees. My first suggestion is to fix backlash so that it doesn't break on damage and stuns enemies when the bubble you apply to yourself breaks. This won't be as overpowered as before 2.0, when you could stun the entire team by placing bubbles on other people. In order to avoid abuse from other hybrid specs, this talent should switched with Force Haste, the talent on the 2nd highest tier on the lightning tree. If the above change seems TOO overpowered for you there is another solution! Make it so your own affliction does not cause the mez from the Backlash bubble (that only works when applied to yourself) doesn't break! If I am dpsing a target, I have to put affliction on him so Thundering Blast can crit, and by doing so, I am screwing over my ability to use my Backlash Bubble to escape when he jumps on me because 1-2 seconds after he does, affliction will just break the mez. I am also screwing myself over when I need to use Electric Bindings to knockback also, as affliction breaks this effect before you can make good use of the root time. Which brings me to my next suggestion... Modify the suppression talent so that affliction doesn't cause Whirlwind to end early! In an oh crap moment if you need to CC a target or escape from a target that you have been dpsing, you can't do it because your affliction, which again you must apply for Thundering Blast to crit, will cause it to end early. I understand that lightning is supposed to survive via CC instead of passive damage reduction, however, it is counter-intuitive to require us to place dots on our targets which will cause all of our CC to end early. Next issue. It is impossible for Lightning Sorcerers to kite melee classes. For example, Focus Sentinels, have 5 slows. Force Leap, Zealous Leap, Twin Saber Throw, Leg Slash, and Force Exhaustion. Lightning Sorcerers have only 2 slows, one of which is proc based on Chain Lightning, and is unreliable in a pinch. It is near impossible for a lightning sorcerer to kite a focus/rage tree, which is one of the most popular dps trees in arenas at the moment. We can't LoS and heal to full as you have intended when we are stuck running at 50% movement speed, while the melee beats on us and almost all of our CC escape tools breaks early (see above discussion.) I understand that melee classes need this many slows and gap-closers so that they can stay on target, but Lightning Sorcerers should have at least ONE effective escape. Replace Fadeout with Force Suffusion in the Corruption Tree. This will allow the Lightning (and Madness, but Lightning needs it more) to escape every 15-20 seconds. This change will not be game breaking as Melee still would have more slows and leaps to catch up (Force Leap is on a shorter cooldown than Force Speed) but it would at least give the Lightning Sorcerer the chance to LoS and heal before they do. This change is especially needed since force leap and zealous leap can root during force speed, which negates the use of force speed entirely. I sincerely believe that the above changes would more or less fix Lightning's survivability in arenas, however there is one more issue that Lightning (and corruption) have in common. This issue is one of the main reasons most sorcerers in pvp use madness or a hybrid spec with madness for dps. This issue is that the spec is EASILY shutdown by interrupts. Every class has one interrupt move, which on paper may not seem like much of an issue, however you have to also consider the fact that stuns, knockbacks, and leaps interrupt targets too. When you take this into consideration, classes end up having like 5 or 6 interrupts. Consider this scenario: In the Lightning Tree I start casting Thundering Blast on a Focus Guardian. He sees this and so his response is Force Leap me (1 Interrupt). I start casting it again immediately since Force Leap doesn't have a lockout timer on the move that it interrupted, his response is to Force Kick me (2nd Interrupt). With my unused Thundering Blast Now on a lockout, I have no choice but to start running, lest I get eaten alive. I use Force Speed, the Guardian's response is to Zealous Leap me. When this is done I start casting Thundering Blast again, the Guardian responds with force push (3rd Interrupt). I Get back up and start casting Thundering Blast for the 4th time, the Guardian's Force Leap cooldown is now refreshed and he leaps me again (4th Interrupt). As there is no lockout from getting interrupted by Force Leap, I start casting Thundering Blast again, the Guardian Uses Force Stasis stunning me (5th Interrupt). When force stasis expires I immediately begin casting Thundering Blast again, but by this time the guardian's Force Kick is off cooldown (6th interrupt). I run and/or cast something else, when my lockout from Force Kick expires, I cast Thundering Blast for the 7th time, and the Guardian uses Awe (7th Interrupt). After Awe expires, I run I try casting Thundering Blast again but by this time his force leap is off cooldown and I am interrupted for the 8th time..... etc, etc, etc. As you can see from the above scenario, Lightning is so easily shut down by interrupts, so much so that Sorcerer's are Forced to play specs that allow them to do damage on the move, i.e. Madness or Hybrid. Which brings me to my next suggestion. Either make Thundering Blast Immune to interrupts, OR (preferably) Increase the Cooldown of Thundering Blast from 9 to 12 seconds and Make it Instant cast! Mercenary's Heatseeker's are instant cast, and snipers are immune to interrupts, so I don't see how giving an instant, or uninterruptible Thundering Blast to Sorcerer's would ruin game balance, if other ranged classes can already do one of the above. This ends my suggestions for Lightning Sorcerers in pvp changes. I do play Lightning in pve, and the only change we need there is for Subversion to reduce the pushback on Crushing Darkness. The only other obvious change for pve/pvp is to fix the Force Regen Bug on Forceweaver, which grants 1% or 2% Alacrity but doesn't increase the force regen rate.

Sages and Sorcerers have the tools to survive, the problem is that they are scattered through out the 3 different skill trees. In order to compensate for this, some skills need to be tweaked, while others moved around, in order to make sages and sorcs viable for arenas. All of the changes would be nice, but hell even just one of them would help out tremendously. As primarily a dps sage/sorc, I will be discussing issues and ideal changes from my experience with pvp in warzones and ranked arenas. I will be making alot of comparisons to marauders/juggs, since it is the general consensus that these Advanced Classes are considered top tier for arenas while sages/sorcerers aren't. Problem 1: Not enough ways to escape when slowed. Sages are expected to survive by kiting, positioning, and LoS. While this is certainly possible against some ACs, against others like rage/focus spec marauders or sentinels, this is near impossible. We have 1 slow (Force Slow) on a long cool-down, 12 seconds for balance, and 9 seconds for telekinetics. The marauder has 5 slows, only one of which can be cleansed (Force Exhaustion/Force Crush), while another has no cool-down. Yes Force Lightning/TK throw does apply a slow, but we have to be stationary and channeling in order to do this, which does not help us distance ourselves from our target so this slow is negligible. Also In the TK Tree, Cascading force also applies a slow when we use TK wave, but that is proc based, and thus unreliable so it is also negligible. Solution 1: Move Egress/Fadeout to the bottom of the healing tree. While I agree that cleansing physical effects (most slows) should be a unique talent for the healing tree, the ability to break free of all slows should be available to all trees, without blowing our 2 min Force of Will (CC breaker) cool-down. If Marauder's and Juggernaut's gap closer applies a slow, it stands to reason then that our gap opener should do the opposite and cleanse the slow. This could easily be done by swapping the place of Psychic Suffusion with Egress in the healing tree. This would allow a dps sage to spec into Egress and force speed out of movement pairing effects every 15 (TK sages) to 20 seconds (other specs). This simple change would give sages a little breathing room for the chance to LoS and reposition or heal. This change would not be game breaking either, as the Marauder/Jugg's force charge would be on an equal or shorter cool-down. Lets not forget that they also have ways to refresh the cool-down on their force charge, or their other gap closer obliterate/zealous leap. Problem 2: Telekinetics is easily shutdown with interrupts. The main issue here is the long cast time of Turbulence/Thundering Blast. This ability is the crux of sage/sorc dps in the middle tree, and it is so easily interrupted. Melee classes can't have their moves interrupted, so why should we be able to have ours interrupted? Because we are a ranged class and we should be standing out of interrupt range right? Well when you have to stand still for 2 seconds to cast something, any melee can run or leap over to you and interrupt your cast. You can try to cast it again while they are beating on you but 90% of the time it will just get interrupted again. Instead of trying to recast you can run, to avoid getting interrupted, but this is an effective interrupt, as you can not run and cast at the same time. Even more unfair, Snipers/Gunslingers are a ranged class immune to interrupts, so why do sages (and commandos) have the unfair disadvantage of being prone to interrupts? Solution 2: Make Turbulence/Thundering Blast Immune to interrupts. I'm not asking for the entire AC to have interrupt immunity on all of it's moves, just the one big hitter that takes 2 seconds to cast. If you want to compare it to a smash, not only does it hit less targets for less damage, it can be interrupted, while smash can't. Problem 3: The Stun Bubble is very limited in it's effectiveness. Yes stun bubbles before 2.0 were incredibly overpowered, not only because they did not break from damage, but because they could be applied to multiple team mates and do the same effect. This caused healing sages/sorcs to abuse the stun bubble, making healing a breeze when you could stun half of the enemy team, just from bubbling allies. While I do agree that stun bubble needed a nerf, it was nerfed into near uselessness. Why? Because now they DO break on damage. The stun bubble should be used as an escape tool for the Telekinetics tree, the problem is since it breaks from damage, if you applied your affliction/weaken mind to your target, (which of course you will apply to any target you are dpsing,) the target's stun will break sooner than expected. Even worse is when you need your bubble to get away from a target that you were not attacking, but you can't because your ally hit him or put a dot on him. Solution 3: Make it so that the stun effect from bubbles that you apply to yourself do not break from damage, while bubbles you apply to allies do not stun at all. This was certainly what I expected the nerf to be post-2.0. As you can see this isn't broken like the pre-2.0 bubble where one sage can stun half of the enemy team just from bubbling. However this change gives the sage the option to actually make use of the time the enemy is stunned by the bubble, by escaping or casting a Turbulence, instead of just having the stun immediately wear off and do nothing because you or your allies put a dot on the target. This change would also give healers more viability in arenas. Healing sages are prone to interrupts because most of the sages heals are channeled abilities.Unlike the operative healer, who only has 2 channeled abilities, and can heal on the move, healing sages are shut down if they aren't stationary and casting. This change would give the sage healer a chance to cast a big heal while his enemies were stunned. Due to the duration of the bubble lockout, this would only happen once every 15 to 17 seconds depending on talents and gear.

Ah i read through most of the posts an did not see cash's simulation. So I assume there was a flaw in the original experiment then?

My initial statement has been proven by this first experiment, but yes my final conclusion is based on assumptions that the community is correct. We do need more testing, as I've stated earlier in my post.

This thread's experiment conclusively states that : A max expertise target will do (marginally) more damage to, and take (marginally) less damage from a 1214 expertise target, in comparison to the damage that 1214 expertise target does to, and the damage received from, the max expertise target, given the same stats. This is the ONLY indisputable information that the data from this experiment shows. Anything else about character sheets, or whatever you want to say is purely speculation. However, it is still believed that a 1214 expertise target will do (marginally) more damage to a diffrent 1214 expertise target, than a max expertise person would do to that different 1214 expertise target. (Another experiment is needed, similar to this one, however this seems to be the response of most on this forum and the popular consensus. For argument's sake, we'll assume this is true.) Assuming the above is true, which is better for dps? Well since the general consensus, is that 1214 is better (or at least more common in warzones) than max expertise, a dps would do (marginally) more damage going with 1214 expertise, since most of the targets he will encounter will not be max expertise targets. If everyone used max expertise, then max expertise would be better. /thread

Nice try, but after further inspection of your combat log, i noticed your companion was also shooting the dummy which of course inflates your dps. Edit: Upon further inspection of your log it appears you noticed this occuring and turned off your companion's dmaging moves mid parse, which shouldn't incrase your numbers too much, you still had good dps considering. Overall the log is still impressive.

If you didn't care you would not have taken the time out of your day to make a post about how you didn't care. You obviously cared enough to post about it. I assume this is a response to the thread that has a pic of a sith maruader doing 819k?