But the confirmation wasn't big enough.

You said that Madness sorcs weren't fine in ranked warzones a few pages ago. But that's irrelevant because Ranked WZs don't exist anymore and the reason Madness got its buffs had NOTHING to do with ranked warzones, bringing up Madness sorcs' performance in ranked WZ's was something you did, and something that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand because ranked warzones are not relevant to class balance at all anymore. Good, then you can stop talking about how madness has no on demand burst in your posts and use that as an excuse for why the buffs were valid because it isn't supposed to have any. Now that we agree on this, we can hopefully never mention Madness spec and its burst, because its non-existent. Lol the hybrid has much higher burst potential than madness, although being a more AoE oriented spec. I wonder though, as such a sorc expert what do you use for burst with that hybrid. Force Lightning and Lightning strike? Because we were talking about burst and sorcs? Link between topics? And seeing how madness has none, that leaves us with Full Lightning, which has considerable single target burst with the TB auto-crit but is dam easy to screw over and the hybrid which is as "bursty" as sorcs get if they're not specced full lightning. Nothing got resolved lol, go read PTS notes -__- if anything sorcs get an optional extra 2-3% mitigation as well as UP's GCD removed along with other less important stuff. Nothing of the passage you quoted has been "resolved", not that it needs to, because Ranked strats and team comps aren't the issue at hand. Much resolving such wow, you totally have a clue what you're talking about

Nobody's talking about ranked warzones, they don't exist anymore. Madness always was ARENA viable and that's it, the buff has just made it even better. Also, why does "burst window" when talking about madness keep popping up everywhere in this thread? O_o Madness has no burst! A 6k death field isn't burst...the 0/30/16 hybrid does have burst because you can cast CL and Death Field back to back and they both do decent enough damage when they both crit to be considered burst, madness isn't meant to burst things down, its role is to pump out sustained damage, which it does better than what it should atm. And I don't know if you guys are aware but pressure comps are the thing now...for the very small % that actually still do group ranked, pressure comps are the easiest and most effective team setups. Sure, hard-switches are awesome and I prefer them to do the derp tank tunneling strats, but they're much more demanding, compared to tunneling one guy non-stop till the healer can't keep him alive anymore.

But that's simply because of the ridiculous amount of pressure they're capable of exerting. Bring them back in line and I doubt it will be the case.

Burst > All is what used to be best in arenas, I agree. But my point wasn't about burst lol, I was saying that killing blows are a bad thing to look at when deciding how good a DPS was, because some specs will get less killing blows by nature despite pumping out more damage.

Bro, I never mained Smash...My main spec was Carnage, then I made Vengeance, and this summer I got a Sentinel to 55 who's focus specced because I can't stand the Combat animations, or else he wouldn't be Focus specced o_O. So unfortunately, I was always on the receiving end of the derpsmash. I can't speak of how strong it was before, but even now it's perfectly capable of pumping out numbers if that's what you're after The Smash whine was caused by multiple ranged stacking together and getting rekt by Smashers...there was enough evidence of that in Warzones, even today people still stack on eachother for some reason. It's one thing to nerf a spec because the players happen to be too close to eachother but another to nerf a spec that clearly outmatches other similar DPS specs by a large margin, while retaining it's superior mobility. Those screenshots might be a bit misleading, since it's Abalam (Cypher,etc.) and he can pull great DPS no matter what spec he plays. But if you were to compare his average Madness DPS to his average Arsenal DPS or Pyro PT DPS you'd see a big disparity between Madness and the other two. That has nothing to do with how effective a DPS was. I can remove 99% of a player's HP only to have somebody poke him with an auto-attack and get the killing blow. Burst Specs and specs with executes/Finishers are generally more likely to have killing blows simply due to the fact that they can remove larger chunks of HP at once, that doesn't mean they are better DPS in absolutely no way. The guy who did the big DPS contributed to the kills too, because no matter how much healing you have, if you can't outheal the dmg the person will die. And for the person to die, you need DPS, not killing blows because anybody can come in an steal the killing blow, but that won't mean he contributed to his team more than the guy who did twice as much damage.

Hide yo kids, Hide yo wife brah. B4 it too layt!!!!

Let them be man, they're afraid their newly buffed spec is gonna get taken from them wait a few months and we can all relive the epic moment when an OP spec gets rightfully nerfed and everybody's going "Waaaah, Waaaaaah, Don't nerf me I'm totally not OP!!!"

Apart from the fact that you pulled 1k DPS with 2 buttons I'm surprised by the fact that the other 3 sorcs on the opposite team managed to pull over 800 DPS while getting the crap farmed out of them.

If it were tied to the Channel talent Rage/Focus would start every fight with a full Rage Bar and a full powered Smash, kind of like what Juggs do, but then you have to factor in the fact that Rage/Focus on a Mara/Sent is quite superior in overall DPS to its heavy armored counterpart and the utility Sentinel/maras bring, even when Rage specced, makes the jug version look miserable.

Heck, that bots fights NPC better than some players I've seen.

Or maybe it was multiple abilities used within the same time window? You do know that Pyro PT can coordinate dmg to deal over 14k dmg within 1second right? A ScreenShot or combat log would be useful.

Have you looked at the dates of these results? Have you even verified if the hacks still work? Honestly, many players blame hacks when they're just too incompetent and got wrecked pretty badly by classes/abilities they don't understand a thing about then come crying about hacks on the forums. As somebody who actively PvP's I know what abilities different classes have and I know what to expect, which apparently is not the case with everybody since I still hear accusations of speed hacking and map glitching in QueshBall when in reality it's just a well coordinated team making extensive usage of a Combat/Carnage Sentinel/Marauder's Transcendence/Predation and Sorc/sage pulls to score goals less 30-40 seconds after the ball has been picked up by one of their teammates. When you have no idea how something works you can't just cry "ZOMG HAX" which is what a majority of people do. I'll repeat it, Bads who don't understand shet about certain game aspects cry hax all the time, it doesn't mean they are everywhere and everybody saying that there really aren't many hax is in reality a major hacker haxing 24/7.

^This. It's about time people that play classes that aren't heavily DoT based and have decent lasting CC's stop attacking through ED. Personally I find that Juggs aren't that hard to deal with if you have Awe/Intimidating Roar, unless you're Annihilation/Watchman specced you can easily wait out ED.

Omg, heresy!!! HOW DARE YOU HAVE KILLING BLOWS WITH MADNESS :mad: I stopped taking this seriously the moment I saw Madness being compared to a spec made for hard-switches. As well as the "Zomg u were free casting, dat dusn't count!1!1!" bit especially when the screenshot shows you having more deaths than all of the members on your team. It's a shame the other team didn't have a healer those guys with 15+ deaths might have pulled better DPS than they did. I mean those 3 sorcs with 12-20 deaths still pulled over 800 DPS...I wonder how many other specs can do that, because when I look at the other DPS specs like the sin and the mara on the opposite team, they're pretty far off and if it wasn't for ED healing that Jugg for over 100k he would've been down there too.

The EU players WERE better. Heck, one team was a tank tunneling pressure comp and the other was a hard-switch comp (if we're talking about the same matches, which I think we are), a tank tunnel pressure comp is not meant to hard switch, the name implies what it's supposed to do, and that's why they had a madness sorc in there as a DPS and not a second mara; because madness sorc pressure is very good even against those with lots of mitigation and you can't stop it. If carnage was superior in terms of tank tunneling they would've brought a second mara instead of the sorc I assure you. You don't do hard-switches with a madness sorc because that's not what you're supposed to do. The reason why they changed the madness sin crushing darkness is because Sins were able to reset it before the duration was over and thus wasted potential DPS in that case that they clipped it, the purpose behind the CrD change wasn't to make them more bursty, that's what the Assassinate proc did, and even then, Force Lightning is so much better than Trash xD Madness sins might be more dangerous dmg wise, but considering they're in melee range all the time it makes their lives a lot harder since they tend to get focused more and eat more damage. Well, if we assume that madness has the damage output it needs, then some other specs need a hell of a DPS buff

Wow, the mobility on this hybrid looks absolutely amazing; however, I'm wondering about the damage output. Is it good?

Well, the problem is that madness needed better PvE DPS, but the buffs were too big in PvP. I feel like the dmg increase to creeping terror wasn't really needed considering hey increased Force Lightning's dmg by 25% when attacking a target affected by creeping terror, which is pretty dam huge. Either one of these has to go in my opinion, but not both. I mean, madness was fine in the past, but most ranged specs got buffed, so I guess it's only natural madness gets something too, but what they gave it for PvE translated into too much for PvP. It's not like any of us want it nerfed to the ground, we just want to see it toned down.

Omg, ur guild is best guild world. May I join? Btw, sorry for ditching you guys without notice yesterday >< I rekt the router by accident.

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I disagree with that. Having too many of any AC in multiple consecutive WZ's all day everyday IS a reason to look at why exactly this is the case. In most cases it's because the AC has a FOTM spec that outperforms most other specs in the game. Remember how it was with the Smashers that every bad cried about? You had like 4-6 in a WZ if not more sometimes. When too many people play a spec it's enough to show there's something wrong with it. Why do you think sorcs represent the highest % of ranged classes and are usually the ones topping the charts by far? It's definitely not because everybody suddenly felt in the mood to play their Sorc and that all of them just instantly got better at it. There's plenty of squishy specs out there, melee and ranged, yet very very few of them have a Madness sorc's dmg output. Even if the damage - survivability ratio for sorcs is lolzy that doesn't mean it's justified, as I said, other classes are squishy; yet, they don't have the same dmg output. Therefore, being squishy isn't a reason to justify having very high DPS.

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Thermals crit for around 5k on my Jugg, when they do. It's true that losing a 6k hit is big, but it's not like even half of them crit, losing a Rail Shot is much worse than losing a thermal. When I play my PT in Pyro spec, I almost never get rail shot parried, even less reflected. I don't know how predictable the opponents you face might be, but I personally find that using RS right after it procs is somewhat stupidly predictable and not necessary. It's not like you'll get another RS in the next 3 globals anyways, I wouldn't go as far as saying that the heat management is gonna go to hell if you don't use RS the second it procs, it's not the end of the world to replace 1 flame burst with a rapid shots, especially if you're not in 4m range. It's not like it's an uphill DPS race for the Pyro, far from it actually and Flame Burst with its retardedly high crit chance is a much better "filler" (though it isn't really one) than those of a Jugg. Anyways, I say we just drop this debate. It seems we both have our opinions and seeing how we continuously back them up I don't think we'll ever finish one day. And I'm getting somewhat tired of arguing tbh xD

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Stuns used right after a leap are, but well timed ones can still save you from ravage's last tick which consist of 50% of the ability's dmg. It's not like every ravage is protected by Unstoppable too.