I agree with Mac here. Hatred needed a performance buff but survivability is still a critical issue. I hope you consider looking at ways to bring hatred's survivability in line with deception.

Can you comment on whether we will still be able to find MK-2 and MK-4 varieties of gear through some means (particularly mods and left side pieces)? This is particularly important for tanks who often prefer a bit of health buffer over an excess of defense.

Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah, it seems like the time in which Ciphas needs to be focused is rather short -- on the order of a handful of gcds. That being said, if at time zero (when the switch first needs to be made), I have two dots ticking on him, I'd imagine that upfront damage would make up for the damage loss between a lacerate (to spread the dots in the first place) and a thrash on Heirad immediately before the switch. One tick of the dots damage (according to my parses) is more than sufficient to make up the damage difference between a thrash and a lacerate on Heirad, which leads me to believe this is still helpful? Plus, if I'm slow in switching targets, I am already damaging Ciphas with my dots. (The dots still do damage to the other guards, just not helpful damage, so they should still contribute to the healing effect as they boost the damage done?) I must be doing something wrong then, lol. As far as I understand, you want to save force shroud for lightning field in phase 1 and for doom in phase 2. What are the best uses of overload saber and deflection, then? From my recent attempts, I have quite a bit damage taken from Heirad's Force Lightning & Kel'sara's Discharge. Sweeping Slash also does a fair amount, although that may be avoidable? That's a good point. Although, to be fair, the tooltip (if I read correctly) states that there is a 50% chance to proc this effect. So, you'd gain on average 2.5 force back from a thrash, or 7.5 force back from a lacerate that hits 3 targets. Lacerate costs 20 force, so it would take 3 lacerates to return enough force to use one more lacerate/thrash in place of a saber strike. So, maybe the better cost-benefit analysis would be comparing the damage lost in using 3 lacerates in place of thrashes compared to the damage gain in one thrash use over a saber strike use. Looking at my average hits of lacerate and thrash, thrash still wins out (since the lacerate damage on other bosses is useless). I have found phantom stride is very nice for phase 2 when Ciphas leaps to raid members for the strangle, so I prefer to reserve it for mobility reasons in that phase at least (or for getting to adds in phase 3). Force speed would work just fine for phase 3, but it's nice to have phantom stride to leap to Ciphas when he leaps to a random raid member and then be able to force speed back to Ciphas when they jump back to the tank. So, definitely not as beneficial as I might have hoped, hah. Still, maybe some merit in select parts of the fight?

Is dot spreading (hatred) strictly bad for NiM Dread Guards? Obviously, the damage is unhelpful in the sense that the resulting guards heal up after one dies, which makes any damage done to them superfluous. I have heard, however, that damaging the other guards buffs their damage. Can someone please confirm or deny this? If so, what extent of damage to them causes this to happen? I.e. would my death field (if it hits them as well as the guard currently being focused) essentially be enough to trigger this effect? To this date, I have not found any refutable source (in game or in guides) that confirms the bosses' outgoing damage is buffed as such. Now, I understand the futility of dot spread for the sake of fluffing numbers. However, it seems that there could be potential small benefits to doing so. 1. Spreading dots in phase 1 enables quicker switching to Ciphas when Heirad goes to do Surging Chain. 2. More dots ticking = more chances to crit on dots = laughably small improvement to chance to get heals from your dots. 3. Dealing melee damage has a chance to proc your lightning charge; from my logs, I have seen separate multiple instances of lightning charge proccing from one hit of lacerate (proccing from different targets). Thanks to our level 32 passive, granting us 5 force when lightning charge procs, we can expect better force regen by using lacerate. 4. If you are having bad luck proccing bloodletting, having dots active on more targets = more chances to proc bloodletting on the internal cooldown. Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?

I was just in disbelief over the high crit percentages. I spent a few hours parsing a couple nights ago and couldn't break 60% crit on Force Breach to save my life. I do find it kind of amusing that the top 2-3 parses on both imp and pub side had not delayed their second Force Potency/Recklessness. Although, if parsing this spec a bit more recently has convinced me anything, it seems like lucky crits make up the difference for these small rotational changes. My highest dps parse right now has several mistakes, but just happened to have the lucky crits. It feels bad - hah.

Seriously. I saw that parse and wanted to cry. 79% crit on Force Breach and 71% crit on Shadow Strikes? Yeah, talk about some good RNG. Not to hijack the thread, but an honest question, since I've been seeing this a lot in different parses. How do you feel about saving your second Force Potency/Recklessness in your opener to line up with Shadow/Phantom Stride, as opposed to using it directly after the first time you stealth out? In general, this means delaying your second use of Force Potency/Recklessness about 15-20ish seconds to get it to line up with your Shadow/Phantom Stride.

True that. That does probably require some good planning in fights where you would care enough about the outgoing damage to do something like that. Out of curiosity, what are some fights you might do that on? I have contemplated it for Kurse, especially with the utility that grants force shroud on dropping into stealth from combat, to mitigate his purple slam circle. Although -- if you happen to have a sin tank in the group, they could just do the same thing instead of a dps ;D.

My summary or TL,DR of this thread (and general reactions to 4.0.3): BW nerfed deceptsins in a bad manner (whether or not you think the damage they are doing is appropriate or not). Also featured: why the flying bantha did get hatred get nerfs? (pvp balancing attempts continue to encroach on pve hopes and dreams). For a melee sustained class without the 30% AOE reduction (and yet all sorcs got that in 4.0) and with practically zero raid utility, hatred is in a sad place for single target sustained. I love my shadows and sins, so I'll keep playing them. But, think of it this way: if you had your choice of: a.) an annihilation mara (or even carnage mara) that brings way better single target damage + predation + bloodthirst, or even b.) a PT that has comparable damage but way better damage reduction and a considerably more impressive sonic rebounder (compared to our utility tied to our threat drop), or even c.) an operative, which has slower windup but better sustained damage and access to some powerful offheals and the same elusive stealth rez (oh yeah, and a raid buff), or d.) a jugg that can do comparable damage but is also equipped with the ever powerful saber reflect, plus has many more cooldowns to help fake-tank if the need arises Well, so ya wanna bring your hatred sin instead? (Shhh, don't tell my raid groups that I have other toons that could be doing more damage than my shadow/sin). I'm not saying that all of these specs are doing as well as they should (vengeance juggs, for instance, should probably also see a small buff), but hatred... well, it ain't nothing to brag about these days.

True, the dummy parses won't represent what will happen in a fight. My perspective is based not only on dummy parses, but also on my experience raiding in 4.0. I main a shadow/sin in two different groups, as well as main a sniper or PT (depending on the day) in another group. My best friend mains a marauder for one of these groups, and a sniper for the other group. I even brought a rage jugg one day for the lols. The big issue with 4.0 for hatred sins was that deception sins were hands-down better for almost all fights, both in terms of dps output and survivability -- they were far better for both burst and sustained damage. I stubbornly played my hatred sin through the first few weeks of 4.0 before deciding to dabble with deception. My understanding of deception is not nearly as in-depth as my understanding of hatred. Despite this, I found it remarkably easier to achieve as much as 300 more dps for many fights. There was no comparison from hatred to top-performing specs like snipers (in any of the 3 specs), AP PTs, or to my friend's mara (annihilation), even when my sniper and PT were in worse gear. Now --- all of those are getting nerfed, yes. Hatred, with its small nerf, will be performing worse (respective to all classes) than before the patch. It was already performing poorly. That's the rub. You're kicking an under-performing class while it's already down. I agree that specs with positional requirements (deception sins, eng snipers), should be performing well under dummy parse circumstances, as it is an ideal case. That being said, many of those positional or stationary requirements can be easily accommodated in raids (the exception being eng snipers, which I think were nerfed too severely). Dummy parses are not perfect reflections of what happens in an ops fight, but they represent the upper limit for what you could achieve in a single target fight. There is no reason why melee dot specs should fall on the bottom of that chart, given that they often face the biggest uptime challenges due to mechanics. Let hatred be somewhere closer to annihilation, where it belongs.

/s ? Perhaps for PvP. For PvE, hatred was below average going into this patch, and hardly anyone's first choice to bring to a raid (no 30% AOE damage reduction, weak raid utility, not to mention underwhelming single target dps). The patch will only make this worse.

Please, please explain to me BW how nerfing hatred sins fits your intended metrics of melee dot specs supposedly having the best sustained dps.