The NEW *INSANE DPS* 1.2 SORC Spec!

[Protanos]

Sorc for now top DPS in any OPS, approximate difference 10% better then other DPS. Edited May 29, 2012 by Protanos

[Daellia]

A marauder has to be in harm's way to apply his dots. A sorc does not.

 

An arguable point, but they also tick for less than a Sniper's Corrosive Dart. Beyond that, getting into melee range for a Mara isn't really getting into harms way. Against a Sorc, you're in harms way even outside that range. Given their damage output, being in melee range is being out of harms way, because the Sorc must move or die at that point.

 

An op filler is a big dps loss vs FL.

 

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have brought up "filler". Sorcs don't really have a "filler" like other classes. Every other class uses their free basic attack as their filler (or in the case of Warriors, their resource generator). Sorcs have no similar ability, so it was a bad comparison. Suffice it to say, FL does more damage than more free basic attacks, and less than most of the staple semi-spammable abilities for dps classes (ex: Tracer Missile)

 

I agree with this. But I should note that other classes' aoe's are channeled, have delays or have much smaller radiuses and don't do internal damage. I have the sneaking suspicion if this maxed out at 5 (and with deathmarks to boot), sorc damage in the hands of a skilled madness player would start doubling everyone else's.

 

Internal damage isn't actually a benefit in PvP. If anything, it's a disadvantage. Yes, it does the same amount of damage against a high-armor target as a low, but the damage of internal and elemental abilities is balance specifically for PvE, in which you are fighting a static target with 30-35% armor reduction (depending on debuffs) and 0 internal or elemental DR. In PvP, you're fighting targets with 10-40% armor reduction and 10%+ internal/elemental DR. This means that in PvP, your internal/elemental effects are doing less damage than they are balanced for, and armor-mitigated effects are doing more (against most targets).

 

Here's the problem. You're saying the sorc has bad defenses because it takes hits badly.

 

If you're taking hits as a dps sorc, you're doing it wrong. They might have the worst armor, but they have the best distance creators by a mile. True kiters who know what they're doing aren't common. But if you do face one as a marauder or jugg and you'll see how frustrating an experience this is. Even carnage, which is the antikiting spec, is in a bad place if the sorc mezzes ravage instead of knocking them back (assuming their leap is spent). A sorc's bad armor is more than made up for by them not being in range of the other guy's abilities. And their range creators are spectacular.

 

This isn't always an option. You say use your Whirlwind on Ravage, but you're talking about a Madness spec, which has a very high likelihood of breaking Whirlwind in just a second or so due to DoTs, meaning your Whirlwind is nothing but a 2-3 second stun that also manages to completely max the target's Resolve in the process.

 

Beyond that, one of our iconic gap-creators, Force Speed, has a longer CD than Force Charge, and can be complete neutered by Force Charge's root (or any other root). If you really want to have issues, try it against a skilled Juggernaut with Unstoppable and Obliterate. They simply can't be peeled.

 

And turrety? That's simply not the case. There is one, and only one ability that a madness sorc needs to stand still for in combat (and one you've described as causing less damage than other classes' fillers, so I'm not sure why you think it's so important now). And all you need to do is not use it if you're being actively pursued until you're not being pursued.

 

Low damage though it may be, it's also what you would spend around 70% of your time doing if you were allowed to stay still, and is around 50% of your total damage in such circumstances. This means movement is a serious reduction in your damage output, which is the definition of turrety. Madness is, however, the least turrety of the Sorc specs, so I'll grant you partial credit here.

 

It does plenty against healers. It forces a cleanse, which is a wasted gcd. If they choose not to cleanse, you toss that on with affliction. Use FL until you see the big heal charging and interrupt it. Now you pop your relic, use deathfield and wrath crushing darkness, pop recklessness and throw down two FLs (they won't interrupt you because they'll be focused on how much health they're losing). Healer is hurting bad at this point. If they stay put, they're going to lose the race. If they try to run, CT again to root them. They will almost always break it. Now you electrocute them and finish the job with 2 more FLs and a shock. If they're still not dead (which they will be) you use wrath lightning strike and its over. The only healers that will survive something like this are ops (who will survive by leaving the fight for 15 seconds).

 

Cleanse has a 4.5 second CD. Smart healers will wait until you put up Affliction as well, cleanse both off, and interrupt your CD (if you hard-cast it, otherwise they'll just heal through it, doesn't do that much damage). Now you're stuck with nothing but your relatively low DPS filler. Neutered.

 

Interrupt is off the GCD, so assuming they won't interrupt your 8-second long burst combo because they'll be panicking about HP is a losing game (and shows you're not playing against skilled players much).

 

See, the only healers that will die here are the bad ones. The good ones would have castrated your combo 3 abilities in, then probably started dpsing you back to put you on the defensive. Beyond that, Innervate alone will out-heal your Force Lightning, and Sorcs are easily the worst of the 3 healers in PvP. Madness burst is almost non-existent, even with your relic and Recklessness popped. Skilled healers can easily heal through or negate it.

 

Your mitigation is movement, parasitism just helps with having to disengage less.

 

Parasitism helps you in extended matches. It's a trickle-healing so you have to spend less time around a corner Seething. In-combat, it provides very little in the way of game-changing benefit. It's not useless, but it's certainly nothing to rely on.

[Larry_Dallas]

An arguable point, but they also tick for less than a Sniper's Corrosive Dart. Beyond that, getting into melee range for a Mara isn't really getting into harms way. Against a Sorc, you're in harms way even outside that range. Given their damage output, being in melee range is being out of harms way, because the Sorc must move or die at that point.

 

My point wasn't that a marauder needs to be in harm's way to bleed a sorc. My point is a marauder needs to be in harm's way to bleed anything. A sorc doesn't (and no, neither does a sniper).

 

 

Internal damage isn't actually a benefit in PvP. If anything, it's a disadvantage. Yes, it does the same amount of damage against a high-armor target as a low, but the damage of internal and elemental abilities is balance specifically for PvE, in which you are fighting a static target with 30-35% armor reduction (depending on debuffs) and 0 internal or elemental DR. In PvP, you're fighting targets with 10-40% armor reduction and 10%+ internal/elemental DR. This means that in PvP, your internal/elemental effects are doing less damage than they are balanced for, and armor-mitigated effects are doing more (against most targets).

 

Couldn't disagree more. Ask a sniper if they'd rather be slapped with internal/elemental instead of something else.

 

Of course, as a sorc, it doesn't matter to ME, if I'm being hit with elemental or kinetic. But it sure does to anyone else.

 

 

This isn't always an option. You say use your Whirlwind on Ravage, but you're talking about a Madness spec, which has a very high likelihood of breaking Whirlwind in just a second or so due to DoTs, meaning your Whirlwind is nothing but a 2-3 second stun that also manages to completely max the target's Resolve in the process.

 

Actually I said nothing about whirlwind. I said sorcs have great distance creators. Preferably, you would use electrocute or, against non-carnage, maybe just force speed away and strafecast force slow or CT. You might get hit with one 10 m ability, but that's the last damage you should take (and I've still got overload in my back pocket). And before you tell me I need to save electorcute for undying rage, I don't. UR is a good time to make sure I've got affliction up on everyone else in range before finishing the job on the marauder.

 

Edit: whoops. I said mez. Meant stun.

 

 

Beyond that, one of our iconic gap-creators, Force Speed, has a longer CD than Force Charge, and can be complete neutered by Force Charge's root (or any other root). If you really want to have issues, try it against a skilled Juggernaut with Unstoppable and Obliterate. They simply can't be peeled.

 

force speed is only one way to create distance and force charge is only one way to close it. Madness sorcs have SIX ways to create or maintain distance. The majority of classes have two to three ways to close it (Carnage being an exception).

 

 

Low damage though it may be, it's also what you would spend around 70% of your time doing if you were allowed to stay still, and is around 50% of your total damage in such circumstances. This means movement is a serious reduction in your damage output, which is the definition of turrety. Madness is, however, the least turrety of the Sorc specs, so I'll grant you partial credit here.

 

Anything you would gain by spamming FL at targets that are chasing you would more than lose through down time due to death. Your money damagers in pvp when being chased are shock, DF, affliction, CT and, as a last resort if you don't need to use it elsewhere, force slow. Don't need to stand still to use any of them.

 

 

Cleanse has a 4.5 second CD. Smart healers will wait until you put up Affliction as well, cleanse both off, and interrupt your CD (if you hard-cast it, otherwise they'll just heal through it, doesn't do that much damage). Now you're stuck with nothing but your relatively low DPS filler. Neutered.

 

They've cleansed deathmark now? Because last I checked affliction has no cooldown and could just be put right back up.

 

 

Interrupt is off the GCD, so assuming they won't interrupt your 8-second long burst combo because they'll be panicking about HP is a losing game (and shows you're not playing against skilled players much).

 

Most players are not skilled, but what you've suggested does not indicate skill. Say they interrupt FL and blow cooldowns to keep affliction from bleeding every time. So what? Shock's bad for force-management, but not a DPS loss. Wrath has procced by now, so crushing darkness can be applied instantly. I was interrupted right at the beginning, so DF's still available.And any GCDs spent cleansing dots (one of which just gets put right back up) result in HP loss due to not using, for instance, innervate instead. All these smart healer's cleverness has accomplished is putting themselves in a worse position earlier to move my limited burst from the end to the beginning and moving FL to the back of the combo instead of the front. I haven't even popped recklessness yet. The killing blow's slightly tougher to get, but nothing else changes.

 

 

See, the only healers that will die here are the bad ones. The good ones would have castrated your combo 3 abilities in, then probably started dpsing you back to put you on the defensive. Beyond that, Innervate alone will out-heal your Force Lightning, and Sorcs are easily the worst of the 3 healers in PvP. Madness burst is almost non-existent, even with your relic and Recklessness popped. Skilled healers can easily heal through or negate it.

 

As stated before, all interrupting the combo will do is to move abilities from one place to another, without actually changing the overall DPS in any meaningful way. (and the more I think about it, I've been locked out of FL at the exact time I wouldn't be using it anyway, what with the cleanses and DF and CD not having been cast yet)

 

Innervate can't be spammed and resurgence and dark heal will not come close to outhealing force lightning with deathmark and 1-3 dots up. They also can't outheal FL if infusion is locked out and they're wasting GCDs to cleanse affliction/CD/CT, at least one of which will just be reapplied immediately.

 

And I would welcome any healer stupid enough to waste GCDs getting into a DPS race with not just a sorc, but any dps class of any spec.

 

But even if the healer could outheal what I'm suggesting (only an op can, and only by some combination of stunning/stealth escaping, which I'm very unlikely to be able to stop), what is he or she adding to the team at this point? I've got them locked down in such a way as if they do anything other than try to outheal my damage, they die. So their team is not being healed. And I've still got affliction, possibly deathmark depending on if DF hit one targets I put affliction on before engaging the healer, on at least two other targets.

 

 

Parasitism helps you in extended matches. It's a trickle-healing so you have to spend less time around a corner Seething. In-combat, it provides very little in the way of game-changing benefit. It's not useless, but it's certainly nothing to rely on.

 

I agree completetly. But it's not to be confused with any form of mitigation. Movement is mitigation for a sorc.

Edited May 29, 2012 by Larry_Dallas

[Daellia]

Couldn't disagree more. Ask a sniper if they'd rather be slapped with internal/elemental instead of something else.

 

Of course, as a sorc, it doesn't matter to ME, if I'm being hit with elemental or kinetic. But it sure does to anyone else.

 

Well, ignoring the argument ad populum, would you rather be hit by an Internal ability that does 3000 damage base or a Kinetic ability that does 4600 base? Against a Sorc's armor (~12% armor) with Mark of Power, the former will deal 2700 damage while the later does 4050. Against a Merc (~30% armor), the former will deal 2700 while the later does 3220.

 

This is the point I'm trying to get across here. Yes, an internal ability that does 3000 damage will deal more damage than a kinetic ability that does 3000 damage. However, armor-mitigated abilities are balanced assuming around 35% armor mitigation, so on average they do about half again as much damage as a similar internal ability does. Since in PvP, most targets have less than 35% armor mitigation (and nearly all targets have at least 10% internal/elemental DR from Mark of Power, which internal/elemental effects aren't balanced with in mind), internal and elemental effects end up doing a noticeable amount less damage relative to their equivalent energy/kinetic abilities.

 

If abilities are balanced around a non-zero armor point, the armor-mitigated abilities are superior to armor-piercing abilities when below that armor point.

 

force speed is only one way to create distance and force charge is only one way to close it. Madness sorcs have SIX ways to create or maintain distance. The majority of classes have two to three ways to close it (Carnage being an exception).

 

Whirlwind, Electrocute, Force Slow, Creeping Terror, Force Speed, overload. Those are the 6 I'm assuming you're speaking of. From a Madness spec standpoint, let's look at these:

 

• [*]Whirlwind: Broken nearly instantly by DoTs, completely fills resolve bar for a 2-3 second stun. Also, 1 minute CD.

[*]Electrocute: Fills 80% of resolve bar. At base move speed, 4 seconds is enough to get 24 yards, just short of the maximum range of Force Charge. Also, 1 minute CD.

[*]Force Slow[/b]: Not only does this ability have no more than a 50% uptime, it's also a weaker slow than the Marauder's 100% uptime snare. Most melee possess 100% uptime snares of at least 50% magnitude. Force Slow is only useful if they can't gap-close you and don't have a snare on you (and you have sufficient distance so they can't apply one), and then only if you're running at full speed away from them (ie. not stopping to cast anything).

[*]Creeping Terror: A 2-second root, while off Resolve, only gains you 12 yards on them, and prevents practical use of Whirlwind. Not a bad option overall, though, particularly with only a 9 second CD.

[*]Force Speed: Neutered by any form of root, stun, mez, or pull. Force Charge has a shorter CD and is a direct counter in every way possible.

[*]Overload: Knocks back around 10 yards (more if you can aim them off a cliff). However, it has a very obvious animation and a 0.5-0.75 second delay on the actual knockback effect. If you're knocked back, stunned, mezed, or pulled during the animation, it goes on cooldown with no knockback effect (though the graphical effect still plays). Also generates 400 resolve off the top for generating a 2-second gap.

 

None of them are overwhelming, and 4 out of 6 have a CD greater than Force Charge. Add to that a Mara's 15-second Obliterate (w/ 40% move speed buff for 5 seconds afterwards), 21-second CD massive snare, spammable 1 rage 50% snare, vanish (with 30% move speed buff for 2 seconds) off the GCD every 45 seconds, and Predation (50% move speed for 10 seconds, if they use it over Undying Rage), and Sorcs definitely end up on the losing end of that kiting battle.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Sorcs are useless. They just aren't nearly as powerful as you seem to believe.

 

Anything you would gain by spamming FL at targets that are chasing you would more than lose through down time due to death. Your money damagers in pvp when being chased are shock, DF, affliction, CT and, as a last resort if you don't need to use it elsewhere, force slow. Don't need to stand still to use any of them.

 

Yes, but restricting your abilities to that prevents you from using Crushing Darkness effectively (which is your highest DPCT ability by a long shot). Those abilities are also strongly force-negative, limiting your combat endurance a great deal. Lastly, your damage using those abilities is going to be abyssmal. Maras, on the other hand, can nuke the crap out of you while chasing you at full movement speed.

 

They've cleansed deathmark now? Because last I checked affliction has no cooldown and could just be put right back up.

 

Deathmark isn't cleansable. The Jedi equivalent is, but Deathmark isn't currently (probably a bug, though). Affliction can certainly be removed, but if you go Affliction -> CT -> Cleansed -> Affliction, you've wasted 4.5 seconds without doing any damage at all, and all they've burned is a single 1.5 second GCD removing the first Affliction and CT. Also, Affliction on its own does VERY little dps. It's only useful in combination with the rest of your DoTs (which have a CD much longer than cleanse) and Force Lightning.

 

That said, I myself have argued against the cleanse argument before, as Sorcs and Sages are the only ones that can cleanse them. Against Op or Merc healers, those DoTs stick like glue, so I'll give you this one.

 

Most players are not skilled, but what you've suggested does not indicate skill. Say they interrupt FL and blow cooldowns to keep affliction from bleeding every time. So what? Shock's bad for force-management, but not a DPS loss. Wrath has procced by now, so crushing darkness can be applied instantly. I was interrupted right at the beginning, so DF's still available.And any GCDs spent cleansing dots (one of which just gets put right back up) result in HP loss due to not using, for instance, innervate instead. All these smart healer's cleverness has accomplished is putting themselves in a worse position earlier to move my limited burst from the end to the beginning and moving FL to the back of the combo instead of the front. I haven't even popped recklessness yet. The killing blow's slightly tougher to get, but nothing else changes.

 

Wrath can't proc if you're not casting FL, and still only has a 30% chance per tick (and if you're getting interrupted out of it, no Wrath for you). DF's up, but you have only Affliction up to take advantage of Deathmark. your FL is on cooldown. You can hardcast CD if you want, but the Sorc healer can then cleanse that and your second affliction off in one GCD again. Also, you popped Recklessness before your first FL, so the interrupt burned a charge on it for a single crit tick of FL, and the second got burned on Shock (which doesn't even benefit the Chain Shock if it procs). Not much benefit there.

 

Innervate can't be spammed and resurgence and dark heal will not come close to outhealing force lightning with deathmark and 1-3 dots up. They also can't outheal FL if infusion is locked out and they're wasting GCDs to cleanse affliction/CD/CT, at least one of which will just be reapplied immediately.

 

Your Force Lightning was interrupted and your DoTs cleansed, so they definitely can. Dark Heal actually isn't that far behind Innervate in HPS, it just sucks *** for Force efficiency. Resurgence + Dark Heal can definitely outheal the scattered DPS you're putting out between interrupts and cleanses (also, remember cleanse has a heal attached to it).

 

But yes, you've got the healer locked down now healing themselves. Then again, you've also got yourself locked down, and you're not locking down their marauder ****** your flag carrier (but they're not healing the mara, so maybe there's a slim hope. Maybe).

[Larry_Dallas]

Against an organized burst team, if you're anywhere near the objective, you're going to take hits. If the burst is decently coordinated you should be dead right as your resolve white bars. If not a little before. I'm just shy of 18k health in BM/WH augmented gear. The premade we normally play against has an OP/mara combo that can 100-0 me in a matter of seconds. There is no kiting them.

 

There's no kiting two of anything for extended periods of time and there's no surviving any organized 2 dps (with all cooldowns) v 1 dps with any class unless you're a zerk marauder with a full resolve bar who can somehow down both targets before UR expires. And how often will that happen?

 

You're telling me a sorc can't beat an organized team by himself. No kidding. No class is going to be able to do that.

 

 

That's being intellectually dishonest. If you're putting real pressure on anything it's while you're turreting FL. Notice that in your scenario of killing a healer you specifically point out the necessity of plenty of FL casts.

 

As I mentioned above, with the current TTK there is no active pursuit. A sorc is simply stunlocked to death.

 

Your job's not to put pressure on anything that's not a healer, not already being focused or not trying to cap an objective. It's to support and harass. You're not the infantry.

 

And with the stunlock/focus thing, how is this sorc specific, exactly? "You've been focused by an op who gets his stealth combo and a zerk marauder. What can a sorc do about that?" I mean, you're giving me an impossible situation for any class and claiming it's a sorc deficiency.

 

Here's one for you. Hows about a voidstar match with a team of 2 op healers 2 annihi maras a pt and a jugg vs a premade of 8 well-coordinated rage marauders. How doe team A stop team B from planting? They can't. How does team A beat team B's time? They can't. Does this indicate annihilation's uselessness? that op healers are UP? That rage needs nerfed? Nope. That same team of rage maras will be a joke against a bunch of spread out ranged attackers of whatever class.

 

 

Movement away from the objective does provide mitigation. Mitigation of your damage from the objective. As 31 madness your force pool dries up very quickly. If you kite successfully you still need to get out of combat to recharge your force pool. You've been effectively eliminated from the objective for longer than the enemy player you just kited and killed.

 

Who said anything about moving away from an objective?

 

Every second you're being chased is one second you're doing damage to 1-5 targets and the higher burst class that's chasing you is accomplishing absolutely nothing. Every second that "better" class is out of the fight, you're still taking bug bites and probably aoe out of his buddies and he may as well disconnect for all the good he does chasing you waiting for FL to cool down so he can go back to chasing you waiting for fl to cool down again. If he's smart, he disengages and rejoins the dogpile, but at a significant health disadvantage. Back to support fire until the next fool starts chasing.

 

And you're really telling me doing no damage to anyone for upwards of 30 seconds at a time, dying, respawning, waiting for a gate to fall, then running back to wherever combat is LESS of a drag to your team over time than 6 seconds in Seethe?

 

 

Parasitism really only helps give you enough HP feedback to use consumption which you're not using if you're getting focused. Its benefits for extended your in combat longevity against burst setups is laughably bad.

 

You mention TTK being very low. Well, either things die fast or you're in protracted engagements for so long that you run out of force because nothing dies fast enough (or you're refreshing affliction on each target after the third tick or something) and you never have a quick break to seethe while the enemy's respawning. You can't have it both ways. The only way a madness sorc is popping consumption after consumption is if you did not take the resource skills from the lightning tree. If that's the case, go back and take them.

[Larry_Dallas]

Well, ignoring the argument ad populum, would you rather be hit by an Internal ability that does 3000 damage base or a Kinetic ability that does 4600 base? Against a Sorc's armor (~12% armor) with Mark of Power, the former will deal 2700 damage while the later does 4050. Against a Merc (~30% armor), the former will deal 2700 while the later does 3220.

 

This is the point I'm trying to get across here. Yes, an internal ability that does 3000 damage will deal more damage than a kinetic ability that does 3000 damage. However, armor-mitigated abilities are balanced assuming around 35% armor mitigation, so on average they do about half again as much damage as a similar internal ability does. Since in PvP, most targets have less than 35% armor mitigation (and nearly all targets have at least 10% internal/elemental DR from Mark of Power, which internal/elemental effects aren't balanced with in mind), internal and elemental effects end up doing a noticeable amount less damage relative to their equivalent energy/kinetic abilities.

 

If abilities are balanced around a non-zero armor point, the armor-mitigated abilities are superior to armor-piercing abilities when below that armor point.

 

that's very interesting. I'm not being a snotty, when I say it's interesting, I mean it.

 

Still, the internal/kinetic thing came about due to a statement I made about attacks that do area damage. Does any other class have an aoe with DF's radius that is instant, up-front-damage and exceeds DF's internal damage with its own kinetic/energy on a per target basis? I can't think of one, but I've not used every spec of every AC. My guess is that's probably why it's limited to 3 targets. I'm sure the devs think it would be too strong otherwise, because 3 is a strange number for an aoe with that big of a radius.

 

 

None of them are overwhelming, and 4 out of 6 have a CD greater than Force Charge. Add to that a Mara's 15-second Obliterate (w/ 40% move speed buff for 5 seconds afterwards), 21-second CD massive snare, spammable 1 rage 50% snare, vanish (with 30% move speed buff for 2 seconds) off the GCD every 45 seconds, and Predation (50% move speed for 10 seconds, if they use it over Undying Rage), and Sorcs definitely end up on the losing end of that kiting battle.

 

 

You're right. None of them are overwhelming. What's overwhelming is that there's so many of them that one or more will be off cooldown at all times.

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Sorcs are useless. They just aren't nearly as powerful as you seem to believe.

 

Then I'm not expressing myself clearly enough. My position is not that sorcs are uber-l33t, invincible pvp monsters. It's that they're effective enough that I don't understand all the complaining about how useless they are now that hybrid's gone. I believe they are imperfect classes that can be very effective in the right hands. In other words, I think madness is darn close to being balanced.

 

 

Yes, but restricting your abilities to that prevents you from using Crushing Darkness effectively (which is your highest DPCT ability by a long shot). Those abilities are also strongly force-negative, limiting your combat endurance a great deal. Lastly, your damage using those abilities is going to be abyssmal. Maras, on the other hand, can nuke the crap out of you while chasing you at full movement speed.

 

Every bit about this is true except the last sentence. It's true, damage while kiting (if wrath is not preprocced) is going to be 30-40% of what I could get against someone who's afk not fighting back. Heck, maybe less.

 

Why this is valuable is because the mara, in your example gets a leap...and that's probably it for the next 45 seconds as long as I can keep him at 11 feet, which, looking at your own chart of distance per range-creator, isn't going to be hard. Obliterate requires being in 10 feet. Saber throw the same. Force crush the same. Carnage is more of a threat because of their 80% predation, but even they're not -completely- insurmountable. And CT doesn't care how much resolve was filled by electrocute and is, as you said, off cooldown an awful lot. If I'm at 11 feet I can get back to the 20s quite easily.

 

But here's the way I look at it. It takes too long to kill a melee attacker this way. But it's also not really the point. By the time the scrum is over, I'll have taken affliction bites out of targets I'm not actively engaged with, maybe some stray deathfields if I can hit them and what I'm kiting, while wiping the chaser. The chaser, meanwhile, who is a burst class, has done about 5000 to me vs. my ~17000 to them, but more importantly, ZERO to targets that are not me. In the context of team play, I've made him less of a factor in gaining the objective than he's made me.

 

My contribution when being chased is to unbalance the scales in the pile by doing a little while the other guy does a lot less. Even if I do catch an obliterate after 55 seconds, followed up by a force crush or crippling slash (I'll wipe if this happens and nobody intervenes), that's about a minute ten of an unfair fight for my team once I wipe. They -should- have the other team outnumbered enough to finish up and cap by then, depending on the map and the node.

 

 

Wrath can't proc if you're not casting FL, and still only has a 30% chance per tick (and if you're getting interrupted out of it, no Wrath for you). DF's up, but you have only Affliction up to take advantage of Deathmark. your FL is on cooldown. You can hardcast CD if you want, but the Sorc healer can then cleanse that and your second affliction off in one GCD again. Also, you popped Recklessness before your first FL, so the interrupt burned a charge on it for a single crit tick of FL, and the second got burned on Shock (which doesn't even benefit the Chain Shock if it procs). Not much benefit there.

 

Recklessness gets popped late. Never ever early. Certainly not on a first application of FL on anything.

 

But basically what you're getting at is if I'm trying to burn down a healer in the manner I've described and if they're not channeling something or otherwise engaged at the instant I attack and if they decide the best use of jolt for the forseeable future is to drop what they're doing and interrupt a sorc who's FL them before he gets wrath and if they're fast enough to actually do that, then no, what I've described won't work.

 

If I can't proc wrath at the front. I'll lose the dps/heal race. But there's a lot of things that have to go exactly right for the healer to stop that and a lot of counter-intuitive judgment calls that need to realistically be made in under a second.

 

the rest of the example pertained to huttball. I don't really engage people in huttball with the intention of killing them unless they're ball carriers or cherry picking. They just respawn on their own goal-line, which is where the ball needs to go. Better to sneak around the scaffolding slowing, rooting, stunning, extricating (etc), peeling off pursuers as best I can by just try to make it hard for the other team's players to get where they're trying to go.

[dcgregorya]

In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have brought up "filler". Sorcs don't really have a "filler" like other classes. Every other class uses their free basic attack as their filler (or in the case of Warriors, their resource generator). Sorcs have no similar ability, so it was a bad comparison. Suffice it to say, FL does more damage than more free basic attacks, and less than most of the staple semi-spammable abilities for dps classes (ex: Tracer Missile)

 

For sheer DPS Sorc isn't coming up short of any class by any means so it doesn't really matter if FL does less per tick than Tracer.

 

Internal damage isn't actually a benefit in PvP. If anything, it's a disadvantage. Yes, it does the same amount of damage against a high-armor target as a low, but the damage of internal and elemental abilities is balance specifically for PvE, in which you are fighting a static target with 30-35% armor reduction (depending on debuffs) and 0 internal or elemental DR. In PvP, you're fighting targets with 10-40% armor reduction and 10%+ internal/elemental DR. This means that in PvP, your internal/elemental effects are doing less damage than they are balanced for, and armor-mitigated effects are doing more (against most targets).

 

10-55% vs typically 10% if they have the buff (not guaranteed mid-PVP match). It is for killing tanks and it does that well. By definition it has to be less of a liability than energy damage.

Beyond that, one of our iconic gap-creators, Force Speed, has a longer CD than Force Charge, and can be complete neutered by Force Charge's root (or any other root). If you really want to have issues, try it against a skilled Juggernaut with Unstoppable and Obliterate. They simply can't be peeled.

 

Unstoppable has its own cooldown. Peeling is always an option when you have a slow and several roots if you spec for them.

 

Low damage though it may be, it's also what you would spend around 70% of your time doing if you were allowed to stay still, and is around 50% of your total damage in such circumstances. This means movement is a serious reduction in your damage output, which is the definition of turrety. Madness is, however, the least turrety of the Sorc specs, so I'll grant you partial credit here.

 

Madness is the only one worth using for PVP imho.

 

Cleanse has a 4.5 second CD. Smart healers will wait until you put up Affliction as well, cleanse both off, and interrupt your CD (if you hard-cast it, otherwise they'll just heal through it, doesn't do that much damage). Now you're stuck with nothing but your relatively low DPS filler. Neutered.

 

Force dots can only be cleansed by sorcs/sages and some abilities like dodge on a scoundrel. Scoundrel cleanse does not remove force effects.

[Lansodw]

There's no kiting two of anything for extended periods of time and there's no surviving any organized 2 dps (with all cooldowns) v 1 dps with any class unless you're a zerk marauder with a full resolve bar who can somehow down both targets before UR expires. And how often will that happen?

 

You're telling me a sorc can't beat an organized team by himself. No kidding. No class is going to be able to do that.

 

You're ignoring the very obvious. Sorcs are top of the menu for the burst ACs because we don't have a solid mitigation talent when focused. DPS sorcs are downed so fast that healers can't do anything to prevent it. Especially the Sorc healers are dealing with the exact same issue on their own.

 

Is the current burst dps in WZs a little out of hand? Yes. No class is immune to the focus train, but Sorcs are #1 on the hit list. Most people that are asking for balancing help from the devs are looking to make it just a tiny bit harder for a team to simply pick the Sorc and watch him melt in 4-5 seconds. This is about making sure that some small amount of coordination is required by the train. Currently it's just point and shoot.

 

This isn't about fending off an entire premade 1v8. People like to extend the scenario to that point to prove some obvious fallacy.

 

 

Your job's not to put pressure on anything that's not a healer, not already being focused or not trying to cap an objective. It's to support and harass. You're not the infantry.

 

How is this a rebuttal to my questioning you saying you don't have to stand still to do damage while at the same time saying repeatedly that you have to cast FL to kill that healer? I pointed out the contradictory nature of your explanations. I didn't mention anything about what role you needed to fulfill.

 

 

 

And with the stunlock/focus thing, how is this sorc specific, exactly? "You've been focused by an op who gets his stealth combo and a zerk marauder. What can a sorc do about that?" I mean, you're giving me an impossible situation for any class and claiming it's a sorc deficiency.

 

In a team effort your off healer should immediately recognize and support the focus target if it's not himself. With the lack of a decent mitigation cooldown - the DPS Sorc is dead too fast to be healed. That is the Sorc deficiency.

 

Prior to 1.2 it at least required the focus train to get interrupts on the healer supporting him to pull off the quick kill against a DPS sorc. Now the train doesn't even have to bother. That's a little too derpy for my taste.

 

 

 

Here's one for you. Hows about a voidstar match with a team of 2 op healers 2 annihi maras a pt and a jugg vs a premade of 8 well-coordinated rage marauders. How doe team A stop team B from planting? They can't. How does team A beat team B's time? They can't. Does this indicate annihilation's uselessness? that op healers are UP? That rage needs nerfed? Nope. That same team of rage maras will be a joke against a bunch of spread out ranged attackers of whatever class.

 

See above about extending the scenario to ridiculous extremes.

 

 

 

 

 

Who said anything about moving away from an objective?

 

Every second you're being chased is one second you're doing damage to 1-5 targets and the higher burst class that's chasing you is accomplishing absolutely nothing. Every second that "better" class is out of the fight, you're still taking bug bites and probably aoe out of his buddies and he may as well disconnect for all the good he does chasing you waiting for FL to cool down so he can go back to chasing you waiting for fl to cool down again. If he's smart, he disengages and rejoins the dogpile, but at a significant health disadvantage. Back to support fire until the next fool starts chasing.

 

The Ops/Maras I face push you away from the dogpile. If you're keeping maximum range on the melee then you're away from the primary objective and out of dps range of anything else. Huttball, you're not supporting or attacking the BC. NC,CW, and VS you're not in range to prevent or support a node cap.

 

 

 

And you're really telling me doing no damage to anyone for upwards of 30 seconds at a time, dying, respawning, waiting for a gate to fall, then running back to wherever combat is LESS of a drag to your team over time than 6 seconds in Seethe?

 

All depends on the objective and the extent of the kite. More often than not, when playing against the best my server has to offer - dying and respawning would have been the faster option. VS being the one probable exclusion given the timer length on the respawn gates.

 

You mention TTK being very low. Well, either things die fast or you're in protracted engagements for so long that you run out of force because nothing dies fast enough (or you're refreshing affliction on each target after the third tick or something) and you never have a quick break to seethe while the enemy's respawning. You can't have it both ways. The only way a madness sorc is popping consumption after consumption is if you did not take the resource skills from the lightning tree. If that's the case, go back and take them.

 

TTK for burst classes is low. 31 Madness is not a burst class. So yes, it is both ways.

 

Usual madness spec is 3/7/31. Not much to obviously pass over for force regeneration in the lightning tree. I ran the spec for a good while after 1.2. I really like the playstyle. Unfortunately it's a force hog. Longevity is a major issue. I eventually switched to 1/12/28 just for the extra LB burst to help get those healers down and go much further without running out of force.

[Daellia]

Every bit about this is true except the last sentence. It's true, damage while kiting (if wrath is not preprocced) is going to be 30-40% of what I could get against someone who's afk not fighting back. Heck, maybe less.

 

Why this is valuable is because the mara, in your example gets a leap...and that's probably it for the next 45 seconds as long as I can keep him at 11 feet, which, looking at your own chart of distance per range-creator, isn't going to be hard. Obliterate requires being in 10 feet. Saber throw the same. Force crush the same. Carnage is more of a threat because of their 80% predation, but even they're not -completely- insurmountable. And CT doesn't care how much resolve was filled by electrocute and is, as you said, off cooldown an awful lot. If I'm at 11 feet I can get back to the 20s quite easily.

 

Problem is, any competent Mara is going to drop a Crippling Slash on you as soon as he charges you (during that root). Thus even if you root him, you're moving at 50% speed and he's still at 100% (or 50% for half the duration of the Crippling Slash if you drop a Force Slow on him). If you knockback, he can Obliterate, Choke, or Crush. If you Force-speed, he can Vanish, Choke, or Crush as you speed out of range (assuming good reaction speed), or simply wait the 12 or so seconds left on his charge CD and get back up in your face.

 

However:

 

In other words, I think madness is darn close to being balanced.

 

I'll be honest, based on this, I think we might simply be arguing whether the glass is half-empty or half-full...

[Cempa]

Why slash when Rupture applies a DoT every second for 6 seconds and the CD for Rupture is pretty much guaranteed to reset before the 6 sec are up!

 

Same for Pyro PT's, have you tried to get away from one? If you have every CD up and his resolve is 0 you might depending on map..Other wise die in a few seconds.

Edited May 30, 2012 by Cempa

[warultima]

Why slash when Rupture applies a DoT every second for 6 seconds and the CD for Rupture is pretty much guaranteed to reset before the 6 sec are up!

 

Same for Pyro PT's, have you tried to get away from one? If you have every CD up and his resolve is 0 you might depending on map..Other wise die in a few seconds.

 

Rupture slow takes 2 talent points that can be used on better talents (which are in abundance of them) so many people opt out and use crippling slash (myself included) since its free and lasts for double the duration. Taking seeping wound however has 1 plus side... it saves 1 GCD to apply the slow.

 

HOWEVER, crippling slash slow is physical debuff which only talented healers can cleanse while seeping wound slow is force debuff that every sorc/sage and their mom can dispel, warranted not many sorc/sage dispel anything anyway.

 

To take the 2 points in seeping wound commonly you are forced to drop

1. Subjugation (this makes u lose 6 second interrupt and shorter cd on obfuscate).

2. Phantom (u lose 20% speed and 2 sec duration on force camo).

3. Empowerment (bleed regen rage and how often anni mara has its bleed ticking?lose major dps)

Edited May 31, 2012 by warultima

[primori]

EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS TOPIC THAT CLAIMS SORCS ARE **** AFTER 1.2 FOR DPS SHOULD UNINSTALL AND GO PLAY HELLO KITTY ONLINE!

 

thats all

[Cempa]

Rupture slow takes 2 talent points that can be used on better talents (which are in abundance of them) so many people opt out and use crippling slash (myself included) since its free and lasts for double the duration. Taking seeping wound however has 1 plus side... it saves 1 GCD to apply the slow.

 

HOWEVER, crippling slash slow is physical debuff which only talented healers can cleanse while seeping wound slow is force debuff that every sorc/sage and their mom can dispel, warranted not many sorc/sage dispel anything anyway.

 

To take the 2 points in seeping wound commonly you are forced to drop

1. Subjugation (this makes u lose 6 second interrupt and shorter cd on obfuscate).

2. Phantom (u lose 20% speed and 2 sec duration on force camo).

3. Empowerment (bleed regen rage and how often anni mara has its bleed ticking?lose major dps)

 

Only Healer builds can dispel Rupture DoT as it requires talents that mid healing tree.

 

As a pure DPS I can dispel Warrior snares without talents so I actually like the Marauders who don't talent Rupture..I kite them to death. (Assuming here they are Annihilation NOT |Carnage or Rage).

 

The ones who do talent Rupture kill me as fast as a Pyro Powertech with talented snare on CGS -Combustion Gas Cylinder- which they apply every time they use an instant Flame Burst!

 

Problem is the DoT applies the snares every second!

Edited May 31, 2012 by Cempa

[warultima]

Only Healer builds can dispel Rupture DoT as it requires talents that mid healing tree.

 

As a pure DPS I can dispel Warrior snares without talents so I actually like the Marauders who don't talent Rupture..I kite them to death. (Assuming here they are Annihilation NOT |Carnage or Rage).

 

The ones who do talent Rupture kill me as fast as a Pyro Powertech with talented snare on CGS -Combustion Gas Cylinder- which they apply every time they use an instant Flame Burst!

 

Problem is the DoT applies the snares every second!

 

Rupture doesnt reapply slow every time it ticks for damage. The slow takes effect as long as the rupture debuff is on you (up op 6 seconds) and drops if the bleed is gone. So it doesnt work like PT.

 

Also I can see that you do not play a marauder (at least not a anni marauder) because rupture slow is NOT reliable at all. Rupture CD is 15s and the slow is only 6, with MAX TALENTED Vicious Slash chance to refresh Rupture is only 33% and Vicious Slash is on the button of the priority list for an Anni Marauder. Yes we dont usually use Vicious Slash at all since its a major dps loss. 66% chance to refresh CD for rupture with Annihilate which takes 5 rage and a long CD as well. Against good sorcs you cant rely on RNG like you suggest.

 

Oh in case you have no idea you only use Vicious Slash when.

1. Force Charge is on CD.

2. Annihilate is on CD.

3. Deadly Saber is on CD.

4. Rupture is on CD.

5. Vicious Throw is unusable or its on CD.

6. Ravage is on CD.

7. Battering Assault is on CD.

8. Only when you have enough rage of 2+ (the rage cost your next rage spender that will come out of CD).

 

Good anni marauder rarely casts Vicious Slash which is the only spammable attack that have a merely 33% chance of refreshing rupture.

 

Between Rupture to the next Rupture its 6 seconds which means its 4 GCD, minus 1 for the next rupture you get 3 attacks.

 

Even if you use ultra bad rotation such as Vicious Slash spam chance of refreshing after 3 GCD is not 100% (its actually a lot lower).

 

It takes little effort to keep crippling slash up, while keeping up rupture slow make your attack priority super baddie-like unless you also throw in crippling slash if rupture failed to refresh which defeats the entire purpose if "wasting" 2 talent points in seeping wounds.

[Shadenuat]

DPS sorcs are downed so fast that healers can't do anything to prevent it.

 

Actually we can, we can pull them to our side across the whole battlefield (Rescue/Extrication).

Edited May 31, 2012 by Shadenuat

[Lansodw]

Actually we can, we can pull them to our side across the whole battlefield (Rescue/Extrication).

 

I laughed at that. I have a sorc healer that I love to play extricate tag with. Sometimes it works wonderfully. Sometimes it allows that rage Jugg an opportune moment for his leap/smash combo and two sorcs in vent hollering "oh dear lord, please get it off!!!!"

 

We get a little focused in our discussions here, but I still very much enjoy playing my DPS Sorc. I think with a few balance tweaks we'll be golden. Squishy in the right places and lethal in others. I don't mind losing when I get outplayed or our team gets beat by a superior strategy. I'd just like to see more strategy going on. The current balance does not seem to promote that.

[darthtrunkmonkey]

Compared to other classes, however, we are. Your DoTs tick for half or less as much as a Mara's. Your Force Lightning ticks for a third or less of the damage of other class fillers. Your Death Field hits decently hard...IF it crits, and it can only be used every 15 seconds (and only hits 3 targets, unlike most other AoE at 5+).

 

Your static barrier, with boost, gives you a grant total of around 4k absorption every 17 seconds. Outside of that shield, you have the absolute lowest damage mitigation in the game, bar none. Lowest armor, no true defensive/damage-reduction cooldowns, and a very turrety dps style (regardless of your spec) if you want to do anything approaching respectable damage.

 

17k HP isn't exactly incredible.

 

As for Creeping Terror, it's a 2-second root. Doesn't do squat against ranged dps or healers, and many melee have ways around it. Beyond that, using Creeping Terror on someone locks you out of using Whirlwind on them (made instacast by the same skill tree) for 18 seconds.

 

 

 

Parasitism, with Devour, even if you're maintaining 100% uptime on CT and Affliction and keeping CD on cooldown, will require around 30 seconds to heal you for the amount of damage you'd take from a single Snipe crit. Good luck using that as mitigation.

 

I'm not saying Sorcs are worthless in PvP, but they certainly are on the weak side, relatively speaking.

 

"Your DoTs tick for half or less as much as a Mara's. Your Force Lightning ticks for a third or less of the damage of other class fillers." this is a funny statement.

 

Which btw is totally untrue and cant be proven true until you post a screenshot of a mara's dots ticking for well over 900 and critting for well over 2k or more. If you reply saying that your dots only tick for 500 or less then you geared your Balance Sage/Madness Sorcerer totally wrong.

 

I replied to the guy stating that all his complaints are untrue about how bad we are, when in reality we aren't that bad. Then I see your post claiming we are the weakest of the weak. Yea why don't you come back in a weak or two when you finally understand how you should gear. When you finally understand that as a "pressure" dps, your job isn't to burst but to keep your targets eyes on his health bar and not his teammates. Also to get his healer to break-off his current target and to use cleanse/dispell or w/e. Once you finally grasp how to gear/play come back and post something that actually means something.

 

Till then this monkey is gonna back to plotting my world domination from the trunk of your car.

[IHate]

Ok, you guys are all cry babies

To put this out I am a Jedi Guardian.

 

I **** hate sorcs. Your bubbles are just insane, absorbs almost 3000k dmg and you guys are complaining that you have light Armour?

 

Second point, I don't know about you guys but i get 250k in voidstar, when i try really really hard, while the rest ( sorcs) have 300K+ and 100k+ healing. ***. You guys should realize that you have one of the easiest classes to play in the game.

 

Complain about utility? What happen to healing, dots, CC'sss ( holy crap , so annoying ) and SUPPORT!

 

Afraid that someone might kill you? Force run! You guys can run away from any fen battle and then heal yourself up.

 

Learn to play guys and accept this nerf, they were long coming, you guys brought this onto yourselves.

 

my 2 cent from a jedi guardian

LOL?

So many classes have jumps that are short force run is garbage...if we get lucky we can get them to burn their purge, but what then? run? JUMP JUMP SMASH. With light armor and no large spike dps the class is just one of the worst for 1vs1 imho. Too many classes with more "control", armor, dps and multiple defensive buffs to make this class useful. When it had larger dps it made more sense, but now as a dps class its just always going to be mid to low on the scale of evenly geared and skilled players.

[Daellia]

Which btw is totally untrue and cant be proven true until you post a screenshot of a mara's dots ticking for well over 900 and critting for well over 2k or more. If you reply saying that your dots only tick for 500 or less then you geared your Balance Sage/Madness Sorcerer totally wrong.

 

Deadly Saber has a coefficient of 0.20 and stacks 3 times for a total of 0.60 per tick (that's 60% of Force Bonus Damage per tick, and they get the same amount of Force Bonus Damage we do). Affliction has a coefficient of 0.31.

 

If we want to get super explicit, an Anni marauder's bleeds get +30% crit damage from Bleedout, +10% damage from Juyo Form, +15% damage from Hemorrhage, and +15% crit from Juyo Mastery. If taken, Malice grants an additional 6% crit chance.

 

Deadly Saber, if applied properly, will get 2 ticks (the initial tick and the 3-second tick) at each stack level, granting 2 ticks at 1 stack, 2 at 2 stacks, and 3 at 3 stacks. This is equivalent damage to 5 ticks at 3 stacks (or 15 at 1 stack), which is the same number of ticks as Affliction before Exsanguinate.

 

Madness's Affliction gains +2 ticks from Exsanguinate, +30% crit damage from Creeping Death, +15% damage from Force Horrors, and +6% damage from Calcify. If taken, it also gains 3% additional crit from Seeping Darkness.

 

Let's add them up just for fun. Let's assume, just for the sake of easy math, 800.0 Force Bonus Damage, 30% crit, 75% crit damage.

 

Deadly Saber will deal an average of (0.2 * 800 + 0.02 * 1610) = 192.2 * (1 + (0.3 + 0.21) * (0.75 + 0.3)) = 295.1231 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.1) = 368.904 damage per tick per stack. At 3 stacks, this ticks for 1106.71 damage.

 

Affliction will deal an average of (0.31 * 800 + 0.031 * 1610) = 297.91 * (1 + (0.3 + 0.03) * (0.75 + 0.3)) = 401.1358 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.06) = 485.374 damage per tick. This is 43.86% of the damage of a Deadly Saber tick (in other words, Deadly Saber is ticking for 2.28 times as much damage at the same gear level).

 

 

On a mildly related side-note, in order to get a 500 damage non-crit Affliction tick, you would need 500 / (1 + 0.15 + 0.06) = 413.223 - 0.031 * 1610 = 363.31 / 0.31 = 1172.0 Force Bonus Damage. This is impossible outside of relic and adrenal usage, and therefore definitely doesn't qualify as "gear[ing] your Balance Sage/Madness Sorcerer totally wrong."

[warultima]

Ive seem my 3x deadly saber crits for 1400-1500 at max stacks.

I however dont know how many times it ticks.

To above poster can u briefly explain how the deadly saber ticking works while stacking?

 

I mean its usually 1st stack 1GCD 2nd stack 1GCD 3rd Stack.

So you are saying 1st stack will get to tick twice even after I stacked it to 2? and so on?

It always feels like I am getting no ticks from deadly saber is I stack them too fast, and only getting 2 ticks at 3 stacks...

 

And to people who dont believe how much more marauder dots tick for... you will be surprised. Also rupture is also great. Its basically a Melee range Crushing Darkness (cept it ticks for internal damage while crushing ticks for kenetic damage) that its CD can be reset via using other attacks.

 

Also deadly saber is the biggest marauder dot and it doesnt even cost a GCD to apply and stack. It gets stacked automatically as you use ANY of your weapon attacks. And casting deadly saber itself is off GCD.

 

Edit: Heres my screenshots for the infidels.

 

1458 damage per tick (this is with nothing but all classes buffs + rakata might stim only on PvP dummy)

 

1983 damage per tick (this is with all the buff as the ones above + champion boundless age +355 Power + rakata attack adrenal 475 power + BT)

 

My marauder is my alt (my main is a sorc) so hes not very geared sporting partial WH/BM as you can tell my relic is only champion as well.

Stats sheets with just sith warrior buff

 

As you can see the stats are medicore at best.

 

Affliction cant do that... I am sorry.

Not crushing darkness neither and sucking terror is just like another affliction.

I think if you take a Affliction tick + a Crushing Darkness tick + a creeping terror tick... the total of it might be comparable to a tick of deadly saber at max stack.

Edited June 1, 2012 by warultima

[Chemic_al]

Deadly Saber has a coefficient of 0.20 and stacks 3 times for a total of 0.60 per tick (that's 60% of Force Bonus Damage per tick, and they get the same amount of Force Bonus Damage we do). Affliction has a coefficient of 0.31.

 

If we want to get super explicit, an Anni marauder's bleeds get +30% crit damage from Bleedout, +10% damage from Juyo Form, +15% damage from Hemorrhage, and +15% crit from Juyo Mastery. If taken, Malice grants an additional 6% crit chance.

 

Deadly Saber, if applied properly, will get 2 ticks (the initial tick and the 3-second tick) at each stack level, granting 2 ticks at 1 stack, 2 at 2 stacks, and 3 at 3 stacks. This is equivalent damage to 5 ticks at 3 stacks (or 15 at 1 stack), which is the same number of ticks as Affliction before Exsanguinate.

 

Madness's Affliction gains +2 ticks from Exsanguinate, +30% crit damage from Creeping Death, +15% damage from Force Horrors, and +6% damage from Calcify. If taken, it also gains 3% additional crit from Seeping Darkness.

 

Let's add them up just for fun. Let's assume, just for the sake of easy math, 800.0 Force Bonus Damage, 30% crit, 75% crit damage.

 

Deadly Saber will deal an average of (0.2 * 800 + 0.02 * 1610) = 192.2 * (1 + (0.3 + 0.21) * (0.75 + 0.3)) = 295.1231 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.1) = 368.904 damage per tick per stack. At 3 stacks, this ticks for 1106.71 damage.

 

Affliction will deal an average of (0.31 * 800 + 0.031 * 1610) = 297.91 * (1 + (0.3 + 0.03) * (0.75 + 0.3)) = 401.1358 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.06) = 485.374 damage per tick. This is 43.86% of the damage of a Deadly Saber tick (in other words, Deadly Saber is ticking for 2.28 times as much damage at the same gear level).

 

 

On a mildly related side-note, in order to get a 500 damage non-crit Affliction tick, you would need 500 / (1 + 0.15 + 0.06) = 413.223 - 0.031 * 1610 = 363.31 / 0.31 = 1172.0 Force Bonus Damage. This is impossible outside of relic and adrenal usage, and therefore definitely doesn't qualify as "gear[ing] your Balance Sage/Madness Sorcerer totally wrong."

 

I appreciate seeing stuff like this and people taking the time to post it. Thanks.

 

Now having read it, it just emphasizes to me how unbalancing it is to give maras all those defensive CDs. And if they think the bubble is so good, I'd trade it in an instant for their force camo, sabre ward, cloak of pain and undying rage. Yeah all of em, you know because bubble is *that* good, I'm sure they wouldn't miss losing their defensive abilities for it. Say what now? You don't want to trade....

[Daellia]

Ive seem my 3x deadly saber crits for 1400-1500 at max stacks.

I however dont know how many times it ticks.

To above poster can u briefly explain how the deadly saber ticking works while stacking?

 

Deadly Saber ticks 3 times over the 6 second duration: once on application (including refresh/increasing stack), once at 3.0 seconds, and once at 6.0 seconds. However, the 6.0 second tick also marks the expiration of the debuff and prevents further stacking. Thus for maximum damage from the ability, you want to refresh/restack it no more than once per 3 seconds, but no less than once every 6.0 seconds. Thus the ideal application is:

 

Deadly Saber -> Melee attack (1 stack) -> Force attack -> Melee attack (2 stacks) -> Force attack -> Melee attack (3 stacks)

 

This allows 2 ticks per stack level, and 3 ticks from the final 3-stack (total is equivalent to 5 ticks at 3 stacks). That said, if you just spam up to 3 stacks, all you lose is the 3.0 second tick at 1 and 2 stacks, equivalent to losing a single 3-stack tick. This decreases the total damage done by the ability by 20%, but increases the effective DPS of the ability by 6.67%.

[darthtrunkmonkey]

so your telling that i should listen to you phat chance of that happening...i shouldve known this thread had troll written on it when i saw the title of it...like the rest of us we were sucked in...

 

have fun trying to prove that were the worst class...

[fungihoujo]

A sorc can get 500k+ damage in a WZ. As we all know, that's what wins WZ- not killing enemies, not objectives, not locking down healers, not staying alive at important times, not killing someone fast with 20k damage over not being able to kill them with 70k damage over a minute because sorc dots/damage is so slow even clickers can outheal it with ease.

 

When I kill someone with 20k damage in 10 seconds as a marauder- because I rooted them, interrupted them, gap closed and speed buffed to keep on them- I don't say '20k damage only, I suck'. A sorc should say 'well, I did 100k damage to one person in a minute and a half, but they're still living because our damage doesn't let us kill someone in the time we can keep them stunned and interrupted.

 

Not to mention- VS, Alderaan, Novare and Huttball all require you to be able to deal some good damage fast on the offensive (and Huttball for defense)- being able to kite one person does not benefit any of those WZ's objectives at all, period. If the game came out with some arena- then kiting would actually have some place (though the class would still suck and be gutted by pillar humpers) and the excuse that sorc's can kite thus deserve to have the worst burst, damage, defensives and easiest healing to interrupt in the game might have some weight.

 

 

As is- they offer a sprint/pull combo for huttball, and some ability to harass in VS defense. Beyond that, there is zero utility and zero reasoning to bring a good sorc over a good <insert other class here>.

[Numerii]

Forcestorm is laughable. 300-400 a hit per person. Even if the entire ops team was in range what a joke.

 

It does look pretty though when we spam it waiting on wz q to pop.

 

You can remove the dmg from it, we dont care about it.

 

This spell's only purpose is to disrupt multiple people from capping a node/door. Use appropriately.