Direct-damage sages/sorcs will underperform in PvP if 1.2 goes live as-is

[Visue]

I've made a point of playing the Telekinetics (Lightning for sorcerers) tree on my sage since the hybrid nerf was "announced." Hybrids will no longer be viable and I prefer a direct-damage spec to a DoT spec like Balance.

 

Telekinetics performs reasonably well until trained. The problem is that once someone notices the sage, there's not much damage mitigation besides Force Armor every 17 seconds. Due to "pushback," the sage's DPS slows considerably upon taking damage. It is also easily shut down with interrupts.

 

I'm in a champion set on my sage, and this is my current damage output with the two main Telekinetics-tree abilities:

 

Disturbance (a.k.a. Lightning Strike) (1.5-second cast time) hits for ~900 on light armor and ~500-600 on heavy armor, expertise notwithstanding.

 

Telekinetic Wave (a.k.a. Chain Lightning) (3-second cast time) hits for ~1,300 damage to all enemies near the target on light armor, ~900 on heavy armor, expertise notwithstanding. This ability has a 30% chance to be made instant-cast with every cast of Disturbance.

 

Turbulence (a.k.a. Thundering Blast) (2-second cast time, 9-second cooldown) hits for ~1,200 internal, ~2650 critically (always critically hits after Weaken Mind, a.k.a. Affliction, is applied), expertise notwithstanding.

 

Keep in mind that each of these has its cast time pushed back if any damage is received and can be interrupted relatively easily.

 

I understand that hybrids were putting out some crazy numbers in warzones what with the instant-cast AoE abilities, but these Telekinetics numbers aren't reasonable. Sages don't have any good direct-damage alternatives left. With the planned 1.2 buff to sentinels and marauders (which already give sages trouble), I fear this will only get worse.

Edited April 3, 2012 by Visue

[Vikassi]

You ahould just re-roll an operative ...

[mordredz]

If you think your going to blow and not even try then bye, not much left to say...

[Visue]

If you think your going to blow and not even try then bye, not much left to say...

 

What?

Edited April 3, 2012 by Visue

[fungihoujo]

Don't go lightning, lighting spec is simply terrible.

 

Madness is terrible too, but slightly less so- of course, force lightning is getting nerfed, so it'll be worse than it already is.

 

To be honest? Reroll a better class and just wait for them to realize how badly they've nerfed sorcs through the ground.

[dwullers]

Hmz, I am already pretty pissed at the nerf. I am a valor lvl 70 Sorc healer (missing only 5 BM items, rest champion) and I am getting slashed to pieces by a Marauder/Sentinel within 5 seconds (bubble on, Power Adrenal on, Willpower Stim active). Only chance I have is purging his crazy DoTs or whatever they are but that's getting nerfed. My burst healing: gone. And with consumption dealing some serious damage, I won't be able to use it during a WZ for the sake of survivability. I don't even have an instant finisher move as a sorc (in contrast to Warriors/Agents). I am basically dead when I drop below 30% health now. Same for team mates, I am healing. *** am I going to do in a PvP match post 1.2? And I don't see how re-roll is an answer to basically removing one class from the game.

[Cindikle]

IMO both trees needs to be redesigned.

 

-Swap Mental Alacrity and Telekinetic Wave. Move the talents following Telekinetic Wave around to make it work.

-Increase the utility of Lightning Strike or increase it's damage(probably both).

-Remove the Psychic Projection talent to give talents the tree is based around more use. Example being "Lightning Strike as a 50/100% chance to make your next Telekinetic Wave or Turbulence cause no cooldown. And increases their damage by 5/10%." Sadly this would counter the first suggestion I made. But just another idea to throw out there. Then again this tree has a lot of proc talents(which makes it even worse for PvP). Maybe that can be changed.

 

With the tree's new found damage, it needs to lose some of that CC. Force Wake goes into the madness tree. Kinetic Collapse is changed to an immobilize. I know enough sorcs who saw their nerfs coming because they have so much control of the battle. Sadly Huttball is where this exploited the most, but really there are changes that could be made to that. (Jump pads on the bottom levels that move you around randomly, cannot use it if you are holding the ball).

 

Far as Balance goes I'm not sure. It's overall a Shadow Priest. Channeled main spell that snares, lots of dots, leach health. Only thing you're missing is mind blast, but you get shock in place of it. We also has Dispersion which is a 90% damage reduction for 6 seconds ability. Although you have much more CC. Perhaps lacking the passive 15% damage reduction of shadowform is what you need. Drop the last dot talent. Give a buff that increases damage(to balance the loss of the dot) and damage reduction by 15% and in counter lowers your self healing outside of balance specific talent heals(mainly for sage as this wont really effect shadows).

[Visue]

IMO both trees needs to be redesigned.

 

-Swap Mental Alacrity and Telekinetic Wave. Move the talents following Telekinetic Wave around to make it work.

-Increase the utility of Lightning Strike or increase it's damage(probably both).

-Remove the Psychic Projection talent to give talents the tree is based around more use. Example being "Lightning Strike as a 50/100% chance to make your next Telekinetic Wave or Turbulence cause no cooldown. And increases their damage by 5/10%." Sadly this would counter the first suggestion I made. But just another idea to throw out there. Then again this tree has a lot of proc talents(which makes it even worse for PvP). Maybe that can be changed.

 

 

 

All good ideas. All I know is that something needs to change with the Telekinetics/Lightning spec before this goes live.

[Nazutron]

It sad whats happening with the sorc/sages. Bioware already lost alot of subscribers, but messing with a balanced class at end game like this will make it worse for bioware. We all know how many is playing sorc/sage = dead game if they leave. I know few are gonna reroll like i did, but most people are quiting :/ Really sad if this doesnt change before 1.2 goes live. If they are gonna nerf us cause of the aoe, they better give us more powerfull single target skills and better survivebility. At end game we are a fast target to kill.....

[Redmarx]

The devs have no clue what they are doing. Their testers are a bunch of inexperienced PVE clickers who have never played in a proper PVP premade.

 

GZ thinks teams of operatives are stunlocking people and making them unsub, and that somehow hybrid sorcs and tracermercs are stronger than marauders or tank assassins.

 

That's the level of chaos and cluelessness that is going on.

 

It's no wonder 1.2, which should have been a great jesus-patch with lots of new content, is being destroyed by a horrible class balance debacle.

Edited April 3, 2012 by Redmarx

[BambulaGTS]

How could be terrible force (no resistances currently in the game on gear, max like 2-4 % from tank talents and 1 class pve set bonus, no shielding involved) internal damage (ignores armor) attack that can have guaranteed crit?

 

The most kickass combination of attack type and damage type in the whole game.

 

Just do not get it.

Edited April 3, 2012 by BambulaGTS

[Master-Nala]

I went back and re-read the patch notes and I'm having a hard time understanding what all this wailing and gnashing of teeth is all about. So hybrids lost TK Wave/Chain Lightning's instant cast. The other changes are tweaks.

 

Calm down folks, the world isn't ending.

[Master-Nala]

Don't go lightning, lighting spec is simply terrible.

 

Madness is terrible too, but slightly less so- of course, force lightning is getting nerfed, so it'll be worse than it already is.

 

To be honest? Reroll a better class and just wait for them to realize how badly they've nerfed sorcs through the ground.

 

Where do you see that?

[Sylvan]

They had to fix the infinite force regen, and I actually think us taking damge from noble sacrifice, even on a healing trance crit, is a good thing.

 

The nerf to our big heal is a mistake, and they will soon realize this. You should never make 2 massive nerfs to a single role in any class at the same time and expect it to go well. I'm one of the better sage healers on my server in PvP and high end PvE and I really think I'm going to struggle after 1.2.

[Hokonoso]

Don't go lightning, lighting spec is simply terrible.

 

Madness is terrible too, but slightly less so- of course, force lightning is getting nerfed, so it'll be worse than it already is.

 

To be honest? Reroll a better class and just wait for them to realize how badly they've nerfed sorcs through the ground.

 

fortunately i have 4 classes to choose from, i dont think ive made a single credit on my sorc since the 1.2 changes announced, i have only played my alts since then. the class is just a support class as is, now they wont be able to dps or heal... at least before we were support + heals or support + aoe dps, now we are just support (ie pull the ball carrier or sprint to the goal).

 

lightning/telekinesis tree should hit JUST as hard as arsenal tree for merceneries pound for pound (lightning strike should hit as hard as tracer missile and thundering blast as hard as heatseeker missile). there is absolutely no reason to justify them not hitting as hard, NO REASON AT ALL!

[bzImage]

Hybrids are still viable, stop doing it wrong and focus on the garbage commendation returns for whichever class you play in a warzone.

[VoidJustice]

Honestly Sorc/Councelors were so overbalanced that no one takes your complaints seriously. You guys have completely unrealistic expectations of how a character should perform. Your most likely still OP and will take several more rounds of nerfs to bring into line. I think you should all re-roll and gain some perspective.

 

I play a Guardian a Councelor and a Trooper and there's really no comparison, the Councelor outperforms the other two AC's by multiples of 10 on live.

Edited April 3, 2012 by VoidJustice

[ZudetGambeous]

I've been playing a TK sage since launch, great PvE spec imo, not so great for PvP but manageable.

 

I find I can pretty consistantly kill BH's/IA's (ranged ones at least) and SI's but you are much better off just letting SW's kill you if they see you, there isn't much point in fighting back.

 

SW is basically god mode against TK spec. I'm usually killed before i'm even able to hit the SW with anything but my instant cast dot.

 

Just run towards them so its over quicker, you'll never escape so why waste more time?

[BloodyTracer]

Thats not your spec spec as much as they just wreck shop SW/JK are crazy if I don't have my cloak up I am pretty much dead on my OP, my evasion is pretty much useless against them.

[Ortagos]

BW intension on this "nerf" was never and still is not to balance them and to put them in same line as other classes. There are too many of sorce/sages in game for there opinion. So this is there way to make loads of people play a different class... and with all them nerfs going on anyway... this is not to balance, this is only to make the game a bit more "harder" and to stop people from complaining about there is no challange.

 

oh nice benefit aswell.. since they play different class, Legacy gets more sence....

 

once i wana see the GMs/responsible people for this change doing a PvP/PvE endcontent.

if they would have played the classes they nerf now same much as we live players did, they would realise during 2 hours of playing that this "nerf" is way too much.

[Ozlock]

I agree with the Op, and I suggest dropping your sorcerer and re-rolling. I know it's not good news, but that's what I did. Believe me I love/loved playing my sorcerer. Played one in beta, and it was my main at launch.

 

They are going to be terrible now in PVP though. I think a lot of sorcerers on my server have already dropped. I know of two personally other than myself, and I've seen a drop off from the sorcerers on my friends list.

 

Anyway, I'm right there with you Visue. Bioware is making a mistake, I'm afraid. Chances of Bioware coming to their senses on this is 3720 to 1.

[Endorn]

Anyway, I'm right there with you Visue. Bioware is making a mistake, I'm afraid. Chances of Bioware coming to their senses on this is 3720 to 1.

 

never tell me the odds.

[Redmarx]

BW intension on this "nerf" was never and still is not to balance them and to put them in same line as other classes. There are too many of sorce/sages in game for there opinion. So this is there way to make loads of people play a different class... .

 

There are actually more sentinels/marauders than sorcs/sages.

 

Overall the warrior and inquisitor populations are about equal, and higher than the other 2 archetypes.

Edited April 3, 2012 by Redmarx

[fadingdimension]

Yeah. You're a light armor caster. If you let someone sit and train you then you should lose. Get away, Sprint, CC, Snare, LoS, Heal, Knockback, Shield, Etc.

 

If you want to face tank people while hard casting spells then you should probably try something else.

[Alodar]

I've made a point of playing the Telekinetics (Lightning for sorcerers) tree on my sage since the hybrid nerf was "announced." Hybrids will no longer be viable and I prefer a direct-damage spec to a DoT spec like Balance.

 

Telekinetics performs reasonably well until trained. The problem is that once someone notices the sage, there's not much damage mitigation besides Force Armor every 17 seconds. Due to "pushback," the sage's DPS slows considerably upon taking damage. It is also easily shut down with interrupts.

 

I'm in a champion set on my sage, and this is my current damage output with the two main Telekinetics-tree abilities:

 

Disturbance (a.k.a. Lightning Strike) (1.5-second cast time) hits for ~900 on light armor and ~500-600 on heavy armor, expertise notwithstanding.

 

Telekinetic Wave (a.k.a. Chain Lightning) (3-second cast time) hits for ~1,300 damage to all enemies near the target on light armor, ~900 on heavy armor, expertise notwithstanding. This ability has a 30% chance to be made instant-cast with every cast of Disturbance.

 

Turbulence (a.k.a. Thundering Blast) (2-second cast time, 9-second cooldown) hits for ~1,200 internal, ~2650 critically (always critically hits after Weaken Mind, a.k.a. Affliction, is applied), expertise notwithstanding.

 

Keep in mind that each of these has its cast time pushed back if any damage is received and can be interrupted relatively easily.

 

I understand that hybrids were putting out some crazy numbers in warzones what with the instant-cast AoE abilities, but these Telekinetics numbers aren't reasonable. Sages don't have any good direct-damage alternatives left. With the planned 1.2 buff to sentinels and marauders (which already give sages trouble), I fear this will only get worse.

 

Have you tried the changes on the public test server?