Fellow sorcerors, help me out: What is the use of lightning strike?

[Ohamsie]

I'm new to the sorceror ways, and for the life of me I can't seem to figure out what the use of Lightning Strike is. Force Lightning and Shock seem like they both deal more damage, with the added benefit of being instantaneous. But as I said, I'm new to this class so surely I am overlooking something? Could someone let me know how to use this ability correctly?

[warultima]

I'm new to the sorceror ways, and for the life of me I can't seem to figure out what the use of Lightning Strike is. Force Lightning and Shock seem like they both deal more damage, with the added benefit of being instantaneous. But as I said, I'm new to this class so surely I am overlooking something? Could someone let me know how to use this ability correctly?

 

It's for deep lightning spec as your main filler instead of force lightning.

Great for PvE terrible for PvP.

Edited August 20, 2012 by warultima

[Darth_Philar]

I use it on my healing Sorc for the force regen buff (from the lightning tree) whenever I get an open GCD.

[hatterson]

To summarize what the two above me have said.

 

In Healy spec: Occasional DPS, personally I prefer dropping affliction and CD on a target, but it's possible to use this way

 

In Lightning spec: Your main filler. Spam this when your other stuff is on cooldown.

 

In Hybrid/Madness spec: You can forget you even know it, there's not a single good use for it*

 

 

OK maybe if you're running, shock is on cooldown, crushing darkness is on cooldown and your wrath buff is up *and* it'll go down before CD is back off cooldown then *maybe* you can use wrath to cast LS. But seriously, just pretend you never learned it.

[warultima]

To summarize what the two above me have said.

 

In Healy spec: Occasional DPS, personally I prefer dropping affliction and CD on a target, but it's possible to use this way

 

In Lightning spec: Your main filler. Spam this when your other stuff is on cooldown.

 

In Hybrid/Madness spec: You can forget you even know it, there's not a single good use for it*

 

 

OK maybe if you're running, shock is on cooldown, crushing darkness is on cooldown and your wrath buff is up *and* it'll go down before CD is back off cooldown then *maybe* you can use wrath to cast LS. But seriously, just pretend you never learned it.

 

This guy is correct. Lightning Strike is the weakest 1.5 second casting attack in this game (it works like tracer missile for mercs but with only 66% of the damage at the same casting time and do not provide armor debuff).

 

Your shock which is instant attack hits much more, and chain shock happens 15% more often then the lightning strike varient and chain shock does 50% of the shock where as the lightning strike version only does 30% of lightning strike damage.

 

Lightning strike as lightning tree's main filler dont even get the 30% crit bonus damage from Reverberating Force. It's actually like a bad joke coming from BW.

[pureeffinmetal]

Lighting Strike is pretty bad. When I was still playing my mantra in my head during a boss fight was constantly "How can I continue to do damage without casting LS?"

 

Its your worst ability unfortunately. They really need to add it to the Reverberating Force talent.

[hatterson]

Lighting Strike is pretty bad. When I was still playing my mantra in my head during a boss fight was constantly "How can I continue to do damage without casting LS?"

 

Its your worst ability unfortunately. They really need to add it to the Reverberating Force talent.

 

The issue with that is it would make Lightning dramatically more powerful than Hybrid or full Madness for DPS.

 

During a typical patchwerk fight in BiS gear, lightning gets roughly 350 DPS from lightning strike excluding crit bonus damage (320 from direct casts and ~30 from procs). Roughly 42% of casts result in crits and thus a 50% increase in crit damage would result in .5*.42 ~= 21% more DPS from lightning strike would result in roughly 70-75 additional DPS (total DPS would be ~1920-1925)

 

Interestingly enough that would actually bring us much closer to on par with the theoretical performance of other top DPS classes, but it would also mean that lightning would be ~130 DPS above Madness and ~140 above Hybrid, that difference is just too much so I couldn't see LS being modified like that without also seeing something happen higher in the Madness tree (although still low enough for Hybrid).

 

It's a pretty solid idea though that wouldn't take much to implement.

[pureeffinmetal]

The issue with that is it would make Lightning dramatically more powerful than Hybrid or full Madness for DPS.

 

During a typical patchwerk fight in BiS gear, lightning gets roughly 350 DPS from lightning strike excluding crit bonus damage (320 from direct casts and ~30 from procs). Roughly 42% of casts result in crits and thus a 50% increase in crit damage would result in .5*.42 ~= 21% more DPS from lightning strike would result in roughly 70-75 additional DPS (total DPS would be ~1920-1925)

 

Interestingly enough that would actually bring us much closer to on par with the theoretical performance of other top DPS classes, but it would also mean that lightning would be ~130 DPS above Madness and ~140 above Hybrid, that difference is just too much so I couldn't see LS being modified like that without also seeing something happen higher in the Madness tree (although still low enough for Hybrid).

 

It's a pretty solid idea though that wouldn't take much to implement.

 

I'm aware of the math. But I don't think it would be a big issue to be honest. Arsenal blows alway Pyro for Mercs, but trying to PVP as Arsenal is like....trying to PVP is Lightning.

 

Having trees balanced for PVE and PVP are fine with me....or would have been fine if I was still playing. Sadly I'm not.

 

More damage on Lightning Strike would also help reduce the skill-cap required to properly play a Lightning/TK Sorc/Sage, which imo is one of the harder speccs to play in game.

[MidichIorian]

It's a filler ability when you are a low level and still have CD on FL.

 

Also, I'm going to disagree with the people who say that it's useless for hybrids/madness. First Wrath always goes to Mind Crush but it's not rare that Wrath will instantly pop again, while MC still is on CD, in which case LS is a perfect filler.

I've been way more successful at killing healers in PvP since I gave up on madness and went hybrid. Actually, i think some of them get quite surprised when I have everything proc'ed and can unload DF/MC/Shock/FL/CL/LS back to back, add the background dots on affliction. That's almost all their health in 3 GCD'es.

[warultima]

It's a filler ability when you are a low level and still have CD on FL.

 

Also, I'm going to disagree with the people who say that it's useless for hybrids/madness. First Wrath always goes to Mind Crush but it's not rare that Wrath will instantly pop again, while MC still is on CD, in which case LS is a perfect filler.

I've been way more successful at killing healers in PvP since I gave up on madness and went hybrid. Actually, i think some of them get quite surprised when I have everything proc'ed and can unload DF/MC/Shock/FL/CL/LS back to back, add the background dots on affliction. That's almost all their health in 3 GCD'es.

 

Hmm fyi for madness wrath lightning strike is a dps loss vs force lightning 1 button spam.

So...

FL spam -> Wrath Crushing Darkness -> FL Spam (until crushing comes out of CD) -> Wrath Crushing Darkness -> FL Spam

is doing MORE DPS than

 

FL spam -> Wrath Crushing Darkness -> FL Spam -> Wrath Lightning Strike

 

It's not a "filler" for madness as your "filler" should always be force lightning.

You only cast Lightning Strike with wrath proc as madness spec when ALL of the conditions below are met.

 

Prerequisite: YOU HAVE TO MOVE NOW AND CANT AFFORD TO CAST FORCE LIGHTNING AND IF U DONT MOVE YOU DIE NOW! then go down the list if 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are all fulfilled you can waste a GCD on wrath LS.

 

1. Shock is on CD

2. Crushing Darkness is on CD

3. Death Field is on CD

4. Affliction still have at least 3 seconds left

5. You have a previously procced and unused wrath on you still.

Cast Wrath Lightning Strike on the move.

 

Yea thats about how important/useful Lightning Strike is to a madness sorc.