Are Sorcerers weak?

[Thrasymicus]

Sorcs/Sages are glass cannon healers. Their output is crazy but they are incredibly squishy. To succeed you need to kite (use your stun, knockback, slow, dot slow[if specced], etc). Have a good tank with you helps a ton. I have a healer of each type and have managed to find their niche's. I find staying alive on my sage the hardest but I can pump out more heals on that toon than my others and I am almost always the top healer in a WZ on all my toons.

[dcgregorya]

Lets state sorc facts. I will assume you are in BiS WH gear and you are playing madness:

 

Advantages:

1- You enter the WZ with a bubble which absorbs 4 to 4.5K damage.

2- Bubble can be recast every 20 secs. You probably can get two bubbles within one fight (8K to 9K hp total).

3- You can cast unnatural preservation, which is an instant heal that heals about 3K, which can also be paired with recklessness for guaranteed crtic (about 5K heal). Unnatural preservation is on 30 sec CD.

4- Dark heal and dark infusion can be used for off healing. You can break LOS and cast 1.5K heal from dark heal very easily. it has no CD.

5- Overload can be used to push melee away and interrupt. 20 sec CD.

6- Force speed can be used to kite melee and change position easily.

7- Instant 8 sec CC.

 

Disadvantages:

1- Light armor, which runs about 20% damage reduction. Medium armor dps is around 25% and heavy armor dps is around 31%. The extra armor reduction at heavy armor compared to light will sum to additional 2.0K to 2.5K hp on 20K hp base (not considering tanks who have other bonuses to armor).

 

To summarize, for a minimum you can gain about 11-12K from bubble and unnatural preservation alone. Take out 2.5K for light armor, you end it up with around 8K additional hp per life compared to most other classes. As it stands, madness Sorc have better survive-ability than merc, PTs, dps assassins, dps operatives, dps jugs and very comparable to snipers. They only class that exceed them in survive-ability is marauders and its very close. Corruption or lighting/corruption hybrid survive-ability exceed all of the above.

 

The problem that most people do not understand that the survive-ability of the class depends on being mobile. I see many people stand in middle of 5 enemies sit there as being attacked and try to heal (also know as face tanking sorc). If you have that problem this class is not for you. Stick to melee.

 

The problem that the dps sorc currently face is that the dps output is not that great, and lacks burst, aside from death field. The class needs a bit of buff in the burst department and everything will be good (which is already being addressed in ver 2.0).

 

You neglected force slow, hard 4 second stun and root on creeping terror. Also trickle healing on all DoT crits for 2% HP per crit (adds up in PVP) and heals from death field. Plus FL is a spammable snare which self-roots you while casting. And can cleanse force afflictions. Because you can heal while the enemy is CC'd, you also have the opportunity to heal 30-50% of your HP at that juncture as well.

 

Like I said earlier in this thread, if you think a sorceror has "almost zero survivability" you need to try some of the other classes.

[dcgregorya]

You can find 7 or more advantages of every class in the game, not only of sorcerers. Problem here is that all these sorc CDs don't help to win a fight cause all what they do is to delay the defeat. You might be able to get some distance again and again, but each time the enemy gets close you'll eat 5-7K dmg and this will kill you long term. You can never play offensive cause your dmg output is too low to kill the enemy while he's slowed or stunned. When the slow/stun wears off, he will come back to you with > 50% HP and he will kill you in 2 GCDs. That's why you can't afford to waste time with making dmg on him, you have to use every second and every CD you have to run away. This is absolutely ridiculous for a DPS specc.

 

I've parsed every class and have every class at 50 and I will tell you that my madness sorc parses slightly under my gunslinger but my gunslinger will die to my madness sorc every single time because of something simple like not having a self heal and having much, much worse self defenses.

 

My sorc can also respect between heals and DPS in the middle of a match.

 

And has oodles more mobility than my merc, scoundrel, gunslinger or vanguard.

 

The sorc DPS specs are more valuable than my scoundrels - even if I prefer the scoundrel heals in general, but the sorc is far easier to be useful in other regards than pure healing (extricate for instance - and force speed of course, plus a long range snare on a 12 second CD).

 

My rage jugg might be able to put up higher numbers but that usually relies on my enemies being idiots - and its a close call tbh because I can put up some pretty crazy numbers as either heals or DPS with a sorc.

 

My sentinel *might* take my sorc 1vs1, assuming we both have all our CDs, but it'd be close and I'd definitely have to medpack to avoid dying to bleeds right after.

 

If you think sorc is awful then just pick another class - personally I think they're just fine the way they are.

[foxmob]

I think you forgot the number one advantage of sorcs/sages in any spec: they can cleanse force effects.

[LightAndShade]

I've been doing some sage/sorc dps lately and have loved it! The output is definitely not an issue. My best is 1010 DPS, but I'm averaging somewhere between 500-900 dps per game. And this is not just team DoT pressure. I play a hybrid spec that I sorta just made up but I only throw out a few dots and didn't pick up many DoT-boosting talents. Most of the damage is single target burst, or AoE pressure. I'm playing a 0/23/18 variation

The survivability is pretty awful if you're focused. I have to admit I haven't played it in RWZ yet so that will change my view I'm sure. You have great kiting abilities even without the 31pt shared tree root (sprint, bubble, KB w/ roots, slows, grenades, force stun, insta-lift), but you can't really survive more than 1 good smasher without a guard.

Utility is great for the team. Pull, sprint, insta-lift, force cleanse, stun bubbles and to a lesser extent hard cast heals are great tools you can throw out to aid your team.

Mostly your effectiveness comes down to positioning. Mine is average because I play sentinel as a main and so I end up standing way to far forward. If you get that right you will rarely get focused in normal wzs and when you do it will be by someone who has overextended, and you can kill/cc/kite them with relative ease.

Edited March 13, 2013 by LightAndShade

[TwitchWINs]

For the rated scene i believe full lightning is the strongest as it has decent peels never runs out of force and unrivaled burst. When i play my sorcerer in ranked vs all the top guilds on the pts so far i have been able to hit burst combos with Thundering blast>Forked lightning proc>Chain lightning for 13-15k in a 1.5-2second combo depending if my polarity shift is up. as for madness it is much less then desirable it really only got 2-3 decent talent changes compared to Lightning and Heals. For a spec built around kiting and sustained damage it got fisted HARD! this patch as sent/mara will break roots and pt/van can become immune to roots for a duration which makes the two classes you most need to kite, unkitable!!! As for hybrid i really liked 0/18/28 as it has great sustained decent burst and good survivability.

[dcgregorya]

For the rated scene i believe full lightning is the strongest as it has decent peels never runs out of force and unrivaled burst. When i play my sorcerer in ranked vs all the top guilds on the pts so far i have been able to hit burst combos with Thundering blast>Forked lightning proc>Chain lightning for 13-15k in a 1.5-2second combo depending if my polarity shift is up. as for madness it is much less then desirable it really only got 2-3 decent talent changes compared to Lightning and Heals. For a spec built around kiting and sustained damage it got fisted HARD! this patch as sent/mara will break roots and pt/van can become immune to roots for a duration which makes the two classes you most need to kite, unkitable!!! As for hybrid i really liked 0/18/28 as it has great sustained decent burst and good survivability.

 

Yeah. And the funny part is - with all the other classes getting buffs, madness got a stealth nerf as it was (and as you accurately point out). Removing instant-cast whirlwind as an additional nerf was just the icing on the cake. I hope they bring that back - it wasn't OP (for sorc at least it sure wasn't).

[Kindran]

The biggest problem with Sorcerer's defensive abilities is that it is based around getting away from others. This is NOT a problem in 1v1 and in fact I do believe it is decently balanced between other classes, but it IS a problem when you put yourself in a multiple person fight (like WZs). You may be able to kite 1 person decently, but as soon as 2 or more people jump a Sorcerer that Sorcerer is toast. Not only can the Sorcerer not get away (as DPS spec) , but its damage is effectively shut down. This is unlike other classes that have defensive CDs which helps themselves rather than harming others. When multiple people jump the other classes they can pop their direct damage reduction or stealth CDs and continue with the damage or escape momentarily.

 

Some people think that by just being a ranged class a Sorcerer should take more damage than a melee as they should not be getting hit as often. This logic only prevails in a 1v1 fight and does NOT work in fights with multiple people as a Sorcerer will most certainly be taking damage nearly all the time.

 

Let's look at the differences between both dps specs of the Sorcerer vs other similar classes:

 

Madness vs Shadow Priest:

Madness has Bubble / instant 8sec single target mezz / 4sec stun / Purge / force speed (does not break roots nor does it stop them) / frontal cone knockback / Force Slow / 2sec root / small self healing through DoTs and Death Field / damage is loaded more into Force Lightning than DoTs

 

SPriest has Bubble / instant AoE 8sec fear / perma 15% dmg reduction / Inner Fire armor boost buff / purge / 10sec disarm with 3sec horror / 4sec silence / small self healing / damage is loaded more into DoTs than Mind Flay / an execute for finishing low hp targets / DoT protection

 

Which of these 2 would you say has effective kiting tools? I would put my money behind the SPriest any day. Not just because the kiting, but the SPriest can do way more damage while kiting too due to damage being loaded more into DoTs

 

Lightning vs Ele shaman

Lightning has bubble / 3sec stun on bubble pop / castable 8sec single target mezz / 4sec stun / Purge / force speed (does not break roots nor does it stop them) / Force Slow / Frontal cone knockback with 2sec root (possible 5sec) / wears light armor (out of light/medium/heavy)

 

Ele shaman has totems providing various effects / can cast Lightning bolt on the run(Lightning Strike) / a proc for Instant cast Lava Burst(Thundering Blast) 1.5sec cast time if no proc / wears mail armor (out of cloth/leather/mail/plate) / uses a shield for major armor --- Sorry I don't know much about Ele shaman defensives but I just wanted to highlight the major armor difference between these 2 classes, the casting main spell while moving and the instant Lava Burst(Thundering Blast)

 

I may have missed some CDs so please correct me if I did, but these are huge differences that are almost needed for PvP and I would love it if we got some love <3

Edited March 13, 2013 by Kindran

[Cretinus]

Everybody keeps listing instant-lift and bubble stun in one go. FYI, instant-lift and bubble stun are on different trees. The only way to get both is to go hybrid which has a ridiculous dmg output. If you want to do decent dmg you have to go lightening or madness, but lightening doesn't have instant-lift and madness doesn't have the stun on the bubble.

[Warforever]

Ok as I started playing a Sorcerer/Sage. I have both a level 50 Sage and Sorcerer. My Sage has full WH gear and the EWH saber. My Sorcerer is missing two pieces of WH, an implant and a relic. I've done tons of research on this class, been to different websites, MMO-Champions, Noxxic, etc. I WILL say I know how to play my class. Pre 50, I was usually in the top 3 for damage and objectives. It just blows my mind how before I hit 50, I did in fact have huge survivability. There have even been points where I'm tearing people up so bad that the minute I respawn, they see me and immediately migrate to me and slaughter me. Understandably so. But now I'm just grinding through trying to get better hear.

 

Although I have noticed this. Last night I played my sorcerer, played 5 matches, lost all 5. I switched to my sage, played 5 matches...lost all 5. Now this is just crappy luck or there is seriously something wrong.

 

Why can't BW or whoever, change PvP to where if you have a certain amount of recruit gear, you will play PvP at a certain tier level. Once you have a certain amount of WH gear, then you play at a different tier level, so on and so forth. Same with pre 50 WZs. 10 -15, 16 - 20, 21 - 25, 26 - 30, etc etc.

 

I love SWTOR!! But do the devs ever look at what is actually going on during these matches?

[Lelvannia]

Everybody keeps listing instant-lift and bubble stun in one go. FYI, instant-lift and bubble stun are on different trees. The only way to get both is to go hybrid which has a ridiculous dmg output. If you want to do decent dmg you have to go lightening or madness, but lightening doesn't have instant-lift and madness doesn't have the stun on the bubble.

 

AND, they're both gone in 2.0. In 2.0 all you can do is spec to reduce cast time of lift a bit, but not make it instant. The bubblestun on the other hand is:

• caster only
  
• mezz instead of stun
  
• placed in the trees in such a way that only someone using the middle tree can resonably spec into it, no more bubblestun hybrids (like healer)
  

Just ONE of these three nerfs would have been crippling already, but boy, can't go for half-measures when smashers cry about something, can we?

Edited March 13, 2013 by Lelvannia

[MusicRider]

For the rated scene i believe full lightning is the strongest as it has decent peels never runs out of force and unrivaled burst. When i play my sorcerer in ranked vs all the top guilds on the pts so far i have been able to hit burst combos with Thundering blast>Forked lightning proc>Chain lightning for 13-15k in a 1.5-2second combo depending if my polarity shift is up. as for madness it is much less then desirable it really only got 2-3 decent talent changes compared to Lightning and Heals. For a spec built around kiting and sustained damage it got fisted HARD! this patch as sent/mara will break roots and pt/van can become immune to roots for a duration which makes the two classes you most need to kite, unkitable!!! As for hybrid i really liked 0/18/28 as it has great sustained decent burst and good survivability.

 

Hi. I've watched the ranked videos and nice playing from your part. Thanks for your comments. I also agree that lightning has very nice burst. Madness with all the changes of all classes in 2.0 does not stand in a very good spot as it is now.

 

I was wondering what are your views on a 30/16 hybrid? In my opinion it also has good burst but also provides higher mobility, death field and wrath proc for the trade of thundering blast and reduced cooldowns on the defensive abilities. What do are your views on this build?

[Cretinus]

...

Why can't BW or whoever, change PvP to where if you have a certain amount of recruit gear, you will play PvP at a certain tier level. Once you have a certain amount of WH gear, then you play at a different tier level, so on and so forth. Same with pre 50 WZs. 10 -15, 16 - 20, 21 - 25, 26 - 30, etc etc.

 

Because this would probably be more tiers than there are players actively playing PvP. If the amount of tiers and brackets is too high, it will take hours for a WZ to have enough players. Keep in mind that SWTOR has estimated 250K players, you can't make as many tiers as there are in WoW with its 5-6 millions players.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Cretinus

[Warforever]

So Sages/Sorcerers have been nerfed in a horrible way I gather?

[MidichIorian]

So Sages/Sorcerers have been nerfed in a horrible way I gather?

To sum things up, yes.

 

I guess it wasnt enough the last time. We're obviously still too damn good......oh wait....

[Edonidd]

Lets state sorc facts. I will assume you are in BiS WH gear and you are playing madness:

 

Advantages:

1- You enter the WZ with a bubble which absorbs 4 to 4.5K damage.

2- Bubble can be recast every 20 secs. You probably can get two bubbles within one fight (8K to 9K hp total).

3- You can cast unnatural preservation, which is an instant heal that heals about 3K, which can also be paired with recklessness for guaranteed crtic (about 5K heal). Unnatural preservation is on 30 sec CD.

4- Dark heal and dark infusion can be used for off healing. You can break LOS and cast 1.5K heal from dark heal very easily. it has no CD.

5- Overload can be used to push melee away and interrupt. 20 sec CD.

6- Force speed can be used to kite melee and change position easily.

7- Instant 8 sec CC.

 

Disadvantages:

1- Light armor, which runs about 20% damage reduction. Medium armor dps is around 25% and heavy armor dps is around 31%. The extra armor reduction at heavy armor compared to light will sum to additional 2.0K to 2.5K hp on 20K hp base (not considering tanks who have other bonuses to armor).

 

To summarize, for a minimum you can gain about 11-12K from bubble and unnatural preservation alone. Take out 2.5K for light armor, you end it up with around 8K additional hp per life compared to most other classes. As it stands, madness Sorc have better survive-ability than merc, PTs, dps assassins, dps operatives, dps jugs and very comparable to snipers. They only class that exceed them in survive-ability is marauders and its very close. Corruption or lighting/corruption hybrid survive-ability exceed all of the above.

 

The problem that most people do not understand that the survive-ability of the class depends on being mobile. I see many people stand in middle of 5 enemies sit there as being attacked and try to heal (also know as face tanking sorc). If you have that problem this class is not for you. Stick to melee.

 

The problem that the dps sorc currently face is that the dps output is not that great, and lacks burst, aside from death field. The class needs a bit of buff in the burst department and everything will be good (which is already being addressed in ver 2.0).

 

Wow that is a lot of survivability. The second most survivable out of every class in the game. Wow. They must be able to stand toe to toe with any one of any class and win...

 

Oh wait you called that face tanking, and said they can't do that, only melee classes can do that.

 

So which is it are they survivable or squishy?

 

Oh maybe you meant they are survivable as long as they run away from the objectives. You're right there, I had a game the other night, i ran and hid in a corner of the map and didn't die one time. Nobody even came close to killing me. So survivable!

 

The fact is Madness Sorcerers right now are a very suboptimal spec for playing WZ's. They are good at 1 vs. 1 dueling, as long as there are LoS opportunities and places to hide nearby. If they have both of those, a very well played Sorc can beat an average player of about 75% of the specs of all other classes.

 

However in 2.0 like you said they did get their damage increased. So did every other class. They also had their defense decreased, so did... 1 other class. Every single class was given an ability that will help in WZ's and PvP, and every single one that i looked at is anti-kiting. But to make up for other classes be less able to be kited, we at least got to lose some of our core kiting tools... wait that doesn't make up for it at all.

[Cretinus]

Sorcerers are supposed to hide and make dmg from behind.

If someone becomes aware of the sorc and goes after him, then the sorc is dead. This wouldn't be much of a problem, if the sorc would be a high dmg outputing, dangerous class. But he's not. Every marauder, juggernaut, vanguard, shadow is able to produce 5X more dmg in the same time.

So what a DPS sorc does is he hides and he makes some funny dmg until a pyro or sentinel sees him and kills him. I will never understand why a class so squishy is not given some decent burst.

All the defensive CDs mentioned in this topic are only good for delaying defeat. Sorc (DPS specc) is broken and that's it.

Every other DPS class has some bombastic instant DPS CD so that when they die, at least they take someone with them. Sorc has not. He dies on an instant 6K style while trying to cast a 2K style.

Every other class counters another class and can go after it, sorc has none. Sorc stands behind and tries to kill no matter who within 8-10 GCDS. If he is spotted by this no matter who, he's dead in 2 GCDs.

Edited March 14, 2013 by Cretinus

[MotorCityMan]

Oh the sorc gets a bubble. Quick, someone call the Med Center and tell em the sorc will be 10 seconds late !

[darthgamer]

Oh the sorc gets a bubble. Quick, someone call the Med Center and tell em the sorc will be 10 seconds late !

 

I about died laughing:)

[Edonidd]

Oh the sorc gets a bubble. Quick, someone call the Med Center and tell em the sorc will be 10 seconds late !

 

Obviously you haven't played on PTS at all to try out this new ability.

 

Everytime I used it, the person would just stop beating on me, and start capping. Meaning I had to cancel my channel early to stop a cap. meaning i did not delay my trip to the med center by 10 seconds, it was more like 4-5. Just wish I could save the other 5-6 seconds for later instead of having to wait a full 3 mins to use it again.

[MusicRider]

I have mixed feelings about dps. Although parses seem to be low and there is a latest one in which someone just broke 2.6k dps, it is still much lower than the parses of the other ranged dps classes (snipers: ~2.9+, commandos: ~2.7+) , I found from a pvp perspective to be decent both from my own experience and from seeing numbers of other sages/sorcs that I was playing with/against.

 

Survivability wise, I still think that they need some changes (force speed root/snare immunity, instant force lift, +10m range on knockback, -30s cd on barrier) and I think they will be in a very balanced position. I had a 1v1 with a smasher which kiting in 1.7 is not a very difficult task, but now seeing him break my root with obliterate was something not expected. Also force crush works very fast now and makes nearly rooted, so you really have to be prepared for it as you can't afford a gcd to pass. I was also worried that my creeping terror did not root at some point a powertech and obviously their burst is still overwhelming.

 

As I said, I don't know, I have mixed feelings. Parses show that sages are the lowest dps in terms of parses out of all ranged dps classes, but in terms of pvp I found them decent to be honest. Survivability is what still worries me.

[Solarenergy]

only if you ask them. the fact of the matter is that they're squishy. they're still very effective, even w/o the bubble stun issue. they're great heals and they have excellent kite tools. lightning spec is crap w/o the bubble stun. but that's kinda like rolling into a wz with a gunnery commando. you're asking for a carry. there's only one effective turret class/spec, and that's sniper.

 

anyway...the shared tree is dot + kite class. lots of roots/cc. but it's still squishy. too many ppl try to face tank stuff. only anni maras, darkness-ish sins are really designed to sit there and take it. sorcs are the worst class in that respect. but...I think too many ppl expect to be able to turret themselves like it's pve and then complain cuz they're getting crushed. I wouldn't take my deception sin into a grp of smashers or whatnot. the spec just isn't designed to take a lot of punishment, and the aoe defense is paltry compared to maras or even the darkness cousins.

 

edit: regarding numbers and madness...you're not going to wreck house. you should win a lot of 1v1s if you know how to kite properly, and you should pull big numbers overall if you know how to dot. a lot of ppl don't like dot specs. well trust me, that dmg counts. and most of it is only cleasnable by other sages/sorcs. what you really lack, however, is burst, and burst is the "sexy" dps that makes you feel like you're wrecking ppl. I don't think you'll get that on sorc dps. at least not in this patch.

 

easiest burst is pt pyro (it's arguably the best). next is mara in smash spec (slightly better than jugg). combat mara would be my choice. it's more difficult than the other two, but it's huge utility, very good survivability and you can really wreck most other class. if your heart is set on ranged dps, then sniper is your only option atm. imo

 

It's not fair to say that if they are healers they are "asking for a carry". That's not true at all. How can any healer be asking for a carry when it's his task to keep his teammates alive? Teams absolutely need healers, it's very difficult to win without one. And any sorc who's good knows that a sorc can carry his team to victory in Huttball with right use of the pull.

[Jedibediah]

IF you're min maxed with the right gear sorcs can literally melt your face off and in 2.0 from what ive been told they are going to be seriously OP along with snipers..

[MotorCityMan]

IF you're min maxed with the right gear sorcs can literally melt your face off and in 2.0 from what ive been told they are going to be seriously OP along with snipers..

 

I heard that the moon landing was fake and that it was all staged at Area 54 and that the market was going to crash in 2014.

Edited March 14, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[Cretinus]

IF you're min maxed with the right gear sorcs can literally melt your face off and in 2.0 from what ive been told they are going to be seriously OP along with snipers..

 

Yeah, funny enough that a sorc has to go scientific and spend millions of credits and go PvE for the right mods for outputting 4.5K dmg in PvP once in a while, while others spam 7K styles in standard war hero gear and without even knowing that there's something like min maxing gear.

Edited March 14, 2013 by Cretinus