The More I play, The More I Realize...

[Cempa]

Sorcerer survivability in PvP is lacking massively in group settings! Look at how many tools every other class has to stay in range of a Sorcerer in group play....As soon as bubble/barrier are on CD Sorcerer is a free kill!

 

The 30m range argument is mute in arena, if you as a Sorcerer can cast from 30m away then the other team is so bad you will win without even using Barrier or Bubble....

 

Force Speed needs to make the Sorcerer immune to all CC.....

 

OR

 

Reduce the CD of Barrier......

 

OR

 

Remove the CD on whirlwind

 

Or bring Electric Binding down so all sorcerers can take it!

[Vaerah]

Sorcerer survivability in PvP is lacking massively in group settings! Look at how many tools every other class has to stay in range of a Sorcerer in group play....As soon as bubble/barrier are on CD Sorcerer is a free kill!

 

The 30m range argument is mute in arena, if you as a Sorcerer can cast from 30m away then the other team is so bad you will win without even using Barrier or Bubble....

 

Force Speed needs to make the Sorcerer immune to all CC.....

 

OR

 

Reduce the CD of Barrier......

 

OR

 

Remove the CD on whirlwind

 

Or bring Electric Binding down so all sorcerers can take it!

 

You are quite true. On my (Obroan) Shadow I eat sorcs for breakfast and it's not because they are squishy, but because they just lack the basic tools for survival.

 

Some things have to be said, however. I played a Sorceress in Warhammer Online. Same class, direct damage and DoT specs etc. etc.... and she'd die within 1 GCD if hit by anything. Of course no bubbles nor shields for her. Sorcs in STWOR are brutally sturdy in comparison.

 

On my SWTOR Sorceress instead (still using Conqueror on her but not far from first Obroan) I found out that:

 

- As heal spec there's not a lot of survivability issues. After a while people get bored and go hit somebody else.

 

- As Lightning there's that fantastic flash bubble, specc-able for 10% durability increase. The flash seems so short yet the increase in survivability even multiple adversaries is quite noticeable as you can actually hope to sprint away without being quickly and immediately being tortured to death.

 

- As Madness, things look grim. No heals, tiny force regen, no flash bubble. The spec that imo needs a TON of survivability (see Warlocks in WoW, tanky and full of defensive CDs) because its lower damage implies they SHALL be reached by melee well alive is the spec that comes with low health, no real defense, no real bubble features, just a stunned damage reduction. It's clear that whoever manages class balance is massively unable to grasp how gear stats inflation is making the few defenses be more and more outdated. Who cares for 30% stun damage reduction when every dog can crit you for 9k *with* that talent (12k without). 9k means you get about 3 shotted instead of about 2 shotted, which is of little consolation considering every WZ and arena buzzes with platoons of sents (lately, seeing 4 in WZs is not even a rare sight any more).

 

So we are left with:

 

- An healing tree that more or less can be made to work, with far less effectiveness and more effort than an op.

 

- A lightning tree that got CC and damage but of course that damage can't be done while perma-kiting.

 

- A DoT tree that is outdated, anemic (in force) with tons of filler talents in the middle of the tree that shows no noticeable survivability tools or even just health compared to the other two. And where they give you a talent to remove the CD on lightning... too bad you still need to stand still to use it whereas the 101 of PvP teaches that everyone must be mobile AND be able to do his class job while being mobile.

 

With that respect, sorcs / sages are just walking coffins.

[Cempa]

That's a great write up and I wish game designers saw it like the player base see it :/

 

Madness needs a couple more defensive CD's simply because roots and snares are off Resolve and each class/build has multiple CC's. As a Sorcerer why does Whirlwind have a CD? Why does Overload not knock down PvP players? Barrier CD should go down each time the Sorcerer gets hit. Force Speed should break the Sorcerer free of roots and snares. We need one more CD like a vanish or blink.

 

Or

 

Just play PT pyro which can go immortal once every xx sec all the while blowing up its target :/.....sigh

[Aetideus]

That's a great write up and I wish game designers saw it like the player base see it :/

 

Madness needs a couple more defensive CD's simply because roots and snares are off Resolve and each class/build has multiple CC's. As a Sorcerer why does Whirlwind have a CD? Why does Overload not knock down PvP players? Barrier CD should go down each time the Sorcerer gets hit. Force Speed should break the Sorcerer free of roots and snares. We need one more CD like a vanish or blink.

 

Or

 

Just play PT pyro which can go immortal once every xx sec all the while blowing up its target :/.....sigh

 

Because they nerfed overload and whirlwind for unexplicble reasons. The only justifiable nerf was the bubble stun on others. The cone, the move up on overload stun, the cast on whirlwind brought the class to the survivability mess that it is now. While Mercs have 360 degrees 'overload' with the same effect.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Aetideus

[princezor]

Remove the CD on whirlwind

 

Lol.

 

All we need at the moment is fadeout from corruption tree for all 3 specs, instant whirlwind back in madness plus better force management cause right now force issues don't exist at all for lightning unless you offheal like mad whereas as madness you won't have enough force to even use death field after a 5min fight.

[Chemic_al]

Madness sorcs get force lightning does more damage per dot on the target 10% per dot and is uninteruptable. Creeping Terror roots for 5 seconds, up from two. Overload range increased, with 2s root. Force speed, becomes more like hydraulics and can't be shut down so easily, and sorcs get shroud.

 

And I dont know why they didn't talent the force bubble to do different things for madness and sorc. Say If anyone hits you in madness it should heal you 5% of health or 10% of the hit damage, and lightning they should be taking damage.

[MidichIorian]

It would take so few QoL changes to put the class in a good place but they, BW, arent open to any suggestions. They wouldnt even have to touch output, meaning that it won't affect PvE.

 

And they ask themselves why warzones are filled with fotm'ers. 80 % of my game time nowdays is on scoundrel, sent or sniper. It used to be 100 % on sage/sorc.

[Vaerah]

And I dont know why they didn't talent the force bubble to do different things for madness and sorc. Say If anyone hits you in madness it should heal you 5% of health or 10% of the hit damage, and lightning they should be taking damage.

 

It's not going to make Madness good enough, would just be part of something "whole" bigger to do. Did I mention I also play a marauder besides a shadow, sorc, vanguard and scoundrel?

Well, on my mara I rejoyce when I see a madness sorc (same for sages too, I frequently have to fight imps vs imps). The healing ones can be a big waste of time (as I said above I think their survibability is fine. Less OK on the "be an useless rabbit hopping everywhere, busy keeping himself alive 100% of the time instead of actually being useful to your team but still...

The lightning ones... well, when is the last time I have seen one in a WZ? They can push back (overload) my charge (assuming I don't attack from the sides or back, that pushback cone is WAY too thin imo) and also backlash.

But madness ones? A joke to kill. They just die and can do nothing to avoid that. Might find the godlike one with a 5ms latency network, former WoW rating 2400 and uber-gear and he'll kill me. But the "regular ones" get melted. End of.

 

Considering my imp main is a madness sorc, that makes me a sad panda.

There's a reason why in WoW warlocks have much higher health than mages, have a pet, fear and other CCs. The same reason why WoW had 14M subs whereas SWTOR never reached 1/10 of that.

Edited January 27, 2014 by Vaerah

[AdrianDmitruk]

I think the OP meant "Remove the cast time on WW" instead of "Remove the CD on WW." That makes a lot more sense as our mez almost requires instant cast to be useful; even polarity shift does nothing for the atrocious pushback that allows WW to become a 3+ second cast and we're dead before it activates. It is also my understanding that WW is not included in the pushback mitigation buffs slated in 2.6. Compare to operative healer instant AOE flashbang and well...you get the idea.

 

As it is now electrocute has an effective 2 minute cooldown because anyone in the process of killing a sorc knows that they can use their stunbreak freely, regardless of resolve, because pushback alone (not to mention interrupts) makes WW highly impractical. And that affects all three specs, not just madness that used to have insta WW before the nerf.

 

Squishy casting classes by their very nature need CC to delay enemies from reaching them long enough to actually get a cast off. Full corruption NEVER had this CC, but before 1.2 we at least could proc a reasonably fast cast time on our main heal. After 1.2 we had nothing and THIS is why sorc heals gravitated towards bubblestun; bubblestun was the only heal build that had enough CC to kite effectively and buy enough time to h2f. (That bubblestun was allowed to become team bubblestun is another issue entirely; I'm referring to self-only bubblestun.)

 

Between 2.0 and 2.4 the 18% reduction in channel time for innervate and stacks for our AOE healing helped us squeeze out heals faster, and for a brief time sorc heals could come close to pre-1.2 viability in PVP if played well...because our cast times more closely resembled pre-1.2 (just on different heals). We still weren't quite on par with operatives but we were at least viable, the "balanced" healer between ezmode ops and completely nerfed-into-oblivion merc. But full corruption still completely lacked CC to actually Make Them Pay for trying to kill you.

 

But after 2.4, with the introduction of arenas...there is literally nothing to discourage 4v1 yolozerging a full sorc healer. Yes you can hope the other 3 on your team peel for you and fill in the CC that you utterly lack but the fact of the matter is, in pure deathmatch op heals require far less babysitting and their superior CC is not only a self-peel but also vastly superior utility for setting up kills (compare to sorcs having friendly pull for utility, very useful in huttball but seldom worth spending a GCD on otherwise...though a truly skilled sorc does know when to pull in arena and it happens from time to time). Full corruption can run until it gets pulled and stunned, and the pull/stun can happen every 35 seconds versus Force Barrier's 3 minute cooldown. It has no CC worth mentioning, see the first three paragraphs. So it's back to the shell that remains of bubblestun spec, simply to survive longer than the first 15-20 seconds for most of us sorc healers...at least those sorc healers who haven't given into FOTY operatives. And this is why a lot of sorc healers that are left hide behind putting more points in lightning than corruption, so they can appear as dps (even though I run 26/18/2 so I'll still display as a healer in arenas).

 

Meanwhile look at how much CC melee gets to use against us, and most of it is off resolve. It's a good thing the keybind for my cleanse is well-worn, as most slows/roots are physical and thus cleansable with Sith Purity talented...but having to self-cleanse every 4th GCD because there are THAT many slows/roots is quite a lot of missing heal throughput.

 

(Note that I did roll FOTM operatives after 1.2 but later, after leaving the game for several months, I returned to the class I love...and now I stick to the class I love even through the dark days of arena as I simply have not the heart to succumb to FOTM a second time.)

Edited January 27, 2014 by AdrianDmitruk

[Cempa]

It's not going to make Madness good enough, would just be part of something "whole" bigger to do. Did I mention I also play a marauder besides a shadow, sorc, vanguard and scoundrel?

Well, on my mara I rejoyce when I see a madness sorc (same for sages too, I frequently have to fight imps vs imps). The healing ones can be a big waste of time (as I said above I think their survibability is fine. Less OK on the "be an useless rabbit hopping everywhere, busy keeping himself alive 100% of the time instead of actually being useful to your team but still...

The lightning ones... well, when is the last time I have seen one in a WZ? They can push back (overload) my charge (assuming I don't attack from the sides or back, that pushback cone is WAY too thin imo) and also backlash.

But madness ones? A joke to kill. They just die and can do nothing to avoid that. Might find the godlike one with a 5ms latency network, former WoW rating 2400 and uber-gear and he'll kill me. But the "regular ones" get melted. End of.

 

Considering my imp main is a madness sorc, that makes me a sad panda.

There's a reason why in WoW warlocks have much higher health than mages, have a pet, fear and other CCs. The same reason why WoW had 14M subs whereas SWTOR never reached 1/10 of that.

 

This has to be one of the best write ups I have read on these forums in a loooong time, I wish I could cross post it on the PvP forums...

[Chemic_al]

 

Considering my imp main is a madness sorc, that makes me a sad panda.

There's a reason why in WoW warlocks have much higher health than mages, have a pet, fear and other CCs. The same reason why WoW had 14M subs whereas SWTOR never reached 1/10 of that.

 

Yep, it is really amazing how they threw away so much potential for the mess we have now . In any case, still enjoy raiding with guild as sorc dps (when not screwed over by nightmare mode mechanics that don't one shot anyone except sorcs), but when Wildstar comes, I'm out the door.

[AlrikFassbauer]

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen any "L2P" remark here ...

[Cempa]

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen any "L2P" remark here ...

 

Because one of the main points is unless the player is among the top 0.01% in the world and lives near the server with an uber rig Madness will get destroyed so easily by just about every other build in the game -even hybrid sorcerers will destroy it lool.

 

Thing is go in game and chances are those who still play Madness are hardcore Sorcerer/Madness players who put in hundreds of hours simply because they love the class/build and chances are they will do well just because the other guy is doing so bad!

[Paethyr]

Wasn't there a post demanding to nerf sorcerers to the ground?

 

That made my blood boil as the other classes are overpowered compared to us.

When I heal PvP, half of the time I am healing myself which makes me useless within 10-15seconds, especially consuming my Health to get more Force - Healers simply can't do it in PvP due to the constant beatings

[AdmiralParmesan]

Wasn't there a post demanding to nerf sorcerers to the ground?

 

That made my blood boil as the other classes are overpowered compared to us.

When I heal PvP, half of the time I am healing myself which makes me useless within 10-15seconds, especially consuming my Health to get more Force - Healers simply can't do it in PvP due to the constant beatings

 

LOL that was probably my sarcastic post. Anyone who plays the class knows it needs some changes

[Cempa]

To make matters worse the amount of Warriors and PT's in WZ is astonishing, try playing in a WZ like that and you will see how bad sorcerers are...you went do any damge..300k tops if your lucky with double digit deaths.