Why will Lightning be broken in 2.7?

[colemanron]

Spell pushback. Yes, here we go again, and trust me, I'm more bored of myself parroting this stuff than you are reading it, so don't leave quiete just yet.

 

 

It has been announced, Subversion will be changed, and will not only grant 100% pushback immunity to Lightning Strike from 2.7 and on, but it also will to Thundering Blast. Good change, it definitely proves, SW:ToR aims to remove ability pushback from the single target rotation of all classes. But, for Lightning Sorcerers it will still not be gone. Is it because of Chain Lightning? No, as I went into it in detail before, since it is never hardcasted on single target, it doesn't necessarily need 100% protection. What is it then? Subversion doesn't include any other abilities, which apparently means as far as the devs can tell, no more adjustment is needed to the matter. I disagree, and give me a chance to explain why.

 

There are two ailities at the moment, that are being used rotationally in Lightning, and do not gain any ability pushback protection, at all. 0%. One is Force Lightning, the other is Crushing Darkness. Is it because we, the palyers misunderstand their roles in our rotation? Is that why the devs have been ignoring the matter for a long time? Let's see.

 

 

 

I will start with the more obvious ability: Force Lightning. Obviously it is not supposed to be casted on cooldown in the Lightning tree, but with the Lightning Barrage talent it becomes not only beneficial to use for every proc, but also vital for the tree to be able to pull competitive dps. Also the changes made to it in 2.7 can't be misunderstood: the devs mean for us to use it more often by removing the critical RNG element from the proc, and basically guaranteeing it in every single Thundering Blast rotation.

 

Having 0% pushback protection on it is extremely painful, as with the Lightning Barrage proc its channel time is halved, making it 1,5 seconds down from 3, before taking alacrity into account. So it becomes an extremely short channel for something that deals damage in 4 ticks. That paired with 0% spell pushback protection makes the channel extremely sensitive to taking any amount of damage, and is something that simply can't stay in the games current evironment, where no class or spec suffers dps loss over taking damage.

 

As i suggested before numerous times, the obvious solution would be to put 100% ability pushback protection into the Lightning Barrage talent for the channel consuming the proc, balancing Lightning with all the other DPS specializations in game, without making the protection gained from Sith Efficacy in the Madness tree redundant.

 

 

Let's get over to the matter of Crushing Darkness then, which is less obvious. Are we actually supposed to use it in our normal rotation? Isn't it the case, that we just found a baseline ability, that ups our single target DPS, that we were never meant to use, similar to the way Snipers were using Orbital Strike? Let us see the facts.

 

The fact is, Crushing Darkness is buffed in the Lightning tree by 2 talents, Convection and Forked Darkness, the latter even being high up in the tree. That alone however does not mean, we need to cast it on cooldown. It may be something we are supposed to use situtationally. So in what situation is Crushing Darkness useful? Is it an AoE? No. Is it a burst ability? No. Can we use it on the move? No. Beetween the facts it's hitting only one target, being a long cast and only being worth casting with its partial dot effect, apparently the only thing it is good for is upping sustained dps on the long run, which of course would require it to be casted on cooldown. Actually if anything, the ability is not rewarding enough for something that has a 2 second cast, and especially not if we take into account, that it takes full ability pushback during its already long cast time.

 

Does it prove, that Lightning is built to cast Crushing Darkness on cooldown? Pretty much. The above facts alone have enough weight, not even considering the changes in 2.7 will remove RNG from the rotation, which would make the spec extremely boring to play without Crushing Darkness, turning one of the most involving rotation completely static.

 

So where is the ability pushback protection then for Crushing Darkness? The answer is simple and surprising: in the Madness tree. Let's not even ask the question of how it ended up there, since for the Madness spec it is clearly never ever beneficial to hardcast it in combat, and even less so with the upcoming changes in 2.7. Lightning however needs it badly. My suggestion is to move the spell pushback protection of Crushing Darkness from Sith Efficacy to Subversion, and by it fix Lightning once and for all.

 

 

 

This ability pushback issue has been plaguing the class for long enough, it needs to be gone now. It has always been a major quality of life issue and a considerable balance problem. But in 2.7, with no other damage dealing spec having spell pushback in their single target rotation, you can forget QoL, this will become a major balance issue. Apparently everybody is too busy discussing the Wrath stacks, which is actually a great thing, the best I have seen from Bioware in a long time, but in the meantime let's not forget, that Lightning is an equally important spec from the game's standpoint, so just try not to break it completely.

 

Since the suggested changes or anything similar should be fairly easy to implement, and could be considered much more as fixing bugs rather than rebalancing, I think it should still be able to make it into 2.7.

 

 

Reposting in the class forums as the PTS will go down on Monday and apparently we won't get this fixed in 2.7. There is not a lot to say, other than I am very disappointed by the level of ignorance shown by the devs refusing to acknowledge this particular issue and other newly introduced bugs posted a number of times by others. I would suggest this to be a question to the devs, and I will keep bumping the topic until a fix will be announced or until I leave.

[DneTrain]

I Think they are addressing the possibility of removing push back from the game altogether. Agreed that the pushback on CD is a pain to handle but we'll just have to deal with it until they figure out what they plan on doing with push back

[colemanron]

Yes, they are, and if we are lucky, it might happen 2 months from now, but more likely it will only be in 3.0 (and that would be closer to 6 months).

 

However in 2.7 they removed pushback for everything they recognized as rotational abilities, but thanks to their earlier mistakes in class design, which apparently they don't want to admit, Lightning will still be screwed over. Now not having anyone in their combat team seeing this issue is sad enough as it is, but also ignoring the countless posts on the PTS forums which they are actually reading and the class forums which I would assume they read is just a whole different level of awesome. I would laugh at their incompetence if only it weren't about my main toon and my one true love in this game.

 

Also my point remains valid wether they take out pushback in 2.8 or 3.0 or not, because with these issues not corrected Lightning will be broken in 2.7, when we know they could have fixed it easily.

Edited March 30, 2014 by colemanron

[DneTrain]

With the number of procs we get for Lightning Barrage and Lightning Storm Im even considering not using Crushing Darkness in my rotation

[colemanron]

For the record I can't see how the number of procs is related to Cruhing Darkness in any way. Care to elaborate?

[DneTrain]

I should of rephrased that statement, what I meant to say was that it is harder to fit Crushing Darkness into the 2.7 rotation as fluidly as I did in pre 2.7. When I was parsing in the PTS, I noticed that I was using Lightning Barrage far more often. Maybe I am just too used to the pre 2.7 rotation where you basically spam lightning strike until the RNG gives you a proc or TB or CD comes off cooldown. I find myself only using Lightning Strike around 2 times as filler in 2.7 until something procs, when before it was about 3-4 times before something procs or comes off CD.

 

Basically if you time your procs since they both have a 10 second ICD you can pretty much guarantee when your procs will come. Makes it a little harder to fit in CD which now has the longest activation time compared to those instant damage moves. I know CD has it's benefits but the lightning class will be much much faster paced with the removal of the RNG in 2.7. Crushing Darkness is the move that slows down the spec to be honest. I don't use polarity shift and Crushing Darkness together (unless it is on the last second of polarity shift just to get it off quicker) because of the bonus polarity shift gives to forked lightning. I know Crushing Darkness is a move that boosts DPS and has its own benefits to the spec. But like you said until they remove Pushback or give us pushback resistance for this move it is really a hindrance to the spec.

[DuEldrvarya]

Well the apparent thing is that in pts compared to live, we tend to get off about two-three times the number of double speed force lightnings, while getting almost identical chain lightning procs. What this means is we have less space (not that much less but still a significant amount) to use crushing darkness/lightning strike. What is the most fluid rotation possible would be to get the force lightning and crushing darkness on opposite tb rotations (I call it rotations but really lightning is just a priority list).

 

(also everyone in lightning should already know the advantages to using a 1.9 second cast if tb is 1.7-2.2 seconds away from getting off instead of the 1.4 second cast. Waste as little of those globals as possible, while minimizing the time between tb's)

 

 

But as it is right now priority:

TB

Double speed force lightning (since the proc wears off rather fast)

Chain lightning

Crushing darkness

Lightning strike

Affliction (to refresh)

You could argue that lightning strike and crushing darkness ought to be flopped in the polarity shift portion, which they can be, but if you sit down and calculate the damage, its basically a wash, and in raids, you want to take advantage of the kb elimination given to cast as many crushings as possible. (also using it with any amount of time left but not enough to get off a lightning strike is ideal. so aforementioned timing is important)

Edited March 31, 2014 by DuEldrvarya

[colemanron]

The absolute worst case scenario for a fully stuffed Thundering Blast rotation as far as I can tell is the following, and I will do the numbers without alacrity for the sake of simplicity:

 

 

**Fight going on**

0. Thundering Blast goes on cooldown, 9 seconds to go

1. Lightning Strike, to ensure both procs are up - 1,5 sec

(Let's assume Crushing Darkness has already come off cooldown, but it was delayed because of TB)

2. Crushing Darkness, to put it back on cd asap - 2 secs

3. Force Lighnting with Barrage - 1,5 sec

4. Chain Lightning with Storm - 1,5 sec

5. Lightning Strike, because we have some time to kill - 1,5 sec

6. Affliction, to put it back up for the upcoming TB rotation - 1,5 sec

7. Thundering Blast, because its back up, the circle is closed

**Fight keeps on going**

 

 

The above rotation adds up for a grand total of 9,5 seconds, now add alacrity back in, and you're golden. And again, this is the worst case scenario, and we still had 1 GCD to kill with a purposeless Lightning Strike beside doing everything required and casting Crushing Darkness.

 

While more procs do make the rotation more stuffed, I don't see the practical issue with implementing CD whenever it's off cd, other than the fact, it does indeed feel rather clunky due to its cast time, not even mentioning the lack of pushback protection. Regardless, it is still a DPS gain, and while it may sit around off cooldown slightly more because the 2.7 rotation will have more spots reserved for higher priority abilities, the difference will be minor.

 

Basically if I understand correctly the only thing newly introduced to our effective rotation will be the need to cast LS straight after TB, to gain the procs asap, but consuming them is still not actually above CD in our priority list, except if casting CD would stop us from using them before the next TB. Under ideal circumstances (aka dummyfight) this latter exception should never happen though.

Edited April 1, 2014 by colemanron

[CyberneticDucks]

i agree with the OP 100%. nice to find someone who isnt whining. although most forum people need to tell the difference between whining and trying to tell people something is a problem that needs to be fixed. just giving you my support, but what is pushback in channeled ability like force lightning. i thought it was only in charge up abilities.

[AdmiralTran]

i agree with the OP 100%. nice to find someone who isnt whining. although most forum people need to tell the difference between whining and trying to tell people something is a problem that needs to be fixed. just giving you my support, but what is pushback in channeled ability like force lightning. i thought it was only in charge up abilities.

 

It shortens the channel time reducing the amount of FL tics..