Why does Madness still run out of force?

[KeyboardNinja]

I can confirm that Lightning will never run out of Force. I've kept a sustained rotation in lightning for over 15 min before, and not once did my Force fall below 3/4 full. Actually I don't even think it got near the 3/4 mark, it stayed virtually full the entire time.

 

During the 3.0 era, Lighting could run out of force, and given enough time, it would. The rotation was basically force neutral with precisely average (or better) crits, given the low levels of critical rating and willpower that were optimal. I had a few extremely unlucky parses (single-digit crit rates) where I actually did run out of force and couldn't continue, and I very commonly saw my self dipping below 30-40% force after starting from 100%. In other words, unsustainability was possible, just not probable.

 

The probability of this happening now is nearly inconceivable. We run such hilariously high crit numbers that it's hard to dip below 95% force, much less 0%. It's certainly possible, but the odds are incredibly long.

 

Madness, on the other hand… Yeah. The devs intend for both Madness and Lightning to have force problems with extremely long and sustained fights, having to resort to things like extra Force Lightning (for Madness), extra Lightning Bolt (for Lightning), or just plain Consuming Darkness. In practice, Madness is really the only one affected by that design decision, since the force returns are a lot less stable and I suspect that our affinity for crit rating is higher than the devs expected. It's certainly annoying that it has the unsustainability issues that Madness has, but it's hardly a new issue (1.0 was the only time that it wasn't unsustainable, and then it was only due to ignoring Lightning Strike).

[Kilvarough]

During the 3.0 era, Lighting could run out of force, and given enough time, it would. The rotation was basically force neutral with precisely average (or better) crits, given the low levels of critical rating and willpower that were optimal. I had a few extremely unlucky parses (single-digit crit rates) where I actually did run out of force and couldn't continue, and I very commonly saw my self dipping below 30-40% force after starting from 100%. In other words, unsustainability was possible, just not probable.

 

I had thought in 3.0 that Force dipped a bit, I just hadn't played in so long I wasn't sure. Definitely nice though that Lightning doesn't have to worry about force management anymore lol.

[RAVM]

Also, Force Storm (also known as Forcequake) is our AoE and is absolutely useless to stop a node or door cap, since the changes in 3.X.

 

Bioware talked about making it so that AoEs wouldn't stop caps but it wasn't implemented.

[RAVM]

Even after long fights I don't have force management issues on my Balance Sage. It's only when I spam something outside of my core attacks (Benelovence, for example) does my force pool get low.

[KeyboardNinja]

Even after long fights I don't have force management issues on my Balance Sage. It's only when I spam something outside of my core attacks (Benelovence, for example) does my force pool get low.

 

You're either not using Force in Balance or Force Serenity often enough, not using Disturbance, or simply not doing things fast enough. The rotation is extremely force negative, to the point where you really can't sustain it on any single-target fight that extends beyond the 4-ish minute mark.

[RAVM]

You're either not using Force in Balance or Force Serenity often enough, not using Disturbance, or simply not doing things fast enough. The rotation is extremely force negative, to the point where you really can't sustain it on any single-target fight that extends beyond the 4-ish minute mark.

 

I'm doing all that stuff (skip Force Serenity if I don't need any healing). I guess not for 4 minutes; I'm not timing things, but 2-3 minutes is what I consider very long for continuous attacking. How often do you attack non-stop for 4+ minutes? I guess during an operation when there's a boss with a gazillion hit points. Apparently nothing I do in this game regularly causes me problems. In the rare cases I run low on force, I skip Disturbance on the PoM proc and that's usually enough to keep it going some more.

 

Anyways, not sure what the problem is. Why bother having a force pool if it's never supposed to run low? Resource management is easier on my Sage than any other class I've played.

Edited November 17, 2015 by RAVM

[Kawabonga]

I'm doing all that stuff (skip Force Serenity if I don't need any healing). I guess not for 4 minutes; I'm not timing things, but 2-3 minutes is what I consider very long for continuous attacking. Hhow often do you attack non-stop for 4+ minutes? I guess during an operation when there's a boss with a gazillion hit points. Apparently nothing I do in this game regularly causes me problems. In the rare cases I run low on force, I skip Disturbance on the PoM proc and that's usually enough to keep it going some more.

 

Anyways, not sure what the problem is. Why bother having a force pool if it's never supposed to run low.

 

"Pesky PvEers and their PvE threads that don't accept my PvP input"

[KeyboardNinja]

I'm doing all that stuff (skip Force Serenity if I don't need any healing). I guess not for 4 minutes; I'm not timing things, but 2-3 minutes is what I consider very long for continuous attacking. How often do you attack non-stop for 4+ minutes? I guess during an operation when there's a boss with a gazillion hit points. Apparently nothing I do in this game regularly causes me problems. In the rare cases I run low on force, I skip Disturbance on the PoM proc and that's usually enough to keep it going some more.

 

Force Serenity is one of your hardest hitting attacks. Skipping it is a MASSIVE DPS loss.

 

If you don't do operations, then no, you won't ever be attacking for a particularly sustained period of time. In terms of operations though, there are relatively few bosses which are on the order of 2-3 minutes. Most boss fights are closer to 6-10 minutes, and a couple are as long as 15.

 

Skipping Dist when in trouble with Force is exactly what you have to do, BTW. It's still a pain, because you're losing DPS off of what is considered the "standard" rotation.

 

Anyways, not sure what the problem is. Why bother having a force pool if it's never supposed to run low? Resource management is easier on my Sage than any other class I've played.

 

In general, I mostly agree. The problem is that, because of the "large pool" force mechanic, Madness is capable of benchmarking and marketing itself as being better than it actually is, since the sustainability doesn't show up for several minutes. Dummy parsing on the 1.5 mil is the most egregious example of this, and always has been, since Madness is capable of maintaining an unsustainable rotation over the entire 4-ish minute period, giving it significantly higher DPS than were it forced to maintain any semblance of force neutrality.

[hoaxburn]

the main reason madness always runs out of force is because u need to drop a death field on someone who has affliction and creep terror and hope it spreads good. cuz you regen force with each tick of deathfield but its only 14 ticks and that goes quickly, much quicker than the deathfield cd. and if u didn't spread dot to a lot of enemies u wont regen much. and force absorbtion uses up the most foce cuz you are always putting it on.