Class Changes: Madness Sorcerer / Balance Sage

[Zwirni]

If that is seriously your justification for "target dps" then you need to stop, for 2 reasons.

 

1. You should never use the absolute luckiest parses for balance, you should be using average parses.

 

2. Virulence has a "dummy rotation" that is very much different than a rotation that you can't use in operations that heavily utilizes roll and does significantly more dps. It's similar to balancing engineering dps based on roll dps on dummies, you don't account for it. Yes it will make for higher dummy parses but it is impractical for real fights.

 

This is wrong on many levels. Firstly I compare top parses to top parses. The average parse for Madness is also not 9386, it is ~8900. And guess what, The average Virulence parse is also 10476, which is 424 DPS below the top parse. So it makes absolutely no difference what you are comparing.

The only difference between the dummy rotation and the real boss rotation is rolling. Rolling hasn't been touched and of course doesn't change the DPS drop.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Zwirni

[shanealdrich]

Then look at the Virulence changes. It got nerfed to roughly 9890 DPS from 10900 DPS. Meaning 9890 should be the new 97,5% of target DPS.

Result: 10143 DPS = 100% .

 

This is wrong on many levels. Firstly I compare top parses to top parses. The average parse for Madness is also not 9386, it is ~8900. And guess what, The average Virulence parse is also 10476, which is 424 DPS below the top parse. So it makes absolutely no difference what you are comparing.

The only difference between the dummy rotation and the real boss rotation is rolling. Rolling hasn't been touched and of course doesn't change the DPS drop.

 

So if the top dps is going down 1010 and the average dps is going down approx: 1010 then the average with roll would be 9476 that is only 116 off of the target of (9600*.975=9360) when you take out roll i bet it will be close to the 9360.

[MilitantMind]

The changes proposed here are nothing short of a feeble and pathetic attempt by the devs(who should be working at some mobile game) to improve the sage/sorc. In theory if the sage/sorc is your glass cannon it needs to have some real burst and be squishy. But currently the lightning spec is a joke compared to marksman, arsenal, carnage, rage, deception, and hell even dps geared tanks. And since BW clearly doesn't know what they're doing, the gutting of barrier and the nerf of any real burst damage from lightning, sorcs are weak and easy targets.

 

Madness is a whole other story. Madness clearly suffers from force issues. Without a decent dot spread, long battles eventually put madness sorcs at a disadvantage. They eventually run out of force, something lightning doesn't suffer from nor do any other specs in the game(if you play the rotation correctly). Another problem that plagues force management is the fact that there is so much resist in the game and the reduction in death field. Madness is a one trick pony, living off of the dot spread mechanic for any real damage and force return is a problem when maras, sins, pts, juggs, snipers, and ops all have resist and/or cleanse. Now clearly there needs to be a counter, sorcs can't be amazing at everything or against any one class but as the class stands now it is struggling.

 

 

If BW is not willing to do any real meaningful change to lightning or madness damage/force management, then sorcs need some real defensive cooldowns. At they very least, buff barrier back to where it used to be. Hell, in BW's infinite wisdom they gave merc/mandos 3 heal to fulls, one with a rapid health rise, one with an absorb/reflect(ROFL), and another with a damage reduction. Snipers nearly have a heal to full, juggs have one that used to cost rage but that got removed(rage cost). All of those classes have better survivability and burst.

 

 

In short, make the sorc/sage a real glass cannon, not some range class with no meaningful burst and is easily the squishiest class in the game. Give lightning better burst and keep it squishy or leave the damage where it is and make sorcs a little harder to kill. With madness, it needs to hit a little harder and have the force return increased from the spread mechanic and you can leave them as squishy as they're now. Or like I said with lightning, make madness a little harder to kill as well.

 

 

Sorry for the long rant, it was my first reaction to the proposed sorc changes.

[DakhathKilrathi]

rip sage/sorc

 

Healing's getting gutted, but you aren't buffing either of the DPS specs enough to make up for it. I don't really want to play a commando/merc, so I guess I just won't play.

[DenariusJay]

Completely useless changes. Eric, I know you said the team is looking into the rotation issues that madness / balance has, with no way to properly recover force these changes are totally useless. A tiny damage buff does not even begin to address the big red flag with this spec. I would definitely prioritize the force management issue first before taking these so called "buffs" (not really, tbh) live, or get both out 5.3.

[KittyKat_Karrot]

Not enough. And Lightning spec needs buffed too

[Hoppinswtor]

At this point I'd be willing to balance this game for free. Edited June 28, 2017 by Hoppinswtor

[ViciousFett]

I'd be a lot happier if Deathmark spread all three dots, instead of just the 2 weakest...

[jenlen]

At this point I'd be willing to balance this game for free.

 

Speaking as someone who has been killed by you many times, and has also had you on my team many times, I wish that Bioware would take you up on that. You actually know how to play all of the classes!

[Dewlmenow]

Considering if they multiplied these changes by 5, they'd actually be closer to the top specs than they will be with these changes, color me underwhelmed. With the nerf to survivability sorc dps inexplicably got, can we even call these changes a buff? Edited June 28, 2017 by Dewlmenow

[verfallen]

I'd be a lot happier if Deathmark spread all three dots, instead of just the 2 weakest...

 

that would be beyond OP tough. Demolish is way too much dps to spread as far as DoT goes.

 

That said those change seems lackluster. There is nothing to adress the force issues, which will become more marked in pvp with the increased of the heal cost.

 

Deathfield's damage bonus being up is nice, but Affliction and Creeping terror need a slight buff as well.

 

This kind of slight adjustment is the kind Lightning needs, but Madness definitely needed more love than that to be competitive.

[XhrisShan]

Snipers nearly have a heal to full

They have a what now?

Edited June 28, 2017 by XhrisShan
Typo correction

[Manjaca]

Considering if they multiplied these changes by 5, they'd actually be closer to the top specs than they will be with these changes, color me underwhelmed. With the nerf to survivability sorc dps inexplicably got, can we even call these changes a buff?

 

No this is not a buff.

 

I Cant understand what the BW devs think? Look at the sniper. Some snipers are faster then sorcs/sages and have burst and have a Heal to full, good survivability.

And what have we? Sit in a Corner, heal to full and stay without force because BW nerf our selfheals.

[Dewlmenow]

No this is not a buff.

 

I Cant understand what the BW devs think? Look at the sniper. Some snipers are faster then sorcs/sages and have burst and have a Heal to full, good survivability.

And what have we? Sit in a Corner, heal to full and stay without force because BW nerf our selfheals.

 

Taking into account the overall changes to 5.3 with a PVP perspective, it's fairly debatable about whether it's a nerf or buff there. Considering how sad madness is in any challenging content right now makes these changes nothing short of incompetent.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Dewlmenow

[FerkWork]

Aside from the listed changes, the team is looking into the "Force negative" nature of the rotation also. It is possible changes could happen there for 5.3 as well, but nothing is settled yet which is why I didn't include it above. I will let you know if/when I get more info.

 

-eric

 

Thank you and I hope it's addressed. This issue hinders the enjoyment of the class and prevent a flowing rotation that optimal.

[ViciousFett]

that would be beyond OP tough. Demolish is way too much dps to spread as far as DoT goes.

 

That said those change seems lackluster. There is nothing to adress the force issues, which will become more marked in pvp with the increased of the heal cost.

 

Deathfield's damage bonus being up is nice, but Affliction and Creeping terror need a slight buff as well.

 

This kind of slight adjustment is the kind Lightning needs, but Madness definitely needed more love than that to be competitive.

 

Even if that's the case, I'd still like to be able to spread all of my dots since Madness is thé dot profession. If the damage on demolish needs to be brought down, and the other two brought up so be it.

[supertimtaf]

Even if that's the case, I'd still like to be able to spread all of my dots since Madness is thé dot profession. If the damage on demolish needs to be brought down, and the other two brought up so be it.

If I'm not mistaken (and I probably must), every dot spec of the game has like three dots. Two that they can spread and one that they cannot, because it is slightly more powerfull. Marauder have deadly saber, Sorc' have demolish, sins have Eradicate... Jugg/operative/sniper being the only exception because their dot mechanics aren't exactly the same. (and Sniper/operative don't have a "third dot").

It is completely understandable that you cannot spread Demolish since it is a way more powerfull dot than the other two. Nerfing it's dps would only bring down madness (and generally sorcerer) in term of dps on a single target. We don't need another nerf, Bioware gave us enough of this. ^^

And it would completely ruin the lightning spec rotation, since you need crushing darkness, a lower version of Demolish, in it

[ivanhedgehog]

It seems like their goal is to reduce the amount of sorcs/sages, given that the class was overplayed in the past. If that is correct, then I would expect to see a slight buff to bump their performance up in the future.

 

overplayed? that translate to "too many customers playing a class that is central in lore. Lets cut out the fun they are having and get them to stop spending money with us" 6 months in the future will be too late.

[DarthEndonae]

These changes are pretty abysmal. Given that our AoE capabilities were nerfed before when death field's radius was reduced, I don't understand why you're buffing it again by increasing the damage of death mark. If you're trying to increase single target damage, why not try to buff the damage of our single target abilities like lightning strike and force lightning, like by removing the 25% damage reduction of force lightning or something. There are other concerns with the discipline that haven't been mentioned (or not emphasized enough):

 

1. Other sorcs can consume our death marks. You may consider making it work more like weakening blast where it just adds additional damage to each tick (alongside its other effects) for a set period of time; or in order to keep it in the spirit of death mark, you could have it increase dot damage by a percentage for a set period of time. This will have the added bonus of no longer making it annoying when you have demolish being your highest damaging ability while wanting it to consume as few death marks as possible due to it having the weakest individual dot tick damage of our 3 dots.This would also alleviate the issue of having multiple sorcs (though unless you fix the issue, it would be better to have more sorcs so you can stack death mark buffs). This issue causes some other problems due to how the discipline works, I will get into those after outlining the other problems.

 

2. Force management for single target is basically just “hope the fight is over before you run out of force”. There are additional complications that arise based on force leech requiring death mark to be up that I will get into more detail later. This issue is even more frustrating because you don’t really have force issues when you get to dot spread because you have more death marks out, so why not just increase the amount of force gained from death mark if you want it to remain as passive as it is? Why not make force lightning regenerate more force and/or make lightning bolt and demolish free with the wrath proc?

 

3. You have to be closer than 30m to double click death field so madness has an effective range shorter than 30m or is unable to take advantage of the double click AOE feature. Increase only death field's range 35m so we can stand at 30m for the rest of our abilities instead of 27-25m.

 

4. The ability cooldowns do not line up very well. There are two ways to do madness currently: you can have a refresh phase where you reapply dots and abilities with cooldowns and a filler phase with just force lightning and lightning strike; the other one has you actually doing the priority, but this is not viable if you have multiple sorcs because it hurts force management because you don't always have death marks when you cast force leech. In addition, that method makes dot spreading more annoying. I recommend either increasing the cooldown and damage of death field and force leech to 18 seconds so the refresh rotation will be correct. Alternatively you could reduce the cooldown of both to 9 seconds each and reduce the damage accordingly, though this would make dot spreading better. Additionally, Force lighting needs to have either a 1.5 or 3 second channel time and adjust the damage accordingly. It’s very annoying to have to clip it sometimes; it makes you feel like you’re doing the rotation wrong because it’s not as fluid.

 

Other sorcs consuming death marks has two consequences, first, it may lower our DPS due to death mark theft. Lighting and corruption sorcs’ dots do not do as much damage as Madness. This means that healers need to be told to not off DPS with their best off DPS abilities and you do objectively less damage with 2 sorcs than if you have one and one is Madness. Second, currently if you are doing the priority rotation, there are instances where you don't use force leech directly after death field because it's better that way (as far as I can see). This means that if you have multiple sorcs, especially multiple madness ones, the death marks may expire before it’s time to use force leech, meaning you’re both forced to use the lower-DPS refresh and filler phase rotation in order to make sure you get the force regeneration from casting force leech while death mark is on the target. I think if you make these changes alongside a damage buff, Madness will be in a good place output wise and the players will be able to take full advantage of what the class has to offer.

[DarthCognusSion]

I don't think that these buffs do enough to fix the issues that this class currently has. The lack of damage is one of those areas, but the others are the clunkiness of the rotation as well as it being force negative. I have made my suggestions in this thread, but I suggest having Wrath making the next Lightning Strike or Demolish free. I think that it should also have a greater damage increase, but the change to making it free should be done regardless. Additionally, have SIth Efficacy restore 2% total Force each time Force Lightning ticks instead of 1%. I would also like to see Lightning Barrage changed to cause Force Lightning channel and tick 50% faster as this will fix the excessive amount of clipping required in the spec.

[XhrisShan]

At this point I'd be willing to balance this game for free.

Same. I've actually run the numbers on the specs' resource management, and when you do that, it becomes even more evident than it is currently that the combat team doesn't know what it's doing.

[DarthTyranid]

I'm out.

 

I am not going to reroll another class and grind command xp all over again.

 

I'll be back when the class is worth playing again. So at the rate of balancing...a year and a half from now?

[BraverDre]

Same. I've actually run the numbers on the specs' resource management, and when you do that, it becomes even more evident than it is currently that the combat team doesn't know what it's doing.

 

They don't know what they are doing plus it seems like their job is to kill the game slowly while making some money. We pay so much money. Its MMO. Developers have to balance the game. Obviously they only do Story Modes and 8vs8. What a waste of time and money

[indelible]

Hey folks,

 

Below you will find the upcoming changes for Madness and Balance coming in Game Update 5.3:

 

 

 

-eric

 

"in one fel swoop" sums up why the balance team have no idea what they're doing.

 

I'm out.

 

Later.

[Dacri]

As the world sorcerer representative (#1 dps sorcerer NA and now #1 dps sorcerer world), I find these changes absurd and not enough.

 

For several patches people have laughed about how easy to kill a sorcerer is, how easy to shut us down is. They even laugh about our incapacity of healing friendly targets (you run out of force with just 2 dark heals -lol-).

 

It is time for you to actually buff madness, make deathfield dot spread aoe wider and make dots hit for more damage. If you have dots on you, you can legit laugh when you have dots on you, like they are actually tickling.

 

What I suggest is, first:

-Survability: Better dcds, like actually having something to use when you have 4 people on you. Force bubble just prevents you from taking dmg for 8 seconds, but you will still get DESTROYED after those 8 seconds. Also fix force bubble heals ticks.you used to heal to 60-70% before 5.0, now you heal to like 15%.

 

Better attack abilities: you need to increase the dmg output by dots. They cant hit so low if you actually want to play competitive in swtor.

 

Better mobility: Change force leech to Force lightning to be able to use while moving, this would really help with the survability of the class and might be the final buff we all sorcerers need. For example, if you have 2 melee on you, you cant legit use any cast because you need to move and wont be able to. Nobody takes force leech mobility because it is useless. Also you should give us unshackable, if you get interrupted, you should be able to cast for 2-3 seconds without being interrupted.

 

This is what the 3 times #1 sage and currently #1 dps sorc world wants. Make this happen bioware, you know where to contact me for further free help.