Class Changes: Madness Sorcerer / Balance Sage

[XhrisShan]

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

Worst offender in this regard is AS commando. You spend a net 29 energy cells per rotation (10 GCDs) unless you replace the two non-critical Charged Bolts with Hammer Shot.

(Also DoTspreading is atrocious for that spec)

Edited June 29, 2017 by XhrisShan
Typo correction, accuracy

[Dhurwin]

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.

 

lol <3 u dacri

[Hellhog]

With Deathmarks being buffed for Madness Sorcs and Hatred Sins, will they ever be fixed on how they get utilized? Currently when either Madness or Hatred places Deathmarks on a target with Deathfield, any other Inquisitor in the group will also take advantage of the Deathmarks with their dots. This is bad when it's a Corruption Sorc's Affliction because it's a raid DPS loss. The healer's affliction will be no where near as powerful baseline as the Madness Affliction or Hatred Discharge.

[Retro_Chrome]

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%

Trying to justify that they know what they are doing is a futile attempt.

 

so i am confused did they actually release a DPS target number if so link please ...until you can i am aware of no official released specific target

[mike_carton]

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

 

This is the sort of thing that happens when you do things piecemeal; like "balancing" skills but leaving Combat Proficiencies for a later time.

 

You'd think this was the world's first MMO and these people are inventing the wheel for the first time.

[shyroman]

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.

 

You say the only difference between the dummy rotation and boss rotation is rolling, but I don't think you understand quite how much of an impact that is. It isn't just replacing basic attack with roll, that isn't nearly as effective as the current dummy rotation. In the dummy rotation, roll is the highest priority filler, far surpassing lethal shot, takedown, and series of shots. That very much changes how the course of the parse goes and is a massive difference in dps.

 

Here's some parses where I get pretty average luck, and they have nearly identical crit damage, so both parses were pretty much identical luck wise, although the dummy parse one was slightly less lucky with dot crits and had less energy to use. The first one is using the dummy rotation, and second is using a boss rotation (no roll). Both parses had nearly identical gear, if anything, the dummy rotation one had very slightly less gear due to it being a month earlier.

http://parsely.io/parser/view/281302

http://parsely.io/parser/view/294080

 

First thing you might notice is the ops rotation is nearly 400 dps lower. Next thing you might notice is the ops rotation one having significantly more speed shots and flurry of bolts while having slightly better dot crits. It actually changes the rotation when you can use roll heavily. Now if the ops rotation parse was brought down by about 750 dps (assuming a slightly better rotation is found that makes use of takedown's lower energy), I extremely doubt it will drop by any less than that. That will bring the dps to about 9500. So if they somehow perfectly hit their target with virulence (which I really doubt), that would bring the target dps to be about 9750.

 

Now onto madness, because that is what this thread is actually about, there is no way these buffs will make it competitive, it will still do mediocre dps and most certainly wont be doing 9750 or even close in sustained fights, especially due to its terrible force management (really needs to gets fixed asap). One of the earlier posters said the dps would be increased by about 230 dps even if every dot was under deathmark which they aren't but lets use that anyways as it is a high overestimate. That would bring the top parses to about 9600, and that's the luckiest of parses, the averages will be significantly lower than that. This combat team really needs to redo numbers across the board because they are clearly doing things so wrong. Putting out that madness should be doing about 2.5% higher dps than virulence and then putting it quite a bit behind even with underestimates with virulence and overestimates with madness.

[mike_carton]

We can accept bioware that your combat team sets certain "dps" number targets for class categories, what is unacceptable then is when the actual numbers after the changes do not align with those targets. You had enough time (months) to fix this.

 

I created an Excel table of Disciplines with current and expected future DPS ranks, and Buff/Debuff sizes etc. based on the introductory post and the first post of Discipline changes. I waited - fortunately, in hind sight - on posting it till I saw the second post. Turns out the extrapolation from first Discipline changes doesn't match the extrapolation from the second. I saw mismatches between what they published as their target ranges and what they were actually doing in terms of DPS changes. Now I can't anymore reconcile any of the numbers. I suspect (meaning, speculation)

 

 

• the DPS bands they gave are approximate and not hard and fast
   
   
  
• they have specific number ranges separately for each Discipline that they've converted into the percentage bands for our consumption and not entirely accurately being achieved in practice
   
   
  
• they are using rotations or combinations of skills that might not necessarily line up with either PvP or PvE usage deemed ideal by the players today. It is possible they're using a weighted average of numbers from multiple scenarios with potentially new rotations considered ideal by them in the post-5.3 world
   
   
  
• they have an agenda beyond just balancing the Disciplines honestly for the purpose of improving the game-playing experience (ex: restarting the gear grind for the people who have tier 4 characters, forcing players currently happy with tier 3 or lower gear into tier 4 grind, forcibly evening out the number of players of different Disciplines and so on. And somebody has it in for the Sage/Sorcerer Advanced Classes)
  

Edited June 29, 2017 by mike_carton

[Warforever]

what is most upsetting is that the Devs aren't saying ANYTHING!!!! Its the middle of the week, you drop this Sugar Honey Ice Tea on us, the ones that love sorcs and the Devs don't even have the balls or common courtesy to address our outrage.

 

I am really @#!$ing pissed off right now. I stopped playing this game because sorcs were trash. I see that sorc heals got nerfed to the ground, so by looking at sins and seeing the buffs they got, I was optimistic that my sorc would see some love. Nope. None. 5%, please. That is a joke.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Warforever
Spelling errors

[DocGamer]

Once upon a time there was a Bioware Dev that was horribly trolled and griefed by a Sorc. in 4.0

 

 

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and savored slowly.

[BraverDre]

1.Buff Madness DPS or People Leave.

2.Fix Force Management Problem

The rotation is so funny that u will run out of power and u won't be able even dps while spamming consuming darkness to restore it and lose like 700dps

Edited June 29, 2017 by BraverDre

[BraverDre]

BALANCE TEAM OF BIOWARE!! THE GAME IS LOSING PEOPLE BECAUSE OF YOU being incompetent:ph_disagree: Edited June 29, 2017 by BraverDre

[Darrahsrhaw]

Dear bioware, Keith, Musco, Balance team are you realy do not undestand the simple? WE NEED A HUGE BUFF FOR SORCS. WE dont ask to make 3 button stupid imbalanced class like YOU DID to merc we JUST WANT OUR EFFORTS TO BE REWARDED. I see mercs can do 10.4 k by 3 buttons. and if they are slacking they can easily do 9.5, 9.6 but sorc in madness can barely do 9 k. And yet i dont say any thing about deffense. You riped our bubble but gave even greater deff cds to other classes. operative, sniper. in ranked operative on acid can win 1v4. and yet you want to buff operative again!!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS? WHAT SORCS HAVE DONE FOR YOU?! WE JUST WANT ENJOY GAME RAID AND. WITH THIS BALANCE SORCS CAN FARM HEROICS

[Ephsylon]

Once upon a time there was a Bioware Dev that was horribly trolled and griefed by a Sorc. in 4.0

 

 

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and savored slowly.

 

Probably by Dacri.

[Fireswraith]

Hey BW how about un-nerfing Force Storm a bit. It's so wimpy it can't even kill the wimpiest of NPCs without needing to cast it over 2 times.

[LordTurin]

Dear bioware, Keith, Musco, Balance team are you realy do not undestand the simple? WE NEED A HUGE BUFF FOR SORCS. WE dont ask to make 3 button stupid imbalanced class like YOU DID to merc we JUST WANT OUR EFFORTS TO BE REWARDED. I see mercs can do 10.4 k by 3 buttons. and if they are slacking they can easily do 9.5, 9.6 but sorc in madness can barely do 9 k. And yet i dont say any thing about deffense. You riped our bubble but gave even greater deff cds to other classes. operative, sniper. in ranked operative on acid can win 1v4. and yet you want to buff operative again!!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS? WHAT SORCS HAVE DONE FOR YOU?! WE JUST WANT ENJOY GAME RAID AND. WITH THIS BALANCE SORCS CAN FARM HEROICS

 

I promise you, no merc is doing 10.4k with 3 buttons.

[Darrahsrhaw]

I promise you, no merc is doing 10.4k with 3 buttons.

 

I do 10 k on merc and if slack 9.7-9.8 easy on 2.5 dummy on my merc but sorc different story. I can give you parse on my merc.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Darrahsrhaw

[LordTurin]

I do 10 k on merc and if slack 9.7-9.8 easy on 2.5 dummy on my merc but sorc different story

 

Congrats. I still bet that you aren't doing it with 3 buttons.

[SidiousJeka]

Bad buff, it's not enough Edited June 29, 2017 by SidiousJeka

[BraverDre]

I promise you, no merc is doing 10.4k with 3 buttons.

 

Ur posts are not welcomed here. A player has to be a complete noob in order to do 9.5k with arcenal merc and sorc try hard with 12 buttons to do at least 9k.. i bet u can do 9k with 3 buttons on merc.

 

Arrivederci

Edited June 29, 2017 by BraverDre

[LordTurin]

Ur posts are not welcomed here. A player has to be a complete noob in order to do 9.5k with arcenal merc and sorc try hard with 12 buttons to do at least 9k.. i bet u can do 9k with 3 buttons on merc.

 

Arrivederci

 

Prove it.

[Darrahsrhaw]

Prove it.

http://parsely.io/parser/view/291781/0 easy

[LordTurin]

http://parsely.io/parser/view/291781/0 easy

 

That was a lot more than 3 abilities.

[LordTurin]

dude i can barely do 9 k on 2.5 witth much more greater efforts on my sorc so u can shut up and go back to your merc's forums

 

That is completely besides the point. I am not here to argue which class does better dps, clearly right now Arsenal is in a better place. But stupid hyperbole like "do 10k with 3 buttons" is exactly the reason that BW has to, not chooses to, but has to ignore the forums. Because if BW listened to stupid stuff like that, we'd end up with some classes doing 5k "cause you can do 10k with 3 buttons, so we better nerf it really hard" and some classes pulling 15k "because it deserves to be that good".

 

All you are doing with that hyperbole is telling BW that ignoring player feedback is appropriate and to just rely on metrics, which is something none of us want.

Edited June 29, 2017 by LordTurin

[BraverDre]

Madness force management needs to be fixed. The class is broken. Period. Bioware listen to our feedback. We are the people who pay for the game and we are sick of these nonsense Edited June 29, 2017 by BraverDre

[SidiousJeka]

OMG you are joking? It's buff is ********... not enough!! I think what this buffs offencive and rude for sorcs... Pathetic buff, 5% is nothing, please do better! Edited June 29, 2017 by SidiousJeka