Is Lightning Sorcerer Good?

[KorThariDroth]

I've only been playing SWTOR since late July, and I finished the sith inquisitor class story a few days ago at level 80 as a vengeance juggernaut, and I haven't done any of the interlude yet, and chose for my second combat class sorcerer, and I found lightning really fun but I don't know if it's good or not. Today I bought the stormwatch tacticalfrom the credits my guild gave me and am doing heroics to be able to buy legendary implants. Instead of using rotations I just use abilities when I see fit and try to always have static barrier on at all times and use lightning chain and force storm the most and second most is usualy affliction and crushing darkness and I also try to use recklesseness polarity and force speed most of the time in that order.

[SteveTheCynic]

In high-level content, Force Storm sucks fairly badly unless you're just stomping "normal" and "weak" foes who will be stunned by FS.

The normal set of abilities to use in "heavy" fights is more like:

• Thundering Blast (TB) every time it's off cooldown.  Don't forget to take the option to let you move while casting TB.
• Chain Lightning every time it's available on instant cast (e.g. frequent just after casting TB)
• Lightning (? - the "vertical" lightning stroke) followed by Crushing Darkness to take advantage of the proc.
• (I forget its name) The other horizontal lightning zap as a filler.
• Affliction to debuff strong enemies (silver, gold and white-gold symbols).  Then use Chain Lightning to reset the countdown on the debuff and TB to take advantage of the automatic Critical hit result on enemies witrh the Affliction debuff.
• Static Barrier when it's available - don't forget to take the "SB blinds enemies when it collapses" option.

Approximately.

And Force Speed is largely unnecessary except as a gap-opener to keep you away from heavy melee foes.

[KorThariDroth]

I forgot to mention that I almost if not fully play solo content only.

[Ominovin]

3 hours ago, KorThariDroth said:

I forgot to mention that I almost if not fully play solo content only.

Lightning Sorcerer is great for solo content:  Most packs can be obliterated with a Chain Lightning + Force Storm (with Suppressive Current dmg proc) + Insta-cast (Lightning Storm proc) Chain Lightning + Force Storm (with Suppressive Current dmg proc) sequence, while single target damage is good as well (with the Stormwatch tactical, it's typically Lightning Flash + Crushing Darkness + Affliction + Thundering Blast + Insta-cast (Lightning Storm proc) Chain Lightning/Halted Offensive + Lightning Bolts until your target is dead, one of your earlier attacks come off CD, or you get a Lightning Storm proc for another inst-cast Chain Lightning/Halted Offensive).

The only issue I have with the spec is that it doesn't play well with CC's as Chain Lightning is generally part of your single target rotation if you don't spec Halted Offensive (which replaces Chain Lightning with a higher damage but single target power) at 23, and if you do spec Halted Offensive you lose one of your major AoEs (Madness spec has a similar 'chose Single Target or AoE' issue in my experience).

ADDENDUM:  By the way, Static Barrier is mostly useless in my experience.  There's no reason not to have it up, but it really doesn't absorb enough damage to actually help you much...

Edited August 20, 2023 by Ominovin

[KorThariDroth]

Thank you Ominovin.