What is the purpose of alacrity?

[Batlanternguy]

Hey yall! I've been playing for a while and hit level 56 in about 3 weeks. But after all this time, there's one armor stat I don't quite understand. As my main slot is a sith lightning sorcerer, should I be worrying about alacrity at all? Does that make a difference in my (meager) tankiness, or dps, or even how much force I have? Or should I not really worry about it? I haven't really searched out any specialized gear or anything yet, but I have hit the part of the game where the post class story makes me do crap tons of flashpoints, so the knowledge would be nice.

[BelorfinSiana]

Anything with a casting time, whether it's healers or dps, can use better alacrity.  When you improve your alacrity rating, instead of taking 3 seconds, something will take say 2.6 seconds.  On the other hand, somebody who doesn't use these kind of abilities, like a guardian tank, has less uses for alacrity.  But it also helps shorten cooldowns, I believe.

[mcenterbar]

This also helps with resource regeneration such as force or heat.  You're not going to see a significant need or benefit to alacrity higher than the 7%+ most people run to reach a 1.4 second global cooldown unless you're running the more difficult tiers of pve content.

[tsteenburg]

And with lightning, you get several boosts to alacrity when you play your rotation correctly, so some lightning sorcs go for just under the 7% so they can nudge crit higher. But until you reach endgame level, you don't really need to worry about specific stats that much unless you end up with one of them being 0.

[SteveTheCynic]

18 hours ago, BelorfinSiana said:

Anything with a casting time, whether it's healers or dps, can use better alacrity.

Not just casting time, but also channel time.  Casting time applies to abilities that you cast for a while, and then they deliver their effect all at once at the end.  Channel time applies to abilities where *during* the channel, you deliver packets of effect at various moments.  You deliver the same number of packets regardless of your Alacrity, but more frequently, to fit into the reduced overall channel time.

And the "Global Cooldown" ("GCD")(1) is also affected by Alacrity, although on a level of 0.1 second decrements instead of 0.01 second decrements.  Some folks go on as if the GCD is the only thing that matters, but some combat styles (especially ranged DPS) are heavily limited by the cast/channel times of their abilities (longer than the 1.5 seconds of the default GCD), so for them, the improved GCD is less important than the improved cast/channel times.

(1) The "cooldown" swipe that shows up on *all* your abilities for a short time when you use any one of them.

[Batlanternguy]

11 hours ago, tsteenburg said:

And with lightning, you get several boosts to alacrity when you play your rotation correctly, so some lightning sorcs go for just under the 7% so they can nudge crit higher. But until you reach endgame level, you don't really need to worry about specific stats that much unless you end up with one of them being 0.

Hmm, I've seen a couple of rotations on guides for the build. Are there some bog-standard basic ones you can recommend I start out with? Also, thanks!

[ThanderSnB]

On 5/16/2024 at 5:57 PM, Batlanternguy said:

Hmm, I've seen a couple of rotations on guides for the build. Are there some bog-standard basic ones you can recommend I start out with? Also, thanks!

These are priority list rotations. Use each ability in order. If one of them is on cooldown, use the next highest ability. There are some other exceptions, which I noted next to the abilities.

Single Target

1. Crushing Darkness
2. Affliction - only cast at the beginning and later if the Affliction debuff falls off the enemy, otherwise skip this step.
3. Polarity Shift + Recklessness - These are the DPS cooldowns. Only use them when fighting a champion boss with tons of health, otherwise skip this step.
4. Thundering Blast
5. Chain Lightning - Thundering Blast makes it instant cast.
6. Lightning Flash
7. Shock
8. Lightning Bolt - basic spam ability with no cooldown

There are some changes at higher levels.

• Eventually you get a passive that causes Affliction to be auto-refreshed by Chain Lightning, so you only need to cast Affliction once at the beginning of the battle.
• At level 75, you can get the Stormwatch tactical. The only change to the rotation is that you start the battle with Lightning Flash to add the Stormwatch debuff to the enemy. Then it returns to its normal #6 priority.
• At level 80, when doing operations, most players add the Unlimited Power ability, so #3 position has 3 DPS cooldowns. The Unlimited Power optional ability comes from one of the choices in the ability tree. You can use it while leveling or for solo content, but most players only use it in operations or maybe world bosses.
• At level 80, once you have the Gathering Storm legendary implant, you can add Force Speed before Thundering Blast to add +20% damage to it.

Area Damage (if fighting 2 or more enemies)

1. Polarity Shift + Recklessness + Unlimited Power - I only use these for AoE when fighting a group of Silver or Gold mobs with high health, most commonly in heroics.
2. Chain Lightning - Pre-cast before combat starts if fighting a group of Silver or Gold mobs, otherwise skip this step.
3. Force Storm - basic spam AoE ability with no cooldown
4. Chain Lightning - only when instant cast because of the passive

Edited May 18 by ThanderSnB

[Batlanternguy]

6 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

1. Force Lightning - basic spam AoE ability with no cooldown

Do you mean force storm? Lightning is a singular attack, right?

[ThanderSnB]

21 hours ago, Batlanternguy said:

Do you mean force storm? Lightning is a singular attack, right?

You are correct. Sorry about that. I fixed it now.