Thank you for your reply. I've tried going fully into both trees, and both somehow felt lacking. The full Lightning forced me to stand still and cast everything, while I found it very difficult in madness to keep an eye on what was happening in the battle, whether my proc was triggered and when I had to reapply my damage-over-times.

So I'm playing a Sorcerer, lvl 51 currently, but working my way towards 55. I'm playing a Lightning/Madness hybrid, but I'm not really sure if it's optimal damage or if there's a much better spec. Here is the current spec I'm working against: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201ZforbdRrcRMZcroRs0z.3 My tactic is to use Deathfield, Force Lightning and Chain Lightning against groups of enemies and against single target I run with an Affliction, Force Lightning, Shock rotation, where Lightning Strike is used when it procs on Wrath (and works similar to shock), which happens quite often, and Chain Lightning is used when Lightning Storm procs about every 10 seconds. Yet I have found myself in heroics lately where I feel like I'm doing very little damage compared to others, even though I am in the DPS trees. Though maybe my lack of super-gear might also influence a bit.

So I hit 50 with my inquisitor, levelling up artifice, archaology and treasure hunting and all hit 400. While it lacked the omg-factor of being able to craft medpacs, I always had a blue hilt to put into my own and my pets lightsabers/vibroswords. And then I hit level 50. All the end game gear is better than the hilts and enhancements I can craft myself. I get a few relics to craft. But the lightsabers that I can craft are crap compared to the Champion/Columi Lightsabers. All in all I now sit with the feeling that I just wasted hundreds of thousands of credits on levelling a useless craft. So please fix this Bioware, please, make Artifice useful in end game, either to make the rank 25 hilts/enhancements (similar to those in Columi/Artifice) or somehow give us some other boosts, please.

I've been playing both as healing and as DPS with lightning and madness and currently I run with a hybrid lightning madness. I did have some problems with my force management below 35 both as healer and madness spec (lightning gets force recovery powers earlier) but in your 40s you should never really run into force problems. As healer you have Force Surge, available at level 35. Resurgence sets up +25% crit on innervate, innervate crit sets up force surge for a free consumption. Mostly endless healing. I think I can count a handful of times I have run out of force in healing spec after I got force surge. Lightning spec is just sick sick sick when it comes to force management. Subversion at lower levels and then later on Lightning Effusion, where force cost is halved on 2 force powers when you get a critical hit. Sith Efficacy is the only force management in the madness tree and madness is the most force starved tree, though it can be managed by a smart player. With my current hybrid I have combined Lightning Effusion and Sith Efficacy, stacked up on critical rating and I have never had any problems at any point running out of force. Even in a hard mode boss battle where I got killed and the healer combat rezzed me, I got up at maybe 20% force and blasted away with force powers and at the end of combat I was almost full. A neverending battery is what I have been called by envious Mercs and Operatives, who have to pay far more attention to their power use.

I'm personally using this hybrid: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZfc0MdRrZcMcRsMz.1 Running out of force is a thing of the past. I don't think I've ever been below 95% force in that spec, it's just crazy efficient. I start the fight by using Affliction. Sure the damage of affliction is horrible, but it is done to trigger lightning barrage. Follow up with a death field. Then start unleashing your full power using force lightning, shock and chain lightning and when wrath is procced and cl is on cooldown, crushing darkness. I have focused a lot on the critical rating to get this working, having around 35% critical chance, so more or less all my powers are cast with lightning effusion (half cost) and force lightning gives 6 force each tick of damage.

Oh! In my part of the world acid is not considered poison. But I guess it makes a lot more sense now.

I'm thinking of speccing into Lethality on my Operative, since I got plenty of melee dps already with my Marauder and DPS-sin and Lethality looks like it is more ranged. Anyway, looking over the tree it has several abilities that looks like it might be great - on Lethal Purpose I recover energy on critical hits with poison effects, Cull deals more damage depending of poison effects and the last tier power makes the next 10 poison effects deal more damage. Yet when looking through all my class powers I can't find any poison powers. Not in those gained by Lethality or the class skills. So are these talents broken? Or is there some poison powers that we get at some point?

I'm in support of this one!

I agree that Subversion isn't the greatest talent, but it's not bad either. However I have found it to be quite awesome as a talent to weave into my madness build. When crushing darkness is still on cooldown and wrath procs on my force lightning, I use lightning strike kinda like another shock. So the force regen is just a bonus, but a nice bonus indeed. Never use lightning strike without wrath proc, cause then it's just a bad bad power.

Is this not just about the change of one single power, changing it so it can only be used in lightning charge? I'm pretty sure you can still make all sorts of hybrids, I just think that they have tried to make it equally beneficial to go all the way in one spec either. I think currently there's a lot of balancing going on and in the end all specs are meant to be viable for both solo and team PVE and PVP.

I'm using this one: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZf0bZcMfRsMkrfz.1 I'm not sure why people hate the last talents in Madness, I find them very good for spreading the love of Damage-Over-Time. A lot in the build is based on criticals, so buff that stat to the maximum. Having several enemies dotted, then each time you make a critical hit, you recover health. Because of this I've actually won medals for hitting 75k healing in PVP, simply by self-healing through the massive dot'ting (and death field). It is pretty good on the force and each time I proc Wrath, I use Crushing Darkness as first priority. But if Crushing Darkness is on cooldown, I use lightning strike, since this works as a shock (instant damage) and also gives higher force regeneration.

I'm only Light III on my own Sorcerer. He was forced into the life of Sith or he could have died a slave, but rather than break and become cruel under the Sith training, he survived and proved his competence. When confronted with light side and dark side choices, I don't click one or the other, without thinking about them. I kill traitors, I need to work with people I can trust. Yet I also spare the lives of those who fought honourably and lost. So at the current point I have something like 6000 light side points and 1000 dark side points. The one thing I hate the most is how certain things are restricted to light/dark V. I can understand how they can be restricted to either being light or dark, such as the coloured crystals. I really hope they give the grey/not-fully light/not-fully dark siders some love in an upcoming patch.

I like most of your build, just not sure I would go 12 points into Deception. Instead I'd use those points more on Madness and Darkness. From Haunted Dreams give you another instant stun and lowering the CD of Electrocute is not a bad thing either. This opens up for Unearthed Knowledge, where your Shock gives a 10% melee damage bonus. This is 6 of the 12 Points in Deception. 2 points in Lightning Reflexes in Darkness opens up for the next Darkness tier (and gives you a little force regeneration and more defense), where we have Blood of the Sith, a 3 point spec for 30% more force regeneration. The last point can be spent where it fits, perhaps Dark Embrace, for more force regeneration after leaving stealth.

I'm Corruption specced and I use Ashara the Hottie. In most fights I just shield up my hottie and myself (takes 1.5 sec) and then go in with lightning blazing. Fighting strongs I tend to use Resurgence and Innervate once, but really I just keep an eye on health bars and if Ashara goes below 25% I heal her up, Resurgence + Innervate and she's at 75% and then another shield on her. In total I probably spend 5 seconds each strong fight healing, the rest I'm blasting. In bigger fights with more enemies I tend to Whirlwind the boss/strong and destroy the rest, so I can focus on the strongest fight at last. As for time to Seethe, then it happens only after fights against elites or powerful strongs. The Corruption Sorcerer with Resurgence, Force Bending, Innervate and Force Surge is a battery, rarely with a need to spend any time recovering health or force.

Been calling the class Sinsassin, so I guess Sin would fit alright too.