I don't know that the game needs another armor debuff -- but that's a good way to increase lightning's sustained DPS and OPs utility while keeping madness relatively unchanged (of course it screams of "scorch" from "that-game-which-must-not-be-named"). I think that some of the fear when it comes to increasing the base damage of Lightning Strike comes from it's possible synergy with madness's wrath proc (which is the problem they have with chain lightning right now) and the potential for pvp burst (Death Field, all 3 dots, FL, Instant cast nuke). I'm not a big pvper though, so I honestly don't know how effective such a combo would be. As for including Lightning Strike within Reverberating Force, while the additional 10% crit would be nice, it won't solve the problem that LS has for madness. Including an additional instant cast NUKE within your dot rotation shouldn't be a DPS decrease. Simply increasing the damage from LS to make it even 85% as effective per second as FL spam would give it a place in Madness rotation as the even number wrath proc eater. Heck -- simply adding Lightning Strike to Calcify would probably be enough.

About the only theory toward loot distribution and recurance that seems to have any sort of credence is that the seed used to populate the distribution table may be a function of all the collective player's character ID tags. It is a pretty well documented issue that some premade groups running the same flashpoint daily, receive the highly skewed loot distribution tables. The cause of this phenomena is not really known, though presumably it has something to do with the RNG seed. People have been testing this since launch, trying to figure out what (if anything) causes these skewed results. From what I've seen and read the following have NO statistically significant effect on loot distribution: Order in entering the Flashpoint Group Leader DPS output Number of Mobs Killed Time of day (Generally; we lack the resources to test all possible times) Person Initially Looting I believe there has been some indications (though admittedly most of it is anecdotal ) that group composition plays a role in distribution -- though there exists plenty of evidence which suggests it does not. Basically, while there do exist some statistically skewed distributions -- we're not sure what the cause is. But who's Epeen is bigger, who loots the boss first, and who enters the flashpoint doesn't make a difference.

While I hate to feed the trolls; did you even read the tooltip on Reverberating Force? "Increases the critical damage of Affliction, Chain Lightning and Thundering Blast by 10%" It doesn't even affect Lightning Strike, let alone fix it's problems or place it anywhere meaningfully within any proper ability order.

Part of me wants to make a meme which reads: Dark Heal, Lightning Strike Y U SO USELESS!? But to get to the point, while both abilities make up a significant portion of early-game play style in their respective trees (Dark Heal being your go-to emergency heal until you get Force Bending, and Lightning Strike being your go to filler until you get thundering blast to use up the time between Force Lightnings) -- they are both next to completely useless in end game. Even the incoming change to Force Bending don't fix Dark Heal -- trusting on a crit is fine for something like innervate which is a filler, but on our emergency heal? That's just asking for RNG fail. (Yes, I recognize that a geared ops sorc will crit over 90% of the time when casting Dark Heal with FB -- but consider than in some "frenzy" intense fights such as foreman crusher the difference between a crit and non-crit is a raid wipe, and knowing that you're going to cast Dark Heal over 10 times in a given fight during the "crunch" periods -- it's not hard to see unlucky wipes.) And, I don't think I need to tell anyone about Lightning Strike. Even when speced 3/31/7, it's a only place in our rotation is "well I guess it's better than casting shock." (Exempting perhaps chain casting it at the fight start for suffusion uptime -- but honestly there's no fight in game that will tap us dry, so that's a waste) Both of these abilities could be great though. They have the capability to stand in their specific niches and diversify our toolset. And really there's a really simple change: Up their coefficients from power / increase their base damage/healing. Keep their force costs -- Dark Heal spam should be completely unsustainable, but in exchange it ought to really put out some heals. Heck if BW wanted to keep proper use of Force Bending and essential part of all healing -- keep Dark Heal exactly as implemented but make Force Bending increase it's base healing, or make it an actually guaranteed crit. As for increasing the damage from Lightning Strike -- it gives us something to consume on wrath procs when Crushing Darkness is on CD, and would help bring full Lightning closer in line with Madness and the Hybrid (since they cast LS more often than either, buffing LS will disproportionately help them). I'm not talking about crazy big changes here, just a couple of little tweaks to let these abilities perform the way they are supposed to / do in early levels.

While I would argue that your 27/0/14 spec is probably sub optimal for basically everything, I'm sure you've heard it all a thousand times before, so I'll spare you. In terms of interrupts, a couple of tips to help make your life easier. First: Keybind it to something easy to reach with no modify key. I have my Jolt (sorcerer here) bound to C so that I can easy hit it with my left index finger when I need to, but so that it's out of the way of my more common DPS bindings. Secondly: if your healer is having trouble keeping the tank up and needs additional heals, consider placing the tank as your focus target. This way you can heal the tank (by using your focus target modifier) without de-targeting the boss. Chances are you're gonna want to practice both focus-target healing and your new keybinding before you attempt the boss again. Make sure you're blowing your cool-downs and relics at the appropriate times etc. You might want to consider using some stims. Even the cheap ones available from the stims vendors provide a significant increase to your willpower. Hopefully that all helps. Good luck!

Would it increase my willingness to run pickup groups with people I don't know? (random PUG) Nope. Wiping would still be wasting my time. It would however encourage me to "unguild" completely and make a private chat channel and an extensive friends list as a replacement (since shared chat and a friends list is all a guild offers right now anyway). So, I'd run with the same people as before -- I would just have 75% repairs for those occasions when we do wipe. That being said -- I'm a pretty pug friendly player anyway so I'm not terribly frightened of randoms to begin with.

If you're worried that you're going to be roped into healing when you don't want to -- you really shouldn't. There's currently a glut of sorcerers on most servers and there's no need to have them all healing. Sorc DPS is very viable end game as either the sustained Lightning or the 6min OOF Hybrid Madness spec (the 6 minute force-pool is more than enough to roll through most bosses, even in hardmode operations). From what I understand, most advanced classes are viable in both their possible roles. So play what you like and have fun.

First off: OP, bravo. You have done an excellent job explaining what you feel is lacking, and for that you deserve some serious praise. To all those who have said: "No one know's who you are; no one cares about your "achievements" " -- I think you're missing the point. The point isn't that everyone cares about Ensidia or D&T's world first, but rather that some people do. The fact is that raiding as currently implemented is woefully easy (think about what I just said: raiding is so easy that it is causing problems). I'm no hardcore raider. At my most serious I would consider myself "casual-hardcore," but even that is really giving me more credit than I'm due. Sure, I raid, I have since I first hit level cap in BC WoW -- but I'm under no illusion that my 4-5 hours a day makes me "hard core" or that my purples make me 1337. But you know what? I like watching kill videos and live stream boss attempts, reading up on theory crafting, tweaking my rotations, yes even filling out spreadsheets. I like pouring over my damage logs. And perhaps most of all I like a well deserved wipe. I like fighting hard for my wins. I want to bump against gear checks, to struggle with a fight and after months of attempts, beat it. You know what I don't care about? Gear. I don't care about how I look, or having a sweet mount or lauding my achievements over others. Gear is only a set of tools that help me beat the next boss. But, I appreciate people who do. I like seeing people in gear that I can't yet achieve. I remember the first time I saw Thunderfury in vanilla WoW, the first time I saw a real fleet in EvE, the first group who got the Amani War Bear, or downed kil'jaeden. Seeing other people's achievements drove me to work harder. They helped encourage me to keep raiding, to keep trying week after week. I'm not going to say that Bioware needs to come out with new mechanics, or even that they need to include damage or threat meters. That's a different argument in my book. What I will say though is that Bioware should realize that catering to the hardcore raiders does more for community than their small number would indicate. After all: the competition for world-firsts is constrained to maybe a couple hundred people world-wide. But there are alot of us who are watching. Who are cheering from the sidelines.

So, while I will totally agree with the majority of posters -- Khem Val (and in fact all of the Inquisitor Companions) when appropriately geared, and properly utilized is perfectly capable of holding aggro and surviving -- I think most posters have ignored a pretty important point. YOUR SPEC MATTERS -- ALOT. I am currently lvl 48, having run with Khem Val until the early 40's on Hoth. At the time I was straight lightning speced. Against normal groups I felt like a beast -- Force storm -> free chain-lightning+ Khem's AOE engage and everything died in the first 15 seconds. Strong groups would take a bit more work -- but groups of elite mobs, even with Whirlwind and Static barrier on kehm would just tear through him. Champion mobs? Forget it. I couldn't do enough damage to kill them fast enough (yes, even with blowing my relics and recklessness and polarity shift) and couldn't heal him efficiently enough to keep him alive. Tired of dying repeatedly -- I respeced corruption (healing). Soloing is now a joke. between my now second faster dark infusion, the force bending buff and the free corruption proc from my crits I finish most fights at or above 80% Force without ever risking death. It actually got to the point where I switched to running with Ashara for better DPS output (and even she's "beefy" enough to tank for me). And yes, I kept khem's gear up-to-date in oranges and as a cybertech, always had the best mods and Armoring for him. He's still "squishy" and won't live long at higher levels without effective healing / damage control.

I have received both the the chest piece and lower robe schematics from Underworld Trading missions. I believe they were in the grade 4 or grade 5 missions. Like all schematics -- it seems like completely RNG.

I'm playing on a 15 inch laptop and I've given up on being able to see debuffs, procs or enemies casting. As a solo questing jedi guardian my MO has become "when in doubt force kick". I've eaten more channeled or cast "big time" abilities (you know the ones you "have to interupt") than I can count, simply because at 1-1.5mm tall the cast bar is completely impossible to read and practically impossible to react to. Sure there are other UI tweeks I would like (Numbers instead of descending bars for my cool downs, customizable action bar sizes and positioning, quicker keybindings, drag and drop on character equipping) but those are all minor in comparison to the tiny buff and cast bar. As a tank a target of target frame comes in a close second, followed by a "target indicator that doesn't get covered over whenever there is debris or carpet on the ground" in the list of essential UI mods. I love the game thus far, but not being able to alter my UI to fit the particular needs of my system and my screen size is a pretty large problem.

The key binds I use are like most everyone else focused around WASD with shift as a modifier as needed. A and D are strafe and turning is done with the mouse in combat or via arrow keys while auto-running my keys used are 1-5 Q E R Z X C Shift + 1-5 Shift + Q E R Shift + A D and lastly 6-0 for my Saber Forms and non-combat skills (buffs, introspection etc) Binding order of importance (most common first) E Sundering Strike Q Strike 2 Slash 3 Force Sweep 4 Master Strike 1 Riposte (yeah I should probably move it to a more prominent place but it's ok there) R (Currently Empty, reserved for Guardian Leap) Shift+E Combat Focus ( I will probably put force stasis here and move combat focus to Shift +4) Shift+Q Force Kick Shift+R Force Leap Shift+1 Guard Shift+2-5 (currently empty, will likely place Cyclone Slash in 2 and move Slash to Shift+2, Throw Lightsaber to Shift+3 and combat Focus to Shift+4) Shift+A Saber Ward Shift+D Call the Force X (medpack) C Sprint Z (Empty, saved for Relic active) Oh and for those that were wondering, the character pane is bound to Shift+C and the reply whisper is bound to \ (right next to enter which you use to reply to everyone else). You will notice that yes, I bind abilities to my A and D keys, but don't bind to my W or S. Honestly it's a habit I got from playing a kiting hunter in TBC and needing to stay running while jumping, turning and firing. As a tank I've found the ability to direct the fight backwards a bit helps give me more space and control of the fight. Like all key bindings they take a bit to get used to but after an hour or so you won't ever wonder where that ability is again. And your hand never moves from Spacebar or the WASD.

Power directly adds damage to every ability you use. In WoW speak it's Attack Power and Spell Power. As a sentinel, since you're doing many attacks per second, each for less damage but for a total of more damage per second, power is likely a better secondary stat choice than +crit. .005%*1.5*<a little bit> isn't as good as <a little bit>+power*<attacks per second>. So I would take the +power and see if you can swap out that crit for power too. Of course we still don't have a combat log so this is total freaking speculation.

That's a difficult question to answer without any sort of combat log numbers to back up our observations or really compare, but I'm playing a Vigilance Guardian and don't seem to spend any longer getting through things than sentinels I see questing near me. I can assume they do a bit more damage since when I was grouped with a sentinel of basically equal level and we both would force leap into the same target, the target would usually go for him. (I was in Shii-Cho Form) But that was before I had Shien Form, so I don't really know what it's like now. I would say: if you've ever considered tanking, even in passing -- be a guardian. You can still DPS and you can also tank. If all you're looking for is awesome melee dps, then I would say sentinel has two lightsabers with your name on them.

My only input for that fight is "don't face him toward the chasm." He's got a mean knock-back ability, which will send you flying into the chasm to an early death. It was pretty hilarious to see the first time. Even made the run back in fast enough to pick him back up with only one death.