[*]4-Piece: Reduces cost of Lightning Strike and Force Lightning or Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw by 2 and reduces the cooldown of Polarity Shift or Mental Alacrity by 15 seconds.

 

Btw am i only one who wonder why in actual 4pc bonus still is Disturbance, while all TK sages use Telekinetics Burst, or is this bonus highly towards balance?

You totally missed the point... The 2-piece is changing the damage dealt, not the alacrity. Unless you made some change without putting it in the patch notes.

 

If this doesn't demonstrate incompetence of the devs idk what does omg

Edited July 14, 2015 by VandolaLinK
spelling correction

Back in January 2015 I made a bugreport and ticket about the useless 4-setbonus but no one ever did anything with that. So hopefully you guys can look at it now?

sage / sorc new 4 set bonus is useless for Lightning/Telekinetics or it's bugged

 

Ticket: 15737389

 

This is what the tooltip for the new 4 set bonus tells us:

"Reduces the cost of Lightning Strike and Force Lightning or Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw by 2 and reduces the cooldown of Polarity Shift or Mental Alacrity by 15 seconds."

 

When you hover your mouse over Lightning Strike and Disturbance it tells it cost 27 force without the 4 set bonus and 25 force with the 4 set bonus. So the tooltip is correct, however, Lightning Strike and Disturbance have both been replaced in 3.0 with Lightning Bolt and Telekinetic Burst and thus Lightning Strike and Disturbance are no longer used in the rotation of Lightning and Telekinetics.

So the 4 set bonus is either useless or bugged for Lightning and Telekinetics.

 

The solution would be reducing the cost of both Lightning Bolt and Telekinetic Burst with 2 and changing the tooltips for those two abilities.

The solution to this is simple and has been said many times over.

 

2 Piece: As is

4 Piece: Updated to include TK Burst/Lightning Bolt

6 Piece: Reverted back to the old Dread Master/Dread Forged 4 Piece set bonus

 

While you're at it, make Force Potency/Recklessness a guaranteed crit, similar to Smuggler's Luck

[*]2-Piece: Turbulence or Force Serenity and Thundering Blast or Force Leech increase alacrity by 2% for 15 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 30 of seconds.

So, i assume, we'll get 2% alacrity boost instead of 2% damage dealt in quite short time.

Which are not the same, and it's a nerf. Again.

I'll even further, and assume that old Dread Master set bonus will work with new Revanite, am i right?

[*]6-Piece: Lightning Strike and Lightning Bolt or Disturbance and Telekinetic Burst reduce the cooldown of Recklessness or Force Potency by 1 second.

As most people alredy mentioned, this part is not that useful. Recklessness is not a guaranteed critical attack, overall, you'll not notice in your damage output, have you had 2 Recklessness or 4.

Replacing it with Dread master 4 piece bonus would be ideal.

 

That all being said, Sith Sorcerer in his current state is very situational dps, and outside of heavy burst-requiring or multiple (more than 4) opponents, it's just bad.

While we at this topic, please, please buff Madness.

"Sustained" dps Discipline, that is behind other "sustained" Disciplines by 500+ dps is not what we want to see.

Damn, it's even behind class own burst Discipline.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Waferdanos

My two cents on what should be changed:

 

2) Leave it as is, nothing bad about it.

 

4) Reduces the cost of Lightning Strike and Lightning Bolt or Disturbance and Telekinetic Burst by 2, and causes Force Lightning or Telekinetic Throw to consume 4 less force for the duration of their channel. Additionally, Crushing Darkness and Demolish or Mind Crush and Vanquish will cause your next Force Lightning to channel and tick twice as fast.

 

6) Affliction and Weaken Mind have a 30% chance to increase Alacrity by 5% for the next 15 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Ezmiu
Change in phrasing

2 and 4 pieces - Old 186 bonuses.

 

6 pieces - Old PvP bonus - decreasing CD for Mind Crush Or Vanquish and Crushing Darknes or Demolish.

 

These bonuses wiil work for both DPS specs.

 

I'm playing in Balance/Madness. In PvE it's one of the worst DPS specs for 1 target damage. After 3.0 almost time i'm not using disturbance, especially in PvE. Proc for instacast i'm use only for Vanquish. Maybe you can change mechanics for proc, i wanna mechanic as have shadows: Proc every 7,5-9 seconds, which finishes CD and make Mind Crush/Vanquish casting instantly.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Moralist

as other mad sorcs stressed here, the current sb is mostly useless to us, since we dont depend on cd most of the time (offtop -same problem with oper healers). And what do i think - maybe we really should stray from having a single sb per class combat role? make more specified SBs for every discipline, enhancing that very discipline's token abilities. IMO this is the only way to not leave half of players out of the picture.

And offtop - please stop nerfing classes. power up those who turn out to be weaker, like it was done before, that way everyone will be happy. We PVE players on PVE servers cant understand why should we get nerfed all the time for pvp balance, sometimes practicly pushed out of our favorite disciplines.

Hey,

the DPS-win is totally ok with the setbonus.

But i rly like to see 1 set for each specc.

Go more in defferences and let us be an "lightning-sorc" or an "madness-sorc".

Let the madness be surrounded by a dark cloud and the lightning should be shakin by massiv lightningbolts around him. Its just an example .

If u got the whole set tokens u should have an optical change.

Sry for my bad english skills.

best regards.

more than 30 percent of the rotation is TK burst. How do you NOT use it.

 

Ya, I read the abilities wrong. I was thinking they were the Consumption/Noble Sacrifice for some reason. That is why I said I never use them as TK/Lightning DPS. Of course I use Recklessness or Force Potency all the time. But a one second quicker cool down is completely worthless and pointless. I fail to see how that was even put in the game as a set piece honestly. It is a joke.

 

One thing this class/tree needs is some balance compared to others. I can go on my Commando/Merc and out DPS my Sage/Sorc every single time. You see, the Commando/Merc 6 set piece is actually very valuable and helps gain more dps, the Sage/Sorc 6 set is....garbage...and gains you nothing.

Edited July 15, 2015 by DarthVengeant

I waffled a bit about chiming in on these threads, because I've lost a lot of faith in the dev team recently, but I finally fell down on the side of saying something…

 

The fact that the old (Dread Master) 4-piece set bonus exists in the game has caused an enormous set of problems for this tier's gearing. The old alacrity proc wasn't designed with respect to the new function of alacrity, particularly not with the way that alacrity interacts with buff durations (i.e. alacrity increases DPS not just through improving time and cooldown availability, but also by reducing CDs/ICDs without reducing buff duration). In fact, the old Dread Master 4-piece is worth a solid chunk of the target "5% increase" all by itself, even without including the 2-pc which comes along with it!

 

So this is a problem for balance reasons, and honestly not one that's going to go away in 4.0. I wouldn't be surprised to see the old 4pc remain BiS at level 65, despite being 10 levels behind, and since all the old operations are getting buffed to 65 with their gear drops replaced, a significant advantage will be held by anyone who will have gotten Dread Master gear prior to 4.0 dropping.

 

The old 4-pc also provides a subjective satisfaction that the new 6pc set bonus (or even the 4pc) just doesn't provide. It's a very active set bonus, in that it alters the rotation in a palpable and dynamic way (due to the way it causes ability CDs and proc ICDs to drift, quite literally randomly). The new 4pc feels fun in a similar way, but not to the same extent, and its conflict with Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift certainly doesn't help.

 

In short, the old 4pc is numerically vastly, vastly superior to the new set bonuses, and it results in a subjective feel which is also dramatically better. Its continued existence in the game makes this whole conversation about new set bonuses largely irrelevant. The best thing for Bioware to do would be to disable the Dread Master (and all previous tiers!) 4pc set bonus, providing a clean slate in 4.0. Then, bring the alacrity proc back in the level 65 set bonuses in some form, if only for the dynamism it provides. 2% alacrity every 20 seconds is way too powerful (unless it's the only set bonus), but something in that direction would be much appreciated. It certainly would be more interesting than the very-forgettable 6pc that we have now.

 

On another sidebar, the 4pc set bonus as it is currently designed massively, massively favors TK/Lightning over Balance/Madness, even when you account for the delay that TK/Lightning is forced to impose on the proc-reduced Potency/Recklessness due to the alignment with Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift. Disturbance/Lightning Strike just isn't used anywhere near as frequently as TK Burst/Lightning Bolt. A far superior set bonus would be an effect involving Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness, which is basically the only ability that both specs use at the same rate, though the double-tick procs in TK/Lightning and the damage boosts in Balance/Madness do make this sort of thing rather complex.

So let's pretend like the devs won't listen to a simple "bring back the old 4 piece" thread because in the past they've been horribly muleheaded about the direction they want the game to go as far as set bonuses. For the old 4 piece set, there was for all intents and purposes a ~65% uptime on it despite the 75% theoretical that can be achieved (the best parses are close to this). With TK/Lightning being still absurdly RNG dependent on procs including the one from the set bonus, can we incorporate its effects while also removing some RNG? In essence, yes. If the 6 piece simply gave 3% alacrity flat out, this would be a general nerf to the alacrity granted currently however the increased stats from the various armorings that will be used should compensate for this. This would also remove one element of RNG for the spec. Let me know what you guys think.

Hey everyone,

 

Current Level 60 Set Bonuses (for reference)

• 2-Piece: Turbulence or Force Serenity and Thundering Blast or Force Leech increase alacrity by 2% for 15 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 30 of seconds.
  
• 4-Piece: Reduces cost of Lightning Strike and Force Lightning or Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw by 2 and reduces the cooldown of Polarity Shift or Mental Alacrity by 15 seconds.
  
• 6-Piece: Lightning Strike and Lightning Bolt or Disturbance and Telekinetic Burst reduce the cooldown of Recklessness or Force Potency by 1 second.
  

Cheers, all!

The SWTOR Combat Team

 

How does my 2-piece setbonus increases damage dealt by 2% for 15 seconds and devs still dnt know about it? o_O

 

Give us autocrit on force potency/recklessness to make the last set bonus at least equal to the other classes'.

Make telekinetic throw/force lightning reduce this CD as well (for balance/madness). <-- But it's pointless anyway.

 

Why don't you give us back 4-piece old pre-SoR set bonus + 2-piece new one?

Since all the best parses (and most of them are still hardly equal to the other classes' damage output) have been done with old 4-piece + new 2-piece.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Lesheren

Btw am i only one who wonder why in actual 4pc bonus still is Disturbance, while all TK sages use Telekinetics Burst, or is this bonus highly towards balance?

Back in January 2015 I made a bugreport and ticket about the useless 4-setbonus but no one ever did anything with that. So hopefully you guys can look at it now?

sage / sorc new 4 set bonus is useless for Lightning/Telekinetics or it's bugged

 

In case you haven't noticed, the 4-pc reduces the cooldown of Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift, which is massively better for TK/Lightning than for Balance/Madness. The cost reduction is meant to make B/M a little less sad (also they frankly need it and TK/Lightning doesn't exactly have any Force management issues), but as KBN pointed out the 4-pc bonus still heavily favours TK/Lightning.

Make the 6 piece equal for these two dps specs please. Lightning Strike and its upgrade are heavily used in TK, in fact it's a builder that's also needed for force regen.

 

In madness that lightning strike is only used if a proc is up and you have nothing else to use, so kinda rarely. Why not make these equal in some way?

 

Make Force Lightning ticks have 25% chance to do the same, or a full channel of FL take a second off. That may actually be equal with TK, otherwise middle tree gets all the benefit of such a high up set bonus.

2: Accuracy/Alacrity X%

4: Willpower X%

6: Critical X%

 

Like the old skill trees could let you do.

I only realized yesterday when I bought my new PVP gear (was waiting for the cheaper 3.3 prices) that the bonus sets are now the same for PVP and PVE gear. Before that I had been wearing my old level 55 PVP gear.

 

PLEASE BRING BACK MY +5 METER RANGE ON PROJECT!!!

 

While it's a bit more PVP centric, it's still a fantastic all around bonus. As a target (player or mob) comes into range, it's like a free attack before you start your regular rotation.

 

This has way more impact than some seldom triggered +2% stat for a brief time, or an extremely minor cooldown reduction (1s per Disturbance) on a buff with a very long cooldown (90s Force Potency). Something is better than nothing, but in this case, not really.

 

What's up with this: Reduces cost of Lightning Strike and Force Lightning or Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw by 2. News flash - a Balance Sage could spam Disturbance and Telekinetic Throw all day long and always stay right near 100% force anyways! This "bonus" really is nothing.

 

And can we forget about procs from Force Serenity and use something else instead? It's a single target ability with an 11 second cooldown, channeled so can't be used on the move (unless a point is spent), and would likely be skipped entirely if the healing isn't needed.

 

I really just want the bonuses from my old PVP gear back, they were so much better than the current ones and almost certainly better than anything else being considered.

-Mind crush cooldown reduced 1.5 seconds and heals for 0.5% (need this to work with Vanquish too)

-Increase range of project 5 meters.

 

If you can't give me those, can we just go back to separate PVE and PVP bonuses?

 

Hard to believe the extent of this downgraded bonus from my new tier of "upgraded" armor.

Edited July 24, 2015 by RAVM

I waffled a bit about chiming in on these threads, because I've lost a lot of faith in the dev team recently, but I finally fell down on the side of saying something…

 

The fact that the old (Dread Master) 4-piece set bonus exists in the game has caused an enormous set of problems for this tier's gearing. The old alacrity proc wasn't designed with respect to the new function of alacrity, particularly not with the way that alacrity interacts with buff durations (i.e. alacrity increases DPS not just through improving time and cooldown availability, but also by reducing CDs/ICDs without reducing buff duration). In fact, the old Dread Master 4-piece is worth a solid chunk of the target "5% increase" all by itself, even without including the 2-pc which comes along with it!

 

So this is a problem for balance reasons, and honestly not one that's going to go away in 4.0. I wouldn't be surprised to see the old 4pc remain BiS at level 65, despite being 10 levels behind, and since all the old operations are getting buffed to 65 with their gear drops replaced, a significant advantage will be held by anyone who will have gotten Dread Master gear prior to 4.0 dropping.

 

The old 4-pc also provides a subjective satisfaction that the new 6pc set bonus (or even the 4pc) just doesn't provide. It's a very active set bonus, in that it alters the rotation in a palpable and dynamic way (due to the way it causes ability CDs and proc ICDs to drift, quite literally randomly). The new 4pc feels fun in a similar way, but not to the same extent, and its conflict with Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift certainly doesn't help.

 

In short, the old 4pc is numerically vastly, vastly superior to the new set bonuses, and it results in a subjective feel which is also dramatically better. Its continued existence in the game makes this whole conversation about new set bonuses largely irrelevant. The best thing for Bioware to do would be to disable the Dread Master (and all previous tiers!) 4pc set bonus, providing a clean slate in 4.0. Then, bring the alacrity proc back in the level 65 set bonuses in some form, if only for the dynamism it provides. 2% alacrity every 20 seconds is way too powerful (unless it's the only set bonus), but something in that direction would be much appreciated. It certainly would be more interesting than the very-forgettable 6pc that we have now.

 

On another sidebar, the 4pc set bonus as it is currently designed massively, massively favors TK/Lightning over Balance/Madness, even when you account for the delay that TK/Lightning is forced to impose on the proc-reduced Potency/Recklessness due to the alignment with Mental Alacrity/Polarity Shift. Disturbance/Lightning Strike just isn't used anywhere near as frequently as TK Burst/Lightning Bolt. A far superior set bonus would be an effect involving Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness, which is basically the only ability that both specs use at the same rate, though the double-tick procs in TK/Lightning and the damage boosts in Balance/Madness do make this sort of thing rather complex.

 

Whatever they do to rework and rebalance the new set bonuses for 65 (hopefully making them equally useful for all disciplines), they absolutely MUST remove ALL old set bonuses (PVE & PVP) and / or replace them with the new if they want everyone to be on equal footing in the rescaled 65 content.

Edited July 26, 2015 by DawnAskham

I'll drop a few suggestions. Food for thought mostly, details can be discussed. I haven't done any math to see the overall effects on dps.

 

- Force Barrier no longer causes threat loss while active. In addition, small amount of damage is reflected towards the attacker

 

The first part is purely for pve. You often find yourself using any defensive cooldown when you're attacked, usually by adds (think Mouse Droids on Coratanni). It doesn't seem right that by trying to prevent damage on yourself you just force them to attack someone else. To prevent exploiting (tanking boss) a small permanent threat reduction can be attached to Barrier, similar to Cloud Mind.

The second part would alleviate the self-stun aspect of Barrier a little. As it is the only cooldown that prevents the user from doing anything, a little damage would be a nice bonus. Could work in pvp as well, plus it would give extra incenitive to attackers to switch target. The reflect should be fairly small, 10-20 % of incoming damage or 100 % of first few attacks with a max reflected damage cap in both cases.

 

- Increases Force Potency stacks to 3 and gives it 100 % chance to crit.

 

I'm a fan of RNG when it's done correctly, but I dislike it when you don't crit on your desired ability when you use Potency and then have to use it on a Mind Crush or Turbulence. 60 % chance on Potency was tuned to pre 2.0 stat levels when high amounts of crit were common anyway.

 

- If you use Force Mend while above 85 % health you will take 50 % less damage for next 3 seconds.

 

Another way to address squishiness. It gives a choice between reducing burst damage or healing through sustained (but not pressure). Can be useful in both pve and pvp, rewards awareness, but tweaking the values too much could render it either useless or overpowered.

 

- x% chance when dealing damage to increase Critical Multiplier by 10 % for 8 seconds, 30 second cooldown.

 

Slightly more interesting than the current 2pc set bonus. Everyone likes high numbers.

 

- Increases maximum Focal Telekinetics stacks to 6 and their duration to 20 seconds. Also increases the amount of Force Suppression stacks applied by 3.

 

Focal Telekinetics stacks incrase alacrity by 1 % in telekinetics. Force Suppression stacks are applied by Force in Balance, 15 stacks total. At first I dismissed it as a bad idea because dotspread is strong as it is, but then I realized that on secondary targets the amount of stacks consumed is less than 15 anyway so increasing the amount wouldn't be affected.

 

I also keep thinking something could be done with Rippling Force, but I'm not sure what to do in Telekinetics that could have a comparatively strong effect.

 

That's it for now, just a few words on current set bonuses:

- As long as only one discipline has problems with force there shouldn't be a set bonus that helps conserve it. I think making resource management easier with set bonus is a great idea, but it works a lot better with smaller energy pools, not the big sage pool. 15 second reduction on Mental Alacrity would be fine, but it's stronger for Telekinetics because that one already has a shorter cooldown and longer duration.

 

- The old 5 % alacrity bonus is felt, unlike current bonuses, which makes it a lot more fun.

 

- The flat 2 % damage increase set bonuses accross all disciplines are horribly unimaginative.

 

- What KeyboardNinja said about keeping old set bonuses.

Edited July 27, 2015 by ceazare

+1 to what KBN said.

 

Hypothetically, if the new 6 piece bonus gives an extra charge of recklessness, its better than the current 6pc but it is still not good enough. Sorcs need extra alacrity. Its just essential. Without it, every ability takes at least 1.4 secs to cast which makes lightning slow and boring to play, and also too immobile. If you can't put it in the set bonus either double the alacrity proc in the discipline tree, or lower the base cast time of all lightnings abilities.

Edited September 1, 2015 by DarthZaul

+1 to what KBN said.

 

Hypothetically, if the new 6 piece bonus gives an extra charge of recklessness, its better than the current 6pc but it is still not good enough. Sorcs need extra alacrity. Its just essential. Without it, every ability takes at least 1.4 secs to cast which makes lightning slow and boring to play, and also too immobile. If you can't put it in the set bonus either double the alacrity proc in the discipline tree, or lower the base cast time of all lightnings abilities.

 

According to datamining on torcommunity, sage's set bonus is left unchanged.

Well thx Bioware, all we wanted was a useful setbonus... And now we have this:

 

The 3.0 Setbonus with an epic 6 setbonus that gives us 1 more charge of recklessness.

As a Sorc playing on lightning i'm very very sad. You know that there are not many skills that are useful with this.. Should we play our rota with lightningstorm again? Or what should we do with this? Still what many people complained about when the 3.0 setbonus was revealed: There is no push in alacrity. And it seems you guys at bioware didn't listen to many thoughtful written comments on this. (I know that my comment here is not as detailed or useful on this but there are many threads and comments which pointed it better than i could ever, because of a lack in my english skills) So if you really want to know read them!

 

This whole thread was about to find a useful and good setbonus for the sorc/sage. Well done. well done.

What should we do now? The 3.0/4.0 setbonus lack still the alacrity we need on our sorcs. And the old 2.0 setbonus with a useful setbonus on 4 items. Well lets face it the missing Main stat makes it useless in the higher levels.

 

All we wanted was a useful 6 setbonus. A setbonus we would want to achieve, to raid for. Something that makes you smile when you aquired it. This is nothing like that.

 

So please bioware. I still have hope in you guys, still have hope that this is just a mistake, a bug that will and must be fixed.

 

Greetings

 

a not so calm sorc/sage

while others class has 100% crit buff on 6 pcs, sigh

For the second set piece instead of reducing the cost of force lightning and lightning bolt have the damage dealt by those attacks increase by 3-5% for the duration of polarity shift think that's a lot more useful then reducing the cost of those attacks.

i think fixing of sage/sorc dps classes is beyond set bonus's and more in the realm of division between the healers and the dps

 

for example currently DPS has the same force barrier, sage healing class has , which is great and all but honestly not necessary,healers need the oh S**T button in pvp because they get focus but in pve its op and not needed there is no mechanic that it is needed for the 1 hit kill damage in operations is all avoidable damage by design

 

dps on the other hand should be a glass cannon and full of roots and knocks backs to keep distance in pvp and just straight up high dps for both PVP and PVE .

 

it would be far better in design to allow the healers to keep barrier as is and when in dps stance just make it a 3 second barrier like the gunslinger has and then punch up the dps ....there for less defense more offence but not OP

 

this is just one ability that could be changed to allow sage's to start competing again with the other far more dominant dps classes