****** GIVE ME A FEW DAYS TO GET EVERYTHING UP HERE, I'M SADLY REQUIRED TO UPDATE FROM SEVERAL LOCATIONS AND KEEPING IT ONLINE HERE IS THE BEST BET FOR ME, I WILL GET ALL THE INFORMATION UP ASAP, BUT ESPECIALLY THE LOOKS/LAYOUT OF THE POST WILL TAKE ME A BIT ******

 

 

A ) Introduction: What this Is/Is not

B ) Recent Updates

C ) Abilities/Abbreviations

D ) Spec

E ) Rotation

F ) Raid stats, consumables, BiS, etc

G ) Secondary Stat / Gearing priority

 

This is meant to be a complete answer for all Madness PvE Sorc's for spec/gearing/stat caps/raid info / BiS lists / etc. This is not: any information for sub-50's (although plenty may still be of use to them) it is also not for Corruption or Lightning sorc's, although for now I will include what numbers I've crunched on Lightning so far, in hopes someone may make a similar post for them.

 

 

Crushing Darkness = CD

Creeping Terror = CT

Affliction = AF

Lightning Strike = LS

Shock = SH

Force Lightning = FL

Death Field = DF

 

 

My build is : http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZf0MZfMcRsrkrcz.1

 

But that doesn't mean there aren't options....

 

I consider these the core talents:

 

Will of the Sith = 6% WP, a given, all specs should include this

Calcify = 12% FL DMG

Madness = no cd FL

Death Field

Sith Efficacy : redused pushback CD and FL 75% and FL regends 1% force per tick

Wrath : FL 30% chance to have next force attack no activation time, 20% more dmg

Lingering Nightmares : increase CD 2 seconds

Deathmark : DF places debuff, increase next 10 dot ticks by 20%

Force horrors: AF dmg 15%

Creeping Death: crit dmg bonus DF and periodic dots by 30%

Creeping Terror

 

---Honorable mention---

This talent brings Shock up to being worthwhile in the rotation, given the severe lack of anywhere else the place the points this is somewhere between and optional and a core talent

 

Chain Shock : 45% chance for Shock to hit the target a second time 50% dmg

 

Optional Talents Include:

 

Sith Defiance: 2% reduced dmg

Disintegration increase crit LS/FL 10%

Haunted Dreams: no cast time WW, when WW breaks, target stunned for 2

Corrupted Flesh: Reduce all dmg taken by periodic effects

 

 

^^^ But to remove the points in any of those talents, consider your other options:

 

Oppressing force: lower electrocute CD by 5 seconds, WW affects addition targets

Parasitism: periodic crits restore 1% hp

Devour: increasing healing from parasitism and DF by 20%

 

Not much, which is why I specc'd the way I did. The only real viable option I see, is the amount of healing from Parasitism/Devour would give you insane "effective health" but as a friend pointed out, when you take AoE damage, the healer is going to top you off, far before you heal yourself 1.2% at a time

 

 

For the last 10 points:

 

I think increased AF duration, and 3% crit out of healing tree are the best we can possible get, the first 5 points in Lightning being however you see fit, any combination of the 3 being viable.

 

 

So I've seen a few sorc guides before that have the madness rotation different than this, mine is based on a few hours (which, is really limited) of number crunching, and data gathering, so if someone else has the math to support another theory, by all means send it my way

 

 

Crushing Darkness (CD)

Affliction (AF)

Creeping Terror (CT)

Death Field (DF) (in the time between CD falling off, and its cooldown being up)

Shock (SH)

Force Lightning (FL)

 

Even with Wrath procc'd and CD still on cooldown, lightning strike does not reach Force Lightning's damage, so FL is the bottom of the rotation unless:

 

If it's a fight requiring a lot of movement, reapply DoT's as needed, use shock, and if you have wrath proc extra, using Lightning Strike (LS) isn't bad, but it's the only time to use LS

(still a work in progress, just putting up to save spot, internet behaving weird)

Edited January 17, 2012 by Terito

 

 

 

Will make a list of all these once they are confirmed with more data :

 

 

4.345 Power = 1 Bonus Damage

4.345 Force Power = 1 Bonus Damage

 

40 Accuracy puts me at 1.44, but adding another 40 only gives 1.82 so I need more data for accuracy, as well as a known cap, I only have 2 pieces of gear, each with 40 accuracy, so stuck here for now

 

Crit :

 

Limited by my gear options, but 28.651 Crit = 1% Crit

 

Alacrity:

 

Limited at the moment, but 37.21 = 1% Activation

 

Surge:

 

Equally limited but, 6.602 = 1% Increased Crit Damages

 

 

Bittersweet Willpower!

 

Ok So Naked (267 WP) WP gives:

 

5 WP = 1 Bonus Damage

127.143 WP = 1% Crit

 

But with full gear (1396 WP) WP gives:

 

3.681 WP = 1 Bonus Damage

147.579 WP = 1% Crit

 

(Note: I AM looking at the fact, that part of the total Bonus Damage, comes from WP, power, force power, etc I know that bonus dmg is not ALL from WP, same story with crit) still it seems to scale somehow

Edited January 17, 2012 by Terito

Doesn't look like I'm going to need this third post, at least short term, so I wanted to take the opportunity to say this: I'm not THE Madness expert, not claiming to be the best SI, Sorc, Math Major, or anything else. So if you have different theories, your numbers yield different results, or have other information you think should be added, by all means share. I want this to be a community influenced article that includes all the knowledge the whole community has on the subject, not 1 person's knowledge vs another's Edited January 17, 2012 by Terito

Good initial effort. Now for corrections:

 

This talent brings Shock up to being worthwhile in the rotation, given the severe lack of anywhere else the place the points this is somewhere between and optional and a core talent

 

Shock is never worth casting in a static turret rotation. Its DPCT is lower than that of Force Lightning, even accounting for Chain Shock (which is an average of a 22.5% damage boost), and it has the worst DPF of any spell we have (even worse than Chain Lightning single-target, which is saying something!).

 

Crushing Darkness (CD)

Affliction (AF)

Creeping Terror (CT)

Death Field (DF) (in the time between CD falling off, and its cooldown being up)

Shock (SH)

Force Lightning (FL)

 

Affliction is higher priority than Crushing Darkness by far. Since CD does Kinetic damage rather than Internal, its DPCT is much lower than you'd expect. Affliction out-paces it by nearly half. Also, as noted above, Shock should never be used except during movement phases when Affliction is up, DF on cooldown, and CD on cooldown.

 

4.345 Power = 1 Bonus Damage

4.345 Force Power = 1 Bonus Damage

 

40 Accuracy puts me at 1.44, but adding another 40 only gives 1.82 so I need more data for accuracy, as well as a known cap, I only have 2 pieces of gear, each with 40 accuracy, so stuck here for now

 

Crit :

 

Limited by my gear options, but 28.651 Crit = 1% Crit

 

Alacrity:

 

Limited at the moment, but 37.21 = 1% Activation

 

Surge:

 

Equally limited but, 6.602 = 1% Increased Crit Damages

 

 

Bittersweet Willpower!

 

Ok So Naked (267 WP) WP gives:

 

5 WP = 1 Bonus Damage

127.143 WP = 1% Crit

 

But with full gear (1396 WP) WP gives:

 

3.681 WP = 1 Bonus Damage

147.579 WP = 1% Crit

 

(Note: I AM looking at the fact, that part of the total Bonus Damage, comes from WP, power, force power, etc I know that bonus dmg is not ALL from WP, same story with crit) still it seems to scale somehow

 

Now to be a bit nit-picky. From top to bottom:

 

• It's actually 4.348:1 for Power and Force Power. To be exactly precise, it's 1 Power/Force Power = 0.23 Bonus Damage (and 0.17 Bonus Healing)
  
• Accuracy is unneeded by Sorcerers. Force Attacks cannot miss.
  
• Crit, Surge, and Alacrity all scale on a DR curve (along with everything except power). See this thread for more details.
  
• Willpower grants 0.20 Bonus Damage per point, no DR. It's always 5:1. Not sure how you got 3.681:1, tbh. The crit scales on a DR curve.

 

You can also check out my compendium on the spec here, though if you borrow anything from it, I'd appreciate citing me as the source (as "Kor").

Good initial effort. Now for corrections:

 

Shock is never worth casting in a static turret rotation. Its DPCT is lower than that of Force Lightning, even accounting for Chain Shock (which is an average of a 22.5% damage boost), and it has the worst DPF of any spell we have (even worse than Chain Lightning single-target, which is saying something!).

.

 

You have any math here? Secondly, Madness does not have Chain Lightning?

 

Shock is 222.8 DMG over 1.5 (global) naked

FL is 259.33 per second naked

Shock + 22.5% 272.93 making it higher than FL

 

W/ gear I get

 

826.33 Shock base

937.33 FL

1012.26 shock talented

 

 

Lastly, no I like what you've done, just didnt see anyone doing such stuff for madness, I'll probably just delete mine, put your link at the top, and contribute there instead

 

fixed the 3.8 whatever WP issue, was my mark of power being on in one set of numbers but not the other

Edited January 18, 2012 by Terito

Even if Shock comes out to being more dmg the pure cost of Shock is what makes this not viable.

 

Shock cost 45 force base ~ 41 with reduced cost

FL costs 30 force with ~ 27 force talented.

 

2 shocks will cost 81 force over 3 seconds and with 8.0/s base force regen over the 3 secs of GCD used to cast these 2 shock (i realize u cant cast them back to back, im refering to over say an 18 sec priority rotation) you have consumed 57 force of your pool. Almost 10% of your force pool in negative.

 

While Forcelighting with its 27 force cost for 3seconds of dps will actually net you + force.

-27 cost of FL + 24 base regen +24 force(sith efficacy) = +21 force regained (+3.5% force pool)

 

While the dmg may be greater over the 2 casts of shock vs. one FL you will depleate your force pool at a much much more rapid rate than using FL which actually gains you force. So in a fight that last longer than 3-4 mins, the extreme cost of shock will cause you to have an empty force pool causing you to waste GCDs on consumption, Therefore causing a dps decrease.

 

All Daellia was saying is that as a skill Shock has the absolute worst Damage per Force consumption of any talent in the game including chain lightning, an aoe talent,(when used on a single target, not that it is in this build). Not that it does less dmg on say a burst fight.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Pwnyride

Here's the raw math for Shock vs. FL:

 

Shock deals 0.156 * StandardHealth(50) + 1.56 * ForceBonus

Force Lightning deals 0.079 * StandardHealth(50) + 0.79 * ForceBonus per tick

 

StandardHealth is a table contained within the game files that gives the base damage value (which the abilities themselves have a multiplier for). The level 50 value is 1610. Thus at level 50 these abilities become:

 

Shock: 251 + 156% Force Bonus

Force Lightning: 127 + 79% Force Bonus per tick = 508 + 316% Force Bonus total

 

By the way, if you hadn't caught it, Force Lightning ticks 4 times, not 3. Once on application, and once per second thereafter.

 

Now let's take a test case of 650.5 Force Bonus (you'll see why in a bit).

 

Shock: 1266

Force Lightning: 2564

 

This gives a DPCT of:

 

Shock: 844

Force Lightning: 854

 

Not that much difference, you might say, and you'd be right. However, while Shock gets 22.5% from Chain Shock, Force Lightning gets 12% from Calcify and 10% crit from Disintegration. To actually check this properly then, we'll need a full gearset. Let's take a straight-from-the-vendor Rakata Force Master's set, which has the following stats:

 

Willpower: 1575

Crit: 536

Surge: 201

Alacrity: 306

Power: 107

Force Power: 1217

 

This gives derived stats of (includes all 4 class buffs):

 

Force Bonus: 650.50

Crit Chance: 37.05%

Crit Multiplier: 77.80%

Activation Speed: 9.43%

 

Thus we can calculate final damage from Force Lightning and Shock:

 

Shock: 1266 * (1 + (0.3705 * 0.7780)) * 1.225 = 1998

Force Lightning: 2564 * (1 + (0.4705 * 0.7780)) * 1.12 = 3923

 

Shock still has a "cast time" of 1.5 seconds (Alacrity doesn't affect the GCD on instant spells), however Force Lightning's new cast time is 3.0 * (1 - 0.0943) = 2.72. Thus DPCT:

 

Shock: 1332

Force Lightning: 1444

 

And there's your DPCT difference.

 

Now, conceivably you could get rid of all of your Alacrity. However, doing so would amplify your Crit, Surge, and Power. Power slightly favors Force Lightning (it scales slightly better with Power), Crit would slightly favor Shock (due to the +10% crit on FL), and Surge would vastly favor Force Lightning (since the value of Surge is extremely volatile based on crit chance).

 

However, this is just DPCT. A 0/13/28 spec is just barely short of actually force-neutral with a full rotation that does not include Chain Lightning at all. Using just Death Field, Affliction, and Crushing Darkness on cooldown/expiration, with Force Lightning filling the holes, the spec has a force endurance of around 30 minutes. Adding 1 Chain Lightning every 15 seconds drops that endurance to under 2 minutes.

 

However, the ideal is that we run out of force exactly as the boss is dying, so we want as many CLs in the rotation as we can afford. Shock is actually less force efficient than even CL, and does less DPCT to boot (CL does 1791 DPCT with the stats above, assuming Wrath proc). To optimize a force-limited situation, the basic mathematical method is simple:

 

• Use as many of your most efficient spell as possible.
  
• If you have force left over, use as many of your next most efficient spell as possible.
  
• Repeat until out of force or out of spells.

 

In this particular case, assuming a fight length of sane duration, this means we can use as many Force Lightning, Affliction, Crushing Darkness, and Death Field casts as possible and still have a bit of force left over. Thus we would then add enough Chain Lightnings to consume that force, and not more. This leaves no force left over for Shock, and thus even if you had an abnormal gear set that actually gave Shock a barely higher DPCT than FL (would require lots of crit, almost no surge, and zero alacrity), its still not worth casting on anything except a very short fight where time rather than force becomes the limiting factor.

 

However, those situations are rare enough and the gearset esoteric enough that I stand by my original point:

 

Shock is never worth casting in a static turret rotation as a Madness Sorc.

Edited January 18, 2012 by Daellia