Corruption Sorc (or Seer Sage) may not be viable in 6.0 without the 4- and 6-piece set bonuses from the Force-Mystic's Set, particularly in the more intense group content, assuming they will be tuned and balanced to a similar difficulty level as they are in Live.

The 1.5 second CD reduction to Innervate did 2 things: It increased the potential healing output of Innervate by 25%. This is useful particularly after a heavy damage phase to help with force recovery and still heal. 2) it slotted in a spot for an extra Consuming Darkness into the rotation. This was helpful to prepare for the next incoming damage spike.

With the 4-piece Force-Mystic's bonus, Consuming Darkness returned 45 Force with each use. In 6.0 its back to 40. This is a 12.5% nerf. Still, Consuming Darkness invokes GCD, so that's 1.2+ seconds of silence right there, depending on alacrity.

On the PTS, I found myself running out of force unless I dropped back to a "leveling" rotation where I spend about 10% of the time doing nothing so force regen would keep the force pool above the tipping point. Nothing or move into melee range and feebly whack with the lightsaber. Worth some giggles, but not viable in harder content.

The Sorc healer set bonuses do look interesting in 6.0, but I don't think they're a viable enough bonus to counter the force management problem the discipline currently has.

Are or will there be new abilities woven into the Corruption Discipline in the level 50-75 range to address the management problem? I would welcome them becoming less gear dependent.

I noticed some changes to Sorc set bonuses which haven't been mentioned yet.

Revitalize - (4) Resurgence heals for 5% more. (6) Healing a target with another ability while Resurgence is active on them has a chance to cause an extra Resurgence tick for half. Refreshing Resurgence on a target refunds some force.

New: (4) Reduces cooldown of Innervate ot Healing Trance by 1,5 sec.

That's really nice. Looks like this set will be default for Corruption Sorcs, at least 4 pieces. Hopefully it won't be hard to get.

Gathering Storm - (4) Force Speed makes your next Force attack deal more damage. (6) Activating Force Speed reduces the cooldown of Polairty Shift by 5 seconds. Using Polarity Shift immediately after extends its duration.

New: (4) Force Speed makes your next Force attack deal 5% more damage.

Guess it's good for dps Sorcs but I don't see myself using this set as a healer. Oh well, 1,5 sec reduction on Innervate CD rocks anyway.

Gathering Storm - (4) Force Speed makes your next Force attack deal more damage. (6) Activating Force Speed reduces the cooldown of Polairty Shift by 5 seconds. Using Polarity Shift immediately after extends its duration.

Favors TK/Lightning over Balance/Madness.

This is a rant fuelled bit of feedback. Feel free to skip, unless you're a dev <snipped>

Constructive Rantless Feedback this time!

Further to my previous fuel-filled rant, an update for this phase of the PTS. I did a few heroics, daily areas and the Gree event to see if anything had changed and indeed it has; our damage output is back to being decent and it appears lightning sorcerers have regained much of our previous survive-ability,

My PTS Sorc is still using the "Endless Offensive Set" which now has +2% alacrity (2pc), Volt Rush deals 10% more damage (4pc), Energize now stack up to 3 times and force speed immediately recharges 2 Volt Rush ability charges (6pc). I'm also using the Element Convention tactical item (scroll down to lightning) and this time around Volt Rush has gone from an almost-useless-forgotten-about-ability to a large part of my rotation; I think the set bonuses really helped that ability. The force speed bonus isn't much use to me as a solo player doing missions and PvE stuff since I rarely use force speed during fights, however, I do a lot of regular warzones and I can see this bonus being excellent in those. Dare I say it; it was actually FUN TO PLAY LIGHTNING on the PTS

I can't say if the ability enhancing amplifiers I have made any difference at all as it's not clear if they're working as intended yet (though I may use amplifiers for improving QoL and crafting rather than enhancing stats).

I did level up my companion to influence 50 (after I discovered the PTS crafting boost thingy gives you more credits so I could afford to buy the extortionate gifts from the vendor on Odessen), so he is a bit better than useless now

Finally, I changed the way I build my stats. I'll leave the caps to the experts (I don't know what the accuracy cut off will be), however I stacked alacrity over crit with my augments and this seems to have helped me a lot.

I really miss my hard-earned level 50 legacy perks though.

I just played 5 warzones on a madness sorc on pts. I went for tier 1 alacrity, 0 accuracy, and the rest in crit. I used the tempest of rho tactical. The other one that instant procs force leech has too many moving parts to reliably use in pvp, in my opinion. I also used the Dire Retaliation 4 piece set bonus (the overload one) and one of the 2 piece ones that gives +2% power, because I think the alacrity +2% is broken.

 

Anyway, my tentative conclusion is what many, including me, already suspected. Madness sorcs are going to be terrible in pvp in 6.0. Much worse than now, where they are merely below average. Madness's advantage over lightning currently is that given enough uptime, madness has higher dps potential. Now that doesn't even appear to be true. Madness and lightning seem to do about the same damage, with lightning possibly doing even more now, and lightning has far, far greater survivability. There's simply no reason to play madness in pvp in 6.0. I don't have a huge issue respeccing to lightning, but it's still a shame that madness will be worthless.

have u tried to go for alacrity instead of crit??

Updated the Sorc thread to include 4 and 6 pc bonuses from the next round of PTS.

 

-eric

I see you guys decided to make a new range class fotm in addition to merc. You want to ruin pvp and loose your subs since sins get useless set bonuses and tacticals like using phantom stride while in stealth buffs discharge (lol who will use close up ability in stealth), mara gets mad dash critical hit while in camouflage (no comments at all) but yeah sorc gets damage buff in big percentages and sorcs tacticals even look extended (one + one + one) lol.

Volt Flux - Volt Rush triggers Lightning Storm when activated. Chain Lightning spreads the Energized effect and causes your next Volt Rush to arc to nearby targets.

Like 3 effects lol ls proc + spreading effect of energize + making volt rush possible on other targets

Ruthless Demolition - Demolish deals 20% more damage on initial hit. Additionally, under Polarity Shift, Demolish resets the cooldown of Force Leech, and causes the next Force Leech to activate instantly.

HUGE DAMAGE buff+ reset cool down + making instant

DEvs when you will finally learn that making new fotm class ruins the game and makes people unsub. If i see sorcs recking all ranked arena and everyone swapping to playing sorcs i will unsub first

I see you guys decided to make a new range class fotm in addition to merc. You want to ruin pvp and loose your subs since sins get useless set bonuses and tacticals like using phantom stride while in stealth buffs discharge (lol who will use close up ability in stealth), mara gets mad dash critical hit while in camouflage (no comments at all) but yeah sorc gets damage buff in big percentages and sorcs tacticals even look extended (one + one + one) lol.

 

 

Volt Flux - Volt Rush triggers Lightning Storm when activated. Chain Lightning spreads the Energized effect and causes your next Volt Rush to arc to nearby targets.

Like 3 effects lol ls proc + spreading effect of energize + making volt rush possible on other targets

 

Ruthless Demolition - Demolish deals 20% more damage on initial hit. Additionally, under Polarity Shift, Demolish resets the cooldown of Force Leech, and causes the next Force Leech to activate instantly.

 

HUGE DAMAGE buff+ reset cool down + making instant

 

DEvs when you will finally learn that making new fotm class ruins the game and makes people unsub. If i see sorcs recking all ranked arena and everyone swapping to playing sorcs i will unsub first

Have you ever played sorc DD? especially last 2 years. It's only pain, no defs, all roots and slow are ignored because all classes, especially melee now have too many ignoring or speed bonuses, or have immunity bonuses.

New ability is useless, nobody using Volt rush now, it's GCD skill, which have lesser DMG than lightning strike in madness, and i'm not saying about bolt in Lightning. Tactical with Polarity shift and 2 Force leeches, with alacrity you have chance to use it only one time in 1 minute 45 seconds, DMG from one Leech lesser than Mara have with Concentrated slice or Focused Burst, which mara using each 10 seconds or lesser. And in compare with General sets and general tactical itmes it's not the best set and item, you wanna test it? go to PTS and play. I was there and saying all with this expirience.

I see you guys decided to make a new range class fotm in addition to merc. You want to ruin pvp and loose your subs since sins get useless set bonuses and tacticals like using phantom stride while in stealth buffs discharge (lol who will use close up ability in stealth), mara gets mad dash critical hit while in camouflage (no comments at all) but yeah sorc gets damage buff in big percentages and sorcs tacticals even look extended (one + one + one) lol.

 

 

Volt Flux - Volt Rush triggers Lightning Storm when activated. Chain Lightning spreads the Energized effect and causes your next Volt Rush to arc to nearby targets.

Like 3 effects lol ls proc + spreading effect of energize + making volt rush possible on other targets

 

Ruthless Demolition - Demolish deals 20% more damage on initial hit. Additionally, under Polarity Shift, Demolish resets the cooldown of Force Leech, and causes the next Force Leech to activate instantly.

 

HUGE DAMAGE buff+ reset cool down + making instant

 

DEvs when you will finally learn that making new fotm class ruins the game and makes people unsub. If i see sorcs recking all ranked arena and everyone swapping to playing sorcs i will unsub first

This post is beyond insane. Every single sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Every class other than sin got better set bonuses and tacticals than sorc. Go back to wintrading Bladech, don't worry yourself with class balance.

have u tried to go for alacrity instead of crit??

It's my understanding that going all the way to tier 2 alacrity is not worth it on the PTS, because you'd be sacrificing virtually all of your crit to do it. Plus, I'm used to the 1.4s gcd that I use on live.

This post is beyond insane. Every single sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Every class other than sin got better set bonuses and tacticals than sorc. Go back to wintrading Bladech, don't worry yourself with class balance.

For madness maybe, Lightning has a good set bonus(Gathering storm), and a beyond broken OP tactical (stormwatch) and a fun / decent one (if stormwatch is nerfed which it should be) in Eyrins haste - see my post on previous page for numbers.

I see you guys decided to make a new range class fotm in addition to merc. You want to ruin pvp and loose your subs since sins get useless set bonuses and tacticals like using phantom stride while in stealth buffs discharge (lol who will use close up ability in stealth), mara gets mad dash critical hit while in camouflage (no comments at all) but yeah sorc gets damage buff in big percentages and sorcs tacticals even look extended (one + one + one) lol.

 

 

Volt Flux - Volt Rush triggers Lightning Storm when activated. Chain Lightning spreads the Energized effect and causes your next Volt Rush to arc to nearby targets.

Like 3 effects lol ls proc + spreading effect of energize + making volt rush possible on other targets

 

Ruthless Demolition - Demolish deals 20% more damage on initial hit. Additionally, under Polarity Shift, Demolish resets the cooldown of Force Leech, and causes the next Force Leech to activate instantly.

 

HUGE DAMAGE buff+ reset cool down + making instant

 

DEvs when you will finally learn that making new fotm class ruins the game and makes people unsub. If i see sorcs recking all ranked arena and everyone swapping to playing sorcs i will unsub first

good damage is the only thing that brings dps sorc - and one spec at that to the level of actually strong dcd classes like merc, sniper (with the new phase walk) and fury mara. madness is meh unless the enemy team decides to "zerg" braindead in one spot and you have that tactical that spreads three dots. on lightning you do not even necessery use the dps tactical in warzones because dummy dps is not dps in warzones, but at least they are now considered a threat the opposing team has to either focus or disable.

as for all the abilities you listed, those as pointed out are not the tacticals/abilities sorcs will actually use because in actual practice they are not that great.

I do agree though that dps assassins and to a smaller degree PTs are not being improved like the other classes with this expansion . Sniper/ Mara/Merc were already strong going in and do not need much.

 

New ability is useless, nobody using Volt rush now, it's GCD skill, which have lesser DMG than lightning strike in madness, and i'm not saying about bolt in Lightning. Tactical with Polarity shift and 2 Force leeches, with alacrity you have chance to use it only one time in 1 minute 45 seconds, DMG from one Leech lesser than Mara have with Concentrated slice or Focused Burst, which mara using each 10 seconds or lesser. And in compare with General sets and general tactical itmes it's not the best set and item, you wanna test it? go to PTS and play. I was there and saying all with this expirience.

I disagree. I initially couldn't see the point of Volt Rush until playing around with the tacticals and recently, the amplifiers. I now love this ability when it's used as an additional aoe after the chain lightning proc (it's still meh for single target damage though). I decided to do a few things in live with my main lightning sorc and actually missed not having Volt Rush on her, which was a surprise.

The Devs have been true to their word when they said that Onslaught would add the ability to "play your way"; for me (after my initial moan post) I just needed to play around with the new items and skill just to see what works for me/my play style. As a solo player, this is brilliant. For people who are used to having to spec a certain way for their raid group or arena team, this new system might prove to be a pain-in-the-arse.

I've been enjoying what they've done for us lightnings. We've been asking for improvements for years and they've given us some. Makes a nice change I really don't think the changes have made lightning in any way OP and I'm happy that we may be able to survive a little longer and get some damage out during PvP, before being stun-locked!

I disagree. I initially couldn't see the point of Volt Rush until playing around with the tacticals and recently, the amplifiers. I now love this ability when it's used as an additional aoe after the chain lightning proc (it's still meh for single target damage though). I decided to do a few things in live with my main lightning sorc and actually missed not having Volt Rush on her, which was a surprise.

The Devs have been true to their word when they said that Onslaught would add the ability to "play your way"; for me (after my initial moan post) I just needed to play around with the new items and skill just to see what works for me/my play style. As a solo player, this is brilliant. For people who are used to having to spec a certain way for their raid group or arena team, this new system might prove to be a pain-in-the-arse.

I've been enjoying what they've done for us lightnings. We've been asking for improvements for years and they've given us some. Makes a nice change I really don't think the changes have made lightning in any way OP and I'm happy that we may be able to survive a little longer and get some damage out during PvP, before being stun-locked!

I mean, the guy you quote is talking about madness - and while volt rush might be usefull in an AoE situation, you have to sacrifice the tactical slot and set bonus to do so, you basicly take away everything you can do single target wise, to have an extra AoE? that's fine.. might be great as a solo player, - personally I have never given a second thought that people might care how stuff feels while doing dailies/heroics, that is possibly a mistake on my part for not partaking in that content since shadow of revan, and so that is fine, if people want to take that choice, (however I still think adding an abilty, and then having to use a set bonus and tactical, just to make a new abilty usefull while famring mobs, pretty.. underwelming)

However lightning has some OP things to it as it stands right now - I talk from a prespective of endgame raiding (nim raiding), The stormwatch tactical is truly broken, and at lvl 75 adds 4k sustained dps. no other tactical I have seen so far adds even half that by itself. which is putting lightning as the top parsing spec, or competing with the top parsing specs, which as a ranged burst class. shouldn't happen, I am personally not the most happy person when it comes to lightning trough 5.0 (bottom dps) and would love to see all specs being balanced much closer to eachother, but for personal satisfaction lightning being middle of the pack would make me happy, but making it straight out OP single target dps like this (which let's be honest, in SWTOR single target dps is the only thing that matters in raids on pretty much everything except a fight here and there where it still matters, just that dot spread helps more.(Izax)

As for pvp, lightning doesn't have to survive any longer, it has INSANE defensives (50% passive damage reduction, spike it up to 65 every 20 seconds and 85% every 45 seconds, add a absorb bubble, imortailty bubble and phasewalk + offheals add to that the abilty to do damage on the move (nearly full rotation) and it really doesn't get the credit it deserves.

Personally I feel like Sorc already has enough of a DPS rotation that makes the current Volt Rush pretty darn useless and mechanically/visually underwhelming to say the least.

Honestly why can't you just make this an off the global cooldown ability with Valkorion's "Dark Blast" animation. When I first used that, all I was thinking was "umm why don't sorcs have this?". Even if it had no charges, just 1 use on a 30 second CD or something, bursty damage and epic animation/soundFX, would be so much better than this current ability which I will never use.

Not to sound rude but I'm not even sure how this current "Volt Rush" made it past QA testing. The same can be said about the new "Severing Slash" animation for the assassin. Don't you guys want your game to come across as quality and stylish? There are already a ton of assets in-game that players don't have access to that look far better than these abilities, so we know the engine and team are able to do better. This just comes off as budget and lazy to be honest.

So I urge you to please reconsider the state of these abilities, and really dedicate an extra week to get the animations appropriately awesome and give them that quality feeling. And I can't stress this enough, PLEASE do not ignore the importance of good quality Sound Effects as they are so vital to achieve impactful, visceral combat. Does Severing Slash even have one to begin with?

I tried the revitalized set bonus today and it doesn´t work.

Is the bonus not implemented yet?

I also just tested the "All for One" and "One for All" tacticals.

In this state they aren´t worth using - it´s almost no difference.

Please consider making the stronger and tell us how they work.

Do they heal 16 players? How much more do they heal if only 1 person is the target?

I tried the revitalized set bonus today and it doesn´t work.

Is the bonus not implemented yet?

Correction: the 2 sets I tested work fine.

I didn´t realize it takes some time for the effect to wear off

And after further testing the "One for all" tactical seems appropriate. The "All for one" not so much.

Unfortunately, the only PvE healer sorcerer tactical worth considering is RSVP: Plus one.

I have barely noticed difference with All for One and One for All. Extrication one doesn't heal for good enough aswell.

And new ability, Volt Rush is laughable with current damage. Make initial blast like 10-20% worse than Shock and it will be OK.

Unfortunately, the only PvE healer sorcerer tactical worth considering is RSVP: Plus one.

I have barely noticed difference with All for One and One for All. Extrication one doesn't heal for good enough aswell.

 

And new ability, Volt Rush is laughable with current damage. Make initial blast like 10-20% worse than Shock and it will be OK.

Yeah, Volt rush is useless without a set bonus.

The One for All tactical is good i think. It healed 300-400 more per tick/player and for 10 seconds and 8 players it´s ok.

I´ll consider using it for 8-16 man ops

So Snipers get phase walk and the Sorc/Sage gets an absolutely useless ability. The Sorc/Sage doesn't need another damage ability. They need more damage mitigation.

They don't need more damage mitigation. Lightning in PvP can survive more damage than more than half other classes. What they need is more damage. Lightning - more burst (it's laughable unless you have Recklessness) and Madness - more sustain (worst DoT spec in the game).

Problem is that the new ability is looking to be useless for dealing damage.

Sorc/Sage gets an absolutely useless ability.

Don't forget, we can heal to full

Yes, went old school

I have a suggestion for the tactical, 'Eyrin's haste'

Currently, it gives you 3 stacks of Convection - spending either 1 stack to make Lightning bolt instant, or 3 to make thundering blast instant, this doesn't actually make much of a choice, thundering blast is already castable on the move and there are very few instances where an instant thundering blast would be better, (maybe casting on styrak manifistation?),but this choice is pretty much always to spend 3 stacks on lightning bolts.

I want this to change, by making instead of thundering blast - Chain lightning instant, this would add the choice of 3x lightning bolt for single target/mobilty, while adding an AoE/Cleave benefit to it aswell as in You can cast Chain lightning > thundering or force storm or bolt to proc 'Lightning storm' > and use another instant chain lightning.