I posted this a while back, and I wanted to encourage community involvement in improving the sorcerer advanced class. The new heal in 1.4 only really addresses healing sorcerer survivability a little and does not do much at all to make DPS sorcerers more viable in pvp. The main focus of some of these conceptual changes is to make the damage of the sorcerer more reliable and to actually add some interesting mechanics to the class in addition to covering survivability concerns. Currently there are not many ways to set up burst potential like other classes, and many of our baseline abilities are not very useful or are not really improved mechanic wise in the specs. Feel free to comment, add your own reasonable ideas or explain why my ideas are bad. As long as you contribute I'll be happy.

 

ALL OF THESE IDEAS ARE DESIGNED UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT THEY WILL BE HIGH UP IN THE SPEC TREE TO AVOID BUFFING THE HYBRID SPECS VERY MUCH IF AT ALL.

 

Some ideas for each spec for each of the specs.

-Baseline:

- Force speed removes roots and makes you immune for the duration.

-Thrash and saber strike both benefit from willpower, not just strength

-shock gains 15% additional critical chance on targets below 30% health

 

Madness spec only

- Increased dot damage overall but shorter durations and add a 3 second cd to affliction to stop multidotting (will not increase overalll pve damage much due to less time to spam cast force lightning) and crushing darkness DOT effect becomes internal damage. Creeping terror has 6% chance per tick to activate your wrath proc.

 

- Passive: Thrash has 100% chance to make your next force slow root for 1.5 seconds and apply a dot that deals a moderate amount of damage on that target over 8 seconds. Lightning strike cast via wrath does 50% more damage overall and increases dot crit chance on that target by 5%. (puts lightning strike on cd for 8 seconds)

 

- Defensive Cd: Passive: removes the force regeneration penalty from consumption. On use Increases force regeneration by 150%. Additionally reduces damage taken by 25%, increases healing received overall by 15% and all current dot ticks activate parasitism for the next 8 seconds.

 

 

Lightning spec only

- Force lightning now slows its targets by 80% and has a 30% chance per tick to make your next thundering blast uninteruptable and do 35% more damage. (15 second internal cd)

 

- Passive: Overload knocks its targets 10 meters further back and roots for 3 seconds but does not break on damage. Adds lightning energy to your thrash decreasing the targets armor by 20%(lasts 6 seconds) for the sorcerer's attacks and making your next lightning strike instant cast.

 

- Storm master (lightning spec only CD) makes force storm instant cast and require no channel. 1.5 min cd

 

Lightning armor- Gives you three stacks of lightning armor. Each stack reduces the amount of damage taken by 20% and push-back received by 10%. Enemy melee attacks will have 30% of their original damage before mitigation returned to the user. Each time you attack with lightning strike, thundering blast or chain lightning you lose a stack of lightning armor. Effect lasts 7 seconds. (1.7 minute cd)

 

 

Corruption spec only

- healing tree CD . reduces damage your taken by 30% and increases your armor rating by 100%. usable while stunned. 2 min cd

 

- gives affliction a 12 second cd. Your affliction now slows its target by 70% for 5 seconds and reduces its target's damage by 5%

 

- New ability: Reduces a targets kinetic/energy damage taken by 20%, cool down is increased by 10 seconds if used on yourself. (30 second cd)

Edited November 18, 2012 by AdmiralParmesan

Some really good ideas in there. The CD for an uninterrupted, very hard hitting TB (without using Mental Alacrity) would be worth switching to full Lightning for 80% slow on FL???? YES PLEASE Edited September 27, 2012 by Jaiyne

I had considered a lightning spec defensive cd type something along the lines of this.

 

Lightning armor- Gives you three stacks of lightning armor. Each stack reduces the amount of damage taken by 20% and push-back received by 10%. Enemy melee attacks will have 30% of their original damage before mitigation returned to the user. Each time you attack with lightning strike, thundering blast or chain lightning you lose a stack of lightning armor. Effect lasts 7 seconds. (1.7 minute cd)

Edited September 28, 2012 by AdmiralParmesan

I really like the Thundering blast damage buff. With lightning Sorcs having to balance alot of stats (Crit, surge, power, alacricity) and the low baseline damage compared to other 31 point talents, even with the 50% extra from reverberating force this all adds up to a good number in stats but not enough of them to get TB in anything worthwhile. Also the 30% proc from Force Lightning you suggested really gives more value for the proc from affliction crits for the ability. Im not sure about the root on overload, but the extra knockback (not an increase in range only the knockback force) definately synergizes well with the supposed feel BW wants to give for the Lightning Sorc. I feel if BW were to implement or at least consider the route of your suggestions it would help the Sorc and by counterpart the Sage to really fit into what they "should" be like.

Thank you. I feel that as a "jedi" sage or "sith" sorcerer we should have some capability to use close combat moves. Even Mercs have some melee attacks and after all we are supposed to have mastered the lightsaber. It is disappointing our melee attacks serve no real purpose and honestly stupid that our melee attacks don't even benefit from our main stat. Not all of my ideas are perfect and most of these concepts are designed to be upper tier abilities so Hybrid specs wouldn't be overpowered.

 

In the end run I just want to feel like my class is a master of the force as it is advertised as. Even marauder's force scream in carnage hits harder than our thundering blast is capable of, or any of our attacks. Similarly it feels kind of silly when you realize that assassins have a large amount of the same cooldowns we do (overload, electrocute, whirlwind, recklessness) and then some really unique force abilities (they can stealth using the force, force cloak and mind trap)

 

Mind you those abilities mentioned fit in with the assassin type feel, but it would be nice to have something unique to our advanced class aside from static barrier and this new instant heal which sucks if you play dps.

 

In the end run I just want to feel like my class is a master of the force as it is advertised as. Even marauder's force scream in carnage hits harder than our thundering blast is capable of, or any of our attacks. Similarly it feels kind of silly when you realize that assassins have a large amount of the same cooldowns we do (overload, electrocute, whirlwind, recklessness) and then some really unique force abilities (they can stealth using the force, force cloak and mind trap)

 

 

And not to mention force shroud. Yes, I've long pointed out the inconsistency of being a "force master" with the abilities we get in this game. Marauders and Assassins as you rightly point out could well take the claim of being force masters more than sorcs ever could.

 

This game has become highly melee biased, and without even basic lightsabre moves, given how often sorcs seem to find themselves in melee range it's just become a bad joke. We aren't even a proper ranged dps any more, we are easily outclassed by snipers, both pvp and pve. No proper burst for single target dps, no execute, no defensive cooldown, worst armour in the game by a country mile coupled with worst dps. And somehow Bioware just can't see it, no they go and buff warrior lolsmash spec instead.

 

But sadly, after repeatedly pointing these things out and being hit with nerf bats, and the idiocy that was patch 1.4, it's come to the point where I no longer want to play my favourite class any more and have cancelled my sub pointing out these reasons.

 

I wish my fellow sorcs well, and hope you get meaningful changes in the future, but personally I wouldn't hold my breath.

Its probably because a decently skilled sorc can create good damage on the scoreboards by multidotting and hitting multiple targets with deathfeild. This creates the illusion that we are a high damage class but in reality our damage does not lead up to much other than slightly pressuring the enemy team. The fact that what little defense we have (the new heal, parasitism and static barrier) contribute to healing numbers also makes us look very powerful on the scoreboard. In fact if you know how to tell the difference between different enemy class specs and how to kite/play against all of them you can beat all but the best players 1v1. However a lot of the matchups rely on resetting the fight (using whirlwind) or LOS so you can heal up to keep fighting. Both of these factors make us look strong in skilled hands, but in a group setting we serve as little more than utility when we play dps.

But sadly, after repeatedly pointing these things out and being hit with nerf bats, and the idiocy that was patch 1.4, it's come to the point where I no longer want to play my favourite class any more and have cancelled my sub pointing out these reasons.

 

I wish my fellow sorcs well, and hope you get meaningful changes in the future, but personally I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

I fully understand as I am currently unsubbed as well for the same reason. I have always wanted an online version of KOTOR to exist, and I knew from the very beginning that the sorcerer was the class archetype I wanted to play. However I am probably going to sub this one last month, not to play but so I can keep posting here on the forums. The large variety of problems our class faces as dps in pvp is quite astounding but I love this game. I hope by continuing to post I can bring out more sorcerer community involvement so that we can bring awareness to both our strengths and fundamental flaws in design in hopes that bioware may eventually listen.

 

In truth I do not want to give up on this game and although I am pessimistic I can only hope that improvements are made so that our class has a balanced and proper feel of being a master of the force.

Edited September 30, 2012 by AdmiralParmesan

I posted this a while back, and I wanted to encourage community involvement in improving the sorcerer advanced class. The new heal in 1.4 only really addresses healing sorcerer survivability a little and does not do much at all to make DPS sorcerers more viable in pvp. The main focus of some of these conceptual changes is to make the damage of the sorcerer more reliable and to actually add some interesting mechanics to the class in addition to covering survivability concerns. Currently there are not many ways to set up burst potential like other classes, and many of our baseline abilities are not very useful or are not really improved mechanic wise in the specs. Feel free to comment, add your own reasonable ideas or explain why my ideas are bad. As long as you contribute I'll be happy.

 

Some ideas for each spec for each of the specs.

-Baseline:

- Force speed removes roots and makes you immune for the duration.

-Thrash and saber strike both benefit from willpower, not just strength

-shock gains 15% additional critical chance on targets below 30% health

 

Madness spec only

- Increased dot damage overall but shorter durations and add a 3 second cd to affliction to stop multidotting (will not increase overalll pve damage much due to less time to spam cast force lightning) and crushing darkness becomes internal damage. Creeping terror has 6% chance per tick to activate your wrath proc.

 

- Passive: Thrash has 100% chance to make your next force slow root for 1.5 seconds and apply a dot that deals a moderate amount of damage on that target over 8 seconds. Lightning strike cast via wrath does 50% more damage overall and increases dot crit chance on that target by 5%. (puts lightning strike on cd for 8 seconds)

 

- Defensive Cd: Passive: removes the force regeneration penalty from consumption. On use Increases force regeneration by 150%. Additionally reduces damage taken by 25%, increases healing received overall by 15% and all current dot ticks activate parasitism for the next 8 seconds.

 

 

Lightning spec only

- Force lightning now slows its targets by 80% and has a 30% chance per tick to make your next thundering blast uninteruptable and do 35% more damage. (15 second internal cd)

 

- Passive: Overload knocks its targets 10 meters further back and roots for 3 seconds but does not break on damage. Adds lightning energy to your thrash decreasing the targets armor by 20%(lasts 6 seconds) for the sorcerer's attacks and making your next lightning strike instant cast.

 

- Storm master (lightning spec only CD) makes force storm instant cast and require no channel. 1.5 min cd

 

 

Corruption spec only

- healing tree CD . reduces damage your taken by 30% and increases your armor rating by 100%. usable while stunned. 2 min cd

 

- gives affliction a 5 second cd. Your affliction now slows its target by 70% for 5 seconds and reduces its target's damage by 5%

 

- New ability: Reduces a targets kinetic/energy damage taken by 20%, cool down is increased by 10 seconds if used on yourself. (30 second cd)

 

Certainly some interesting ideas, although some of the possible going a bit too far in my opinion... I guess it's the sort of thing that would need iterative testing to find the best specific values. Anyway, sorry for wall of text. If I don't mention it, I agree with you (hopefully this'll make it less long).

 

I don't think the Crit change on shock is a good idea though, for two reasons. Firstly, it would be giving a healer spec a semi-execute, which they seem not to want to do. More importantly, it would change very little of our "execute power". If you want to kill someone low on health, you pop Recklessness/Force Potency and hit Death Field/Force In Balance and then Shock/Project. I think it would be better to add tree-specific bonuses higher up in the Lightning/TK and Madness/Balance trees to provide a better execute function, in the same way that "Cold Blooded" does for Dot Damage in Scoundrel's Dirty Fighting tree, an effect which synergises well with Wounding Shots.

 

Madness Spec:

Not sure about higher damage and adding a CD to Affliction, as that would impact on any Hybrid Lightning/Madness builds DoTing to proc Lightning Barrage. Guess it depends on Developer intent at that point (Hybrids vs Full tree). If we got lower duration DoTs, I don't think Crushing Darkness would need to be Internal (Affliction already is), especially Creeping Terror was also able to proc Wrath (would be great). We'd have possibly too much hard-to-mitigate mobile damage with that set of changes.

 

Instead of being a passive with cooldown, add it to/change a skill higher up Madness that lets you apply this on a normal Lightning strike, and stack it 2 or 3 times. Then a skillful player has the option of maintaining this debuff while performing a DoT rotation, as an option instead of front loaded damage (Yes, that'd be more PvE oriented).

 

I don't think we'd need all those suggestions for defensives. Either we need better force management (and so our heal is our defensive) or we need a proper defensive CD (so our heal is a force management tool). I'd say not both.

 

Lightning:

Unless it's literally at the top of the tree, then no to the extra slow. Any Lightning/Madness Hybrid could practically lock down a person with that, which is too much (Yes to making TB an instant though).

 

Not sure about overload. 5s root is a powerful kiting tool, where the extra 10m makes little difference against anyone with a leap ready and waiting. I'd actually rather keep what we've got at this point.

 

I know I said I wouldn't comment on things I agree with, but a HELL yeah on Storm master idea.

 

Corruption.

No to the changes to affliction. That a 70%, 100% uptime slow (in effect) on a target is, I believe, too much. Granted, the current Slow on affliction is terrible, but there's probably a better middleground.

 

Personally, my biggest issue is that many things just don't synergise all that well in any of the trees, compared to other classes.

 

You look at Madness, and you think. "Ok, so this is a DoT based spec, with pretty slow, minor-damage DoTs". I'm left thinking:

 

• It's a DPS spec, so why don't I have an execute?
  
• DoT builds require a lot of setup time, so where is my burst skill to monopolise on the number of DoTs I have running?
  
• DoT builds are designated Kiters, so why is it's fallback damage dealing ability a spammable channeled skill?
  
• Why is the healing from Deathfield (and Devour) STILL broken?
  

 

My other major gripe, is the lack of flow in skill use. Consumption should be off the GCD (in line with other classes resource management abilities). Unatural Preservation should be off the GCD (In line with other classes DCDs... (because that's what it seems to be)). As a more general points, tank-capable classes that play as DPS get to use their off-spec abilities (taunts) without impacting on their main-spec performance, because they're off the GCD. What do heal-capable DPS specs get that they can do without impacting upon their main-spec performance.... oh yeah, nothing.

First of all thanks for responding, I obviously don't mind wall of texts if you haven't noticed from my own posts.

 

Keep in mind all of these change are designed to be very high tier in the skill trees. It would be incredibly overpowered if you were capable of reaching several of these defensive cds at once. As well all of these changes would need to be tested to figure out the specific values they should be at.

 

Madness-

As for the madness lightning strike via wrath it was designed so there is/would be a purpose to using lightning strike through wrath proc, since currently there is no purpose in doing so. Lightning strike used through wrath is just a lose of damage compared to casting more force lightning. I just felt it was important to lessen madness's dependence on force lightning. Currently a large part of madness's single target damage is just casting force lightning, which hurts in pvp because you can't kite while using force lightning and you can't produce decent single target damage without having time to cast force lightning. This is not to even mention we don't have anything worth casting if force lightning is interrupted.

 

Lightning-

The 80% slow on force lightning is definitely designed to be a 6th tier skill ability since it is obvious how overpowered a hybrid spec could be with this tool.

 

The overload change I made for a few reasons. When fighting a target, it is important for obvious reasons that full lightning spec keep affliction up on the target. However the 5 second root breaks after 2 seconds so anyone you are trying to kill will most likely be broken our of the root around 2.5 seconds (sometimes a little more or less). Speaking that this game has 1.5 second globals and that overload activates instantly (as well as the root) this barely even gives you time to cast lightning strike. With a 3 second root you should have enough time to cast crushing darkness or thundering blast before the target breaks out. As well nobody likes to sit in a 5 second root who was accidentally hit by an overload and not attacked. In a way this change was designed as a buff and a small nerf.

 

Corruption-

In hindsight I agree with your opinion on the affliction 70% slow. However I don't feel a 50% slow is decent enough to create any real room between the healer and the target since mostly classes have access to some sort of relatively spammable 50% slow or at least a root. Perhaps making it have a 15 second cooldown would make it so you could use it fairly often, but not use it to chain slow a target.

Edited October 1, 2012 by AdmiralParmesan

Personally, my biggest issue is that many things just don't synergise all that well in any of the trees, compared to other classes.

 

You look at Madness, and you think. "Ok, so this is a DoT based spec, with pretty slow, minor-damage DoTs". I'm left thinking:

 

• It's a DPS spec, so why don't I have an execute?
  
• DoT builds require a lot of setup time, so where is my burst skill to monopolise on the number of DoTs I have running?
  
• DoT builds are designated Kiters, so why is it's fallback damage dealing ability a spammable channeled skill?
  
• Why is the healing from Deathfield (and Devour) STILL broken?
  

 

My other major gripe, is the lack of flow in skill use. Consumption should be off the GCD (in line with other classes resource management abilities). Unatural Preservation should be off the GCD (In line with other classes DCDs... (because that's what it seems to be)). As a more general points, tank-capable classes that play as DPS get to use their off-spec abilities (taunts) without impacting on their main-spec performance, because they're off the GCD. What do heal-capable DPS specs get that they can do without impacting upon their main-spec performance.... oh yeah, nothing.

 

Couldn't agree more

I could see a defensive CD being mixed with cloud mind. Would be nice to have you vanish from players unless you attack.

That is a very cool idea. Having a purpose for our aggro reducing ability like operatives/snipers would be really cool.

Cloud mind reducing damage incoming from a specific target reminds me a lot of detaunt from Rift (I think that's what it was). It was a CD that reduced 50% damage from a specific target for 15 seconds. It really is a good idea. It's on a long enough CD that it couldn't be abused and it would be just enough of a defensive CD against all of those extremely burst heavy classes.

 

The only problem with this that I see is if a healer is using it against someone against them and they have guard.. Only receiving 25% damage from one target would be pretty insane. At least sorc healers would be even more viable!

 

The defensive CD is the ONE thing that the vast majority of sorcs have been screaming for since launch (for pvp). The self heal is a joke against war hero opponents whose BASIC attacks do the amount of damage that a non crit heals for. (As a DPS build anyway, the self heal is at least buffed from the healing trees talents)

Regardless of how and if they change the class around, a few things are very clear:

 

- DPS sorcs lack burst damage

-Have inflated scores due to spreading of dots

-Lack survivability

-Have inflated kill counts due to spreading of dots

-Are not a viable spec for RWZs

 

Bioware is aware of many of these issues, don't let them fool you. However, I am uncertain why they have yet to address them.

 

It's really frustrating...

 

I always thought the following:

 

Light armor = tons of damage, low survivability(not the current survivability if you are targeted by a determined mara,PT, you are dead)

Medium = moderate surv. and mod. damage

etc. etc.

 

You get the picture. My only question is why are we handicapped? @bioware

One thing I am surprised about is that we don't even have an execute ability lol.

I'm generally against defensive abilties for sorcs/sages but a passive one I'd accept. Not if it cuts back on something els though because a DCD is probably thre last thing on my wishlist.

Honestly I think anything would be a good start. The thing is I can't imagine them ever giving us even the quality of burst other classes have. But the thing is we would need better burst than the other classes to even compete if we don't have a defensive cooldown. This is not to mention how terrible our damage is under pressure (being forced to kite). Sorc damage does need to go up, but the defensive options of a sorc need to be evaluated as well.

 

Having useful options and tools is the most important part of any competitive environment. Sorcs are limited in pvp not only due to low burst cap, but also becuase the base capabilities of the sorc are limited.

I'm generally against defensive abilties for sorcs/sages but a passive one I'd accept. Not if it cuts back on something els though because a DCD is probably thre last thing on my wishlist.

 

Well, in that case we should be the highest DPS class, and we are the worst.

 

Levelling up a pyro spec pyrotech showed me that. That's a proper dps class, pure and simple. Might even say it's a bit boring, just button mash and you get good results, maybe, but it's sustained burst is unquestionable, and it has a dot that actually hurts.

 

It's quite clear Bioware have this fallacious notion that a dps class that has a heal tree, operative, merc and sorc, should have crappy dps to compensate. Until the brain boxes get it into their head that self-healing when dps specced is "last resort" territory and generally not done, nothing will ever change.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Chemic_al

Well, in that case we should be the highest DPS class, and we are the worst.

 

Levelling up a pyro spec pyrotech showed me that. That's a proper dps class, pure and simple. Might even say it's a bit boring, just button mash and you get good results, maybe, but it's sustained burst is unquestionable, and it has a dot that actually hurts.

 

It's quite clear Bioware have this fallacious notion that a dps class that has a heal tree, operative, merc and sorc, should have crappy dps to compensate. Until the brain boxes get it into their head that self-healing when dps specced is "last resort" territory and generally not done, nothing will ever change.

 

Yep this is on spot with the problem. When you consider the wide variety of tools the pure dps classes have compared to the dps classes witha heal tree it is sad. I'm not sure if they ever even plan to address these problems. Its not to even mention that specs like full madness don't even have the force regen abilities to justify healing in combat. Healing will run you out of force and you have no real mechanic to get force back other than consumption........which takes away the health you just healed.