...Or even viable?

 

Hey guys, I'm a longtime Madness player, but I decided to play around a bit and try out some hybrid specs. I ended up with this:

 

0/16/28

 

What I wanna know is, have anyone of you tried out a similar build, and how did it perform? Is this build viable or should I just keep going full madness?

 

I'm also uncertain whether I should keep my 2 points in Lightning Barrage or move them to crit chance or alacrity. What do you guys think?

 

I'm dependent on a lot of procs for my rotation/priority list, but it works out alright.

 

I think I'm getting pretty good damage, but I'd like to hear the opinion from some more experienced players!

 

 

Thank you!

Highest parsing hybrid spec is 2/16/27, but it's still far behind full lightning and madness for single target.

The last time I compared hybrid with madness, the difference was 200 DPS and I was in 69 gear.

It's great for questing, FPs and maybe SM operations with lots of AE and zero force issues.

However, for HM operations i recommend sticking with madness or lightning.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Sindariel

Thank you! I'll go back to madness then

PVP perspective and dailies -

 

I play 0/30/16 and it's great for group play and survivability (Well, as much as a sorc can have). Solid aoe pressure + instants galore. (death field - instant CD/boosted LS - Insant CL - Chain Shock)

 

Problem is it's totally RNG dependent in the burst area... but at least you're the most mobile that you'd ever be in any other spec. Full madness isn't as good until dot protection comes into play and full lightning is really dependent on good teammates who can free you up to turret.

 

The thing that I like most about the build though is being able to throw instant Potentially hard hitting crits at low health targets from 30 meters anywhere around me. I think the build you want to play depends more on if you're a team player or just want a 1v1 spec.

 

Also, having plenty of AOE to do dailies with = Awesome.

 

PVE perspective:

Full lightning if you're lazy and don't want to pay attention to your dot timers

Edited November 16, 2013 by veyl

No escape from checking dots timer, lightning just refresh one instead of two.

 

As for DPS, hybrid will be 150 to 200 DPS under full madness and 250-300 or so under lightning by my numbers.

 

While the old hybrid (13/28) was potentially better than madness, the boost the upper tree received (CT buff, forked darkness buff) make the full tree better than the hybrid. Its still a nice spec in solo play, but then again I kinda grew a liking to TB/CL chain wiping a strong

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201ZccrbbZcMfRsbkrf0M.3

 

This spec would work well as far as solving force issues no need to pick up chain lightning as you wouldn't get the 50% bonus to crit.

 

You would get the bonus for CD though and Lightning strike to add to your Wrath procs. also the improved ticks for force lightning. On the plus side you would retain the 30% less damage while stunned however you would lose the 2 second root and have to rely on snare knockback stun.

 

You lose out on the electrocute damage reduction also 3% crit.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201ZccrbbZcMfRsbkrf0M.3

 

This spec would work well as far as solving force issues no need to pick up chain lightning as you wouldn't get the 50% bonus to crit.

 

You would get the bonus for CD though and Lightning strike to add to your Wrath procs. also the improved ticks for force lightning. On the plus side you would retain the 30% less damage while stunned however you would lose the 2 second root and have to rely on snare knockback stun.

 

You lose out on the electrocute damage reduction also 3% crit.

 

Imo this spec is now "you might as well go full madness" at that point. The extra survivability you get imo doesn't counterbalance enough the loss of the root on CT.

 

However if you do want that survivability it gives for PvP with the ez-mode force management (that thing is worthless in PvE, so I'm assuming its aimed for PvP play where you often get stun locked) you might want to move points from Subversion to Lightning Barrier. You'll never hardcast LS, so the thing is mostly pointless for non-full lightning spec, and subversion alone isn't worth 2 points. Might as well go full out for what you intend, which is lowering your damage output in exchange for survivability and force management. In this case, survivability boost by the barrier is much better than the management one on LS, especially since you already have Effusion.

 

 

For PvP I would still personnaly go, if I was to go hybrid with the standard 0/18/28, for stun on bubble break, and mobility.

I play a 6/3/36 a hybrid spec is just to soft in warzones and little to no control. It's nice if you have a pre made group because you can go crazy with spells but if your focused you will die quickly.

I play a 6/3/36 a hybrid spec is just to soft in warzones and little to no control. It's nice if you have a pre made group because you can go crazy with spells but if your focused you will die quickly.

 

As said, if I was to go with an hybrid spec, so I quite agree.

 

I typically respec to full madness for them. Chance are I won't live long enough to run out of force anyway

Edited November 19, 2013 by verfallen

PVP perspective and dailies -

 

I play 0/30/16 and it's great for group play and survivability (Well, as much as a sorc can have). Solid aoe pressure + instants galore. (death field - instant CD/boosted LS - Insant CL - Chain Shock)

 

I use that for dailies as well. More fun than either full spec IMO.

For ops and FPs I'm almost always healing so no comparison here

I was thinking of doing something along the lines of this.

 

any cons you can think of while in this?

I would take Froce Horrors and drop Parasitism 9% damage to dots is better than 1% healing through crit dots when you will only likely be using 1 dot. Oppresing Force can be dropped also 5 seconds won't make or brake you.

 

Then you would have what we call Wrafhfull Lightning. Lightning Strikes with Wrath proc can hit for 6- 7k depending on your surge/power Death Field you can use but it's really just for filler and doesn't hit hard without the bonus of 30% crit and it doesn't improve dot damage it's more just for padding stats if you have a clump of people crits will be low at 4k in that spec. I would use the point elsewhere to be honest.

 

Lightning stike will be your heavy hitter though in this build and I would use it early and often. IYou can start with LS FL (wrath proc) Shock LS CL (should have proc'd )FL You need decent crit for the spec to be viable nothing like hitting all that and only getting one crit and only doing 10k damage and seeing it all be healed away with 1 spell.

 

The problem with Lightning is that the damage is energy based so heavy armor reduces it's damage a lot. You'll see once in a while a big hit on a sorc/sage but don't be fooled by those or splash damage done by aoe spells like CL. If a Maura or Jugg is on you with any skill they will shut you down and drop you with something called burst damage. Your biggest hitter CL just about every dps class has a 30% reduction to aoe attacks so the reality is your crit bonus is really only 20% then subtract armor/expertise and your left with limp single target damage.

 

In the instance of a powertech they have 30% damage reduction while stunned so even if you got a crit with CL on one that was stunned you would be at a base -60% so your bonus crit damage would be -10% if he had hit you with ion pulse prior to being stunned you would be at -15% then subtract for armor and expertise. So you see there are some clases you simply don't want to waste your time with AOE on because you would do about 2800 crits even out of stun you'll get a little over 5k.

 

 

 

LS is your main weapon the proc CL is ok but if you did any testing on the dummy I bet that just using LS would result in higher dps and overall damage.

 

The dev's have made our damage pretty pathetic because of all the reductions but if you look at the end of a warzone a sorc can have high damage but about 2-4 killing blows with 31 kills look at a deception assasin and you'll see his damage may be done but his biggest crit is much higher and his killing blows is probably 3-4x what a sorcs is. This is because we can't kill anything but we spend a lot of time trying where as a sin gets kills and hits hard hence the target is not alive long enough for them to have bigger damage numbers.