Oh and 12k was a a bit of an exaggeration. I used to hit that but my gear has improved since then. Now I hit for 13-14k. Edited November 29, 2017 by fortyfivedollars

Also would it be possible to lower the cooldown of Crushing Darkness to 10 seconds to synch it with Thundering Blast for more fluid burst potential?

Also possibly remove the 10% Internal and Elemental damage reduction bonus from the Inquisitor/Consular class buff. Edited December 3, 2017 by fortyfivedollars

I guess that's really the fundamental problem with the Lightning spec in PvP. Lightning's damage is mitigated too much in PvP compared to it's lack of defensive damage mitigation. And that's just the spec. I'm not even talking about the fundamental problems for caster specs in this game, which I have already covered in previous threads.

The specs never been the same since they nerfed lightning bolt in the 4.0 force storm OP fiasco or was it 3.0, I can’t remember.

I’m sure the veterans remember how they made LS part of the rotation and put a snare in it. Seriously, who makes a castable AOE part of a burst spec rotation

Anyway, people QQ’d with good reason. Bioware in their wisdom completely ignored the feed back and what the problem actually was. Instead of nerfing FS, they nerfed lightning bolt’s burst and instant proc. This broke the rotation, but still didn’t fix the problem with FS. Eventually 3-4 months later they decided to finally nerf FS power and it’s snare, but they never reversed their nerf to lightning bolt.

Since then the class has never been the same. It’s been kludgy in the rotation and lacking any real burst potential compared to all other burst classes. But also in that time they’ve made survivability higher, which is great if you want to run around all match healing yourself at the expense of your already weak dps output

IMO, the whole spec needs a rethink and it needs to be completely seperate to the other Sorc specs so that it doesn’t affect them in some unforeseen way. I think this is why we always have so many problems with balancing classes because they don’t just focus on the spec specific abilities, they always seem to do broad spectrum nerfs of a whole class to fix just one spec and that always breaks one of the other ones they weren’t trying to fix.

For me personally, I would like to see much more burst, less reliance on dots (we already have Madness for dots) and less reliance on AOE to do damage (once again, we have Madness for that). Also less time self healing and more passives to mitigate damage. I think survivability would be too high if they were to grant the burst I want and I’d happily trade some of that survivability for more burst dps.

Some of the ideas people have posted here are good, but none are perfect for what I’d like. Which is a ranged sorc version of a Fury Mara, no dots, less healing, more passive defence and even more of reliance on mobility to mitigate damage so it is a pure combat class and not a semi hybrid that is there to off heal or apply fluff AOE damage.

Edited December 18, 2017 by TrixxieTriss

Still you're not hitting 12k unless they have some cooldown active or your gear is very suboptimal. The top parse does 19.7k on average with TB, so even with 10% internal dr you should be doing something like 17.7k without recklessness and in the ballpark of 24k with recklessness.

 

That’s a parse and doesn’t represent pvp play where you can really get a full rotation together. You are also talking about the “top” parses, not the average damage done by TB in a pvp environment.

I average about 14k TB in pvp. I have also crit stupidly high on occasion (highest 36k), but that is so rare as to be an anomaly.

Basically, you can’t compare paring theory to pvp, it’s a completely different environment to pve.

Dummy parses apply to pvp perfectly fine. Not the overall dps done on a dummy parse, but the average crit on Thundering Blast on a dummy can easily be applied to pvp. The damage calculations happen in exactly the same way, there's just a few factors to take into account. Dummy don't have internal DR, so you'll have to shave off 10% for that. That is the damage you can expect to get on someone with just the inquisitor buff and no further buffs or DCDs. Now certain classes get some innate dr, but you should still easily be hitting 16k-17k on non tanks with no defensive cooldowns active.

Now sure you can argue defensive cooldowns are obviously used in pvp, but then all abilities are affected by defensive cooldowns, note that I'm quoting these numbers to compare them to other high hitting abilities like Ambush and Heatseakers and thus if I'm not counting defensive cooldowns on those, it makes no sense to do take them account for Thundering Blast.

So don't give me that 'parses don't apply to pvp' nonsense, they absolutely do apply. Comparing average damage done by certain abilities on dummies are a perfectly valid way of calculating their expected damage on players.

Edited December 19, 2017 by AdjeYo