As A Sorcerer, Every One Is OP

Only ops/scounds (in pairs), shadows/assassins (1 does the job), and some powertechs/vanguards are the bane of madness sorcerers. Ops/Scoundrel healers are the hardest (healers) for us to kill. Everything else is managable with proper tactics. Yes, we benefit least from expertise due to our abilities lacking high base damage (against fully WH geared players), affliction deals 200-400 per tick, creeping terror deals 140-180 per tick, and crushing darkness deals 450-700 per tick (the higher numbers can even be crits if it's a class with significant internal/elemental resists or DoT damage reduction via talents). In all honesty, affliction is a waste of force for a madness sorc (unless you're about to drop). Creeping terror is great but not for its damage. Death field (power relic buff + expertise adrenal + recklessness) damage values are steadily decreasing (used to deal ~4400 per target that lacked AoE damage reduction via talents, now it does 2200-3600 - hell, I've been seeing many of my empowered crits on it not even break 2k for certain classes/specs) - again, this is due to the mediocre damage value death field has so expertise isn't helping it nearly as much as other abilities.

We have two abilities that benefit moderately from expertise: Shock and (can't believe I'm going to say this) Force Lightning. Crushing Darkness doesn't seem to be doing much (even with wrath procs) - I tend to hit a target with a wrath procced crushing darkness for 1800 initial damage (should be more) whereas I hit the same target with shock for 2200 + 1100 (chain-shock). Something certainly seems to be bugged with wrath-procced crushing darkness's Initial Damage values (haven't checked its DoT values much since they fixed it to get bonuses from wrath procs).

Madness sorc. can dish out good (not great) Single Target DPS and potentially decent sustained dps, but its primary role is AoE and multiple targets (unfortunately, Death Field and DoT's are getting weaker as people gear up accordingly, and Force Storm is worthless except for being used as a door guard after bomb plants in void star - or in between door detonations on clustered enemies to slow them - it's damage is moot - 200-600 per person, per tick last time I found myself using it and I actually had relic + adrenal up - also costs a lot of force) and our force maintenance is awful. We can dish out dps for ~ 20 seconds of using our big damage abilities, then we have to use force lightning for 3-4 full channels before we can use another ability (here's where powertechs get to complain about being able to use an ability while our utility recovers, but powertech's rapid shots actually deals equivalent if not more damage to our force lightning depending on their procs as based on their spec - and can have similar effect, if pyro spec -50% slow-).

This is a difficult one. Valor level 79 on my sorcerer and I can definitely understand our classes weaknesses. However, most of the time I still dominate and unlike pre 1.2 I have to work for it.

For example in 3 warzones (Hb, VS,CW) last night I did about a total of a million dmg 100 Kills and one death. I kited my *** off and ran like a ***** when required. I was top dmg, Kills and Objective points each time. I wasnt left alone but I wasn't trained like I normally am.

When im trained on by two powertechs ( a few sick ones on our server) or marauders I usually die fast. Even One powertech I die relatively fast. We aren't a 1v1 class anymore and when these big hitters are around I struggle. Im easily identifiable with FL coming out of my hands and knowing I can do sick dmg unchecked im either running or dead. This isnt a fun playstyle at all (I then jump on my 45 marauder destroy face rarely having to run and am calm again:P) as escape at times is nigh impossible.

Now is the issue Sorcerers are too weak or is it certain melee classes have too much of an upperhand on them at times. I certainly dont feel weak and with a good tank and healer with me Il survive the marauder trains most likely. I dont think il survie two pyro powertechs even guarded and healed. They just appear too strong at the moment. As an addendum Im curious to see that of the FOTm marauders at 50 very few are actually any good while the Pyros PTs still seem to do great dmg even when crap and the good ones are gods.

So in conclusion I think certain classes need to be brought back a notch to give Sorcerers a more even chance. I dont think Sorcerers need direct buffs although a viable turret playstyle for the Lightning tree would be appreciated much as was done for carnage and rage for marauders. Id like to see how ranked pans out in full WH gear before anything definitive although i predict we will be high up on focus target lists as I doubt we would last long focused (likely die in a stun pull).

It's very rare to find pure DPS sorcerer/sages remaining (I'm 3/7/31). Many sages/sorcs have either gone pure heals or hybrid heals/dps (almost all of them have knockback root and melee-ranged stun on bubble break, which is annoyingly beneficial to heal-spec survival and I must say all healers are effective -despite all the QQ- if their teammates have companion passive buffs - namely the healing received increase). Also, what would be OP'd about a 5s AoE root and a 2s targeted root when snipers have a 5s AoE root + 5s targeted root? Particularly when you factor in that we tend to be DoT dependant (thus, we're more likely to root-break via damage early on).

The TL;DR of the whole situation is: Hybrid and Madness/Balance DPS Sorcs/Sages are absolutely 100% fine as they are. Should not receive any significant tweaks.

It's Marauders and Pyro Powertechs that need to be brought back down in line with the rest of the classes. Plain and simple. How they should be brought back in line is up for debate though (I propose nerfing the absurd Marauder cooldowns and making the Combustible Gas Cylinder dot dispellable by Sorcs/Sages.)

I also think the full Lightning/TK tree for Sorcs/Sages should be buffed, but I feel that if Bioware does buff it, the Marauders and Powertechs will use that as a fake excuse to keep their class OP. Therefore that tree should stay lame for the greater good of PvP balance.

I want bigger hits more burst. Stupid to kite and play hard and always to die with enemy at 3% and I am just kicking rocks cause I am out of cooldowns. Our dots should tick higher and through cc and we should have one reliable 4k (+) crit attack.

Issue is expertise applying to abilities that have high base damage values - sorcerer doesn't really have any (shock being the only significant increase - although crushing darkness should benefit more yet my shock is doing more initial damage). Problem is some classes have multiple abilities that have high (at least significantly higher) base damage values than sorc/sage and therfore they have multiple abilities that gain more significant bonuses from expertise (sniper/gunslinger, assassin/shadow, powertech/vanguard, maras/sents -annihilation/rage specs have more than carnage-, etc.). The biggest issue comes from the increase to expertise value caps for damage modifiers (sorc. has no abilities with significant base damage, so doesn't benefit as much) - the reduction in damage mitigation from expertise is at least permitting us to deal SOME damage with our abilities, but the dipsarity between being a class that has high base damage abilities and doesn't is growing.

I've tried every Sage spec I could think of, and for DPS I settled on the full Balance build you use as well. It's really the only viable one, but as you point out it does lack synergy because of DOTs breaking our CC. This also however has the added issue of causing problems for team play, where we are unintentionally either breaking CCs and ruining caps or we just aren't contributing because we can't really do anything else.

It also scales very badly with and against high end gear and high end PVP, as it lacks burst and most of the damage can be cleansed. I believe that's why you don't see many DPS Sage/Sorc in high level PVP now.

Healing wise Sage/Sorc isn't the best but is still viable, especially on a good team. But, personally, I find PVP healing very boring. Ironically I strongly prefer PVE Tank or Healing over DPSing, and in PVP it goes the opposite where I more enjoy DPS.

I have 3 other classes I play with, Assault based Vanguard is a much better DOT based ranged spec than Sorc/Sage right now. But I actually no longer play that spec because I find the tank spec is actually stronger. My Marauder blasts out more damage and has better survivability by far, and surprisingly feels harder to contain even in huttball, which is the only WZ I enjoy being a Sage in. I use my Marauder defensive cooldowns extremely offensively, and I've really only noticed a handful of other Marauders that play a similar playstyle that I do. My last class is an Operative but at a low level so I guess I don't really have a comment on that, but the playstyle seems more fun and I don't think I'd have any trouble with it at high level.

With Sage/Sorc right now it's basically taking advantage of weak players and bad gear. But more than that, it's just a really boring DPS style. There really isn't anything too useful in it, and it's actually, despite people's claims, less skillfull than the previous hybrid builds pre-1.2. The rotations don't actually seem to change at all and there are very few options on what you can do. People mistake the Marauders having different viable options as being more difficult or more skilled to use, but having those options actually makes playing the game more fun and makes you more effective than not having them.

Madness DPS falls off with gear. Get to full WH gear (remodded) and face opponents that are just as geared. DoT damage is bad. And we lose ~ 1000 damage to targets with death field (when we relic/adrenal) compared to when everyone was BM geared. Base damage of abilities is what is currently determining the efficiency of ability usage (i.e. I've stopped using affliction quite a bit now - just not worth the force cost).

Wha... Kinrath is basically and totally balanced pub vs imp...

Make sure you check for noobz in pve gear... and if you see any
try to nicely ask them to buy some recruit gear.

We do have a few players that have not gotten the memo... once you get
one or two of those in your Wz it's game over... otherwise we get some really good games
going in prime time.

I am sorry, but the whining in this game is ridiculous. Of course RDPS die to MDPS at close range. If they did not, NO ONE would EVER play a MDPS. Terribly hard to understand, I know.