Time for a PvP Fix

As a long time sorc healer in various capcities (full, hybrid) and someone who's a PvPer 90% of my time on him, Believer here is completely on the mark with his well thought out analysis of the current state of the class. I can't buy my way onto a good ranked team, it's lol pugging and constant losses or nothing.

Essentially, I do well in unranked because of general skill level, but when I face a 4 man pre-made of similar quality players in the various OP classes, I get crushed.

Well done sir.

The problem is Sorcerers actually are one of the very best in the game at solo PvE. And are one of the most played classes in the game. So they decide they can't really buff us. But then they take away our abilities in PvP (only classes that have PvE abilities removed in PvP are sorcs and merc... hmmm) We have an ability we are able to spend spec points on that allows our whirlwind to affect additional targets, but it only works in PvE. Speaking of Whirlwind, that and Concussion Missile by Merecenaries are great in PvE. I have tried some flashpoints where the only CC we had were flashbangs or Intimidating Roar. Let me tell you, both of those suck as CC in PvE. In PvP they last just as long as our Whirlwind on the same CD, but they both affect multiple targets and are both instant cast.

Give us a 60 second CC in WZ's and then see who is still crying about bubble stun. Or since they cut down the effect of whirlwind by 90% cut down the CD by 90% . In PvE we have a 60 second effect and a 60 second CD, in PvP we have a 6 second effect and a 60 second CD? No give us a 6 second CD too. Let the crying commence

Since they can't give us more CC which our class was designed around, and they can't give us burst that would be commiserate with our lack of defenses, since smash is already the most complained about thing in game, and Mara's and Juggs have at least 2x our survivability so we would have to do 14k auto-crits to be truly balanced with them. So give us something.

We have 3 dot's and many consider Madness to be a DOT class. Affliction and Creeping Terror both do about 2k damage, and spread that over 15 seconds. They tick every 3 seconds. Ticks do not interrupt caps, casting, channeling, or stealth. They do break our whirlwind. First off, Affliction needs a CD. Nothing hurts our class more than people tab DOTing with affliction, spreading out 2k dmg over 15 seconds to 6-8 people looks really cool on the scoreboard at the end of the match, but actually has a net negative effect on you and your team as you aren't doing anything useful in that fight. Plus people see those huge damage scores at the end of a fight and assume everything is fine with Sorcs. Deathfield (and Deathmark) has a 15 second CD, Crushing Darkness has a 15 second CD, Creeping terror has a 15 second CD. Put Affliction on that same CD.. Triple the damage by all DOT's, make Deathmark affect every tick over its duration. DOT's are able to be dispelled and it takes a lot of work to put a deathfield, and 3 dots onto one target. It should be doing more damage than abilities that are instant cast with 0 set-up. Risk-reward.

Conversely make the duration shorter, the ticks faster, make them interrupt stealth (those guys need a predator) and captures, and lower the CD's of Crushing Darkness and Creping Terror. And make all of our DOT's AoE up to 5 targets like corrosive grenade. Make Crushing Darkness always insta cast (seriously a 3 second CD for that?) and make wrath procs just give a flat 20% bonus to our next 2 abilities. Deathfield has to affect up to 5 additional targets though, not 3 (it is less than smash, orbital strike, deathfrom above, etc. anyways) and deathmark has to affect all ticks, not just the first 10 (specced right, we have 19 ticks of DOT I believe). Risk v Reward.

Risk vs. Reward is the foundation of game theory, it's something that the makers of a game should be intimately familiar with. No offense intended, but whoever designed some of these classes and mechanics has never heard of Game Theory or Risk vs Reward. Risk vs Reward says the risk of dying faster with less flat damage mitigation from armor, compounded by the risk of having the least defensive Cooldown abilities of any class in the game should be met with a reward equal to that risk. Trade-offs. Bioware started out with D20 games, and character creation. Original Bioware was intimately familiar with Risk vs Reward and Game Theory. This current Bioware is obviously just a shell of its former self, but it is sullying everything the name Bioware was built on.

Theres so much to comment on your post, that i feel i have to explain why i use the word scumbag when i refer to the so called "SWTOR balance team".

The bubble buff wasnt a mistake on an oversight that is now being corrected. While i agree that the pre 1.2 double dip was a non intended bug that had to be fixed the bubble stun buff was thought and tested, it wasnt an error.

Why is that so important? Because it was thought and tested, and it was approved, BUT MONTHS LATER THEY GOT CAVED IN BECAUSE SOME MARAUDERS CRIED ON FORUMS. The PvP team actually caved in when the marauder kids cried all over.

What right does a marauder / juggie has tro cry about something in SWTOR? Marauders are the only MANDATORY AC in a RWZ because carnage group predation is just too good. Even if you play like dog you might make into a rated team as a carnage mara because we just need predation.

Marauders and Juggies have top dps in PvP, both in terms of burst and sustained, while having at least 3x more survivability than the other dps classes. Marauders actually have 3 working and beatifully streamlined specs for PvP, each one attending to a unique playstile but all very competitive. Juggies have LOLSMASH which is over the top, but vengeance is also decent for PvP, although it doesnt have a lot of burst its very good for huttball (hello ball carrier pull JK invulnerability).

Marauders and Jugs facerrol their way into any warzone, having excellent CC (hello instant AoE mez), excellent survivability (hello multiple defensive CDs) and several ways of locking down any caster (JK force choke, push, cast spell on lolmara? JK IN COMBAT STEALTH).

They can actually overextend their healers and get away with it with their "balanced" cooldowns, no other DPS class can do it, not even powertechs.

All of this, on top of incredibly good DPS, if not the highest potential DPS in PvP area with their "balanced" smash spec.

Months of playing with this height of imbalance actually created a full generation of "spoiled" players. Players who complain about bubble burst but they dont realise that charging a sage upfront is not the best strategy ever. Players that dont realise our bubble is so weak that 3 ticks of force choke will actually break if from a safe distance.

The dev team caved to this kind of players, they actually caved in, its unbeliveable.

You deserve your title.

What I like most in this thread is how mature the community has become.
It's not just a qq thread of ppl crying out,but seems like one with ppl that have realized what the vital problems of sorcs are atm.I don't see even players from other classes interfearing in here just to troll with posts like "take your nerf and sit tight now...you were op for 3 months",as it was happening close to 1.2,which shows that even players of other classes know that sorcs need a fix.I' ll talk only in terms of dps as I've never played a healer in swtor and the only healing class I've played in my 6 years experience of mmos was a shaman in wow.
There are things I wanted to suggest that look logical atm:
1.A madness based spec should have its basic dot,affliction,hitting harder.I laugh at the fact that my biggest crit of affliction on a full wh player is around 600 while other classes' dots hit me with 900 while I am at 1350 expertise.
2.Chain lightning should be put back into wrath proc.I don't think that this would affect a lot the current pvp situation anyways cause many classes have aoe avoidance and the spell itself isn 't hitting that hard.2,5-3k on 3 targets would be nothing compaired to the 7-9k aoe others can pull.It would just give to madness or hybrid specs a bit more burst.
If you don 't wanna bring chain lightning back,then something has to be given to strenghten lightning strike when being cast by wrath proc.
3.Change bubble stun to work only for the caster.This will stop the whole qq from melee players about the chain stuns and will avoid us from being taken something else that will nerf our survivability even more.
4.As for lightning....I don't know what to think of.The whole spec needs a format.The bread and butter of this spec is TB.It's a very powerfull spell BUT it has a cd and a casting time.So as long as this spec is easy to shut down,they should give it something that would make us a threat of burst at least when TB isn't on cd.
I was thinking about a talent that gives lightning strike a % to reduce next TB's cast time and to stuck for 2-3 times so that TB could be casted at around 1sec.
5.This last thing is bothering me for a long time.A full lightning tree can't get wrath.So lightning barrage is a crap talent to be in lightning tree.I really don't care for a proc in my secondary filler.I would prefer instead a talent that gives a buff to our main filler.lightning strike.like a stucking vulnerability or slow.

Oh btw....something last that I've been hearing from the whole ranged dps community.One of the biggest fails of BW on ranged classes was the nerfing of our small cc into 10m.They have to reconsider that as long as the whole strategy against a warrior is to keep him away.If he comes close then you are sure dead.Atm warriors don t even struggle for the main difficulty of their class....how to reach ranged!!

Merry x-mas to every1

One interesting point that has been raised how facerrolish overpowered and too reliable melee are in this game, when were talking PvP.

If you make a list of highly sucessful rated teams all around you will notice that the great majority of them are melee heavy teams. At least it was like that on Fatman, i have never seen a highly RWZ team with more than one ranged DPS.

This makes our life even worse since melee pressure train IS the counter to our caster / ranged playstile, be it healing or DPS caster, since we can easily LoS any ranged damage dealer.

What SWTOR dev team doesnt realise is that, they HAVE TO nerf melee (i consider ptech melee) to make the PvP more competitive because if they actually buff us and mandos to melee level well be madly overpowered and the game would turn into a 1 shot fest.

The problem is, the scumbags think melee is actually balanced, they think its a coincidence that sage and mandos are the worst classes in game. THEY ARE THE WORST CLASSES IN GAME BECAUSE THEY ARE RAPED BY MELEE, IS THAT SO HARD TO SEE FOR PETES SAKE.

What about sniper yo?

Sniper is ranged, they are also immune to charge and have hunker down, they also can burst as hard as a melee, if they play their cards right. That is why sniper is the only viable ranged class in rateds. And even tho they are viable, teams dont ever take more than one sniper, and most of the time their primary job is to AoE cap areas with that neverending probe.

Why? While snipers are a kickass balanced class, with good decent burst and means to fight back and control the melee wave, they take a little more finesse to play and they cant overextend.

Melee is too good, its too easy, too much straightfoward. While straightfoward "frontliner" deserve their place in the PvP world, the level of dominance they have achieved in SWTOR is totally out of proportion.

This brings me to the matter of bubble bursting affecting other people than the sage.

FRIENDLY BUBBLE BURST IS THE ONLY THING IN THE META GAME THAT KEEPS OVERPOWERED MELEE TRAIN IN CHECK.

Its the only think that keeps them from actually annihilating a whole team in a matter of a few globals, thats why they hate it. And if the scumbags actually remove it without nerfing them its going to be the end for ranged, really, there will be no hope.

Now bear with me and think about the story of SWTOR development. Apart from scrapper (which is in the gutter too btw) not a single melee train spec has been toned down since day one. On the contrary, all they receive is buffs and fixes. If you check the all time patch notes of SWTOR, in ALMOST EVERY SINGLE DAMN PATCH weve seen buffs or fixes for the melee classes, either by straight buffing or fixing their abilities so they work "faster", the only exception being minor tone downs to annihilation tree that almost dont affect PvP and downgrade of LOLMARA SUPERMAN SKILL for 4 seconds, which doesnt make a difference really, they are still OP as ****.

Just look at the way they "nerf" powertech. The 1st powertech "nerf" came in 1.2, they put a ICD on rail shot. While it prevented the aberration of rail shot proccing 3 times in a row, since the proc chance went way up, it made the powertech damage more reliable and actually PUMPED UP both their burst and sustained. I know that because my wife plays a vanguard and her damage actually went way up with 1.2 "nerf" because she knows she can make it proc roughly every 6 seconds instead of sitting and waiting for god procs. It was a buff.

Think about the second powertech "nerf". They nerfed the slow, which was like the worst decision EVER because now ptechs are free kills to maras / sins since they cant kite them anymore (50% vs. 30% slow). But hey, while their range was reduced (non issue for ptechs btw, they were always melee) THEYR BURST ACTUALLY WENT UP. How so? Well assault plastique doest share a CD with sitck grenade anymore so they can just stick both grenades and time their 6 sec proc to make everything blow almost instantly, effectivelly killing people in a 2 or 3 globals if they play their cards right. It was a buff.

That is the point when i stop believing the ability of this development team to actually fix this game. They just love their melee-ish PET CLASSES and take a dump on ranged classes now and them (except sniper, i guess some dev loves sniper).

Look what the way they "nerf" their non stealthy frontline melee classes, even thought half the world knows that they are OP and that RWZ teams only take non stealthy melee, now look at the way they destroyed sage mandos and scrappers continuously.

Even if they buff us, its going to be a slighty fix. Like they did in 1.4, they PRETENDED to buff us to make us viable but were still not viable and while they were announcing the GREAT FIX FOR SAGES AND MANDOS YO, they actually MADE A STEALTH BUFF TO SMASH, GOD KNOWS WHY.

Thats how they work.

There will be no hope for us while they dont nerf melee, and they will never do it, they also wont buff us to the powerlevel wielded by their pet classes because that literally would mean that we could do like 15k damage in two globals, so strong and reliable they are.

Instead, they will actually remove from the game the only thing that keeps melee training partially in check, which is friendly bubble burst.

The thing with friendly bubble burst is that, instead of killing people under focus in 2 globals, melee trains take like 2 globals and 3 seconds to do it, which actually gives a (small) chance of healing tru all that smash and fighting back. With friendly bubble burst gone, its going to be boom boom smash everyone dead, RWZ will be decided on who smashed who first and ranged will totally dissapear, with the exception of one sniper here and there.

Scumbag developer is scumbag, what fcan we say?

Take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBV7H92uRG8

Granted, this was obviously made for fun and it might not work out exactly like that in real situations but the fact alone that it can work like that, means that there's something that needs to be fixed.

Stunning, rooting, snaring or whatever the hell it is...this game has way too much of it already. It's pretty obvious that they never thought back when they were first designing the Corruption tree, that healers would ever be willing to give up their Aoe heal and that's how we ended up with a hybrid that takes both Efficacious Currents and Backlash. And the truth is that at launch, with the lower cast time of Dark Infusion and the free Consumption, there was no need to.

My point is this: When healers are willing to give up one of their most important heals just to survive, it means that there's obviously something wrong with the balance and it should be addressed.

But, personally, I wholeheartedly support anything that removes one of (what it feels like) millions of CCs and stuns in this game. I wish that one day Star Wars will finally seize to be Stun Wars and that goes for ALL classes.

We must demand a change to our survivability and/or healing. NOT support one more root.

So I agree with what the mod proposed (making it only for bubbles cast on ourselves). They could even give it a chance of applying to bubbles we cast on others (like 15%/30%) so that we could keep it but not abuse it.

PS: I agree with pretty much all the rest of your post. Although, I do not think that calling people names helps in any way...

Ok bro, the video shows a bunch of smart players using their skills in a smart way to control the opponents.

Thats cool thas cool, but really any skill from several classes in the game can be used to give massive advantages when smart players use them, when they play their cards right.

Once i have played a ranked huttball match and the other team had 4 fire pullers on it (1 ptech 3 tankasins), so everytime my team got the ball whoever was carrying it was literraly fire pulled 3 times in a row. No matter what we did to stop it, since half of their team was a puller, our ball carrier always ended in the fire.

We can say the same about guard, we can say the same about smart players using taunt and making people tank like 6 dps on top of them (ive seem it happen).

I dunno if theres a video about it, but have you ever seen what happens with a non bubble sage when he/she gets focused by 2 smashers? Smash hits a EWH sage for over than 6k, force scream hits for over than 5k, thats more than 20k damage in a few globals.

You can say the sage deservers to die because two smash monkeys ganged up on them, and youre not wrong, the problem is, if i have a class that dies in 2 globals and another class that can live for like 5 globals thus giving the friendly team a chance to react and try to stop the smash monkey attack, people will obviously bring the 3 global guy.

"But but but, non bubble sage still has knock back"

Yeah, and smashers have another charge, this move actually crits for 3k on a EWH geared sage.

That sage is extremely underpowered is a fact. Is bubble stun OP? I really dont know, its debatable, we can talk all night about the implications of bubble stun (2 nights if we have some good beer) but the underliying question is:

WHILE BUBBLE BURST CAN BE VIEWED AS OP BY SOME POINT OF VIEW (especially the point of view of melee train) ITS ACTUALLY THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS US SEMI-VIABLE.

Im talking about both self and friendly bubble stun. Without friendly bubblestun, a hybrid sage cannot heal the kind of damage smash / ptech can do without the bubble relief.

If they knockout friendly blind, bubble sage might still be a pain to kill, but we wont be able to buy time to our team before the big smash attack anymore, thus hurting our viability for RWZs.

What about full heals?

Its kinda cool, some people can make it work, but the question is: full heals needs constantly babysitting to put up respectable perfonmances, sawbones healing will but equal (if not better) performance with less peels, more control and MORE UTILITY?

MOAR UTILITY, PREPOSTEROUS!!!!!!

Non hybrid sage utility:
- friendly pulls for huttballin


Sawbones utility:
- smuggle
- stealth (sapcap)


Hybrid sage utility:
- friendly pulls
- BUBBLESTUN YAY
- rooting knockback (kickass)

I thin that pretty much underlies our situation, as long as the game stays this way, as long as classes have multiple stuns, instant aoe mezzes, pulls, pushes, double snares (carnage mara says hi) and multiple charges (hello smash knock me JK ANOTHER CHARGE) "overpowered" bubble stun doesnt look so OP.

I respect your opinion brother, but i still think i am right on the matter.

Merry xmas.

The short version question is this: Why is it only a hybrid healer is ever wanted by competitive ranked groups (if at all)?

Second, why is it they are ONLY WANTED for their bubble stun? Not a single thing else they provide that a similarly skilled operative can provide. In fact, in normal warzones when I outperform an operative I give myself an extra pat on the back, because I knew I worked harder to do it.

I think i may have hit on something here ,but what a about a skill (you could call it fear or whatever) that your invincible or like a 30-50% damage reduction to people within 5m for like 5-8 seconds. put it on a 1 to 2 minute cd. that way if melee decides its all that and jumps on you, pop that and absorb part (or all) of there ridiculous smash or scream. plus it doesn't screw up pve either, nor does it make it more of a stun fest. then throw a high level talent in madness to lower the cooldown or extend the duration, to balance the utility between lightning and madness. and the cherry on top would be the animation. four juggs come flying at you then they start cowering, and your like COME AT ME BRO

and if this has been posted i'm sorry, didn't wanna read 50+ pages

Lotsa good suggestions here OP. Although, personally, here's what I'd like to see for Corruption changes. It would work wonders for mobility.

Make Force Bending change the Dark Heal to an instant HoT that heals for the same amount it does now. Perhaps over 8-10 seconds. Each tick can crit, of course. Now move the +60% crit chance from DH force bending over to DI. Lower the cost of DI by 5 force as you said.

This guarantees that the super long cast on DI is worth it, when you know there will be a big heal at the end. 2.5 sec cast with a pretty high force cost should guarantee a big heal through increased crit rate. And the Dark Heal converted to a HoT means that a sorc also now has a tool to use on the move, albeit at a fairly high force cost.

Good work, OP.