Defensive Cooldown for Sorcerer/Sage

Lowering its damage and making it instant accounts for a new skill. Also the the damage ouput of the tk/ling tree depends heavily on dist/ls, lowering its damage will make things worse for this tree.

its true that i can put out a pretty good bit of dmg as my sage but most of that dmg can be taken away with a simple cleanse. and its not even close to enough dmg to counter the fact that we're light armor. full elite gear and i get 7k smashed? sages and shadows are the only light armor classes in game. therefore their dmg should reflect that. dont give us defensive cooldowns and stuff just boost the dmg and healing a minor amount. we are supposed to be glass cannons. the only way a sage/sorc is ever top of dps/healing is if the other team sucks and doesnt throw 3 or 4 skills at them which would either kill em or put them in defensive run away mode.

Madness is ok for score-board padding.

Otherwise, it takes quite some time to drop someone, which is useless in basically every warzone.

Damage versus effective damage people; no one cares that you can triple dot someone if they still whitebar on WW and cross the goal line....

Make up your mind... either is OP being spammable at 2 - 2.8k or its NOT. Personally I say it is NOT OP. Right now a Sorc can stand up on a railing as a TK and spam away and it still takes forever to kill anything.

What I would like to see is Lightning Strike made castable-on-the-move.

Retain the 1.5sec activation timer, increase its damage about 5-10%, but allow me to use it while I am running away.

That would make the 18/23 Hybrid a viable glass cannon spec that has a handful of utility options and some built in burst if I order my attacks properly and save up Recklessness, Wrath, and a CL-Proc for a single CD-DF-CL burn phase.

I might actually be able to kill someone in less than 5 GCDs for once!

We can make lightning strike spamibility tied to the bubble. I dont know which state would be better and more balanced, being able to instacat lightning strike when bubble is on or when it is off?

If it is instacast when it is off, it will force you into a risky scenario when you postpone your bubble to shoot lightning strike. Get focused? Put your bubble on and run, bursted your bubble? You get your instacast back,

Or the opposite, you will strugle to keep your bubble as long as possible because this will allow you to be fullly mobile and dps. Your enemies will have to pop your bubble to deny you dps mobility, and if the bubbke mezz is on, you are not in a bad shape. Besides, you probably dont want permanent istacast, because with some alacrity, f you are left to freecast, you can get the gcd lower than 1,5. Being able to control this with bubble will add you options.

There is nothing wrong with being able to spam lightning strike while on the move. Melee have enough gap closers to compensate and they have greater defensive cooldowns and they hit a truckload harder than any sorc can. Hell if your worried as a sniper that you won't be able to compete vs them they can always make snipe activate instantly too or lower the cost of overload shot so that you can actually use it.

Read above, if you can freecast at 1.3s, you are better without instacas with 1,5gcd, better to give more options than enforce a perma instacast.

Yes its great being able to free cast at 1.3s but that ISNT going to happen. The moment any melee leap to you you are screwed. You cannot do much of anything vs them. I would much rather be able to move and have it instant cast (not intterruptable) than have a 1.3s cast time. Just remember what it was like for snipers before I think 1.2? When ALL sniper attacks were interruptable. The class was a joke. It was absolutely no threat whatsoever to any melee. This is what its like for a lightning sorc right now. It is also the same for a Merc.

may be in beta SWTOR, but SWTOR 1.0 sniper had always unshackable buff while in cover.