Sorcerer Changes Brainstorming

Both were buffed in their own way.

Issue is you then create a damage loss in madness, which cast LS sparingly but still.

Before 2,0, many people asked for a buff to it since it seemed lackluster, and I think it was.

You currently have a spec that is in a roughly fine place in PvE damage wise. It could use a slight boost, but not onthe magnitude you are proposing. PvP have many issues, but I don't believe the issues would happens as much if you had tool to be more free to cast as it is.

There is the reflexion path we should take for PvP imo.

PvE issues right now are just slight QoL and pushback issues, and a big utility one.

For damage, if you add a slight armor pen to LS, I think Lightning falls in a nice place.

Understand me, I want to see my primary spec get love lime you, but I don't want to see it be overbuffed and nerfed back into the ground in 2 months 1,2 style.

I'm fairly certain you're overestimating how much DPS would change with instant TB. It will take a global, so that reduces the effective cast time to 1.5s, shaving off only half a second. You'd be getting an extra LS every third TB, which wouldn't be a huge increase overall. On a crit, let's say 4-5k (not sure what it comes out to be in full pve gear, space that out over 33 seconds. It's probably about as much as a DPS improvement as would be needed in pve.

Numbers could be slightly off as I'm thinking about this during a wipe. With further thought, keeping the CD at 9s would give the extra LS every 27 seconds, which still isn't a huge increase. Increasing the cost to compensate would be a better choice, or at the very least dropping the cast to somewhere around .5 to 1s instead of that monster 2s.

Last edit for coherence. Don't post tired, folks.

If you are to lower the cast to 1,5, you might as well make it instant with an increased cooldown, at that point we could reach a pvp issue. However both scenario do not lie, TB would be in average superior to Heatseekers by a massive margin. I've argued on a thread specifically about it with someone, and the "slight superiority" of HM right now would be 1/10th of the superiority of changing TB to 1,5 sec cast or instant due to the autocrit and massive crit damage bonus, and the proc chance.

I'm not an hardcore theorycrafter, but it does appear to me you'd create a significant dps increase, and I'd estimate the damage nerf needed to keep it around its actual values to roughly 20%.

There are many ways you could go around adjusting it but assuming they want to keep it in line with arsenal thats the values you get.

If we figure we want a slight buff to it, instant and at 83-84% of its current damage is what you could look for, on an 9,5 seconds cooldown. Its mostly a mobility buff that way, and doesn't tweak pve too much.

Otherwise, you can go by the philsophy sorc = squishier therefore needs to out dps arsenal a bit. But imo you risk quite an uproar from that community, and possibly a nerf eventually.

I'm not against the change itself if you are wondering. I merely wish people to acknowledge there is a cost that would most likely come with that demand.


Edit : 1 extra LS/27 seconds is roughly 100 to 150 more dps depending on gear. Its a % based on mine currently, and i haven't parsed in a while but I believe I'm around 2650 right now, so around 5%.

Let me jump in with my opinions about a few possible improvements, that would require some more fundamental changes to the class, than the ones I came up with before. Disclaimer: I'm talking about dps in the forst place, because that's what I'm playing most of the time, and that is what I have experience and insight with.


Spell pushback: It needs to go. It is that simple. At the moment there are 8 classes in the game, all can specialize into damage dealing. Out of the 8 classes, there are at least 3 (that I kow of) capable of possibly gaining DPS while taking damage (mara, jugg, pt). I realize they are all meele classes, I'm not asking for anything similar for sorcerers. BUT out of the 8 classes there are only 2 actually losing dps while taking damage, the merc and the sorc. Now I understand the idea, that glass cannon classes need to be kept in line by certain mechanics, however needing spell pushback to lower their damage dealt would assume if they are not taking damage, they are leading the pack in dps. At the moment this is not true. Marauders (gaining dps from damage taken) and snipers (unaffected by damage taken) lead the pack, and the spell pushback mechanic is merely putting the other 2 ranged classes further behind snipers.

Pushback is mostly an issue for Lightning, Madness does'nt suffer too much because of it. Regardless in my opinion the pushback immunity talents of both specs for both classes should either be changed to 100% or at least 90% for dders, if the mechanic needs to stay at any cost, thus removing/decreasing one of the main issues the ranged classes are struggling for. Oh, and even though it was mentioned before several times (even by me), I will just say it again: grant pushback protection to lightning on crushing darkness and lightning barrage. It is needed.

As for healing, I won't go into spell pushback, since reducing or removing it could possibly make healing overpowered in pvp, but it may be doable anyway. I will just let all the smarter people pick this part of the problem apart.


Force management: There is no force management for sorcerers, and it is intended by design. The sorc is the one class, not meant to be resource limited on damage dealing. This works perfectly on lightning, the same should be said about madness too. Multidotting, aoeing, using shock while kiting should all be doable without ever having to worry about resource. Offhealing should definitely make the dpses force starved, but other than that pretty much nothing else. I won't even go into what mechanics should be used to achieve this, there are numerous possibilities, but it just needs to be changed. In pvp Madness can't afford to channel force lightning 50% of the time to regen, not even mentioning the lackluster and costly aoe of the spec, and since the class was'nt meant to be resource limited, it has no tools to deal with oom situations. (No free attack, no force regen cd, and don't even mention consumption to me, as it was clearly designed exclusively for Corruption.) I know the guys at Bioware did'nt ask about Madness, but they also won't be able to fix it with uncleansable dots alone.


Execute: I feel like Lightning has both the sustained dps and the burst to be perfectly viable wihtout an execute (I'd sure be happy to get one, but don't think it's needed), Madness however lacks in both regards. According to maths and dummy parses others have spent a lot of time documenting Madness is way behind lightning (and pretty much every other spec) in sustained dps, and unsurprisingly faces issues when it somes to finishing off any player, but especially healers in pvp. I believe an execute talent high up in the tree would possibly solve both issues by increasing dot damage under 30% of target's health.


Mobility: Madness has great mobility, so that is not a concern, on the other hand Ligthning suffers greatly due to any kind of movement, and this is specifically painful in pvp, where it is extremely easy to completely shut down a lightning sorc, knowing they can't deal any significant damage while kiting. The only fix i can imagine for this is giving the spec more abilites to instacast. Because making more abilities instant by deafult would change the spec completely, and possibly make it overpowered, I don't think this should happen. A better fix could be in my eyes if for example thundering blast were to make the next (possibly more than 1) lightning strike(s) instant cast. It should also be a 100% chance to be procced, otherwise it could end up like chain lightning: it gives a nice mobility tool in the hands of sorceres, but it's completely unreliable, thus not very useful, since it can only be procced by casting and not guaranteed.


That's it for now. I may be back later with more pointless and stupid ideas.

Only reason thunder blast shouldn't be instant is cause of all the procs that can come off it. Either make increase the proc chance or add a dot to thunder blast or increase the dmg. But 2 sec cast has to be justified.

I still feel that in general a sorc's dps is too reliant on procs and critical hits, which can screw you over somewhat if you get unlucky, on one of my parse attempts in madness I went for roughly 40 seconds without a single wrath proc. In lightning I find my chain lightning proc shows up at a decent enough pace, though if I don't get a crit I'd be lucky to get a 2-3k hit out.

and I know this doesn't seem to be the popular opinion on this thread right now, but I still feel as if sorc dps needs more love in pve.

Min dmg on chain lightning should be raised for sure. It's a 3 sec cast that can be made instant no reason why it should ever hit for less than 4k

Anyone ever notice that the proc length that makes tk throw tick twice as fast is extreme short to the point where u misss the proc sometimes ?

Nope. This is where the devs would say: L2LOS&H2F&P.

I think I am all ideaed out here slowly losing interest in this game. These devs take far to long to see things been talking about these same spec problems for lightning from PTS pre 2.0 . They then go and disrespect the community with l2p h2f only to turn around and say the spec needs some love. These people don't listen at all.

Eric when is 2.6 coming I am tired of waiting