Sorcerer Changes Brainstorming

That was quite a slap in the face yeh, however we should not have brought in marauder in the questions we sent. That just made dev tunnel vision on it, and the valid concern raised sounded like "I wanna be like a Marauder/sniper!"

I'm not justifying the answer we got, that was just plain ridiculous, but I believe the question could have been formulated better.


As far as FL procs goes, its long enough. Only time I risk the proc is delaying it hoping for also a CL one if recklessness is up. Otherwise in 10 seconds you have plenty of time to reapply CD and affliction then cast TB if needed before using it.

Its main issue is that proc gets hit particularly hard by pushback due to its short channel on one side, and the fact the spec has no PB protection on FL. Hence why I think that proc should be made immune to pushback.

Few sorc changes mostly for heals.

Changed Sap strength to allow your static barrier to reduce damage to yourself by 5% when ever your static barrier is removed due to damage.

Force bending-Dark Infusion changed to reduce the cast time by 0.50 seconds(pretty sure this is how it used to be)

Fadeout should be basline for all Sorcerers and replaced with a new talent in the corruption tree called <Empowered Mind> that causes cloud mind to grant remove and grant immunity to snares and roots for 2secs

Conspiring Force switched with Shapless Spirit in the Madness tree.

this next one is kinda op imo

Courruted Barrier- now heals allies that are affected by your static barrier by 1% of your total hp and causes Force Barrier to heal allies within 10m by 1% of your total hp.

Reverse Corruption- now also takes Consumption off the gcd and reduces the health spent by 3%

Pve Mystic 2 piece set bonus that lowers the cd of Innervate by 1.5 should be baseline for Corruption.

New Pve Mystic 4 piece set bonus now increases Static barriers Absorb by 15%

Old Pve Mystic 4 piece set bonus is now the new 2 piece set bonus that adds 50 force.

Lastly combine sith defience and Will of the Sith and increase the damage reduction from Sith defience to 2.5/5% total.

Thats all I have for sorc heals.

For rotational purposes ya 10 secs is ok but for when u want to use that ability as a slow/dmg. Example u drop crushing darkness then affil. U get leap to, u wait for your bubble to burst so u can force run out and TB. By the time u get into position get off the TB your proc may or may not be over especially if u have to heal in there somewhere or bubble back yourself or knockback. We take so much dmg and have to react so quickly to different situations that I have missed that proc several a times.

And yes the questions were not good and a ton left out for lightning mainly cause I think the person who gave the questions doesn't understand lightning problems but Eric and his team should have combed through it before they submitted it to the devs to make sure the right intent was given.


The person who I quote early in this thread knows the class well. He used the word counter intuitive when describing our defenses it mimics what I said in the sage thread. I hope Eric reads that this time around

I"m entirely sure this is the appropriate thread, but I am unexcited by tuning...although that is always ever changing and needed.

Thinking Outside the Box...

If we are not supposed to be the best damage dealers due to our ability to heal, then make us the best support class.

Battle Meditation - Damage
Put us in a trance that heightened the rest of the raid's dps by a set amount where the formula of the heightened damage raid output of the remaining 3 dps raiders (or whatever minus the battle meditating sorc) cumulative during the 20 seconds of a 2 minute cooldown would be a good chunk (20% to 30%) higher then the normal dps of the 4 dps with Sorc simply outputting dps.

So say the 4 dps averaged 2600 dps each ...over 20 seconds they would do normally do 208000 damage. If Battle Meditation did Double Damage, the 3 dps (4th dps is the sorc Channeling Battle Meditation) would then do 312000 damage over 20 seconds. That is pretty reasonable considering how much health boss fights have.

Tradeoffs, the sorc no longer would get to compete with the highest dps numbers BUT at least would would be asked on raids as a compliment to the Maurader and Sniper damage and actually be asked to come.

Battle Trance - Resource Refill
Thinking of what a healer would benefit from a battle meditation. Since one of the things that makes a sorc more of a labored experience as a healer than playing the Operative of infinite resources is the fact we have to constantly consume. What if we had moments where we would want the entire raid to burst their dps and needed their resources to be refilled. Give the sorc a Battle Trance to channel a couple seconds (maybe 8 to 10) that would refil all resources, including rage. Again 2 minute cooldown.

Just 2 ideas outside the box.

I do NOT want to diminish the importance of the class balance and fine tuning discussions because I believe those are important...I just find those not as exciting.

I only get aggravated by this game's balancing because they take over half a year to produce a balancing patch that is often lackluster and doesn't reflect what the community wants.

2.5's changes won't be enough to fix this game's pvp balancing and I don't really feel like waiting till 2.6 just so "maybe" see some changes. Lord knows they love pushing back any content involved with pvp.

They should just give baseline fadeout to everyone and fix madness energy regen.

While healing sorcs are a mess, dps sorcs are okay. The problem is that classes like PT and warrior (and, to some extent, assasin) are completely dumbed down.

Give QoL changes to DPS sorcs, maybe a mild PvE buff and they would be fine.

The problem of this game is that melee classes are completely dumbed down. Im not saying they do too much damage. Damage is legit. Im not saying they have too many defensives, they are melee, they need defensives. Altho 45 sec UR was retarded, they do need some defensive CDs.

The problem with melee in this game is:
- Why does force crush hits full conq / obroan people for 4k rolling ticks?
- Why does every warrior skill has roots / slows baked into it?
- Why a class that has access to two charges, 30m slows and ranged roots has attacks that rape you from 10m range, including a ranged execute?
- Why does a PT can snare people with auto attacks?
- Why does smash spec doesnt have a proper rotation and has no ramp up time like every spec in the game?
- Why does warriors get instant AoE mezzes with lower cooldowns than poor man's force lift?

Sorc dps is (kind of) fine. Heals are a mess. But the problem with this game is melee. Everything melee does is automatic and has multiple snares baked into it. They dont have or need to setup anything to do overwhelming frontload damage. I understand that some classes are naturally more straightfoward than others but Bioware has gone too far with it.

Melee are suposed to think too. And to play defensevely when they allow themselves to drift to bad spots.

And the awnser to Bioware is giving Veng another baked in YOLO root. While they keep balancing with this mentality, PvP will be lacking.

I would think that removing this "automatization" for melee would normalize the game. Sorc dps wouldnt need extreme buffs (or no buff at all) and the comps would be more diverse at the different skills levels. Making caveman melee harder to play would also make way to concealment or even madness sins, who knows.

Even if they give sorcs obscene amounts of buffs, the game will still be lopsided because melee specs are what they are.

Smash spec does awesome burst since 1.0. And it is legit, to some extent. The problem is that they received a myriad of slows and roots and a completely unecessary force crush buff.

The truth is while the game was far from perfect, the balance between straighfowardness / skill cap between melee and ranged was much better at 1.1.5, with tracer spammers being the notable exception.

Good marauders trashed sorcs in 1.1.5, bad ones cryed on the forums. Thats the way its suposed to be.

personally I think they need more than a mild buff but that is just me, and I am pretty sure there will be a time and place for those other classes, we are meant to be focusing on sorcs here.

Believer makes good points, as always. My level 43 marauder is pretty brainless, even as Carnage where I'm watching for procs to line up my burst, which given how little I play it, is taking me a while to really get down. I know that my damage output is much higher than my sorc's was at that level, way back in 1.3. Taking into consideration that now I'm more familiar with gearing and the game's mechanics, that would make sense, but the mara is much, much easier to play, period.

My juggernaut, regardless of where I take her, be it raids or warzones, is derpy as hell. Enrage, charge, smash, crush, obliterate, vicious slash to get smash off cd, smash. In mostly partisan gear, she does stupid amounts of damage for next to no effort. In raids, all I look for is ravage and vicious throw procs and the scream autocrit buff. I've always felt like I did more damage on her, even back when EC was endgame. There's no challenge to mid-range gameplay as jugg dps, and it's boring. I play the sorc because of the challenge, the intensity and enjoyment that being a squishy ranged class provides. I love Lightning, but since I only raid on occasion and primarily yolo queue, I can't play it and expect to contribute except against really bad teams or the occasional reg queue I do.

We all hate comparing SWTOR to WoW, but when it comes down to class balance, especially pvp, it's necessary. Ranged casters in WoW are highly competitive, as the Blizzcon streams demonstrated and as memory serves from years ago. Melee are powerful and can be devastating, but they don't dominate the game as they do here. Ranged classes have no real means of keeping melee away; we have tools to get them off us, but nothing to really keep them off, while gap closers are rampant. Warriors with their leaps, roots and snares, operatives with their stuns and rolls (weakest but fully irritating), assassins with their snare, sprint and massive burst, bounty hunters with hydraulic overrides, powertechs with pulls, all of them are extremely capable of getting a target into melee and keeping it there. What to ranged have? Sorcs have a bad knockback with an optional weak root, weak mezzes, roots that are only available through high-tier talents, a generally useless sprint under focus from melee. Mercs have a nice knockback and hydraulic overrides with a couple half-decent defensive cds. Snipers have a fair amount of ranged control, but can't counter smashers effectively.

While wanting to be a different game from the other notable MMOs out there makes sense and is understandable, the one thing that BioWare hasn't been doing is learning from them. Class balance overall, and I mean that very vaguely, is alright. For everyone under NiM content, it's almost perfect. For those in regular pvp, it's fine. Skilled players will wipe the floor with the unskilled. However, the balance issues become glaring at higher levels of play. Pvp shouldn't require skill levels on par with Mudclot, Xenobia, Thurinlore, Seaney, Glory, Mathrim, Razbot et al. to make a class viable. I've been told I'm good, but I know I'm not great, in part due to equipment and in larger part due to not being a top-tier player like those mentioned. Despite that fact, surviving in solo queues is supremely challenging; often I have the highest amount of damage taken thanks to being tunneled by melee, and I'd assume the same is true for many other sorcs out there. We need changes, and BioWare's slowly acknowledging it, but they need to redesign melee as well.

When I played WoW, I had two mains over the years: a warlock and a death knight. The lock had relatively few defenses, most notable stamina stacking, but it had a spammable cc. Controlling and bursting an opponent wasn't terribly difficult if you knew what you were doing, and it also was fairly squishy outside of the broken SL/SL spec. The death knight was a hybrid class; it could be either tank or dps and had a relatively spammable self heal in death strike. It had a couple snares and roots, as well as a pull, but wasn't really overpowered after a couple balance patches. All of this was years into the game's existence when the balance team had a good amount of experience under their collective belt, but again, this was years before SWTOR existed. Warriors had a slow and a charge, but were very gear-dependent for their effectiveness.

The question I have to ask is why hasn't the team (or guy) in Austin been able to pick up on the flaws in their (his) design when other games out there aren't making the same mistakes? I get that it's not an easy job, especially for a small team or moreso for a single person, to balance eight classes in both pve and pvp, but the disparity we're seeing is atrocious. Anecdotal evidence here: over the weekend my very casual guild got a sm tfb queue and I'd decided to heal it on my embarrassingly badly geared operative. Our other healer was a pvp-geared sorc. We had no healing issues at all. Yes, it was sm, but an operative shouldn't be able to raid heal without problems in a mishmash of 50, partisan and crafted 50+ gear, particularly at a mediocre skill level as I esteem myself in that role. The only stressful fights were a couple sloppy trash pulls and the final boss, again largely due to sloppiness.

Bottom line, we need better escape tools. Melee need fewer gap closers and less control. In no rational circumstance should a highly survivable melee have superior damage, gap closers and control to a low-survivability ranged. We are glass cannons without the boom. Never should a class be so utterly reliant on the skill level of its teammates on top of the skill level of its player. I find my sorc to be highly enjoyable, I do. It's just incredibly disheartening to look at an enemy team and immediately say, "focus the sorc," while simultaneously playing one.

TL;DR - buff sorc escape mechanisms and possibly oomf, nerf melee gap closers and fix your damned game, BioWare.

Anyone get the feeling/vibe that Bioware isn't particularly listening? Two weeks and no updates as to what the Combat Team may and may not be considering (so of course we can't refine our feedback). Ranked gets reset in a few hours and we still have not even the slightest conceptual idea of where our class might be headed, other than H2F of course. It's like they forgot about their own thread. How sad.