Rotation

The Lightning rotation is all wrong. Burst caster spec rotations have to follow two rules:

Dots up first

Casts before instants

Having to use an instant before a cast is clunky because instants are front-loaded GCDs and casts are back-loaded GCDS. Using a front-loaded GCD before a back-loaded GCD essentially makes you wait out 2 GCDs before hitting your target again. Optimally the rotation should consist of back-loaded casts followed by front-loaded instants for nice one-two burst combos.

How this applies to the Lightning rotation specifically is the issue of Crushing Darkness needing Lightning Flash to be cast first. Optimally the opening burst rotation should be Crushing Darkness + Affliction, then Thundering Blast + Chain Lightning. However the cast time on Crushing darkness makes this impractical without the Lightning Flash proc. Other than the Crushing Darkness proc Lighting Flash isn't terrible useful, so I would suggest making Crushing Darkness a 1.5 second cast by default and doing something else with Lighting Flash. Perhaps make it a >30%hp execute.

Defenses

Lightning has two viable defenses for PvP: Force Barrier and Heal tanking. Unfortunately both these defenses prohibit any DPS. So unless you have someone else around to kill the guy attacking you, you're just delaying the inevitable. Now, my position on caster defenses is that a DPS class should be relying on its DPS to kill the target before the target kills them, so I don't agree with giving Lightning Sorcs more DCDs. DCDs also do not fit the light armor caster archetype. Bioware already knows my position on kiting, but Lightning Sorcs need to be able to kite more effectively for their defense. So at this time I would simply suggest that Lightning Bolt become an instant cast ability, while removing it's chance to proc instant Chain Lightning.

I also have some issues with the relative lack of armor penetration for Lightning Sorcs (and on the flip-side, lack of passive damage mitigation). Most other DPS specs have enough armor penetration to negate all of a Sorc's armor, while a Lightning Sorc receives no armor penetration for it's lightning abilities. I'm going to assume that our two dots are meant to cover this (even though Crushing Darkness damage is also mitigated by armor), so when the application of said dots become more practical we can see if armor penetration is still a problem for burst DPS.

To reiterate:

Lower the cast time of Crushing Darkness to 1.5 seconds by default, and also lower it's cooldown to 10 seconds to synch it with Thundering Blast

Make Lightning Bolt an instant cast ability by default, and remove its chance to proc instant Chain Lightning

Also possibly remove the 10% Internal and Elemental damage reduction bonus from the Inquisitor/Consular class buff

Here's a pithy comment.

Heatseeker Missile does 30k damage and is instant.

Ambush does 30k damage and is uninterruptible.

Thundering Blast does 12k damage, has a cast time and is interruptible.

Lightning's not perfect. Here are a few corrections/suggestions:

(1) Buff Thundering Blast. My average thundering blast hits for 18k (24k with recklessness autocrit), not 12k. It's still FAR too weak, though - regular tb's should hit for 23k and the autocrits 32k. If the dps parses get out of control, bioware can simply remove the forked lightning procs on lightning bolt in exchange for the harder-hitting burst. In other words: high peaks, low valleys. Autocrit thundering blast should be the second hardest hitting move in the game (after ambush, which should hit for 35k w/everything attached) and about 5 percent ahead of heatseekers. Like you said, it's an interrupt-able cast - and recklessness only comes once every 1m15s or so. Without recklessness, this buffed thundering blast would be roughly as potent as raging burst. I mean sure, you do occasionally get a secondary thundering blast move, but it's rng-based - maybe bioware should just remove that extra attack and roll all that damage into the primary hit.

(2) Keep Lightning Bolt proc. You get two free lightning bolts every time you use force speed - and often get other instant bolts after taking damage. I've won duels without casting a single tb for this very reason. It's extremely important for lightning bolt to proc chain lightning.

(3) Mitigate the active, resource-intensive nature of sorc survivability. You'll still need to kite, but you won't lose thousands upon thousands of dps (and all your force) if the spec had more passive aid - that is, cooldowns/heals that are off the gcd. Look at merc, sniper, and all of the melee classes: almost all of their survivability is passive, so they tend to lose far less dps when tunneled or dueling. Lightning basically needs some sort of proc that provides free, buffed, instant heals - the static barrier should also be taken off the gcd and given a 5-second cd so that it can still be used to off-bubble without being OP. Perhaps lightning flash, in addition to reducing the cd of crushing darkness, should make your next dark heal a free instant. The crit chance of dark heal should be buffed as well - I shouldn't have to burn recklessness stacks on my basic heal - further nerfing my dps output - just to make it viable.

(4) Interrupt immunity for 4 seconds after unnatural preservation would help prevent casts from getting shut down.

(5) Fix Phase Walk. It's is a great dcd, but bugged to all heck. Phase walk shouldn't reset when you are hindered or out of range. Additionally, apply a bastion debuff so that you can only be hindered once every 2 minutes (the cd for cc break). Frankly, this should apply to every class - and then give some other classes a short hinder to balance things out.

Also, regarding the burst window: I prefer to burst someone down with thundering blast (w/affliction obviously) + lightning flash + chain lightning, in exactly that order. In other words, a cast followed by two instants. 3 charges of recklessness consumed for about 50k damage in 3 seconds. Save your last stack for chain lightning; if you still have two stacks of recklessness and you hit other people with chain lightning, you'll lose both stacks; if you use chain lightning on your last stack, it'll still autocrit all targets. More splash damage during your burst window is always a good thing. After that you can go into crushing darkness + shock.

My redesign of the lightning rotation treats it as a ranged carnage, in which a revamped crushing darkness serves as your ferocity/burst window. That's when you get an autocrit thundering blast (that can be clipped!) and a significantly buffed shock, as well as a new sub-30 execute move specifically for that window. I might post it someday.

Also, just an aside: if you're kiting melee, don't apply force slow until the snare from chain lightning wears off. They're both 50 percent snares.

Hmm, could be your gear or something. Take a look at the max hit/average hit here:

https://i.imgur.com/67PNGKO.png

Base damage of Thundering Blast at level 70 is 1528. For TB to be hitting for 18k on average you need 5600 bonus damage, which is impossible with current gear. Recklessness doesn't add crit damage, only crit chance, so it's irrelevant for an autocrit.

Look up any parse on parsely, Thundering Blast hits for about 19k in max gear (if you get the extra proc thingy you're looking at 24k by the way). And yes Recklessness does affect Thundering Blast, any crit chance over 100% gets added to crit multiplier. That's why on the top parse for lightning at the moment (this one) the average TB hits about 20k, where the top crit is 27k.

As to your comparison with Ambush and Heatseekers (the average crits on the top parses dealing 26k and 25k respectively), they aren't autocrits and have longer cooldowns (12 and 15 seconds respectively, where tb has a 9 second cooldown). Don't get me wrong I'm not arguing whether or not Lightning needs changes, I'm just saying you're way off on these.

Base damage of Thundering Blast at level 70 is 1528. For TB to be hitting for 18k on average you need 5600 bonus damage, which is impossible with current gear. Recklessness doesn't add crit damage, only crit chance, so it's irrelevant for an autocrit.

yes it does nowadays, since autocrit the extra crit change is added to surge.

Right, so it's not 18k on average, it's just 18k every 1.5 minutes. And HSM and Ambush hit for 30k on unarmored targets, like a Sorc with it's entire armor mitigation negated by armor penetration.

No, 18k on average, 27k every minute and a half. And that's not counting the 4.5k extra about once in four times due to Forked Darkness.

No, 18k on average, 27k every minute and a half. And that's not counting the 4.5k extra about once in four times due to Forked Darkness.

Indeed, thread starter clearly doesn't know what the heck she or she is talking about.

WelI I don't know how you could possible be hitting those numbers when mine are hitting for 12k with 3.3k bonus damage.

Must be some kind of non PvP mechanic.

WelI I don't know how you could possible be hitting those numbers when mine are hitting for 12k with 3.3k bonus damage.

 

Must be some kind of non PvP mechanic.

Man, if you are talking about pvp you need to consider dcds... also when parsing people tend to do so with 10% armor debuff. Yes you can hit for 13k is smn has saber ward up... dont mix the two... numbers are reported from a pve perspective and dummy parses, where everyone does on equal terms.

Man, if you are talking about pvp you need to consider dcds... also when parsing people tend to do so with 10% armor debuff. Yes you can hit for 13k is smn has saber ward up... dont mix the two... numbers are reported from a pve perspective and dummy parses, where everyone does on equal terms.

Well yeah I'm talking about PvP. That's why I named the thread Lightning PvP Feedback.

And the 10% armor debuff doesn't affect Thundering Blast because it's internal damage.

Oh I see now. My TB is hitting for 12k in PvP because of the 10% internal damage reduction from the Inquisitor buff. On a training dummy I hit for 14k-15k.

Sorc's getting screwed with their own buff. Nice play Bioware.

Sorry but I don't believe you.

I just checked your post history, this topic and your posts in it make a lot more sense in that context.

Hmm so autocrits add all crit chance (not just Recklessness crit chance) to crit damage. That would finally explain how people claim to be getting 18k Thundering Blasts. That change happened in 4.0 and I was playing a Merc back then so autocrits weren't an issue for me.

Of course, it would've been simpler if someone had just told me that straight up.

Hmm so autocrits add all crit chance (not just Recklessness crit chance) to crit damage. That would finally explain how people claim to be getting 18k Thundering Blasts. That change happened in 4.0 and I was playing a Merc back then so autocrits weren't an issue for me.

 

Of course, it would've been simpler if someone had just told me that straight up.

And yes Recklessness does affect Thundering Blast, any crit chance over 100% gets added to crit multiplier.

/5char

/5char

You didn't specifically mention that normal crit chance was added as well, so I assumed it was just Recklessness crit chance.

You didn't specifically mention that normal crit chance was added as well, so I assumed it was just Recklessness crit chance.

It literally says: any crit chance over 100% gets added to crit multiplier., nowhere did I say just crit chance from recklessness. I said any crit chance is added, therefore recklessness too