(Live stream with Vulkk).

 

@ 3:06 they finally acknowledged the dps issue with tk/litghnintg sage/sorc. Fingers crossed. Might even dust off my account and play my beloved caster once more. Who knows, 6.0 expanion might be a hit as well. Just hope they don't buff em too much or we will have another 150 forum posts about "nerf sage/sorc! they have been OP once and for a good while already" and such.

 

But glad they might seen the reality where mercs instant casting 30K crits, snipers 30k crits (uninteruptible) while sorcs need to cast their 18k-24k crits which is easy to interrupt and then there's the cooldown timer difference on these hard hitters (with passives/procs).

 

Anyway skank tank nerf was long time coming. Sorry for the grammar and thanks for reading!

Edited May 2, 2018 by vXCozmoz

Yeah they neutered lightning burst even more with the last nerf, that was stupid, now they have to undo it/ increase its burst but not touch the overall sustain. But I bet they do something stupid again as their track record shows.

Yeah they neutered lightning burst even more with the last nerf, that was stupid, now they have to undo it/ increase its burst but not touch the overall sustain. But I bet they do something stupid again as their track record shows.

 

Auch. They accually nerfed them even more? So that means any so called "buff/fix" will simply be where they were before that patch, which in term mean less good. Some part of my body is telling me that BW dislike burst specs in general. Both for PvE and PvP. But then I forget the mercs and snipers (and maras) crits left and right so that statement is kinda unvalid.

 

Although I did hear they are at first getting some def buff but we all know it's the dps/burst/sustain that has been lacking for a while now (which they admitted on the stream). Thanks for replying.

Edited April 29, 2018 by vXCozmoz

Thundering Blast hit for 30K or get the heck out Edited April 29, 2018 by Romeugues

Thundering Blast hit for 30K or get the heck out

 

I wouldn't say no to it since agian, our strongest hit/crit is casted and not instant/uninteruptible. We are getting a flat 10% dmg reduction from that shield. Didn't play for a while so please bare with me about it's proper name or if it was that effect on the shield debuff when you casted it

 

I mean glasscannons (such as sorcs/sages) should have strong dps or burst. Talking in dps spec ofc.

Edited May 11, 2018 by vXCozmoz

I must honestly mention that I'm a little surprised that my thread now has almost 500 views but very few inputs from the community. My main goal with this was to try shed some light for the class with the linked video (Creative Director Charles Boyd and Community Manager Eric Musco).

 

As I do only see threads like "delete sorcs from the game" and in that kind of nature. Now before you get heated up with me I DO know myself that sorc/sage dps isn't in "THAT" good spot but again, this was to get some discussion going. From what I could tell from the stream is that they got a buff and admitting they're lacking behind in dps, especially compared to mercs and it's not lost on the side but as a first step buffing the def.

 

Don't get me wrong I don't try force anyone to bump the thread just to make me happy, it's also for the other fellow sorcs/sages out there. So I'll ask the first question then. Will the 10% DR buff (up from 5%) be enough or do they need more/better survival, given the melee train etc? Some say they need dps/burst buff, some say more def, and some say both.

 

I am no super sorc expert but played R-dps in all my 7 mmo's and I usually adapt kinda quickly how to kite, where to positioning myself etc. Everything I can do to help my team, not the type who just try plug into the closest enemy for some dps numbers, as I'm a very obj minded player. I play to win and not to be special (yeah we still exist).

 

Sure I did top dps numbers here and there, lightning spec, like when I went mid in Alderaan - Civil War but who cares about regs right

 

Thanks for reading and sorry for the grammar.

Edited May 14, 2018 by vXCozmoz

thundering blast right now hits like a wet noodle & it really should do the same damge like valkorions dark blast ability that you can use in KOTET chapter 9,

it's like 16-17k non-crit & 28 - 30k crit....or give us the skill as well lol.

thundering blast right now hits like a wet noodle & it really should do the same damge like valkorions dark blast ability that you can use in KOTET chapter 9,

it's like 16-17k non-crit & 28 - 30k crit....or give us the skill as well lol.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 28-30k crits imho is "OK" given mercs got their 30k crits as well, yeah I know they got instant while we need to cast for 1.4secs. I am not defending mercs dps/burst as they do still have face-tank dcd's but lightning sorcs has quite many instant buttons to press.

 

1-2 clicks sure mercs got their main missile punch and proced rail shot but we got almost instant TB (1.4sec isn't that long cast time imo) and instant proced chain ligthning (the two main abilities that should always be on cd for sorc). But melee is a pain ofc as they got a much shorter cd on their interrupt compared to the ranged classes.

 

What I'm trying to say is in the same time period or close to it, when classes using their main hard hitters, a lightning sorc got quite a bunch of instant nukes, in no order: TB -> instant CL, LF (flash), LB (bolt) and so on. Add all these up which takes little time to do with tier4 gear and 242+ augs it's not That bad. I guess it depends what you do with your toon. PvE/PvP/Ops/FPs in SM/NiM etc.

 

Although I do agree sorcs/sages still need some overlook, which again was confirmed from the stream. As for me I enjoy the class so much so idc for the "must play X for ezmode". You do need to like your class in order to invest in it. As nerfs/buffs comes and goes =)

Isn't it better to Combo HSM with Rail Shot, taking advantage of HSM's near GCD travel at max range, getting both your highest single gcd abilities off nearly instantly.

You can mix a bunch of things. It's actually up to a 4 ability combo if I think about it again.

 

So Explosive Dart, Tracer Missile, Heatseeker Missiles, Rail Shot and it all damages in less than 1 GCD because of delays and differences in travel time.

Comparing Thundering Blast to Heatseeker Missiles is a bit hard. On one hand, they both have a travel time, both are the hardest hitters of the spec. But first one is an autocrit, 2nd isn't.

 

If you look at the parses, you can see that average hit is higher for TB, average crit is higher for HM and highest hit is basically the same.

 

And the biggest hits for both of them come on the same timer - 1min cd for set bonus on merc and almost 1 min cd on Recklessness for Sorc.

 

If we put it simply - IF you crit with heatseeker, you do much more burst than sorc. But if you don't crit with it, Lightning will deliver more burst.

 

So overall, I'd say it is like this: Sorc is more consistent with it's burst but merc can be scarier depending on RNG.

 

And to everyone who keeps asking for lightning buffs - Lightning already is the best ranged Burst spec. If you buff it more for some reason, you need to buff Marksman and Arsenal as well, otherwise it would be unfair and just plain dumb.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Equeliber

We need to go deeper.

 

The example has 10 HSM crits and 5 of those were the set bonus so RNG crits alone are 2k less than all crits (24k vs 26k average). The set bonus inflates the crit numbers.

 

The other unmentioned part is that Thundering Blast is not just "Thundering Blast" as read off a parser sheet, that's something of a lie.

 

Thundering Blast has 25% chance to do 25% bonus damage in a cloned damage hit (which also autocrits) called "Thundering Blast (Forked Darkness)" and that is not included in "Thundering Blast" numbers.

 

We've just seen in the examples that the maximum single hit from both is only 2k apart but Thundering Blast can on top of this chip in 25% extra from its clone proc.

 

It didn't actually proc on any of the biggest Thundering Blast hits in the examples but it could have.

 

I would say when taking into account the Forked Darkness proc that the minimum, average and maximum hit goes to... Thundering Blast over Heatseeker Missiles.

 

The example that could have, but didn't happen would be the best Thundering Blast hit of 27k if it had a Forked Darkness proc which would make that Thundering Blast worth 33k. The best set bonus autocrit from Heatseeker Missiles was 29k.

 

Boy that's awkward. Guess that means the myth is stone dead in every possible way?

 

Maybe the examples are not representative. The overall parses do seem fairly tryhard though, pushing close to 10k in sub par specs.

 

Found an example of it happening in the second parse on 2.5m for Lightning:

 

13:32:24.387 	@Valkae 	Operations Training Dummy 	Thundering Blast 	ApplyEffect : Damage (26349* internal ) <26349>
13:32:24.783 	@Valkae 	Operations Training Dummy 	Thundering Blast (Forked Darkness) 	ApplyEffect : Damage (6585* internal ) <6585> 

 

Casual 32934 in full accuracy PVE gear with one Thundering Blast.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Gyronamics

Snip

 

26k thundering blast? i can see that happen with adrenal + unlimited power + double relic procc ...can you link that parse `?

Edited May 20, 2018 by meddani

Well 3-4 posts have been deleted out of this thread so you can't see the information, calculations or numbers being talked about.

 

So I'll sum it up here and if needed I'll do some numbers again:

 

Thundering Blast hits harder than Heatseeker Missiles according to minimum, average and maximum damage.

 

*and saying otherwise as reason to buff Thundering Blast is extremely misguided.

 

However this is the site: http://parsely.io/parser/leaderboard

 

And either you choose Live or the previous patch and it's really hard to find a Lightning parse that doesn't have a 26/27k Thundering Blast in it.

 

That particular one was second on the 2.5m dummy on Live because the first didn't have any Forked Darkness procs on the big hits (which increase the damage of the Thundering Blast by 25%) and I needed an example to demonstrate.

 

You can even find 28k from last patch if you want: http://parsely.io/parser/view/359487/0. Depends how people have split their alacrity and crit plus damage variance.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Gyronamics

Well Arsenal was stupidly nerfed into the ground DPS wise (instead of DCDs.. bla bla bla) so comparing the biggest hitters between the two is a bit moot, neither of them burst that great. Also burst potential isn't just your biggest hitter, there's your "burst rotation" where you can do X damage in a certain amount of seconds (or gcds) by lining up your biggest hitters(i.e popping Recklessness, casting TB,LF and CL), like in PvP bursting down a player, simply hitting them for 25-30K isn't going to kill them, obviously, I think that's a better way of measuring how much burst potential a class has. Edited May 21, 2018 by Romeugues

Well Arsenal was stupidly nerfed into the ground DPS wise (instead of DCDs.. bla bla bla) so comparing the biggest hitters between the two is a bit moot, neither of them burst that great. Also burst potential isn't just your biggest hitter, there's your "burst rotation" where you can do X damage in a certain amount of seconds (or gcds) by lining up your biggest hitters(i.e popping Recklessness, casting TB,LF and CL), like in PvP bursting down a player, simply hitting them for 25-30K isn't going to kill them, obviously, I think that's a better way of measuring how much burst potential a class has.

 

Agreed and well said. I made this thread mostly for the possible buffs to the class. For good or worse is up for debate of course. Seen this has more turned into checking the difference between 1 single skill vs the other, which was not my intention or main thought.

 

I also said the same thing in a different way in my other posts, some were removed for some reason, incl a few from that guy "Gyronamics". Like the X damage you can do with the class in a short time period was not that bad and so on. Coming from a returning player.

 

The general mindset of people is like this: Some only focus a class based on a target dummy (parsely) in pve, or where you can stand in 1 spot and mash buttons and move a few feet when some aoe or boss mechanic occur. Some only on pvp and usually it's only for ranked, and some for both. We all know in pvp there is no "real" rotation since so much can and will happen to you and your enemies. Sure you can have a standard one that you try pull off when ever possible.

 

After playing my beloved caster and tested things back & forth I can say from my POV that for PvE and PvP (regs) is more then viable and fun, which is the single most important thing when playing an mmo imho. I for one never got the idea playing X class/spec just because it happens to be OP right now. I will admit that for ranked the class struggles, in dps specs. I believe that's one reason we got that flat 10% DR buff (up form 5%) and they even stated "as our first step we do this".

 

I did not stop playing the game because sorcs/sages are not the best class for ranked in some current meta or when they were very strong. I had my other reasons . What I said here was not mean to offend anyone, but to speak my mind.

Edited May 22, 2018 by vXCozmoz

Agreed and well said. I made this thread mostly for the possible buffs to the class. For good or worse is up for debate of course. Seen this has more turned into checking the difference between 1 single skill vs the other, which was not my intention or main thought.

 

I also said the same thing in a different way in my other posts, some were removed for some reason, incl a few from that guy "Gyronamics". Like the X damage you can do with the class in a short time period was not that bad and so on. Coming from a returning player.

 

The general mindset of people is like this: Some only focus a class based on a target dummy (parsely) in pve, or where you can stand in 1 spot and mash buttons and move a few feet when some aoe or boss mechanic occur. Some only on pvp and usually it's only for ranked, and some for both. We all know in pvp there is no "real" rotation since so much can and will happen to you and your enemies. Sure you can have a standard one that you try pull off when ever possible.

 

After playing my beloved caster and tested things back & forth I can say from my POV that for PvE and PvP (regs) is more then viable and fun, which is the single most important thing when playing an mmo imho. I for one never got the idea playing X class/spec just because it happens to be OP right now. I will admit that for ranked the class struggles, in dps specs. I believe that's one reason we got that flat 10% DR buff (up form 5%) and they even stated "as our first step we do this".

 

I did not stop playing the game because sorcs/sages are not the best class for ranked in some current meta or when they were very strong. I had my other reasons . What I said here was not mean to offend anyone, but to speak my mind.

 

Absolutely, positively outstandingly said. Well done x 5

Well Arsenal was stupidly nerfed into the ground DPS wise (instead of DCDs.. bla bla bla) so comparing the biggest hitters between the two is a bit moot, neither of them burst that great. Also burst potential isn't just your biggest hitter, there's your "burst rotation" where you can do X damage in a certain amount of seconds (or gcds) by lining up your biggest hitters(i.e popping Recklessness, casting TB,LF and CL), like in PvP bursting down a player, simply hitting them for 25-30K isn't going to kill them, obviously, I think that's a better way of measuring how much burst potential a class has.

 

Yes, it was said but posts were deleted.

 

Merc Arsenal can for example stick together 4 abilities to hit in a GCD if they want: Explosive Dart, Tracer Missile (normal cast), Heatseeker Missiles, Rail Shot.

 

The days are long gone when you could go into a WZ with such low health and face such high hits that you could get comboed out by one player.

 

But that didn't stop complaints so everyones maximum hits got poisoned along with generic damage reduction, some more than others

Edited May 22, 2018 by Gyronamics