"Sub back up," my brother, the dog, told me. "Join me on the Bastion. And do the Inquisitor story. Once you know what's going on in the Jedi story line, it's the only other character who controls her own destiny. And I do mean 'her,' because it's obviously written for a chick."

 

So I picked one out. A wee little girl with lightning bolts. I'm focusing on the lightning tree, and looking for tips on how to be a good lightning sorceress for PVP. So I head out to Dulfy.net and scour the forums here and, after digging through, I learn what everyone's advice on how to play a lightning sorceress in PVP:

 

Don't.

 

But I am not a reasonable man. I'm playing a light side Sith, to boot. And just to be obnoxious, I'm playing the game on a Macbook Pro in Boot Camp. Doing everything wrong, in other words.

 

I'm going to need to get used to this.

 

This will be the place where I will log this great experiment, where the tale of our dear Darth Squirrelcorpse will come to light and maybe, just maybe, figure out how to be a successful PVP player with a lightning sorceress controlled by a guy who otherwise doesn't know what he's doing.

 

I tried to stop 'em, man. I tried.

I'm a light side lightning sorcerer too and I do better and survive on her more than my marauder lol

Darth squirrel corpse +1 for awesome name

I tried to make my lightning Sorceress work, I really did. And maybe it's because my Balance (Madness) Sage is my main, but I just couldn't get into it. It just feels too clunky and doesn't have all the tools you need for a turret spec IMO.

 

But if you're going through with it anyway, you have my respect for going against the grain.

I tried to make my lightning Sorceress work, I really did. And maybe it's because my Balance (Madness) Sage is my main, but I just couldn't get into it. It just feels too clunky and doesn't have all the tools you need for a turret spec IMO.

 

But if you're going through with it anyway, you have my respect for going against the grain.

 

Thanks! But I don't know if it's worthy of respect. My grandfather was a pig-stubborn man, my father was a pig-stubborn man, and I? I'm my father's son.

 

And being Light Side doesn't help. I mean, Light 1 means I got the awesome lightsaber at Balmorra that requires being Light 1 to wield, but it also means losing 144 affection from Khem Val on one of the quests. So I go to the companion gifts vendor and buy his love back.

 

But he seems to have a very short memory. (Note the conversation log.)

 

Also note down at the bottom, you can get an idea of the rotation I'm using to survive right now. I basically hit 4-3-5-6-7-8; I hit 3 and 4 whenever they pop back up, 5 whenever I switch targets, and then rotate though 6-8 in the mean time. Dulfy says just to spam Lightning Strike, but Shock does just as much damage as it does, temp stuns weak opponents and doesn't have a cast time. I've also moved Overload into a mouse area, since it's something I don't need in a typical rotation.

 

I'm definitely open to suggestions. She is performing better than she was.

 

As for her name, there's kind of a story behind that...

Well, its nice to have someone enthusiastic about lightning. I used to be, too. Then I leveled my sorc at around the same time all marauders were rolling smash, and that slowly killed that.

 

I really hope you never lose that sense of fun your having as lightning.

 

Best,

af_raptura

got one in the enemy group in unrated arena, while i was queuing with guild premade group, i think round 1 he died before his first thundering blast, he got only his self heal 3k medal, and round 2 his group was almost dead before his first thundering blast, i saw a chain lighting on our guarded healer..i must say in his defence that he wasn't a good kiter..but idk how kiting could work on that spec..

"Squirrelcorpse" ??? Did you read too much "Quest For The Spark", maybe ?

So I picked one out. A wee little girl with lightning bolts. I'm focusing on the lightning tree, and looking for tips on how to be a good lightning sorceress for PVP. So I head out to Dulfy.net and scour the forums here and, after digging through, I learn what everyone's advice on how to play a lightning sorceress in PVP:

 

Don't.

 

That's really not true... Full lightning might be problematic for (solo ranked) arenas but for normal wzs it is perfectly fine and deadly. In fact in organised team play (that is within a group of friends or when ranked wzs existed) it was the best and most viable spec for a dps sorc. Put a fellow dps teammate (avoid madness sorc) on your focus and follow his target. The two of you together will destroy the one he targets in secs.

 

However, it does require high skill to play the spec and it does require a full tree.... so before being able to do so I would go with madness for pvp.

Also note down at the bottom, you can get an idea of the rotation I'm using to survive right now. I basically hit 4-3-5-6-7-8; I hit 3 and 4 whenever they pop back up, 5 whenever I switch targets, and then rotate though 6-8 in the mean time. Dulfy says just to spam Lightning Strike, but Shock does just as much damage as it does, temp stuns weak opponents and doesn't have a cast time. I've also moved Overload into a mouse area, since it's something I don't need in a typical rotation.

 

I'm definitely open to suggestions. She is performing better than she was.

 

I am sorry but I am not goona look on your keybinds and derive your rotaiton. If you want right it down. But commonly is:

 

When polarity and recklessness are up:

affliction->polarity->blast->ling strike->recklessness->force ling->chain ling->spam ling strike till blast off cd.->blast->ling strike-> see below for options

 

When polarity and recklessness are on cooldown:

affliction->blast->ling strike->crushing darkness (if bubbled or without bubble if not focussed)->force ling->chain ling->spam ling strike till blast off cd.->blast->ling strike->see below for options

 

Options on second blast->ling stirke in both cases:

a) affliction but gets blast and its proc and ling strike and its proc out of sync with affliction but maximises dps

b) usual FL->CL->ling strike spam till 1.5s before blast comes off gcd and then affliction and start from the beginning

 

Spamming LS is "better" cause you are saving shock for when you have to move.

Edited June 9, 2014 by MusicRider

Darth squirrel corpse +1 for awesome name

 

the only way he could have come up with that name is if he found a datacron that increased his awesome rating by 1000

Edited June 9, 2014 by CyberneticDucks

I am sorry but I am not goona look on your keybinds and derive your rotaiton. If you want right it down. But commonly is:

 

When polarity and recklessness are up:

affliction->polarity->blast->ling strike->recklessness->force ling->chain ling->spam ling strike till blast off cd.->blast->ling strike-> see below for options

 

When polarity and recklessness are on cooldown:

affliction->blast->ling strike->crushing darkness (if bubbled or without bubble if not focussed)->force ling->chain ling->spam ling strike till blast off cd.->blast->ling strike->see below for options

 

Options on second blast->ling stirke in both cases:

a) affliction but gets blast and its proc and ling strike and its proc out of sync with affliction but maximises dps

b) usual FL->CL->ling strike spam till 1.5s before blast comes off gcd and then affliction and start from the beginning

 

Spamming LS is "better" cause you are saving shock for when you have to move.

 

Look man... To me, it's "this is the lightning bolt that stuns weak enemies and is instant," "this is the lightning bolt that channels and hurts a lot over time," "this is the lightning bolt that is really annoying because it takes half an eon to cast for one puny little zap, because she has to drop a woolen carpet piece down on the ground and scuff her feet on it first.." I have the default keybindings: one on the left, equals on the right and everything in-between in-between. If I want to use something that isn't there, I have to clicky with the mousey.

 

Except for "Affliction." I know that's the green one that looks like it isn't useful but actually does cool things if you spam everyone you see with it.

 

I appreciate the advice, but realize that I'm going to have to look all those things up and match the word with the cute little icon and figure out what they all are. If you give me advice that uses lots of letters, such as "you want to use this AOE because the CD is shorter than the DOT" then I'm probably going to have to do several Google searches before I figure it out.

 

But that is all part of the show. If I really knew what I was doing, this wouldn't be nearly as much fun.

OK, I looked one or two of those up and I don't have 'em yet. So I can't have 'em in my rotation yet. She's just a puny widdle level 22, wandering about Nar Shadaa. Because Nar Shadaa is, like, my favorite place in the game. It's like Vegas, but cheaper and with fewer people trying to sell you An Evening With Candy.

So I attempted to play a war zone or two last night, and up popped two DM's. I attempted to follow my DPS companions and do the rotation that had proven so effective in PvE.

 

It was not super effective.

 

Well... who needs those stinking rotations, anyway? Bah.

Yeah... rotations are for models on runways!

I called up my brother, the dog.

 

"I suck at DPS."

 

"Kill order: Weakest to strongest."

 

pause

 

"Oh."

 

My first 'toon and only level 55, Ikki-puupuu, was a tank Jedi Guardian. So I'm running into WZ's immediately thinking of charging the biggest baddest bad guy of the bunch. This is what happens when you do that: Squirrelcorpse becomes Sorceresscorpse.

 

----

 

One nice thing (for me, anyway) about the 2.8 update was the free respec. This time I ignored the lousy Dulfy.net recommendation and mostly charged my way up the Lightning tree, granting me my first taste of Chain Lightning.

 

Oh my God I love Chain Lightning. Running around Kuat Drive Yards (yes, I know, it's PvE... shaddap!), eliminating entire groups of Republic troopers in one shot... assuming, of course, the 3-second cast time doesn't lead the guy you're targeting to get killed by a teammate before you get the chance.

 

"The great thing about Chain Lightning," says my brother, the dog, "is when you get onto Voidstar and are defending a door, you just wait for everyone to Zerg Rush* the door, then drop that on them."

 

Muahahahahahahahhahahaaaa...

 

Dear God, please let Voidstar spawn up for me. And not Huttball. Please, no, not Huttball. I have no idea what I'm doing in Huttball. I don't know what ANY of these guys are doing in Huttball, frankly. I'm not sure they do, either. Maybe that's why we lost 6-0?

 

 

* I don't know how he knows this term. He's never even played Starcraft. Or Warcraft. Or any kind of Blizzard game. He didn't even play Diablo.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Rimbosity

So, a quick update on everyone's favorite Varmint of the Sith.

 

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this!

 

It's not about damage, it's not about healing, it's not about capturing objectives, it's not about going from weakest to strongest, it's not about following the DPS guy around, it's not about any of those things. Like some zen truth hidden behind the curtain, it's about being all of them and none at the same time.

 

It's about being the girl behind the guy, the Sith manipulating everything just out of vision of the actual actors doing the real work, giving a push here and a shove there, the puppetmaster pulling the strings of the rest of the team.

 

The victory at the Ancient Hypergate, was a tight, tight battle between two nearly evenly matched squads.

 

Darth Squirrelcorpse was far from the best damage dealer. She was OK in healing. She wasn't really a player for objectives, and died far too often. But she medaled 9 times, because she was doing a little bit of everything, just behind the fray.

 

Didn't do it right at first. At first, she charged into the fray on the wrong side of the screen, trying to get off a chain lightning and some zaps here and there to interrupt her opponents' inevitable capture. But even with all the defenses up, going over there is a dangerous bid that is not for solo squirrel carrion.

 

Throwing Chain Lightning into the Ancient Hypergate's center chamber, on the other hand, now that's some real fun. She could work well from the relative safety of her own side's gate, working near the entrance to the center chamber to help keep the chamber safe for her own team and dangerous for the other side. A little heal for the tank here, an interrupt for the opponent trying to capture there. Someone's attacking me? Pop up the shield and draw him into hostile territory, where he finds himself suddenly outnumbered and in trouble!

 

There may be some use for this class in PvP yet...

So you're playing in a PVP warzone, and even though you seem to be slightly better matched than your opponent, it seems the battle is almost always going your opponent's way, as if an unseen hand is pushing all the odds in your opponents' favor, working behind the scenes to wreck your team and boost your opponent. But who? Where? How?

 

You may just yet have been owned by a Zap Witch.

 

Almost level 28, and playing a light side Zap Witch is getting interesting, now. Well... actually... It's always been interesting hopping onto Flashpoints and here, this hooded Sith of purple lightning and black arts going light. She's all the way up to Light II, now. I think there are light Jedi who haven't hit that by this level. Anyway.

 

Spotted a level 44 Jedi Shadow on Tatooine while doing class missions, and reported it to the general chat.

 

"Is he ganking?" someone asked.

 

"A level 44 Jedi Shadow is hanging around an Imp level 27 quest area and you're asking if he's ganking? What do you think he's doing?"

 

Oddly, he kept his distance from my squishy little Zap Witch. I wonder why?

 

I've abandoned Dulfy.net's recommendations for now, and am instead barging my way as high up the Zap skill tree as fast as possible. This has proven to be a good move. I don't really need a 2% boost to Alacrity as much as I need, say, a skill that causes Chain Lightning to automatically cooldown and fire without cast time if you use the "rub your hair with a balloon first" 1.5-second cast time Lightning Strike. Or a skill that blinds if the bubble pops. Or a skill that causes Force Lightning (seriously, why do they even putting lightning in their names?) to channel 2x as fast IF you are attacking someone with Affliction and Lightning Strike first.

 

Oh, so that's why Dulfy says to use the lousy Lightning Strike. Noted.

 

Playing PVP has become more fun. MUCH more fun. I now see why Zap Witch is called a "support" class. What's been frustrating has been folks saying, "If you play it right, it's very effective," without ever really detailing what that means. But I think I understand now.

 

When you're playing a tank or healer or one of the tougher DPS classes, there's a thing you do regardless of situation. That's your role, that thing you do. Tank? Find the toughest guy in the opponent and get him to hit you instead of others. Heal? Keep the tank alive. DPS? Take out the trash in flashpoints, and just generally kill anything that moves in PVP.

 

There's no such simplistic plan for a Zap Witch. Zap Witch has incredible flexibility -- jack of all trades, master of none -- but isn't great at any one thing. She won't out-heal a real healer, she won't out-DPS a good DPS, and she'll get flattened in less than half a second if she aggros; there's a reason "Run Away!" is an early ability for her.

 

But as she gains levels she gets these abilities that help her to survive by hook and by crook, many of which can be applied to her teammates. And she gets these attacks that are great at dragging opponents down to her level -- and beneath her teammates' level. This truly is the class of The Emperor.

 

She waits for the battle to be engaged, first. Once the battle is engaged, she pops bubbles on teammates, so that right off the bat, they last longer. Chain lightning to bring down the health of the opposition, perhaps. Does someone need healing already? Should a time-lapse damage ability be applied to the toughest bad guy, or an area-of-effect on the crowd of trash? Is someone attacking her and she needs to use abilities she's saved up to help her evade? Do it! Then reassess again, and act.

 

She is particularly effective on Novare Coast. Novare Coast often ends up being a collection of small skirmishes in a tight area. The Zap Witch gets just outside of that area, where she's just beyond the engagement. Pops bubbles on her teammates, and then throws some Chain Lightning on the foes, who -- packed into a tight area -- all get a real charge out of it. Heh. Heh. Heheheheh. MWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA...

 

*cough*

 

ahem.

 

Anyway. If you see my Lord Darth Squirrelcorpse Varmint out on the Bastion server, feel free to say hi! Unless you're Republic, in which case, don't be shy like that level 44 Jedi Shadow was... Feel free to gank her.

Edited June 22, 2014 by Rimbosity

You have a great style in writing. I enjoy your "blog" very much. It almost reads like an "journey-novel". Thank you.

 

*Subscribes thread*

Edited June 22, 2014 by AlrikFassbauer

You have a great style in writing. I enjoy your "blog" very much. It almost reads like an "journey-novel". Thank you.

 

*Subscribes thread*

 

Thank you! I'm enjoying writing it. I'm enjoying the challenge of making PvP work on her, too.

 

I'm getting better at it.

 

And I think that leaderboard shows an oddity. Look at Squirrelcorpse's numbers, compared with the number of medals she has. This has happened several times now... I have no idea what those medals are for. What I do know is that the team she joined was losing before she showed up...

I went on vacation to my parents' vacation place on a small island far away from cili-vization, which is why there's been not much from me.

 

But I have been playing. Darth Squirrelcorpse 2XP'ed her way up to the mid-30s, now level 36. I'm still focusing on going as high as I can on the lightning skill tree first, before doubling back to other skill tree things that might be useful.

 

---

 

Much like reaching your 30s in real life, reaching level 30 means you are much better at certain things, but find there are other things you can't do like you once did back in your teens and 20s.

 

Healing, for one thing. Group Finder will still default to queueing you up as a healer for flashpoints, and then you find you didn't actually get Kuat Drive Yards, you got an actual flashpoint instead, you're the designated healer, and you can't heal for ****.

 

For the poor people who ended up with Squirrelcorpse as their healer -- I AM SO SORRY. SO, SO VERY SORRY. And at the very end, I actually lost connection to the server (remote island, remember?) right at the big boss, dropping her out of the battle. So they probably think Squirrel's the worst healer ever. And in this case, she was.

 

---

 

An odd thing happened in a deathmatch warzone: Squirrelcorpse's team won.

 

That doesn't usually happen with a Zap Witch. Node-capturing warzones? She is a tiny little ball of bad *********** news for the opponents. (Assuming you're, say, not on Novare Coast and your entire team caps one gun AND THEN JUST SITS THERE FOR THE REST OF THE MATCH. Which is a thing that happened. But I digress.)

 

But in Deathmatch? The Ops chat usually goes something like this:

 

"Well, ****, this one's over before it even begins."

 

"Yep. Maybe we can at least take their *********** healer out before the round's over, just for spite?"

 

So at the start of the deathmatch, Squirrel's team barged forward into the opposition, and Squirrelcorpse (as usual) hung back to start feeding long-range Chain Lightning into the fray, and to her shock (heh) and surprise, no one was attacking her. Even when the battle went down to 2 vs 1, the one remaining opponent attacked the other guy. So Squirrelcorpse popped a bubble on her teammate and healed him. Bam.

 

Round 2, Squirrelcorpse was dead three seconds in.

 

So they learned. I typed into the Ops chat, "Oh, I see our opponent realized they should kill the Zap Witch first."

 

And then a very strange thing happened. A very stupid thing, without which the Warzone would have ended in our favor.

 

They have two, we have two. Having nothing else to do, I'm watching closely. But I only see one teammate fighting both opponents. They are down to below 1/3 health, both of her teammates are at 1/2 and above. But that doesn't last long at all, because it's in actuality a 2v1 scenario. After my teammate dies, he demands a "***?" from our teammate, an Operative, who has stealthed and is doing nothing.

 

******* Operative: "But I was healing up."

 

Me: "Yeah, you were fully healed before the point when our opponents got healed back up."

 

And then the Operative just sat there hidden.

 

I talked to my brother, The Dog, about this. "Oh yeah, used to be an Operative in that situation could just wait it out until the match went into Sudden Death, and then just quickly take out both opponents before they knew what was going on."

 

That's not what happened here. They found him somehow, and euthanized him quickly.

 

Third round, I managed to survive a whole 20 seconds, using just about every trick in the book I could think of while all 4 opponents attacked me at once. I'm actually getting really good at using tricks to run away and basically get people to attack ANYONE ELSE BUT POOR LITTLE SQUIRRELCORPSE. But it's hard when you're marked.

 

---

 

Level 34 is when you get Lightning Storm. This is like sex. Not only that, but it's channeled, and even if it's interrupted immediately, it triggers the instant, zero-energy, no-cast-time Chain Lightning effect. THIS IS ABSOLUTE MURDER in WarZones where you capture a node. And it's really fun in PvE when you are cleaning up groups of trash. The lightning storm holds them in place and charges the chain lightning, then chain lightning basically wipes 'em out.

 

Still, I notice I rarely have as much damage as my teammates in PVP WarZones. I think this is from a combination of:

 

1. Staying way out of range and waiting for others to engage before I do,
   
2. Running away as soon as anyone notices me,
   
3. Cast time
   

 

That said, despite the cast time and need to set things up, at this level, when the Zap Witch finally does manage to get a shot off, it hits like a freight train. No wonder everyone tries to kill her!

 

Anyway, enough talking about playing; time to get back online and start playing. I'm going to try and solo a HEROIC 4 on Alderaan. Alderaan's level 29, so she's a bit over-leveled at 36 for it. I was going to spend more time doing planetary quests, but they're just not interesting enough story-wise to continue. But if you're into Bioanalysis, it's an absolute dream, for the abundance of Hallucinogenic Compound that can be sold on GTN for $1000 each...

do get Arenas in regular WZ queue in lvl10-29 and 30-54 bracket? or the arenas only pops for lvl55?

do get Arenas in regular WZ queue in lvl10-29 and 30-54 bracket? or the arenas only pops for lvl55?

 

Arenas are for everyone! I'm only level 36, so there it is...

I'm going to try and solo a HEROIC 4 on Alderaan. Alderaan's level 29, so she's a bit over-leveled at 36 for it.

 

You will get OH SO KILLED

 

You might kill a few here or there but soon it will be clear why it's a 4 player thing. And some of those heroics actually requires several players to activate stuff.

I dunno. H2s are very do-able at 6 levels over, especially with a 1 minute CC available, if your gear is up to scratch (full blues within a level or 2 of your level, esp. hilt and offhand armoring) -- although Khem Val's death field thing is murder on CCs (Treek is so much better).

 

It's also quite viable (if it's an instanced area) to run out of the instance after killing half of a pack while your companion stages a heroic last stand -- although again, this gets harder the deeper you are in. Open world Heroic areas are trickier, not the least because, while the mobs will eventually Evade, you will probably be running through respawned areas.

 

Overall, though, better to get a group together, depending on your server population.