After spending a few hours on training dummies, elites, and in PvP I've noticed that

a) it's appears, for some reason, to be harder to get double-dipping off, i.e. ramming the FL button will yield a double-dip less often than before, though this could be an illusion

b) when you double-dip your FL will tick 2 or 3 times (check the combat log!), meaning that you get a total of 4-6 ticks, instead of the 8 you would get from two 'normal' FL's. Not only is this a decrease in DPS compared to before, it's now also undesirable as it's the same amount of damage, only with a slightly better 'burstyness' to it, but also being force-negative.

 

Since hybrid was already very close to Madness and Lightning (iirc about 3% difference over Madness, and 3,2~% over Lightning) I'd go as far as saying that this spec is officially 'dead'. If LB stays as it is, with the clipping (and/or harder to get double-dipped), it's far too unreliable to be in a serious spec.

 

Leaving full-on Lightning (3/31/7) and Madness (3/7/31) as viable choices in PvP. The damage difference between them is negligible. Lightning offers somewhat of a burst, through lining up Recklessness/adrenal/stim with the instant crit from Telekinetic Blast (with Polarity Shift) and a previously procced Lightning Storm for an instant Chain Lightning. However the filler spell (Lightning Strike) sucks monkey balls, FL will have a cooldown and CD will have a long cast time, all of which is also easily interruptible. Playing Lightning is not just being a glass cannon, you're a stationary turret.

 

As far as utility goes, the root form the knockback is underwhelming and little more than a minor annoyance to opponents, it's never kept me alive at least. The blind on the static barrier is undesirable as it will fill up a target's resolve bar with a 'useless' stun which is terrible in Hutball. Force Speed having a 20s cooldown is nice though, but IMO not enough to warrant going Lightning.

 

As for Madness, it's not different from the 1/12/28 spec that much. Losing Lightning Barrage does mean losing the only 'burst' we have. We gain Creeping Terrors which is roughly just a seperate Affliction (in terms of DPS) with a ******, and more often than not, useless root, however in 1.2 CT has gained a 17% DPCT increase from the additional tick when casted. You gain a 10s off Electrocute which is great for PvP and instant whirlwind (which often helps in Ops, and is also good as a second interrupt). As said before the DPS is pretty equal to Lightning, however much more mobile. It is however, force negative meaning you *will* go OOF fast in intensive fights, as compared to Lightning where one has pretty much infinite Force.

 

So yeah, atm I would go 3/7/31 for the mobility, but like hybrid, it's *********** boring. You will still just be spamming force lightning and a few instants when you glow Purple. Then back to FL again. So I rolled an Operative instead.

agree with you. Still using 1/12/28 bc I found that dot's gives a lot of DPS and LB gives a little damage burst. That's why mooved from 3/7/31.

Lightning Barrier / Electric Bindings / Backlash does not give right protection but just keeps your agony for a few seconds more .

Garricus any updates on this guide as of the newest patch?

I think that's rather hard, considering the changes with the latest patch are uncertain at best. Some people (including me) have reported that regularly you cannot double-dip off LB at all, making it wonky, while others do not experience this issue. And other people again have reported that the number of ticks are reduced when you double-dip LB causing an even greater Force-negative rotation, not to mention a DPS loss in double-dipping as compared to before (up to 33%, depending on how often FL ticks).

Even so, 1/12/28 is only 3% DPS over 3/7/31 madness, and 3,1%~ over Lightning. Personally I went full Madness a while ago with the wonkyness of LB at the moment.

Is there an Awesome gude to PVE spec out there ?? I do not pvp and a new level 50, sorc dps lightning specced

at moment, I have 3 Columi pieces . I am now raiding and doing dailies, I was told not to use thundering blast

as it takes to long to fire off ? .This is a very interesting post, , covering hybrid,pve/pvp builds and

rotations, but a little confusing. So please guys could you help with an awesome PVE spec and rotations.

I am currently 3/31/7 build but dont mind respeccing to Hybrid or whatever helps my team .

Thanks guys.

Is there an Awesome gude to PVE spec out there ?? I do not pvp and a new level 50, sorc dps lightning specced

at moment, I have 3 Columi pieces . I am now raiding and doing dailies, I was told not to use thundering blast

as it takes to long to fire off ? .This is a very interesting post, , covering hybrid,pve/pvp builds and

rotations, but a little confusing. So please guys could you help with an awesome PVE spec and rotations.

I am currently 3/31/7 build but dont mind respeccing to Hybrid or whatever helps my team .

Thanks guys.

You will most likely want to use either 1/12/28 as mentioned in the OP, or 3/7/31 Madness. They are quite similar, the main difference being that 1/12/28 has Lightning Barrage which allows you to exploit a bug, essentially causing your Force Lightning ticks to double. So you would get double the amount of ticks within the same amount of time. However this is buggy, and can (probably will) be fixed by BW in the future making it an unreliable spec. Even now there is some discord on how regularly you can get this exploit off, and it does seem that the amount of ticks you get is 'wonky' at best since the latest patch.

As such I personally run 3/7/31 at the moment. It does not have Lightning Barrage but you gain a DoT, Creeping Terror, which lasts 18 seconds and deals the same damage as Affliction (with Exsanguination but without Force Horrors). 18 seconds might seem long but it is a viable DoT in most PvE situations like boss fights and is only a slight DPS loss over Lightning Barrage. The advantage however is that it's instant, whereas Force Lightning is obviously a channel. This in consideration, you will likely get more DPS with 3/7/31 in a lot of boss fights. Take Gharj for example, while running to the next platform you cannot use Force Lightning, but you could put up Creeping Terror while running along with Affliction (and Death Field, and Crushing Darkness if Wrath is up, but this counts for both specs).

IMO 3/31/7 Lightning is neither viable for PvE nor PvP. While it's a lot more fun to play and technically not a huge DPS loss (around 0,12% over Madness, and 3% over Hybrid), it's terribly un-mobile. Nearly all of your abilities are hardcasted, meaning they have a cast time. Your main spell, Thundering Blast has a base cast time of 3s I believe. This is in my opinion unacceptable for PvE too as you'll be running around a lot, having to interrupt your casts regularly. Take the rocks at the Foreman Crusher for example, or having to run in a Lightning Ball at Soa, or having to get back to the switches at the Annihilation Droid.. or.. or.. you get the idea.

THX!Very nice Specc 1/12/28 here is my dmg:

http://i.imgur.com/VbJKX.jpg

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/954/screenshot2012051501235.jpg

with 1/12/28 PvE Spec and only Battlemaster gear without augments.

THX!Very nice Specc 1/12/28 here is my dmg:

 

http://i.imgur.com/VbJKX.jpg

 

I think I have a hard time seeing where these numbers are coming from exactly. On my server I typically see myself and a few other sorcs being able to get to 570k with that being the highest I've seen. For one my spec is 0/12/29 so there could very well be some differences there, but I don't think enough to increase it to where you are at.

If you don't mind could you, or anyone for that matter, explain whats going on from your end?

I think I have a hard time seeing where these numbers are coming from exactly. On my server I typically see myself and a few other sorcs being able to get to 570k with that being the highest I've seen. For one my spec is 0/12/29 so there could very well be some differences there, but I don't think enough to increase it to where you are at.

 

If you don't mind could you, or anyone for that matter, explain whats going on from your end?

Indeed would be nice if he would explain a bit what rotation and what abilities he use in what order to have such perfomance.

While the damage numbers he pulled seemed impressive its clear the opposing team simply had no dps and had a LOT of healing. (4 healers on the opposing team.) Just look closer at the scoreboard.

**edit** I wanted to clarify that I mean no disrespect. But are you people trying to be damage monkeys or are you playing to win? A real pvper will pull out those numbers while completing objectives. Just remember this is a team game. And if you're running around the outskirts and ramparts on huttball 1v1ing you are playing for yourself.

-D

I think I have a hard time seeing where these numbers are coming from exactly. On my server I typically see myself and a few other sorcs being able to get to 570k with that being the highest I've seen. For one my spec is 0/12/29 so there could very well be some differences there, but I don't think enough to increase it to where you are at.

 

If you don't mind could you, or anyone for that matter, explain whats going on from your end?

The explanation is extremely easy. He died zero times and took VERY little damage. Look at his healing. It's not even 40k. He only had to bubble himself enough to block 40k damage in the entire WZ - as a comparison I can easily hit 90k healing on bubbling myself in Voidstar. 7 of the 16 players in that Voidstar were healers. 3 were on his team, so he had amazing healing support. Half of the enemy team were healers, so that team had garbage DPS. He basically was a turret all game long and barely played objectives, look at his objective score. He focused only on DPS and nothing else, didn't have to worry about dying. 700k damage is actually barely average considering all of the above. Don't be too impressed by his cherry-picked screenshot.

The problem of the DPS-sorc in PVP

1. Background

I have been full battlmaster since the beginning of march and I used to be one of the top sorcerers of my server. I really loved the versatility of the sorceror before 1.2. You could go madness and be very hard to kill or go hybrid and be a glass cannon.

2. The problem

What happened after 1.2 is that they lowered the damage so much that you you cant even kill while kiting and they removed the option of being glass canon (hybrid) aswell.

We are now running around dotting people and setting up kills for our teammates. This would be fine if we were hard to kill, but unfortionately we are not.

People are argueing that we are support and should play the class as support. The only problem I see with this reasoning is that other classes have the same or even better support capabilities while still being viable when it comes to kill stuff. Take Powertechs for instance: Awesome killng machines, heavy armor, bubble, pull and taunts! They can kill 1v1 and they can be supportive. DPS sorcs have support functions but not enough to outweigh the lack of killingcapability or surviverability.

So we have concluded that we cannot kill our oponents. Now we have to analyze why that is?:

To isoltate our problem I have devided it into two main flaws:

1. We lack the tools to do enough damage over a certain period of time. It simply takes us too long to kill someone.

Or

2. Our surviverabilty is too low. Even if we kite we cant outlast the burst of the other classes.

The summary of the above:

Give us more time or up the damage.

3. Possible solutions:

Give us more damage from force lightning. This way we can be glasscanons again. Why up force lightning? Because it can be interrupted. It gives us the possibility to do damage but also the option for others to prevent it.

Or

Give us more surviverability. Up the amount of damage the shield can take or up the amount of healing parasitim does. Or even give us instant heals on wrath procs.

I hope that this will bring some clearity to the developers and the community.

Best regards

Dratten

No more double dipping on the lightning barrage. What's the new primo spec gonna be?

You already can't double-dip. The second Force Lightning has the normal tick interval (1.0 seconds, modified by Alacrity), but only channels for 1.5 seconds. This means that on a double dip, you get 6 ticks in 3.0 seconds. This is the same number of ticks as you'd get if you cast a Barrage FL followed by a normal FL, and double-dipping costs an effective 15 Force more than single-dipping (making double-dipping DPS-negative compared to single-dipping in a force-limited scenario, and DPS-neutral otherwise). The only thing 1.3 is changing is making it impossible to screw yourself by accidentally double-dipping.

Without double-dipping, 1/12/28 is nearly dead even with 3/31/7 and 3/7/31. All 3 are within a half percent of each other in total output. Pick your spec based on it's utility merits. 1/12/28 has the simplest rotation, 3/7/31 has the highest mobile DPS (by a slight amount), a 3/7/31 has by far the highest AoE, best force efficiency, and best burst (but also has the most complex rotation). I personally prefer the latter, but that's just me.

I'm no longer playing SWTOR, and won't be updating this thread. Daellia looks like he/she has a lot of knowledge with Sorcs, so I'd read up on his/her posts. Maybe a moderator can give you this thread or something so you can edit it, and not lose the popularity of it. Thanks to everyone who used my guides from the beginning and good luck in your future endevors of SWTOR.

Daellia if you are interested in taking over this thread, please message me and I can contact a moderator and see what they can do.

I'm no longer playing SWTOR, and won't be updating this thread. Daellia looks like he/she has a lot of knowledge with Sorcs, so I'd read up on his/her posts. Maybe a moderator can give you this thread or something so you can edit it, and not lose the popularity of it. Thanks to everyone who used my guides from the beginning and good luck in your future endevors of SWTOR.

 

Daellia if you are interested in taking over this thread, please message me and I can contact a moderator and see what they can do.

I don't think there is much need for a spec guide as there are, currently, three 'mainstream' viable DPS specs (not counting the weird heal/dps hybrids). 1/12/28 (Hybrid), 3/31/7 (Lightning) and 3/7/31 (Madness) are all so close in terms of raw DPS that the difference is rather negligible.

The main difference in these specs comes from it's difference in playstyle. 1/12/28 (Hybrid) gives you a tiny bit of additional burst through Lightning Barrage, albeit underwhelming. 3/7/31 (Madness) offers little extra over the Hybrid spec, though you lose Lightning Barrage's lil' burst. You gain Creeping Terror which is a nice extra DoT and can be quite useful in PvP (and in some on-the-move fights in PvE, like when running at Gharj). 3/31/7 (Lightning) offers the most burst, but is also very hard to play perfectly due to the amount of procs. Lightning being proc based also makes it dependable on the RNG which can be detrimental in PvP (however, you could line up a sick burst with Affliction > Thundering Blast > Recklessness > instant Chain Lightning > Crushing Darkness > Lightning Barrage).

My opinion is that 3/7/31 is currently the way to go for both PvP and PvE. It does suffer from Force issues when compared to the other spec, but it's mobility far outweights the benefits of Lightning in my opinion. Also, being able to instant-cast Whirlwind and a lower cooldown on Electrocute does a lot for me in terms of being able to kite, much more than Lightning Effusion does. Creeping Terror is also occasionally quite useful, think Huttball to stop a full-resolve guy in the fire. I hardly use 3/31/7 these days, although I would still recommend running this spec for EC, and especially for the Kephess fight.

Daellia if you are interested in taking over this thread, please message me and I can contact a moderator and see what they can do.

I no longer play either. My account has just over a month left on its sub time, but after that I won't even be able to post here.