I feel like I found a good setup right now with a couple of tacticals for my Madness Sorcerer.

Right now, swapping between Tempest of Rho and Slow Mercy depending on whether I do trash clearing or boss fights.

Thus far, I have the rotations figured out to best use both and it is absolutely making a difference. It's also nice to have tacticals for different situations (so long as I can switch them - can be a challenge in a Flashpoint when people sometimes tend to charge ahead).

The only downside is that I don't really feel like there is a set bonus that pays attention to what I can use - 2 pieces into Gathering Storm, which is what I am getting by default because the other 3 sets appear to be more for healers or PVP, but Gathering Storm feels like it would fit better for my Lightning Sorc, not my Madness Sorc.

Anyone else finding some fun combos?

It's also nice to have tacticals for different situations (so long as I can switch them - can be a challenge in a Flashpoint when people sometimes tend to charge ahead).

To make switching even easier, put the tacticals you want to use in your inventory. Then drag them to a skillbar. Then you only need to click on the skillbar icon to switch them. (This also works for weapons.)

The Gathering Storm set + Stormwatch seems to be the best for Lighning Sorcerer for pve. I enjoy that so much. While Eyrin's Haste seems better for pvp. Stormwatch inflicts damage to every target affected by your Affliction for each tick, since it should be on your target at all times for lighting. As for Madness, I would recommend the Ticking Bomb tactical, which increases the damage dealt by Crushing Darkness (and its madness counterpart) for each time it ticks, considering you use it more for this spec. As for Stormwatch, I don't think it is better than the other for madness since you should renew Affliction each time it wears off. I don't know though. We should wait for the numbers to be sure. It probably doesn't differ much. Now, I don't have any idea if there is a better set for madness than the Gathering Storm but I can't find any myself. All other Sorc sets seem no good to me.

Ticking force bomb is actually for Lightning spec.

Trust me, Tempest of Rho does the job - channel Force Lightning, hit Creeping Terror, then start toggling between FL and Lightning Strike for extra ticks. Mix in an Affliction for good measure. Honestly, since Affliction, Creeping Terror, and Force Lightning are all periodic damage, my next focus is actually going to be Grabbing the Max Periodic Intensity where I can find it on Armorings and my hilt.

Anyway, Tempest of Rho is beautiful for Madness against bosses. Just have to fine tune the rotation - Since Force Lightning procs insta-cast on both Lightning Strike and Demolish, but only Lightning Strike (and Force Lightning) hit extra ticks of Creeping Darkness, I have to figure out a better way to keep an eye on that debuff on the boss so that when it expires, I can hit demolish instead of lightning strike and then reapply Creeping Terror. Have to figure out where best to work in Polarity Shift and Recklessness as well.

Slow Mercy by the way is my new favorite trash-clearing champion. If you have a group that kites packs around corners, you wait until the whole pack is there and pick the guy with the most health - then Force Lightning (triggers Demolish insta-cast proc), chain that into Death Field to put Deathmark on the whole pack, and follow up with the insta-cast of Demolish, which hits EVERYONE deathmarked.

Then if you have the bonus damage to force storm in your utilities, you get between that and the tactical an extra 15%+25% damage for Force Storm (for deathmarked people in the case of the tactical). By this point, the whole pack is just MELTED. The only drawback is when you got a hyper player who runs all over the place instead of working to keep the pack together to AOE. But all I can say is DAMN. Its real nice. I also imagine it would be useful in PVP when combined with the Descellerator set, but I haven't tried that out yet.

Ticking force bomb is actually for Lightning spec.

Sorry, got it in my lightning sorc, and didn't know that. It doesn't make sense though. Maybe it was a mistake and they actually made it for madness. Anyway… What about Stormwatch for lightning?

When I do come across it I'll plug it into my lightning sorc. Haven't got my hands on it yet and building out my madness sorc first.

I feel like I found a good setup right now with a couple of tacticals for my Madness Sorcerer.

 

Right now, swapping between Tempest of Rho and Slow Mercy depending on whether I do trash clearing or boss fights.

 

Thus far, I have the rotations figured out to best use both and it is absolutely making a difference. It's also nice to have tacticals for different situations (so long as I can switch them - can be a challenge in a Flashpoint when people sometimes tend to charge ahead).

 

The only downside is that I don't really feel like there is a set bonus that pays attention to what I can use - 2 pieces into Gathering Storm, which is what I am getting by default because the other 3 sets appear to be more for healers or PVP, but Gathering Storm feels like it would fit better for my Lightning Sorc, not my Madness Sorc.

 

Anyone else finding some fun combos?

I think they need to add more options for madness sorcerer. Something that brings it back to 3.0.

I think they need to add more options for madness sorcerer. Something that brings it back to 3.0.

I wouldn't disagree. I at least want an armor set that synergizes well with Madness. Maybe something that has some interaction with Force Lightning or Affliction, else adds another Periodic Damage DOT to our arsenal. Hell, they love their new Volt Rush ability - why not an armor set that at 4 pieces doubles the duration of Affliction, and at 6 pieces allows Volt rush to refresh the duration for Creeping Terror?

Currently, I'd been using the Overwhelming Offense tactical with my Madness sorc, because the DOT's quickly get the damage stacks up, and keeps them up. However, it's unclear to me exactly how much each stack is worth (ie 1% dmg increase per stack?). I'll probably pick up Slow Mercy when I can next afford it, to better deal with mobs.

For set bonus, I'm using Stationary Grit right now, as none of the Sorc-specific sets looked particularly helpful to me for Madness. Gathering Storm seemed interesting, but I don't like the idea of having to burn my "escape" on cooldown to do burst damage.

I main Madness Sorc and have settled on the Gathering Storm set with the Slow Mercy and Tempest of Rho tacticals and it's been a lot of fun so far. I should probably switch them out between mobs and bosses, but I usually forget and end up just leaving the Slow Mercy one equipped. In Vet FPs, with a decent group, I don't even have to bother with a rotation. I just target the strongest enemy, hit Death Field, Force Lightning, and then Demolish hits everyone. If the mob isn't already dead by this point I just spam Force Storm to help finish them off. This set up just melts trash mobs and makes Madness feel fun and powerful again. In a lot of open world stuff with weak mobs I just hit Force Storm then Death Field, that's usually enough to take them all out.

The set bonus doesn't really do much in that lower level content, but it really shines in Master Mode FPs. For bosses and strong mobs in Master Mode FPs I usually open with Force Speed to get the proc on Polarity Shift, then hit Polarity shift and just go into my normal rotation of Creeping Terror, Affliction, Death Field, Force Leach,and Force Lightning - Demolish, Force Lightning - Lightning Strike. With the set bonus here I'm getting 20 seconds of Polarity Shift and 20% extra damage while it lasts. I can make it through almost 2 whole rotations before it wears off. This does a ton of damage up front and I have to be careful sometimes that I don't steal agro from the tank. After this I repeat my standard rotation, but hit force speed each time just before a procced Demolish. In my rotation this lines up perfectly and Force Speed is just coming off of cooldown as I'm getting the proc on Demolish. This gives Demolish a 20% damage boost every time I use it and knocks another 10 seconds off the cooldown of Polarity Shift. 10 Seconds doesn't sound like much, but in practice it usually allows me to use Polarity shift at least 2 or 3 times during a boss fight. In addition, since I can just throw in a force speed here and there while running between mobs to reduce the cooldown, it means that I can use Polarity Shift all the time and don't have to save it for the bosses.

I don't do PvP or Operations, so I can't speak about those. But, for casual play, open world, Heroics, and Vet and MM flashpoints this set up has been working out great.

In case you wanted to know my gear set-up, I'm currently at item rating 306 with the full 6 piece Gathering Storm set and a random bracer. I went the cheap route and just put MK-10 augment kits in everything and use the old 228 augments since I can make those by crafting. I have my accuracy at about 110.3% with a yellow stim, my crit is at 39.99% and I have a little over 9% alacrity. I could probably swap an alacrity augment for a crit, but under recklessness this gives me 99.99% crit which is good enough for me for now.

I main a sorc healer and the revitalized mystic set has the best bonus with 4+ pieces. But the 6-piece bonus I'm not sure about but once I got that 4th piece I was back in my healing flow. I also found the tactical that increases healing of my aoe heal the more people are benefitting from it quite useful, particularly in ops.

And I love the sniper siege tactical. Makes my sniper an aoe monster

I main Madness Sorc and have settled on the Gathering Storm set with the Slow Mercy and Tempest of Rho tacticals and it's been a lot of fun so far. I should probably switch them out between mobs and bosses, but I usually forget and end up just leaving the Slow Mercy one equipped. In Vet FPs, with a decent group, I don't even have to bother with a rotation. I just target the strongest enemy, hit Death Field, Force Lightning, and then Demolish hits everyone. If the mob isn't already dead by this point I just spam Force Storm to help finish them off. This set up just melts trash mobs and makes Madness feel fun and powerful again. In a lot of open world stuff with weak mobs I just hit Force Storm then Death Field, that's usually enough to take them all out.

 

The set bonus doesn't really do much in that lower level content, but it really shines in Master Mode FPs. For bosses and strong mobs in Master Mode FPs I usually open with Force Speed to get the proc on Polarity Shift, then hit Polarity shift and just go into my normal rotation of Creeping Terror, Affliction, Death Field, Force Leach,and Force Lightning - Demolish, Force Lightning - Lightning Strike. With the set bonus here I'm getting 20 seconds of Polarity Shift and 20% extra damage while it lasts. I can make it through almost 2 whole rotations before it wears off. This does a ton of damage up front and I have to be careful sometimes that I don't steal agro from the tank. After this I repeat my standard rotation, but hit force speed each time just before a procced Demolish. In my rotation this lines up perfectly and Force Speed is just coming off of cooldown as I'm getting the proc on Demolish. This gives Demolish a 20% damage boost every time I use it and knocks another 10 seconds off the cooldown of Polarity Shift. 10 Seconds doesn't sound like much, but in practice it usually allows me to use Polarity shift at least 2 or 3 times during a boss fight. In addition, since I can just throw in a force speed here and there while running between mobs to reduce the cooldown, it means that I can use Polarity Shift all the time and don't have to save it for the bosses.

 

I don't do PvP or Operations, so I can't speak about those. But, for casual play, open world, Heroics, and Vet and MM flashpoints this set up has been working out great.

 

In case you wanted to know my gear set-up, I'm currently at item rating 306 with the full 6 piece Gathering Storm set and a random bracer. I went the cheap route and just put MK-10 augment kits in everything and use the old 228 augments since I can make those by crafting. I have my accuracy at about 110.3% with a yellow stim, my crit is at 39.99% and I have a little over 9% alacrity. I could probably swap an alacrity augment for a crit, but under recklessness this gives me 99.99% crit which is good enough for me for now.

Good to know gathering storm is useful - that's the only set I am really working on right now.

And I can attest to Slow Mercy being absolutely killer for clearing trash.

They're really overpriced for what they do. A million credits for that? Really? Then there's having to collect tech fragments...

Not really. And to be honest my two tacticals I ended up looting.

But even so a million credits and some tech fragments for something you'll likely keep, and some of the cool benefits from some of these?

I get how they'd appear at first but once you actually start using them you see their value.