Has anyone done a few wz's with the new madness talents? Just curious to see if the damage buffs (although they said slight) were decent. I really enjoy playing a dot based class and was hoping we would of got some type of dot protection this patch but that seems to not be the case.

Has anyone done a few wz's with the new madness talents? Just curious to see if the damage buffs (although they said slight) were decent. I really enjoy playing a dot based class and was hoping we would of got some type of dot protection this patch but that seems to not be the case.

 

Yup, madness is almost the same as it is on live.

 

Damage buffs are very slight on full madness, but then considering the other classes damage/healing also went up and that some of our attacks which werent shieldable now are, i would say our damage stays in the same levels of live, if not slightly nerfed if compared to other classes damage.

 

The lost of the instant whirlind talent is dissapoinint and hurts us a lot.

 

All in all, if youre a good madness player in live you will do almost as good in 2.0, but you still has the same problems, if not more. IMO madness is a good spec for DUELING but its awkwardness for 8 man objective PvP just got more visible with the loss of instant whirl and not sufficient damage buffs.

 

Force management is still a problem, since you have no real relief, spam light to help with regen is almost impossible but its like that on live already.

 

All in all, its fun, if youre skilled you can totally rape the random pugs, but dont expect to see too much of madness on RWZs if 2.0 goes live this way.

 

Oh and Force Barrier is super good, awesome, you will have a lot of fun with it.

 

All testing has been done at lvl 55 with full EWH modded augmented gear, but i doubt things will change a lot with the new tier gear.

Thank you for your response. Trying to decide between my sorc or my operative. Love them both. Appreciate the feedback.

I don't think they're slight for madness in the least!

 

Just looking at this (I logged in to PTS to verify this):

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sorcerer/236/

 

Death Field now hits 5 targets! That's a big boost to dps... in addition Wrath now boosts damage by 35% instead of 20%. We lose the double Shock proc, but it's easy to still pick up. I may not though as it seems the high force cost Shock is less in our rotation now, and we have more reason to use Wrath for Lightning Strike instead of using a gcd for Shock, we'll see.

 

There are many other changes.

Edited February 22, 2013 by Monterone

Can't really test anything for madness in PVP right now due to Warzones being completely broken with players having 400k health and one shotting people due to a bug.

 

I did manage to play a few games to test out the build and did some PVE testing on the operation dummy.

 

No instant whirlwind absolutely sucks, we need more sorcs testing and giving feedback to change that **** back. Force Barrier is NOT as good as it's made out to be by the guy above. You stand there in a giant bubble unable to do anything. When the channel is done you *might* be able to force sprint away, however, if your team didn't heal// kill whatever is around you... you will still be obliterated just like live. I've said this before: It's much like ICEBLOCK from Warcraft that mages had... The big differences are you can't freeze everything around you in place and blink away. You only get to hope that you're not rooted out of the block when you force sprint. They moved both bindings and the blind, too high in lightning to go hybrid so that is out of the question.

 

The damage output is not that strong in pvp but again, nearly impossible to actually test because of the bolter//expertise stacking.

 

In PVE, there's a noticeable increase.... But we still don't have a Sub 30% execute range talent like everyone else does (except for arsenal mercs who also don't have one) but the Assassins got it in their Madness tree. Ridiculous.

 

I would much rather have the Teleport ability that Sins got (( AND LOL @ THAT. Who in the right mind decided assasins needed yet ANOTHER escape that can be done In or out of stealth? This development team is a joke.)

I got to level 10 on my Inquisitors and didn't really have to think all that hard about which advanced class to choose. I rarely used the saber attacks and used shock and force lightni.g almost exclusively to kill things. I looked at some of the guides and knew Sins got much better saber attacks, so figured the Sorcerers got much better force/ranged attacks. I found out that Sins get better damage from all saber attacks obviously, but also can hit harder with shock in all three trees than Sorcs can in any tree. Can hit harder with Force Lightning in one tree than Sorc's can in any tree. But at least I liked Deathfield. So what if they could do slightly more damage than us (melee crits increase ranged crit chance) with that too. But now they get an execute built into deathfield, to go along with an actual execute.

 

Deathfield is what now, the 5th different ability Sins have a capability to get 5k+ hits with? Sorcs still don't have 1 yet.

I don't think they're slight for madness in the least!

 

Just looking at this (I logged in to PTS to verify this):

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sorcerer/236/

 

Death Field now hits 5 targets! That's a big boost to dps... in addition Wrath now boosts damage by 35% instead of 20%. We lose the double Shock proc, but it's easy to still pick up. I may not though as it seems the high force cost Shock is less in our rotation now, and we have more reason to use Wrath for Lightning Strike instead of using a gcd for Shock, we'll see.

 

There are many other changes.

 

Every class got damage buffs, if you look at things and isolate them you will think every single class has been buffed and its now overpowered.

 

I have only tested Pyrotech and Sorc on the PTS so far but i can tell you that pyros still do much more damage than madness.

 

Its kind of soon to take final conclusions but my experience so far is that sorc damage is still low if compared to other DPS ACs and doesnt make up for the low survivability of the AC.

 

Even with the buffs, madness still lacks any kind of single target burst. Which is what makes or breaks PvP anyway.

I've tested all classes at 55 and with Sorc being my main I can say the damage boost of madness isn't "slight" at all, it's actually quite large. All of our abilities hit consideribly harder and the talent changes as well as the redesign of alacrity really compliment the whole spec. I've been able to kill every class 1v1 (excluding stealthers due to their obvious advantage in 1v1) and finish with just under 50% health.

 

I parsed with every class and while I don't have any numbers to share on this laptop I do know that Lightning Sorc was among the highest dps with madness being slightly behind. (although madness will surely outperform on some fights).

 

As someone who has played this class since beta I am extremely happy with what bioware have done with the class. Although they've kept the sustained damage feel it now feels significant enough to compete with the burst other classes can push.

 

I only have two complaints about madness thusfar. The first is like many others I feel that the removal of instant whirlwind was a little unjustified. I do however think with our larger damage potential we wouldn't have to rely on it as much as we have in the past, but even so it was a nice utility I feel we shouldn't have lost.

 

My second complaint is regarding an Assassin talent called Bloodletting which basically increases deathfield and dot damage by 15% on targets under 30% health. You can think of it as a periodic execute ability. My complaint is simply that we don't have it. This is something we would really benefit from, but it was given to Asssasins despite them already having an extremely strong execute skill. I feel like having this talent would really round off the spec into a near perfect state for Sorcs. One of the issues madness has always had, for example when killing healers, is once we've gotten them very low our damage is just too slow to put them down before they pop an emergency heal or cooldown and they just hold on for dear life until someone helps them or someone helps you. It's fine to outheal some damage, but our constant damage shouldn't be outhealed indefinitely. This talent would help eliminate that problem entirely. I can't understand for the life of me why this was given to Assassins.

 

Overall I'm very much looking forward to Sorcerers feeling powerful again. It's been a long time since any of us felt like we filled that epic Palpatine role. Anybody who's wondering about the state of Sorcerers, here it is plain and simple. Things are looking up. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but... Good job Bioware. You may not have fixed the class indefinitely, but it's definitely more than viable again.

 

Deathfield is what now, the 5th different ability Sins have a capability to get 5k+ hits with? Sorcs still don't have 1 yet.

 

You'll find most abilities used in the Lightning rotation hit extremely hard now. Lightning Strike consistently hits for 3-4k and Thundering Blast and Chain Lightning tend to hit for a minimum of 6k with the new gear sets and both have a chance to proc a second attack which usually hits between 1-2k. You could easily do 20k damage chaining these two abilities together if you're lucky with procs/crits and that's not including the potential AOE from chain lightning. Also Deathfield for sorcs hits just as hard as it does for Assassins and always has.

Edited February 22, 2013 by Elvandar
Typo

From a PVE perspective, just looking at the skill tree it's interesting.

 

They potentially give you a reason to use Lightning Strike with the 35 percent extra damage from Wrath, the Lightning Burns proc and the proc that has the 100 percent change to increase your alacrity if you use lightning strike.

 

There is nothing new in the madness tree that helps with force regen but if you invest 7 points in the lightning tree you can get Subversion which increases your force regen rate for 10 percent and stacks up to three times if you use Lightning Strike. Granted you could do that before, but there was little incentive to use Lightning Strike. If you do that however, then you would have to decide between getting the 3 percent extra crit chance in the corruption tree or the 2 percent extra alacrity and the 1 percent extra crit chance.

 

The main concern is that they eliminated the second tier talent in the lighting tree that extended your affliction by 6 seconds which means you will have to reapply that a lot more.

 

Also, it feels like there are a lot of utility talents in the madness tree that you would need to take to get Creeping Terror that are of questionable utility in PVE.

Edited February 22, 2013 by TomWolp

The lost of the instant whirlind talent is dissapoinint and hurts us a lot..

^this

 

My second complaint is regarding an Assassin talent called Bloodletting which basically increases deathfield and dot damage by 15% on targets under 30% health. You can think of it as a periodic execute ability. My complaint is simply that we don't have it. This is something we would really benefit from, but it was given to Asssasins despite them already having an extremely strong execute skill. I feel like having this talent would really round off the spec into a near perfect state for Sorcs. One of the issues madness has always had, for example when killing healers, is once we've gotten them very low our damage is just too slow to put them down before they pop an emergency heal or cooldown and they just hold on for dear life until someone helps them or someone helps you. It's fine to outheal some damage, but our constant damage shouldn't be outhealed indefinitely. This talent would help eliminate that problem entirely. I can't understand for the life of me why this was given to Assassins.

 

Overall I'm very much looking forward to Sorcerers feeling powerful again. It's been a long time since any of us felt like we filled that epic Palpatine role. Anybody who's wondering about the state of Sorcerers, here it is plain and simple. Things are looking up. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but... Good job Bioware. You may not have fixed the class indefinitely, but it's definitely more than viable again.

 

 

Since maras are laughing about how rage is now incredibly strong and didn't get any meaningful nerf, I do not share your optimism and fully expect knights and warriors to continue roflstomping wzs.

 

They've not given us shroud, they've taken away instant whirlwind, the couldn't be bothered to make it so our dots don't break the whirlwind either. And like you say they give a class with an execute something that should have been given to sorcs.

 

Force bubble is meh. I'd much rather have had a straight damage reflection for 4s then that useless ability. But no they give that sort of thing to Juggs, like they need ANOTHER defensive. They already take forever to kill, even in dps specs.

 

So no, I don't share your optimism, but hey things are looking up for everyone except Sorcs. Good right?

Edited February 22, 2013 by Chemic_al

So after looking at the PTS tree and thinking from a PvE perspective i agree with TomWolp that its interesting.

 

The changes done for Lightning Strike make it easy to fit in our rotations in Operations when you already have Deathmark and dots on a target and dont want to use Crushing Darkness. Giving us an additional smaller dot with Lightning Burn, while doesnt make a huge difference, is an appreciated bonus now from LS. The alacrity boost is an alacrity boost not much else there. I do like that they reformed Forror Horrors to affect all our dots as well. I see a fairly average dps boost there in PvE though i wont say its on even with everyone else.

 

From a PvP perspective all i have to say is SSDD. And honestly BW no insta-whirlwind? Are you all just Maras and Juggs???? Cause Wrath+ChainLightning wasn't enough? Loss of 360 knockback not enough? What's next huh? Gonna give us a cast bar for Affliction? I just don't understand it they might as well just give Sorcs a toolbelt if they want us to be utility so badly. At the very least you made Deathfield hit 5ppl now but I doubt we will be able to hit at least 5k with it right?

 

All in all (IMO) Madness seems to have become slightly better in the PvE department but in PvP its the same. And I really like the changes done with Lightning Strike.

 

 

 

R.I.P. Instant Whirlwind

I don't like to use the PTS because it means I have to play the same content over again. Plus the story spoilers. However, with the changes made to Madness I have to say I am happy with the damage increase we are getting, or "effectiveness" might be a better word.

I am with some though, that Sins were far too powerful to begin with and giving them an Execute type ability just adds to their OP already. And yes, losing the instant cast to our Whirl Wind is a blow to our guts, but what about the previous nerf, cutting our Electrocute range down to 10 meters. Last I checked, we are ranged and very squishy, so what would compell Bioware to think cutting down our CC's range down would be a good thing?

Yes, our damage effectiveness is increased but over all we are not done yet being fixed. I am happy with the progress, but await further repair.

I still love my Madness Sorc, but I also have learned to work with what I have.

So after looking at the PTS tree and thinking from a PvE perspective i agree with TomWolp that its interesting.

 

The changes done for Lightning Strike make it easy to fit in our rotations in Operations when you already have Deathmark and dots on a target and dont want to use Crushing Darkness. Giving us an additional smaller dot with Lightning Burn, while doesnt make a huge difference, is an appreciated bonus now from LS. The alacrity boost is an alacrity boost not much else there. I do like that they reformed Forror Horrors to affect all our dots as well. I see a fairly average dps boost there in PvE though i wont say its on even with everyone else.

 

From a PvP perspective all i have to say is SSDD. And honestly BW no insta-whirlwind? Are you all just Maras and Juggs???? Cause Wrath+ChainLightning wasn't enough? Loss of 360 knockback not enough? What's next huh? Gonna give us a cast bar for Affliction? I just don't understand it they might as well just give Sorcs a toolbelt if they want us to be utility so badly. At the very least you made Deathfield hit 5ppl now but I doubt we will be able to hit at least 5k with it right?

 

All in all (IMO) Madness seems to have become slightly better in the PvE department but in PvP its the same. And I really like the changes done with Lightning Strike.

 

 

 

R.I.P. Instant Whirlwind

 

 

Yes, the more i test madness in 2.0 the more i agree that the light strike buff and other minor DPS buffs are a godsend to PvE, but they dont change our predictament in PvP.

 

As to Force Management, i think theres a terrible missunderstanding going on. So, we have to spend points on the talent that makes our force pool go to 600, then spend points on the talent that makes our spells have reduced cost, then we advance to 2nd tier of lightning and still have to spend 2 points on the subversion. Thats 7 skill points plus 3 from efficacy on the madness tree.

 

THATS 10 SKILL POINTS SPENT ON TALENTS THAT DO NOT HELP OUR DAMAGE, DO NOT GIVE US DEFENSES OR UTILITY AND MADNESS STILL HAS THE 2ND WORSE ENERGY MANAGEMENT IN THE WHOLE GAME, ONLY COMPARED TO CONCEALMENT OPS

 

Its lame design if i ever saw it. These talents are mere "point tax", they should be made baseline or they should be merged with talents that give us extra damage / healing / protection. Its a HUGE design flaw and its being carried over to 2.0.

 

No other class in the game has to spend 10 talent points to still have bad energy management, no, they can actually spend their points on talents that makes them stronger, one of the reason madness (and sorcs in general) are subpar and the devs arent adressing it.

Im assuming you are talking about the 3 useless defense abilities (=6pts) in the madness tree that noone should even think of puttings in. Unless you also mean "Electric Induction" which lowers force cost blah blah blah.

 

Anyways ive been able to make a mock Full Madness 3/7/36 tree that im assuming will be the general tree used by madness sorcs now in both pvp and pve. The 7pts in Lightning imo are up to how much force reservation you want. You can put the points into "Reserves" for more force but i dont think theextra 100 makes a big difference. I would strongly advice against putting any points in "Subversion" because you can only use the regen boost through LS. A point or 2 in "Convection" would be better to increase the power of LS and CD (2%/4%)

No other class in the game has to spend 10 talent points to still have bad energy management, no, they can actually spend their points on talents that makes them stronger, one of the reason madness (and sorcs in general) are subpar and the devs arent adressing it.

 

If you've tried 2.0 madness and are still running out of force then you're doing something very very wrong. I have struggled to even intentionally give myself force problems. Management is not an issue at all in 2.0. Hell for Lightning even spamming heals I was unable to drop lower than 97%.

 

As to people saying it's still poor at pvp I'd like to disagree with that. Madness as it is on live is a very good spec for PVP if played correctly, it's main problem is simply we lack the burst pvp requires. On the PTS the only classes I've had trouble beating 1v1 (which is generally tougher on us than mass pvp) are stealthers. I was able to handle every other class with ease including a high rated marauder with fully augmented elite war hero (compared to my half augmented regular war hero). Suffice to say the likes of Marauders and Pyros feel far less of a threat to us now. Thanks to the general damage boost we are finally a proper kiting class, where as in the past kiting didn't do much at all.

 

While its true 2.0 madness has stayed as a "sustained" damage spec, the increase to that sustained damage combined with the new use for lightning strike is enough to put a lot of pressure on the enemy. I have no doubt the loss of our instant CC will hinder us in PVP, but with the exception of that change, Madness has improved leaps and bounds across the board. At this point all I could ask for is some form of execute ability or talent since that is something we seriously lack, while Assassins now have two execute oriented things included in their class.

If you've tried 2.0 madness and are still running out of force then you're doing something very very wrong. I have struggled to even intentionally give myself force problems. Management is not an issue at all in 2.0. Hell for Lightning even spamming heals I was unable to drop lower than 97%.

 

What changed in force management from 1.7 to 2.0?

 

You still go OOF faster than any other class in the game in "mid node" fights unless you intend to die and respawn every 2 minutes.

Madness 2.0 just seems as similar as it is now for pvp. I can see force management being less a problem than now but judging from the tree Madness just looks the same. Any change of partcular sorts is no more instawhirlwind, force barrier, and increased movement if you use polarity shift from tree ability. I guess between CT, Electricute, Force Slow/Lightning, Surging Speed, Force Barrier, etc we became better at kiting. Still im not saying its gotten worse for pvp but im not saying its gotten much better either. Seems mostly same to me

You still go OOF faster than any other class in the game in "mid node" fights unless you intend to die and respawn every 2 minutes.

 

I'm not sure exactly what has changed regarding force management, but it feels far less starved as full Madness.

 

If you are multi dotting sure you'll go OOF quickly. If you don't multi dot so much you wont run out of force, it's as simple as that. If you go ahead and stick to single target you'll find you shouldn't have any force issues even over long fights.

I'm not sure exactly what has changed regarding force management, but it feels far less starved as full Madness.

 

If you are multi dotting sure you'll go OOF quickly. If you don't multi dot so much you wont run out of force, it's as simple as that. If you go ahead and stick to single target you'll find you shouldn't have any force issues even over long fights.

 

I will say that from the tree and such we can go about 3 dotted targets without much force loss there. Hit both with DF, mark em with Afflictions, mark 1 with CT and with Wrath mark the other with CD or CT if its off cooldown. You can even use LS new mini dot to help out.

 

Like i said the changes make Madness moderately better but i dont think it makes a large jump in the whole scheme of things.

 

*cough* still waiting for BW to make Deathfield an AoE dot *cough*

Edited February 22, 2013 by Sosajoshua

I'm not sure exactly what has changed regarding force management, but it feels far less starved as full Madness.

 

If you are multi dotting sure you'll go OOF quickly. If you don't multi dot so much you wont run out of force, it's as simple as that. If you go ahead and stick to single target you'll find you shouldn't have any force issues even over long fights.

 

Its not as simple as that, to achieve full damage per gcd on a madness sorc, you have to be "opportunistic" and dot as much people as its reasonably possible (dotting the 8 players of the enemy team is idiotic, but you must pre dot anything that your team might switch too).

 

You also must do things like stopcasting FL channel to cast instant CD or LS if (AND ONLY IF FOR PETES SAKE) it procs after the gcd because instant CD / FL > damage per gcd than just letting FL tick, the same goes for shock if it gets outta CD after the first 1.5 seconds of casting FL.

 

So, to achieve respectable damage with madness you have to cast DF and CT almost on CD, let FL tick for 1 gcd only and wait for a proc to try to cast something instant and shock on cd.

 

If you do this, you will have decent sustained damage, but you will run OOF.

 

Spamming FL 24/7 makes you a force god, it also makes your damage suck.

Did they cut down durations of dots and I not read that? If not, regular rotation seems fair to go about still. And I mean i understand what you mean with Wrath but at least for me the proc generates quick enough that I use LS in rotations now if Deathmark is still up and i still get the proc right after DN is gone to use CD. So i dont see a Wrath problem for sorcs like i see a RS proc problem for Pyros

Everyone please remember to post your thoughts and suggestions in the PTS threads. Even though they've ignored our class feedback for the most part, getting our posts read possibly by someone who can DO something about it is very important and worth a shot.

Did we get a DF hit increase? Just something that crossed my mind after remembering that I crit one for 5.7k against Dread Guards in TFBHM. I dont mind if we dont but hey if i could hit 6.5k (thats wishful thinking) that'd be fun!

Everyone please remember to post your thoughts and suggestions in the PTS threads. Even though they've ignored our class feedback for the most part, getting our posts read possibly by someone who can DO something about it is very important and worth a shot.

 

Ill beleive that when I'm high again give me a quick 20 minutes and ill be in that mode. lol j/k

 

Yea i really beleive 2.0 is the ugh oh crap we gotta do something with this class