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4.0 Lightning Sorcerer Guide


DarthCognusSion

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I have been playing Lightning Sorcerer since I started playing this game all the way back at early access launch 4 years ago. I have always loved the class, through the good times and the bad. Since there have been no new guides since 4.0, I decided to make one. Enjoy

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i7oxtVA0KzIETKRTI2GduQ7lhUx-sKjSHn-iLTwZ9Sk/edit?usp=sharing

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I meant in-depth guides that really explore the class. I mean no offense to the author of the other post, but their guide is very brief and lacks much of what class guides have come to be. This guide was meant to give players a strong start point for understanding how to play this class at a high level. This is to what I was referring when I said that there had been no other Lightning Sorcerer guides. Perhaps I worded it poorly and should have been more specific. Edited by DarthCognusSion
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Thanks for the guide, DCS. I also mean no offense to the makers of the other thread, but I found this one more helpful.

 

I never expected I'd enjoy being a Sorcerer over the past few years, so I never bothered to try it. But with the double XP thing going on, I figured I might as well. I am having more fun on this Lightning spec Sorc than any of my other characters right now. It may not be as singularly powerful as my PT, but for me it's more fun and that's what counts. And I'm reading your guide closely, so thanks!

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I never expected I'd enjoy being a Sorcerer over the past few years, so I never bothered to try it. But with the double XP thing going on, I figured I might as well. I am having more fun on this Lightning spec Sorc than any of my other characters right now. It may not be as singularly powerful as my PT, but for me it's more fun and that's what counts. And I'm reading your guide closely, so thanks!

 

Thank you. I made this guide because I love the class so much. There have been many times in the past where I have played higher parsing classes (mainly Virulence) but I have always come back to Lightning because I just find it so much more fun. It is not FotM by any means, but I just want people to know that with the proper time put into understanding the nuances of the class, a well played Sorc can do very well.

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The most compelling reason anyone should ever play a Sorc in a raid environment is to extricate members into hilarious situations. Sion excels at this task. Sure...the burst dps is nice and the utility of the class is stellar. There is no doubt that a well-played Sorc is a valuable addition. Regardless, the trolling potential is unsurpassed. Until the Devs fix Translocate into a viable ability, Sorc's extricate is the king of the mountain.
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The most compelling reason anyone should ever play a Sorc in a raid environment is to extricate members into hilarious situations. Sion excels at this task. Sure...the burst dps is nice and the utility of the class is stellar. There is no doubt that a well-played Sorc is a valuable addition. Regardless, the trolling potential is unsurpassed. Until the Devs fix Translocate into a viable ability, Sorc's extricate is the king of the mountain.

 

I do not troll. I simply take advantage of the lack of situational awareness that many people in my group have. If they do not wish to die horrible deaths, they shouldn't stand so close to ledges, lava, or other precarious situations.

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In your opening rotation you are using force speed but not explaining why. As I am sure you are aware there is no dps gain, except from trying to squeeze an extra LB during a relic proc, which very likely at that point.

 

My suggestion is two-fold:

- might want to explain the reasons behind it otherwise people will get stressed with force speed which will result to actual lower attack APM even if that might not be evident by the APM number shown as A stands for abilities and counts speed also.

- For the opening rotation you can force speed (on the spot) in the pull phase before the hard-casted crushing darkness. Puts force speed on cd earlier and avoids having an extra button to press where you have it.

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In your opening rotation you are using force speed but not explaining why. As I am sure you are aware there is no dps gain, except from trying to squeeze an extra LB during a relic proc, which very likely at that point.

 

My suggestion is two-fold:

- might want to explain the reasons behind it otherwise people will get stressed with force speed which will result to actual lower attack APM even if that might not be evident by the APM number shown as A stands for abilities and counts speed also.

- For the opening rotation you can force speed (on the spot) in the pull phase before the hard-casted crushing darkness. Puts force speed on cd earlier and avoids having an extra button to press where you have it.

 

I do not explain why right under the rotation, but I do explain the use of Force Speed under my Offensive Cooldowns section (yes I know it isn't technically an off cd, but i thought it was still the best spot for it). As for casting Force Speed before, of course you can do that. I don't do that because I don't feel the need. The opener, and overall guide, represents what I believe to be the best way of doing things. This opinion has been influenced by my own experience, previous guide writers, and Bant (because no matter how much I know about Sorc, he always finds a way to tell me something I don't). Of course there are always going to be areas in which people disagree about the most efficient way of doing things. However, I feel that if you (impersonal, I don't mean you specifically) read the whole guide, you should come away with a solid understanding of why I do the things I do, and can make your own adjustments for preference as needed because, at the end of the day, using Force Speed before the first CD or where I use it is going to amount to such a minute difference in dps that it really is just preference.

 

Edit: After re-reading this I realize that I come off a little strong which was not my intention. I was merely trying to illustrate that there is no significant difference in dps related to where you use the first Force Speed.

Edited by DarthCognusSion
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No bother about the tone. Yes missed that section with explaining force speed. It only applies in the beginning, that really makes little difference. Also fast-clickers or macroers won't really have a problem. It was just a thing that readers could be aware of.

 

But by reading this section now, I was thinking that I often do with recklessness. Correctly you mention that it might be worth delaying it a bit to get flash/CL (and possibly CD off their cd). What I often do is that given that chain proc will last for 10s and it is never hard-casted then there is no rush in firing it. This means you can hold the chain proc and reck while waiting for flash to come off-cd but mind (as you already say) the time needed from TB to become available again. In fact when parsing I have got into the habit of actually following TB with bolt or flash/CD (per priority system) to make sure that I have the CL proc as it often drifts from TB.

Edited by MusicRider
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Small note on Recklessness: Crushing darkness is the worst possible candidate for it because the DoT portion doesn't benefit from it. It's probably not worth delaying CrD if it happens to come off cooldown during Recklessness, but you should be doing your best to use Flash, Chain and Bolt.
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Small note on Recklessness: Crushing darkness is the worst possible candidate for it because the DoT portion doesn't benefit from it. It's probably not worth delaying CrD if it happens to come off cooldown during Recklessness, but you should be doing your best to use Flash, Chain and Bolt.

 

Yes kind of agree with this, typical use for me is with flash+chain+bolt or chain|flash + 2xbolts. In fact I would rephrase the above comment and say that it is not worth delaying any of the priority abilities by more than 1gcd (other than proc chain off) to wait on recklessness, in fact the opposite delaying reck but again waiting for both flash and crushing might be too long and one delay the other. It is safer to keep reck+chain on proc waiting some seconds for flash and add a filler bolt for the 3rd charge.

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Small note on Recklessness: Crushing darkness is the worst possible candidate for it because the DoT portion doesn't benefit from it. It's probably not worth delaying CrD if it happens to come off cooldown during Recklessness, but you should be doing your best to use Flash, Chain and Bolt.

Yes kind of agree with this, typical use for me is with flash+chain+bolt or chain|flash + 2xbolts. In fact I would rephrase the above comment and say that it is not worth delaying any of the priority abilities by more than 1gcd (other than proc chain off) to wait on recklessness, in fact the opposite delaying reck but again waiting for both flash and crushing might be too long and one delay the other. It is safer to keep reck+chain on proc waiting some seconds for flash and add a filler bolt for the 3rd charge.

 

Lightning Flash and Chain Lightning are definitely the 2 best abilities to use with Recklessness. I want to be clear that you should never be delaying abilities for Recklessness, maybe 1 gcd but no more than that. As I state in the guide, delaying Recklessness a little is ok but never for more than 1 Thundering Blast cycle. I also try and squeeze it into the Polarity Shift window so that I can use it more often. So yes I am aware that Crushing Darkness is not optimal for it, but neither is Lightning Bolt, and I don't like delaying Recklessness long enough for LF and CL to match up. I concern myself mainly with the first 2 charges of Recklessness anyway. The third is basically a guaranteed waste until they fix its interaction with Thundering Blast. This is why I advocate for the use of the Dread Master 4-piece, if you have it, with the new 2-piece because the 5% increased alacrity with 70--75% uptime is just better from the testing that I have done. Of course if you don't have the Dread Master 4-piece, this point is moot. Keep in mind though that while both CD and LB have a 25% chance to proc, only CD has a 10% increase to crit damage. LB may still be better, but I don't think that there is enough there for one to worry about it

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The next highest priority for a Recklessness charge is Crushing Darkness, followed lastly by Lightning Bolt.

 

I was just pointing out that this statement in the guide is wrong. By how much? Well your own parse says it's about 21% difference.

 

Any chance you could expand on how you tested for your set bonus? I've given a go at modifying Bant's spreadsheet to simulate it and I'm getting a small difference in favor of the new 6p

Edited by Kawabonga
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My main is a lightning sorc so this was real helpful, did you crunch the numbers to find out dps or is there a program that does that? I have never liked not having a dps meter in this game.

 

No I did not do the numbers myself. I rely on Bant's numbers and his insight for most of the number related things. As far as my own dps, I use Starparse and Parsely to review and analyze how I am doing.

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No I did not do the numbers myself. I rely on Bant's numbers and his insight for most of the number related things. As far as my own dps, I use Starparse and Parsely to review and analyze how I am doing.

 

Thanx much for hooking me up, I will google those.

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I was just pointing out that this statement in the guide is wrong. By how much? Well your own parse says it's about 21% difference.

 

Any chance you could expand on how you tested for your set bonus? I've given a go at modifying Bant's spreadsheet to simulate it and I'm getting a small difference in favor of the new 6p

 

As far as my log goes, yes there is a 21% difference in how much CD's avg crit was to LB's average. I never used a Rck charge on LB (the first one appears like it occurs within the window, but the charges are actually spent on LF and CL) . But if you look at that log I used Rck 4 times, and I only used it on CD 1 of those times. If you compare the highest LB I had (6748) to the CD that was used on that Rck charge (4856), yes there is a good amount of difference between these. However, you are now talking about the difference of 1892 damage over a 1.5 million parse. It is pretty insignificant. I just want to point out that the difference is so small (.126134%) that they are almost equal, and it is not worth delaying the CD even 1 gcd for the LB because the damage of CD (initial hit+DoT) is on average higher than LB. This is why I make that statement in the guide.

 

Edit: I did not take into account the 6-piece here, which is my own fault. Due to the addition of the 3rd charge, and therefore more instances where either CD or LB would need to be used, perhaps it might be worth to prioritize LB. I will need to test this more. However, I still believe as of this time that delaying CD for LB is never a good idea.

 

My testing is purely through parsing and not through the spreadsheet. Just out of curiosity, how did you use Bant's spreadsheet to test this because I talked to Bant about this, but he no longer has the values at hand for the 4-piece and so has not tested that. On top of this, Thundering Blast is not affected by Recklessness, but I believe on Bant's spreadsheet there is still the calculation there that would allow that extra damage to factor in. This may account the discrepancy or it might be that my evidence is merely anecdotal, and that in actuality the 6-piece is better. Like I said in the guide, I am not 100% 224. Based on my own testing with about 50 parses on each, I determined that the old 4-piece was better. This probably needs to be tested more, this is only my recommendation.

Edited by DarthCognusSion
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Edit: I did not take into account the 6-piece here, which is my own fault. Due to the addition of the 3rd charge, and therefore more instances where either CD or LB would need to be used, perhaps it might be worth to prioritize LB. I will need to test this more. However, I still believe as of this time that delaying CD for LB is never a good idea.

 

My testing is purely through parsing and not through the spreadsheet. Just out of curiosity, how did you use Bant's spreadsheet to test this because I talked to Bant about this, but he no longer has the values at hand for the 4-piece and so has not tested that. On top of this, Thundering Blast is not affected by Recklessness, but I believe on Bant's spreadsheet there is still the calculation there that would allow that extra damage to factor in. This may account the discrepancy or it might be that my evidence is merely anecdotal, and that in actuality the 6-piece is better. Like I said in the guide, I am not 100% 224. Based on my own testing with about 50 parses on each, I determined that the old 4-piece was better. This probably needs to be tested more, this is only my recommendation.

 

I added to each ability activation a vaule of 0.05*15/20*0.7 (I've been generous with the uptime), then lowered the mastery value of the 224 pieces to take into account the 186 armorings and removed the crit bonus to LB

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I added to each ability activation a vaule of 0.05*15/20*0.7 (I've been generous with the uptime), then lowered the mastery value of the 224 pieces to take into account the 186 armorings and removed the crit bonus to LB

 

Ah I see. Well if the results are accurate then it is possible that what my parses have played out are more outlier than trend. It could also be that I am not full 224 yet. All I know is that from what I have seen in both Ops fights and dummy parses, the DM 4-piece has done better for me. As it is no longer obtainable though, this will not make much of a difference to many people, only those of us who still have the old set.

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For some reason I didn't realize this guide and thread was here, but this is great. Thanks Sion for this.

 

First, I have been interested in trying out the old 4-piece, but mine is not a complete 186 set. I only have 2x186, x1180, 1x174, which results in 27 less mastery and 23 less endurance than yours. Seems small, but since it is already close to, if not, worse than the new 6-piece I will probably stick with what I'm doing.

 

Since I am interested in this and what people are doing I browse parsley a lot, and there are some weird things at the top of the TK/Lightning leader boards.

 

Yanto-telrac's top parse for instance uses a crazy amount of TK Wave. I suspect there is some glitch going on that lets it proc more than it is supposed to?

 

Then there is Aynhand's parse which uses project 42 times. Any idea how that has worked so well?

 

Through all this I find is nice that your rotation is almost exactly what I have been using with pretty awesome success!

 

Edit: I decided just to try out my old 4-piece and in on my 4th attempt I bested myself by 141 dps. Maybe it is better on a dummy, but is it better on a boss? uggggh 315 mastery less and about 3k HP less

Edited by Bejujular
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For practical purposes I discarded my 186 4 piece and exchanged for the 220 new (Don't play enough on my Sorc/Sage to justify 224 yet) 6 piece, Because I also liked to play Madness when in the mood (I'm lazy to have 2 sets of gear) and I prefer the extra Hp on fights especially on things like NiM DG first phase etc...
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