Sorc/Sage dpsers have been rather unpopular in high end raids for quiete some time now, due to a number of reasons. The lack of utilities (the abilities coming with having a healer tree are fairly useless in intances where enrage timer is a thing, even though cleansing lately became actually useful), the lack of defensive cooldowns and passive defenses thus requiring more babysitting from healers than any other class, and most importantly the lacking damage compared to other class(es) made Sorcerers undesirable in high end raids. Of course nerfing the ability that made Snipers overpowered for so long helped the latter quiete a bit, and so did the reduced spell pushback, I personally think there is more work to be done with the class before it will be back on the wanted list.

Lightning

As far as sustained dps goes, the Lightning tree is in a perfect spot. It bursts when it needs to, it AoEs when it wants to and it has amazing sustained dps for a spec built for burst. However it needs a tad more help to be able to apply it's damage to actual boss fights, because dummy numbers alone are simply not enough.

Spell pushback: Upping the pushback reduction on Lightning Strike to 100% is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. I personally think pushback should be just gone from all rotational abilities of all dps specs completely, as it seems stupid to gimp only 2 classes out of 8 by it. However even if it needs to stay in-game, I want to specify, having 0% a.k.a. no pushback protection at all on rotational abilities is a nono, and lightning has two abilities this applies for.

Crushing Darkness needs at least the same protection Thundering Blast and Chain Lightning gets from the Subversion talent, wich means 70%. The ability currently gains 75% protection from the Sith Efficacy talent in the Madness tree, which is completely unnecessary, as Madness sorcerers are not supposed to hardcast Crushing Darkness except for maybe precasting before the beginning of a fight, in other words, when there is no damage going around. It could be just moved from one talent to another based on both specializations needs.

Force Lightning should not be included to Subversion, as it's use in Lightning would not justify it, however channeling it in 1,5 second with 0% pushback protection means a random hit can easily make 50% of its damage disappear. Which is why the Lightning Barrage proc in my opinion should grant 100% pushback immunity on the cast consuming the proc, thus making the ability more reliable.

In my opinion these small QoL changes alone could turn Lightning into a good raiding spec.

Madness

Madness seemingly is going to need a bit more love to be able to take it's supposed place as the main raiding spec of all Sorcerers. It lacks both QoL features and raw damage.

Sustained DPS: As the dps leaderboards clearly show it, Madness is actually behind Lightning as far as sustained, uninterrupted damage goes under ideal circumstances. According to Bioware's previous statements the specs operating with dots are supposed to be ahead on sustained damage in exchange for having lower burst, but currently this is not the case for Sorcerers.

To fix this I would suggest to give Madness sorcerers the same execute talent Assassins using the shared tree already have. That alone could probably make up for the bulk of the dps for the spec to be able fall in its deserved place in comparison to Lightning. Also this change could help in PVP too, as it is well known that Madness sorcerers severely lacking in the burst department whenever their cooldowns are not available, and it could make them more capable of dealing with healers or opponents being healed.

Quality of Life: As far as QoL goes, Madness has four very specific issues, all tied to each other very closely.

As things stand right now the Wrath proc is way too unreliable. It should be used on two different spells in every single 15 second rotation, and Force Lighnting in the bulk of the time will only be casted three times in every 15 seconds. In other words if the first cast won't give a proc, its a significant risk to take wether to consume the proc coming from the second cast on a LS and risk not having it when CD comes off cooldown, or save it up and possibly overwrite with another, losing dps in the process.

I think a good solution would be to allow Wrath to be stacked up to two, allowing LS to be used more reliably and more often in the rotation, and by this upping the sustained dps further, turning Madness into the go-to spec for fights where sustained single target dps is the key.

Focal Lightning has a 15 second uptime which feels too short, fairly often it can fall off even midfight while maintaining a good rotation. Due to the above detailed issue LS currently cannot be used often enough to keep the buff up 100% of the time, and FL's proc chance seems to be too low to be reliable. The above mentioned change could fairly easily fix this issue, or at least turn it into a very minor inconvenience, or if nothing else, the buffs uptime should be incresed to 20 seconds or possibly more.

Force management is not perfect as it stands right now, and with the above suggested change (due to its nature of leading to more LS casts) it could become worse. My suggestion would be for Wrath to also reduce the force cost of the affected ability by 30-50-100% making the rotation more sustainable for a class, that is not supposed to be limited by resources, at least not in its single target rotation.

AoE damage currently is quiete weak for Madness spec, and while making Death Field hit five targets up from three helped significantly, I feel further adjustment is needed. At the moment Force Storm is way too expensive for a Madness sorcerer to be easily used in AoE phases, and in prolonged AoE situations it can make the player depleted of Force quickly. I would suggest a change to the Wrath system to affect Force Storm too. Possibly it could quicken it's channel time and/or up it's damage by 30% as Wrath does with LS and CD and/or simply make it profit from the suggested reduced Force cost, making the ability more spammable annd less costly while adding depth and flavor to the spec.

Overall I believe the above changes could make it worth for any group shooting to clear any PVE content in the game to consider a Sorcerer (played correctly) to be equal to any Sniper or Mercenary (btw fix pyro) while affecting the current PVP balance minimally.