An idea on sorc changes

Ok, so maybe I have a couple of posts left in me before my sub runs out in the next couple of days. Last 2+ years have been a lot of fun at times, and hopefully these balancing passes will make me get back into it again some time soon. But for now, a couple of ideas to make Madness more enjoyable to play.



Yes, Madness has force issues in PvP and who knows, the new change to Focal Lightning making Lightning Strike force neutral at 4 stacks may help but it will not fix it. It is AMAZING to be getting Fadeout and it is a much needed and requested addition, but Madness will be sacrificing a 100 force from the mid tree in order to attain this. This could just exacerbate the force issues, we'll see, since losing a 100 force also negatively impacts Sith Efficacy from Madness and will make Madness regen less force overall from channeling FL. I'm not gonna complain about Fadeout though, it's a welcome change; might as well pick up Sap Strength now that we have to go into tier 2 of Corruption. Thank you for listening to us on this BW, baseline would have been nice but I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.



Due to the need for Madness to be mobile, the force regen mechanism being tied to a channeled ability simply doesn't work. In addition to that, in comparison to the middle tree, Madness only has one form of force management compared to the mid tree having two mechanisms, Effusion and Subversion. Here are a few ideas that could help Madness rise to its true potential, sans the force issues, making it work well in PvP as well as in PvE as it always has.



- Crushing Darkness could use the same benefits Lightning Strike is getting, lowered force cost on stacks of Focal Lightning. This could even be changed and added on to Wrath instead of Focal.L. Increase the chance a tick of Force Lightning will trigger Focal Lightning from 20% to 25%. This guarantees one stack of Focal from a full channel of FL.



- A complete second force management mechanism added to the tree, balancing it with the mid tree. There have been many, many amazing ideas on these forums on how to tackle this, but I always thought it should be attached to something that lets sorcs stay mobile. Parasitism could and should also affect force replenishment, in addition to affecting self heals on DoT crits. Testing would have to be done to see if Devour should include force regen in it or just keep it for self heals -- a Death Field filling 10% of the force back up may be too much, and then again it may not.



While on the topic of Devour, it should really be removed. Parasitism should automatically grant 1/2% regen on crits, which would leave Devour open for a redesign -- perhaps a brand new force regen mechanism high up in the tree, also based on DoTs, but balanced separately.



- Creeping Death should increase the crit multiplier on Unnatural Preservation as well. Admit it, in most situations this is the only heal a madness sorc will be able to get off, since it's instant. It's on a 30s cooldown. Throw us a bone and make it heal a bit higher in those rare instances that it crits. :)





I think those couple of changes would mean the world to the sorcs, even without making WW instant again and so on; although I do think WW should be put back to instant again, made to last 6 seconds and remove the 2s stun at the end of it. Heck, all mezz should be lowered to 6s or below, especially the AoE ones that multiple classes have. A 3 to 6s 50% slow on Overload would be nice also in Madness, but since force issues are paramount for that tree, I won't go into too many other ideas.



Anyways, I wish I could be around to post these on PTS when it opens but my sub will be out by then, perhaps some of the other sorcs can repeat them there? :)



Flame on. I'm sure there are some folks out there who have issues with sorcs and will think any idea terrible, but bottom line is Madness has force issues, for both sorcs and assassins, and I'm just afraid the one change they are putting in will not be nearly enough, however it will be treated as a fix and we'll have to wait another year before any meaningful changes are made.