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Few of us OCUK'ers are in the process of setting up a group. Check out http://www.beyondtheclock.com/
*****Official Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread*****
- Thread starter CaptainRAVE
- Start date
XSG (final name to be decided)
Set for PvP.
We've not advertised the guild outside of XSGamers tbh but we like to get people onboard from the start who enjoy XSGamers ethos of fun,frag,whack
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Speaking of which, so far a maximum of 10 people voted on guild name choices and server type out of 39 (?) that declared interest in the game...What is up with people? If you're truly interested voice your opinions on the forums, that remain rather dead for the time being...
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Indeed, it's all gone a bit quiet since the initial sign-up. We need people to vote so we can get the guild created and ready for the impending EU guild invites next month.
So get voting!
We should have sorted name and server ages ago! We might have got into the guild beta invites... missed the boat I think
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There's supposed to be a wave of EU guild invites in September
This is why I suggested just naming the guild 'Overclockers' or 'OcUK'. For the beta that would be perfectly suitable to allow you to sign up and potentially gain beta access for the guild. When release comes you can always change the guild name to something else, but during the beta it will mostly be OcUK people, and temporary anyway.
I voted on the Poll of potential names but personally none of them sound that good, if I could come up with a better one I would, but I guess we will have to make do.
I voted on the Poll of potential names but personally none of them sound that good, if I could come up with a better one I would, but I guess we will have to make do.
Comprehensive Sith Sorcerer Guide and Review
I have now hit level 50 on my Sorcerer, finished the class quest and did some flashpoints and warzones. I figure for both new players and devs alike, an overview of the class and where it stands now would be helpful, especially from someone who has proverbially seen it all.
Over the last few days I've played around all 3 specs at max level. I'm going to have separate threads about companions, pvp, and flashpoints in their respective feedback forums at some point, so I'm just going to talk about class mechanics and story.
Ill start with the story, since that is what Bioware is selling the game on.
SPOILER WARNING.
You start as an apprentice, beat all the others on Korriban, get Lord Zash as your master, go collect 4 artifacts, get betrayed, Khem Val interrupts the ritual and Zash and Khem end up sharing a body. Thats chapter 1. The underwhelming facet of chapter 1 to me is that I never have an explanation of what the artifacts I'm collecting are supposed to do - "great power" is kind of nebulous, and that you never really play a sith sorcerer role throughout it - you are just a treasure hunter for the most part. I do understand you are an apprentice taking orders from your master, but simultaneously I never got really involved in any of the story besides everything involving your ghostly grandpa - that stuff was good. I liked the dude, just because he was flawed in his vain power hunt but he seemed to fill the fatherly role really well for a dark lord of the sith. I wish I could see him more often. Another comment on the first chapter is that you kill a Darth extremely early on - understandably with some underhandedness - and it kind of burns the rest of the story somewhat - this guy already got darth and you just turned off his cybernetics and he fell over as a level 17 strong mob.
Chapter 2, you end up chasing ghosts. Thanaton comes out of absolutely no where - you never hear of him before Zash is gone and he just shows up saying youre his new lackey. So he doesnt like you because he doesnt like Zash, and you get your butt kicked and saved by ghosts. Then you go get more ghosts, try again, and get your butt kicked - again. And that really is all of chapter 2, besides the 2 apprentices who get killed before you really get to know them.
Chapter 3, you got ghost problems and fix the ghost problems, then go kill Thanaton after a nice war on Corellia. I do like the whole planet wide war and you have a fleet aspect - and the side story about the superweapon fits the Sorcerer (and Assassin) power struggle nicely. Chapter 3 was definitely my favorite.
The real problem comes down to you always searching for something you dont know what it does. Or trying to fix something you broke. You are never making power plays, or manipulating politics for your own gain, and you basically get a power base handed to you by a moff out of no where, besides the Nar Shaddaa cult. It comes as an expense of having both sorcerers and assassins, which are completely different icons in the star wars universe (Maul vs Palpatine) and making a story for both is quite hard.
In the end, it played a lot like Kotor 1 did, in that you hunted for artifacts and secrets and in the end killed the bad guy. The only problem is, Thanaton is never introduced as the man behind the scenes until half way through the story. It should be subtle, but he should bump into you early on, so his intense hatred of you is more justified (and no matter what he says, he really does hate you).
I wish we had more of the political coup style Palpatine story, and that an assassin gets more planet conquer mayhem to sow. Divergent stories based on AC would be a lot of wasted potential, seeing as you are then not only limiting the experience to 1/8 of players, its now 1/16.
But in the end, it works. It isn't that amazing really, but it does a good job giving background on the Sith and the way the Sith order operates.
Next post I want to talk about some mechanics.
So the class itself, at level 10, basically gives you 400 more force so you can play a full time caster. The sorcerer is the only class not to use its default auto attack, which doesnt even scale with willpower. You cast all the time, sitting in the back throwing out nukes.
A problem with leveling a sorcerer is that early on, your regeneration is terrible. As madness, you dont have enough dots to keep getting back 1% mana all the time until you get your 31 point talent, and as Lightning you dont have the crit to keep rolling crits for half cost spells until you get Thundering Blast. Likewise, when healing you need your innervate and critical hits make consumption free talent, otherwise you oom just as fast as the other specs pretty much.
Of course, once you get these talents, you have much more longevity and really can play your main role forever as any spec. However, you cant heal as lightning or madness for long and you cant dps as healing for long. That is a good system, but the pvp complaints are endless.
The problem with sorcerer pvp though really comes down to fight duration rather than any broken mechanic. If you try to play jack of all trades on a sorcerer at any level and heal while dpsing and ccing and using all your high cost abilities you will run OOM and be useless in 30 seconds. Too bad fights in pvp end so fast because of the damage and cc being insane. The consequence there is that sorcerers dont run OOM doing everything before the fights over. The mechanics arnt fundementally broken in this regard, its just you feel a sorcerer is op because they spend 500 force worth of spells without pacing until you are dead.
Ill have a brief overview of the specs as well before I get into the talents and abilities, and my opinions on them.
Madness - it is my favorite spec, and is really well designed for both sorcerers and assassins. Overall, you are a dot based spec that does the most sustained dps I have found yet in the game (without a damage meter, its mostly from my pulling aggro all the time and comparing it to solo players of other classes killing mobs) but also have some good burst. The mana (force) returns can be insane - I can run a rotation with death field aoe, shock on cd, dots on 2 targets and use every instant cast proc and still last a very long time. This scales insanely well with crit as well, because your crits dots return health and mana (force
I can see madness being a problem in pvp. You cast almost nothing so you are impossible to lock out (even though all your burst is tied to getting instant casts off force lightning, so it kind of balances out) but between your slow, shock, death field, and 2 dots, you can do tons of mobile damage. Even your CCs are instant cast. It is a very mobile pvp spec, and the benefit of force lightning, your main nuke, also slowing makes madness the obvious sorcerer pvp choice (if burst wasnt crazy as lightning).
Lightning - Lightning packs burst. You get an extra offensive cd, and your thundering blast makes the rotation very sustainable. If you thought madness was crit focused, this spec needs it even more - affliction crits every 10 seconds for big burst force lightning, and your crits sustain your force even more than madness, and you can really go to town with big burst.
However, big burst does not a sustainability model make. Overall, I think madness is higher dps than lightning, even though affliction -> thundering -> 1.5 sec lightning -> shock is the highest burst I have seen. The spec seems lacking in pvp, since you dont have the instants of madness so you are very interrupt vulnerable, but you dont have your primary nuke as a slow and your cc isnt instant. The overload root and slow immunity force speed help a lot, but I still feel madness is stronger in this regard. It might be attributable to the fact a lightning sorc is absolutely a glass cannon - you can blow up healers between stun, interrupt, and knockback in a way madness cant. So you can blow up primary targets.
Another thing lightning has going for it is amazing aoe damage. Madness has a mixed bag - you will use death field on cd for the extra dot damage, and the fact it hits harder than shock, but the spec has no synergy with force storm and thus doesnt have aoe sustainability. Lightning has that and more - you can easily weave aoe and single target together and half cost force storms make them much more sustainable.
I feel lightning needs some buffs overall. The tradeoff of burst for sustained is not worth it in my view over madness, and in pve aoe seems to be very non-essential.
Corruption - sorcerers are by far the strongest healer in game right now. The reason for this is entirely rotation based - you can sustain a tank extremely well between hots, shields, and innervates, such that you gain force overall because of how good consumption is. Simultaneously, you can burst heal with dark infusion and aoe heals whenever you need to and just revert to your sustained rotation to get back your force. The difference between sorcerers and other healers is that the other healers rapidly hard cap their energy in healing intensive situations and with their regen low cant get it back and need to blow cds. Sorcerers dont have these cds - so logically, if you ever actually OOM, you are screwed (until innervate comes up and you get a consumption proc). However, I feel the sorcerer model is stronger because it can handle many more instances of intense healing than any other healer.
The burst problem is on both sides of the fence - operatives and mercenaries have too high spell costs such that it takes very little burst healing to put them in panic mode where their regen is so low they cant come back from it, and sorcerers have too much force to dump on burst healing before they are at a critical unsustainable point, and even then your regen never changes - you are still getting all the force you are going to get back at 50 force spamming innervate for consumption as you are at 500 force doing your sustained rotation.
The solution is buffs, not nerfs, in my opinion. Few people play ToR healers as is, so incentivizing it more with a more powerful playstyle would be good.
I cant talk about corruption yet in PVP, because I havnt played it in pvp, but I imagine it is rock solid there too, because the combination innervate shield hot is so good, plus you have a slow, interrupt, CC, stun, and knockback to throw out at your leisure.
One thing about corruption to be noted is trying to do any damage as the spec is horribly obtuse. Where a BH or IA healer can throw out auto attacks, you can not, and unless you are pushing max force, regenning force is better than throwing out a spell (even though the damage to force ratio on force lightning is so good it makes me want to cast it a lot). I feel like corruption could use a more spammable range spell to fill gaps, because if you use force lightning and affliction, you really dont know what to do, because lightning strike is really force inefficient as anything but lightning, and crushing darkness is the same way. Shock as well. They all have the high inefficiency without talents problem.
Next post I'll talk about talents and review all the talents - some need work. Then Ill talk about spells.
Talent talk! Going bottom to top, left to right in terms of trees.
Torment - This talent screams assassin, but I use it in my madness spec because its more force regen than having some of the later tier talents to cut shocks cost by 6. As a sorcerer, you never use thrash, so its kind of useless for that.
Calcify - Force lightning is the bread and butter of madness and any buff to it is great. I take this talent as lightning too, because you really are damage talent limited after finishing out the lightning tree, and you do use force lightning on cd - the crit chance synergizes nicely with lightning in that regard.
Will of the Sith - This talent, in my opinion, is must have as any spec. Maybe its too strong. Consider nerfing to 2 / 4% so its not as good as it is right now.
Exploitative Strikes - This talent is assassin only since you never use melee attacks as a sorcerer.
Sith Efficacy - The mana refund makes force lightning a mana gain over its duration, if you have the extra 100 force in lightning it gives you 18 + 24 = 42 force in 3 seconds, so you gain 12 force channeling lightning. (though you would have regened 18, so you lose some force over what you would have had standing around). Extremely good in that it gives you no excuse to not spam lightning. Its also good for healing spec in that it makes lightning free, and a healer thats trying to play a hybrid spec "should" go madness to get this and.. madness. Makes your dps a force gain.
Chain Shock - This talent is very random, but overall does something interesting - with torment and chain shock, shock becomes more force efficient than lightning strike on average. Crit chain shocks can do 1500 burst, so it fills in a gap that madness lacks burst. This talent is mandatory as either spec.
Parasitism - This talent scales too well, lets just be clear on that. While leveling, it is the second half of the force regen that gives madness its longevity, but when you are at 50 with 30% crit, you actually regen so much force spamming dots you can spam any spell you have without fear of running OOM (oof?). IMO, make it so that dot ticks restore .2% total force and health, so that the regen doesnt get out of hand in the end game, and it is slightly better at early levels. In addition, Force Lightning does proc this, and Ill bring this up later, because force lightning doesnt always qualify as a dot.
Oppressing Force - A very bland talent, but a must have for pvp because the cd reductions are huge. Mainly on overload. The whirlwind CCs weak mobs aspect is pretty useless - it can be situational, say if you had a situation where mobs gained damage reduction being near one another, you can instantly cc 3 of them off if they are standard. I can see this being a problem in raid fights if mobs are ever not strong+.
Madness - This talent defines the spec. It makes force lightning your spam spell - it isnt even that big a cd reduction, seeing as without it you only have 3 seconds between lightning casts. But it is a big deal and is kind of OP where it is in the early levels, but it balances out, because this talent makes the corruption dps hybrid spec possible.
Death Field - An amazing aoe that does a ton of damage (1k noncrit with crap gear at 50) with instant cast to boot. When you get deathmark, THIS spell becomes more force efficient than shock at single target dps. However, because the target reticule doesnt actually show the true range, its somewhat hard for new players to aim this right not to hit cc. It takes practice to learn.
Claws of Decay - Purely assassin only, because sorcerers never use thrash. If Bioware wanted sorcerers to even have a reason to consider this talent, they need to make melee attacks scale off willpower. I dont see why not - a melee sorcerer would still get destroyed due to having light armor.
Fanaticism - The intent of this talent is clear, but the implementation is sorely lacking. It is meant such that only assassins can get it, to make death field a more feasible aoe spell in their rotation, since otherwise it costs half their force. However, you can get it without taking death field, and I can see the metagame evolving to the point where getting it as a sorcerer is still worth the 2 point dump to get 25 force back on death field. As is, you can spam death field due to how good parasitism is on cd and never run OOM, but a pvp madness sorcerer will burn force a lot faster and I can see attempts to get this talent for its huge efficiency as being problematic.
Wrath - Another spec defining talent. Until you get this, nothing besides affliction is worth casting aside force lightning because the dps never counteracts the force to damage tradeoff. After you get this, crushing darkness enters the rotation because you can sustain using it on cd (even though it is inefficient) for the huge dps addition it gives. I "want" to use additional procs on lightning strike, however they are dps losses and force inefficient over just spamming more lightning due to the gcd. Maybe make this talent reduce the cost by 50% as well? It would make it always worth using procs.
Raze - This would be a good time to point out how Madness has two mirror trees in one. Assassins get Claws of Decay and their descendents and sorcerers get Efficacy Madness and Wrath. The other class doesnt really benefit from the other classes 3 talent combo, but both bring the spec into their own for either class. Its a good design in that regard. A sorcerer will never have this talent though, because they never melee.
Lingering Nightmares - This talent makes Crushing Darkness worth casting with Wrath, because it adds ~500 damage at level 50. However, this talent is still underwhelming. I recommend here that it reduce the crushing darkness cd by 3 / 6 / 9 seconds so that you can keep up the crushing darkness dot on a single target.
Calculating Mind - This is basically 20 force off Death Field. If you use death field in your normal rotation (and you should) this is a great efficiency talent. It is underwhelming in that it only has 10 charges, but the spec is already pushing some crazy force regen. I really recommend changing this talent to increase the number of death mark charges by 5 / 10, so that you can roll deathmark on your main target, maybe also reduce the cd of death field by 1 / 2 seconds.
Deathmark - Makes death field a single target attack. The 20% more damage with 10 periodic ticks adds up to roughly 500 damage at level 50. The fact force lightning and force storm doesnt consume these charges cuts down the synergy of this spell as an aoe tool. I think deathmark should work on force storm and force lightning - both are channeled dots, pretty much.
Unearthed Knowledge - Another assassin only talent, since sorcerers dont melee.
Haunted Dreams - Amazing talent in pve and pvp, basically must have and a defining aspect of the spec.
Creeping Death - I would rather this be 30% crit chance rather than damage, because I hate having a lot of crit damage in pvp as a general rule, it makes damage output very random when someone gets crit chains. Its solid dps gain however, even though it gives a lot less than most other talents in the tree. Should work with force lightning and force storm as well.
Devour - The healing from parasitism and death field is pitiful, and this talent is too. As is, its worthless. It would need to be at least 60% to be worth it, because lvl 50 death field on its max 3 targets only heals 300 damage. Parasitism is more reasonable, and refunds 120 health a proc, but still, 20% is almost nothing.
Creeping Terror - extremely force efficient, long duration dot that defines madness. Amazing talent, its pvp potential with the spammable root is amazing too. Due to the cd/ duration, you can roll this spell on 2 targets at once, and can juggle dot rotations. Madness is already the highest single target sorcerer dps, but on any fight with 2 targets (2 bosses, for example) Madness goes off the charts with cleave damage. IMO, make this spell only active on one target at a time, or leave it as is - having a niche for high dps doesnt mean the spec is broken. Dot specs usually do huge cleave damage, and threat is an issue when doing this even with guard and a level 50 tank.
Overall, Madness does overpowered damage and has too much control. Its longevity with lots of crit chance is insane, and the only downside is that in pvp you have no survivability talents outside reduced cd stun / knockback and the instant whirlwind, and after those you can get steamrolled. However, you dont need that much time to get dots up and a single rotation of creeping terror / affliction / 1 force lightning / death field / shock / crushing darkness will do 6- 7k damage, and you only cast one spell in that. You are almost uninterpretable and have huge mobility.
You don't have burst though, so that's important to remember. A madness sorcerer can kill anyone else, except a healer. You just cant burst down a healer as this spec like you can as lightning. You have no offensive cds worth mentioning (recklessness is much better for lightning, all you can blow it on as madness is crushing darkness and a deathfield / shock) so Bioware needs to be careful with this spec, because it MUST do the most damage (but not by much) because it lacks burst, cooldowns, and a sustainable aoe rotation (force storm having no synergy is part of the problem).
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Your could always look at us if you still looking we The Immortals .. and your age group would fit very well. ..AAH nm missed the empire bit, we were gonna go empire till they had that huge poll anf 97% of 13 year old kids and younger were going empire. There seems to be empire guild getting built on here but would not be one I could recommend
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I'm with http://www.kyramprudii.com/ they are a good bunch, worth checking out
.You can apply http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=401261 here
"Kyr'am Prudii is an English speaking Adult/18+ Imperial PvP clan with a core group of friends at its centre. While SWTOR is still in the beta phase, and with launch now looking like a few months away, we began working on giving the clan depth and attitude while moving forward with recruitment stages. Most members pass times are chilling on Skype/TS3/Vent and have a good laugh at the expense of each other, within good reason while playing WOW, SWG, Aion or LOL (warning 18+). Though our primary target is to be a PvP orientated clan, we do move through PvE content and those people who PvE but also dabble in PvP are very welcome to apply but please note that we are not competitive in progression of content and progression within the guild may slow compared to PvE optimized guilds (We will run Operations on hard modes if they are available). Lastly we are an 18+ guild but skilled and mature people of any age are always considered."
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How bizarre! Reckon it might have something to do with the fact that that's a Star Wars film and this is a Star Wars game?
Freaky man...
LOL
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You don't say, i actually own the whole saga, so the jokes on you there, and it's more to do with the Deceived trailer.
I don't really understand what you mean, the joke's on me how? I never claimed that you didn't have the other films
Maybe this is simply just another shocking case of two things that share the same intellectual property being somewhat alike? Whodathunkit?
You're the one that said it was bizarre, don't blame me!
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They closed for now but will open again at some time I think.
I was reading the official forums and the mmorpg forums this morning and there is so much hate for this game!! I just dont understand it
It's like people don't want this to be a success, they really want it to fail before its launched and I just cant see the reasoning behind it?
My suggestion is save yourself your £40 quid, save yourself your monthly fee and don't play the game, simple.
It's like people don't want this to be a success, they really want it to fail before its launched and I just cant see the reasoning behind it?
My suggestion is save yourself your £40 quid, save yourself your monthly fee and don't play the game, simple.