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Complete Sith Sorcerer Lightning Guide (PvE only), suitable for both beginner players and more advanced and experienced veterans, who seek to improve their performance! This Guide is written for VULKK.com by Endonae (Satele Shan)

UP TO DATE FOR PATCH 6.1.2

INTRO

Welcome to my 6.0 guide for Lightning sorc! As of 6.1.1, Lightning was nerfed slightly, but it’s still a good ranged DPS spec to play in 6.0 and still generally performs better than Madness in real single target situations despite being the burst DPS spec, largely thanks to much greater contributions from Lightning Barrier, which don’t show up in dummy parses.

Madness does perform much better in AoE situations though since their Slow Mercy AOE tactical is far better than Lightning’s Elemental Convection, however Lightning is still one of the best burst specs out there for AoE thanks to its rotational AoE damage from Chain Lightning. Defensively, Lightning is also very strong, having some of the highest continuously active damage reduction and some defensive cooldowns that can increase it to 84% for 6 seconds. Sorc DPS in general also doesn’t have to deal with any sort of energy management like most other classes and has the best mobility out of any of the ranged DPS specs.

GEARING AND STATS PRIORITIES

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second duration before you can activate another ability) given the constraints of the fight? Which ability do I use right now that will provide me the most DPS? How can I maximize my uptime? If I’m not activating an ability right now, why not? Can I finish this cast before I need to move? What happens if I don’t have time to finish a cast before moving? Can the healers deal with it without too much stress?

Gear Items

I’m not going to get into which specific versions of enhancements and such to use. The tiny stat variations from using something like an R-3 versus an R-4 aren’t worth the trouble and a single extra random crit, lag spike, or mid-fight sneeze will completely overshadow any difference in DPS you could possibly observe from an extra few points of power. Generally, the unlettered stuff is is pretty close to optimal if it isn’t outright followed by R and AR mods. If you want to be fully BiS, you can start swapping out some of the unlettered enhancements for R variants in order to not waste a single point when going past a threshold, though I wouldn’t waste too much time doing this if I were you.

Armorings/Hilt – Superior Versatile Armoring/Hilt 80 (should have 471 Mastery, 409 Endurance)

– Superior Versatile Armoring/Hilt 80 (should have 471 Mastery, 409 Endurance) Mods – Superior Lethal Mod 80 unlettered, R-1, and R-2 are the best. As long as the sum of Mastery and Power is above 725 with Endurance being the lowest stat of the 3, you have a good mod that you should keep.

– Superior Lethal Mod 80 unlettered, R-1, and R-2 are the best. As long as the sum of Mastery and Power is above 725 with Endurance being the lowest stat of the 3, you have a good mod that you should keep. Enhancements – The best enhancements are the ones where Endurance is the lowest stat of the three and the sum of the other two (Power and Tertiary) is 744 or higher. The unlettered +285 Endurance, +313 Power, +431 tertiary stat are a great base and once you surpass your stat targets, you can start swapping them out for the R-variants that have more Power than tertiary stat. The best word corresponding to BiS for each tertiary stat is: Accuracy = Initiative Alacrity = Nimble or Quick Savant (must include Quick, regular Savant is bad) DPS Mods = Lethal DPS Armoring/Hilt = Versatile Critical = Adept

– The best enhancements are the ones where Endurance is the lowest stat of the three and the sum of the other two (Power and Tertiary) is 744 or higher. The unlettered +285 Endurance, +313 Power, +431 tertiary stat are a great base and once you surpass your stat targets, you can start swapping them out for the R-variants that have more Power than tertiary stat. The best word corresponding to BiS for each tertiary stat is: Implant/Ear – Sha’Tek brand MK-19

– Sha’Tek brand MK-19 Relics – Sha’Tek brand MK-19 Level 75 content: Sha’Tek Relic of Focused Retribution and Sha’Tek Relic of Serendipitous Assault Sub-level 75 content: Sha’Tek Relic of Primeval Fatesealer (it’s a clicky so put it on your bar) and Sha’Tek Relic of Devastating Vengeance

– Sha’Tek brand MK-19 Stim – Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim

– Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim Medpac – Advanced Kyrprax Medpac

– Advanced Kyrprax Medpac Adrenal Level 75 content: Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal (the critical adrenal is less consistent, but performs very similar, so if you don’t want to keep switching between the two, it’s fine to use the Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal in level 75 content as well) Sub-level 75 content: Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal

Set Bonus – Gathering Storm 6-piece + 1 Amplified Champion piece since it has a combat-oriented Amplifier in the shell slot instead of a non-combat-oriented Amplifier. The headpiece is your best bet for the Amplified Champion piece since that makes it easier to switch out if you plan to do the Dreadful or Hateful Entity, though it doesn’t really matter that much.

– Gathering Storm 6-piece + 1 Amplified Champion piece since it has a combat-oriented Amplifier in the shell slot instead of a non-combat-oriented Amplifier. The headpiece is your best bet for the Amplified Champion piece since that makes it easier to switch out if you plan to do the Dreadful or Hateful Entity, though it doesn’t really matter that much. Amplifiers – +1% Force Sensitivity (only applies to armorings and hilts/barrels). All damage dealt by sorcs is Force damage, so this amplifier will increase the damage dealt by all of your abilities.

– +1% Force Sensitivity (only applies to armorings and hilts/barrels). All damage dealt by sorcs is Force damage, so this amplifier will increase the damage dealt by all of your abilities. Crystals – Eviscerating. This is a little more important now than it’s been in the past because the War Hero and Hawkeye crystals don’t do anything in sub-75 content.

– Eviscerating. This is a little more important now than it’s been in the past because the War Hero and Hawkeye crystals don’t do anything in sub-75 content. Augments – The new purple 286 augments (Advanced [type] Augment 74 + Augmentation Kit MK-11) are best-in-slot, however they are incredibly expensive, so I would only recommend getting them for your main and only if you have a bunch of extra credits burning a hole in your pocket. The blue 276 augments ([Type] Augment 73) provide about 88% of the benefit for about 6% of the cost of the purple 286 augments. They do still require the MK-11 kits, but it’s really hard to justify using the 286 augments unless you or your group really needs that small stat increase to slightly boost your numbers. Since those MK-11 kits are still a bit expensive, I recommend only augmenting the final pieces of your gear, so 306 left side, MH/OH, and set bonus pieces. If you played in 5.0, your 228 augments (Advanced [type] Augment 45 + Augmentation Kit MK-10) are still valuable, more than even the old 236 or 240s! They contain roughly the same amount of tertiary stat as the new 286 and 276 augments, so continue using those until you have pieces of gear that you want to use your MK-11 kits on. These old 228 augments are also all you’ll need for any of the gear you’ll be using for level 70 content because Power and Endurance are capped, so the new augments really don’t provide any noticeable benefit in non level 75 content.

Stat Priority

Accuracy to 110 .00% – I reach this with 3 accuracy enhancements/implants/ear + 1 augment + Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, resulting in 1641 accuracy, equivalent to 110.24%. This is the most important stat to reach its threshold because attacks that miss deal 0 damage and no other stats matter if that happens. You need 110% accuracy and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. I am working towards getting closer to 110.00% since anything over 110% does nothing for me. Alacrity to 11.38% – I reach this with 4 enhancements/implants/ear + 4 augments resulting in 2125 alacrity. If you don’t have any 286 augments yet, you’ll need to use a different balance of enhancements/augments to reach the desired stat level or replace 1 Critical augment with 1 Alacrity augment (bring your Alacrity up to 2652/13.45%). Lightning sorc has different Alacrity requirements than every other class because of the Focal Alacrity discipline passive providing 5% additional alacrity while in combat which allows us to get to the 1.3s GCD without having to spend nearly as much stat to get there. This isn’t the whole story though, while you only need 10.4% Alacrity to meet the 1.3 second GCD at 15.38% with your Focal Lightning stacks, you need an extra 1% to reach the 36.38% Alacrity with Polarity Shift active to get the 1.1 second GCD. Critical gets the rest – I currently have 39.30% Critical chance from 2456 crit from 2 crystals, 3 enhancements/earpiece/implants and 9 augments. This stat is the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it like the other two tertiary stats.

For the standard level 75 build, I would recommend using 1 alacrity earpiece, 1 alacrity implant, and 1 critical implant, all with critical augments. This minimizes the number of pieces you need to switch out when you need to switch to Madness or get a 1.2s GCD while the Primeval Fatesealer relic is active in level 70 content. In order to switch to Madness, you just need to switch out the alacrity implant and ear for a critical version (both still have a critical augment). In order to switch to the 1.2s GCD during Primeval Fatesealer for level 70 content, switch out the critical implant for an alacrity implant that has an alacrity augment. You won’t ever need a 286 augment for this implant since it won’t ever be used at level 75, so you won’t ever be able to benefit from the extra power, which is the only real benefit the 286 augment provides. Again, the purpose of doing this is to give you enough Alacrity to give you a 1.2s GCD while your Primeval Fatesealer relic is active.

RELATED ► Complete SWTOR EndGame Gearing Guide for Level 75

Tactical Items

Stormwatch Stormwatch

Effect : Lightning Flash applies Stormwatch to its target for the next 10 seconds. Whenever the target takes damage from Affliction, Thundering Blast, and Crushing Darkness, a lightning bolt is called down upon the target dealing 1764 energy damage.

: Lightning Flash applies Stormwatch to its target for the next 10 seconds. Whenever the target takes damage from Affliction, Thundering Blast, and Crushing Darkness, a lightning bolt is called down upon the target dealing 1764 energy damage. Recommendation : Use as your default tactical item and for single target situations, especially if you need sustained DPS or don’t plan on target swapping. You must be mindful of what you use Lightning Flash on by taking this tactical because it basically applies another DoT.

Elemental Convection Elemental Convection

Effect : Volt Rush Triggers Lightning Storm when activated (on a separate rate limit). Chain Lightning gives you Volt Flux, causing your Volt Rush to arc to multiple targets for the next 10 seconds.

: Volt Rush Triggers Lightning Storm when activated (on a separate rate limit). Chain Lightning gives you Volt Flux, causing your Volt Rush to arc to multiple targets for the next 10 seconds. Recommendation : If you need to AoE, this is the better tactical since you get an additional Chain Lightning and AoE from Volt Rush, however Volt Rush deals very little damage, so if you want to AoE, you’re better off switching to Madness and using the Slow Mercy tactical. This one is pretty great for trash and dailies though.

Ticking Force-Bomb Ticking Force-Bomb

Effect : Forked Darkness now has a greater chance to activate on Crushing Darkness and Crushing Darkness deals more damage each time it ticks.

: Forked Darkness now has a greater chance to activate on Crushing Darkness and Crushing Darkness deals more damage each time it ticks. Recommendation : This tactical item does not provide as much of a DPS increase as Stormwatch, however it isn’t a big drop, only about 1500-2000 DPS and offers some advantages. It’s easier to use since you don’t have to be considerate of what you use Lightning Flash on, so it makes it much easier to target swap with and the damage from the ability goes out in a smaller amount of time so it can be a better option on fights with a bunch of different targets. Definitely don’t use this as your default though.

An Explosive Return An Explosive Return

Effect : Returning to your Phase Walk marker causes a force explosion around you, dealing damage to any nearby enemies.

: Returning to your Phase Walk marker causes a force explosion around you, dealing damage to any nearby enemies. Recommendation : This tactical item is not worth it as it doesn’t deal enough damage. If it did like 100k or something and knocked enemies away, then it might be worth looking into, but it’s too unreliable if you want to teleport with it too and has too long of a cooldown to be worth it.

Endless Barrier Endless Barrier

Effect : Activating Unnatural Preservation removes Static Barrier’s Deionized effect from you.

: Activating Unnatural Preservation removes Static Barrier’s Deionized effect from you. Recommendation : Not nearly enough of a DPS increase with Lightning Barrier to only get an additional bubble every other time.

Eyrin’s Haste Eyrin’s Haste

Effect : Force Speed grants an additional Convection stack. 3 Convection stacks allows Thundering Blast to be activated instantly and consume all stacks. Lightning Bolt deals 10% more damage and Thundering Blast deals 20% more damage while Convection is active.

: Force Speed grants an additional Convection stack. 3 Convection stacks allows Thundering Blast to be activated instantly and consume all stacks. Lightning Bolt deals 10% more damage and Thundering Blast deals 20% more damage while Convection is active. Recommendation : This tactical item is oriented towards PvP and burst situations since it makes every other use of Thundering Blast impossible to interrupt and deal extra damage. It is pretty annoying to use in raids though because the instant Chain Lightning proc will become desynchronized from Thundering Blast since half of them are instant. Like Ticking Force-Bomb, this tactical deals about 1500-2000 DPS less than you’ll get out of Stormwatch.

UTILITIES

Skillful

ABILITY DESCRIPTION & RECOMMENDATION

Force Suffusion Effect : Overload heals you and up to 7 affected allies for ~3900.



Recommendation : Never take this, you aren’t a healer, don’t waste your GCDs doing someone else’s job and even as a healer, it’s a terrible choice.

Sith Defiance Effect : Increases damage reduction by 3%.



Recommendation : Always take this, it’s useful in every fight.

Tempest Mastery Effect : Increases the damage dealt by Force Storm by 25%.



Recommendation : Sometimes take this. If you plan to use Force Storm at all during the fight, you should take this.

Empty Body Effect : Increases all healing received by 5%. Does not affect stolen life.



Recommendation : Always take this, it’s useful in every fight.

Dizzying Force Effect : Reduces target’s accuracy by 20% after Whirlwind ends. Additionally, your Whirlwind affects up to 2 additional standard or weak enemies within 8m of the target.



Recommendation : Never take this. If you need to reduce the accuracy of something, other classes have far better ways of doing this.

Dark Speed Effect : Dark Heal increases the movement speed of the target by 50% for 6 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds.



Recommendation : Never take this. If someone needs to move and you need to waste a GCD to do it, you’re far better off pulling them.

Corrupted Flesh Effect : Reduces the damage taken from all periodic effects by 15%.



Recommendation : Sometimes take this. If there is significant DoT damage, this is usually a good option.

Torturous Tactics Effect : Lowers the cooldown of Electrocute by 10 seconds. In addition, targets stunned by your electrocute deal 25% less damage when Electrocute wears off.



Recommendation : Take this on specific fights only. I can’t think of any fight where this would be required that exists now except for maybe Tyth if you’re handling Graces or Nahut if you’re handling turrets, but it definitely could be helpful if you’re required to stun something.

Masterful

ABILITY DESCRIPTION & RECOMMENDATION

Suppression Effect : Activating Cloud Mind grants Suppression, which increases damage reduction by 25% for 6 seconds.



Recommendation : Always take this. It’s one of your primary defensive cooldowns.

Dark Resilience Effect : Reduces damage taken by the target of your Extrication by 25% for 6 seconds after your extricate them. Additionally increases the healing done by Unnatural Preservation by 30%.



Recommendation : Take this if you aren’t taking Lightning Barrier. The big benefit is the heal increase for Unnatural Preservation, though this is the least helpful point you take in this tier and should be the first one you give up if you take something else

Conspiring Force Effect : Targets affected by your Affliction are slowed by 30% for its duration.



Recommendation : Never take this. You have better tools to slow enemies, like Chain Lightning and Force Slow.

Lightning Barrier Effect : Your Static Barrier crackles with electricity, shocking attackers for ~11,000 energy damage when it absorbs direct damage to you. This effect does not affect Static Barriers placed on allies and cannot occur more than once each second.



Recommendation : Almost always take this. Lightning Barrier deals quite a lot of damage and should only not be taken when you find that you aren’t able to get at least 1 tick out of it on each use or if it’s ticking on something you don’t want it to tick on. I’ll explain this in greater detail later on.

Surging Speed Effect : Reduces the cooldowns of Force Speed by 5 seconds, Force Slow by 3 seconds, and Force Barrier by 30 seconds. In addition, Force Speed lasts 0.5 seconds longer, Polarity Shift increases your movement speed by 100% while active, and the active cooldown of Force Speed is finished when Force Barrier ends.



Recommendation : Always take this. You need the cooldown reduction on Force Speed in order to maximize the benefit provided by your Gathering Storm set bonus and the other effects are nice too.

Backlash Effect : Static Barriers you place on yourself erupt in a flash of light when they end, blunding up to 8 nearby enemies for 3 seconds. This effect breaks from direct damage.



Recommendation : Take this on specific fights only. This is not generally useful in operations because most enemies have CC immunity. It can be helpful for Hull Cutter Droids on Izax.

Haunted Dreams Effect : If your Whirlwind breaks early from damage, the target is stunned for 2 seconds. In addition, Whirlwind activates instantly.



Recommendation : Take this on specific fights only. It is useful for the turrets on Nahut and Berserkers on Geonosian Queen.

Electric Bindings Effect : Overload binds its targets in electricity, immobilizing them for 5 seconds. Direct damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the effect prematurely.



Recommendation : Take this on specific fights only. It is required for Styrak in NiM. This tends to be more for managing adds which is more often a tank mechanic, so you will see Assassin tanks take this utility more often.

Heroic

ABILITY DESCRIPTION & RECOMMENDATION

Emersion Effect : Force Speed grants Emersion, removing all movement-impairing effects and granting immunity to them for the duration.



Recommendation : Take this on specific fights only. It is required for Cartel Warlords in NiM to cleanse Horic’s grenade.

Shapeless Spirit Effect : Reduces all damage taken while stunned by 30%. Additionally, reduces damage taken from area effects by 30%.



Recommendation : Always take this. Almost every fight in the game has some form of AoE damage and the vast majority of damage dealt by bosses is considered AoE.

Force Mobility Effect : Thundering Blast, Innervate, and Force Leech may be activated while moving.



Recommendation : Always take this. Thundering Blast is your highest damaging ability, it should not be delayed because you have to move.

Galvanizing Cleanse Effect : Expunge grants Galvanizing Cleanse, making your next ability with an activation time activate instantly. The effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds and lasts up to 15 seconds.



Recommendation : Never take this. While it can provide a very small benefit on fights with forced downtime to give you an instant Chain Lightning, there are always better utilities to take.

Corrupted Barrier Effect : Your Static Barrier, Force Barrier, and Enduring Bastion heal you for 1% of your total health every second for as long as they last. This healing scales up to 4% with the charges for Enduring Bastion.



Recommendation : Never take this.The healing is too small and ends when the bubble breaks. There are always better defensive utilities to take.

Unnatural Vigor Effect : Unnatural Preservation increases your damage reduction by 15% for 6 seconds. Additionally, reduces the cooldown of Unnatural Preservation by 5 seconds.



Recommendation : Almost always take this. The only time you won’t take this is if you’ll be taking Shifting Silhouette instead.

Shifting Silhouette Effect : Using Phase Walk to return to its marked location grants Shifting Silhouette, keeping you from being lept to or pulled and making you immune to pushback for the next to seconds. Additionally, the cooldown of Phase Walk is reduced by 15 seconds and all defenses are increased by 30% for the duration of Shifting Silhouette.



Recommendation : Occasionally take this. It’s a more effective defensive cooldown than Unnatural Vigor, but far more situational because it’s only more effective against ticking damage. Only take this if you can’t really benefit from Lightning Barrier.

Enfeebling Strike Effect : Strike the target with your lightsaber, dealing ~8,400 weapon damage and immobilizing it for 3 seconds. When the immobilization effect ends, the target is slowed by 50% for 6 seconds.



Recommendation : Never take this. Saber Strike and this utility only exist so that the Sorcerer has some reason to have a lightsaber at all.

ABILITIES PRIORITIES AND ROTATIONS

Opener

Chain Lightning (pre-cast) Relic (sub 75) Polarity Shift Force Speed Recklessness Affliction Adrenal + Unlimited Power Thundering Blast Lightning Flash Crushing Darkness Chain Lightning Shock Priority List

This opener assumes that you are using the Stormwatch tactical and have the 6-piece Gathering Storm tactical; if you are using a different tactical, particularly Ticking Force-Bomb, pre-cast Crushing Darkness instead and just follow the priority list as this opener basically does. You can also pre-cast Crushing Darkness instead even with Stormwatch, the difference in DPS is very small. I do want to point out a few notable components here:

Chain Lightning is used for the precast because the other two potential candidates (Thundering Blast and Crushing Darkness) should be saved until Affliction and Stormwatch are on the target respectively.

Chain Lightning is used before Shock after Crushing Darkness in this first instance because you will not have all 5 stacks of Focal Lightning (your 5% alacrity) yet, which you want sooner rather than later and you still have 3 GCDs before you have to use Shock so it isn’t a DPS loss to delay it 1 GCD.

Thundering Blast is used before Lightning Flash despite missing out on a Stormwatch tick because Force Speed is much more effective when used on Thundering Blast than Lightning Flash (20% of Thundering Blast’s damage is greater than 20% of Lightning Flash’s)

Alacrity cooldowns are used before Affliction is applied because this will increase the tick rate for as long as Affliction remains on that target, which can be the entire fight in many instances. Primeval Fatesealer is used before Polarity Shift because Polarity Shift is affected by Alacrity while Primeval Fatesealer is not. Recklessness and your Adrenal are also affected by Alacrity so those are used after your alacrity cooldowns.

Recklessness is used before Affliction because it puts the ability on cooldown sooner and Affliction will not consume a Recklessness charge because it isn’t direct damage. The Adrenal and Unlimited Power are saved until after Affliction is used because these sorts of cooldowns only affect damage that occurs during the buff, not the entirety of the DoTs. A great way to remember this is that damage increases apply once the health is actually reduced (or when you see the flytext for the damage value), not based on ability activation.

The Primeval Fatesealer Relic is only used in sub-level 75 content, so just skip it in the opener if it isn’t equipped.

As of 6.1.1, it’s important to wait to use Force Speed until after you activate Polarity Shift in the opener, since Polarity Shift now always lasts 5 seconds longer with the Gathering Storm set bonus and Polarity Shift will initially be off-cooldown, so you want to wait to benefit from the 5 second cooldown reduction. To be clear, you’ll still end up using it before Thundering Blast.

PriorityList

Affliction (if not on the target) Thundering Blast Lightning Flash Crushing Darkness Shock if Crushing Darkness is on the target Lightning Barrier (if your bubble has expired and it’s appropriate) Chain Lightning (w/ proc) Lightning Bolt

This ability priority ensures that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible, it’s very important that you practice this on a dummy at least until you can do the rotation without having to constantly look at your bar. Make sure you understand and remember this priority because you do not get to do all of your abilities on cooldown in Lightning, things will get delayed and that’s unavoidable. The only thing you really don’t want to delay is Thundering Blast. I will go into detail about each ability later on so that you can have a better understanding of how these abilities interact with each other and the discipline.

If there is downtime during a fight, remember that you can precast things and often place your DoTs on shortly before the boss can actually take damage. You won’t get the full damage of your DoTs but you also won’t have to spend a GCD to apply them when the boss is vulnerable, so you will end up dealing more damage.

The key to being a great DPS is to be always DPSing. Using any damaging ability is better than just standing there not doing anything. Some DPS is better than zero DPS. Even if you mess up, keep doing the rotation! Unless there’s a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage or forces you to stop DPSing, you should not stop DPSing. If a tank is telling you to stop DPS or hold off for a few seconds because they can’t keep aggro, don’t listen to them, they’re the one that doesn’t know the proper way to keep aggro. Tell them to git gud.

Damage Types

Almost all abilities in the game (both from players and NPCs) have damage types that explain how they will interact with enemy damage mitigation. Damage mitigation only applies if an attack has damage types so if it is untyped which is denoted by light blue flytext, you will not be able to mitigate the attack with anything. Understanding this is helpful because this information determines how much damage you’ll be dealing to other enemies and players. There are four dimensions of damage types that exist:

Force/Tech and Melee/Ranged – This is determined for the most part by where the attack is coming from. Melee and Ranged are the easiest to determine, the attack is generally melee if it is coming from a lightsaber swing and generally ranged if it is coming from a blaster. Weapon damage is synonymous with Ranged/Melee damage. Force attacks will be abilities done by Sith and Jedi that are generally not coming directly from a weapon while tech attacks are generally done by non force users that are not fired from a blaster. There are exceptions to all of these. The distinction between Force/Tech and Melee/Ranged is that Melee/Ranged attacks can be dodged via a player’s defense chance (Force/Tech can also be resisted but not through adding stats). Internal/Elemental and Energy/Kinetic – The major distinction is between the two is Energy/Kinetic is affected by armor while Internal/Elemental is not. Everything in the game has armor and this information is not factored into the tooltips so you have to look at how much the ability did to a specific target in Starparse or the flytext to get an accurate reading. Weapon damage is always Energy/Kinetic. Whether an attack is Energy/Kinetic or Internal/Elemental is for all intents and purposes arbitrary, the devs decided each attack should be a certain damage type for balance purposes. There is no real distinction between the Energy and Kinetic as well as Internal and Elemental, the two words are basically interchangeable from a numbers perspective and which word is used is determined by which is a more fitting descriptor. For example, fire damage is elemental while bleeding is internal but they both interact the same way with damage mitigation. Periodic vs Direct – Periodic is if it’s a Damage over Time effect (DoT) and direct if it’s not a DoT. There are lots of exceptions to this rule, especially with what bosses give and it having a debuff does not make it a DoT. Single Target vs AoE – Does the attack hit multiple players? If yes, then it’s an AoE. If no, it’s single target. Bosses also have all sorts of weird typing with their attacks, some things that look like they should be AoE are actually considered single target attacks while others that look like single target might actually be AoE attacks. Luckily with #3 and #4, these are less important.

LEARN MORE ► SWTOR Guide to Damage Types and Damage Mitigation

Single Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes and Important Procs

Please have the game open while reading the remainder of this guide. I will not be writing out tooltip descriptions for abilities and I will only be writing out the components of discipline passives that directly relate to the ability and rotation. This forces you to read through what everything does so that you can understand what all of your passives and abilities do as well as locate these abilities in-game. Make sure you place all of these abilities on your bar in an order that makes sense to you.

Affliction (Force/Internal/Periodic/Single Target/Instant)

This DoT is one of your hardest hitting abilities on its own and accounts for about 11% of your total damage output. It should be the first ability you use on any new target. When Affliction is on the target, Thundering Blast is an autocrit, so it is imperative that Affliction is active on anything you plan to hit with Thundering Blast. If there’s ever any downtime or if you ever have to switch to attack something else, make sure that Affliction is on the target before continuing on with your rotation as it can often fall off. Since Affliction is also one of your most damaging abilities, it’s beneficial to put on secondary targets (like if a fight has two or more bosses) that need to die even if you might not be focusing them, especially if they are within 8m of each other, this is called Multi-DoTing. Affliction has one proc that is relevant to your rotation:

Charged Reaction – Affliction’s duration is refreshed by dealing direct damage with Chain Lightning and Crushing Darkness, so you only need to apply it once to most targets unless there is a significant amount of time where you do not use those abilities. While multi-DoTing, you can leverage this to maintain Affliction on up to two targets indefinitely even if they are not near each other by alternating Chain Lightning and Crushing Darkness on each of them. So Target A’s Affliction first gets refreshed with Chain Lightning and Target B’s Affliction first gets refreshed with Crushing Darkness. Next time, Target A’s Affliction gets refreshed with Crushing Darkness and Target B’s gets refreshed with Chain Lightning and so on. This can be a bit tricky to do, so make sure you aren’t losing DPS by doing this and sometimes bosses need to be pushed evenly or have mechanics associated with their health level, so don’t do this if it will cause a mechanic to get messed up. If they are near each other, they can both get refreshed by Chain Lightning, so you don’t need to bother with this. You will also be taking GCDs away from whatever you’re supposed to be hitting, so don’t do this if it’s causing the sides/bosses to get messed up. Even if you can’t maintain Affliction using Chain Lightning and Crushing Darkness, it’s still a DPS increase to apply Affliction instead of using Lightning Bolt, provided they stay alive long enough for the full duration of the ability.

Thundering Blast (Force/Internal/Direct/Single Target/Casted)

This is easily the hardest hitting ability on the sorc and accounts for about 20% of your total damage output. It also automatically critically hits targets affected by Affliction, so you want to make sure it’s applied before using this ability. Thundering Blast has two procs that are relevant to your rotation:

Lightning Storm – Finishes the cooldown on Chain Lightning, makes your next use of the ability instant and consume 50% less force, can only occur once every 10 seconds. This ability can also proc off of Lightning Bolt and Force Storm, but the rate limit/internal cooldown on this proc aligns very well the 9 second cooldown on Thundering Blast, so it’s important to make sure that this procs off of Thundering Blast so that you can ensure you are getting the proc as often as possible and gain it in a predictable fashion. While it isn’t an exact match, the nature of the spec in terms of ability priority and damage distribution demand that this is the best way to ensure that you will get the Lightning Storm proc as consistently and frequently as possible.

Lightning Effusion – Direct Force Attacks grant 2 charges of Lightning Effusion when they critically hit, each charge reduces the Force consumed by your next Force attack by 75%. This proc is one of the primary reasons why you don’t have any energy management as a Lightning Sorc since you are almost guaranteed to have this proc for ⅔ of your attacks and will always get it from Thundering Blast since it’s an autocrit.

Reverberating Force – Increases the critical damage dealt by Thundering Blast, Lightning Flash, Chain Lightning, and Crushing Darkness by 15%. Before 6.1.1, this was only a 5% increase, but now that it’s 15% it’s much more relevant since it directly increases the damage dealt by Thundering Blast and now plays a more important role in determining which abilities Recklessness should be used on.

Chain Lightning (Force/Energy/Direct/AoE/Casted)

This ability provides Lightning with some AoE damage that goes out rotationally and accounts for about 11.1% of your overall damage output. In single target situations, this ability should never be hard-casted and should only be used with the Lightning Storm proc, however if there are multiple targets, it should be hard-casted. Chain Lightning is one of your harder hitting abilities, but does not need to be used immediately on cooldown. The only limitation is that it needs to be used before your next Thundering Blast, though it often will be used directly after Thundering Blast. I have already explained all of the procs related to this ability that are relevant to your rotation, but there are a few situations that will determine when to use this ability specifically:

If the adds are not yet grouped up but will be before your next Thundering Blast, delay the ability until they are sufficiently grouped up.

If Lightning Flash is not available immediately before or after Thundering Blast, Chain Lightning Should consume your second charge of Recklessness.

Lightning Bolt (Force/Energy/Direct/Single Target/Casted)

While this ability accounts for approximately 19.8% of your overall damage output, almost equal to the amount provided by Thundering Blast, it only does so because you use the ability far more frequently; it takes 4-5 uses of Lightning Bolt to get the same damage as a single Thundering Blast. Lightning Bolt is your filler ability, so it is used when everything else is on cooldown. It’s really important to note that Lightning Bolt does not deal more damage than other less rotational abilities like an unprocc’d Shock or Force Lightning, so you won’t lose DPS if you replace it for another ability if the other ability has a more desirable trait. The way Lightning Bolt makes itself important is by having many important procs associated with it:

Convection – Force Speed grants 2 charges of Convection which make your next 2 Lightning Bolts activate instantly. Contrary to popular belief, this is not really much of a DPS increase. Because Lightning Bolt is still a 1.5 second cast (same as a GCD), you’re not actually doing your rotation any faster because you can’t use your next ability until the same amount of time has passed since the ability was activated. The only difference is that the damage goes out at the beginning of the 1.5 seconds when it’s instant instead of at the end when it’s casted. The only benefit this has is if a temporary damage increase, like from a relic or adrenal, falls off midway through the cast so the ability would not benefit from the damage increase when it was casted, but would if it were instant. Any other observable DPS increases would be due to the exploitation of bugs. This is not enough of a reason to use Force Speed on cooldown because you’ll miss out on far more DPS if you have to move and don’t do anything for a GCD or two, however thanks to the Gathering Storm set bonus, you end up having to use Force Speed on cooldown anyway.

Subversion – Taking direct damage has a 25% chance to grant Subversion, which makes your next Lightning Bolt instant, can only occur once every 8 seconds. It’s very difficult to capitalize on this in PvE unless you’re taking damage very consistently, the only example I can think of is if you’re kiting Raptus. The big thing to note is that if this proc is active and you use Force Speed to gain Convection stacks, both Subversion and a charge of Convection will get consumed on the same Lightning Bolt unfortunately.

Fulgurous Fortification – Lightning Bolt increases damage reduction by 5%, stacks up to 3 times (15% damage reduction total). It’s easy to let this damage reduction fall off because you can go a relatively long period of time without using Lightning Bolt due to its low priority.

Charged Reaction – Lightning Bolt increases your force regeneration rate by 10%, stacks up to 3 times (30% total). This proc really doesn’t matter in the long run, the only time I ever pay attention to it is if I died and just got revived, though really if you just do your rotation, you will never run out of force.

Forked Lightning – Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lightning Flash have a 25% chance to produce a second arc of lightning which deals 25% damage. This effect introduces a lot of RNG to the spec because it accounts for about 6% of your damage dealt and some of your other passives are dependent on Forking. Please note that Forked Lightning can consume the 20% damage increase proc from the 4-piece of your Gathering Storm set bonus, which is especially problematic when one of your Lightning Bolts fork right before you activate a Thundering Blast that you intend to use the 20% damage increase on.

Chaos Nexus – Forked Lightning has a 50% chance to produce a second arc of lightning instead of 25% during Polarity Shift. This is more significant than it has been in prior expansions since the overall uptime of Polarity Shift has increased significantly thanks to the Gathering Storm set bonus.

Conduction – Forked Lightning (and Forked Darkness) each reduce the cooldown of Polarity Shift by 1 second each time they trigger. This effect is very significant, over a parse that’s just a little less than 5 minutes, Forks triggered 116 times, resulting in 116 seconds of Polarity Shift’s cooldown getting reduced, almost enough for 2 additional uses of the ability!

Lightning Flash (Force/Energy/Direct/Single Target/Instant)

This ability deals nearly the same damage as Chain Lightning, though thanks to its longer cooldown, it only accounts for about 7.3% of your total damage output. There are two procs that are relevant to your rotation:

Force Flash – This proc is built directly into the ability and reduces the activation time of your next Crushing Darkness by 0.5 seconds. If both Lightning Flash and Crushing Darkness are off cooldown at the same time, be sure to use Lightning Flash first so that you can take advantage of the reduced cast time on Crushing Darkness.

Stormwatch – This is the primary tactical item you will be using for Lightning. It accounts for about 9.9% of your total damage output (more than Lightning Flash itself!), making it more important to use Lightning Flash on cooldown than it may appear. In my testing, I haven’t noticed a difference between using Thundering Blast or Lightning Flash first if they come off cooldown at the same time, though I think it will come down to other factors as to which one is better at any given time.

Crushing Darkness (Force/Kinetic/Direct and Periodic/Single Target/Casted)

This ability deals both Direct and Periodic damage with the initial hit being Direct and the DoT component being Periodic damage. This makes Crushing Darkness a very poor candidate for for use with Force Speed and Recklessness because only the weak, initial hit will benefit from these abilities or any others that only affect direct damage. However, it still deals a substantial amount of damage and accounts for about 8.4% of your total damage output (compared to the approximate 7% for each of Chain Lightning and Lightning Flash). It is imperative that this ability is not used unless you have the Force Flash proc from Lightning Flash active. A frequent situation can happen where Crushing Darkness will come off cooldown right before Lightning Flash so you’ll still have the proc, but it will fall off very early into the cast, which is fine, but be careful because if you’re slow (low APM) or don’t have enough alacrity, you might end up hard casting Crushing Darkness which is bad. While you’re learning, it’s best to play it safe and use Lightning Flash first. Crushing Darkness has one proc that is relevant to the rotation that I haven’t yet mentioned:

Convulsing Currents – Shock deals 35% more damage to targets affected by your Crushing Darkness and Crushing Darkness deals 10% more damage during Polarity Shift. This means that you have 4 GCDs following Crushing Darkness to use Shock on that target. Please note that you don’t get a buff on your bar and Shock won’t light up as a result, so it’s not quite a proc even though I refer to it as such throughout this guide. The second component of the effect won’t change how you use the ability since Crushing Darkness already has a pretty high priority.

Forked Darkness – Crushing Darkness places a debuff that makes the target take 5% more damage from Force attacks for 45 seconds. It also makes Crushing Darkness have a 25% chance to tick an additional time. This chance is not increased by Chaos Nexus, but does benefit from the effects of Conduction. These additional ticks will also proc Stormwatch.

Shock (Force/Energy/Direct/Single Target/Instant)

This ability accounts for the smallest amount of your overall damage output (besides forks) at only about 5.3%. The primary use of this ability is on targets affected by Crushing Darkness, and its 6 second cooldown guarantees that you can only use the ability once per use of Crushing Darkness unless you use Crushing Darkness and immediately increase your alacrity. While Crushing Darkness is on the target, it deals slightly less damage than Lightning Flash and Chain Lightning, but it doesn’t benefit from forks or Reverberating Force which increases the critical damage of some of your other abilities by 15%. Since Reverberating Force was buffed in 6.1.1, Shock should no longer be used with Recklessness or Force Speed. Without Crushing Darkness on the target, it deals nearly the same damage as Lightning Bolt (so does Force Lightning per GCD), so if it weren’t for all the procs given by Lightning Bolt, it really wouldn’t matter which you would use and in the short term, it isn’t really going to negatively affect your DPS if you use it a few times throughout the fight. Shock’s key benefit is that it’s an instant ability and there are a few other situations worth mentioning where it’s a valuable ability:

When you need to move and don’t have an instant Lightning Bolt at your disposal.

When something is about to die and you think there’s a high chance that the target will die before you finish a cast on Lightning Bolt.

When you mess up the Lightning Storm (Chain Lightning) proc and want to make sure you don’t use any abilities that will proc it until you do Thundering Blast again. Force Lightning is also very helpful in this situation, so it’s actually advantageous that Shock (and Force Lightning) do not grant all the other procs that Lightning Bolt does.

Static Barrier with the Lightning Barrier utility point (Force/Energy/Direct/Single Target/Instant)

Before I explain any further, I want to say that contrary to what some people believe, Lightning Barrier isn’t bugged. There are a few fights in the game where DoTs end up being coded as dealing direct damage instead of periodic so Lightning Barrier ends up getting a ton of ticks in quick succession. It’s unclear whether these damage types are deliberately incorrect since there are many other examples of abilities not matching their damage types such as Tyrans’ Shock being a melee attack and Titan 6’s grenade changing damage types from HM to NiM. You should definitely use it as often as you can.

Lightning Barrier represents a significant amount of your total damage output; over the course of entire fights, it can easily account for 5%-7% of your total damage output, which is a ton considering the ability has an effective 20 second cooldown, longer than any other rotational ability, so damage per use is very high. Static Barrier is also an instant ability that does not require an enemy target on activation, meaning it’s a great move to use while on the move and can be used to great effect if there’s downtime where you can’t hit anything. Each tick of Lightning Barrier deals nearly the exact same amount as a Lightning Bolt/Shock/Force Lightning, so as long as you manage to take damage that causes Lightning Barrier to tick once every 30 seconds (the maximum duration of the bubble), you will break even on DPS when Static Barrier is used in place of a Lightning Bolt while mitigating a significant amount of damage at the same time. If you manage to get multiple ticks out of a single use of the ability, your damage output increases dramatically because you’re now dealing the damage of multiple Lightning Bolts while only spending one GCD (the same as Lightning Bolt) to deal that damage. There is also a way to increase the number of ticks that you get out of a single use of Static Barrier: increasing your damage reduction. Damage reduction applies to incoming damage before it is dealt to the bubble, the bubble acts like invisible extra health during damage calculation. Therefore, damage reduction can greatly increase the amount of ticks that can be sent out before the bubble runs out of health and as a Lightning sorc, you can get up to 84% damage reduction with all of your abilities and passives active, so you can get multiple hits out of even very large ticks of damage and I’ll be outlining all the sources of damage reduction below:

Fulgurous Fortification discipline passive – Up to 15% from stacks from using Lightning Bolt

Convection discipline passive – While you have the deionized debuff from using Static Barrier, you gain 10% damage reduction

Suppression utility – You gain 25% damage reduction for 6 seconds after using Cloud Mind

Unnatural Vigor utility – You can 15% damage reduction for 6 seconds after using Unnatural Preservation

Sith Defiance utility – 3% damage reduction passively

Other sources – Armor and Buffs also give you damage reduction against certain damage types

Corrupted Flesh utility – 15% against periodic damage. Lightning Barrier only works against direct damage, so if you’re getting hit by periodic damage while trying to utilize Lightning Barrier on another attack, this utility point can help you minimize the damage your bubble takes against attacks that don’t trigger Lightning Barrier. The best example of a fight where this utility is valuable is Tyrans. His regular AoE damage pulses are what trigger your Lightning Barrier, but if you get hit by his Affliction, your Static Barrier will be consumed very quickly, so this will help you salvage that bubble by mitigating some of the damage. In that fight specifically, you want to save your defensive cooldowns for when you just bubbled yourself and get hit with Affliction. Your goal is to have your bubble survive long enough that you get at least one tick out of Lightning Barrier. The Corrupted Flesh utility will not help you if Lightning Barrier is triggering primarily off of a DoT, like Nefra’s scream or Stormcaller’s Double Destruction since those attacks are considered direct damage, not periodic.

If an attack is dodged/parried/deflected/resisted thanks to defense chance, you will not trigger Lightning Barrier, and I’ll explain this in greater detail when I talk about Phase Walk and the Shifting Silhouette utility.

When using this ability, its standard place in the priority is right above Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt, however this can change depending on how many ticks you expect from one bubble. The more ticks that go out, the higher priority it has. Make sure that you wait until your bubble has completely expired or fallen off before reapplying it, otherwise you’re leaving DPS on the table. It’s important to note that you’ll always deal the same amount of damage per tick no matter how much health the bubble has left, it isn’t a reflect where the damage sent out is proportional to the damage received, so if you have just 1 health left on the bubble when you take damage, Lightning Barrier will still send out a tick that deals the same amount as a Lightning Bolt. You should also know that if you get bubbled by another sorc, you will not be given Lightning Barrier and you have to make sure that your current bubble is completely removed before applying your own as soon as the deionized debuff wears off. If you overwrite it by using your own bubble while you still have someone else’s it’ll still give you your bubble, but it won’t give you Lightning Barrier, so you have to right click the bubble in your buff bar to remove it before applying your own.

Most of the fights in this game will cause Lightning Barrier to tick, however there are a few different ways that it can get used. Some bosses will tick Lightning Barrier throughout the entire fight (or most of it) and in those fights, you should focus on having your Lightning Barrier up all the time. In other fights, there will be certain attacks that bosses will do that make Lightning Barrier tick a ton in a very short time. In those instances, it’s important that you have a fresh bubble and your damage reduction cooldowns ready for right before the damage goes out so that you can maximize the number of ticks. I won’t list all of the places you can use Lightning Barrier here since there are a lot of them. Instead, I will tell you how to find them. When fighting a new boss or one where you aren’t sure, pay close attention to your health bar and debuffs. The best sources are ticking damage, usually from DoTs (like Nefra’s DoT) or channeled abilities (like Styrak’s Force Lightning) as well as frequent small hits of AoE (like Tyrans and Raptus have throughout their fights), and even persistent circles that deal relatively low contact damage (like Spit from the Kell Dragon). You can tell when it ticks because you will see a little burst of light go from your bubble to whatever caused the damage, this is super important to determine because if it’s not constant throughout the fight, you need to be prepared to use a bubble right before the damage goes out and Cloud Mind and Unnatural Vigor immediately before or as close to the first tick as possible unless you also need the damage reduction active for a final big hit at the end (like Hierad’s Lightning Field). In these short burst of ticks, activating Lightning Barrier on time becomes your highest priority ability, even beyond Thundering Blast and Lightning Flash because a single use of the ability can easily deal more damage than either of those abilities. If you’re in one of these situations, it’s more important to make sure that you have Force Barrier available to you or know that your healers can handle any other damage you’ll take because you will not have any other defensives after doing this, though it’s usually not a problem. You should also make sure it’s going towards a target you actually want to hit (I really don’t think it’s worth taking if it’s mostly going towards little adds that will get killed with AoE and aren’t worth focusing down) and be sure to check in StarParse after a fight to see how much damage it’s dealing, if you’re getting very little (less than 1 tick per bubble) or no damage from the ability, take that utility off and use Dark Resilience for that fight, though make sure you’ve checked it thoroughly; for example, Zorn & Toth in EC only tick during the phases where the spikes (red circles) are coming out of the ground. In one of the more recent updates, they made it so you can see how much damage you’re absorbing with your bubble and how much health your bubble has, making it much easier to tell exactly how many ticks of Lightning Barrier you’re getting out of individual attacks and how many ticks you have remaining before your barrier dies, which helps you to minimize the damage you take if you’re standing in a circle you’re not supposed to be standing in.

AoE Damage

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single target abilities is: (Damage Dealt/Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD. AoE damage is considered fluff if the adds do not need to die or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage to adds. The best example of this for sorcs is placing your Force Storm on just a couple of the Ugnaughts that are away from Grob’thok. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss.

Force Storm (Force/Energy/Direct/AoE/Channeled)

If you plan to use Force Storm at all during a boss fight, you should take the Tempest Mastery utility. This ability’s damage per GCD surpasses the following abilities after the following number of targets are hit with one use of the ability and assumes you are taking the Tempest Mastery utility:

Lightning Bolt: 2 targets

Lightning Flash, Crushing Darkness, Shock w/ Proc: 3 targets

Thundering Blast: 6 targets

Chain Lightning: Never, because Chain Lightning deals roughly the same damage but only has a 2.5 second cast time instead of a 3 second channel

Chain Lighting (Force/Energy/Direct/AoE/Casted)

This ability is already used rotationally and should be used on cooldown, including being hard-casted if there are multiple targets. When it is being hard-casted, the instant proc should be used as soon as you get it since the ability’s cooldown is now the relevant limiting factor in how frequently it can be used, not the rate limit on the Lightning Storm proc. It has higher priority when hard-casted if the following number of targets are hit with one use of the ability:

Lightning Bolt, Lightning Flash, Crushing Darkness, Shock w/ Proc: 2 targets

Thundering Blast: 5 targets

Affliction (Force/Internal/Periodic/Single Target/Instant)

Thanks to the Charged Reaction proc, you can place Affliction on lots of enemies if they are within 8m of each other and keep Affliction up on all of them indefinitely because Chain Lightning will refresh their durations. Make sure that the adds you’re using it on will stay alive for a while, at least the full duration of the base DoT. Start by applying it to whichever enemies have the highest HP and work your way down. Continue to use Chain Lightning and get the Lightning Storm proc as frequently as possible, so use this in place of Force Storms.

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Lightning is very good at mitigating short bursts of damage, as I mentioned in a previous section, they can get up to 84% damage reduction for 6 seconds, however they don’t fare quite as well over longer periods of time because they don’t really have any long lasting cooldowns like many other classes have with things like Saber Ward, Deflection, and Energy Shield, however Lightning’s high damage reduction helps to make up for this a bit, especially with the nerfs to the amount of damage reduction that armor provides so Lightning has some of the highest constant damage reduction against all damage types. Even before 6.0, they were better at handling internal/elemental damage reduction than just about all the other classes because their damage reduction applies to all damage types while armor only works on energy/kinetic damage. I also want to remind you that you need to locate and read what these abilities do so that you can place them in your bar.

Cloud Mind w/ Suppression utility

This is your bread and butter defensive cooldown, providing you with good damage reduction for a short period of time and over the long term, you’ll end up having higher uptime than you would with something like Energy Shield because of the shorter cooldown. It’s important to note that this is unfortunately on your threat drop ability, so if you manage to get aggro on something while Lightning Barrier is up, you might not get many more ticks on that enemy once you use this ability, which is fine since Lightning Barrier ticks on adds is not the best use of the utility. For threat drop purposes, it’s a bit harder for tanks to keep aggro now, so make sure you use this to reduce your threat at the beginning of the fight. Right after Lightning Flash or the second Chain Lightning in your opener are good times to use it and if you are having an issue continually, request that someone guard you and tell your tanks that they need to learn how to generate threat better because they should be able to keep aggro.

Unnatural Preservation and the Unnatural Vigor utility

This ability is not off-healing. Do not consider it as off-healing. Consider it a defensive cooldown just like any other that just so happens to work by providing you with a lot of HP. The traditional wisdom with sorc survivability is that they can take big hits and survive because they will almost always be at higher HP than all other classes such that if someone else uses another defensive cooldown with lower health, they won’t lose as much health overall but since the sorc was at higher health before they took the hit thanks to proactive use of Unnatural Preservation, they’ll be dropped to the same health level as the other class. However, Unnatural Vigor has complicated this somewhat because it grants 15% damage reduction for 6 seconds after use, so now you often have to weigh the damage reduction against the healing if you’re at full health (is it better to take the full hit and heal afterwards or will the damage reduction end up being more valuable?). A good rule of thumb is to use Unnatural Preservation on cooldown provided you can take full (or almost full) benefit of the heal and save it for the damage reduction if you’re going to take a dedicated hit or plan to pair the damage reduction with Cloud Mind to get a ton of ticks out of Lightning Barrier.

Force Barrier and Enduring Bastion

This ability works by giving you +20,000% defense chance, so if an attack cannot be dodged/deflected/parried/resisted, Force Barrier will not work. In most fights, this ability doesn’t get used and is more of an emergency button unless it’s getting used to cheese something deliberately like Doom from Ciphas or Ion Cutter from Master. Because you aren’t dealing any damage while channeling this ability, it is absolutely critical that you do not channel it for longer than you need to. Unless you’re buying time for DoT ticks and such, there’s not too much of a point to channeling for longer than 6 seconds anyway, which is when you get the fourth and final stack of Enduring Bastion which absorbs a massive amount of damage (though usually not massive enough if you need the 4 stacks). It is off the GCD and functions as a CC break, and I do use it if I need to CC break frequently, like I do on Monolith when getting a color. I also like to use the ability and immediately break the channel to get the single stack of Enduring Bastion which helps a little bit in burn phases where everyone is taking constant damage. This ability also takes Force Speed off cooldown when it ends, if you take the Surging Speed utility (which you have to now thanks to the Gathering Storm set bonus), however this is not a good use of the ability in combat and it’s much better to save it for emergencies. The deciding factor for beating a boss is far more likely to be surviving long enough with Force Barrier over the full channel than getting an extra Force Speed or two throughout the fight and if you get killed when Force Barrier is on cooldown because you used it as a DPS increase instead, you’re gonna lose a whole lot more DPS by being dead.

Static Barrier

You should think of this ability as no different than any of your other healing abilities like Resurgence and Dark Heal because it costs a GCD to use, so you will lose DPS if you use this ability and either don’t have the Lightning Barrier utility or don’t get a tick from Lightning Barrier in the next 30 seconds even if you do take that utility. This ability should only be used if you think you or someone else will die if you don’t use it, and when I say die, I mean it, I do not mean take a giant hit, I mean die. If your healers can heal you back up and you don’t have the Lightning Barrier utility, don’t use it unless there is downtime where you can’t do any DPS.

Medpac

Don’t save it for a rainy day because today is that rainy day! Unless you get hit by a one-shot mechanic (which you shouldn’t), you should never let yourself die while your Medpac is still available and you certainly should never try to use one of your heals before using your Medpac (and I hope you know that Unnatural Preservation is not included in this). If everyone’s health is getting low or there’s a heal check in the current phase, do not hesitate to use your Medpac if you can take full benefit of the health provided or need to be above a certain health level to survive an imminent mechanic. If you think Medpacs are too expensive, it’s time to get Biochem on one of your alts or even better, your raiding toon so that you can make your own or get reusables.

Expunge

This is the cleanse for the sorcs. Generally the healers are responsible for dealing with most of the cleanses, though there are a few instances where the DPS should help, like on Dread Council with Tyrans’ Death Mark. Before you use this on yourself, make sure that you don’t get Lightning Barrier ticks off of it and try to avoid using this as your cleanse, a lot of the cleanses that DPS are responsible for can be removed with an ability that is off the GCD like the CC break or the Emersion utility.

Phase Walk

Due to the Gathering Storm set bonus requiring us to use Force Speed on cooldown, our mobility is reduced significantly and it becomes more important to rely on Phase Walk for movement. This ability can be activated off the GCD even though it has a cast, the only reason it has one at all is to prevent you from placing it in the air or while you’re moving. It can also be activated in the middle of channels (including Force Barrier), not casts though, without interrupting the cast so long as you stay in range of whatever you’re hitting. It can also be used while CC’d, sometimes even when you can’t break out of the CC, the button will be grayed out, but it will still teleport you. If you try to teleport while in the air, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there is a whole lot of lag before it teleports you so be mindful of that. When thinking about different spots to place Phase Walk, ask yourself: is there a specific location I know I will want to return to at some point later in the fight? Is that position going to be generally safe to return to?

I also want to talk about the Shifting Silhouette utility you can take. It provides 30% defense for 10 seconds after returning to your marked point, normally Defense Chance only applies to Melee/Ranged attacks, however this utility also increases your chance to resist Force/Tech attacks, so you won’t take any damage if you successfully dodge/deflect/parry/resist an attack but the effect won’t help you at all if you do take the hit. In PvE, this is much stronger mitigation than what you can get out of Unnatural Vigor, however it’s unreliable. This makes it a bad choice for mitigating large hits where you need the reliability of damage reduction, but on frequent smaller hits, it’s not functionally different from 30% damage reduction. There is another snag as well, attacks mitigated with defense do not proc Lightning Barrier because it doesn’t count as you taking damage and unfortunately, Lightning Barrier works best against the same kinds of attacks as Shifting Silhouette mitigates, meaning that the only valuable time to use it is if you do not want to deal damage back to whatever you are mitigating. There are still instances where this utility point is taken, but it shouldn’t be taken if the fight can make great use out of Lightning Barrier so the two points should not be taken at the same time.

Force Speed

This ability is easily the best ability for movement in the game because it allows you to keep DPSing while moving an incredible distance very quickly. Unfortunately, now we don’t really get to use it for movement since we need it for the Gathering Storm set bonus, though if you come across a situation where you will likely die if you don’t use it, save it for that situation but try to rely on Phase Walk as much as possible if those situations can be predicted and make sure to use Force Speed during downtime to keep reducing the cooldown on Polarity Shift.

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here or if it needs to be saved for a DPS check/burst window, but don’t start delaying it for that until you see that you have to.

Polarity Shift

In 6.0, thanks yet again to the Gathering Storm set bonus, this ability will have a very high uptime both thanks to the cooldown reduction and 20 second duration. In fact, it will have approximately a 33% uptime where your Alacrity will be increased such that you will have a 1.1 second GCD and deal 20% more damage with all of your attacks. As of 6.1.1, the duration increase of Polarity Shift has been reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds and no longer requires Force Speed to have been used recently in order to receive this duration increase. Going forward, this means that Force Speed should be used after Polarity Shift instead of before in order to benefit from the cooldown reduction. Make sure you have this ability off cooldown for any DPS checks, but still make sure that you are using it as often as possible, so don’t save it for so long that it could have come off cooldown in time for the DPS check.

Recklessness

This ability should almost always be used during Polarity Shift and if you’re activating them at the same time, make sure you activate Polarity Shift first. It’s okay to delay it for a significant period of time because the alacrity from Polarity Shift will counteract the delay so your next Recklessness will end up happening at roughly the same time regardless. I usually base this decision on how much time is left on Polarity Shift’s cooldown if it isn’t active. If the cooldown is above 30-40 seconds, I will try to use Recklessness immediately because it means that Polarity Shift likely just ended, so you’ll have a situation where Recklessness will skip the next Polarity Shift but become available by the time for the following one. The benefit of using Recklessness during Polarity Shift is that you get to benefit from the 20% damage increase that is active thanks to the (yep, you guessed it) Gathering Storm set bonus, so those abilities’ damage increase will be compounded. You almost always want to make sure that you use one of the charges of Recklessness on Thundering Blast, while it is an autocrit, it will still benefit as a supercrit, where the excess critical chance is converted into critical multiplier. This only affects abilities that autocrit, not just when an ability’s crit chance surpasses 100%. The other charge should either be on Chain Lightning or Lightning Flash depending on what’s available. If you use Chain Lightning as one of the abilities for Recklessness, it must always be used on the second charge if there are multiple enemies that will get hit because it will consume a charge for each enemy hit. Please note that once you activate Recklessness, it’s more important that the correct abilities are benefiting from the increased critical chance, so it’s okay to ignore the priority list for a moment. Generally, this means that you’ll have to delay Crushing Darkness by a GCD so that you can use the second charge on Chain Lightning. It can also be used on Force Storm if you need some beefed up AoE damage and that will only ever consume a single charge even if it hits more than one enemy. It should never be used on Crushing Darkness because it will only affect the initial hit because that’s the only part that is direct damage and Lightning Bolt is too weak. If you mess it up, you’re better off using one of the charges on Force Lightning than Lightning Bolt because Force Lightning does the same damage per GCD as Lightning Bolt, so you’re better off getting effectively 2 of them to autocrit instead of 1. As I mentioned before, Shock is no longer a good choice to use Recklessness on because it doesn’t benefit from the Reverberating Force discipline passive. It’s also worth noting that right now, we can’t actually surpass 40% crit chance with how much Alacrity we need, so there’s a very small chance that abilities that aren’t Thundering Blast won’t crit, though it won’t consume the charge either, so just be prepared.

Force Speed

This ability increases the damage dealt by your next direct Force attack by 20% thanks to the Gathering Storm Set bonus, it also reduces the cooldown of Polarity Shift by 5 seconds, so you need to use this on cooldown in order to maximize the cooldown reduction. Since this cooldown reduction is smaller as of 6.1.1, it’s now better to save this damage increase proc exclusively for Thundering Blast, instead of trying to use it on cooldown on something like Chain Lightning or Lightning Flash, though it’s not the end of the world if you use it on one of those abilities instead. Since this buff can get consumed on Forked Lightning, if you know that you’ll be using an ability that will Fork prior to using Thundering Blast and you are confident in your high APM, try using Force Speed immediately after using Thundering Blast instead of before in these instances in order to ensure that the buff gets consumed on Thundering Blast.

Adrenal

Make sure this item is always used during Polarity Shift, even if you have to delay it a while. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where this delay will be enough to where it will result in missing out on a use of the Adrenal and most of the delay will end up being counteracted by the Alacrity increase from Polarity Shift anyway. It’s important you do this because you will get more abilities off during the Adrenal window thanks to your higher APM thanks to the alacrity and the damage increase will compound with the stat increase from the adrenal. Remember, you should use the Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal in level 75 content and Advanced Kyrprax Critical Adrenal in non-level 75 content.

Sha’Tek Relic of Primeval Fatesealer

This relic is unfortunately the only viable alternative for use in sub-level 75 content alongside the Sha’Tek Relic of Devastating Vengeance because the standard Focused Retribution and Serendipitous Assault relics are useless because Mastery and Power are capped. It should be used on cooldown because it is not affected by Alacrity like Recklessness and the Adrenal are. It should also be saved for burst phases and DPS checks if they exist in a given fight.

Raid Utility

Unlimited Power

Unlike the relics and adrenals, Unlimited Power does increase your stats even if you’re in sub-75 content. Your raid buff should be used on cooldown just like any other offensive cooldown unless it needs to be used for a burst phase or DPS check, normally the raid lead will make the call on when these should be used. This is not a personal buff for you, it’s something that buffs the whole team. It also only has a 40m range, so be mindful on larger maps that it might not catch everyone and position yourself accordingly so that it catches as many people as possible. Use this on trash mobs if you want to troll your team.

Reanimation

This is a battle rez. Often, if somebody dies, the healers have a lot on their plate and you should attempt to use this as soon as you see the text appear on your screen. Make sure you’re standing in a safe location and if multiple people are dead, check with the raid lead if you aren’t sure who to revive. Use this to revive someone who died on a trash mob if you want to troll your team.

Extrication

This is the famed sorc pull! While it is primarily used for trolling to great effect, especially when paired with Phase Walk to jump off ledges while pulling an unsuspecting victim to their doom while you teleport back safely, it does still have some utility in combat. If you are 100% certain that someone will die if you don’t pull them, do it; if you are 99% certain they will die, probably don’t pull them. You will get yelled at if you mess up. You should have a very good idea of where this ability is on your bar because if you have to waste time finding it, you’ll probably end up sending a corpse soaring through the air instead of saving someone’s life and at that point, you’re better off just removing it from your bar. Try to minimally disrupt the other person’s rotation since it will interrupt their cast and communicate with them beforehand if there’s time.

Off-Healing

If you ever have to do this, something has clearly gone wrong with the attempt, or someone is not pulling their weight and you should complain to the raid lead and make a big scene about having to off-heal. This game is designed around each role being able to fully perform all of its duties without the need for another off-role’s help. You should not ever off-heal yourself unless you literally think you will die if you do not receive healing right now and the pull is salvageable. You should also not waste your time healing another player with Resurgence or Dark Heal, just bubble them and go back to DPSing because the other heals do not do very much and waste time. If there is downtime though where you can’t do anything else at all, it’s okay to heal yourself with these abilities, but really make sure there’s nothing you can do at all that would increase your damage output first. Besides it being not your job, a lot of bosses have fairly tight enrage timers, so if you’re having to waste your precious GCDs helping out another role because they can’t deal with what they are fully capable of dealing with, you’re gonna end up wiping to an enraged boss later anyway.

Crowd Control and Other Notable Abilities

There are only a handful of instances in operations where CC is required, so I will briefly go over what the sorc has at their disposal.

Overload

This is your conal knockback. The only fight it’s important for right now is Styrak in NiM where you have to knock back the Chained Manifestations. Also, please do not ruin everybody else’s day by using this ability for its AoE damage.

Electrocute

This is your hard stun. Most stuns have a range of either 4m or 10m depending on whether it’s a melee or ranged spec, however Lightning’s stun has a range of 15m because Lightning has a 5m range increase on almost all of its offensive abilities.

Jolt

This is your interrupt. Unfortunately, it only has a 30m range. At 18 seconds, its cooldown is longer than what most melee specs have, but isn’t the longest for ranged specs. That honor goes to the Mercenary, which has a 24 second cooldown on their interrupt (and it was the only class that didn’t have one at launch). If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted.

Whirlwind

This is your mez, a CC ability that breaks on damage. Usually if you’re using this in-combat, you will want to use it very soon after the enemy spawns, though usually healers are assigned this responsibility when possible.

Force Slow

This is your slow. Its force cost is extremely cheap and its damage is decent. If you find yourself running for long periods of time (normally if you’re kiting something), this is a great alternative to Shock if that’s on cooldown and you don’t have any other DPS abilities available that can be activated while moving. It even deals more damage than Volt Rush does on first use.

Unbreakable Will

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’d.

Volt Rush

This is your last resort as an ability that you can use while moving if everything else is unavailable. It doesn’t even surpass Lightning Bolt in damage output until the third use and even then it only barely does. That said, once in a while I do need to use it since I am less likely to be able to use Lightning Bolt while moving now since I don’t have Force Speed available on-demand.

Force Lightning

As I mentioned earlier, this ability deals the same damage per GCD as Shock, Lightning Bolt, and a Lightning Barrier tick, so the full channel will deal the same damage as two casts of those other abilities. However, that doesn’t mean it should be part of the normal rotation. As strange as it is, you should not use Force Lightning rotationally in the Lightning spec. However, it does have a few benefits that make it worthwhile to use on occasion:

2 GCDs of damage for one use of the ability. This means it’s better to use Recklessness and Force Speed on this ability rather than Lightning Bolt since the effects will apply to the entire channel. It’s still not enough to make it better than using these cooldowns on a more appropriate ability, but it does help you recover if you mess up.

It’s a channeled ability instead of being casted, so the damage goes out in 4 ticks over 3 seconds instead of 1 tick at the end of 1.5 seconds, so if something is only a GCD or two away from death, this is a more valuable use of your time than casting a Lightning Bolt and hoping it lands before the enemy dies.

It’s very helpful in resetting the Lightning Storm proc to Thundering Blast if they get desynchronized. Generally what will happen is you end up delaying Thundering Blast by a GCD because none of the cooldowns line up properly in Lightning thanks to the inconsistent Alacrity and cooldown durations that aren’t multiples of each other. In any case, Lightning Storm ends up proccing off of a Lightning Bolt right before you cast Thundering Blast. The key to fixing this is not using any Lightning Bolts or anything else that procs Lightning Storm until you use Thundering Blast again. Force Lightning and Shock are two abilities you can replace your Lightning Bolts with when trying to fix this.

It slows the target by 50% for the duration of the channel (Lightning Bolt only slows by 30%).

PATCH NOTES CHANGES

This segment of the guide is managed by Vulkk, separately from the rest of the article. Here you will find information about the class and discipline directly taken from BioWare’s patch notes, whenever the developers decide a change is needed.

The major update for the 2019 expansion Onslaught – Patch 6.0, brought significant amount of changes to all classes. Endonae explains in details which new armor sets, tacticals and amplifiers to take, so instead of listing all Sorcerer-related patch notes, if you wish to read them, please head to the SWTOR 6.0 patch notes article.

( Lightning Tacticals ) Eyrin’s Haste’s damage buff now applies to Thundering Blast as intended.

Source: SWTOR 6.0.1 Patch Notes

The list below is written also by Endonae in an attempt to simplify the changes in one short paragraph. If you wish to, you can also check the SWTOR 6.1.1 Patch Notes.

Force Speed’s 20% damage increase should now be used exclusively on Thundering Blast

Force Speed should now be used after Polarity Shift in the opener

Recklessness should no longer be used on Shock since Reverberating Force was buffed, though it was never the best use of your second charge.

Crushing Darkness’ priority has not changed as a result of the 10% damage increase it receives while Polarity Shift is active

Forked Lightning can consume the 20% damage increase from Force Speed, so try to use it immediately after Thundering Blast if your APM is high enough to mitigate this issue. Also report this as a bug to the developers so they can fix this problem (though a more ideal solution would be to make it so the damage increase only applies to Thundering Blast and either Death Field or Force Leech for Madness)

This is unrelated to the new patch, but if you change your stats to have 13.45%/2652 Alacrity while you have the Primeval Fatesealer relic equipped, you can get the 1.2s GCD while that relic is active. It only requires an extra enhancement and augment of Alacrity to reach. Check out my Stat Priority section for more info.

CONCLUSIONS

Acknowledgements and Special Thanks

I want to thank Zab, Zanwell, and Cortell for your invaluable feedback on this guide, you’ve all been (and continue to be) fantastic competition in StarParse and inspire me to do better. I also want to give special thanks to everyone who is or has ever been a member of Time Turners, I’ve had an amazing time over the years and can’t wait to see what’s in store for the years to come.

About the Author

Endonae has mained a Sith Sorcerer continuously since release. He began nightmare raiding in 4.0 and is an avid decorator. He also leads a raid team that has been around since late 1.0 and currently resides in <Lightning Masters> on Satele Shan. It has slowly worked its way up from getting lost in the lava caves on the way to Gharj in EV SM to completing timed runs in nightmare.

From Vulkk

I would like to thank Endonae for reaching out with an offer to deliver this extensive Lightning Sorcerer PvE Guide for SWTOR Update 6.0+.

Endonae also provided most if not all of the ability icons. Some I have taken from Jedipedia’s database and TorCommunity’s database.

If you are skilled with a Class and Discipline that has not yet been covered with a guide on VULKK (check the list here), and you want to provide one for the SWTOR Community, contact me via email or wherever you see Vulkk present.

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