[Archive] Sith Sorcerer/Jedi Sage Lightning/Telekinetics Compendium

[Alratan]

(08-11-2011 01:34 AM)Anubis Black Wrote:  TB is not expensive skillpoint wise. And there are no skill points. There are talent points. And TB costs 1. To get to TB you need to spend 30 talent points. In the optimal build stated those 30 talent points are absolutely warranted.

In WoW they were talents, but in SW:TOR they are skills.

SW:TOR Website Wrote:Your choice of Advanced Class not only defines which skill trees are available to your character (there are two unique trees per Advanced Class as well as one shared tree for the class), they also provide access to various special abilities, such as the ability to dual wield Lightsabers, wear heavy armor, etc.

I've been calling everything else 'abilities' for clarity. See the Advanced Classes page.

(08-11-2011 01:34 AM)Anubis Black Wrote:  Hybrid tax. If there isn't one, people will whine and it will be implemented. Either way, hybrid specs cannot compete mathematically.

For clarity to Undead Prince, whilst I agree that that normally one spec is better than others, there are some situations in MMOs where someone has to take a certain skill/talent. In that case, it is still worth optimising the spec which contains that talent, so a single class may have different specs.

For instance, most raids in WoW TBC had to contain an Affliction Warlock for debuffs, even though Destruction was better in higher tiers. Destruction had lower DPS in lower tiers, though, so two builds (for different gear levels and roles) were necessary. Same with Fire and Arcane Mages (regarding gear levels changing dps) or Holy and Holy/Discipline Priests (for having on person in the raid with a certain talent).

Similarly, I can see situations where Madness is better for certain fights than Lightning. Thus, Undead Prince, whilst you're right that there are some situations in which Madness may be better, the norm from MMOs dictates that Lightning is most likely better.

(08-11-2011 02:05 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Lightning tree build: ... Force Lightning/Madness tree build: ...

You've missed out other abilities from the rotation. Affliction needs casting (and does damage) three times per minute, for instance, which should be included.

Force Lightning gains no benefit from Wrath if you use Lightning Barrage, as then it becomes a channelled attack, lacking a cast time. You either have the option for it to do +20% damage every so often, or cast more of them, but not both.

I couldn't find them quickly in my look through the thread, but do we have any concrete numbers on FL beyond the Tatooine video posted in June? I'm reticent to base anything on that due to being from on old build, possibility of character stats affecting the damage, and the fact that these videos have typically been very easy.

(08-11-2011 02:05 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  So, based on these approximations, to be more efficient than the FL-spamming Madness build, the Lightning-tree build would have to have its Thundering Blasts deal at least 12,000 damage, or more likely >15,000 damage (or, >2500 per casting) in order to be clearly more damaging. So that's how high the "correcting coefficients" should take it in order to outdamage a level 26 Force Lightning.

If you're right, it's not necessary that TB is buffed - any Lighting skills/abilities could work.

(08-11-2011 02:05 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  1) As a bonus, the Madness build will also have Parasitism + Devour, which for a 25% force critical and two active DoTs each ticking every 3 seconds will give 1,3% of total hp and fp pools on average every 12 seconds, or 5 times/minute. 6,5% of a 5,000 hp pool = 325 hp, which coupled with the Death Field will heal us a healthy 925 hp per minute. That's as much as a Dark Infusion, or twice as much as a Dark Heal. So not only this build would appear to have higher DPS, but it also has higher survivability, putting a lesser strain on the group's healers.

Note that periodic, unpredictable, small heals aren't fantastic for survivability in raid situations. You're rarely going to be sitting around with a health deficit permanently in order for Parasitism to properly apply all of its heals.

(08-11-2011 02:05 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  2) FL has non-damaging effects as well, and will keep your target at the very least 50% slowed, if not outright stunned. Again, this should considerably benefit the group as a whole.

This is unlikely to affect bosses, which are the main consideration for a single-target dps build in raids. Bosses are almost universally immune to slowing effects in MMOs, unless it's a specific aspect of the fight. Even if they are affected, they typically don't go running around that much in a way that would really matter in terms of snares/slowing, except on those particular fights.

(08-11-2011 02:44 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  So, from the group strategy standpoint, more survivability for ANY member = stronger group.

If a slight increase in DPS will cost you a large decrease in survivability, it may actually be suboptimal because the party spends more resources keeping you alive than the bang they get from your DPS.

To an extent, yes, but you've yet to establish any large survivability benefits thus far. In the event when there are large decreases in survivability, remember that healers will frequently not be doing a lot of DPS (although, as always, this may be different in SW:ToR). If they have to spend all of their time healing if it makes you can do more dps, the extra dps you can bring have not been wasted. The only time it's a problem is if your survivability is low enough to cause you or others to die, for whatever reason.

(08-11-2011 02:44 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  That's what I meant by saying TB is expensive. You need to spend 31 points to get there. It's an objective fact, to get TB you need to spend a lot of points and in the process sacrifice some other options.

That's the case with every option, and only really matters if there are otherwise worthless skills you must take in order to achieve it, or if the skills you must take for some alternative skill are much better.

(08-11-2011 02:44 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Is the Tattoine video incorrect then? Because there was no global cooldown when he cast CL, and the CL cooldown only started AFTER he spent 3 seconds charging the spell up.

Global cooldowns typically start from the beginning of casts. If you have abilities with cast/channel times as long as the global cooldown or longer, you won't notice it. It's only really there to prevent instants from being able to be cast without delay all of the time.

(08-11-2011 02:44 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  I just honestly don't see why AoE DPS shouldn't ever be taken into account. Will there be no instances of enemy groups? Wouldn't in these cases AoE DPS be more viable than single target DPS?

There are, but they're generally not the hardest bit in most MMOs. I hope that SW:TOR will be different, as it makes less sense for 16 people to gang up on a single person in such a static way, but the vast majority of the time when high damage counts, it's single target. When it's not single-target, it's generally only burst damage that counts, not sustained.

[Undead Prince]

(08-11-2011 04:16 AM)Draeveus Wrote:  Force Lightning itself does not benefit from Wrath. FL is channelled and therefore has no cast time. This would put a severe hindrance on your proposed FL spam build

You're right, the FL is indicated as "channeled", as opposed to other spells which have "casting time"...

Dammit, and there I was thinking I was actually on to something interesting

In that case, yeah, the viability of the FL spam is greatly reduced...

Quote:Also, about the "hybrid tax":

According to the latest leaked patch notes, both Madness and Balance (JC shared tree) have been buffed to bring their dps more in line with other trees. Not sure if this is true or not, or what Bioware's definition of "in line" is, but hopefully this means that both AC's will have access to 2 viable dps specs, and players can pick the one that suits them best.

But weren't the screencaptures of the trees leaked after this new data about strengthening Madness? I assumed it was already "strengthened". If not, I will certainly be happy if Madness opens up more viable options to experiment with.

[Anubis Black]

The statement "As we see, there is no incentive to ever use Lightning Strike if Force Lightning is available, so it might only be used when the latter is on cd." is very outdated. With the new talents available, LS is our main filler.

Please read up on how haste works. PS is not a 20% casting speed reduction. It is a 20% increase in casting rate. What does this mean?



In our case that's 20%, so we have



As we don't know yet if this haste effect will affect gcd, we will assume



If we were to be able to lower our gcd, this will mean



We don't know how long PS is for, if 20sec seems overpowered and 10sec a bit lacking, we can average that to 15sec. Since we have established that FL and CL won't be viable to cast without a proc, we can use PS only for CD and TB. If we were able to lower our gcd, it might have a lot more use. Let's look at damage boosts from talents:

Aff: 6sec increased DoT duration, i.e. 21sec total; 50% increased crit bonus damage => ticks: 67.57 on hit, 135 on crit;
CD: 6% increased damage => 198 on hit, 297 on crit, ticks: 67.5 on hit, 101.25 on crit
TB: 6% increased damage; 50 increased crit bonus damage => 171.19 on hit, 342.38 on crit (always crits when Aff is up)
LBFL: 5% increased damage => ticks: 207.9 on hit, 311.85 on crit
LSmCL: 6% increased damage; 50% increased crit bonus damage; 30% chance to deal 30% additional damage => w/o LSm: 214.12 on hit, 428.24 on crit; w/ LSm: 278.36 on hit, 556.7 on crit
LS: 6% increased damage; 30% chance to proc insta CL; 30% chance to deal 30% additional damage => w/o LSm: 377.36 on hit, 566 on crit; w/ LSm: 490.57 on hit, 735.85 on crit

Assuming 20% crit chance and completely disregarding abilities' coefficients:

Total damage:



Even though this is a totally wrong approach, I decided to humor you to show you how to calculate the damage this way (even though again, this is not how it's done). So now you can say that Aff will be cast 3 times, CD will be cast 3 times, TB will be cast 6 times, LBFL will be cast 0.2*20 (amount of Aff ticks) = 4 times, LSmCL will be cast 0.3*(amount of LS casts) times and LS will be cast X times. For the last two we have 34.5sec cast time left, so we go with 18 LS casts and 5 LSmCL casts.

To combine that all:



Finally, we take a look at one of our most important talents- Conduction. Assuming 3 stacks are up (the idea of the build) that increases our damage by 3%. So that's 18,950*1.03 = 19,518 damage.

Now let's look at your FL spam. First of all, notice that LB can proc only once every 10sec. so using the same amount of crit (20%), on average you will have 4 LBFL procs as stated above. Also notice that Wrath does not apply to FL, since FL is not a cast. It is a channel. Wrath is a talent that INCENTIVISES you to use an ability other than FL in your rotation. It makes your FL buff all of your other abilities with a cast time. It most likely does not apply to instants as they don't have cast time either.

So it boils down to 3 Aff casts, 3 CD casts, 4 LBFL casts and 14 FL casts. The latter two sum up to damage. Now we have to recalculate Aff and CD damage.



We get a total of

19,518 vs. 20,016.5 and one last adjustment, for CL I will now not use the base from the talent and apply talent multipliers, but use the tooltip damage from the Tatooine video as I did with FL.



Thus we have which is around 800 damage higher. Notice how if we use a tooltip value of CL the damage increases by 1.3k and imagine how much it will increase if we use a tooltip value for TB. And even so, I'm not including the 6% damage added to CL, assuming it's included in the tooltip, even though I'm adding it to Aff (which is used in both builds). Not to mention abilities' coefficients and how they will shift the balance even more in this direction.

I really do not see why you would want to go out of your way to force a "rotation" that totally destroys the purpose of the talents (e.g. Wrath) and uses a horrendous hybrid spec just for the lulz. Really, man, try and read what you can about MMOs, especiall WoW. I can bet you whatever you want 90% of the mechanics will be taken from there. It has the perfect combat system and Bioware have acknowledged that. I don't think you'll be able to keep up when actual discussions start.

[Undead Prince]

Alratan, I think you bring up excellent and enlightening points. There is really very little else I can say in reply

(08-11-2011 04:16 AM)Alratan Wrote:  Thus, Undead Prince, whilst you're right that there are some situations in which Madness may be better, the norm from MMOs dictates that Lightning is most likely better.

Most likely. After all, Lightning is the poster child for the Ranged DPS Sorc. I just want to exhaust all possible alternatives before committing myself to the most obvious path.

Quote:You've missed out other abilities from the rotation. Affliction needs casting (and does damage) three times per minute, for instance, which should be included.

The DoTs would be basically the same for both builds, so why bother including them. It would only clog up the calculations and Heavens know I've had enough trouble with them already

Quote:Force Lightning gains no benefit from Wrath if you use Lightning Barrage, as then it becomes a channelled attack, lacking a cast time. You either have the option for it to do +20% damage every so often, or cast more of them, but not both.

Yeah, I guess you're right. That particular thing with Wrath takes a lot away from the FL spam idea.

Quote:I couldn't find them quickly in my look through the thread, but do we have any concrete numbers on FL beyond the Tatooine video posted in June? I'm reticent to base anything on that due to being from on old build, possibility of character stats affecting the damage, and the fact that these videos have typically been very easy.

I actually assumed the Tatooine video was one of the best examples we had of Sorc abilities in action, as it has received a lot of attention on the web. Is it from a hopelessly outdated build then? In that case we really don't have much to go on with regarding Sorc abilities.

Quote:If you're right, it's not necessary that TB is buffed - any Lighting skills/abilities could work.

Well, according to Anubis the higher-tier spells would get more buffed as the character nears the level cap. So I suppose TB will get the greatest buff as compared to FL, and the other Lightning talents, being lower-tier, won't benefit as much.

Quote:Note that periodic, unpredictable, small heals aren't fantastic for survivability in raid situations. You're rarely going to be sitting around with a health deficit permanently in order for Parasitism to properly apply all of its heals.

You're right, of course, but the same can be said of big aimed heals. Some of them will invariably go "over the top", for instance, wasting a certain portion of the heal.

And judging by the game videos, at least some health deficit most of the time is more than likely, which would allow enough space for life draining effects to work their little magic.

Quote:This is unlikely to affect bosses, which are the main consideration for a single-target dps build in raids. Bosses are almost universally immune to slowing effects in MMOs, unless it's a specific aspect of the fight. Even if they are affected, they typically don't go running around that much in a way that would really matter in terms of snares/slowing, except on those particular fights.

Again, you're absolutely right. Although since the tooltip expressly states that only standard/weak enemies are stunned, and does not say anything like it with regard to the slowing effect, it seems there is at least a reasonable chance that the slowing will also work on bosses. E.g. in BioWare's own Dragon Age 1 and 2 the various status effects affected bosses, but for a shorter duration than grunts, and this was reflected in the tooltips.

And slowing of movement can be a noticeably good thing, esp. w/regard to melee bosses, allowing kiting & other stuff. Whereas if the boss can easily catch up with any character, the fight becomes much harder.

Quote:To an extent, yes, but you've yet to establish any large survivability benefits thus far.

That particular argument was more theoretical in nature, not directly connected to concrete builds.

Quote:In the event when there are large decreases in survivability, remember that healers will frequently not be doing a lot of DPS (although, as always, this may be different in SW:ToR). If they have to spend all of their time healing if it makes you can do more dps, the extra dps you can bring have not been wasted. The only time it's a problem is if your survivability is low enough to cause you or others to die, for whatever reason.

As with many other points, this is hard to debate without concrete data. The extra few heals which a character wouldn't need due to boosted survivability could make all the difference (eg. healer runs out of mana or is killed), or it can be completely negligible. What I'm saying is that this element has to be considered, along with the DPS potential, as part of a successful character/party, and shouldn't just be ignored.

Quote:Global cooldowns typically start from the beginning of casts. If you have abilities with cast/channel times as long as the global cooldown or longer, you won't notice it. It's only really there to prevent instants from being able to be cast without delay all of the time.

Yep, that's what I thought. It's only 1 second anyway, so doesn't make a difference. But the casting time is not subsumed into the individual cooldown, at least not according to the Tatooine vid.

Quote:There are, but they're generally not the hardest bit in most MMOs. I hope that SW:TOR will be different, as it makes less sense for 16 people to gang up on a single person in such a static way, but the vast majority of the time when high damage counts, it's single target. When it's not single-target, it's generally only burst damage that counts, not sustained.

Well, it's nice to have options. The Lightning tree has Chain Lightning, which is also basically an AoE and gets a lot of upgrades. So, why not use it in situations where it's better than single target spells? The videos we have of SWTOR gameplay show many instances with groups of enemies, where such spells would be useful.

[Undead Prince]

Whoa, Anubis Black, that is some serious calculation

And even considering my obvious mistake with Wrath, the Lightning tree still won by only 800 damage? That's less than 4% difference.

Also, it seems to me you've shortchanged the FL spam a bit in calculations. E.g.: if we spend 10,5 seconds on DoTs, and 6 seconds on the 4 LBFLs, the remaining 43,5 seconds are enough for 14,5 FLs, not just 14. In which case the difference between the two builds would be only 350 damage, or about 1,5%.

Considering how close, even in such an unoptimized state, the FL spam build came to the 31 Lightning build (and with considerably less skillpoint investment, without any high-tier talents), wouldn't you agree that possible alternatives to the 31 Lightning path at least deserve examination?

P.S. No need to be so confrontational, I'm not trying to enter any kind of contest with you, just sharing my thoughts & observations and trying to see if there are any options available for optimisation other than Lightning 31.

[Alratan]

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  The DoTs would be basically the same for both builds, so why bother including them. It would only clog up the calculations and Heavens know I've had enough trouble with them already

Because some abilities/buffs/procs have a timer on them, and not including Affliction inflates their value. Conversely, others have a cooldown, and not including Affliction reduces their value.

For instance, Polarity Shift only lasts X seconds, and if it cannot reduce below the GCD, then the use of any abilities with a cast time lower than the 1.20*GCD will reduce the effectiveness of this buff. Along similar lines, Lightning Barrage cannot occur more than once every 10s. If some of that 10s is spent casting Affliction, then the cooldown is less bad.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  I actually assumed the Tatooine video was one of the best examples we had of Sorc abilities in action, as it has received a lot of attention on the web. Is it from a hopelessly outdated build then? In that case we really don't have much to go on with regarding Sorc abilities.

The date bothers me less than invisible modifiers from character stats. Not knowing how much Willpower the Sorcerer has, we can't infer much about the base damage, which is needed for a fair comparison.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Well, according to Anubis the higher-tier spells would get more buffed as the character nears the level cap. So I suppose TB will get the greatest buff as compared to FL, and the other Lightning talents, being lower-tier, won't benefit as much.

Whilst true, it's unlikely that any single would receive a a buff of such a magnitude, unless it were severely underpowered. More likely is that such an ability would receive a large buff, with smaller buffs applied to other abilities to make up for it. Or whole abilities would be changed to make the standard higher.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  You're right, of course, but the same can be said of big aimed heals. Some of them will invariably go "over the top", for instance, wasting a certain portion of the heal.

There are often several tiers of heals (and are for Sorcerers, in fact), so you can always go with the option with minimal overheal. There is no such option for Parasitism. Further, the fact that heals can overheal does not remove from the fact that Parasitism's overheal are a bad, thing. Even if it did, the overheals from Parasitism are probably far more frequent, and even when it doesn't overheal, the healing amount is far smaller, and so less useful.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  And judging by the game videos, at least some health deficit most of the time is more than likely, which would allow enough space for life draining effects to work their little magic.

I don't think we've seen a proper video of a high-level flashpoint yet. In levelling it's common (as there are rarely big spike damage worries, and you don't have teams of healers) and in the only flashpoint we have seen, there are no healers yet.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Again, you're absolutely right. Although since the tooltip expressly states that only standard/weak enemies are stunned, and does not say anything like it with regard to the slowing effect, it seems there is at least a reasonable chance that the slowing will also work on bosses. E.g. in BioWare's own Dragon Age 1 and 2 the various status effects affected bosses, but for a shorter duration than grunts, and this was reflected in the tooltips.

It's normally taken as standard that boss level mobs are immune to snares/CC without stating it, but you're right that the tooltip doesn't specifically exclude them.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  And slowing of movement can be a noticeably good thing, esp. w/regard to melee bosses, allowing kiting & other stuff. Whereas if the boss can easily catch up with any character, the fight becomes much harder.

As I said, in the majority of fights, kiting isn't needed.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  As with many other points, this is hard to debate without concrete data. The extra few heals which a character wouldn't need due to boosted survivability could make all the difference (eg. healer runs out of mana or is killed), or it can be completely negligible. What I'm saying is that this element has to be considered, along with the DPS potential, as part of a successful character/party, and shouldn't just be ignored.

I agree, but given that there's no real survivability penalty demonstrated, this doesn't need consideration (yet).

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Yep, that's what I thought. It's only 1 second anyway, so doesn't make a difference. But the casting time is not subsumed into the individual cooldown, at least not according to the Tatooine vid.

The GCD is 1.5s. I find the Tatooine video far too irritating to focus to watch for smaller details, so I can't comment on the ability cooldown.

(08-11-2011 05:13 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Well, it's nice to have options. The Lightning tree has Chain Lightning, which is also basically an AoE and gets a lot of upgrades. So, why not use it in situations where it's better than single target spells? The videos we have of SWTOR gameplay show many instances with groups of enemies, where such spells would be useful.

AoEs are still very useful to be given for trash/adds, and do gain bonuses, but that doesn't mean they aren't secondary. Also, the videos we have of SW:TOR gameplay aren't those of operations or other high-end flashpoints, so we can't deduce much from them.

[Undead Prince]

As always, excellent points, Alratan, thanks for the explanations. Nothing much to add, except this:

Quote:(Incidentally, I overstated in my previous post: some Force Lightning casts will be affected by Wrath, as only (at most) 1 FL every 10 seconds will channel from Lightning Barrage.)

Please explain this one to me. You're saying that non-LB Force Lightnings WILL benefit from Wrath? But the Wrath tooltip says "force attack with a cast time", & the FL tooltip says "channeling", not "casting time"? Aren't those mutually exclusive, and thus FL is not eligible for Wrath under any circumstances?

[Alratan]

This is true - I forgot that it channels normally as well. Please ignore that part :P. That aside, glad I could be helpful!

[Undead Prince]

Okay, Anubis Black, I have one better for you :-)

First of all, in your rotation Polarity Shift is assumed to be always active, whereas in fact:

a) you'd have to cast it 4 times per minute if proceeding from your assumption that it lasts for 15 seconds;
b) but you can't do even that because Polarity Shift has a 1 minute cooldown.

If PS didn't have a cooldown and you were casting it every 15 seconds, that would require you to spend 6 seconds of every minute, or 10% of the total timeframe. By a rough calculation, taking away 10% of your build's damage would leave it at 18,720 damage per minute, as compared to the simple FL/Madness spam of 20,016.5 damage per minute: with a difference of nearly 2200 in favor of the FL spam build.

If you only cast PS once per minute, you still need to: spend 1,5 seconds on the casting; calculate only 25% of your spells' casting times as affected by PS. You'll lose about 4-5 seconds from your rotation, which will again translate into substantial damage loss as compared to the simple FL/Madness spam.

However, for the sake of further comparison, I will offer you another build calculation while proceeding from the same premises as you regarding Polarity Shift.

Take this build for instance. It has Chain Lightning, Lightning Storm x3, Forked Lightning x3, and Polarity Shift; but it also has Madness, Wrath x2, Death Field and Parasitism x2.

Therefore:

1. Polarity Shift is assumed to be always active and will reduce the casting time of all FLs to 2,5 sec;

2. Wrath will trigger instant Chain Lightning 30% of the time FL or LBFL happens;

3. 15 FL + 4 LBFL + 4 WCL = 50 seconds, + 9,5 sec for the 6 DoTs = 59,5 seconds

15 FL +4 LBFL = 19*914,76 (your number for FL) = 17380,44

4 WCL = 4*537,15 * 1,2 (20% Wrath damage bonus) = 2578,32 (your number for the CL, because I can't really calc it myself; feel free to correct)

6 DoTs = 3550,8 (your number)

TOTAL: 23509,56 damage per minute, vs. 20842,82 of your build = an increase of 2666,74 damage.

So, due to having access to PS and Wrath, I am able to squeeze in an extra FL and also a few WCLs on top of the FL/LBFLs.

Plus, it has Death Field and Parasitism as nice extras.

What do you think?

[Draeveus]

(08-11-2011 07:58 AM)Undead Prince Wrote:  Okay, Anubis Black, I have one better for you :-)

First of all, in your rotation Polarity Shift is assumed to be always active, whereas in fact:

a) you'd have to cast it 4 times per minute if proceeding from your assumption that it lasts for 15 seconds;
b) but you can't do even that because Polarity Shift has a 1 minute cooldown.

If PS didn't have a cooldown and you were casting it every 15 seconds, that would require you to spend 6 seconds of every minute, or 10% of the total timeframe. By a rough calculation, taking away 10% of your build's damage would leave it at 18,720 damage per minute, as compared to the simple FL/Madness spam of 20,016.5 damage per minute: with a difference of nearly 2200 in favor of the FL spam build.

If you only cast PS once per minute, you still need to: spend 1,5 seconds on the casting; calculate only 25% of your spells' casting times as affected by PS. You'll lose about 4-5 seconds from your rotation, which will again translate into substantial damage loss as compared to the simple FL/Madness spam.

However, for the sake of further comparison, I will offer you another build calculation while proceeding from the same premises as you regarding Polarity Shift.

Take this build for instance. It has Chain Lightning, Lightning Storm x3, Forked Lightning x3, and Polarity Shift; but it also has Madness, Wrath x2, Death Field and Parasitism x2.

Therefore:

1. Polarity Shift is assumed to be always active and will reduce the casting time of all FLs to 2,5 sec;

2. Wrath will trigger instant Chain Lightning 30% of the time FL or LBFL happens;

3. 15 FL + 4 LBFL + 4 WCL = 50 seconds, + 9,5 sec for the 6 DoTs = 59,5 seconds

15 FL +4 LBFL = 19*914,76 (your number for FL) = 17380,44

4 WCL = 4*537,15 * 1,2 (20% Wrath damage bonus) = 2578,32 (your number for the CL, because I can't really calc it myself; feel free to correct)

6 DoTs = 3550,8 (your number)

TOTAL: 23509,56 damage per minute, vs. 20842,82 of your build = an increase of 2666,74 damage.

So, due to having access to PS and Wrath, I am able to squeeze in an extra FL and also a few WCLs on top of the FL/LBFLs.

Plus, it has Death Field and Parasitism as nice extras.

What do you think?

While a madness/lightning hybrid build (featuring LB/CL and Madness/Wrath) has the potential for high dps (very high by your intial estimate) it will be impossible to create accurate numbers until we have:
A) base damage of all skills at lvl 50.
B) complete talent trees (ie. the duration of Polarity Shift).
C) coefficients for all skills.

Perhaps Pred, or someone else with access, can look up this information either by looking at their class trainers or scouring official beta forums? (Heck, even if you look up JC information, we can probably figure out the SI equivalents). Much appreciated if this can be accomplished