SWTOR 7.7 Lightning Sorcerer PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Lightning Sorcerer PvE Guide (DPS) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Introduction to Lightning Sorcerer

Lightning Sorcerers tap into their anger and hatred to decimate their foes with endless bolts of lightning and thunderous blasts of overwhelming darkness.

Lightning is the strongest ranged direct damage spec by far, but it has trouble competing with most melee DPS disciplines in terms of sustained DPS. Its saving grace is its exceptional PvE-style burst, thanks to powerful offensive cooldowns that are enhanced by its legendary implants.

Lightning also has the potential to offer significantly more AoE damage than just most other burst specs in the game, though they now have to sacrifice some single-target DPS in exchange for rotational AoE. Unfortunately, all DoT specs are leagues better when it comes to AoE, and many of them are competitive with PvE-style burst, including Madness.

While most combat styles had their survivability nerfed in some way with the release of 7.0, Lightning was arguably one of the hardest hit in PvE and is in a much worse place compared to 6.0. The biggest nerf to Lightning in PvE comes from the fact that Sorcerers no longer have access to AoE RDT, which is now only given to mDPS and Snipers / Gunslingers.

If that’s all it was, Lightning would be in a rough spot, but their other mitigation could potentially compensate. Sadly, that wasn’t the only nerf BioWare felt was necessary. Unnatural Vigor (15% DR on Unnatural Preservation), Defiance (3% DR), Empty Body (+5% healing received), and Dark Resilience (+30% Healing to Unnatural Preservation) are also largely inaccessible in PvE group content or gone completely.

Madness has vastly superior survivability these days, so it’s difficult to justify playing Lightning in fights where you’ll be taking a lot of damage, even if Lightning can technically survive many of them.

Major Changes in 7.0

Utility points are gone! Instead, there is a new system called the Ability Tree. Each discipline has 8 choices where they pick 1 of 3 options. The options have several similarities across the Combat Styles:

• 2 choices buff a discipline-specific ability (2 abilities, 1 choice each).
• 3 choices which are just old Utility effects. These choices are almost always the same for all disciplines. 
• 2 choices where you’re picking between 1 ability or 1 of 2 passives. One of the ability choices tends to be an offensive cooldown (OCD). The other seems to be related to PvP balance, but there isn’t a clear pattern beyond the choice forcing players to decide which of 3 capabilities they want to keep.
• 1 choice where you’re picking 1 of 3 abilities. One of the abilities is always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for BioWare since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Lightning permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Force Slow
• Reanimation

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only (so Corruption still has Reanimation), but there is no longer a global 5 min lockout on those abilities, so it’s treated just like any other ability, albeit with a much longer cooldown. 

Guarding is now a tank-only ability, which is the logical next step since the nerf to Guard for DPS partway through 6.0 was ineffective at stopping its ubiquity in PvP.

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Lightning requires 2 other DPS debuffs:

Lightning is significantly less independent than most burst specs, but it’s still pretty average in terms of group composition dependency compared to all DPS. Unfortunately, there isn’t a “perfect pairing” for Lightning either because no single discipline provides both DPS debuffs that Lightning needs (Armor and Internal/Elemental).

It is true that the Armor and Internal/Elemental debuffs are useful to all disciplines, so it won’t be too hard to meet Lightning’s requirements. However, Lightning is really only contributing 1 valuable debuff itself, which will still limit which specs other DPS can bring.

You’re best off bringing a Juggernaut / Guardian alongside a Lightning Sorcerer since they provide the armor debuff and can benefit from both debuffs Lightning provides. To be clear, Juggernaut / Guardian are by no means required and are not the only Combat Styles or disciplines that provide the DPS debuffs required by Lightning. They are just the most efficient and allow the 4th player to bring whatever they want. 

So long as each DPS is given the debuffs they need (or at least the most impactful ones), you’ll be fine. Don’t fixate on having a 100% ideal composition. 

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5s 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?  

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide for more details on how they differ from each other and how to determine which attack does what damage!

Our in-depth analysis and breakdown of the relationship between mechanics and strategy in boss fights in SWTOR may also help you perform better in group content.

Abilities Explained

Please have the game open while reading through the next few sections. I will not be writing out ability descriptions and I will only be transcribing 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. 

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Affliction

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This DoT is one of your hardest-hitting abilities on its own and should typically 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 this is one of your most damaging abilities, it’s beneficial to put on secondary targets that need to die (like if a fight has two or more bosses), especially if they are within 8m of each other. This is called multi-DoTing. 

If you’re just starting out, it’s best to just always reapply Affliction as your first ability, but if you’re a more advanced player, it technically doesn’t always need to be applied immediately as your very first GCD on a new target.

There are situations where it can be slightly beneficial to use other abilities first, such as Crushing Darkness and Lightning Flash, because missing individual ticks of Affliction over the course of a fight won’t add up nearly as quickly as delaying the use of high-damage abilities. 

The primary benefit of Affliction being on the target is just to make Thundering Blast an autocrit. You definitely don’t want to delay Thundering Blast in the process of delaying Affliction, but if Thundering Blast still has a few seconds left on its cooldown and one of your other high-priority abilities is available, it can be worthwhile to use those abilities first. Again, if you’re still new to the spec, just always apply Affliction first. 

There are still instances where you should use Affliction first even if you have other high-priority abilities available. If an alacrity buff like Polarity Shift is about to run out, you want to make sure you apply it before that falls off so you get the higher tick rate.

If you’re focusing down an add that will die quickly and not a boss, the longer you wait to apply Affliction results in lost DoT ticks on that target, so the GCD used to apply Affliction will be less effective. It’s already a DPS loss to have to reapply Affliction at all, so you definitely want to get the most out of that GCD. Affliction has 1 proc that is relevant to your rotation: 

Forked Darkness
Affliction’s duration is refreshed by dealing direct damage with Chain Lightning and Crushing Darkness. This means 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. It is possible to maintain Affliction on 2 targets indefinitely by alternating Chain Lightning and Crushing Darkness on each target, but this is tricky to do and results in less damage dealt by Stormwatch.

You have to remember to use Lightning Flash on whichever target you apply Crushing Darkness to as well. Since a full duration of Affliction is still a DPS increase over Lightning Bolt, I prefer to just manually reapply Affliction to secondary targets after it’s fallen off rather than squeeze every last drop of DPS out of the spec.

Thundering Blast

(Force/Internal/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
This is easily Lightning’s hardest-hitting ability because it automatically critically hits targets affected by Affliction, so you want to make sure that Affliction is on the target before using Thundering Blast. It’s also crucial to never delay this ability since it deals so much damage. The only time it is ever beneficial to delay Thundering Blast is if there are a ton of adds to AoE, though make sure you aren’t fluffing. Thundering Blast has 3 procs and 2 discipline passives associated with it 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. This 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 perfectly with the 9s 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.

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.

Convection
Increases the critical damage dealt by Thundering Blast, Lightning Flash, Chain Lightning, and Crushing Darkness by 12%. This passive makes it so that Thundering Blast, Lightning Flash, and Chain Lightning synergize better with Recklessness than your other rotational abilities. 12% isn’t enough to make Crushing Darkness a viable Recklessness target because the crit chance increase only applies to the initial direct damage hit, not the DoT, though both components of Crushing Darkness still benefit from Reverberating Force.

Reserved Darkness
Thundering Blast grants a stack of Reserved Darkness, making your next Dark Heal activate instantly and heal for 30% more. Stacks up to 2 times and lasts 15s. This proc was added in 7.1.1 to the Convection discipline passive. Since Dark Heal still costs a GCD, it mostly serves to improve survivability in PvP, though you can use it during downtime to heal yourself or someone else.

Dark Thunder
When you activate Thundering Blast, there is a 25% chance that the ability will produce a second blast that strikes the same target for 20% damage dealt by the initial hit. This passive is pretty straightforward, I only wanted to mention it because it shows up as a separate entry in StarParse, and note that it will autocrit just like Thundering Blast does.

Force Mobility
You wouldn’t know it unless you read the 7.3.1 patch notes because the game doesn’t tell you, but Force Mobility, which makes Thundering Blast castable while moving, is now built into the discipline.

In other words, you can now always cast Thundering Blast while moving. There is no need to take anything extra, and you can now select a different ability tree buff at level 51.

Chain Lightning

(Force/Energy/Direct/AoE/Casted)
This ability provides Lightning with some rotational AoE damage, which is uncommon for burst DPS specs, though it still doesn’t come close to matching the rotational AoE damage output provided by DoT specs.

In single-target situations, Chain Lightning should never be hard-casted and should only be used with the Lightning Storm proc. However, if there are multiple targets, it can be a DPS increase to hard-cast the ability, though I’ll discuss that in more detail later on.

While Chain Lightning is one of your harder-hitting abilities, it does not always need to be used immediately on cooldown. The only normal limitation is that it needs to be used before your next Thundering Blast because that ability is what we want to proc Lightning Storm (this changes when it becomes viable to hard-cast), so the effective cooldown of the ability is the cooldown of Lightning Storm and Thundering Blast, though it often will be used directly after Thundering Blast anyway.

Outside of the priority system, you should delay activating Chain Lightning if adds have spawned recently and are not yet sufficiently grouped up but will be before your next Thundering Blast, delay this ability until they are close enough together that you can hit (almost) all of them. Chain Lightning has 1 debuff associated with it that I want to mention:

Overwhelm
Dealing damage with Chain Lightning applies Overwhelmed, which increases the target’s AoE damage taken by 10% for 45s. The AoE debuff is only useful outside of AoE situations to Vengeance Juggernaut / Vigilance Guardian, Virulence Sniper / Dirty Fighting Gunslinger, and Lethality Operative / Ruffian Scoundrel because those are the only disciplines that have a rotational AoE ability that do not provide the AoE debuff for themselves. 

Lightning Bolt

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
Lightning Bolt is your filler ability, so it is only used when everything else is on cooldown. While this ability accounts for a large portion of your overall damage output, almost equal to the amount provided by Thundering Blast, it only does so because you use it far more frequently. It takes 4-5 uses of Lightning Bolt to deal the same amount of damage as a single Thundering Blast. 

Lightning Bolt does not deal appreciably more immediate damage than Force Lightning, so you won’t lose DPS if you desperately want to include Force Lightning in your rotation. The way Lightning Bolt makes itself important is by being so tightly integrated into the discipline, benefiting from and providing many procs. Lightning Bolt has a whopping 5 procs and 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Convection
Force Speed grants 2 charges of Convection which make your next 2 Lightning Bolts activate instantly. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a DPS increase. Because Lightning Bolt is still a 1.5s 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, which can result in a DPS increase if a temporary damage boost would fall off partway through the cast before the damage goes out; however the inverse is also true for random procs, so it’s kind of a wash.

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 and Unmatched Haste Legendary Items, 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 or Greus. 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, unfortunately, get consumed on the same Lightning Bolt.

Fulgurous Fortification
Lightning Bolt increases damage reduction by 5%, stacks up to 3 times (15% damage reduction total). This proc is now built directly into the ability itself. 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.

With the lack of AoE RDT, it’s more important to prevent Fulgurous Fortification from falling off, so if you can delay Chain Lightning to prevent the loss of these stacks, do it. That said, don’t let this get in the way of the rest of your rotation unless you think you’ll die without that DR.  

Charged Reaction
Lightning Bolt increases your Force regeneration rate by 10%, stacks up to 3 times (30% total). Doing your rotation normally will ensure sufficient uptime on this proc to where you never run out of Force, but it can be more beneficial to make sure you have higher uptime if you die and get rezzed since you come back with a smaller pool of Force. After you get rezzed, prioritize building these stacks over using Chain Lightning, though still be sure to activate Chain Lightning before Thundering Blast comes off cooldown. 

Forked Lightning
Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lightning Flash have a 25% chance to produce a second arc of lightning which deals 25% damage. Forked Lightning is twice as likely to occur while Polarity Shift is active. 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 Gathering Storm Legendary Item. This is especially problematic when one of your Lightning Bolts forks right before you activate a Thundering Blast that you intend to use the 20% damage increase on. Unfortunately, it’s unavoidable.

While Polarity Shift is active, it’s slightly more important to use Lightning Bolt over Shock or especially Force Lightning while Polarity Shift is active. Since you have 4 GCDs to use Shock after Crushing Darkness, I recommend waiting until after Polarity Shift falls off when Crushing Darkness is applied at the very end of the window for a small potential DPS increase from an extra fork.

It’s also technically ideal to apply Lightning Barrier before activating Polarity Shift, but you have so many other considerations to make with that ability that it’s almost never possible to factor that in. I want to emphasize that these are tiny optimizations that may not even result in a DPS increase. Only cater to Forked Lightning if you feel completely comfortable with the fight and discipline.  

Conduction
Forked Lightning (and Forked Darkness) each reduce the cooldown of Polarity Shift by 1s 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!

This effect of Conduction is bugged or may have been changed, resulting from it being combined with another effect that makes you immune to interrupts for 4 seconds upon being interrupted yourself. Currently, there seems to be a 15s rate limit on this cooldown reduction because the interrupt immunity can only be granted once every 15 seconds.

Lightning Flash

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals nearly the same amount of direct single-target damage as Chain Lightning, though it will directly account for a smaller proportion of your overall damage output thanks to its longer cooldown. Lightning Flash has 2 procs associated with it 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 two-thirds of the damage dealt by Lightning Flash as a GCD, making it drastically more important to use Lightning Flash on cooldown.

As a result of the changes in 7.3, Stormwatch now lasts long enough to have slightly more than 100% uptime. This difference enables you to delay Lightning Flash by a single GCD so you can prioritize Thundering Blast, assuming Stormwatch is still on your target. However, the timing is super tight, and it will fall off before you can finish the cast on Thundering Blast if you have any downtime.

Alacrity helps to smooth this out, so you have more leeway with the next activation after Polarity Shift since the cooldown of Lightning Flash is affected while the Stormwatch debuff duration is not.

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 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, Crushing Darkness as a whole still deals a substantial amount of damage, more than Chain Lightning and Lightning Flash, so it is worth using on cooldown.

It is imperative that this ability is not used unless you have the Force Flash proc from Lightning Flash active because without the proc, its DPS becomes too low. It is possible to use Crushing Darkness and Lightning Flash on cooldown and always get the proc, though the timing is sometimes pretty tight.

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 always use Lightning Flash first. Crushing Darkness has 1 proc and 1 discipline passive that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already 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, so Shock won’t light up either.

If we’re being perfectly accurate, Convulsing Currents is not at all proc, though it could easily become one, and I will continue referring 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 applies the Force debuff, which makes the target take 5% more damage from Force attacks for 45 seconds. Forked Darkness also gives Crushing Darkness a 25% chance to tick an additional time whenever it deals damage. Unlike Forked Lightning, this chance does not increase while Polarity Shift is active, but it does benefit from the effects of Conduction. These additional ticks will also trigger Stormwatch.

Shock

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
The primary use of this ability is on targets affected by Crushing Darkness, and its 6s 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 on average than Lightning Flash and Chain Lightning since it doesn’t benefit from Convection and can’t trigger Forked Lightning. Since Shock isn’t included with these sorts of damage buffs, Recklessness and Force Speed should not be consumed with it, though this is fairly easy to avoid.

Without Crushing Darkness on the target, Shock still deals about 20% more damage than Lightning Bolt, even with Forked Lightning factored in. Unless you’re taking a lot of damage or your Force is ridiculously low, you should prioritize Shock over Lightning Bolt. Shock doesn’t have any other procs or discipline passives associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Static Barrier with Lightning Barrier

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Lightning Barrier is an ability tree buff makes you deal a flat amount of damage to your attacker whenever you your Static Barrier absorbs direct (AKA non-peridoic/non-DoT) damage. Each tick of Lightning Barrier deals nearly the exact same amount as a Lightning Bolt. The damage dealt by Lightning Barrier is not dependent on the amount of damage dealt by the attack that triggered it.

So as long as you manage to absorb some amount of non-DoT damage during the 30s it’s active, you will break even on DPS when Static Barrier is used in place of a Lightning Bolt and mitigate a bit of damage at the same time.

Without Lightning Barrier, Static Barrier costs a GCD to mitigate some damage without dealing damage. It’s an off-heal. With Lightning Barrier, you become able to apply Static Barrier to yourself without always losing DPS. You can even gain a little bit of DPS if you apply it during downtime.

Unlike in past expansions, it’s exceptionally difficult to get more than a single tick out of Lightning Barrier before your bubble pops, at least in harder content. Lightning Sorcerers don’t have access to nearly as much damage reduction, including AoE RDT, though that’s not the only limitation.

The amount of damage absorbed by the Static Barrier just hasn’t kept up with our overall health pools. We have over 400k HP at level 80 now, and the bubble absorbs less than 20k. It actually absorbs slightly less damage now than it did in 6.0 when we had about 30% less max HP than we do now.

Make no mistake, reactive damage like Lightning Barrier was a plague on game balance, so it’s good that it’s been curtailed so much. It’s important to appreciate because you do still want to put some thought into when you bubble yourself.

Periodic damage will usually chew through your Static Barrier in just a couple of ticks, so you have to be careful to bubble yourself only when you know you’ll take non-DoT damage before that DoT is applied. It’s also not worth bubbling yourself if your Fulgurous Fortification would fall off or you’d delay a stronger attack. You do get some mitigation from Static Barrier but don’t bend over backward for it.

Finally, I want to note that Lightning Sorcerers specifically get 5% DR while they are Deionized by any bubble, so while you can’t give or receive Lightning Barrier from other Sorcerers, you can get that 5% DR if another Sorcerer or Sage bubbles you.

Volt Rush

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is pretty unique and one of the only damaging abilities that can have multiple charges and deals more damage each time it is used thanks to the Energized proc, though the proc only lasts for 5s, so you can’t do much else in between Volt Rush activations if you want to benefit from Energized.

Volt Rush deals slightly less damage per target on average compared to Lightning Bolt, so it should only be used while you have the Elemental Convection equipped because it almost entirely eliminates the DPS loss associated with using Volt Rush, even in single-target situations when using Halted Offensive.

This ability has other trade-offs compared to Lightning Bolt too because it’s not as tightly integrated into the discipline. It won’t trigger things like Forked Lightning or grant Fulgurous Fortification and Charged Reaction like Lightning Bolt does.

Besides AoE, Volt Rush does have another key advantage over Lightning Bolt: always being instant. This enables vastly superior mobility to the extent that you can probably get away with doing almost your entire rotation while moving except for casting Crushing Darkness.

Volt Rush also has the effects of the Endless Offensive set bonus from 6.0 built-in, so activating Force Speed grants 2 charges of Volt Rush, though it still has the bug where it resets the cooldown timer whenever activated.

Volt Rush should only be used if you can proc Lightning Storm, need to deal AoE damage, or need to move when Shock is unavailable, and the Subversion or Convection procs that make Lightning Bolt instant are unavailable.

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 immediately or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage than necessary to adds. The best example of this for Sorcs is placing your Force Storm on group of 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)
This is your spammable AoE. It procs Lightning Storm, which is good when you need to AoE, but it can desynchronize the proc from Thundering Blast, so make sure that it gets resynchronized with Thundering Blast as you return to single-target (basically use Shock or Force Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt until your next Thundering Blast). You can also just keep using Thundering Blast to proc it. Force Storm’s damage per GCD surpasses the following abilities after the following number of targets are hit.:

• 2 targets: Lightning Bolt
• 4 Targets: Lightning Flash, Crushing Darkness, Shock w/ Proc
• 6 Targets: Thundering Blast
• Never: Chain Lightning, because Chain Lightning deals roughly the same damage but only has a 2.5s cast time instead of a 3s channel

If you are channeling Force Storm during a boss fight, you should probably use the Suppressive Current ability tree buff unless there is a more important single-target DPS check.

Chain Lightning

(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: 3 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. The more targets there are, the longer it takes for this to result in a DPS increase. The less health each enemy has, the less time there is for the DoT to tick. It’s hard to give exact recommendations about when to apply Affliction to adds. It’s best to apply Affliction to only a few targets with high health, like the Champions.

Volt Rush

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is only an AoE while you have the Elemental Convection tactical equipped and only if you’ve activated Chain Lightning within the past 10 seconds. With Elemental Convection, you can use Volt Rush in 2 different ways.

The first way is focused on sustained DPS where you only use Volt Rush when you are able to proc Lightning Storm to reset the cooldown on Chain Lightning. The second way is focused on burst AoE where you use all 3 charges mostly back to back so you can benefit from the Energize Proc.

Make sure that you don’t use Volt Rush if you think it will proc Chain Lightning when you already have Lightning Storm because you’ll just overwrite the proc rather than get another one. In general, the only time you should use Volt Rush before procced Chain Lightning is if you are certain you won’t trigger Lightning Storm. Volt Rush has a higher priority if you can hit the following number of targets with one use of the ability:

• Lightning Bolt, Lightning Flash, Shock w/ proc: 2 Targets
• Crushing Darkness: 3 Targets
• Thundering Blast: 4 Targets
• Chain Lightning: Never

Eye of the Storm

(Force/Energy/Direct/AoE/Casted)
This ability is brand new in 7.0, but don’t get too excited. It basically just lets you cast Lightning Bolt to 3 targets at once, but without most of the little bells and whistles that Lightning Bolt gets from the discipline. The only thing it can do is trigger Lightning Storm (Chain Lightning proc).

Eye of the Storm is really only worth using against trash mobs out in the open world as a pre-casting AoE alternative to Lightning Bolt, so you don’t have to hard-cast Chain Lightning against every single group of trash. For most groups of standard enemies, you can take them down with Eye of the Storm > Chain Lightning (instant) > Force Storm (with Suppressive Current).

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns (OCDs) should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here and should only be delayed if they need to be saved for a DPS check or burst window, but don’t start delaying them until you see that you have to. 

Polarity Shift

Thanks to our Unmatched Haste and Gathering Storm Legendary Items, this ability will have approximately a 33% uptime when used on cooldown where your Alacrity will be increased such that you will have a 1.2s GCD and deal 20% more damage with all of your attacks. 

Make sure Polarity Shift will be available for any and all DPS checks but don’t save it for so long that it could have come off cooldown in time for the DPS check. 

Unless the timing for a check doesn’t allow for it, you should always activate Polarity Shift immediately before casting Thundering Blast, ideally right as a pre-casted Chain Lightning finishes. If you do it right, Chain Lightning will hit after Polarity Shift is active and you’ll get an extra 2 GCDs worth of damage inside the window.

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. Using Recklessness during Polarity Shift compounds the benefits of both damage increases; you get an autocrit that deals 20% more damage. 

Almost always use one stack of Recklessness on Thundering Blast. While that ability is an autocrit, it will still deal increased damage as a supercrit, which is a special property of autocrit attacks where the excess critical chance is converted into critical multiplier

When used on Thundering Blast, Recklessness effectively increases its damage dealt by a whopping 60%. To be clear, supercrits only affect abilities that are autocrits. It does not work when abilities just happen to have their crit chances go over 100% from combined effects. A singular effect needs to grant 100% crit chance.

The other stack of Recklessness should be used on either 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, though the crit chance will still be increased for all enemies even if it’s only possible to consume one stack. 

Likewise, Halted Offensive should always be prioritized for the second stack of Recklessness over Lightning Flash because its damage dealt is effectively the same as if you were hitting a second target with Chain Lightning.

Once you activate Recklessness, it’s more important that the correct abilities benefit 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. 

Recklessness can also be used on Force Storm if you need some beefed-up AoE damage. That ability will only ever consume a single stack even if it hits more than one enemy. Recklessness should never be used on Crushing Darkness because it will only affect the initial hit since Recklessness only increases the crit chance of direct damage.

Never use Recklessness with Lightning Bolt. If you mess it up, you’re better off using one of the charges on Force Lightning because Force Lightning does the same damage per GCD as Lightning Bolt, so you’re better off getting effectively 2 GCDs to autocrit instead of 1. 

As I mentioned before, Shock is not a good choice to buff with Recklessness either because it doesn’t benefit from the Reverberating Force discipline passive. It’s better to use the second stack on Force Lightning. 

Force Speed

This ability increases the damage dealt by your next direct Force attack by 20% thanks to the Gathering Storm implant, and it also reduces the cooldown of Polarity Shift by 5 seconds thanks to the Unmatched Haste implant, so you need to use this on cooldown in order to maximize the cooldown reduction and number of damage increases. 

It’s best to save the 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 and due to the travel time of Thundering Blast, there’s a good chance most of your uses of Force Speed will actually end up buffing Chain Lightning instead unless you’re super close to the boss.

The 20% buff can get consumed on Forked Lightning, which is terrible. If you feel really comfortable with the fight and rotation and have very high APM and know that you’ll be using an ability that can trigger Forked Lightning prior to using Thundering Blast, 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 to always activate your Adrenal during Polarity Shift, even if you have to delay it a while unless you have a fight with a lot of DPS checks where it’s impossible to have Polarity Shift available for every single check. 

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. 

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Defensive cooldowns (DCDs) are not used just to stop you from getting killed, they’re there to minimize overall damage taken. For any Combat Style and any fight, your most effective DCDs should be mapped to the most damaging attacks in the fight while weaker DCDs should be used against weaker attacks. 

Don’t pop all of your DCDs at once or only use them when your health gets low. You should be attempting to mitigate as much damage as possible by using your DCDs against predictable damage.

In fights where you’ll be taking a high amount of sustained damage, it’s important to use your DCDs in the order that maximizes your overall uptime. If you can tweak the order that you use your DCDs where it allows you to get an extra use out of one of them over the course of a long burn phase, you should definitely do that instead of activating your potentially stronger DCDs first.

It’s good to have 1 emergency panic button too, but everything else should be used to prevent your health from getting low in the first place. Part of knowing a fight is understanding how much damage you take and what you can do to mitigate that damage. 

Cloud Mind

This is your bread-and-butter defensive cooldown, providing you with a bit of damage reduction for a short period of time. Its short cooldown and duration make it better at mitigating spikes than dealing with higher sustained DTPS that you’ll find in burn phases. 

Cloud Mind also functions as a threat drop, so make sure to use it at the beginning of the fight, especially if you aren’t guarded. The best time to use it is right after the second Thundering Blast or Chain Lightning in your opener, which should be right before the tank’s AoE taunt is wearing off and right around the time raid buffs are ending. 

If you are having issues with pulling aggro on the primary target continually and you are doing your threat drop correctly, request that someone guard you. At this point, you’ve done everything you can to minimize your threat generation, and it’s your tank’s fault for losing aggro. 

Unnatural Preservation

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. Since the Sorc was at higher health before they took the hit thanks to their proactive use of Unnatural Preservation, they’ll be dropped to the same health level as the other class. 

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. 

Since 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). Each stack of Enduring Bastion absorbs as much damage as your Static Barrier, so at 4 stacks of Enduring Bastion, you basically have 4 bubbles on you at the same time.

Force Barrier does not cost a GCD to use and functions as a CC break, and I recommend using it that way if you need to CC break frequently, like on Monolith when getting a color.

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 rule). 

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. Choosing not to use a medpac for financial reasons and subsequently dying is not a valid excuse.

Expunge

This is the cleanse for the Sorcs. Generally, 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 whatever you’re trying to cleanse 

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 ability tree option and unless the debuff is going out to many members of your group at the same time, your healers are responsible for cleansing you. 

Your job as a DPS is to spend your GCDs on dealing damage. Your healer’s job is to spend their GCDs on mitigating damage, which includes most cleansing.

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 our Legendary Items, 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. 

Phase Walk

Due to our Legendary Items 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. Phase Walk 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 and can be used while CC’d, even though the button will be grayed out if you try to use it while CC’d. 

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? Ask yourself this in every single fight and consider that its usefulness may be different in each phase.

Group Utility

Unlimited Power and Force Empowerment

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. Using it once results in an approximate sustained 1k DPS increase or about 4k over the course of those 10 seconds it’s active. HPS is more variable, but should still be proportionally stronger too. Unlimited Power is not a personal buff for you, it’s something that buffs the whole team, so multiply those numbers by 6 + a little extra for the tank contribution.

Normally the raid lead will make the call on when this should be used. Since there is a 5 minute lockout for everyone who received the buff to activate or benefit from the effect, and this applies to both faction’s version of the ability, so only one player in the raid group should ever take Unlimited Power or Force Empowerment. Other Sorcerers and Sages should take one of the other 2 options in the ability tree instead. When multiple DPS are dead, the player with an unused Unlimited Power or Force Empowerment should be prioritized.  

I also want to point out that all raid buffs only have a 40m range, so be mindful on larger maps that it might not catch everyone; be sure to position yourself so that it affects as many people as possible before activating it. The most notable instance of this range limit is during the second set of tentacles in the first phase of the TFB fight where you need to position yourself in the center near where the first and third set of tentacles spawn in order to ensure everybody gets the raid buff.

Use this on trash mobs 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. When possible, 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. You should complain to the raid lead and, if necessary, make a big scene about needing to off-heal. PvE in this game around each role being able to fully perform all of its duties without the need for another off-role’s help.

Healers are balanced to be capable of keeping everyone alive without anyone needing to spend GCDs off-healing. You should never off-heal yourself when you could be dealing damage unless you literally think you will die if you do not receive healing right now, and the pull is salvageable. 

A lot of bosses have enrage timers too, so if you have 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.

If you do end up in a situation where off-healing another player is possible or necessary, I strongly recommend spending your stacks of Reserved Darkness with Dark Heal first, followed by Static Barrier, and then Resurgence. If you need to heal yourself, Static Barrier has a higher priority than Dark Heal thanks to Lightning Barrier.

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 Sorc has at its 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. It now has Electric Bindings as a built-in feature. 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 24s 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. 

Unbreakable Will

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’d and are unable to deal damage or satisfy a mechanic as a result of being CC’d. 

Force Lightning

As I mentioned earlier, this ability deals roughly the same damage per GCD as a Lightning Bolt or 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, though 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%). 

Ability Tree Choices

Make a habit of reading through all of your Ability Tree choices each time you log in. They are intended to be changed on the fly and having a clearer idea of what all of them do will help you to recognize situations where individual choices will be useful in-game.

Level 23 Choice – Chain Lightning Buffs

Forbidden Knowledge

• Effect: Dealing damage with Chain Lightning reduces the cooldown of Unnatural Preservation by 5s, up to 15s per Chain Lightning activation, and builds stacks of Forbidden Knowledge, increasing the healing done by your next Unnatural Preservation by 5% per stack (up to 15%). Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in boss fights where you can consistently hit at least 2 targets with Chain Lightning, but AoE from Force Storm is unnecessary. The effect is super confusing because the cooldown reduction scales with the number of targets hit, up to 3 for a maximum cooldown reduction of 15 seconds per Chain Lightning activation while you can get up to a 15% healing boost to your next Unnatural Preservation (this will happen consistently even in single-target situations), but the stacks of Forbidden Knowledge have no bearing on the extent of the cooldown reduction. Make sure to activate Unnatural Preservation before using Chain Lightning whenever you use this ability tree buff even if you can only partially benefit from the heal.

Halted Offensive

• Effect: Replaces Chain Lightning with a single-target version of the ability that deals about 30% more damage and has a cast time that is 0.5s longer.
• Recommendation: Take this for single-target boss fights only. Halted Offensive offers a single-target DPS increase that makes it deal practically the same damage as 2 Lightning Bolts. Since Halted Offensive becomes your second most damaging direct attack by a considerable margin, it’s imperative that your second stack of Recklessness is used on Halted Offensive, not Lightning Flash or anything else and it’s okay to delay your other abilities by a GCD to ensure that this happens. Hard-casting Halted Offensive offers the same amount of DPS as casting 2 Lightning Bolts instead, but since survivability, mobility, and reliability are diminished, there is no reason to hard-cast the ability outside of pre-casting.

Suppressive Current

• Effect: Chain Lightning applies Suppressive Current to all targets it hits. Your next Force Storm detonates the current, dealing additional damage.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and add fights. In solo content, this option is awesome since it practically guarantees that you won’t have to channel Force Storm more than once. Suppressive Current is also valuable in boss fights where you’re regularly using Force Storm throughout the fight and there isn’t much of a single-target DPS check (such as add fights like Draxus and Revanite Commanders). Using a single GCD of Force Storm against a target affected by Suppressive Current is a single-target DPS increase over Lightning Bolt. That said, it’s unpleasant to break the cast on Force Storm in every single rotation cycle, so I’d only recommend taking this in fights where you’re mostly fighting adds the entire time and can afford to do the full channel of Force Storm.

Level 27 Choice – Eye of the Storm, Cloud Mind, or Finish Them

Eye of the Storm

• Effect: Grants a new ability that deals similar damage to Lightning Bolt but can damage up to 3 enemies.
• Recommendation: Don’t bother taking this. Eye of the Storm is like Lightning Bolt, but it’s not fully integrated into the discipline, so it can’t function as the replacement it would need to be to be worth taking. Namely, it doesn’t have casting pushback protection or grant your DR and Force regen procs. It just procs Lightning Storm, which lets you do a bit more precast damage against trash mobs. It’s far more problematic not to have Cloud Mind when you need it than it is to get that little bit of extra damage outside of combat.

Cloud Mind

• Effect: Grants the Cloud Mind ability, which increases your damage reduction by 25% for 6 seconds and reduces your threat by a moderate amount.
• Recommendation: Always take this. Unnatural Preservation isn’t enough to keep you healthy on its own. You need something to help you mitigate the big hits that’s available more often and less cumbersome to use than Force Barrier. The threat drop component is also important to have for your opener in FPs and Operations.

Finish Them

• Effect: Shock deals bonus damage and returns Force when hitting targets affected by slows and increases your movement speed by 20%. This can only occur once every 8 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The effect seems to be bugged and apply regardless of whether your target is slowed or even have the talent. Finish Them wouldn’t be worth taking even if it worked as described. It feels like a prototype version of Plague Master.

Level 39 Choice – Thundering Blast Buffs

Off Balance

• Effect: Thundering Blast immobilizes targets for 2 seconds. This can only occur once every 9 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in PvP only. More control is valuable in PvP, but it isn’t necessary in solo content and doesn’t work in PvE group content.

Thunder and Lightning

• Effect: Thundering Blast causes your next Chain Lightning or Halted Offensive to deal 10% more damage.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and in fights with a lot of adds. Thunder and Lightning offers a DPS increase over Dark Embrace even while you have Stormwatch equipped if you can consistently hit at least 3 targets total. If you are not using Stormwatch, you only need to consistently hit 2 targets for Thunder and Lightning to become superior. It never offers a DPS increase if you’re using Halted Offensive because 10% of Halted Offensive’s damage is less than the damage dealt by a single tick of Affliction and you can never hit multiple targets with that ability. Keep in mind that with only 2 or 3 targets, the DPS increase from using Thunder and Lightning is minuscule, so if you’re not consistently hitting more than the minimum or the secondary targets have a much lower priority than the primary one, you should probably use Dark Embrace instead.

Dark Embrace

• Effect: Thundering Blast ticks Affliction.
• Recommendation: Take this in in PvE group content. Contrary to the in-game description for Lightning only, this talent only causes Affliction to tick once, not twice. Dark Embrace is the strongest option whenever you are using Halted Offensive or can’t consistently hit at least 3 targets with Chain Lightning. It will typically be inferior in solo content. Since Stormwatch triggers off of Affliction ticks, Dark Embrace synergizes with it, though an individual Stormwatch tick is still pretty weak.

Level 43 Choice – Insulating Blast, Unlimited Power, or Overcharged Barrier

Insulating Blast

• Effect: Thundering Blast grants a stack of Insulating Blast, which increases your damage reduction by 5% for 18 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. 5% DR is not that much, but it’s the strongest option you have at level 43. The only time you’d want to give this up is if you need to provide the raid buff (Unlimited Power) in an Operation.

Unlimited Power

• Effect: Grants the Unlimited Power ability, which increases Mastery, Endurance, and Presence by 10% for you and your Operation group members within 40m for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this when your raid lead tells you to. If you’re working on a boss fight with a DPS or heal check that you’re struggling with the only Sorcerer | Sage in the group, it’s worthwhile to take Unlimited Power. Only one Sorcerer | Sage needs to take this. Typically, healers do it because it’s always affordable for them. Madness | Balance must give up a ton of survivability and no one pays attention to the DPS spec you’re playing unless something goes wrong.

Overcharged Barrier

• Effect: Increases all healing received by 5% and increases damage absorbed by Static Barrier by 10%.
• Recommendation: Never take this. It may be more reliably active in solo content than Insulating Blast, but the 5% DR is definitely stronger than this tiny bubble boost when you need it.

Level 51 Choice – Lightning Barrier, Force Mobility, or Defiance

Lightning Barrier

• Effect: Your Static Barrier crackles with electricity, shocking attackers for as much damage as a Lightning Bolt whenever it absorbs direct damage to you. This does not affect Static Barriers placed on or by allies and cannot occur more than once each second.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Lightning Barrier allows you to use Static Barrier on yourself in lieu of a Lightning Bolt without losing DPS. Static Barrier not only absorbs a small amount of damage, but the Deionized debuff gives you +5% DR. The easier the content, the more overpowered this talent becomes.

Torturous Tactics

• Effect: The cooldown of Electrocute is reduced by 15s. Targets successfully stunned by your Electrocute deal 25% less damage for 10s after the stun wears off.
• Recommendation: Take this in PvP and for specific boss fights. Torturous Tactics is a powerful talent, but Lightning Barrier’s power scales with content difficulty since it isn’t a simple reflect, so you can only justify taking it when you need survivability and it’s usable. This constrains it to PvP and select boss fights with powerful adds, like the first few bosses in Dxun.

Defiance

• Effect: Increases damage reduction by 3%.
• Recommendation: Don’t bother taking this. The effect is always useful and easier to use, but it’s so weak that you’ll end up causing more problems if you have this when you shouldn’t than if you just stuck with one of the alternatives.

Level 64 Choice – Unnatural Vigor, Surging Speed, or Backlash

Unnatural Vigor

• Effect: Unnatural Preservation increases your damage reduction by 15% for 6 seconds and the cooldown of Unnatural Preservation is reduced by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The effect is really nice and synergizes with Forbidden Knowlege, but Backlash is stronger when it works and Surging Speed offers a DPS increase on top of the other benefits.

Surging Speed

• Effect: Reduces the cooldowns of Force Speed by 5 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 activating Force Barrier finishes the cooldown on Force Speed.
• Recommendation: Take this in PvE group content. The cooldown reduction on Force Speed makes this option a substantial DPS increase thanks to the Gathering Storm and Unmatched Haste legendary implants. The other mobility improvements are nice too.

Backlash

• Effect: Static Barriers you place on yourself erupt in a flash of light when they end, mezzing up to 8 enemies within 5m of you for 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in PvP and for solo content. This is the notorious bubble stun, which is infamous for its effectiveness in PvP and synergizes well with the Endless Barrier tactical. It also works well in solo content, particularly heroics and MM Chapters where the enemies are strong enough to actually pop your bubble. Since most enemies in boss fights are immune to CC, it’s typically not worth taking in PvE group content, especially when you have to give up some DPS.

Level 68 Choice – Whirlwind, Phase Walk, or Volt Rush

Whirlwind

• Effect: Grants the Whirlwind ability, which mezzes the target for 8 seconds. If the effect ends prematurely, the target is stunned for 2 seconds. Strong, Elite, and Champion enemies heal rapidly.
• Recommendation: Take this as needed in PvE and by default in PvP. Sometimes you gotta mez a particularly troublesome add or player. Whirlwind gets the job done. Keep in mind that bosses and most strong adds are immune to CC. I recommend Whirlwind over Phase Walk in PvP because it’s far easier to use and can be just as impactful.

Phase Walk

• Effect: Grants the Phase Walk ability, which allows you to place a mark on the ground that lasts up to 10 minutes. At any point, you can teleport back to that mark if you are within 60m, at which point the ability goes on cooldown for 60s.
• Recommendation: Take this by default in PvE and as needed in PvP. Phase Walk gives you additional mobility, but it can be hard to use and isn’t as useful as it seems. It’s an essential survivability tool in Arenas, but in Warzones, it’s faster or just as fast to die and run back, so it’s only useful if you need to get somewhere specific ASAP.

Volt Rush

• Effect: Deals a small amount of damage to your target and grants Energize, which increases the damage (and healing, if applicable) dealt by Volt Rush by 30%. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you have the Elemental Convection tactical equipped. Volt Rush is your weakest ability without Elemental Convection. With that tactical, the extra Chain Lightning it can proc will make up for this. Some damage is also better than no damage, so if you’re in a fight where you need to kite so much that you have GCDs where none of your abilities are available, you might want to consider taking this option.

Level 73 Choice – Emersion, Corrupted Flesh, or Conspiring Force

Emersion

• Effect: Force Speed grants Emersion, purging all movement-impairing effects and granting immunity to them for the duration.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever you’re getting slowed regularly. You’ll always want to take this in PvP and solo content. However, it’s far more situation in PvE group content. Adds tend to apply slows more frequently than bosses, but slows aren’t super common. Emersion can also be used to cleanse certain DoTs that have a movement-impairing component like Captain Horic’s Corrosive Grenade in S&V NiM.

Corrupted Flesh

• Effect: Reduces periodic damage taken by 15%.
• Recommendation: Take this by default. Corrupted Flesh isn’t that great, 15% reduced damage taken (RDT) against a single type of damage that usually comes from a single attack, if the boss even has one to begin with. It’s better than nothing and that’s about it.

Conspiring Force

• Effect: Targets affected by your Affliction are slowed by 30% for its duration.
• Recommendation: Never take this. It’s nice, but you already have a ton of slows built into the discipline, and it’s never better than Emersion.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Stormwatch
Effect Lightning Flash applies Stormwatch to its target for the next 15 seconds. Whenever the target takes damage from Affliction, Thundering Blast, and Crushing Darkness, a lightning bolt is called down upon the target dealing a small amount of Energy damage.
Recommendation This is your default tactical item 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
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.
Recommendation If you need sustained AoE, this is the better tactical since you get an additional Chain Lightning and AoE from Volt Rush. Never take it with Halted Offensive.

Endless Barrier
Effect Activating Unnatural Preservation purges your Deionized debuff.
Recommendation Take this in PvP. Stormwatch’s damage is too susceptible to DCDs and creates an incentive not to target swap, both of which make it bad for PvP. Eyrin’s Haste is too weak and messes up your rotation too much to be worth using, especially now that Force Mobility is baseline for Sorcerer DPS. Endless Barrier enables you to apply Static Barrier far more often, along with bubble stun. If you time it right, sometimes you can apply 3 bubbles back to back, which is just as infuriating as it sounds for any mDPS that dares to challenge you. Remember to always apply Static Barrier before activating Unnatural Preservation so you don’t miss it.

In our Catalog of all Tacticals in SWTOR you will find information about all other Tacticals that we didn’t list in this guide. You may find something adequate that is also cheaper and easier to obtain for your needs while you work on getting the recommended one for your combat style and build.

Legendary Implants

BioWare has removed set bonuses from the game and replaced them with Legendary Items, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them, so rather than needing to collect 4 pieces of a gear set to get the 4-piece set bonus, or 6 pieces for the 6-piece, you’ll get either a 4 or 6-piece set bonus effect on an implant. 

This was done to improve customization (now you can mix and match set bonus effects), make them easier to obtain, and consume less inventory space. Here are the Legendary Items you should use as a Lightning Sorcerer.

• Unmatched Haste – The duration of Mental Alacrity / Polarity Shift is increased by 5 seconds and using Force Speed reduces the active cooldown of Mental Alacrity / Polarity Shift by 5 seconds. 
• Gathering Storm – Force Speed makes your next Force attack deal 20% more damage and you deal 20% more damage while Polarity Shift is active.

I recommend purchasing the Gathering Storm implant first because that one grants the actual damage increases while Unmatched Haste only amplifies them.

If you want to know more about Legendary Items, I have a guide called Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0. It explains how to unlock Legendary Items and contains a full list of them broken down by Combat Style.

Stat Priority

As a DPS, you’ll need to care about 3 different stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, and Critical Rating. There are thresholds associated with Accuracy and Alacrity, so you need to prioritize reaching those thresholds to get the full benefit from each stat point.

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to a Variable % – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. Lightning has unique stat requirements that vary depending on the max iRating you’re going for because it gets a whopping +5% from the Focal Lightning proc. I’ll cover the options for what percentages you should shoot for in a dedicated section momentarily.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

Find out which mods to purchase from Hyde and Zeek in SWTOR on the Fleet to minimize spending and optimize your build. The dedicated guide contains tips for all roles in both PvE and PvP.

Lightning Sorcerers and Alacrity

Lightning has a proc called Focal Lightning that grants +5% Alacrity. This makes it a lot easier for Lightning to reach the 1.3s GCD and even 1.1s GCD during Polarity Shift. However, if your iRating isn’t high enough, you will end up sacrificing too much Critical Rating to reach those upper thresholds. The 1.3s GCD is valuable as a Lightning Sorcerer because it enables you to do the following:

• More reliably delay Lightning Flash for a GCD to cast Thundering Blast without Stormwatch falling off at the very last millisecond.
• Prioritize Crushing Darkness without worrying about the Force Flash proc falling off when Lightning Flash is about to come off cooldown.
• Better adhere to the priority system during Polarity Shift because you have 1-2 spare GCDs at the end and aren’t obligated to use Chain Lightning immediately after Thundering Blast, even if you have other high-priority abilities available.

I only recommend shooting for the 1.3s GCD in PvE if you have either 344 gear OR the Zeal (Alacrity) Guild Perk Set Bonus. If you don’t have either of those things, use mods to drop your overall Alacrity down to ~2.5% and dump the remainder into Critical Rating (after reaching 110% Accuracy, of course).

Recommended Alacrity Targets for Lightning in 7.7

• 344: ~10.6% (1.3s GCD)
• Zeal Guild Perk: ~11.6% (1.3s GCD + 1.1s GCD during Polarity Shift)
• 340 Only: ~2.5% (1.4s GCD)

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since the stats come in much smaller amounts, augments allow you to fine-tune your gear to provide almost as much of each total stat as you want.

To equip an augment, you must first use an Augmentation Kit that matches the crafting grade of the augment (ex. Grade 11 augments require MK-11 Kits).

The 296, 302, 310, and 318 iRating augments released with 7.6 and 7.7 are BiS. The higher the iRating, the more stats they offer and the more expensive they are to make or buy, though most of the benefit is provided by having augments at all, and the base-rarity blue 296 augments are the cheapest.

Almost everyone should buy the blue 296 augments because they provide the greatest bang for the buck, but you do have multiple options:

• Gold 318 augments (Superior [Type] Augment 86). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS) and offer ~25% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 4 additional gold augments. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Purple 310 augments (Advanced [Type] Augment 86). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They are cheaper than the gold 318s, but they’re in the same price bracket in terms of affordability, so there’s no reason for anyone to use them at this point.
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76) are the mid-tier augments. For all intents and purposes, these are equivalent to the gold 300 augments from 6.0. I only recommend them if you’re close to a stat threshold or don’t already have gold 300 augments and want something a bit better than the blue 296s.
• Blue 296 augments ([Type] Augment 83) are the most basic tier of augments for level 80 players. They are pretty cheap as only the schematic comes from the associated lair boss, Propagator Core XR-53. You don’t need any Corrupted Bioprocessors to craft these augments.

Check out our 7.7 Augments Guide for everything you need to know about augmenting gear!

Earpiece

Which Earpiece you use will depend on what specific tertiary stats the rest of your gear and augments provide. Typically, you’ll need to use either an Accuracy (Initiative, yellow icon) or Alacrity (Quick Savant / Nimble, green icon) Earpiece.

Crystals

Advanced Eviscerating Crystals are the best. They are the only type of crystal that increases one of your tertiary stats. Since the stat pool for tertiary stats is much smaller than that of primary or secondary stats, adding 41 is a more significant upgrade than it would be if you were to add 41 to one of the primary or secondary stats (mastery, power, or endurance).

Relics

I recommend the Relic of Focused Retribution (FR) and Relic of Serendipitous Assault (SA) for all PvE content, regardless of gear. However, your second relic is dependent on how much Alacrity Rating you have in your gear. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas SA’s proc increases your Power stats. If you have the choice, purchase the Relic of Focused Retribution first because in equal amounts, and only in equal amounts, Mastery offers more of a DPS gain than Power.

If you are shooting for the 1.3s GCD with 344 gear but do NOT have the Zeal Guild Perk Set Bonus, you can gain a small amount of DPS by swapping out the Relic of Serendipitous Assault for the Relic of Devastating Vengeance (DV).

Your Critical Rating is low enough that you don’t dive deep into diminishing returns. In addition, you will be able to use Thundering Blast during most procs thanks to its cooldown that roughly matches the duration of the Relic’s proc, causing Thundering Blast to deal additional supercritical damage. I use it with my 344 gear, but the improvement is small and not as consistent, so I don’t want to cause confusion by recommending something that only applies to a small portion of the playerbase.

Biochem Items

I recommend the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, Advanced Kyrprax Medpac, and Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal for all PvE content. Grade 11 Biochem items from the crafting tier released with 6.0 remain BiS. Since they haven’t been updated to level 80, their effects are weaker than they should be, though they can still have an impact.

You should use the Proficient Stim as a DPS because it provides 2 tertiary stats that you need, Accuracy and Critical Rating, and tertiary stats are harder to come by and what you build your gear around. You should use the Attack Adrenal because it provides Power, which typically provides the greatest DPS increase, though it’s also more consistent, which is what you need for DPS checks.

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

If your guild uses the Zeal (cyan) guild perk set bonus, which gives a passive +5% Alacrity boost, you won’t need nearly as much Alacrity stat to reach your desired Alacrity threshold. My recommendations do not factor in these boosts, so if you have one, you’ll need to pay attention to percentage thresholds rather than the stat amounts. Just keep adding one augment at a time until you reach the desired percentage.

Guild leaders, I recommend using the Fortune (yellow) guild perk set bonus instead. It grants +5% Critical Chance and also boosts the Critical Rate and Time Efficiency of all Crew Skills by 2%. The reason for this is that you don’t have to change the way you gear in order to benefit from the effect.

Neither effect works in MM raids or PvP, so if you or your guild members do either of those activities, you’ll need to tweak your gear to reach the desired threshold depending on the activity, which I find super tedious. Even if your guild doesn’t do those activities, leaders still need to actively maintain the set bonus because your gear will become suboptimal on top of losing the bonus, whereas it’s not a big deal if your crit is a little lower for a bit.

The Alacrity boost is much stronger than the Critical Chance boost. Still, PvE content isn’t balanced around these guild perk set

Best Lightning Sorcerer Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. Build Essentials can include important ability tree buffs, a tactical item, and even legendary items occasionally.

The ability tree buffs that aren’t listed as Build Essentials can be changed as needed without compromising the integrity of the build, though I have included a full set of default choices that will be most consistently helpful in accomplishing what the build sets out to do.

Lightning Boss Fight Build

This build feels really similar to Lightning from 6.0 (minus the rotational AoE) and emphasizes survivability over fluff. As the name of this build suggests, it should be used when you want to maximize your single-target DPS because adds are rare, non-existent, or being dealt with by the DoT specs in your group.

Most of the time, you’ll be taking Lightning Barrier and Insulating Blast, but sometimes the group or fight will require you to take some Torturous Tactics or Unlimited Power respectively instead. Likewise, you’ll almost always take Phase Walk, but you have really easy access to the 60s mez, so make sure you’re helping with CC mechanics when appropriate!

Maximum AoE Build

This build is designed for dealing maximum AoE damage within a group content setting, and there is a greater emphasis on survivability compared to what you might use in solo content.

Lightning doesn’t offer nearly as much sustained AoE damage and has to give up quite a bit of single-target DPS to deal it, but the spec has far greater control over when exactly the damage goes out (as in being more on-demand) and has very granular controls on exactly how much single-target potential it trades for AoE potential.

This build has all of the dials set to maximum, but it’s impractical for most content in the game because it gives up too much single-target damage for what ultimately amounts to less than what DoT specs get for free, and the sheer number of abilities that deal AoE damage means you lose that (super situational) on-demand benefit.

I do not recommend Eye of the Storm with this build because the ability doesn’t benefit from pushback protection, making it horrible whenever you’re actually in combat. At the same time, Cloud Mind is far more valuable and you don’t really have much in the way of spare GCDs for Eye of the Storm anyway.

Solo Content Build

These options are centered around dealing maximum damage in a solo content setting. Against most groups of trash, you just do a simple rotation of pre-casted Chain Lightning ► Force Storm. Any stronger enemies that are left over get whacked with Affliction ► Thundering Blast ► (if necessary) Lightning Flash ► Crushing Darkness ► Shock (if necessary). Static Barrier should also be applied outside of combat between trash pulls.

It doesn’t really matter which tactical item you use; they all have advantages. Stormwatch will result in the highest sustained DPS and is best in longer fights. Eyrin’s Haste can often allow you to defeat enemies outright with Thundering Blast, so you don’t have to spend an extra GCD to do Lightning Flash. Elemental Convection gives you a bunch of AoE, but you get enough from your ability tree buffs that it isn’t super necessary.

I want to draw attention to a couple of specific non-essential choices too. Emersion is by far the best choice in the top tier since so many adds slow you with those pesky DoTs that reapply the slow with each tick and persist for way too long.

Phase Walk is also super nice whenever you need to come back the way you came, like if you only need to go into a room or alcove to click a button, you can put Phase Walk at the doorway to save yourself a bit of time.

Lightning PvP Build

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It can be a little different than the standard rotation because everything is off cooldown, including your OCDs and relic procs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact.

1. Chain Lightning (pre-cast)
2. Polarity Shift
3. Affliction
4. Adrenal
5. Unlimited Power (if applicable)
6. Lightning Flash
7. Force Speed + Recklessness
8. Thundering Blast
9. Chain Lightning
10. Crushing Darkness
11. Shock
12. Priority List

This opener assumes that you are using the Stormwatch tactical and are using the Unmatched Haste and Gathering Storm Legendary Items.

Chain Lightning is used before Crushing Darkness because Recklessness is active. This is especially important when using the Halted Offensive ability tree buff. When Halted Offensive is used, it’s vastly superior to pair with Recklessness compared to Lightning Flash, so this also enables you to not have to tweak your opener depending on which Chain Lightning buff is taken.

Lightning Flash is used before Thundering Blast so we don’t miss out on 2 ticks of Stormwatch. You can delay it until after Thundering Blast (and the following Halted Offensive) if you are not using Stormwatch, but make sure you use it before Crushing Darkness.

Polarity Shift must be 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. Recklessness and your Adrenal are also affected by Alacrity so those are also used after Polarity Shift.

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. 

It’s essential to wait to use Force Speed and Recklessness until after you activate Lightning Flash so that the damage boosts are used on Thundering Blast and Chain Lightning. Technically, it’s okay to use Recklessness on Lightning Flash if you’re not using Halted Offensive since they deal very similar single-target damage, but Halted Offensive or multi-target Chain Lightning are superior uses of the second Recklessness stack.

Priority

In Lightning, you use a priority system because it is impossible to use all of your rotational abilities on cooldown, so when multiple high-damage abilities are available at the same time, a priority list is used to determine which one should be used first in order to provide the highest DPS and ensures that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible.

1. Affliction (if not on the target)
2. Thundering Blast
3. Lightning Flash
4. Crushing Darkness
5. Shock
6. Static Barrier (only with Lightning Barrier)
7. Chain Lightning (with Lightning Storm proc)
8. Force Storm (if you can hit at least 2 targets)
9. Lightning Bolt

This ability priority ensures that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible. It is common for multiple high-damage abilities to become available at the same time; all you have to do is adhere to the priority, and you’ll do fine. It’s important to practice this on a dummy at least until you can do the rotation without having to constantly look at your bar.

Remember, you have the full duration of Crushing Darkness to use Shock and the full duration of the Lightning Storm proc to use Chain Lightning, so you can delay them for other higher-priority abilities if there’s still time. For example, Chain Lightning only needs to be used before your next Thundering Blast comes off cooldown.

The only things you really don’t want to delay are Thundering Blast and Lightning Flash. Sometimes, Thundering Blast and Lightning Flash will sometimes come off cooldown at the same time. If you didn’t have any downtime, you should be able to prioritize Thundering Blast, but you should prioritize Lightning Flash if Stormwatch fell off.

In a similar vein, Lightning Flash will come off cooldown at the same time as Crushing Darkness, be careful not to use Crushing Darkness without the Force Flash proc. You’re gonna lose more DPS by using Crushing Darkness without the proc than you will by delaying it a GCD, though you can cut it pretty close as you only need to have the proc on your bar until you start the cast. It does not matter if Force Flash falls off mid-cast.

If there is downtime during a fight, remember that you can apply Affliction and often pre-cast Thundering Blast or Halted Offensive right before the boss can actually take damage. You will miss out on 1-2 ticks of Affliction, but you also won’t have to spend a GCD to apply it when the boss is vulnerable, so you will end up dealing more damage.

Fillers are where Lightning’s priority gets significantly more complicated. The priority list I showed earlier is simplified for clarity. There are many situations where you’ll want to tweak that priority:

• Chain Lightning should always be used immediately after Thundering Blast if you have Recklessness or at the end of Polarity Shift, but otherwise be delayed to use your other abilities on cooldown.
• Chain Lightning should be prioritized if you can hit multiple targets.
• Lightning Bolt should be prioritized if its Fulgurous Fortification and Charged Reaction procs are about to fall off, especially in fights where you’re taking a lot of damage or your Force is sub-150.
• Shock should be used over Lightning Bolt even without Crushing Darkness on the target if your buffs aren’t about to fall off.
• Apply Affliction to secondary targets that you aren’t focusing.
• Lightning Barrier’s priority changes based on the amount of damage you’re taking. If you can get more than 3 ticks per activation, it’s worth prioritizing over everything else, including Thundering Blast.
• Force Storm should be prioritized if you can hit multiple targets, and Force Lightning can be used to resynchronize your Lightning Storm proc with Thundering Blast.

The key to being a great DPS is to always be 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.