SWTOR 7.0 Sorcerer Changes Preview and Analysis (October PTS)

Latest SWTOR PTS for Update 7.0 brought more changes to the Sorcerer class. Here you will learn what they were and how they affect the class!

Sorcerers / Sages received a lot of changes from their initial release on the PTS and a lot of them make less sense. In this article, I’ll just be going through all of the changes compared to the Live game rather than compare it to what was previously on the PTS.

I will also be including translations for Republic players. 

Ability Pruning

Force Slow

This is the only ability that Sorcerers / Sages have lost completely. I’ll miss the animation, but it was never all that useful. 

Extrication / Rescue

The last build of the PTS had the ability as one of the ability choices at level 70, but now it just seems to be gone completely. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be gone. The Dark Resilience / Valiance utility effect is currently one of the choices and that buffs Extrication / Rescue, so it’s possible BioWare forgot to give it back as a base ability. Alternatively, maybe BioWare just hasn’t updated the text yet. 

If it is leaving in 7.0, I’ll be sad because the troll pull has always been a lot of fun to use to mess with your teammates. That said, it’s super situational in PvE and only occasionally gets used outside of Huttball in PvP, where it technically isn’t necessary since players can just pass the ball instead. It also sometimes can cause anger if you pull someone when they don’t want to be pulled. 

If Extrication / Rescue does stick around for 7.0, it definitely shouldn’t be an ability you have to pick because the other options will always be better, so it would only remain as a troll ability in that case and that isn’t good.

Level 70 Choice

At level 70, Sorcerers / Sages have to pick between 1 of 3 different abilities:

• Whirlwind / Force Lift (includes Haunted Dreams / Containment utility effect)
• Phase Walk
• Volt Rush / TK Blitz (includes Storm’s Succor / Metaphysical Mender tactical effect)

Phase Walk

I feel like Phase Walk is not gonna get picked all that often because it’s not consistently useful and requires a lot of thinking and creativity in order to use effectively. In PvE, players often need to be told to use it or they forget it exists and that typically only means it gets used in the most obvious use cases even though it is useful a lot more often than that. 

In PvP, it’s a more restricted, inferior version of stealth. In unranked warzones, it can be helpful for objectives, but it’s not all that great defensively. Since it takes so long to heal up after teleporting, you’re usually just better off dying and running back. The only defensive boost it gets you is a couple more seconds of stalling. 

In ranked arenas, its usefulness largely depends on the capabilities, strategy, and skill of the other team and the more skilled the other team is, the less useful it becomes. If the other team decides to focus you down first, you typically don’t have time to get far enough away from where you placed the ability in order for it to be helpful at all. Sometimes you can get killed by DoTs or another player that’s waiting for you to teleport too. If the other team has an Electro Net, you’re even more restricted in when you can use it. If the other team is bad, it’s as strong as stealth out, if not stronger. 

Phase Walk needs to be more consistently useful. I think one way to accomplish this would be to make it so some form of the Shifting Silhouette / Ethereal Entity utility effect is applied both when you place the ability and when you teleport back. This gives Sorcerers / Sages some protection in the early match when they’re setting up and makes it more useful as a DCD in PvE and in unranked Warzones, though at the cost of getting to use it for mobility. It would also be nice for burn phases where Sorcerers / Sages are a bit lacking in terms of sustained damage mitigation compared to most other disciplines. 

Volt Rush / TK Blitz

I’ve been playing around with the Storm’s Succor / Metaphysical Mender tactical and it’s actually pretty neat! In terms of damage output, it’s fairly close to Lightning Bolt / TK Burst and the heal more than makes up for that slight DPS loss. I do think it needs to be more tightly integrated with the individual disciplines though. 

• For Lightning / TK, it needs to benefit from Forked Lightning / TK Momentum and have a 50% chance to apply a stack of the alacrity (if that isn’t being made passive as it should be). The range on the heal should also be expanded to 35m so it can heal you if you can deal damage with it. 
• For Madness / Balance, it should be a partial alternative to Force Lightning / TK Throw. Both the damage and heal should generate a stack of Wrath / Presence of Mind (which currently isn’t listed in the discipline passives on the PTS) as well as the Fulminating Current / Psychokinetic Torrent proc. 
• For Corruption / Seer, it should proc Dark Concentration / Altruism and crits with either the damage or heal should grant a stack of Force Surge / Resplendence. 

In addition, the animation for Sorcerers and maybe Sages needs to be improved. Right now, it’s like the lamest lightning attack ever followed by the Roaming Mend animation. This is fine as a base, but I’d like to see the lightning attack get fancier with more stacks of the Energized proc.

Whirlwind / Force Lift

Right now, the tooltip doesn’t mention the fact that the player is stunned if it breaks early, which is the second component of the Haunted Dreams / Containment utility effect. Purely from a numbers standpoint, Volt Rush / TK Blitz is the better. You basically get to negate 6 GCDs of damage per minute while with Whirlwind / Force Lift, you only get to negate 5 at most, assuming the CC doesn’t get broken. I think it would be a harder choice between the two if the Dizzying Force utility effect was also incorporated into the ability. 

Level 35 Choice

At level 35, Sorcerers / Sages choose between Unlimited Power / Force Empowerment (raid buff) or 1 of 2 other discipline-specific passives. I’ll cover this later on when I look at each discipline individually.

As I mentioned last time, I really like the idea of having to choose between the raid buff or 1 of 2 other weak passives and I hope BioWare does that for all the raid buffs. Only 1 person in the group needs to have each raid buff and they aren’t useable in arenas at all and aren’t super useful in 8-person Warzones, so it’s nice to have an alternative for those situations. It shouldn’t be strong though. Don’t want to feel like you’re missing out on some big passive because you’re stuck with taking the raid buff. 

With this round of changes, some of the passives are quite strong and it isn’t balanced evenly between the disciplines, so there’s a greater incentive for one discipline to take it over another, which is not good.

Level 20 Choice

At level 20, Sorcerers / Sages choose between the Cloud Mind ability with the 25% DR effect built-in or 1 of 2 other discipline-specific passives. I’ll cover the other options in greater detail later on when I look at each discipline individually.

The other options for each discipline are all pretty weak. It really seems like BioWare wants you to pick Cloud Mind, which makes sense considering it’s one of our few core DCDs and are creating this choice just to make it so each class has 5 abilities locked away. This really shouldn’t be a choice at all though. Cloud Mind with the 25% DR should be given as a baseline ability. If they’re concerned with an additional choice making Sorcs too strong, they can just replace it with a third weak option rather than buff the choices. 

It’s possible BioWare is moving away from locking away 5 abilities behind a choice for every single discipline since different disciplines for the  Bounty Hunter / Trooper changes were more varied in terms of how many abilities were locked away. I’m completely fine with not having such a rigid structure for the choices if it means more classes get to hold onto more abilities. I’m also fine with not every choice needing to have 3 options. Abilities should only be locked away behind a choice when there are significant balance implications that can’t be fixed in some other way or there’s some other major benefit to doing so, like getting rid of extreme ability bloat or preventing waste. 

Universal Passive Choices

Sorcerers / Sages have 3 choices where they have to choose 1 of 3 passives. 

Level 80 Choice

• Emersion / Egress
• Corrupted Flesh / Mind Ward
• Conspiring Force / Confound

This is an absolutely terrible choice. The options aren’t balanced and there isn’t a consistently useful option for PvE. Sorcerers / Sages are always gonna pick Emersion / Egress for PvP and Corrupted Flesh / Mind Ward for PvE where it will only be useful for some fights. 

Level 60 Choice

• Unnatural Vigor / Valorous Spirit
• Surging Speed / Metaphysical Alacrity
• Dark Resilience / Valiance

This one is better than the level 80 choice, but still not great. If Force Speed remains a DPS increase like it is now thanks to the Gathering Storm set bonus, this will be a non-choice for DPS in 7.0. Hopefully that doesn’t happen since using Force Speed on cooldown is a bad habit in PvP. If Force Speed isn’t used rotationally, it’s semi-decent. Unnatural Vigor / Valorous Spirit is weak enough that it’s okay to give it up if you need the lower cooldown on Force Speed or Force Barrier, but otherwise Unnatural Vigor will be taken by default. 

Unnatural Vigor / Valorous Spirit is always gonna get picked over Dark Resilience / Valiance just like it does now though. I think Dark Resilience / Valiance would be a more competitive choice if it were combined with Corrupted Flesh / Mind Ward, especially if it were buffed to include  30% RDT against periodic damage. The Extrication / Rescue DR should be made part of the base ability. 

Level 50 Choice

• Lightning Barrier / TK Defense
• Force Mobility
• Sith Defiance / Jedi Resistance

This choice is horrendous! It’s even worse than the one Sorcerers / Sages have at level 80. I’d really love to hear who at BioWare thought that 3% DR was a comparable choice next to the other 2 options. That’s just plain ridiculous. If you don’t want to make a third choice, just don’t give a third choice. 

Honestly, Force Mobility just needs to be given as a baseline effect, the same goes for Thrill of the Hunt / Forced March for Mercenaries / Commandos. These utilities have always been taken in all content since they were introduced nearly 7 years ago in 3.0. There’s no need for them to continue to exist as something players need to “choose” to have. 

Lightning Barrier / TK Defense needs to be heavily reworked or removed, as does all high-uptime reactive damage like Cloak of Pain / Rebuke and Reflective Armor. I talk in more detail about it in my analysis of the preliminary changes to PT / VG. Since Lightning Barrier / TK Defense is applied using a GCD, it can still exist as an effect, it just has to not deal its damage as ticks which can’t be balanced easily. 

All that needs to be done to fix it is have it so Lightning Barrier / TK Defense deals a fixed, higher amount of damage to whatever pops the bubble. The damage could be comparable to things like Lightning Flash / TK Gust and Lightning Strike / Disturbance with Wrath / Presence of Mind Proc. It just needs to be stronger than the weakest filler ability. This also makes its damage output more consistent between the disciplines since it would no longer be dependent on damage reduction.

The animation also needs to be improved, the current one is way too intense and doesn’t match at all for Sages. I think a purple version of the Electro Shield effect would be more appropriate for Sorcerers and then maybe some sort of ripple effect on the bubble that is mirrored on the target around their head would fit a lot better for Sages.

Discipline-Specific Choices

Each discipline has 2 completely unique choices between 3 passives that each buff a discipline-specific ability and 2 other choices that contain at least 1 option that is shared but also others that are discipline-specific. 

Lightning / Telekinetics

Thundering Blast / Turbulence

• Thundering Blast / Turbulence immobilizes the target for 2 seconds. This can only occur once every 9 seconds.
• Thundering Blast / Turbulence causes your next Chain Lightning / TK Wave to deal 5% more damage. This can only occur once every 12 seconds.
• Thundering Blast / Turbulence cases Affliction / Weaken Mind to tick twice. 

All of these options technically work, but they’re so boring and weak. I’m still not sure why there is a 9 second rate limit on an ability with a 9 second cooldown. You’ll be able to apply the root every single time you use the ability. 

The Chain Lightning / TK Wave damage increase is ridiculously weak and it doesn’t even apply every time you get the proc. I don’t understand why it’s so terrible. Also, when you’d want this buff most is when you’d be least likely to be using Thundering Blast / Turbulence at all and it definitely isn’t worth it to use Thundering Blast / Turbulence over half a channel of Force Storm / Forcequake for such a small damage increase.

The double-tick on Affliction / Weaken Mind is pretty weak though it does mean you’ll get an extra tick of Stormwatch as well. 

The root is pretty nice for PvP, but please try again with the other ones BioWare!

Chain Lightning / TK Wave

• Critical hits with Chain Lightning / TK Wave build stacks of Preserved / Mended, which increase the healing done by Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend and reduce its cooldown.
• Chain Lightning / TK Wave only affects one target, dealing additional damage.
• Chain Lightning / TK Wave applies Suppressive Current to all targets it hits. Your next Force Storm / Forcequake detonates the current doing additional damage. 

These choices are all fine. I don’t think they were changed from the last PTS build. You have a clear option for PvP, single target, and AoE damage. I’m very excited to see the lighting explosion animation during Force Storm. Also as I mentioned in the last article, the single-target Chain Lightning / TK Wave needs to apply a different DPS debuff than the AoE debuff like the same passive does for Death Field / Force in Balance, preferably the Armor debuff.

Level 35 Choice

• Unlimited Power / Force Empowerment ability
• Increases all healing received by 5% and increases the damage absorbed by Static Barrier / Force Armor by 10%.
• Thundering Blast / Turbulence increases your damage reduction by 1%, stacks up to 5 times. 

The Thundering Blast / Turbulence DR is definitely weak and what I’m talking about as a good alternative to the raid buff. Maybe a little too weak honestly. It’s gonna take nearly a minute to fully ramp up the DR though and it will definitely fall off sometimes. The other passive seems like it would be a better fit for the healer discipline, though especially if they fix Lightning Barrier / TK Defense, I think it’s a fantastic option for all disciplines to have access to for this choice. It’s just strong enough that it still feels like it’s doing something, but just weak enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re missing out on anything major.

Level 20 Choice

• Overloaded Strike ability – makes Lightning Strike / Disturbance into a small AoE. 
• Cloud Mind ability with 25% DR built in
• Shock / Project deals bonus damage and returns Force when hitting slowed targets. This can only occur once every 8 seconds. 

These choices need to be redone. Shock / Project already gets bonus damage from Crushing Darkness / Mind Crush and Lightning / TK is completely fine with resource management, so the Force refund is about as impactful as dumping a bucket of water into the ocean. 

Overloaded Strike could be interesting in theory. I’m all for more lightning explosions (if that’s how they depict the AoE animation), but I’d never ever take this over Cloud Mind. Also, this effect should just apply to Lightning Bolt / TK Burst instead of being a completely separate ability.

Madness and Balance

Creeping Terror / Sever Force

• Applying Creeping Terror / Sever Force reduces the cooldown of Recklessness by 2 seconds. This cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.
• Creeping Terror / Sever Force has a 20% chance to deal damage to up to 4 targets within 10m of the initial target. 
• Dealing damage with Creeping Terror / Sever Force consumes and benefits from 2 stacks of Deathmark / Force Suppression.

The first effect is weird and needs to be redone. The rate limit clearly exists to make it so you can’t benefit from DoT spreading, but in single target situations, you’re only applying Creeping Terror / Sever Force 5 times per Recklessness / Force Potency use, so this is effectively only a 10 second cooldown reduction with extra steps. LAME!

The second effect is intriguing, but I’m not sure how it interacts with DoT spread. It would be a lot cooler if instead the effect was “Whenever Creeping Terror / Sever Force deals damage, it has a 50% chance to trigger a Dark Echo / Resonant Pulse.” This has much clearer AoE scaling and deals about the same amount of damage.

The third effect is fine in theory, but it deals less damage than the second effect, unless the second effect is meant to be AoE only and not also apply the damage to the primary target like it currently does. It does synergize with one of the choices for Death Field / Force in Balance, but so does the second effect, so I think it might just be best to scrap this idea and try again. 

Death Field / Force in Balance

• When a Deathmark / Force Suppression stack is consumed, there is a 50% chance for it to be refunded.
• Death Field / Force in Balance becomes a single-target ability, dealing more damage and stealing / “redistributing” 5% more life. In addition, Death Field / Force In Balance applies the Internal / Elemental damage debuff instead of the AoE debuff.
• When a stack of Deathmark / Force Suppression is consumed, you are healed for 1% of your maximum health. 

These options seem fine, not super flashy, but they work. I especially like the 50% chance to refund a Deathmark / Force Suppression stack since it synergizes well with both AoE and single-target situations. I am curious about how much more damage the single-target version of Death Field / Force in Balance will deal though, like the extra Deathmarks / Force Suppression stacks are equal to about 25% of the damage dealt by Death Field / Force in Balance, so it’s gonna have to be a fair bit more than that in order to see use. 

Level 35 Choice

• Unlimited Power / Force Empowerment ability
• When you deal critical damage with your DoTs, your damage reduction is increased by 5% for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. 
• Dealing periodic damage reduces the cooldown of Force Speed by 3 seconds. This can only occur once every 5 seconds. 

These options are too strong next to the raid buff. You definitely wouldn’t want to take the raid buff when playing Madness / Balance if you had another Sorcerer / Sage who could take it instead. 

That said, I really like the two options as passives individually. The Force Speed one will make the cooldown of Force Speed effectively 11 seconds. It does diminish the usefulness of the Surging Speed / Metaphysical Alacrity option in the level 60 choice though, since it reduces it to being only 6 seconds of possible cooldown reduction, which makes the effective cooldown 9 seconds. Not really sure how you’d go about fixing that though. 

The 15% DR is pretty nice though; few specs have access to that much rotational DR and it should help Madness / Balance survive better against the bigger hits while their self-healing takes care of the rest.

Level 20 Choice

• Cloud Mind with the 25% DR effect
• Overloaded Strike – same as Lightning, though it’s worded a little differently. Not sure if they’re meant to be different or not.
• Shock / Project finishes off all your directly applied DoTs at once, dealing their remaining damage. The cooldown for Shock / Project is increased by 12 seconds. 

Just like Lightning’s choice, I have a hard time thinking anyone would take anything but Cloud Mind. The Shock / Project effect is more interesting than what Lightning / TK got, it’s basically the Ultraviolet Blast and Catalyzed Toxins tactical item but for Madness / Balance, but you can choose when you want to trigger it without losing DPS. It doesn’t seem to trigger the Deathmark / Force Suppression stacks right now though. I hope they make Cloud Mind with the DR a baseline ability and come up with a third option to consider instead. 

Corruption and Seer

Innervate / Healing Trance

• Innervate / Healing Trance spreads your Resurgence / Rejuvenate to heal nearby allies. 
• Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity increases the healing done of Innervate by 3%.
• Innervate / Healing Trance builds stacks of Corrupted Bastion, increasing the healing done by Dark Heal / Benevolence and Dark Infusion / Deliverance by 3% per stack. 

I think these were the same as last time. The Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity one is still hilariously weak. The third one that buffs your other heals seems to be the most balanced of the 3 options. I don’t think the Resurgence / Rejuvenate spread is as strong as people think. It’s still a fair bit of healing, don’t get me wrong, but the actual HoT component of the ability heals for about 30% less than Revivification / Salvation and it takes 15 seconds as opposed to 10 and you can’t apply that more than once, and at least right now, it doesn’t trigger Renewal either or refresh when you activate Innervate a second time. I have a feeling you’ll only want to use it when lots of AoE healing is needed, and if it ends up being too strong, BioWare can easily reduce the spread radius so it affects less people.

Dark Infusion / Deliverance

• Dark Infusion / Deliverance applies a 12 second HoT
• Dark Infusion / Deliverance hits one additional target within 10m
• Dark Infusion / Deliverance grants a proc that makes your next Dark Infusion instant. This can only occur once every 10 seconds.

I believe these are the same as they were last time as well. My biggest concern is still that the HoT needs to be stronger than Dark Infusion itself in order for it to ever be chosen over the one that makes it hit an additional target. That’s a lot of healing either way and with that much extra healing, I feel like you’d have to get rid of the rate limit on the third option in order for it to remain competitive. You don’t need emergency healing if everyone is getting healed so much that they never drop that low for more than a moment.

Level 35 Choice

• Unlimited Power / Force Empowerment ability
• Healing with Innervate / Healing Trance grants a stack of Unhindered Resolve. Each stack grants 2% DR, stacks up to 3 times. 
• If a friendly player dies while Resurgence / Rejuvenate is active on them, you are granted Death’s Embrace, making your next Reanimation / Revival or Dark Infusion / Deliverance instant. 

These are great choices! They’re weak alternatives to the raid buff, but you won’t feel too bad if you aren’t able to take one because you’re responsible for the raid buff. I am a bit perplexed as to why Lightning / TK gets a really slow 5% DR, Corruption / Seer gets a super fast 6%, and Madness / Balance gets 15% DR. Move 10% of Madness / Balance’s DR to the discipline and then the only thing that needs to be tweaked is the Force Speed cooldown passive for Madness / Balance! 

I am concerned that we now have 3 procs that interact with the cast time for Dark Infusion / Deliverance. If BioWare wants to keep the 2 new procs they added, they should change the effect of Force Bending / Conveyance to something else and then make it so both of the new passives grant a single stack of the same passive. 

Level 20 Choice

• Cloud Mind with the 25% DR
• Dark Speed / Benevolent Haste utility effect
• Dark Heal / Benevolence has a 50% chance to cause Resurgence / Rejuvenate to tick twice. 

Terrible effects. BioWare, please just make Cloud Mind with the 25% DR a passive and give us some actual decent choices here!

Concluding Thoughts

More work needs to be done before Sorcerer / Sage is ready for 7.0. Honestly a lot of the changes introduced in this build of the PTS seem worse than they were last time around, though as I have seen a greater number of changes, I think I have also clarified what I am hoping for out of 7.0.

The biggest issue affecting the Sorcerer changes right now is just the quality of the choices. It doesn’t feel like there’s always a real choice to make because some options are just way stronger than others and there’s no point in having a choice at all if there really isn’t one to make in the first place.

Follow along with VULKK.com every single SWTOR PTS Update for The Legacy of the Sith 7.0 Expansion and beyond!

Here is a quick summary of what was released so far since the big announcement in July 2021:

• SWTOR 7.0 Powertech Changes Preview and Analysis (PTS)
• SWTOR 7.0 Mercenary Changes Preview and Analysis (PTS)
• SWTOR 7.0 Assassin Changes Preview and Analysis (PTS)
• SWTOR 7.0 Sorcerer Changes Preview and Analysis (PTS) – first wave
• SWTOR 7.0 PTS New UI and Sniper and Operative Changes
• SWTOR Manaan Short Story: what did we learn
• SWTOR 7.0 PTS Sentinel Combat Styles Analysis
• SWTOR 7.0 PTS Guardian Combat Styles first look
• SWTOR 7.0 Legacy of the Sith Expansion announced