Let’s talk about Madness Sorcerers and Balance Sages in SWTOR 7.3.1

SWTOR 7.3.1 features balance changes for Sorcerer and Sage DPS, Mercenary and Commando DPS, and all 3 tank disciplines. Here, we’ll be looking at the new state of the Madness and Balance and what Broadsword could improve.

7.3.1 Madness and Balance Changes

Note: The changes listed below have been rewritten for clarity. You can read the original notes from our SWTOR 7.3.1 Changes Overview.

• The Critical Movement / Enhanced Force Speed ability tree buff is now offered at level 27 alongside Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari and Overloaded Strike / Destructive Wave.
• Cloud Mind is now offered at level 43 alongside Corrupted Defense / Warden of the Force and Unlimited Power / Force Empowerment.
• Force Mobility is now built into Force Leech / Force Serenity. It has been replaced by Torturous Tactics / Staggering Stratagem, which has the following effect:
  • Lowers the cooldown of Electrocute / Force Stun by 10s. In addition, targets stunned by your Electrocute / Force Stun deal 25% less damage for 10s when the stun effect wears off.
• Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari no longer changes the damage type of Demolish / Vanquish from Kinetic to Internal.

PRAISE THE EMPEROR! Plague Master and Teachings of Rajivari have FINALLY been fixed! As fantastic as they are, their bugged state was responsible for defiling the entire spec.

The bug transformed what was an elegant, if partial, solution to the spec’s rotational issues into one that forced you into following yet another static rotation that defied the game’s conventions. These static rotations required you to clip DoTs and significantly delay powerful abilities just so you could convert as much of Demolish / Vanquish’s damage as possible from Kinetic to Internal.

In PvE, bosses have 28% damage reduction from armor (35% without the armor debuff). Internal (and Elemental) damage is distinct from Kinetic (and Energy) damage because they completely bypass this DR, just like when you activate Ferocity / Precision, though base damage values are balanced to take this into account.

The DoT damage dealt by Demolish / Vanquish is balanced according to the fact that it’s meant to deal Kinetic damage and thereby be affected by armor, and it’s already one of the more damaging attacks in the game.

Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari was effectively giving Demolish / Vanquish a 28% damage boost in PvE while allowing it to ignore a significant chunk of player survivability in PvP, making the spec capable of finishing players off at higher health than intended.

That said, even without the damage type conversion, Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari remains quite valuable in both PvE and PvP because it effectively turns Madness / Balance into a burst spec, especially when you factor in its powerful offensive cooldowns.

In order to appreciate the aforementioned ability tree buff, we need to understand the static single-target rotation we will likely be returning to for the time being, and its many, albeit less severe, problems.

(Lightning Strike / Disturbance seems to deal roughly the same damage as Force Lightning now)

This static rotation exists because there’s no way to use all your strong abilities on cooldown without clipping your 18s DoTs. On the other hand, if you don’t want to clip those DoTs, you will sometimes have to delay your strong abilities. Either way results in a frustrating DPS loss that is almost avoidable as you’re only clipping the final tick of your DoTs or delaying abilities by 1-2 GCDs at a time.

Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari helps to fix this issue (for the most part), allowing it to act as a small sustained DPS increase. The ability tree buff lets you finish off your DoTs and reposition their applications so that they won’t need to be reapplied right as a strong ability is coming off cooldown.

In actual fights, Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari can offer an additional DPS increase when a boss becomes immune or an add needs to be focused down by allowing you to deal the DoT damage that would have not ticked until the boss was immune or the add was already defeated.

Unfortunately, the DPS gain on the dummy appears to be small and it’s super difficult to measure in boss fights. It effectively transforms the easiest rotation in the game into one of the hardest priority systems, so unless you really know what you’re doing, you’re gonna have a hard time benefitting from Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari at all, especially in a progression setting.

However, Swapping Cloud Mind and Critical Movement / Enhanced Force Speed offers an easier path to matching the sustained DPS potential by allowing you to buff whichever ability you want with Force Speed every single cycle instead of having to worry about the gradual desynchronization.

You’ll want to use Force Speed on Force Leech / Force Serenity in single-target situations and Death Field / Force in Balance if you can hit more than 1 enemy. Critical Movement / Enhanced Force Speed offers enough of a cooldown reduction that you only need to take Surging Speed / Metaphysical Alacrity if you opt to take Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari.

If you are taking Critical Movement / Enhanced Force Speed, Unnatural Vigor / Valorous Spirit is your best option most of the time. Cloud Mind is effectively unavailable to Madness / Balance now unless you’re really only taking spike damage, so depending on how often you were taking Cloud Mind before 7.3.1, you may see the switch to Unnatural Vigor / Valorous Spirit as a 10% DR nerf or something new that you sometimes have access to.

Given that the discipline still has easy access to so much survivability in PvP, I am a bit concerned that they’re basically able to create even more of a damage deficit with Lightning Barrier / Telekinetic Defense or Torturous Tactics / Staggering Stratagem. The former creates more total distance between you and your opponent’s health bars while being easier to use, but the latter can protect you far better against burst damage.

More broadly, swapping those two options constrains the discipline’s maximum damage mitigation, burst, and mobility to a tighter band, so you’ll have a more consistent experience facing off against a Madness Sorcerer or Balance Sage in PvP.

I should have the full Madness Sorcerer and Balance Sage class guides updated within the next couple of days, though if you’ve made it this far and you’re already familiar with the spec, you probably have a pretty good idea of what to do in 7.3.1.

What’s still wrong with Madness and Balance

Sadly, I fear that their survivability will remain too accessible and Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari is an insufficient solution to the rotational issues. Beyond just being super challenging to utilize, I don’t think it’s even possible to completely avoid delaying abilities (in lieu of clipping DoTs), only minimize it significantly when you aren’t disrupted.

The alternative, while less problematic than the dark days of bugged Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari, still has some significant issues.

Death Field / Force in Balance is the only DoT spread for Madness / Balance and its cooldown is 15s instead of 18s, forcing you to delay your best AoE ability if you want to respread to everything. In addition, it only has a 5m radius, so it’s really hard to consistently spread to everything like other specs can.

Force Storm / Forcequake doesn’t interact with the discipline at all, so it’s super awkward to incorporate in the middle of combat while other specs can effortlessly swap out their filler for the spammable AoE. Flame Sweep / Explosive Surge’s is the gold standard for spammable AoE. Broadsword should want all specs to have that degree of interchangeability.

Let’s not forget about the single-target rotation either. It still involves clipping DoTs too, which is not something that should be encouraged on a regular basis, and it’s not even the only source of clipping! The nonstandard channel time of Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw (it’s not a multiple of the GCD) means that you end up either having to clip the final channel before Demolish / Vanquish, or delay that ability by a fraction of a second, eventually leading to lost DPS.

It just feels so ridiculously clunky to have the cooldowns just not quite line up, but the misalignment is small enough that a priority system feels like overkill and adds a lot of complexity for little benefit.

Madness and Balance are also one of the best PvP specs at the moment thanks to their potent combination of burst, range, mobility, and self-healing. They arguably need to be taken down another notch, though that performance doesn’t translate as well to PvE.

The Challenges of Fixing Madness and Balance

Fixing Madness Sorcerer and Balance Sage without introducing some other problem(s) is quite challenging. It’s really easy to end up in a situation where the rotation feels too similar to that of another DoT spec or ends up with either too much or too little Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw usage.

The devs are already constrained by needing to provide good, but not too good, performance in both PvE and PvP. They need to hit all sorts of sustained, burst, AoE damage targets without offering too much survivability or damage output in one mode but not another.

Beyond that, the rotation has to be unique yet conventional; somewhat challenging to execute yet still intuitive, reliable, and consistent; and ultimately be fun and reminiscent of Star Wars. It’s hard to fix these problems without a bit of a rework.

Broadsword likely doesn’t want to alter the duration of the DoTs since other specs use them. Giving each DoT spec different DoT durations helps immensely with differentiating them, so I think it makes sense to just treat that as an anchor point and look elsewhere for changes. However, reducing their durations to 15s would be a quicker fix.

Since we can’t change the durations of DoTs, the only solution to the DoT spread problem is to either increase the cooldown of Death Field / Force in Balance to 18s or halve its cooldown. The former has less overall impact on the structure of the spec and it would be hard to nerf the damage and debuffs of Death Field / Force in Balance to account for the reduced cooldown in a way that still makes it a high priority in single-target situations.

I’d also like to see Death Field / Force in Balance get its radius reverted back to 8m as well as give Death Brand / Shifted Balance a mini-DoT spread to 3 targets within 5m so that you don’t have to completely sacrifice your AoE capabilities just to get a survivability boost, but it’s more of a nice-to-have than something that’s actually necessary.

Continuing on in the AoE department, it’s high time that Force Storm / Forcequake became the AoE version of Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw. They’re already both spammable fillers with 3s channels, so the only difference it will need to retain is to deal less single-target damage. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be able to build and/or benefit from all the other Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw procs like Wrath / Presence of Mind, Lightning Burns / Rippling Force, and Fulminating Current / Psychokinetic Torrent.

The next step is to make Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw a 3s channel again to resynchronize it with the GCD and Force Storm / Forcequake’s channel time, but we need to then mitigate the subsequent mobility and Wrath / Presence of Mind generation issues.

Given that Lightning Strike / Disturbance deals the same damage as Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw, we could make it so Lightning Strike / Disturbance still benefits from Wrath / Presence of Mind but doesn’t consume it (Demolish / Vanquish still would).

The duration of Wrath / Presence of Mind can be changed to 10s to tightly control the maximum mobility provided by Lightning Strike / Disturbance spam but we can, and should, also add an incentive to prioritize Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw when possible.

At the same time, the spec has easy access to a bit too much survivability, particularly through self-healing, combined with high mobility and range that put it in a pretty strong position in PvP, so that needs to be adjusted without compromising its well-balanced survivability in PvE.

We can fix both problems by unifying the new Vitiate’s Malice / Warden’s Vigor proc with Parasitism / Focused Insight into a new proc and making Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend heal 10% of your max health instead of an amount that can crit, we can create a survivability experience that’s more streamlined, easier to understand, and visceral while also offering opponents in PvP a period of vulnerability and clearer window to defeat the Madness Sorcerer / Balance Sage.

The idea is to have Force Leech / Force Serenity and Death Brand / Shifted Balance apply a debuff to targets they damage. When your 18s DoTs, Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw, or Force Storm / Forcequake deals damage to one of those targets, you get a stack of a buff that increases the percentage of max health that is healed by your next Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend.

The healing boost per stack is meant to be small and match the current healing dealt by relevant effects of Parasitism / Focused Insight and Vitiate’s Malice / Warden’s Vigor. The healing boosts to Death Field / Force in Balance and Force Leech / Force Serenity would be baked into the base ability for the sake of clarity.

Players would need to continue to hit a specific target to boost their survivability and wouldn’t be able to access all of that survivability constantly as they’d be bound by the cooldown on Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend. Furthermore, they can’t start up the process again until they get Force Leech / Force Serenity off on a good target.

Basically, there would be more strings attached to Madness / Balance’s survivability, but a good player could still get roughly identical performance to now. The lack of healing from Lightning Strike / Disturbance also diminishes its value when you don’t have to move.

My Proposed Changes in Patch Note Form

In order to think through these ideas, I found it helpful to come up with the actual patch notes for the changes I would like to see. If you’re interested in seeing more precise information in a form you’re familiar with, I recommend checking these out. Again, these are not official patch notes, just ones that I would like to see.

• Transmission / Force Reach now also increases the radius of Death Field / Force in Balance by 3m.
• The cooldown and damage output of Death Field / Force in Balance and the number of Deathmark / Force Suppression stacks applied per activation have been increased by 20% in order to synchronize it with the durations of Creeping Terror / Sever Force and Affliction / Weaken Mind, without affecting DPS. In addition, Death Field / Force in Balance now heals for 20% of the damage it deals baseline and no longer benefits from Parasitism / Focused Insight,
• The cooldown and damage output of Death Brand / Shifted Balance and the number of Deathmark / Force Suppression stacks applied per activation have been increased by 20% in order to synchronize it with the durations of Creeping Terror / Sever Force and Affliction / Weaken Mind, without affecting DPS. In addition, Death Brand / Shifted Balance now heals for 50% of the damage it deals baseline and no longer benefits from Parasitism / Focused Insight, but does deal damage to up to 3 targets within 5m and is capable of spreading DoTs to those targets.
  • Armchair Dev Note: Death Brand / Shifted Balance is now simply a more concentrated version of Death Field / Force in Balance, making it better for single-target burst, but worse for most AoE.
• Devour / Mind’s Eye is now part of the baseline effect of Deathmark / Force Suppression instead of being a separate passive.
• Wrath / Presence of Mind is no longer consumed by Lightning Strike / Disturbance and has been slightly reworked to have the following effects:
  • Dealing damage with Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw, Force Storm / Forcequake, or Volt Rush / Telekinetic Blitz builds a stack of Wrath / Presence of Mind. Each stack of Wrath / Presence of Mind increases the critical chance of your periodic effects by 3%, increases the damage dealt by Demolish / Vanquish and Lightning Strike / Disturbance by 7.5%, and reduces the Force cost of each of those abilities by 12.5%. Wrath / Presence of Mind can stack up to 4 times, last 10s (down from 15s), and can only be built once every 0.75s. At 4 stacks, Lightning Strike / Disturbance and Demolish / Vanquish activate instantly. Demolish / Vanquish consumes all 4 stacks when it is activated.
• The Madness / Telekinetic Balance discipline passive has been redesigned and now has the following effect:
  • Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw and Force Storm / Forcequake no longer suffer from ability activation pushback, deal 15% more damage, and restore 2% of your total Force each time you deal damage. In addition, Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw no longer has a cooldown.
  • Armchair Dev Note: The objectives of these changes are to make Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw and Force Storm / Forcequake interchangeable as your filler and synchronized with the GCD without significantly changing single-target DPS. This subsequently makes it harder to build Wrath / Presence of Mind and while enabling Lightning Strike / Disturbance to be a more viable and obvious alternative. The removal of Resurgence’s armor buff for Madness helps to slightly compensate for other survivability changes and simplify the spec’s survivability.
• Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend is now granted at level 18 and now restores 10% of your maximum health instead of healing for an amount that scales with so many of your stats.
  • Armchair Dev Note: DCDs really shouldn’t be linked so heavily to your stats. This improves the overall consistency and reliability of the DCD without affecting the average survivability it provides; helps new players further distinguish it from other heals; and enables devs to expand functionality on a per-discipline basis in a way that’s more comprehensible to the player.
• Vitiate’s Malice / Warden’s Vigor has been combined with Parasitism / Focused Insight and redesigned to have the following unified effect:
  • Force Leech / Force Serenity and Death Brand / Shifted Balance apply Parasitism / Focused Insight to targets they damage. Dealing damage with Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw, Force Storm / Forcequake, Creeping Terror / Sever Force, or Affliction / Weaken Mind builds a stack of Parasitic Leech / Focused Serenity on you. Each stack of Parasitic Leech / Focused Serenity increases the maximum health gained from your next activation of Unnatural Preservation / Force Mend by 0.25%. Parasitism / Focused Insight and Parasitic Leech / Focused Serenity last 30s. If Parasitic Leech / Focused Serenity expires by means other than being consumed by Unnatural Preservation, you are healed for 0.125% of your max health per stack of Parasitic Leech / Focused Serenity.
  • Armchair Dev Note: This redesign doesn’t affect the overall single-target sustained survivability of Madness / Balance, but makes it less accessible and not scale as strongly with the number of targets, expanding the periods of vulnerability in PvP without having a tangible impact in PvE. At the same time, it creates a stronger connection between the spec’s passive and active healing effects, enabling and requiring players to be more strategic in order to gain survivability. In other words, you can get very similar survivability compared to now, but you have to work a bit harder for it and get a more visceral payoff.
• Sustaining Corruption / One with the Force has been redesigned and now has the following effect:
  • Consuming a stack of Deathmark / Force Suppression builds a stack of Parasitic Leech / Focused Serenity. In addition, when you defeat a target affected by your Deathmark / Force Suppression, the cooldowns of Death Field / Force in Balance, Force Leech / Force Serenity, Demolish / Vanquish, Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity, and Recklessness / Force Potency are reduced by 1s for each remaining stack of Deathmark / Force Suppression.
  • Armchair Dev Note: The single-target HPS remains the same as before, but it now has proper AoE scaling while being integrated into the new survivability proc. Since the spec’s multi-target healing was reduced, I think it’s fine to re-offer it here. The intent is for this to be solo content-oriented, but I have no idea if the limits are insufficient to make it bad in group content, that would require testing.
• The cooldown and damage output of Death Field / Force in Balance and the number of Deathmark / Force Suppression stacks applied per activation have been increased by 20% in order to synchronize it with the durations of Creeping Terror / Sever Force and Affliction / Weaken Mind, without affecting DPS. In addition, Death Field / Force in Balance now heals for 25% of the damage it deals baseline instead of benefitting from Parasitism / Focused Insight.
• Creeping Terror / Sever Force no longer applies a root.
• Force Leech has been streamlined and now has the following description:
  • Steals life from an enemy, dealing [+30% compared to now] internal damage and healing you for 100% of the damage dealt. Dealing damage with Force Leech roots the target for 2s. Standard and weak enemies are knocked down instead. Costs 30 Force (down from 45), 12s cooldown.
  • Armchair Dev Note: The idea is to remove the Deathmark / Force Suppression and Affliction / Weaken Mind dependencies along with unnecessary contrivances given that the target of Force Leech / Force Serenity now plays a more important role in its usage. Migrating the root from Creeping Terror / Sever Force to Force Leech / Force Serenity nerfs the overall uptime of Madness / Balance’s roots by placing the effect on a high-priority ability with a longer cooldown and cast time. It also makes such a powerful ability feel more rightly visceral.
• Replaced Overloaded Strike / Destructive Wave with a new effect called Force Void / The Living Force that has the following effect:
  • Force Leech / Force Serenity hits up to 3 additional targets within 5m of the primary target.
  • Armchair Dev Note: Yes, this is strong, but so are the alternatives now. The range limitations and high priority of Force Leech will help keep it in check, but it’s easy to nerf the damage dealt to secondary targets or number of affected targets if it becomes too strong. In general, I lean towards buffing the DoT specs to be more in line with Hatred / Serenity rather than nerf them.
• The Eternal Torment / Center Point ability tree buff has been redesigned and now has the following effect:
  • Dealing damage with Creeping Terror / Sever Force has a 40% chance to trigger a Dark Echo / Resonant Pulse.
  • Armchair Dev Note: Dark Echo / Resonant Pulse is such a cool effect, it’s a missed opportunity to just have Creeping Terror / Sever Force tick on multiple targets instead of triggering that. Balance-wise, each Dark Echo / Resonant Pulse can hit more targets, but doesn’t hit as hard, so overall damage output won’t change much.
• Lightning Barrier / Telekinetic Defense has been reworked and now has the following effect:
  • Any damage absorbed by your own Static Barrier / Force Armor is reflected back at your attacker. Does not affect Static Barriers / Force Armors placed on or by allies.
  • Armchair Dev Note: Lightning Barrier / Telekinetic Defense is unnecessarily complicated and prone to abuse based on the amount of DR you have. At the same time, Static Barrier / Force Armor offers a small enough amount of protection that the amount of damage deficit created by this ability can be controlled tightly, and in a way that doesn’t influence healer capabilities.
• Lightning Burns / Rippling Force is now a combat style passive with the following effect:
  • Dealing damage with any Force Lightning / Force Telekinesis attack has a 25% chance to apply Lightning Burns / Rippling Force, which deals damage equal to 25% of the damage dealt by the initial hit. The chance to trigger Lightning Burns / Rippling Force is doubled while Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity is active.
  • Armchair Dev Note: Lightning Burns deserves a larger role. Enemies should get a little smoky after being zapped like Luke and Vader were on the Death Star II. A little bit of random visual distortion as the effect for Rippling Force would help to make the barrage of Force Telekinesis feel a bit more organic too. Both are better than the existing buggy animations that result from Forked Lightning / Telekinetic Momentum. Unifying similar effects makes things easier to learn for new players too.
• The Tempest of Rho tactical has been redesigned to have the following effect:
  • Lightning Burns / Rippling Force applied by Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw, Force Storm / Forcequake, and Lightning Strike / Disturbance deal 75% more damage, restore 2 Force, and are twice as likely to trigger.
  • Armchair Dev Note: The idea is to make Madness / Balance have a little more freedom with target swapping than it has currently. It’s frustrating to finish off your DoTs with Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari, only to learn that you need to spend another GCD or two DPSing where the only thing you can realistically do is spam Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw. It also feels more normal to just nice to think of Creeping Terror / Sever Force and Affliction / Weaken Mind as a pair of abilities rather than one being so much stronger than the other.
• The effects of the Mystic’s Ruthless Blade tactical have been merged into the Killing Field tactical and Mystic’s Ruthless Blade has been removed from the game.
  • Armchair Dev Note: Killing Field deserves a small single-target damage boost and Mystic’s Ruthless Blade is just a bit to weak next to Tempest of Rho. Both effects are already centered around Demolish Vanquish too.
• Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari now additionally makes your next activation of Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw apply both Affliction and Creeping Terror.
  • Armchair Dev Note: I am not sure if this will be necessary, testing is required to see how the longer cooldowns affect the rotation exactly, but the whole idea is another line of defense to prevent you from having to delay something as a result of finishing off your DoTs where you’re mainly deciding how to spend your filler GCDs.