Situational Awareness for the noobish Sorc

I realized I am referring a lot of sorcs to this site and most are not aware of the basics that are expected of them. So I am going to go through information about situational awareness. Every single patch the sorc is loosing ~10% damage. It is not possible to buttonmash and do good anymore. Previously I covered what spell rotation to cast on who. In this article I will go over situational basics.

Healers: You can’t give 100% without them. If you don’t have a good healer with you know that you will have to tone it down. Some things that can help are Absorb Vitality, Bathing in Blood, Tapping the Dark and definitely Dhar Wind .

If you have good healers and you are against a good team know that they will be focusing on your healers. You have to stop what is bothering them so they can heal you and those are : melee trains, healing debuffs, focus fire on you, line of sight on you.

1.Melee trains:

A. Tanks:

It is next to impossible to stop them by yourself, you can only slow them down. Good opposition tanks will always be on you or your healers and that is their job. And they will be healed like no tomorrow. They won’t go down unless focus fired but still you should not prioritize on them. I hear some sorcs attack the tanks only when the tank attacks them. No. Ignore damage on the tank as much as you can. The good thing is they can’t really hurt.

Here are the things you can do to slow them down:

- If the tank is on you, first move is to Detaunt and move on.

- If the tank is on you (you don’t have Detaunt up ) or your healers you can in priority order: Disarm, Knockback (T.Blasting), Root, Snare. The rest is left to your healer, they might be able to knockback the tank and they will most definitely use their detaunts. At which point the tank will not pose a threat.

- If it’s a dps specced tank or one that feels squishy the best thing to do is to focus fire. The ultimate focus fire is done with a healing debuff (ex: Squig Herder Rotten Arrow) + Magus Glean Magic (Spirit Debuff) + Zealot corp debuff and Zealot morale 1 Tzeench’s Talon which reduces all resists by 500 as well as a ton of armor.

B. Melee dps:

They have to be focus fired no matter what. They can be hurt and they can hurt you and your healers bad. They have #1 priority on things to kill list. Prioritize on the one that can do the most damage and is the most squishy.

When they are on you:

- Definitely use Disarm and apply your rotation (refer to Spell Rotations article). When there is more than one on you, apply your Disarm rotation on one, while simultaneously apply Detaunt on the other and if there is a third melee (tank or dps) rank3 Disable is of the next thing to do. Knockback and Root are secondary options after Disarm&Detaunt&Disable, they will give you 2 global cooldowns at most (While Disarms gives you 3+, Disable gives almost 5)

When they are on your healer:

-Disarm rotation. Simultaneously Disable a second melee dps if you morale is up. Again Knockback and Root are secondary options.

Ultimate Assist Defence Coordination:

The first tool an advanced sorc has to learn is ISAssist Tracker. You also have to have TargetRing so you can actually see that target your buddy dps or healer is calling for. 2 sorcs stopping the melee dps is much easier. Always call for who is being Disarmed and/or Disabled. Save you disables until every sorc’s Disarm is used. When melee train is on either of you or your healer know that sorc1 will be disarming the high priority target. Use assist and identify the target to be disarmed. Sorc2 should use Disarm on the 2^nd priority target Always use Disarms first, this should take care of 2 melee dps/tank for 3 GCD’s. For the 3^rd and and following use Disable, Knockback and Root as in order. Once all melee dps is CC’d both sorcs should return back to the high priority target and focus fire. Remember all Melee dps on your healers will be focus healed.

2. Healing Debuffs&Focus Fire:

Healing Debuffs. Killer. They have to be gone. As far as I know it is Shadow Warriors and Bw’s on order side who have them. Once melee train is taken care of your next target is their rdps or healers, whichever is more convenient. It could be argued which is important. They are both important. If you don’t kill the healers they can keep rezzing like a factory, but rezzing will stop them from healing their dps and your focus fire will succeed. If you don’t attack their rdps then you healers will have a hard time keeping you alive. So attack whichever is more convenient. Remember that it is easier to focus fire and take down the rdps because there is a chance that that their rdps might not be assist healed. If you attack a healer you will be trying to overcome the healer itself and another healer assisting them.

Ultimate Assist Offense Coordination:

What I recommend in the situation where the opposition is majorly healers and rdps are rotations that simultaneously cover both targets making use of Detaunt, Silence, Disarm (SW) and Disable

-If you’re assisting and either of you has Disable up, disable the healer immediately and focus fire.

-If you’re assisting and Silence is up, Silence the healer and focus fire. Remember Silence is an AOE attack, if you pick your target well then you might be able to disable that Bw or Engi also.

-If youre assisting without any CC up: use your best judgment, personally I go for the healer.

-If you are by yourself without an assist: use your best judgment, once you pick your target simultaneously Silence/Detaunt the other target and switch back during your rotation. For example you’re against a healer and a caster dps and you pick the healer: Wop (healer), Silence/Detaunt (the dps), and switch back to the healer to finish the rotation. This will prevent you or your healer from taking dmg while attacking your target. Bottom line is: Always use your Detaunt and Silence whenever possible. Your rotations should cover 2 targets at a time. You must at all times reduce the damage you are taking and the healing the enemy is recieving via what CC you have available. ‘Target Previous’ and ‘Target Next’ keybinds are very useful for this.

Other than that, never, ever attack different targets. All dps should focus on a single target unless one of the dps’ is an aoe spec. Sometimes it is hard for melee dps to assist you, but it is always possible for rdps to assist the melee dps. Always have an assist macro ready for your healers so when they call for help you can immediately respond.

3. Line of sight

Healers cannot heal you without LoS. Always watch for where you healer is. Marking the healer as your friendly target helps. Make sure you don’t go behind obstacles. This is very important.

This is all for now. I will be editing the article as I get recommendations or new thoughts.

Muradi

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• Tactics as of 1.2.1
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