The relic does proc on self-heals (e.g. Shadow tank procs from Combat Technique and Harnessed Shadows), so it would almost certainly sometimes heal you as a sentinel when you heal yourself. For my shadow tank, it contributes ~15% of my self-healing, or about 3% of my total incoming healing in an operation, which isn't bad. But it seems like a very poor choice for a sentinel...

A set rotation would be extremely complex because the cooldowns of abilities are all different. Also, Ataru attacks proc at partially random times, leading to variable resource gains and buffs.

There is a third method, which we use successfully, which is for the tank to get away from the group if you get a second Double Destruction right as you are passing a 20% threshold. You stay in line with the DPS who are eating the debuff, and don't go so far that you plant the spike where the shield + adds might be. Angle a bit toward the back of Stormcaller as you're running away. We almost never have the issue on the 80% DD, it is usually at 40% or 60%.

The armor debuff doesn't stack with the same debuff from gunslingers or gunnery commandos, so that is kind of redundant if you have one of those specs. You shouldn't really compare with sentinels (or gunslingers) though. Apart from sentinel and gunslinger, who are given a bit of extra utility due to having no other roles available, the utility of all the other dps specs is pretty much the same.

Yes you are right, actually looking at the trees, you can't get Steadfast without having 5 points in the first tier of Combat anyway (3 Dual Wield Mastery, 2 Defensive Forms), so if the OP is asking the question it sounds like he has 2 points in Jedi Crusader, which seems debateable.

It may take a little practice to do it smoothly, but you target, taunt, force speed, run, and hop up the sloping side of the tank you are switching to, then move in front of him. Trying to jump up the front at the angle you are coming from seems more error-prone. I also recommend taunting before you hit force speed and start running, because trying to steer and jump accurately while moving at high speed AND hitting another ability is making it harder than it needs to be. First get aggro, then get to where you need to be quickly. Force Leap (Guardian) and Storm (Vanguard) each take 1 GCD (1.5 seconds). I find I get there before Force Speed ends (2 seconds), so it doesn't take much longer, just a bit more hand/eye coordination. I also set Firebrand as my focus target, so I can always see the Incinerate Armor cast.

I can't think of many Level 50 boss fights with enrage timers shorter than 5 minutes, or longer than 10 minutes, and I can rebuild 30 stacks in well under a minute, so it is pretty much two Inspirations per fight regardless. Using Inspiration at the very beginning of a fight is sometimes a good idea, and sometimes not. If I want to use Inspiration at the beginning, I will still build 30 stacks first though because I want to use Zen together with it. Just like Inspiration, not getting maximum benefit from Valorous Call (by keeping it on cooldown) is wasting time and potential DPS.

Valorous Call is not required for Inspiration...

This is somewhat different from what I've found most effective in actual pve combat, and in simulation. In your suggested rotation, you don't use Blade Rush until the fourth attack. This is a mistake. You always, always want the buff from Blade Rush that increases Ataru proc chance. And you want to get Combat Trance up for sure as quickly as possible. Also, I think it should go without saying that Blade Storm is used on cooldown, any time the Combat Trance buff is up. If it is not up, then you Blade Rush first. Delaying abilities to overlap them with Precise Strike is a mistake, I think, because it means you will use your best abilities less often. Here's how I would open on something that I can't use Opportune Strike or Pommel Strike on: Valorous Call -> Zen -> Rebuke -> Force Leap -> Blade Rush -> Zealous Strike -> Precise Strike -> Blade Storm -> Master Strike -> Blade Rush spam until Zen is used up and you are out of focus, at which point Zealous will be coming off cooldown. In many cases you will also need to throw Force Camo in there, because unless the tank is very good he won't be able to keep up with you. At this point, you start watching buffs to make sure Blade Rush and Combat Trance are always up, and if they are, generally use your core abilities as they come off cooldown (Zealous, Precise, Blade Storm, Master Strike, in that priority order) while filling with Blade Rush at least every 4th GCD, or any time either buff is missing. The only time I would delay using Precise Strike is when Master Strike is on cooldown and I will have to use Strike or Zealous Strike while the buff is up. Instead, use the focus builder first. The only time I would delay using Blade Storm is if the Combat Trance buff is missing (in which case use Blade Rush first). The importance of maintaining the Ataru buff from Blade Rush cannot be over-stated.

I'll reply by PM to avoid taking the thread off on a tangent.

We have never had trash respawns since we started keeping people inside after wipes, in dozens of wipes (learning Kephess HM...) during prime-time when there are multiple instances. That's regardless of whether their bodies are visible or not. I think the visibility problem is a seperate issue. If it is not "failsafe", it reduces the frequency of the problem to unnoticeable levels.

I think you may have overlooked an important mechanic. When Kephess casts Breath of the Masters, he also puts a debuff on the target called "Touch of the Masters". If that tank takes *any* damage before the debuff wears off (from Kephess, who has a very long-ranged cleave - called Savage Arcing Slash, oddly enough - or a tick from one of the purple circles), they are one-shot. It is not enough to taunt, Kephess has to be faced away from the tank who is dropping circles so they do not take damage from his cleave.

Blade Storm is not burn damage.

The average damage each ability does based on your stats, including crits, DR, etc, is just a big formula, and the formula says 300+ Critical Rating is not optimal. Only about a 1% worse than optimal, but not optimal.

Hammer Shot actually heals you three times for 0.334 of your Tech healing bonus, or 1.002 times total. Any bonuses to healing, including CSC itself and the 1% legacy bonus to incoming healing (if applicable), will also be applied. Your Tech bonus healing and value displayed when you heal are also rounded. Basically it sounds right.

Yeah, I posted some ideas in another thread, and one of them was a dive/roll gap closer that goes a fixed distance (15-20 m?) in the direction you are facing or moving (similar to, dare I say it, the roll ability that Monks are getting in the next WoW expansion, and also somewhat similar to a roll into cover, except it's not into cover location, but a fixed distance - this way, it would have functionality similar to Force Leap, but be mechanically different and appropriate in flavor for Scoundrels). It could, perhaps, require/consume TUH and unlock Shoot First for a very brief period of time (so TUH could be regained if you manage to roll behind something and blast it immediately, say within 1-2 GCDs).

What is your basis for claiming this? The math says otherwise. The difference in expected damage between, say, 175 and 350 Critical Rating (assuming the difference goes into Power, and you have augmented Rakata/BH/Campaign Strength levels) is pretty small (~1%), but there is no doubt that 350 Critical Rating is above optimal. The expected damage of every ability, given your stats, is just a formula. The formula for every ability is known, and the formula for every ability says that to maximize the expected damage you want more considerably more Power than Critical Rating in either Sentinel spec.

I am pretty sure less than half of Watchman damage normally comes from burns, and both are applied by melee attacks that can be avoided if you have insufficient accuracy. Unless your gear is good enough to have +10% Accuracy without sacrificing your critical multiplier, Steadfast is a better investment.

I think your recommended Critical Rating of 350 is too high. I have calculated exact stat weights for every ability, and in BH/Campaign rating gear, the optimum value of Critical Rating appears to be more like 150-175 (this is with about 1950 Strength and 800 Power, unbuffed). Both Combat and Watchman have talents that cause key abilities to proc autocrits; when significant amounts of the spec's damage comes from auto-crit procs, that tends to favor Power over Critical Rating. If I were to follow your suggestion and increase my Critical Rating by 175-200 points by trading Power, my average damage would go down by almost 1%.

The internal name for the Sage advanced class in the game client files is "Jedi_Wizard"... At one point during beta, the Balance spec was described by Georg Zoeller on the public forums as a melee/ranged hybrid, but that concept seems to have been quietly buried shortly afterward, despite very strong feedback from beta testers that they wanted such an option. And just to make sure Sages never use their lightsabers, they even took away melee bonus damage from Willpower for Sages... Personally, I was hoping for something along the lines of a LotRO lore-master, where in groups you would probably never melee, but solo you would have a 2-3 relatively useful and cool melee moves that would make the saber more than an ornament.

I just tested today. The group finder sometimes puts my healing Scoundrel into the wrong role as DPS. I have field-respec and put together a partial set of DPS gear (to get the DPS 2-piece bonus and lose some Alacrity) so I can switch to Scrapper and be somewhat useful when this happens. I was parsing a pretty steady 1300 today on the training dummy in my "Group Finder screwed-up" build, with no stim, no Accuracy Rating, and healing implants/scattergun with Alacrity. Also, since I switched to healing a couple months ago, I am not exactly an expert at the Scrapper rotation anymore. I have 2095 Cunning unbuffed, 577 Power, 192 Critical Rating and 375 Surge with this set-up. My DPS isn't going to break any records, but I think it would be perfectly respectable for EV/KP hard-mode, and maybe adequate for Denova story mode. I had to do Lost Island HM as DPS with it yesterday, and managed fine. If your numbers are from actual boss fights rather than the training dummy, they sound reasonable, but not great, considering your gear is probably somewhat more DPS-appropriate than mine, but there are a lot of mechanics that reduce your time on target compared to the ideal situation on the training dummy.

The gunslinger off-hand and scoundrel off-hand are stat sticks, but not comparable mechanically. There is no weapon-based attack which actually uses the shotgun, and the damage range shown on scatterguns is cosmetic (although it is correlated with the Tech Power stat of the item, which is not cosmetic). The attacks (all two of them) where the animation shows the shotgun attacking are really tech attacks similar to Blaster Whip, which do not use any weapon's damage value. Gunslingers are true dual-wield, and their off-hand weapon is actually used in attacks. But off-hand attacks add much less than 30% to their damage, because they do not benefit from bonus damage, have much lower accuracy, and do not have any base damage. It is more like 5-10%.

Whether damage is mitigated by armor does not depend on the attack type (Ranged/White or Tech/Yellow), but the damage type. Kinetic and Energy damage is reduced by armor. Internal and Elemental damage is not. Both Grav Round and Charged Bolts damage is mitigated by armor (but of course Grav Round reduces the target's armor).

Yes, it is really annoying for Scoundrels too. There are many places in flashpoints where people in plain view can walk past a mob, but being in stealth at the same distance aggros it. It not only makes no sense, but is a gratuitous slap in the face of the stealth classes. The only real workaround I can see is to go into the fight visible and immediately use Force Cloak (Shadow) or Disappearing Act (Scoundrel) after combat starts (and hope you aren't immediate knocked out of stealth by AoE or the knockback that about 90% of the mobs in the game seem to spam).

Rapid Recovery is just about as bad as Expertise. It can be shown that for a steady rate of attacks, each of which has a certain probability to proc some effect with an internal cooldown, the average rate of procs should be: R = pr / (1 + prT), where r = rate of proc chances (rate of outgoing attacks, in the case of Combat Technique) p = probability of a proc per chance T = internal cooldown It is convenient to measure time in units of GCDs, then r is the average number of outgoing attacks per GCD. For our abilities, this is between 1 and 3, and 2/GCD is a pretty safe guess for the average rate. The internal cooldown T is 3 GCDs. The proc chance is 0.50 without Rapid Recovery, and 0.65 with Rapid Recovery. So the average rate of procs without the skill is: R = 0.5 * 2/(1 + 0.5*2*3) = 0.25 procs/GCD The average rate of procs with the skill is: R = 0.65 * 2/(1 + 0.65*2*3) = 0.2653 procs/GCD A 2-point investment therefore gains you 0.0153 procs/GCD, or about 0.01 procs per second (i.e. 1 additional proc every 100 seconds, on average). This is a 6% increase in the proc rate, which means it is about +2 DPS and +3 HPS on my geared Level 50 Shadow Tank for 2 skill points. No thanks. With around 2000 Endurance, a 2 point investment in Mental Fortitude buys you +40 Endurance, or +400 hit points and +32 extra heals every time you use Telekinetic Throw with Harnessed Shadows and +40 extra heals every time you use Battle Readiness with Impact Control. Depending on how often you use TKT, the HPS increase is only a little less than Rapid Recovery, plus you get the extra hit points.