I don't understand why you went through so much trouble to black out parts of the screen shot. I feel like I should have some top level security clearance to even be looking at this document....and then I have to eat your screenshot when I'm done with it.

Combat has quite a few preference points as mentioned in the Combat build discussion. Most end game combat players tend to put points into defensive roll and the more quest / daily oriented players are putting those points into Temperance. If you pvp, Stagger and Fleetfooted are good spots. Bottom line is those last 3 - 5 points are playstyle oriented.

Yeah I can see each ability taking the base damage and scaling by an unknown factor but power does still scale the base damage a a liner rate. However, we would need to figure out that hidden factor to determine if power would be better or worse for a given tree. For example if something like Cauterize has a very low factor (close to 1) then power becomes less important for Watchman or if something like Blade Rush as a larger factor (say 2 or even 3) then power becomes much more valuable for Combat. Not sure I would want to attempt these figures without a log and parser tho...heck at least a training dummy as the tooltips may not necessarily be accurate. God I hope this is not the case. It really dumbs down the class making accuracy a pointless stat. The Accuracy tool tip says Melee abilities. From what I can tell things like Merc Strike, Zealous Strike, and Precision Slash are all considered Melee and, it would seem, affected by accuracy.

I love you too...and I mean in THAT way. Glad I could help.

Unfortunately, given a no movement, tank and spank, it seems range do just as much, and sometimes more damage than all the melee classes. You throw in add transitions, knockbacks, immune phases where you have to dps something far away, or movement and the time on target for melee classes goes way down while range just turn slightly and continue to pew pew. After playing several other classes, the Sentinel does have the best survival cooldowns. Unfortunately, I think this was a reactive decision when they saw Sentinels just getting obliterated. Rather than addressing the underlying problem of not enough time on target or too high damage output from other classes, they just threw defensive cooldowns at us. Even then, you would have to have a melee class alive for almost twice as long to match the output of an equally played range class.

Yeah I saw this on a few of the other guides and have been meaning to add it. I'll do what I can to get it in the next big update

Yes as indicated in at least 4 replies now, you should not be using Blade Storm in a rotation UNLESS you are out of melee range and trying to maintain damage. Sure you can saunter back to the boss and hit it with your Slash or Merc Slash but in those 2 or 3 seconds, you have no only lost DPS but your timing is now off on your rotation cooldowns. I'll update the Watchman PvE overview to be more explicit about this since there seems to be quite a bit of confusion. If you haven't done Hard Modes or Ops yet, you're in for a crazy ride. The amount of movement, knockbacks, and general out-of-melee-range is staggeringly stupid. It is so bad in fact that current 16 man ops tend to bring 1 Melee tank, 1 Sentinel, 1 Guardian dps and the rest range. Any more melee than that and the operation is wasting damage. Bladestorm does not reset cauterize, I read over the Watchman PvE build section and didn't find a the reference you are talking about. However, with in the 16,000 or so words that this beast of a post has grown to, it is entirely possible that I misspoke. I'll see if I can find this misstatement and kill it. EDIT: Found it and fixed. Thanks for the catch.

This has been talked about several times, and you nailed the questing answer. With regard to end game, you will have a lot of extra focus. I find myself trying to spend focus as quickly as possible and while Blade Storm gains no benefit from the watchman tree, it still hits quite hard and allows you to do damage at range. Slash is a much better option if you are in melee range but if you have done any of the end game flash points or operations you know the Bioware people have some sick fetish with knocking melee out of melee range. So, while not an amazing ability for Watchman, don't drop it off your bar.

You're doing it wrong. You don't mez the player you're trying to kill expecting him to stay mez'd. You use it to take his buddy out of the fight or interrupt that heal he started casting. You can also use it to: Mez most of the other team and disarm the bomb in voidstar Mez the other team as you progress to the next door in voidstar Jump into a group of enemy players, murder a lowbie, mez everyone, camo, val call, Transcendence, escape Take on 2 players, kill 1 of them while the other is out of the fight Interrupt everyone trying to plant a bomb Interrupt everyone trying to cap a node in Alderaan Help your team cap a node by mezing those coming to hit your capper mez everyone chasing you while you carry the huttball mez everyone chasing someone else carrying the huttball Keep a healer completely locked down through Leap, Kick, Stasis, Awe Harass a lowbie by Mezing them for no reason Mez a player and kill his companion, just for fun Mez yourself for no reason Challenge someone to a dual, Mez them, Camo, Transcendence, run away, claim the dual bugged out and call them a cheater. Bind it to your Alt + F4 key and claim its a broken ability that crashes your game everytime you use it OR Post on the forums about how you used it on someone who had dots on them and that its a sub par ability

Read through this thread, should answer most of your questions. There is a quick link to the talent build section that will give you an answer to this specific question. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=47695#talentbuilds

You have to look at it more in terms of stat points vs % So yes, 6% is numerically higher than 3% but that 6% only affects 5 abilities, assuming burns are considered force. Something to think about, if burns are considered force, Marauders Bleeds would also have to be considered force. While accuracy allows you to affect all your abilities including the 5 main force abilities by allowing you to increase strength and power - better scaling dps. Now on the other side, if you take the 6% crit you could take less critical strike on your gear. Now it wouldn't be exactly 6% worth because you're only affecting 5 abilities out of 15 or so which mathematically speaking means you get 1/3 base points or 2% which is about 60 or so base points. There you made me do the math! So very roughly speaking, the 6% critical talent frees up about 60 points to spend elsewhere while the 3% accuracy talent frees up about 100 with all other things being equal.

Has anyone confirmed that burns are considered force? I know this question was raised a little while ago but unsure if it has been confirmed. Assuming they are, 6% more crit is defiantly an option. You did have to sacrifice 100% damage reduction on force camo, which I find amazingly useful for dodging insta-kill things, and you would still need to beef up accuracy on your gear. If not, you're only adding 6% crit to Storm and Sweep which I tend to use infrequently unless I have extra focus and everything else is on cooldown. I think they real math balance would be spending those 3 points on crit (our lowest priority and poorest scaling stat) vs spending them on Steadfast allowing us to stack more strength, power and surge. It is far to early for me to do that type of math but I suspect swapping out that 100ish accuracy points for 100 points of the other stats would be better dps vs a 6% increase crit on dots that have a 100% crit chance every 20 seconds or so.

There are definitely some preference points in there. I would hope that an encounter would not require a mere 30% AOE reduction to survive and, as of yet, have not run into one where I have said, "I wish I had 30% aoe reduction, we would have won that fight". Most of the time I'm saying "I wish we could put out just a bit more DPS to bring down the adds / boss faster" and that's where taking 3/3 Steadfast comes into play allowing me to allocate more strength, power, surge, and crit instead of accuracy. However, there are between 2 and 4 optional points in each of the builds and it really depends on preference. I hope people are reading the thought process behind the trees and adjusting them for their play style / groups and not simply copying them.

We don't need buffed damage, we don't need a longer Force Camo, we don't need to move faster, we don't need to try to imbalance the class for the sake of being able to curb stomp other players while wearing level 49 questing greens. That being said, there are two areas that we do need help in: 1) We need an active knockback resistance. By active I mean you have to activate an ability which grants you knock back immunity for a short time. This could be a new ability, I mean I still have the Alt+Shift+Ctrl+A key unbound...could put it there. Or attach it to an existing ability like Blade Ward or Force Camo. All classes should have this, not just us. 2) We, as well as all Melee, need to have the 100% root affect our resolve bar. As it stands now, Melee has 2x the amount of CC that can be used against us - stuns, mez, snares, and roots vs stuns and mez for ranged since they can still do damage in the latter two. Simply by knocking us back and rooting us in place they take us out of the fight. On the other side, Melee has nothing like this to use against range. There is nothing more infuriating than a Sorcerer stunning us with their stupid finger lightning, then whirlwind us, then knocking us back AND rooting us to the ground. A well played Sorc or Sniper can effectively remove melee from the fight for a good 18 seconds. In addition for PvP, make the CC break (Resolute) reset every time you die.

Anyway you might be able to post those guides on the forums? It seems like there could be a lot of good information in there but having to go to an external site is not something I'm terribly interested in doing. Not that you don't sound like a very trustworthy skeleton, but I can't tell you how many times people had horror stories about having their account stolen and all their gear + items sold off in the course of a few hours - which led to weeks of trying to piece everything back together.