I've had plenty of 0/0 Voidstar ties because of the ridiculous number of Imperial healers I play against.... side that defends 2nd wins them all, which has always been the Imperials in my case I would prefer a tie over what is essentially random (who attacks first).

Your only hope is to time your defensive CD's right if they are as good as you are... I've dueled a gunslinger in my guild that is damn good (he won a 1v1 tourney on my server), and I can beat him if I use all of my defensive CD's, but if anything is on CD I can only get him to ~10% health. Snipers are effectively your counter, but don't worry, they're not very popular and they're your only counter

A Sentinel with half of a brain can completely neuter a Mercenary. I generally come away from fights with Mercs at about 90% health. They're the easiest class in the game to shut down... period. The only way you are useful is if people ignore you.

I'm only champion geared and as a Watchman I will hit 450k-500k in full-length Voidstars. I always cheese and cap west quickly on Alderaan and then defend it so never much damage there, Huttball is hit or miss depending on the # of Sorcs that want to chain-knockback me I don't think having a "pocket healer" is necessary to doing insane damage as a Sentinel due to defensive abilities, but having at least one healer on your team sure helps. I often have 0 healers on my team in wz's and do better than most as I can escape to health power-ups much easier. I don't think 5k is feasible at this point unless you are full-battlemaster fighting 0-expertise 50 and get really lucky, but I can get to 4.5k with power adrenal/power relic/inspiration + merc slash crit

So you want a 2nd invulnerability bubble? To go with our 4 second stealth invulnerability? Sounds balanced.

We did Karagga with 2 Sentinels and no one having more than 3/5 PvE set. We are easy-mode for our healers because we can survive all kinds of crazy happenings in addition to never having to worry about running out of resources for our DPS.

I'm curious about something. To the people that think this class is weak in a group setting: Do you have problems with DPS Mercenaries? How do you feel you do against enemy healers? How do you fare against Sorcerors?

I love the complexity of this class and would be sorely disappointed if the "general public" gets its way. This isn't even about damage numbers in a warzone. There is exactly 1 class in this game that gives a [Watchman] Sentinel problems (Sniper), and in every other case the Sentinel has the advantage (Assassin, Powertech, Juggernaut, Operative), or a huge advantage (Mercenary and Sorceror). By the way, those two classes are the most played and most complained about classes the Empire has right now... so... playing a Sentinel just feels like easy-mode right now. That's not even getting into how perfectly suited Sentinels are to shutting down healers. Maybe if the Combat tree turned into a truly different playstyle that was easier and worked well in PvP it would be OK, but if general Sentinel abilities were made easier... oh geez, nerfs would come down hard about two months later. I'm confident that, given time, more people will have success with this class. Even "average" players. Do they have the patience to stick with it? I don't know. Fundamentally changing this class will kill its appeal.

As a Watchman Sentinel the ONLY class/spec that I have problems with is my mirror, the Annihilation Marauder. I have never ever ever lost 1v1 against any other spec/class, even when they have the gear advantage. We are just impossible to kill 1v1 if skill and gear are equal. Annihilation Marauders are the only class my healer friends complain about. In WZ's I stick to enemy healers like glue, even if they are really good Sorc's. Operative healers are completely helpless, and Merc healers must turtle to survive as the OP stated. I generally am able to stay up indefinitely with intermittent heals vs. a healer being healed by a healer being guarded by a tank while a DPS is on me. It is all kinds of fun.

Bring a Sentinel or Marauder. Done.

This guy gets it. He just forgot to mention the horribly overpowered +80% Transcendence in Watchman that you simply must enjoy before they nerf it.

Hey Araxus, you were in one of the videos Dox posted from Ilum from Thursday, and you looked pretty darn useful jumping on people, drawing fire, going invulnerable and lol'ing as they stood in our AoE's trying feebly to kill you. My basic Ilum rotation is Jump -> smack, smack, smack -> get focused -> pop GbtF as I get low -> stealth and transcend out back to my group to get healed... rinse and repeat. It works wonders as a disruption to the enemy formation and you can frustrate the healers while you're there, drop an awe if you can jump to their rear lines, generally you will cause a little bit of panic if someone else jumps in with you or unstealths as you jump in. It's good fun.

More survivability. That's kind of a good thing in PvP. Force Fade + Focused Pursuit are so awesome; when you chain GbtF + Force Camo + Transcendance, you are invulnerable for 9 seconds while moving at 180% movement speed... lol. I don't think my guild would let me spec out of Focused Pursuit now that they've gotten used to it

I think it's a different way of saying QQ MOAR. That's my best guess.

DPS is not dependent on a resource like Force or Energy that can run out.