holy crap! I am leveling an Sin right now, I'm bored of my Sentinel if I'm honest and really am loving that Deception tree... i'm getting used to how it works... man that's a crazy huge hit, i'm guessing that has to be maul with an exptert buff, or maybe that "inspiration" mirror? Against low geared cat? 8k is like holy crap

vanishing hack has been reported plenty of times. I've had it happen to me too man. Cheap ****.

combat ussually isn't focus starved depending on how you spec... you should be taking talents when you're playing that give you focus while you're being hit or build centering while taking dmg so that you can reduce your focus usage with Zen for example. Zealous strike has a really short cooldown in Combat past a certain level if you spec for the perk. I seem to always have 3 to 6 focus in Combat. Freakin' Smash spec is always high on the Focus because of zen and free force sweeps. Watchman gets lots of free Focus and shorter leap cooldowns and range to build up. summary; shouldn't be an issue. Just keep leveling

Sentinels are great for PvP but build wise, Watchman in PvP isn't the best, but probably until lvl 40 you wouldn't want to use the other trees. Up till lvl 20 though, use your Focus tree, since you have limited skills and most lower talents in Focus are perks for the low level skills you do currently have. Combat can be useful but really your dps will be horrible until you can get Percision slash and then really still to be honest won't be that great till 40 with Bladerush. Watchman is a good tree for PvE but higher level healers will just cancel out your burns in PvP if they know what's good for them. Google search for Watchman builds and you'll get loads of hits I'm sure.

Assasin or Shadow hybrid in PvP is overall probably the most useful class you can play. If you want to just do huge DPS numbers a Sentinel/Marauder or a Gunslinger/Sniper. If you want to heal, Operative or Scoundrel.

make Smash's AoE a little more tame... make it a targeted player takes the full smash but everyone around him takes %50 of that smash or the buff from the leap or singularity a debuff on a target not a buff to the warrior/knight. You still get viable burst, and good AoE but not 6k crits to 5 people.

I always have a lowbee toon on the PVP grind because I find it's really fun and more challenging in some ways, yet easier in others. Firstly, depending on your class it's harder to do your job when you don't have all your abilities. Typically until your 30s it's hard to have 'a build' or anything like that... you have a handful of abilities, enough to heal or dps or tank but really not many. Once you're in your 40's you essentially have the tools you do at 50 except for your top skill which in most cases isn't that special. the big difference is most people tend to just death match, more so then 50 pvp imo... people want to go out there on their lvl 40 rage jug and smash the level 15s to oblivion not caring about the ball or guarding nodes... which to me is really funny because I currently play a Scoundrel scrapper and reck anyone 1v1 and often 2v1 but I tend to hang out in the endzone for goals in huttball and we win a lot of then 6-0 which I find to be a lot of fun. I leveled my commando to 50 through class quest and PvP and a little bit of FPs and loved it in PvP. I leveled my Juggernaught through PvE and didn't have as much fun. Lowbee PVP is a lot of fun... but dealing with twinks can be just as annoying, in fact more so then having to run against a bunch of EWH players waiting for their rated team to come on.

If you want to PvP at the end game Watchman is less and less popular now until they make your burns uncleansable by healers. The majority of your damage is going to be from Cauterize and Overload saber and a healer can just cut off all that whole rotation with the click of one button that has a shorter cooldown then your entire rotation does to pull off. When they nerfed Watchman they made it unreliable in PvP and that's why you see every other Sentinel in Combat or Focus (i'd say 70% focus 20% Combat 10% Watchman these days). BUT if you're heart-set on Watchman it's not a difficult rotation . Pick your victim Force Leap when you're flying through the air, use Overload Sabre When you land, Zealous Strike (1 stack of OS) Cauterize (2stacks OS and Merciless Slash (SLash if MS is on cooldown) then pop Zen if you can... then typically Masterstrike or slash till you dump focus. You should have a 6s interupt, this is very important. Use rebuke when you're in a fight, use Saberward if you're in a close fight or against another OP class like a Powertech for example. Use your Force Cammo a lot (you can spec to have a lot of extra run speed and longer duration, this is your most useful cooldown). Try out Focus if you're lvl 40, watch some face smashing loldps ****. Combat is a lot of fun too, especially for huttball if you're playing to win and not deathmatching.

Watchman and Combat are the popular choices in PvE both have things they do that contribute to the group. Both have good sustained DPS, Watchman has better sustained DPS. Combat has more burst dmg for burn phases of boss encounters. If you have two Sentinels in your raiding groups it's probably a good idea to have one watchman and one combat for if you're on the final boss fight in EC you need to burn down the boss in phases very quickly, the quick single target burst dmg from Combat sentinels can really help you reach these goals. Then again if you don't have a combat sentinel it won't matter. They don't bring as much to the group in terms of utility that a Watchman would (the healing from zen which isn't much but it's at least a little bit, the shorter cooldowns on the interupts so on and so forth) but in a short window a Combat Sentinel will do insane amounts of burst. Guardians often will get relegated to their tanking role. I don't know a lot of Guardians that get to DPS in raids that often even though they're perfectly viable to do it.

interesting post by the OP, although using '5k' is not really that reliable... gear is everything in PvP... i think we all know that Smash/Sweep is the scramble in your eggs in PvP. Lately I've been running around on my Sentinel which I often switch around specs for laughs and just to not be another contributor to the whole "DERPSMASH" epidemic going on. The hardest I've ever hit anyone in PvP was with Masterstrike's last tick which I hit someone for 7k with... no one should be able to hit anyone regardless of gear gap or circumstances for that hard... I think that besides Derpsmash and lolertech DPS on all the classes is fine in PvP (ymmv)

i like the ttk in this game. GW2 the TTK is way to long. I played Warhammer online and I could kill a target in 2 or 3 global cooldowns in that game if I wanted to. I think our TTK is actually right where it should be. just my 2 cents

Snipers and DPS Powertechs are the only two classes I think twice about going after without any sort of support. Snipers are at least relatively easy to evade but Powertechs are much more difficult. I pop pacify on them force cammo and say 'cya later' if they target me. I tend to play Combat or Focus in PVP depending on how I feel when I log on, Combat is far easier to deal with Snipers then Focus since that whole spec is just a 1 trick pony (maybe 2 tricks) while Combat you can pacify from a longer rage when they knock you back and cammo out of their root. Getting in their face after they use their knockback basically is going to force them to use whatever other cd's to keep from eating your 3 shots from master strike, or at least that's what I tend tos ee these days... a lot of Snipers will take the first 2 hits and then flashbank on the 3rd strike (which tends to be that 5k+ tick + the bladestorm a split second later). It can't be said enough that LOS of a sniper is your best weapon, and then letting Gunslingers or Commando's deal with them while you chase around their healers. I avoid snipers because they' are such a good counter to Sentinels if especially that Right hand tree (can't remember the name, never played a sniper but did play a slinger)

thanks, I've been having back pains the last few months carrying pugs in general. This should help a lot. Thanks!!

the 4 piece bonus is pretty epic when you are focus spec especially, you're smashing people for7k and **** it's good for combat too, leap in rooted masterstrike will almost 1 shot someone unless they're pretty geared.

i made my scoundrel and have worked out his gear for a similar purpose, to annoy the crap out of twinks... I wouldn't say he's a twink because his gear isn't optimized in any way but I've got 400 cyber on him and he's in all purple mods and armorings for his level, and his gear is augmented... 14k hp in wz is pretty good without talented into the HP bonus. He's just well geared for his level. I bet easily I could spend a little time to make sure all his **** was purple and straight up pimped out at 49 and quit wz with 30s like some of these fools do... but why.. I like pvp at lvl 50 for the most part, even if you get rolled for the first week or two lolz it's fun to run into a twinked out Focus marauder and rip his face off before he has a chance to even think about popping 'guarded' because, well it's just about the funniest thing you can do in game.

Watchman in PvE is still great, it's not that fantastic in PvP anymore since they cut the self healing down substantially and you can still have your dots removed by healers. Most Sentinels in PvP are Focus or Combat probably making up 70% of pvp Sentinels. Guardians are great though and do fine with DPS and obviously have the option to be a tank should you feel the desire to fill that role. The Sentinel will push more DPS then a Guardian will in most cases if gear and skill is even, and it should. That's just the way I've experienced it at least.

Sentinel can be a bit of a pain in the *** till you're in your 30's and from that point on you should be dominating PvP and once you hit 40 you should be pretty much unstopable. If you want to do any of the 3 trees they're fine in low tier PvP because most healers don't cleanse dots of Watchman, all you need in watchman to really kick *** is Overload Sabre and start to get the dot talents to increase their dmg and your faster interupt Once you can take precision slash in combat, you can really start to hurt people and do some nice burst. Focus will be the weak of the 3 trees sub lvl 40, but once you get lvl 40, the Focus tree just blows people up, dealing insane dmg. All 3 trees once you can take the top lvl talent really get exponentially better (especially Focus and Watchman). A poorly played Focus sentinel is probably more effective then an average of most other classes in PvP because of the ease of rotation, mobility and AOE burst dmg.

Thanks for the posts. I had to take a bit of a break from game due to the holidays. Focus is fun, and too viable in PvP although my preference is Combat in all things Pvp and pve. I was doing 1900-2000 parces in my gear which is probably now out of date with TFB which i've not cleared on HM or done NiM EC. I was just curious if anyone was using it... I figured Guardians/Juggs were using it though. I see the validity of using it for clearing trash. I guess that if you have the Legacy perk to field respec you can just respec as the raid goes on for clearing trash or boss fights with mucho adds like Kephess. Our group was having trouble with some aspects early on with that fight but when I switched to Combat the burst increase on the Bombers and such really helped (that and we added a commando to the raid that gave us that nice AoE bump too). Looking forward to getting back into Raiding

Hey all. Back from a few months off, playing a lot of PvP lately and finally wanted to see what FOcus was about.. it's fun, for sure and I'm curious though if anyone raids in Focus at all or is it just what I fear it would be... a cc breaking-fest. I typically run Combat in PvE since our other Sents were watchman to offer more burst on burn phases... I don't plan to raid a whole lot but if it comes up I'd like to not have to constantly respec (please put duel spec in bw thanks). So anyway, anyone here raid HM Ops in Focus?

well you don't get Doc till your second act of your class story which is a drag because your first comp on your Marauder is Quinn. I used Kira a lot throughout the game. I found that Watchman provided more then enough healing to keep the two of you going while questing and make going through mobs a lot faster. Doc would come out when there were Elites or major plot point fights. In end game I use Doc a lot now since I don't really play Watchman anymore. But I was able to solo any of the daily 2man heroics with Kira and watchman heals, I'm sure not uncommon a feat... but with Doc I was able to solo the 4 man BH heroic in watchman... Doc is a beast, especially once you toss some rakata or better on him. I understand now that Watchman got nerfed though with the self healing (hahahahhahahahah) so I don't really know if it's possible to do heroics without Doc anymore... I should find out (I have been not playing since October).

you're better off using that gcd on blade rush then cauterize, it does so little damage and the self heal is so small that it really doesn't add up to anything at all. I use a similar PvE build, I take swelling winds just because a little more AoE never hurt anyone, and if you're doing Dayly Quests etc it's nice to clear through that stuff a tad bit faster. I also take 1pt root on Crippling Throw instead of that point in the self heal because I don't feel like respec every time I want to go PvP To the OP i'd say your strength is pretty low. You're going to want to invest some time and credits into Augmenting your gear with Str/End augments. If you augment every piece that's a big chunk of strength that you get that will pump your overall DPS up. You have a lot of accuracy too, I don't think you need much over 100% on your melee accuracy, but that's a point of contention for a lot of players, some say you don't need %100, others do. In Combat I think 100% is just fine, much higher then that you are wasting stats you could be putting on Power. Insight is useless in Combat, the only force abilities you're going to use is Sweep and Bladestorm, and Bladestorm should be auto crit if you are rotating right, so those extra points are a toss away and you should put them elsewhere. You're losing dmg probably because you're not using Precision Slash Blade Storm or your Zen spam at the right times. I don't think anything pumps out more dmg in a 5s span then a Combat Sentinel using Precision Slash with 3 bladerushes and a blade storm when he has Zen up, I've seen 3k parse spikes for myself and I know sents that have better gear then me (and better players, easily). If you're not using STR/Power Stims you might want to find a friendly Biochemist who can make you or sell you some, that will pump your stats up and if you get the blue lvl 48 ones they have a 2hr time limit and last through any wipes. Depending on your server you should be able to buy them on the GTN for a reasonable price. just my opinion.

absolutely true. If you have played 1 build forever you're not going to randomly switch over to another tree and equal your DPS put out, it takes some practice. I switch between Watchman and Combat a lot because I want to be able to keep myself up to spec on both trees and recently have been toying with Focus in PvP, it certain is pretty good, you don't see every other Rage Jug/Mar in smash spec by accident. I haven't tried it for PvE all it seems to me like it would be is clearing trash or adds which a Commando would do a lot better with more then just 1 AoE. But in PvE I know Watch and Combat are perfecty viable, we typically have 2 sents in our raids and I go combat because I know the build and the other is Watchman, we get a nice synergy there with the burst from Combat on say the Bombers in Kephess and on the Walker vs the nice high sustained DPS on the Watchman sent. We flip flop on our parser trading for top spot all raid long.

I'm in the same position as the OP with a Jug that I rolled at launch and played almost entirely PvP except for the story Content. My advantage is my main is a sent and geared so I knew all the FPs except for BP and Foundry. This includes clearing all the Op content except for all of HM TFB as a healer and a dps. Learning the fights is really vital, and none of them up to TFB or HM EC are terribly difficult to figure out. I started to tank FP on my Jug this weekend and low and behold the first two FP I got were BP and Foundry. To my surprise everyone was very nice and patient and helped me with skipping the trash and the boss mechanics. I tanked it all in Battle Master gear (minus offhand) and there was never an issue with getting close to dying or really losing agro if you guard your best DPS and keep your AoE going and taunt when needed. I had a blast tanking and am looking forward to continuing Just thought i'd ad that to help give the OP some confidence.

It looks pretty decent although I'd say that your crit % is low. You'd want to get it to be at around %30 unbuffed, or the low 30's with the crit buff from a smug/agent. If you're watchman/annilation I don't feel like having %100 accuracy is such a vital thing if you're combat or carnage then it's more important imo. If you have your Accuracy above 96% you're going to be fine, I think 98% is the sweet spot that ought to put you in a position of just never ever missing much of anything. Since in watchman you're dealing with your Burns for damage you're going to want to have a good amount of power, and if you spec properly with a proper spec you can have %50ish on your dots with full Juyo form and that's where your real damage is coming from. Looking at your spec i would probably spec a lot differently then you do mostly because as a watchman I want my interrupt to be on 6s, you don't need to take 1 pts on the force cammo talent unless you do a lot of pvp, that's really a pvp talent imo. Force cammo is awesome for threat drop but you don't want to be off dps for 5s because depending on the timing of you pulling threat you could lose your merciless buff time etc. Jedi Crusader is good for 1 pt in your talent tree in the combat window as it helps you gain focus for free as you ought to be using rebuke on cooldown in boss fights that have aoe, like every boss in every operation. I;d drop insight and take the cooldown reduction and dmg increase on masterstrike also.

wow no love for Crusader, i think it's a great talent. I pvp and pve and almost always take at least 1 point of JC (1 is enough, you don't really need 2). You're always taking damage one way or another except for some of the HM FP. But if you're in an Op you're taking dmg in the boss fights from slash AoE pretty much the whole fight. If you're watchman this is going to cut down on the amount of 'strike' you're going to need to build your focus back up when you get it low. JC + Combat will pretty much keep you at 4 Focus so that at any point you can use Zen and BR without having to use strike much at all.