In my leveling experience I did use Kira more then T7 up until my 3rd pet and then used that pet and Kira up until the end of the storyline. T7 is a great character, he's a tank and you might prefer him to Kira. Remember, you do have to upgrade your companion gear otherwise they'll fall behind the curve. Remember that if a fight with Kira is getting you killed a lot just try it with T7, some fights just require a tank. Sentinel really is a bit of a late bloomer in terms of their abilities. I was in Focus all the way up to 30 which was when I found Watchman was finally really working well. Use your planet commendations to upgrade your companion gear if it's low level (if you're 22 try to keep the gear on everyone at 20 at the lowest)

use Pacify whenever it's off cooldown on PT's, keep them snared and interrupted. Guarded by the Force is pretty important for 1vX fights for Sentinels but I'm still learning the right time for it. If you're in Watchman you should be able to win most 1v1 fights except against Tanks which in my experience is a crap shoot... or against other players who are just more skilled.

tanks and hybrid classes have a much easier time getting the metals in wz then dps and straight heals. as a sentinel I can pretty much garuntee myself 4 metals (75k dmg 2.5k single hit, killing blow and 10 kills) but getting more then 7 is something that is extremely difficult to do. 10 was the best I ever managed in a full length 6 to 5 final score hut ball. I've done some things in wz's that it made no sense that I was left with so few metals while a tank ended up with twice as many. Yesterday I was in a void star where i got 7 metals, very good for me personally but when looking at the score board 40kills with 20 deathblows... 20 db and not worth a metal after just 1 db? Is there a metal for multiple solo kills? i've been in wz where i got 7 solo kills and only 1 metal. I know for me it's working on my playing (I've seen sentinels get 75k healing a few times and i've only managed it once, you guessed it a void star) Heals have it a bit better. \you can get 75k heals 300k heals, 2.5 crit 5k crit, defender, death blow and it's not insanely hard to get 75k dmg either if you keep dots ticking all the time in a voidstar. I saw a scoreboard the other day with a shadow getting 15 metals the highest i've seen and was just flabergasted. it's a big of a broken system, but they'd have to do something along the lines of having a metal system that is based on your class/role in the instance as well as for the general things

thanks for the input. I don't have enough T2 pve gear it seems to make it worth wild atm, i need to get in more False Emp runs to get the chest, Taral V takes 25mins to finish if you bypass enough of it (easy to do). AFter this morning I got 2 more champ pieces (omg something in a bag) and that leaves me with only 2 pieces left to obtain (implant and ear) and i'll be full champion. I feel as though if your pvp bonus is 10% it ought to be sufficient, again I don't have the proper pve gear to match effectively imo. but again thanks for the input.

6s kick is pretty much win for fighting elites and other players (especially healers)

I'm curious to hear what regular PVP player have to say about mixing your PvP and PvE gear to find a balance. I find that the primary stats and what not on the pvp gear to be lacking, but obviously you have to have that expertise. Is there a number (%X) to shoot for in your expertise then fill out with Columni/Rakata. For me, I don't have any Rakata gear (aside from the commendation ear) since our guild is too small to run Operations atm. I have a few pieces of Columni / Tionese. I am however rolling with almost all my Champion gear (minus ear 1 implant and bracers which of course currently are Cent). My thought is that if I can get %10 PvP bonus I should tart wearing PvE gear for better stats. Any of you pvp guys with more gear have an opinion? I do want to get in the Ops raids for that phat lewtz but it'll be a while as our guild gears up.

I'll use it when I pvp when my target is rooted/stunned and cannot just walk away from it. I make sure to pop my crit relic also so that when I hit that sucker it'll finish him. I'll also pop that **** when you can see someone not moving, just standing in 1 place like a noob. It give syou a moment to get all your focus builders back up, and it hits super hard. In PvE I'll use it on bosses and what not when I have my zen dots up and it packs a huge punch.

I found Watchman to be more viable in hardmodes but that Combat was fine. While it doesn't really seem like much healing the dot ticks from having 3 stacks + Cauterize + Zen can help healers manage their energy/force in boss fights from having to constantly be healing other people. With Force Camo giving %100 dmg reduction if you pull agro you can escape getting your party wiped and also help your healer keep his focus on healing your tank. Granted your tank should be able to hold agro, but sometimes **** goes down and you pull. I've also found that in situations where the Tank goes down for whatever reason in Watchman you can almost off tank for long enough to get your battle rez off. That and Merciless Slash hits like an effing truck all day every day. The real big thing though, as mentioned briefly, is 6s interrupt with Kick... that is money, big money! In fact now after playign Combat in PvP and PvE for a few days the only real reason why I went back to Watchman was the kick was just too good to pass up, even though I LOVED the 3s root on Crippling Throw (still that's a PvP talent if I ever saw one) Combat is fine for PvE if you use it in PvP and don't want to respec it's quite a bit different in terms of rotation, and I don't feel that it gives anywhere near the utility of Watchman for PvE (re: group heals, self heals) but there's no real need to spec out of it. Focus I can't really see being worth using for anything I've seen thus far, mostly because I tend to run FP with a Trooper who just drops his AoE down to clear adds and I find doing single target dps on the bosses to be more effective. just my thought at least.

battlemaster gear is the 3rd tier of PVP gear. It requires you to be Valor 60 to be able to equip. PvP Gear progressions from Centurian to Champion to Battlemaster. Cent and Champion have no requirements other then being lvl 50 and recieving the needed commendations through completing Daily missions (warzone and Ilum missions) and earning commendations in warzones. Once you reach Valor 60 you will be able to open Battlemaster bags. In the bags they will have Champion commendations or Battlemaster tokens. Battlemaster Gear take between 1 and 3 tokens to purchase gear OR subsequently 200 merc commendations and 200 wz commendations to buy the relics/trinkets. So basically you get to farm warzones all day every day till you're 60 and then have to grind warzones all day every day till you get enough tokens to buy the gear.

Merciless is a bit 'sticky' but compared to how it was a month ago, it's night and day, the class is actually playable now. I'm sure this will continue to improve as the dev's work out the kinks, give it time.

Shadow/Tank in tanking spec or Smuggler/Agent getting the jump on me out of stealth.

thanks for the replies thus far, playing around atm, I really really like the 3s root on the heal debuff, that is really handy, so far my favorite thing. 3k crits on bladestorm is pretty sweet too. I have to get used to not having the same mobility I had in watchman, i'm going to play combat this whole weekend, if I have to force myself to... wish me luck

I feel like Watchman is the better spec for PvE and PvP, I have no doubt about it. The survivability, off heals (while minimal still can help a lot) and constant preasure on healers with the 6s kick is really great. I've never tried Combat in PvE yet, I don't know if it's even remotely viable. In PvP I see the potential for the root on the heal debuff, the root on masterstrike, I just don't trust the fact that you have to be in form you are in... maybe a combat log would convince me it's worth it or not but I can't really tell what sort of dps it's doing and thus I cannot really tell if Blade Rush is worth anything and thus the entire tree. The majority of people here seem to be Watchman, then Focus and last Combat. Any combat vets willing to give me some pointers because I really want to get a good grasp on this build and how I should spec it, especially the 2ndary tree. any help is much appreciated.

in pvp I don't use master strike unless someone is getting force choked, otherwise it's too bugg. blade storm isn't something I'm using much either (watchman). I'll use it to stun a weak mob for pommel, but Doc tends to stun enough that I don't need it. I actually can't think of what I have it bound to at the moment Riposte, not in pvp.

5k for hitting one person for 5k, with sweep in focus that's entirely possible to do for a Sent, even easier for a Guardian.

pop your Expertise stim, hunt down a lowbee, you should be able to get it with an expert buff. It would be much easier to do so in Focus or Combat.

Sent PVP armor looks like Ironman and an ATM machine had a love child

running is for Inquisitors who have their bubble on cd. and they're good at it too.

I have a question about this. I was looking at my gear last night and noted that a lot of the cent/champ gear has accuracy. My acc is over %100 which to me seems like overcompensating when I wished I had more power. Question... if I remod my cent gear will I lose the expertise or is it built into the gear or passive on the mods

if they made the CC breaking abilities give a short immunity, or on a shorter cooldown then knockbacks wouldn't be nearly as noticable. The real problems are class mechanic taht knock you back and root or snare/stun you. If a Sorc specs for the root he can knock you off a ledge in HB and you're rooted and has several options to keep you off of him while dealing damage to you, once you get back on him he still has 2 or 3 options to evade you not to mention a bubble. Agents are similar, you can't even charge them in cover so you have to approach them from another path, they can just stun you the moment you get on them and load up their full rotation on you and it's gg. I'm curious if BW realizes how much CC they put in this game for range classes Vs the lack of anti-kiting they give the few melee classes in game. I feel as a Sentinel I have enough abilities to catch someone, or at least a logical amount but with Sorc/Sage and Ops/Smug having way to many options to keep you from touching them, especially in Huttball.

bookmarking

mods are all well and good but if you're fresh 50 going into a WZ against Ilum farmed battlemasters without any expertise in your gear, well good luck. You have to take your lumps (which I'm in the process of doing) to get that expertise rating up while you also farm the PvE gear. The longer you hold off on getting Centurian and Champion gear the longer the struggle. That 10-20% gap on dmg reduction/dishing/healing is massive.

fixed that for you

I was Focus up until 30 and I went Watchman after that and solo questing was pretty much a breeze. I did a lot of sidequests up till the 40's then I just pretty much did heroics from time to time, class quests, planet bonus and pvp. I want to go back and do side quests there just sin't room in the quest log

I run with Kira when questing until there's an Elite/storyline boss that I think I need heals for. Watchman can keep you going so that your breaks between pulls is relatively short. Plus as a cybertech doc has underworld bonus so I have him out on missions a lot :-D