I feel your pain OP. I have also experienced getting told to stop killing someone on Ilum "Because we're trading these points! Stoooop!!!" I of course responded that Ilum is a PvP zone, and I don't care if I get rewards for it or not, I'm going to PvP. My complaining friend remained unconvinced, and I ignored him. The only good news I can share is that last night we randomly formed a nice roaming PvP gang and hunted lots of Imperials. Eventually, the Imp side grouped up too, and came with something like twice our numbers, so then we went to play warzones I think my server balance must be a little better however, so ymmv. I have actually had two Rep v Rep Huttball matches now.

Agree with MBirkhofer. Also note that for Focus Sentinels, Zealous Leap ignores cover. Use that to recover from one of the Sniper knockbacks (and build your sweep at the same time to kill him, naturally). Stasis is your friend if you got knocked back and don't have any immediate closing options, and follow it up with some of your 10m ranged attacks while marching up again. I wish I had some strategy against operatives... my best plan is still run at the moment

I'm not sure if I can claim A or B....probably somewhere in the middle, but I love my Sentinel. L50, 42 valor, Focus. I have tried neither Watchman nor Combat. I have occasionally looked over enviously at the better interrupting ability Watchman gets, and have wondered if it might be better single target DPS in Flashpoints, but I can't really imagine living without Force Exhaustion and Zealous Leap in PvP.

1. Best case scenario is having something solid behind you, but it's not necessary. If you're on a catwalk, position yourself such that the knockback won't knock you off the catwalk (just backwards/forwards and far enough from traps). Even the root knockbacks don't bother me too much, because half the time my opponent stays outside of melee range but inside my 10m ranged attacks. 2. The center ramp doesn't have anything solid near it, true. The side ramps next to the middle section have nice boxes though. If you're on the high level catwalks and your positioning is excellent, you can use the little posts next to the flamepits as something solid. Otherwise just make sure you don't get knocked off.

Knockbacks can be relatively easily countered with good footwork. The knockback effect works in a line between you and your opponent, so make sure that whatever is behind you in that line is safe. If you can put your back against something solid, so much the better. Once you're comfortable with positioning, knockbacks turn into wasted GCDs for your opponent. I still get knocked off of platforms occasionally, but it's almost exclusively because I didn't notice a sorc/bounty hunter in the midst of a group, or I just leaped in and the knockback was already going off to get rid of someone else.

Just want to provide some counter feedback. I avoided this thread until I hit the final fight, and after my first go around ended with only having done maybe 15% hp worth of damage, I looked around briefly online. Number one tip that helped me: Ignore the clones. I believe the time I won (three tries) I used call on the force mid fight. Not so much for saberward as for the healing on T7. Could be wrong and I burnt it on the previous try. Anyways, I walked up to the emperor's throne, hit him with a zealous strike. He jumped to the middle of the room and spawned clones, I leaped to him. After that, I just poured on DPS until he died. T7 actually survived the entire fight that round, which surprised me since he evaporated the first go around. Class: Focus Sentinel, 2 pieces of Champion gear, rest around 50 modded or blue/purple T7 Gear: about 2/3s of the companion rewards from Corellia, some lower level parts (motors, one core, maybe around L20). Oh, and I saved my companion. I was very fortunate to group with a 50 knight on Corellia who warned me T7 was my only companion option on the final fight, so I intentionally chose his gear rewards on Corellia.

Depends a bit whether your sorc is DPS or healing specced. You can typically find out which it is by whether or not you are being perma-lightning'd. In either case, you want to interrupt a lot - just prioritize the interrupts differently. A damage sorc will hurt, interrupt those damage spells (especially storm or crushing darkness, but any lightning is bad for your health). A Healing sorc will be very difficult to break if you let them get off too many heals, make sure you don't waste your kicks interrupting damage spells in that case. Keep in mind that Force stasis will also interrupt, and whenever you get thrown away, make sure you use your jump to interrupt some skill when you come back. They do have that nifty Force Speed though, so if you don't need to use Leap, don't. Wait for them to run away, and then Leap on them and toss on your slow. Beyond that... not much. Manage your defensive abilities. Rebuke, Pacify, Saber Ward, Guarded by the Force, not necessarily in that order or all of them. A quick half-second Camo tossed in there can also buy you a little more time since they need to retarget. If you're Focus (due to cooldown bonus), make sure you use Stasis as soon as it's ready and there's an opportunity to interrupt - that's 3 seconds of damage free zone. Drop a cauterize or other dot on them before you do so for added oomph.

Certainly the clicking thing is an issue. I only ever have the opportunity to click on abilities in PvE where everything politely stands still while I kill it. I think I had a "rebind my keys party" twice while I leveled, and now I'm finally pretty happy. I have five spare buttons on my mouse, and I dedicated those to most of my defensive cooldowns and zen/transcendence. Speaking of, my first targets as a Sentinel after healers are those annoying imperial agents A couple times I've come up short attacking a sniper type, though I didn't realize force choke breaks cover... that's excellent news! Mostly though, any target I have my mind set on will die, provided I don't get primaried by tons of people and/or a healer comes into the mix (in which case I can try and interrupt them a few times and burst my previous target down, or just switch to the healer). Guarded by the Force really helps with getting swarmed too, it buys those few extra seconds to kill your target before you go down (or better yet, camo out of the area). Though I will admit I have noticed some of the tendency to primary "two lightsabers" and I try to keep my blades sheathed until I'm actually fighting, heh. Oh, and since I picked up such a nice tip from you, here's the two things I've noticed fighting agents. 1) Your friends are a liability if they are near you, because I'll use them as a jump point when you're in cover. Mostly noticeable when there's an elevation change between you and me. 2) I'm pretty sure Zealous Leap doesn't care about cover. It's only 10m range, sure, but I've used it to jump between levels in Huttball many a time when Force Leap was still on cooldown (after getting knocked off yet again hehe). Can typically counter this by staying further back from the edge.

You need to make the low level stuff and then reverse engineer it into blue/purples. There's a chart somewhere, but each green seems to have three blue options that you can get via REing (with different stat distribution), and then each blue has five purple options (with different additional stat). Underworld Trading missions also have a chance to drop orange schematics. What I'm curious about is reverse engineering into orange... if I find a nice looking piece of armor and I get the schematic for it in green/blue form, can I turn that into an orange schematic? Or are orange schematics purely drops? So far people in general have thought that reverse engineering into orange isn't possible...

I enjoy my Sentinel a lot (PvE and Warzones), and I just finished Act 1.