So I agree with the "fine line" approach as far as trying to balance having crit and power. I am still trying to decide where that fine line is. With the DR on surge and crit, I am wondering if anyone has suggestions as to where those two stats should sit before losing there effectiveness due to DR. I have read that surge around 300 and a crit of about 25% seems to be the "go to" answer. Also, when talking about crit % are we talking about the melee crit or the focus crit? Because if DoTs tick as focus dmg then it would lead me to believe that we are referring to focus crit (which can be easier to get to 25% with the insight ability)

So I have a few questions on stats and figured who better to help answer them than my lovely fellow sents. So let's just ignore discussion of strength since I feel that should be our most obvious primary stat to stack. The question I am wondering is whether to stack crit or power. I play the watchmen spec (love me some dots), so focusing on that spec mostly. My first thought was to stack crit since (including our dots) we are nearly constantly ticking dmg. But I read in a few places on these forums that ability "insight" under the focus tree will work for OS and Cauterize. This leads me to believe that our DoT dmg gets its critical chance from our "force crit %" instead of our "melee crit %" (anyone verify that?). Also, if specced for it, a watchman sent can get their zen off fairly regularly. With these two thoughts in mind i am now wondering if power > crit. I guess my thoughts on this subject is that, if DoTs tick as force dmg and are affected by force crit %, then power is better since it makes our actually melee attacks hit harder. And we can have pretty decent force crit % when using insight ability and a few armor mods. It would be great to hear my fellow sents thoughts/opinions on this topic: power > crit or crit > power. What are you stacking? Is it working? Is this for pvp or pve? What spec are you?

^^ I would like to hear ppls thoughts on this as well

So here are my 2 cents worth of tips. These tips are more for beginners (i.e. if you read and say "duh" then not for you ) First: I have sort of a pack-rat mentality in that I like to save things. I would save medpacks, stims, credits, even long CD abilities. My thought was that "I shouldn't use this now cause i might need it later." I realized that this mentality is not conducive to the MMO genre. Ok so basically my tip for newer players is to use those defensive abilities with long CD often and always have a stim "on" More specifically in PvP: I found that using my defensive abilities in a more proactive way rather than a reactive way enhanced my longevity enormously. Instead of saying "crap I'm taking a lot of dmg now" and then using my defensive abilities. I now think " ok probably gonna take some hits, use a 'weaker' defensive ability and then play it by ear" I am sure for many long time MMO players this seems obvious or almost intuitive. But I am fairly new to MMOs and I am sure there are many sents that are new as well so I wanted to throw out a tip that I learned for them. Philosophical opinion: the more we help each other as sents and less flaming we do, the better the class and community becomes

Hit lvl 38 the other day. I have loved the sentinel so far, but recently I have felt the sentinel come into his own. For anyone who is leveling a sentinel...just wait it gets epic at the latter lvls. Can't wait to see what 50 has in store

I usually focus on healers cause, in my experience, if you take out the healers the rest of the group starts to fall apart. At the very least the healers begin healing themselves instead of others which still helps out my team. The other tactic I have began using is just sticking to a healer on my team and fending off anyone who attempts to kill him/her. We kind of build a symbiotic relationship as I keep him alive and he keeps me alive. I find this works great in the defensive of turrets or doors I'm sure this might be common knowledge for many of you, just adding my 2 cents

For you to state that you are quitting because your team is not "skilled" must mean that you are assuming you are extremely skilled at the game. If you are such a masterful MMO player why not take the time to teach others "how to play" the wz. Help these so called lesser skilled players out, this would only benefit you as it would begin to decrease the amount of "unskilled" players you end up getting paired with. To be honest all I am seeing when I read your posts are " I'm not winning and it's ALL my teams fault, I have nothing to do with losing bc I am so talented that I couldn't possibly be in any way linked to my teams losing.". Ever stop to think that your team is losing cause people with your mentality keep joining and quitting? If you're quitting cause your team is losing and you find them not on par with your epic skill level of ultimate epicness, why don't you just roll with a premade?? People who quite to find a better team are both selfish and whiners. I do hope you unsub as I get tired of you quitting when the wz isn't going exactly as planned. The less people like you in the game the better in my opinion. Ok done ranting

To be honest, preferring OWPvP to WZs is just that, a matter of preference. I don't think anyone can definitively say one is better than the other. On that note, I prefer open world PvP far more. Especially when games implement a reason for it, such as turf wars and the like. Having a base and defending is much more satisfying to me than WZs. I think for me the reason is that in OWPvP after you successfully defend a base you get to keep it and say "this is ours, go ahead, try and take it.". However, OWPvP in this game seems very lackluster with not much to call your own and defend or take over. So I suppose in this game specifically I would choose WZs at the moment. But in other games with a more expansive open world mechanics I would prefer OWPvP

^ This But bump to the OP. Well thought out and well written:)

Love the comments stating "you can get gear if you really work for it for xx amount of days". And " if you dont have BM gear yet or soon then you're lazy" or some such iteration of those comments. I guess my thought was that games are something I play when I'm feeling lazy. Didn't know that to enjoy a competitive PvP enviornment I had to work hard for it. Thought the competitive environment was something built into and part of a game, not something you have to work towards

You know it's sorta silly, if the PvP in a game was enjoyable you wouldn't need an "incentive to keep playing". Having an incentive such as the gear system that swtor relies so heavily on to keep us playing just highlights how terrible the PvP mechanics are. The good PvP mechanics=good incentive to keep skilled players coming back for more Bad PvP mechanics= build in an incentive since there is not one innately inherent

My question (and this is an honest question, not a backhanded insult) is: why do you need the gear progression in PvP to increase your stats? As opposed to a gear progression that is different in terms of asthetics/visual appearance (or something else, this was just one example) If the answer is: because i want to be some how recognized for my characters progression. I again ask why does that progression have to be an increase in stats? I understand that a lot (not all of course) of MMO players like to feel as though they are working towards a goal and enjoy being rewarded for reaching said goal. But again why do players want that reward to be a stat boost? I suppose you could answer this question with a remark such as: well if no stat progression on gear, then why even have character levels and more abilities per level? Isn't that the same as gaining stats with better PvP gear? (which is responding to my question with a question, and not really an answer) My thought is that it's different. Yes a higher level character should be more powerful, but shouldn't characters of equal level have equality in how well they perform their roles in PvP?

I mostly play the game solo. I occasionally group with other players to run FP but not very often. To be honest the main reason I don't group more often is usually because of intimidation of other players. I don't mean to say that other players scare me. What I mean is that a majority (not always though and I do keep that in mind) of the time the other players I am with are very unforgiving of others. Many things seem to anger MMO players that seem illogical to me. Examples are things such as when I have not memorized the FP map yet or I don't know that exact mechanics of bosses. These two things are just specific examples I picked out to highlight the larger point. This unforgiving mentality of other MMO gamers just seems odd to me. I mean to say that at one point in their gaming life weren't they inexperienced? Didn't they once not know the maps or mechanics? Didn't they once have crap gear? Another example is endgame material. A lot of players get mad if your gear is subpar or require you to have xxxx gear to group with them. Don't you need to run those same FP/OP/HM to get that gear? And if so, weren't they once undergeared as well. Grouping with other players for endgame stuff is difficult because they want you to already have the gear/knowledge. Gear/knowledge is difficult to obtain if you can't run endgame material because ppl don't want to group with you if you dont already have it (that was confusing just typing it ) However, not all ppl I have grouped with have this mentality, it is just those that do seem to stick out more in my mind.

The "carrot on the stick" is whatever the developers decide to make it. Take a look at the game guild wars. They didn't have a true incentive (as most MMOs would define it) to play PvP. Gear in that game carried little weight and the battles were truly fought, won, or lost based only on skill. In fact all the "end game" gear had the same stats and only held different aesthetic looks to them. To me that game has had one of the best PvP experiences and they did it with out relying on how pwnatotamus your gear was. Now I also recognize that a lot of ppl will not place GW into the "true" MMO format. I am also not stating that I wish the PvP mechanics in this game were the exact same as GW (bc if I was then I would just got play that game). However my point is simply that you don't need to use gear as an incentive to play PvP, if the game mechanics are good then players will play PvP anyway.

Guild Wars. One of the few games that almost solely relied on personal skill. Sure other PvP games rely on skil...and gear. GWs idea of limiting the skills you could use in a match was genius as it gave you such a wide variety of play styles to build and work with and nearly all of them were competitive. This game kinda reminded me of the card game MtG. There was a huge pool of skills to choose from and it was up to you to decide what skills to use together and how to implement them. And yes I know that GW was heavily instanced and therefore may not qualify as a true "MMO"