This one has been a bit frustrating for me. A very savvy ranged player can pick us apart while we do little to no damage. True story: in the only duel I've lost in this game, I fought against a ranged player. That player won by running away from me the whole time and taking long range "pot shots". If I force leaped, I was thrown back with damage done to me and basically had no way to close the gap. The duel was also against a fellow ops group member while we were waiting for a WB to spawn so I didn't have my Doc. Sentinels without a Doc are kind of like a gun with only one bullet: you better pray it's a kill shot or you'll be dead. My conclusion (unless somebody has a good strategy they can share if this ever happens to me again): we need a force pull ability. We're melee attackers so our only chance is to, well, melee attack. Or...would a force pull ability then give us an unfair advantage because of our dps? Thanks!

I'm a level 47 Combat Sentinel with a pretty good handle on all of the basics and a few of the more complex/"expert level" concepts. Not many, but I hope to get there. I have a few things I want to throw out there that seem to get a lot of debate and hope for some good feedback for my personal knowledge and others who might read this. As I close in on level 50, I'm fine tuning my Jedi and his stats as well as my Doc. Without a healer of some kind, I truly believe that a sentinel really is that "glass cannon" that everyone seems to have said at one point or another. So... Strength vs Power I was a little hesitant to buy a certain earpiece off GTN the other night because it came with -10 strength. However, the power boost was huge. Despite the strength drop, all of my damage stats increased by a pretty sizable number. I thought Power didn't really start coming into play until bonus damage? Can someone elaborate on this one just a little bit more? Critical Chance/Critical Rating vs Critical Multiplier/Surge This one has a little bit more actual theory to it. Unless I've completely misunderstood something, if we have say a 25% Critical Chance then (theoretically) 1 out of every 4 attacks will be a critical attack which then uses the multiplier to determine how powerful that attack is. Recent talk seems to be valuing surge over critical rating and while I understand there's a pretty substantial DR for CR, shouldn't CR still be more important? Theoretically (and dealing with just hypothetical numbers for the sake of discussion) I would rather score critical hits more often than higher powered ones. Say you have a 25% Crit Chance that does 1000 damage vs a 20% Crit Chance that does 1400 damage. In your first 8 attacks with 25% Crit Chance, you theoretically do 2000 Critical Damage while in your first 8 attacks with the higher Multiplier, you've still only done 1400. Only at a much higher number of total attacks does the higher multiplier outweigh the higher chance. Keeping in mind that these numbers are just hypothetical for the sake of the concept/theory, what do most of you prefer? Endurance vs Damage "The best defense is a good offense". Heard that one. However, is it really to our overall benefit as "fragile" sentinels to go with all might armoring/might hilts and other high strength/low(er) endurance items? If all sentinels are doing the same thing, then in a one v one PVP match whoever has the more expensive gear with the higher overall ratings even though both are doing the same thing is going to win. But what if you beefed up your endurance a little more than other sentinels, doing a little less damage but with a longer life? Accuracy Rating This one interests me a lot because nobody that I've talked to seems to unanimously agree. Having over 100% accuracy takes away from your opponent's defenses but some people insist on putting everything into the other stats and ignoring accuracy altogether. One or two misses in an attack could be the difference between life and death for our fragile sentinels since we're relying on our offense for our defense. By guaranteeing that you never miss and actually taking something away from your opponent's defense, why would you not want to bolster your accuracy? Alacrity Rating This one's on here because of my admittedly poor understanding of it right now. Most people agree that alacrity is kind of pointless or a waste for sentinels, but back to "damage per second" - if we're attacking at a faster rate (like when we use Zen) isn't this also to our benefit? Muhammad Ali (speed) once KO'd George Foreman (power) and even criticized him before hand saying he "punched like a mummy" - where his punches were definitely powerful, but too slow. By not using alacrity are we being George Foreman's out there in Jedi World where smaller, faster guys (and gals) can beat the crap out of us? Hope this wasn't too long for everybody. I'll look forward to your replies/discussion. Thanks for your help!