do you agree?

[Shandrii]

stumbled across this video on youtube when i was trying to get some tips on sentinel, do you agree with his spec tree and how he portrays the combat sentinel?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZrzKWeFuo

Edited January 11, 2012 by Shandrii

[Apocalypse-]

Nope. You're gimping yourself by going Combat.

[Tacola]

Nope. You're gimping yourself by going Combat.

 

Why is Combat spec gimped?

[Shandrii]

Nope. You're gimping yourself by going Combat.

 

i'd like an answer to this aswell, seems like a good tree the way he is describing it. Not to bust your butt on it or anything but have you played combat a lot? because if you haven't i don't think you would know its capabilities....

[MBirkhofer]

I've been meaning to give combat another chance with decent gear at 50.

 

Focus which has been my... uh, focus.. feels better to me. It has much much more utility.

More options of what you can be doing at any give time. slows, stuns, burst. or sustained slash dps, zen vs trans.

Those options and the complexity of the rotation however can be a downside though. While sweep isn't your only damage, it is a significant move. And any target on the move, will avoid it. both raid boss, and player. KB's can totally counter your sweeps. Although, stasis, crush, and bladestorm do help with ranged.

 

I did combat in beta, and it was definitely much much weaker then focus leveling.

 

The crippling throw root is pretty much the only utility in combat. Compared to 100% trans in focus, and slow of force crush, and shorter cd AND more damage on stasis.

The def buffs in focus also are pretty huge.

[Apocalypse-]

i'd like an answer to this aswell, seems like a good tree the way he is describing it. Not to bust your butt on it or anything but have you played combat a lot? because if you haven't i don't think you would know its capabilities....

 

I've played combat plenty. It's a tooltip pretty tree that will trick long-time MMO PvPers with two roots, base movement speed boost auto-crit on a major ability, armor pen, ect. Problem is one of the two roots barely works, the other isn't all that powerful, the base movement speed is barely noticeable, and the tree ends up being a one-trick pony with that one auto-crit skill.

 

In practice, Watchman does far more damage, has far more survivability, equal-if-not-better mobility, and more utility due to nearly double the centering generation. Additionally, Focus beats Combat with far more mobility, more consequential damage, better survivability, better centering generation, and the strongest slow in the game. Everything worthwhile in the Combat Tree is in the first two rows and can be used by the other two trees.

 

There's been excessively long conversations about this on this forum, so here's your summary: Combat is a terrible tree for everything past level 30.

[Coramac]

I've been meaning to give combat another chance with decent gear at 50.

 

Focus which has been my... uh, focus.. feels better to me. It has much much more utility.

More options of what you can be doing at any give time. slows, stuns, burst. or sustained slash dps, zen vs trans.

Those options and the complexity of the rotation however can be a downside though. While sweep isn't your only damage, it is a significant move. And any target on the move, will avoid it. both raid boss, and player. KB's can totally counter your sweeps. Although, stasis, crush, and bladestorm do help with ranged.

 

I did combat in beta, and it was definitely much much weaker then focus leveling.

 

The crippling throw root is pretty much the only utility in combat. Compared to 100% trans in focus, and slow of force crush, and shorter cd AND more damage on stasis.

The def buffs in focus also are pretty huge.

 

I think you were pretty spot on in one of your older posts about Combat later on with better gear. I'm a respec whore and OCD max / min'er. I have noticed a huge performance increase in Combat in terms of TTK on my test mobs at 50 with better gear. It has very solid scaling. I think Ataru Stance needs a tweak- the accuracy needs to be replaced. Opportune Attack seems like it might be bugged. It doesn't proc on every Ataru Strike. It might have an ICD that isn't listed.

 

It is both the easiest and hardest spec to play with in my experience. It's very easy to get it to work well. It's extremely difficult and virtually impossible to maximize without a buff tracker. So much of what you do is dependent on buff durations. While it doesn't really have more cooldowns to keep track of than Watchman, their priority changes based on the remaining duration of your buffs and current Focus.

[Coramac]

the base movement speed is barely noticeable

 

You can't notice it because it doesn't work or at least didn't last time I tested.

[Lionflash]

You can't notice it because it doesn't work or at least didn't last time I tested.

 

I sit possible it only works in combat? It difinetly doesn't work out of combat...

[Coramac]

I sit possible it only works in combat? It difinetly doesn't work out of combat...

 

That's where I tested it. A friend and I were in combat, we both ran in a straight line. We were moving at the same speed. I did this a long time ago, and my friend didn't want to test, I'll double check tonight to see if there was an error, but I'm pretty confident that it isn't working.

[MBirkhofer]

I think you were pretty spot on in one of your older posts about Combat later on with better gear. I'm a respec whore and OCD max / min'er. I have noticed a huge performance increase in Combat in terms of TTK on my test mobs at 50 with better gear. It has very solid scaling. I think Ataru Stance needs a tweak- the accuracy needs to be replaced. Opportune Attack seems like it might be bugged. It doesn't proc on every Ataru Strike. It might have an ICD that isn't listed.

 

It is both the easiest and hardest spec to play with in my experience. It's very easy to get it to work well. It's extremely difficult and virtually impossible to maximize without a buff tracker. So much of what you do is dependent on buff durations. While it doesn't really have more cooldowns to keep track of than Watchman, their priority changes based on the remaining duration of your buffs and current Focus.

 

Indeed. I want to try it again at a higher gear level to see some things.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501ocZGMrbddrRMsZhM.1

heres my, lets give combat a 3rd chance build.

Some notes.

Accuracy. wait a minute. All testing seems to point out ACC does NOTHING. so this right here is a huge problem. 3% force acc? uh, force attacks have 100% hit rate. Defense does not mitigate force attacks. Well that sounds like a clear problem to me.

Ataru form, and that talent then clearly have some seriously questionable purpose and effect.

 

Opportune attack. hmm, I could have sworn it said it had a 6s cd in beta. I'll have to examine this closer when I have time.

 

 

Looking at the build I just posted. its REALLY point heavy. I would love the 2/2 sweep talent, master focus, etc. Combat forces you to spend so many talent points buffing ataru to be not completely awful. and that is skipping the acc talent which seems to be useless.

The entire combat tree needs to be redone. Needs acc reworked. needs more power earlier. Needs all those ataru talents reduced, and replaced with some utility options.

 

Combat is a sustained dps spec. The offhand buffs, the ataru procs clearly show this. Ataru procing on ms, strike, zstrike. Your "downtime" and building dps is higher with combat then the other two.

[Apocalypse-]

You can't notice it because it doesn't work or at least didn't last time I tested.

 

It pseudo works. You HAVE to toggle ataru off/on every time you go through a loading screen to get the movement speed back. Even still, it's barely noticeable.

[MBirkhofer]

That's where I tested it. A friend and I were in combat, we both ran in a straight line. We were moving at the same speed. I did this a long time ago, and my friend didn't want to test, I'll double check tonight to see if there was an error, but I'm pretty confident that it isn't working.

 

i got a stopwatch out and tried once. could not tell a difference.

 

Others swear it works though.

[Shandrii]

Indeed. I want to try it again at a higher gear level to see some things.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501ocZGMrbddrRMsZhM.1

heres my, lets give combat a 3rd chance build.

Some notes.

Accuracy. wait a minute. All testing seems to point out ACC does NOTHING. so this right here is a huge problem. 3% force acc? uh, force attacks have 100% hit rate. Defense does not mitigate force attacks. Well that sounds like a clear problem to me.

Ataru form, and that talent then clearly have some seriously questionable purpose and effect.

 

Opportune attack. hmm, I could have sworn it said it had a 6s cd in beta. I'll have to examine this closer when I have time.

 

 

Looking at the build I just posted. its REALLY point heavy. I would love the 2/2 sweep talent, master focus, etc. Combat forces you to spend so many talent points buffing ataru to be not completely awful. and that is skipping the acc talent which seems to be useless.

The entire combat tree needs to be redone. Needs acc reworked. needs more power earlier. Needs all those ataru talents reduced, and replaced with some utility options.

 

Combat is a sustained dps spec. The offhand buffs, the ataru procs clearly show this. Ataru procing on ms, strike, zstrike. Your "downtime" and building dps is higher with combat then the other two.

why do insight though? your blade storm already has a 100% crit chance right?

[MBirkhofer]

Ataru is force damage.

 

(Obviously, hard to really test if it is or is not getting the crit %)

Edited January 11, 2012 by MBirkhofer

[Sevitan]

Combat is really fun, but it is somewhat buggy and lacking.

 

The problem is that your main focus dump attack, Blade Rush, has most of it's damage tied to RNG. There's the base damage, which is in fact 2 simultaneous attacks of the main-hand + off-hand (both I think crit separately, but I'm unsure of this point), the basic 30% ataru proc chance (50% on subsequent blade rushes) and the guaranteed proc.

 

So you have the chance to see 2 to 4 numbers on each attack. The main hand attack (which can miss too of course but is unlikely). The chance of the off-hand hit is going to be about 70%-75% (though this isn't additional damage as it is already calculated into the tooltip, so you have a 25% to 30% chance of losing that 300 damage on every Blade Rush if this misses). Then you have the guaranteed atrau procs and the separate one on GCD which will have a 30% to 50% of happening.

 

That's a lot of numbers, and it seems all can crit individually, giving actually impressive potential damage per hit since everything will crit for your base crit multiplier + 30%(roughly close to a crit bladstorm or possibly more I think, hard to figure out what's going on without a combat log and if the 10% focus applies to atartu procs as well, probably not though).

 

Suffice to say, this doesn't happen very often anyway and is unreliable in the first place, but I think with a good crit rating this damage may possibly be scary enough considering giving Combat a chance with good enough gear.

 

All things considered, popping Zen after Precision Strike and spamming Blade Rushes does impressive damage (if you're lucky, but this isn't something you can often do in pvp of course and it sill has the chance screw you over due to the RNG).

 

There's a couple glaring issues that could possibly make Combat worthwhile if altered possibly, but right now it's way too random for it to be reliable for anything.

 

The whole accuracy focus has pretty clear intent, to increase the damage through ensuring off-hand attacks hit. But that base damage doesn't scale with anything but the weapon itself and the dual-wield mastery talent. So with Redeemer and other high end weapons that ends up being around 200-300 damage. This isn't really a huge buff, especially since you will still have around 25% chance to miss with the off-hand and lose that damage (which isn't that much in the first place). Currently the only way to increase this damage is with crit/surge, which only makes this even more random.

 

For instance, if the global cool down on atrau procs didn't exist, and the chance of it to proc was set to possibly occur on each hit of either weapon, this would allow each attack to possibly proc ataru strike twice (would obviously have to be tweaked for multi hit attacks) then the damage might actually be impressive. Or it could end up being OP as hell, not like there is a good way to even test the damage currently how it works. Or just simply improve the scaling of the off-hand.

[EasymodeX]

Yeah, my best Blade Rush hit has been around 2700 from double crit Ataru procs and crit on the direct hit. No adrenal/relic.

 

It's no joke as your spammable rage dump.

 

I think the most effective combat fixes would be:

 

- Take Precision off the GCD and refund 1 focus using Enraged Slash in Watchman.

- The Ataru proc buff that generates 1 focus should also give +10% crit for the duration.

 

That's probably close.

Edited January 11, 2012 by EasymodeX

[Coramac]

Indeed. I want to try it again at a higher gear level to see some things.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501ocZGMrbddrRMsZhM.1

heres my, lets give combat a 3rd chance build.

 

Pretty much the same as my Combat builds except that I take the points out of Focused Leap and into Debilitiation. I hate Master Strike, but I found its situational benefits outweighed Focused Leap. Probably more of a personal preference.

 

Some notes.

Accuracy. wait a minute. All testing seems to point out ACC does NOTHING. so this right here is a huge problem. 3% force acc? uh, force attacks have 100% hit rate. Defense does not mitigate force attacks. Well that sounds like a clear problem to me.

Ataru form, and that talent then clearly have some seriously questionable purpose and effect.

 

I say it's not a big deal because it performs well without it. I looked at it as more of an irritation.

 

Opportune attack. hmm, I could have sworn it said it had a 6s cd in beta. I'll have to examine this closer when I have time.

 

This could be. I thought I'd seen it proc in relatively short order, but I could be wrong.

 

Looking at the build I just posted. its REALLY point heavy. I would love the 2/2 sweep talent, master focus, etc. Combat forces you to spend so many talent points buffing ataru to be not completely awful. and that is skipping the acc talent which seems to be useless.

The entire combat tree needs to be redone. Needs acc reworked. needs more power earlier. Needs all those ataru talents reduced, and replaced with some utility options.

 

I think a tweaking might be a better way to phrase it. It has some really strong talents elsewhere. Swift Blades is a fantastic talent. It's 2 points for 2 focus and 3 seconds off the CD. That's a great talent from an efficiency standpoint.

 

But, I do agree. There are 8 points that are directly tied into Ataru Stance. That's far more points tied into a single ability than any other tree in the game to my knowledge. That doesn't translate into bad... but... maybe it should be a little different.

 

My changes would be:

1.) Change accuracy to crit. In theory, this is virtually the same damage increase as 3% accuracy shoudl be. I think it fits in very well thematically for the tree.

2.) Make Ataru a base Sentinel stance.

3.) Move Blade Rush into Ataru Stance's position.

4.) Replace Blade Rush with a high Focus cost, high damage ability with an overhead attack animation. I'd go with 6 Focus, 10% more damage than Merciless Slash as base damage, and an automatic Ataru Strike with a 12 second CD. It shouldn't be a big increase (if any) for DPS but would give a good burst option and simplify an overly complex rotation.

5.) Steadfast- reduce to two points and increases Blade Storm damage.

 

Ok... maybe that is a rework... Oh, and Zen needs to be changed or at least made to work correctly.

 

Combat is a sustained dps spec. The offhand buffs, the ataru procs clearly show this. Ataru procing on ms, strike, zstrike. Your "downtime" and building dps is higher with combat then the other two.

 

Well, that offhand spec is much better than I gave it credit. It's a pretty fantastic ability point wise, but yes, I totally agree that Combat is a sustained tree. I think one of the problems it has is that people try to play it like a burst tree, and it is very clearly just not designed for that.

 

Additionally, I never had a big issue with Focus building. I've actually found Combat to be the easiest tree on Focus. Combat Trance and faster Zealous Strike are really, really good. Those combined with the fact that there is only 1 ability used that has a cost of 3 or greater goes a long way.

[PantsOn]

Accuracy. wait a minute. All testing seems to point out ACC does NOTHING.

 

*** are you talking about?

Edited January 11, 2012 by PantsOn

[MBirkhofer]

*** are you talking about?

 

force attacks have 100% hit rate. ataru, blade storm, sweep, crush, stasis.

Defense does not mitgate force attacks. so any acc for force attacks over 100% does nothing.

 

special attacks. everything that is not strike. have 100% main hand hit acc. and 67% offhand acc.

Defense stat does mitigate these. so acc does penetrate defense over 100. Players also have 5% base.

Raid bosses do not appear to.

[PantsOn]

special attacks. everything that is not strike. have 100% main hand hit acc. and 67% offhand acc.

Defense stat does mitigate these. so acc does penetrate defense over 100. Players also have 5% base.

Raid bosses do not appear to.

 

So what you're saying is that accuracy does matter? Accuracy is incredibly important in preventing TOTAL DPS loss caused by dodges/parries.

[spriing]

From what I have read Combat is a better build after you can pick up the Blade Rush skill. I played Combat until level 18 I think, and then I switched to Watchman. I wasn't having any problems killing things as Combat but everyone was saying how great the Watchman tree was so I tired it out.

 

I do think Watchman is a good tree but holy crap you constantly have to apply Overload Saber. I wish it were a persistent buff instead.

 

I am thinking about trying the Combat Tree out again in the near future.

 

Try this link out. The guys name is Faroh and he has posted a few videos on the Sentinel class all of his earlier stuff was in the Combat tree but this linik he tells you about the Watchman tree and why he chose it over Combat.

 

[tk-fourtwentyone]

Video is fairly accurate. I disagree slightly with his opinion on watchman not being good one on one for defending a node. I suspect they are superiour in that regard. My rotation is probably different as well. Not sure about awe having such a prominent place on his toolbar. *shrug*

[MBirkhofer]

did you really not read what I said about accuracy?

It is basically only effecting offhand attacks. and vs players geared with +defense stat.

Force attacks, which are a large part of all 3 builds, gain absolutely nothing from acc.

Blade storm and ataru are force attacks.

 

1% acc increasing offhand hit chance by 1%. offhand damage accounting for 3-5% of your total damage.

So yeah, that total dps loss of .05%. ouch. Wait, your right its 3% not 1. So .15%.

 

 

 

 

anyway, I gave combat another shot.

I altered my build in game from my original suggestion.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501bcZuMrbddrRMsZhM.1

I noticed there isn't any reason to have 2/2 jedi crusader.. its a 50% chance to generate 1 focus on damage with rebuke up. vs 100%. But a 3s cd. Simply put most players will hit you at LEAST 2 times in 3s. Probably more. Thus, 50% will have almost the same effect.

 

Still no debilitation. MS is garbage in pvp really. I don't want a skill that only works on baddies. Those points are better placed elsewhere.

 

 

Gear. My gear is in a much better place now, and I feel that made all the difference with combat. My early testing on live, was late 40s. I think I was 48ish when I gave it a shot. And it clearly under-preformed vs focus still. now with champ weapons, and mostly champ/cen everything else. I felt like I had some power. while at 48 I felt like I was just getting thrown around constantly, and lacked the burst to fight back.

 

Damage output.

Combat is two things. 1. simple. 2. consistent.

Focus, on the other hand is very complicated. That complication is a boon and a hindrance. on one hand, you have a ton of versatility. you can slow 1 guy, burst another. you can slash sustained dps, or explode on someone with crush/sweep/stasis/blade. You can zen sustained dps, or trans party buff. (but to be clear, focus slash is your lowest dps move. its buffed over other specs slash, but its not bladerush, or crush, etc.)

All those options do mean, you can get interrupted however. sweep does need buildup. stasis is a channel. when you do unload on someone, you can blow them up hard though.

Focus has alot more burst. Esp vs lightly armored. I feel like I was much stronger vs healers as focus. A crush+sweep would land reliably, and deal more damage then they could heal. Stasis adding into that as well. good damage, and a stun.

 

Combat damage felt way more consistent. Blade rush is always up. Zstrike has a shorter cd. As well as other +focus gen in combat. Combat tears down tanks very well due to precision strike as well. But, I felt helpless vs most healers. Any cross healing, and I could not burst them down. The sustained damage could not break through absorb shields/guard. And stasis does less damage, and has a longer cd for combat. This was notably weaker then what focus's burst would do. Sure, 3-4 cross healers were a problem there, but a lone healer or just 2 in a pug were no problem. I outright had issues taking out people, I know I would have killed as focus.

 

Crippling throw root vs force crush. Hard to say which is better. crush obviously does more damage. alot more. And its snare is pretty beefy.

 

Combat buffs don't last as long. trance is 6s. blade rush 6s. prec strike is 6s. if your get kb, rooted etc. all your buffs will drop off. Focus's leap crit%, and singularity buffs last much much longer. I want to say 15s off the top of my head, but might be even longer.

 

Group utility. Focus wins this hands down. Aoe as well. obviously.

 

Soloing, focus hands down also. I went around doing some class quests. and combat notably I was taking more damage. That leap in, crush, aoe sweep kill everything is so much stronger for npc packs.

 

Raid dps, the afore mentioned consistent damage will likely then mean combat will top raid dps. That damage will also not get ruined by movement fights as much.

 

 

Also, I STILL am not sure def forms +speed is doing anything.

Edited January 12, 2012 by MBirkhofer

[Rizque]

The problem with combat is that it has poor focus generation which is a major strength of watchmen. Further, the root on saber throw which sounds awesome isn't that great in practice as 10m is ridiculously a short range in this game.

 

90% of the time you will end up using 10m spells when the opponent is already in melee range which reduces the usefulness of the spell.