Reme's thoughts on Combat Spec Sent

[rememberence]

Disclaimer: Aside from a bit of napkin math performed off one skill for Armor Penetration - there's not too many maths in this, most of this is feel, thoughts and inference. That being said I'm relatively certain that at least the core of it makes sense.

 

So:

 

Combat spec. The first thing to understand that it's a very slow spec to evolve. You don't get your combat stance until 20 and then, once you have it, you spend the next 19 levels slowly making it better in various ways until, at 40, it all comes together.

 

With Blade Rush.

 

So...starting at the beginning.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501bcZhGrrddMoMsZG.1 is the spec I use for Combat. It may not be mathematically superior (I don't know) but it works for me, feels effective, and I can explain as to why I chose what.

 

So we're going with this one for right now.

 

So ignoring some of the side talents (acc is important but I'm not discussing it here) let's focus on the core abilities of Combat.

 

First off: Ataru form: "Enters an Acrobatic Lightsaber form increasing Accuracy by 3%. In addition your attacks have a 20% change to trigger an additional attack doing [xx] energy damage. This effect can not occur more than once every 1.5 seconds."

 

Yay level 20! You finally get your combat stance and get a taste of what Combat is all about. Unfortunately at this point you're really only gaining the Accuracy boost plus a random bit of damage every few strikes. At random. Randomly.

 

Yay.

 

Over the next few levels you pick up some nice little enhancements to it at least.

 

Opportune Strike [2]: Ataru form hits make your next focus spender deal 10% more damage.

Ataru Mastery [2]: Increases Ataru form strike damage by 30%

Combat Trance: Hits from Ataru form grant Combat trance for 6 seconds, when it ends you gain one focus. (which seems odd until:)

Immaculate Force: Increases the critical strike chance of Blade Storm by 100% while Combat Trance is active.

 

All very nice little add on abilities. All completely random (20% chance) until level 40.

 

A little further up the tree however we get out first major MANUALLY TRIGGERED ability. Precision Slash.

 

"Slashes the target for [xx] weapon damage and grants Precision for 6 seconds, which increases armor penetration by 100%. Lasts for 6 seconds."

 

Nice.

 

Now a little napkin math (slightly longer form for those interested, it's really really raw: 5 hits on the same enemy with Master Strike. 3 unbuffed, 2 buffed, average damage and difference) gave a very rough understanding of just what "100% armor penetration" translated into and...it looks like a 50% damage increase.

 

Very very nice.

 

So at this point we get our first buff and I always, always, always recommend - at least on goldstars (and silverstars too probably) and up - firing off precision strike BEFORE Master Strike.

 

Master Strike is our really hard hitting ability and buffing it by 50% is incredibly nice. Especially since Master Strike is a cooldown relegated skill (can be fired off with no focus as long as the cooldown is up) which means you can burn your last bit of focus on Precision Slash and then fire of a buffed Master Strike even on empty.

 

The final core ability is Blade Rush. (Swift Blades into Saber Storm - decreasing blade storm's cooldown and increasing crit damage is very nice but...less a core of the build, imo. Or at least, not something I'm going to explain here and now.)

 

Blade Rush:

 

"Strikes the target for [xx] damage and automatically triggers an Ataru form strike. For 6 seconds after using Blade Rush your Ataru form has an extra 30% chance to be triggered."

 

And now you become a god.

 

All those nifty little add-ons before can now be manually triggered with Blade rush. 10% damage, auto-critting Blade Storm. And you can now work the Ataru Strikes actually into the rotation vs just having them happen randomly (20% chance...) PLUS you get a 50% chance to trigger them after Blade Rush which goes off ALL THE TIME.

 

Wonderful.

 

Now however, you've to deal with rolling priorities or, as I think of them, combos.

 

For example: Master Strike (our "nuke") should really only be triggered after Precision Strike (on health laden enemies.) However... you can fire off something else in that 6 second period so you should /really/ trigger an ataru form strike first (I'm not entirely certain if MS can trigger the hit but I know that Blade Rush should take advantage of Precision Strike)

 

So: Combo - Precision Strike - Ataru Form (Blade rush) - Master Strike

You typically need the focus to pull that off though...and if you're leaping in it would be:

 

FL (force leap) - Ataru Form - Zealous Strike - Ataru Form - Precision Slash - Ataru Form - Master Strike

 

First Ataru form gives ZS a chance to trigger the hit, second clears the 10% damage buff (on focus spenders), resets the 50% chance cooldown and gives Precision Slash a chance to get the hit PLUS do 10% more damage as a focus spender. Third At-Form takes advantage of PS's 100% armor pen. and then (may - not sure here) give MS a chance to trigger the hit.

 

That's the intro combo and the reasons why.

 

"Minor" combos - when you can't pull off the full roller.

 

At-form into Blade Storm - auto, trigger the crit.

 

Precision into at-form into at-form (if everything else is on cooldown) it gives both at-form's the 100% armor pen. and gives the second the 10% focus spender bonus.

 

That's the basics of it that I've been able to figure out.

 

Try to make sure you use your interrupt (force kick I think) BEFORE blowing a Precision Strike or you'll kill the timer.

 

My typical full (you're going to die now) combo is the above followed by Force Choke (stasis) (and only if I don't have to use it to interrupt) into force blind (I'm sure that has another name) to give myself some chance to build a bit of focus back up before going into minor combos.

 

At-form-blade storm-...auto attack (whatever that three strike one) is tends to kill standard enemies rather well (and remember even the "auto-attack" can get an at-form hit now with Blade Rush).

 

Master Focus (Focus Tree) reducing MS cooldown by 3 seconds and Force Stasis cooldown by 10 really tightens up the rough spots in the build/rotation and Focused Slash (Watchmen Tree) helps your "burstiness" (combo uses before focus regen period) last longer.

 

...anyway that's my thoughts.

 

-Reme

[Csdabest]

Yes MS can trigger a ataru strike. My biggest gripes with Ataru form and combat is offhand weapon damage percentage compared to the main hand. And the Fact that thr 3% accuracy buff we get while in the form it not well supported in the combat tree in wich it is rooted in. Especially when it comes to the centering buffs of Zen.

 

Zen for Juyo form-It increase the chance of crits for burn attacks by 100% and cause burn damage to heal your party. Compliments Juyo form and the watchmen tree nicely.

 

Zen for Shi-cho form- it reduces the cost of slash to zero. Pretty nice. Especially if you get the slash crit increase. Works out perfectly for that tree.

 

Zen for Ataru form- Reduces the cost of Blade storm and slash by 1.

 

It seems ataru Zen buff is redundant with Shi-cho whle Shi cho does it even better puting the slash at zero. Ataru form should have gotten an increase on accuracy to cause even more direct damage since that what seems Ataru form mainly does other than proc another Ataru form strike.

 

Also There should be some more abilities in the Combat tree that deal direct damage.

[MBirkhofer]

Yes MS can trigger a ataru strike. My biggest gripes with Ataru form and combat is offhand weapon damage percentage compared to the main hand. And the Fact that thr 3% accuracy buff we get while in the form it not well supported in the combat tree in wich it is rooted in. Especially when it comes to the centering buffs of Zen.

 

Zen for Juyo form-It increase the chance of crits for burn attacks by 100% and cause burn damage to heal your party. Compliments Juyo form and the watchmen tree nicely.

 

Zen for Shi-cho form- it reduces the cost of slash to zero. Pretty nice. Especially if you get the slash crit increase. Works out perfectly for that tree.

 

Zen for Ataru form- Reduces the cost of Blade storm and slash by 1.

 

It seems ataru Zen buff is redundant with Shi-cho whle Shi cho does it even better puting the slash at zero. Ataru form should have gotten an increase on accuracy to cause even more direct damage since that what seems Ataru form mainly does other than proc another Ataru form strike.

 

Also There should be some more abilities in the Combat tree that deal direct damage.

 

Zen is largely the reason combat is so far behind the other two specs while leveling. The tree itself is definitely weaker, but zen for combat is basically unusable until 3/3 focused slash. And also weaker without bladerush.

Once you do have both its much better, but still far behind the other two..

it also reduces the gcd of bladerush to 1s. This is intended to be tied with prec strike. Which also lasts 6s. You need 9 focus to start. Prec strike. Zen. Bladerushx5. (latency/input, you wont get all 6) Decent damage. Still way behind the power of focus popping zen at 0 focus, and ending with 6.

 

Really though, I LOVE your suggestion. How to fix ataru zen.

Removes DW penalty. Offhand attacks have 100% hit, and 100% damage.

Reduces focus cost of slash, bladerush by 1.

Edited January 13, 2012 by MBirkhofer

[Tsuruchi]

This is almost point-for-point the build I use on my sentinel (I picked up the MS root instead of Temperance, should probably change that). I have an absolute blast playing Combat, but hate playing Watchman.

[Aznryoga]

imo problem with combat tree are the time based buffs it gives

with all the things you've already had to keep track of, focus and abilities cds. Now you have to constantly look to check the time left on ataru form procs. Not only that, because of gcd, both precision strike and ataru form effectively only gives 4.5 seconds of uptime. Effectively constantly gimping precision strike's effectiveness (boss knock back, switching to adds, etc)

 

The auto crit for blade storm should really just be a charge that allows your next blade storm to crit instead of being on a short time based buff. Same with precision strike. Although you can argue that if it only gives 3 charges of 100% armor pen you would get less dps than precision strike -> master strike -> whatever, but the fact that there is so much movement in both pve and pvp, I find that if I play combat I would prefer to guarentee my next 3 attacks to hit hard. (in pvp, precision strike never gets its full potential unless some one else stuns the target for us, force stasis would be cool if as sentinel you can still do melee hits with it on but only attack with attacks that can be done with one hand)

[PantsOn]

imo problem with combat tree are the time based buffs it gives

with all the things you've already had to keep track of, focus and abilities cds. Now you have to constantly look to check the time left on ataru form procs. Not only that, because of gcd, both precision strike and ataru form effectively only gives 4.5 seconds of uptime. Effectively constantly gimping precision strike's effectiveness (boss knock back, switching to adds, etc)

 

The auto crit for blade storm should really just be a charge that allows your next blade storm to crit instead of being on a short time based buff. Same with precision strike. Although you can argue that if it only gives 3 charges of 100% armor pen you would get less dps than precision strike -> master strike -> whatever, but the fact that there is so much movement in both pve and pvp, I find that if I play combat I would prefer to guarentee my next 3 attacks to hit hard. (in pvp, precision strike never gets its full potential unless some one else stuns the target for us, force stasis would be cool if as sentinel you can still do melee hits with it on but only attack with attacks that can be done with one hand)

 

Popping Precision Strike as soon as you're in a Trance and then letting Blade Storm rip will make for a nice BIG yellow number. I guess Blade Storm is mitigated by armor.

[BurntSushi]

To the OP, your first issue is that you are putting too much emphasis on Master Strike.

 

MS is something that you use when all other abilities are on CD. In my rotation my Blade Storm hits for a lot higher than MS.

 

My typical rotation is Force Leap>Rebuke>Zealous Strikes>Precision Strikes>Blade Rush>Blade Storm then repeat until Dispatch and throw in your Awe's, Pacify and Camo whenever necessary.

 

I usually will save my MS if my rotation gets out of whack from pressure or if I see an immobilized enemy. I would work MS into my rotation if our talent worked correctly and it wasn't so damn sluggish.