"Fixing" Sentinels.

[Apocalypse-]

I'm going to preface this entire post with the fact that I do not believe Sentinel is even close to being a gimp class. I also believe that Sentinels are currently one of the two strongest classes available, next to Vanguard/Powertech. A full fix of ability lag/stuttering would be enough for a good number of sentinels to be happy with the class.

 

However, there is massive discontent on this forum, because in order to see that strength, it requires a level of play that many players either can't or won't play at with regularity. This is especially true of the Watchman (Annihilation) tree, and compounded by Combat(Carnage)'s ineptitude. So with that said, I'm going to try to address the class's complexity in a way that still leaves Watchman as a high challenge-high reward spec, but de-intensifies it slightly. I am also going to propose changes that would make Combat viable for more situations, and also slightly repurpose Focus into more of an AoE role rather than a semi-AoE semi-Single target tree. The following changes are things I've discussed with a few sentinels/marauders to almost entirely positive reviews. The following suggestions would leave the class still hard to play (Which, there needs to be a class of this difficulty: see Spoiler tag at bottom for explanation I wrote in another thread), but would lower the difficulty from what it is now by streamlining things. My interests are in maintaining the uniqueness and extreme flexibility the class has while removing some unnecessary functions. The vast majority of the fixes for this class can be achieved via the skill trees rather than messing with more core functionality.

 

Marauders, you're going to need this, I'm not continuing the mirroring parentheses past this point. Quick hits: Cauterize = Rupture, Cyclone Slash = Sweeping Slash. Rebuke = Cloak of Pain.

 

Watchman

Starting in Watchman tree, I am assuming the "net gain" from the Searing Saber fix is going to be by returning Plasma blades to 30%, so the raw 6% loss in damage will be offset by the gain in critical multiplier. Once that fix happens, these two talents need to swap position in the tree, with Plasma Blades being restricted to Juyo Stance. The main goal in this change is to help out leveling. At low levels (and really at all levels), the increased damage is far more valuable than the increased crit damage. Keep it tied from Juyo Mastery though.

 

The next Watchman change would be combining Close Quarters and Blurred Speed, at the location Blurred Speed is currently. When Blurred Speed was 5 seconds off leap, it was justified for costing two points. At only 3 seconds, combining these two traits is a step in the right direction.

 

That leaves an open space where Close Quarters used to be. In this place, I would like to see the old Cauterize-spread talent from the bottom of combat brought back, merely nerfed significantly. Rather than the 50% of Cauterize's damage over 15 seconds, bring it back as 30% of Cauterize's damage over 6 seconds (4 ticks), this talent would be 50% objective orientated 50% increased healing orientated. Since these ticks would be so small, using this combo would prevent talented Sentinels from putting up Zen for those 6 seconds, so the healing wouldn't be doubled up, just more constant.

 

The last change to Watchman that I think is necessary, as much as I tried to avoid doing it, is changing Mind Sear (and by extension Cauterize) back to their old form. Mind Sear's name made sense when it was a buff to Force Stasis. The old Mind Sear was "Force Stasis causes the next 5 dots from the sentinel to hit for 10/20/30% harder on the target." It applied a 5-stack of debuffs that were eaten by each individual dot tick. The current Mind Sear is the cause of most of the severe complexity in the Watchman Tree, and the Old Mind Sear gave Watchman a, as one of the sentinels I talked to put it, "BYAAHH!!!" ability to combo a well placed Zen with a massive damage burst. However, without a reset, Cauterize cannot be a long cooldown, nor can it be a short dot. Moving cauterize back to a 15 second dot with about 160-180% of the current damage would even out the boost in damage from Mind Sear from the loss in the short Cauterize and the Cauterize reset. It also allows less... seasoned... Sentinels to look up from their bars with more confidence.

-Cauterize can also not go back to it's old zero-cooldown state. That was overpowered combo'd with Inflammation. I suggest putting it at 6 second cooldown.

-The one thing that I dislike about this change is it somewhat forces you to take two points into Master Focus to get 10 seconds off of Force Stasis. If it prevents the class from going into massive buff/nerf cycles, it's worth it.

 

Focus

The tree that needs the least work of all the trees. It's straightforward, but lacking. It's not truly an AoE tree, it's not a single target tree. For starters, lets swap Swift Slash and Unwavering Focus. This doesn't severely impact leveling, though it does primarily benefit the Combat Tree. More on this later, but this is just a simple swap here.

 

The next talent that needs to be retouched is Saber Strength. Add to this talent 6/12% damage to Cyclone Slash. This is moving the tree towards more of an AoE tree. Additionally, add 5/10% crit chance to Cyclone Slash on Swift Slash, making it a choice between Slash and Cyclone Slash at every opportunity. Slash should still be a better option if there is only one target (or you've used Zen), but Cyclone slash needs to be an option for something more than a Focus burn.

 

Zealous leap's range should be returned to 15 meters.

 

This is a either or one, but rolling Pulse into Unwavering Focus would allow a talent in place of Pulse that would let Cyclone slash build Singularity (this requires that singularity be moved down one and a chain up to Singularity's current position), I would say moving singularity to 8 total (each tick of stasis or exhaustion building two), with Cyclone slash having a 10% chance per target to build one once per GCD. This is just kind of throwing it out there, I don't think it's that necessary.

 

Combat

 

Ah Combat, the whole reason the concept of Sentinels being underpowered exists. The complexity of Watchman wouldn't be an issue if Combat could compete with it. However, the tree isn't that far behind on PvE damage numbers, so buffing it's damage isn't the answer.

 

The first order of business in Combat affects all three trees. Defensive Forms. For starters, move this to a 3-point talent with Duel-wield mastery becoming a 2-point. Leave Juyo/Shii-Cho's bonuses as is for max points, there are buffs to justify that elsewhere. For Ataru, take the current 15% run speed bonus and make that passive to Ataru. Back to the talent, for Ataru, make it so that getting hits boosts Ataru proc chance by 30% for 3 seconds, stacking (though obviously capping at 20% due to time). The other option, if Dynamic isn't possible, is to have defensive forms buff Ataru with 1.5/3% defense chance (keep reading for why defense).

-Also with Defensive Forms, Defensive Roll should be incorporated into it now that it's a 3-point talent at 10/20/30%. This frees up a point for all the trees and allows a bit more variety.

-Now, this does more or less make Defensive Forms a must-have talent. However, it is exceptionally rare for it to not be taken, the passive centering generation from this talent is already indisposable. Rolling Defensive Roll into Forms is intended primarily to shore up the oft-cited defensive deficiencies the class has, while opening up other options rather than needing to devote so many points to defense as a medium armor class.

 

With Defensive Roll removed, there is a spot open here. In this spot, I suggest adding a talent that Increases offhand accuracy by 5/10% and also generates one centering per successful Ataru Strike. This fixes one of the major issues of this tree in the long centering buildup, while also restricting the bonus generation to Ataru form.

 

Next, make Fleet Footed's current trait a base class passive. Yes, that's quite powerful, but it's also not always going to be used with every Force Camo. It's more of a buff to Focus than Watchman imo. Moving Fleet Footed to Debilitation's current spot, and likely keeping the name, make the talent be 50/100% chance to make Force leap give 4 seconds of Snare/Root/Knockback immunity, starting when triggered, so you'll have 2.5 seconds after landing of immunity, but can't be knocked out of the air. This gives the tree the biggest thing it's missing in a anti-CC role, while restricting it to 6th Tier prevents it from overpowering the other two trees. It is still counterable with a hard-stun, but you're still in the fight afterwards.

 

With Debilitation's displacement, put it into Fleet Footing's position and roll Displacement into it (see what I did there?). Combining these two on the 5th Tier may require the Crippling Throw root to be shortened to 2 seconds from 3, but it frees up the tree for other things.

 

In Displacement's current place, a talent entirely for Rebuke. 2 points, reduces the cooldown on rebuke by 5/10 seconds and while Rebuke is active the sentinel has 2/4% increased Defense Chance, and increases the damage done by Rebuke by 7.5/15%. This, combo'd with Recompense and Jedi Crusader can make for an exceptionally sturdy Sentinel. However, without the self-healing of Watchman it's mostly just for raw mitigation, not bad for anti-zerg survival, it'll at least give your healer an extra GCD to do something.

 

Precision Slash's buff should be for four attacks, but should only last 10 seconds if not used. This is both a buff and a nerf. You can't follow with 5-6 Zen-boosted Blade Rushes, but you also can't be cheated out of your buff via knockback. The 10 second timer is to prevent over-stacking it by waiting to do 8 GCDs in a row.

 

Notable things I suggest leaving untouched

Rebuke as an active skill. It's not always needed. Having it always up makes us the best tanks the game have to offer (riposte+rebuke damage puts our dps numbers out of reach when used every GCD, so we'd keep threat) Additionally, as is, you can be "juked" out of it by a smart opponent. It's the single most powerful skill in the game after Tracer Missile/Grav Round, it needs a counter. To make it passive would require nerfing it, and you never put forward your best skill to get nerfed.

 

No Duel-Wield Mastery buff (beyond decreasing it's point cost by 1). Our offhand damage is balanced against two-handed weapons-Assault Cannons and Sniper Rifles. It averages out to be the same damage as those. Bioware is set to keeping all ACs within 5% DPS of each other, so asking for a DPS buff is unproductive.

 

No additional CC. The class is very potent, giving us additional CC just sets the nerfbat in motion.

 

Not buffing Crippling Throw. This one I'm on the fence about. About the only buff that would be acceptable is a short, negative alacrity debuff to help against a single healer. Against multiple healers working together, your team should need to work together to counter it.

 

 

 

There's a couple things I missed that I'll need to add when I talk to a couple people again, but this is the vast majority of it. Again, my goal was NOT to make Watchman an easy spec. It's slightly harder than it needs to be, but it does need to be hard. The goal was to bring up Focus and Combat to Watchman's level of performance without encroaching on what any of the 3 do with another tree. We only get DPS, we need to have options on how to do it.

 

On why there needs to be at least one hard class:

 

This isn't the real world. I'm not playing basketball with a cast on my foot. The idea of being able to play twice as good (on a different class) is a red herring.

 

Every class has a skill cap where you can't possibly play any better. At/near these skill caps, the classes are almost perfectly balanced, if not favoring Sentinels and Vanguards. The "issue" is that Sentinel's skill cap requires a significantly higher level of play than say a Commando who has a much higher "skill floor". However, because of this, there is far less definition between a bad Commando and a good Commando. If Sentinels range in ability from 1-10, Commandos might only range in ability from 6-9.9. Great players can almost completely shut out a Commando, it is impossible to shut out a Sentinel without blowing serious cooldowns and once they're gone or resolve is up, the Sentinel can run rampant.

 

The issue is that raising the "skill floor" for Sentinels would involve making the class far simpler, and considering that there are numerous people even in this thread that love the complexity of Sentinels, that is not an acceptable solution. The class is Boom or Bust. Playing a Sentinel and being in the 6-8 range is excessively rare and you'll typically not stay there, if you're good enough to be there you're just missing a few key ideas/revalations (or possibly just gear) and you'll take a huge step soon. The TRUE problem lies in the excessively elevated skill floors of other classes, chiefly Commandos, but also Sages though to a lesser extent. Scoundrels will join us in the low skill floor category once quad-buff stacking is history tomorrow. Expect their forum to start the tears with people who today are "great" at scoundrel/operative being "useless" tomorrow. They're not as boom or bust as we are, but they're not all that far behind.

 

I've had this same kind of discussion when I played LOTRO over the Runekeeper. When it launched, the class was extremely boom or bust, and the same day I pulled off a 8v1 against a Warg pack I got to read a thread saying how underpowered the class was. Eventually, the whiners won and the class got buffed into godmode, people saw what a few great players were doing on the class and these players would absolutely dominate every facet of the game. However, because the class still had a large gap between average and great, the class wasn't nerfed because the average common denominator was balanced. It marked just another one of Turbine's long list of mistakes and people kept going expecting a nerf each patch. As it continuously wasn't nerfed patch after patch, people quit the game. 12 months after the massive buff to Runekeepers and the start of subscriptions bleeding like crazy, the game was fully FTP. It took them 6 months to get the FTP systems running, so at 6 months out they were decided that they needed a saving throw.

 

Bioware needs to come out and label the classes "Easy", "Intermediate", "Advanced"/"Hard" and treat those as your balancing guidelines. NOT balance around nothing other than Average, as that ends very badly with either great players being gods on complex classes or every class being 123412341234...(notetoself: create macro)...12341234....

 

Edited January 27, 2012 by Apocalypse-

[Xilrasis]

Most of these suggestions would be relatively solid changes.

 

The only thing, though, that I am truly concerned with about your analysis... it seems as if you are examining the class as "effective" from a 1v1 point of view. If rated 4v4 ever goes in (And I suspect it will) -- will SENTINEL be the class to take?

 

A part of me says yes, for escape-ability, survivability, reasonably sustained damage with controllable moderate burst and quick/multiple interrupts.

 

The other part of me says no, because without some cooldowns up we are incredibly vulnerable. We are extremely susceptible to roots, kiting, and dispels (to varying degrees as different specs). Pushbacks cripple us. Our damage is entirely predictable. Our focus generation can easily become crippled by smart use of stuns/kiting.

 

In the current state of the game, two spots on that 4v4 are guaranteed to be a healer and a tank. Guard is entirely too powerful, especially with Merc/Comm healers. Do we really offer enough to bring us over a Sorc or a Merc with their superior DPS vs high armor and high utility/CC? Perhaps a VG DPS who is bursty with quite a bit of utility and a second guard/can stance swap on assist trains for near unkillability?

 

Part of the problem in this scenario, I suppose, is the utility/mobility of a sorcerer in a small group environment and the overall flexibility of a well played PT/Vanguard in similar environments.

 

Only time will tell.

 

(Please correct me if i'm wrong about the 1v1 assessment ... and for the record, I by no means think sentinels are "underpowered", I just think there are some inherent flaws with some systems, IE resolve, that can make playing one an excruciating experience against competent opposition.)

[Apocalypse-]

Transcendence (Either the traited Watchman or the 100% uptime Focus one) is the single strongest group buff in the game for Objective based PvP. I'd be far harder pressed to bring a Commando or Gunslinger than I would be a Sentinel. And so long as you pace your cooldowns, you're not squishy.

 

The rated warzones will be 8v8 not 4v4 as of the last time they talked about them, so the only class that needs to be concerned is Gunnery Commandos and Arsenal Mercenaries. Gunslingers will get their place, but they're not going to be traited a "standard" way for them.

 

After Blizzard publicly stated that they regret putting in Arenas, I really doubt we'll see deathmatch style Warzones in TOR, and especially not warzones smaller than 8v8.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Apocalypse-

[Xilrasis]

Transcendence (Either the traited Watchman or the 100% uptime Focus one) is the single strongest group buff in the game for Objective based PvP. I'd be far harder pressed to bring a Commando or Gunslinger than I would be a Sentinel. And so long as you pace your cooldowns, you're not squishy.

 

The rated warzones will be 8v8 not 4v4 as of the last time they talked about them, so the only class that needs to be concerned is Gunnery Commandos and Arsenal Mercenaries. Gunslingers will get their place, but they're not going to be traited a "standard" way for them.

 

After Blizzard publicly stated that they regret putting in Arenas, I really doubt we'll see deathmatch style Warzones in TOR, and especially not warzones smaller than 8v8.

 

Perhaps. If its 8v8 then I can see the place for sure, for the reasons stated. Replying to help you keep this seen!

[OGsam]

Bump, stop reading whine threads and take the time to read this ./signed

[FobManX]

Not sure how I feel about the Mind Sear change as it would give us ANOTHER ability/CD we'd have to manage in Force Stasis.

 

Great post though. For the most part I like your changes. I don't hate the Mind Sear change either, but it wouldn't make Watchman simpler IMO.

[Apocalypse-]

Not sure how I feel about the Mind Sear change as it would give us ANOTHER ability/CD we'd have to manage in Force Stasis.

 

Great post though. For the most part I like your changes. I don't hate the Mind Sear change either, but it wouldn't make Watchman simpler IMO.

 

We used to have it. That's the original form of Mind Sear. It's extremely simple in comparison.