Help on Rotation for Watchmen build!!!

[Tethyr]

Hello everyone,

 

Just achieved lvl 50, and I'm bout to start raiding with my guild. I switch to Watchmen for pve raid, but very new to this spec. Can someone please give me an advice on the perfect rotation/priority dmg that I need to achieve perfect harmony. What stance do I have to be in, and also what is my priority of stats , do I go all out on strength or surge or Power or crits gear. Totaly lost, So I ask the sentinel community to help me out on this to better myself.

 

Thank You,

Inspiring to be one of among of the dps gods!!!

[Cinemayor]

This is a question that has no short answer.

 

There isn't a set rotation; you're more accurate when you ask for priority damage. Using a damage parser shows which abilities contribute more to your damage than others and that's a good place to start.

 

For Watchman spec, around a third of your total damage comes from burns (Overload Saber and Cauterise) so your first priority is to apply your burns as often as possible (preferably without 'wasting' Cauterise by applying it again before the previous one is finishing in the case of resetting it with Strike/Merc Slash).

 

Second priority is to then to get the most out of those burns - which means using Zen. The optimal time to use it is JUST as you apply the third stack of Overload Saber onto your target. In practice I find it easier to hit the button JUST before the attack that will apply the third stack hits the target (to compensate for server lag our own imperfect human reaction speed).

 

After that, you want to keep Merciless Strike and Master Strike on cooldown as often as possible without breaking the above two priorities. Merc Strike in particular gains a MASSIVE boost in effectiveness over a fight if you can keep three stacks of the Merciless buff up (reducing the cooldown = more uses = more damage).

 

After that it's a case of filling in with other abilities as necessary. Slash is used for dumping excess focus when the above abilities are on cooldown, Force Sweep when there are three or more targets you can hit (and CC isn't an issue...) and possibly even Cyclone Slash for groups of four or five when Sweep is on cooldown.

 

One easy and handy trick is to realise the Overload Saber and Force Leap share a 12 second cooldown with the right talents, so you can combine both moves to refresh your OS stacks AND get some free focus (assuming you talented for close-range leaps, which you should).

 

Watchman spec is ALL about Juyo. The damage buff from having 5 stacks of Juyo form is significant and applies to every single attack you make - Juyo form MORE than makes up for not having any talents to increase the Strength stat directly.

 

Stats are another contentious issue: a very basic guideline I use is to get 100% accuracy, 25-30% crit (without the Smuggler buff). 70-75% surge then stack power like a fat man stacks pancakes. For augments, Strength are mathematically superior to Power by such a tiny, tiny margin that you're best advised to simply get which ever are cheaper/easier to get hold of (Power on my server, by a long way).

 

This is about the shortest remotely helpful answer I can give! There is a LOT more to master if you want to be a really good Sentinel, but there is no substitute for practice. Take advice as a guide instead of a definite statement and practice a lot. That's all there is to it.

[GrayGunner]

I was planning on commenting, but Cinemayor covered just about everything.

 

The only objection I can raise is strength being superior to power. Strength provides a .2 bonus to damage while power provides a .23. The only difference is that strength also provides minimal bonuses to crit rating as well. Very very minor in the long run, but power is slightly superior to strength once you have your ideal crit rate.

[Tethyr]

Outstanding coverage from both of you guys, greatly appreciate. Aye, I will practice alot on parser. Ty Again. last question...can you provide me the Build Tree please. Ty kindly again!

[Cinemayor]

This is what I'm running atm for pure PvE: http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/jedi_knight/sentinel/#::f2ef2efef12e5fe2fe8f10ef8:

[Aurojiin]

The only objection I can raise is strength being superior to power. Strength provides a .2 bonus to damage while power provides a .23. The only difference is that strength also provides minimal bonuses to crit rating as well. Very very minor in the long run, but power is slightly superior to strength once you have your ideal crit rate.

This myth is so pervasive I'm going to end up ripping my hair out from frustration.

 

The crit contribution from Strength is on a separate DR curve from critical rating. How high your total critical chance is has ZERO relevance to the DPS effect of Strength's crit contribution.

[GrayGunner]

This myth is so pervasive I'm going to end up ripping my hair out from frustration.

 

The crit contribution from Strength is on a separate DR curve from critical rating. How high your total critical chance is has ZERO relevance to the DPS effect of Strength's crit contribution.

 

Wouldn't it still be a better choice for the extra bonus from power after attaining a high enough crit chance?

[Cinemayor]

Wouldn't it still be a better choice for the extra bonus from power after attaining a high enough crit chance?

 

Which is why I carefully re-mod my gear for best results. It does get expensive though

[Aurojiin]

Wouldn't it still be a better choice for the extra bonus from power after attaining a high enough crit chance?

Ok, let's try this from another angle.

 

Why is there a "high enough" crit chance?

[LagunaD]

I share Aurojiin's frustration with the "Power is better than Strength" myth.

 

First, Strength's contribution to your damage bonus is buffed twice, and Power is buffed once. When you take that into account, the difference in damage bonus is 0.021 per point.

 

Second, damage bonus is additive, while critical chance is multiplicative. The better your gear (i.e. the bigger your abilities' base damage), the better Strength is relative to Power, because you gain more damage from criticals but you do not gain significantly more damage from the attack bonus.

 

Third, diminishing returns on the critical bonus from Strength are about 2.5 times *less* severe than the DR on any other stat. For any possible gear level attainable now or in the foreseeable future, the DR on the critical bonus from Strength is not worth worrying about.

 

Fourth, as Aurojiin correctly points out, there is no such thing as "enough" critical chance, unless you have 100% at all times, or you think there is such a thing as "enough" damage.

 

Finally, I'd like to point out that the average damage your abilities do is based on a formula, or rather three formulas.

 

There is one formula that converts your base stats like Strength, Power and Critical Rating into combat stats like critical chance and bonus damage, including DR where applicable. There is a second formula that determines the base damage of each of your abilities from your weapon stats (for melee attacks) and your bonus damage (from the first formula). And there is a third formula that can predict the average damage of an ability (including miss, avoidance and critical hits) based on the results of the other two formulas.

 

All of these formulas are known, exactly. Given that they are known, for every ability, it is a conceptually simple process (using calculus, or brute force) to figure out how much 1 point of Strength or 1 point of Power increases the average damage of a given ability. And with semi-decent (i.e. blue) or better gear at Level 50, taking into account all DR and every other factor that you can think of, the answer is that Strength increases the average damage of ALL relevant abilities by about 5% more than Power.

 

The identical conclusion emerges if you actually simulate a full rotation, including procs and resource effects, as it must, since in the end it is just a set of formulas, all of which are known exactly, and math is not a matter of opinion.

 

It is not all that difficult to show why, without doing the full math. As explained above, with buffs the difference in attack bonus between Power and Strength is 0.021 per point. So for 220 points, the difference is 4.62. Core rotational abilities typically have a damage bonus coefficient of about 1.7 or so, hence a 4.62 difference in bonus damage will mean about a 7.9 point difference in tooltip damage. If your Strength is around 2000, 220 additional points will increase your critical chance by about +1%. A +1% critical chance bonus will increase the average damage of all your abilities by 0.75-1.05% (a number of key abilities for DPS specs get a 30% surge bonus from talents, including burns for Watchman and Blade Rush/Blade Storm/Ataru for Combat, although the Ataru surge bonus is currently bugged...). So say 0.9% on average.

 

Therefore, Strength wins as long as 0.9% of a given ability's damage is more than 7.9 (or around 10 if we are more careful and take criticals into account). That is true for any ability that hits for more than ~1000 points of damage, which is every ability you care about. Moreover, notice that the additive attack bonus advantage doesn't scale much with your gear. But the multiplicative percentage bonus from increased critical chance DOES. The better your gear, the more Strength wins over Power.

 

This is only an approximate demonstration; but a full calculation leads to the same conclusion.

Edited July 16, 2012 by LagunaD

[SalBasss]

This is what I'm running atm for pure PvE: http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/jedi_knight/sentinel/#::f2ef2efef12e5fe2fe8f10ef8:

 

With the amounts of +Accuracy that current endgame gear gives, I don't like Steadfast as accuracy is already high enough. Insight will provide MUCH more benefit, as the force critical chance applies to burns.

[Cinemayor]

With the amounts of +Accuracy that current endgame gear gives, I don't like Steadfast as accuracy is already high enough. Insight will provide MUCH more benefit, as the force critical chance applies to burns.

 

I think of it slightly differently - I already get extra crit chance to burns from Juyo Mastery which is plenty enough when you consider Zen gives a 100% on burns to 6 ticks whenever you get 30 stacks (which should be often). By talenting accuracy (which is a flat bonus, not subject to DR etc) I can the replace accuracy mods with power.

 

I'm currently sitting at 100.84% accuracy WITH 3/3 Steadfast, dropping accuracy/surge mods for power/surge. I now have a lot of power

Edited July 16, 2012 by Cinemayor

[Aurojiin]

I think of it slightly differently - I already get extra crit chance to burns from Juyo Mastery which is plenty enough when you consider Zen gives a 100% on burns to 6 ticks whenever you get 30 stacks (which should be often). By talenting accuracy (which is a flat bonus, not subject to DR etc) I can the replace accuracy mods with power.

 

I'm currently sitting at 100.84% accuracy WITH 3/3 Steadfast, dropping accuracy/surge mods for power/surge. I now have a lot of power

Actually, you can't replace Accuracy with Power; it trades with Surge. There are no Accuracy/Surge enhancements.

 

At BiS gear levels with legacy companion bonuses, talenting the three points in Steadfast will basically let you trade two Accuracy enhancements for Surge. So the question is whether 3% crit chance is worth the ~2.6% crit modifier you'd gain.

 

Here's my spec. Only points of note are 2 in Defensive Roll (because I don't hate my healers) and I don't waste points on Master Focus, seeing how Master Strike is such a small part of Watchman DPS.

Edited July 17, 2012 by Aurojiin

[Cinemayor]

Actually, you can't replace Accuracy with Power; it trades with Surge. There are no Accuracy/Surge enhancements.

 

At BiS gear levels with legacy companion bonuses, talenting the three points in Steadfast will basically let you trade two Accuracy enhancements for Surge. So the question is whether 3% crit chance is worth the ~2.6% crit modifier you'd gain.

 

Here's my spec. Only points of note are 2 in Defensive Roll (because I don't hate my healers) and I don't waste points on Master Focus, seeing how Master Strike is such a small part of Watchman DPS.

 

Apologies, you are correct. Since I don't fancy remodding all my gear AGAIN I'll stick with what I have! If I end up with more accuracy from gear I'll probably swap Steadfast for Insight out of curiousity but since I parse 1700dps on the dummy I'm not in any tremendous rush - I suspect the results would be close, with Insight probably providing more damage.