Focus in PvE

[KruelhandJorb]

Hey all.

 

Back from a few months off, playing a lot of PvP lately and finally wanted to see what FOcus was about.. it's fun, for sure and I'm curious though if anyone raids in Focus at all or is it just what I fear it would be... a cc breaking-fest.

 

I typically run Combat in PvE since our other Sents were watchman to offer more burst on burn phases... I don't plan to raid a whole lot but if it comes up I'd like to not have to constantly respec (please put duel spec in bw thanks).

 

So anyway, anyone here raid HM Ops in Focus?

[Gyronamics]

We have a focus guardian we've done ec nim with. Seems just fine with it.

[Hiniba]

I haven't parsed but with top end gear they seem to come pretty close in damage to the other two trees (I IMAGINE it's slightly less but I doubt the differences are huge). Very nice for fights with adds and stuff that can be AOE'd since otherwise sentinels are a bit lacking in that department. I know people view it as a PVP tree and an AOE tree but there's still nice DOT damage from it's top tier ability, even not hitting a group sweep still does lots of damage, shii cho ignores 30% of armor, masterstrike and abilities like that are improved a lot.

I would say one of the biggest advantages is how quickly I can recycle focus (since you can instantly refill with Zen and then use the same focus to get half of your 30 stack back quickly). I feel, compared to Combat or Watchman I pop zen way more often (plus after the last update Watchman's zen lost some use and I've always felt slow on my 30 stack with combat but I might not do it perfectly).

[Draaconis]

Here is the Focus I've been banging around with:

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501bZGhZGrR0dforfz.2

 

Between two leaps, force exhaustion, force stasis, and singularity, you get a lot of free sweeps with 100% crit chance+100% damage. It usually pops for about 5-6K for up to 5 targets in a 360 arc. I'm not capped on gear though. I recommend carrying Doc around with you though and turn off his offensive skills. You get knocked around alot leaping into groups.

[BlznSmri]

It's viable, but not competitive with Combat and Watchmen...

[arkitip]

It's very viable for Guardians, because it does similar DPS to Vig. For Sentinels though Watchman and Combat outperform it pretty handily. Edited December 18, 2012 by arkitip

[Ramtar]

It's viable, but not competitive with Combat and Watchmen...

 

Sorry to bust your bubble but Focus is competitive as the other two in PvE.

[BlznSmri]

Sorry to bust your bubble but Focus is competitive as the other two in PvE.

 

It doesn't do comparable DPS to Watchmen or Combat, thus, it's not competitive with them. There are fights were being a Janitor will help (Add duty on Writhing Horror, Trandoshan phase of NM Kephass) but otherwise Watchmen and Combat make Focus their *****.

 

Focus does viable dps, but it is still, on average, 100-200 dps behind Combat and Watchmen.

[Ramtar]

It doesn't do comparable DPS to Watchmen or Combat, thus, it's not competitive with them. There are fights were being a Janitor will help (Add duty on Writhing Horror, Trandoshan phase of NM Kephass) but otherwise Watchmen and Combat make Focus their *****.

 

Focus does viable dps, but it is still, on average, 100-200 dps behind Combat and Watchmen.

 

Oh that's right, my bad, I forget the devs didn't to give the ability to NPCs to remove DOTs or Bubble Stun that would reduce a Watchman or Combat damage numbers during a operation.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Ramtar

[BlznSmri]

Oh that's right, my bad, I forget the devs didn't to give the ability to NPCs to remove DOTs or Bubble Stun that would reduce a Watchman or Combat damage numbers during a operation.

 

I get that you don't like certain things about Player versus Player, but those complaints have no place in Player versus Environment threads.

 

If you want to ***** and argue about PvP do it in PvP designated threads.

[Ramtar]

I get that you don't like certain things about Player versus Player, but those complaints have no place in Player versus Environment threads.

 

If you want to ***** and argue about PvP do it in PvP designated threads.

 

My complaint is that you talk down about the Focus tree. Check your own signature.

 

This forum is to talk about the class as a whole, to make it viable and successful in both environments: PvE and PvP.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Ramtar

[BlznSmri]

My complaint is that you talk down about the Focus tree. Check your own signature.

 

This forum is to talk about the class as a whole, to make it viable and successful in both environments: PvE and PvP.

 

Then make a thread about that. I don't down play Focus, I state the fact that it doesn't do comparable DPS to Watchmen or Combat and that it's weaker than the two in single target fights. Focus excels on Trash and the few fights that require AoE output (Trandoshans on EC Kephass, Adds in Writhing Horror) because of the emphasis and buffs to Force Sweep. I didn't include it in my guide because of the disparity in damage and because there's really nothing difficult about the spec.

[IAmViiOLENT]

Agree with Apostate. Using Rage I can get maybe 1850 out of it in a single target dummy parse, (Thats pretty generous, I'd guess more like 1800..) compared to the easy 2k-2.2k of carnage/annihilation. I have actually used it on NiM EC Kephess recently though, and in that case it wasn't bad at all as I could clear out the adds practically by myself.

[Devilhanzou]

In ops or any long-term pve fighting watchmen and combat will out do focus any day, but they are supposed to really. In the Sentinel tree you have your dot spec 3 minute plus for optimal max dps class in watchmen, your cookie cutter burst spec in Combat (simple to play but hard to master like certain other duel wield melee classes in games past ), and then your Mega Short Term Burst PVP Spec in Focus. Now that being said the fact that focus spec in that 5-15 second burst can net you anywhere from 3000-5000+ dps and its nice to change it up every now and then. Focus spec is great for doing dailies especially anything evolving non-elite mobs by the plenty.

 

btw I would not recommend the site personally for anything except if people are looking to mess around with focus http://www.noxxic.com has a separate section for pve focus and pvp focus and I have found the dmg in the pve spec they recommend to be about 150-200 higher than staying in the a typical pvp focus spec.

Edited December 23, 2012 by Devilhanzou
add

[Grimsblood]

Agree with Apostate. Using Rage I can get maybe 1850 out of it in a single target dummy parse, (Thats pretty generous, I'd guess more like 1800..) compared to the easy 2k-2.2k of carnage/annihilation. I have actually used it on NiM EC Kephess recently though, and in that case it wasn't bad at all as I could clear out the adds practically by myself.

 

I am interested in seeing your logs from these self claimed numbers.

[Hikaru]

i rarely post but when i saw that claim i also have to ask, Can i also see the logs to these claimed result (1900 single target focus) (2.2+k watchman) would like to see a 300+ sec parse of that.

 

 

Thanks in advance

[Mission_dj]

I'm personally getting 2k watchman. Just shy of 1900 in combat. Only getting 1750 in focus. That's with all gear BiS.

[Xiij]

Hey all.

 

Back from a few months off, playing a lot of PvP lately and finally wanted to see what FOcus was about.. it's fun, for sure and I'm curious though if anyone raids in Focus at all or is it just what I fear it would be... a cc breaking-fest.

 

I typically run Combat in PvE since our other Sents were watchman to offer more burst on burn phases... I don't plan to raid a whole lot but if it comes up I'd like to not have to constantly respec (please put duel spec in bw thanks).

 

So anyway, anyone here raid HM Ops in Focus?

 

I thought I'd try to get this a bit more on track; Focus is fun in PVE, not ideal though. You lose a lot of dps in fights where there are cc's (or as you suggested you could just break them...). I typically run Watchman in my ops group; however, I've been known to respec mid op to "lol-sweep" for a fight or two just to give everyone a good laugh about sents doing aoe. Also, I typically run focus in HM FP's because there are tons of adds on trash pulls (really nice in kaon on the turret fight).

 

That being said, if your op group has 2 sents, they might be open to the idea of having a "lol-sweep" sent. They do aoe like a champ and have inspiration, what more could you ask for? I normally roll with something like this; also somewhere in this forum someone suggested a hybrid spec that's fun to mess around in which looks something like this (I think you use shii-cho).

 

Anyway, try it out in pve see if you like it; I'm going to dip out before people start fighting about what the best sent spec is again...

[KruelhandJorb]

Thanks for the posts. I had to take a bit of a break from game due to the holidays. Focus is fun, and too viable in PvP although my preference is Combat in all things Pvp and pve. I was doing 1900-2000 parces in my gear which is probably now out of date with TFB which i've not cleared on HM or done NiM EC.

 

I was just curious if anyone was using it... I figured Guardians/Juggs were using it though.

 

I see the validity of using it for clearing trash. I guess that if you have the Legacy perk to field respec you can just respec as the raid goes on for clearing trash or boss fights with mucho adds like Kephess. Our group was having trouble with some aspects early on with that fight but when I switched to Combat the burst increase on the Bombers and such really helped (that and we added a commando to the raid that gave us that nice AoE bump too).

 

Looking forward to getting back into Raiding