Dps in 72 gear

[Zenmar]

Hello everyone,

I'm a Watchman Sent running HM Ops (not yet the newer ones) and I don't fell satisfied with my DPS. I play in couple with a Combat sent, and even if his gear is only slightly better than mine, his numbers on dummy are much higher than mine.

I was always considered a good player among guildies, and mine was usually the highest dps in ops, but now I feel uncomfortable with these numbers.

 

I am in almost full 72 gear (just miss 2 armorings and a UW implant, using a Verpine atm), and I have 3133 str, 1336 pow, around 68% surge rating and no pieces with critical rating on them.

 

This is a parse i did tonight, I hope some of you guys can give me some tip. Thanks

http://www.torparse.com/a/446130

 

PS

Sorry for any mistakes, I'm not mothertongue.

[Alec_Fortescue]

And you shouldn't be happy with it. You can and you will do better. Not good enough for you gear. Keep practicing. I have full 72, except for 3 armorings, on my Guardian and I pulled over 3k. :l You should be aiming for 3k every parse at least. Won't really help you out with rotation, because sentinel is not my stuff but 3k is the amount of dmg you should be doing pretty much on every parse. Especially with Annihilation, which was made for single-target damage. Tips I got from my guild, and common sense, when I was trying out a sent:

 

As little downtime on Merciless Slash as possible

Biochem is a must

Try to use Zen just before you're about to put on the third stack of Overload Saber. That way your big hitting bleeds are critical

Cauterize takes priority before Merciless Slash.

 

Meh... But what can I know?!

 

Here is a good guide by a theory crafter:

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-1202.html A lot of reading, lots to understand but should be worth it.

 

Though it's made for 2.0, it's still up to date until 2.5 comes in.

 

There is also a possibility that the class is simply not for you. ;] It was my case and I need to roll with a Guardian/Juggernaut which I find nice to play with. I just "didn't feel it" as a sentinel. And I prefer single-saber.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[Zenmar]

And you shouldn't be happy with it. You can and you will do better. Not good enough for you gear. Keep practicing. I have full 72, except for 3 armorings, on my Guardian and I pulled over 3k. :l You should be aiming for 3k every parse at least. Won't really help you out with rotation, because sentinel is not my stuff but 3k is the amount of dmg you should be doing pretty much on every parse. Especially with Annihilation, which was made for single-target damage. Tips I got from my guild, and common sense, when I was trying out a sent:

 

As little downtime on Merciless Slash as possible

Biochem is a must

Try to use Zen just before you're about to put on the third stack of Overload Saber. That way your big hitting bleeds are critical

Cauterize takes priority before Merciless Slash.

 

Meh... But what can I know?!

 

Here is a good guide by a theory crafter:

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-1202.html A lot of reading, lots to understand but should be worth it.

 

Though it's made for 2.0, it's still up to date until 2.5 comes in.

 

There is also a possibility that the class is simply not for you. ;] It was my case and I need to roll with a Guardian/Juggernaut which I find nice to play with. I just "didn't feel it" as a sentinel. And I prefer single-saber.

 

Well, I have been playing my sentinel since early access, and only during these days I started to feel that "there is something wrong". I know the rotation, i know the cooldowns and I know which stats I need to maximize to improve performances.

 

I'd need someone to take a look at the parse i posted, and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

[Afieri]

One glaring thing that jumped out at me was the fact that you aren't using Twin Saber Throw at all. Twin Saber Throw should be used to replace Slash when you have procced the reset on Cauterize and are just using fillers whil waiting for Merciless Slash to come up or the Cauterize dot to fall off.

 

You use Inspiration as soon as you pull, and your adrenal before your first cauterize, this is limiting your potential because you are doing max damage when you have 6 Juyo Stacks and a 4 stack of Merciless. So an idea would be to delay your Inspiration a little bit (I guess around the first time you get a natural 30 stack of centering?) and definitely make sure that you are hitting Valorous Call and then subsequently hitting Zen within a couple of seconds of each other. I guess the optimal time to do all that would be to hit your Insp+VC+Zen as you have a 2 stack of Overload Saber on the target so your Zen stacks get chewed up the hardest hitting ticks of the stacks.

 

Double checking to make 100% sure, you have the 4 piece set bonus for sentinels because that there is an easy 100+dps.

 

Once you are in your 4 stack of Merciless, you have 3 GCD's between each MS. One of those will hopefully always be devoted to Cauterize, which leaves you with 2 GCD's in which you have to do several things:

- Ensure you have enough focus to hit MS and/or OS as soon as they come off cooldown.

- Attempt to proc the reset on Cauterize through Slash.

 

Generally you will be using one focus builder as one of the GCD's and the other will be Slash.

 

Priority list for focus builders is:

- Zealous Strike

- Force Leap

- Strike

 

Try to follow this exactly, watchman becomes quite focus starved once it gets going so you need to be not messing up your resources.

 

I've already stated the use of TST, now onto Master Strike (MtrS). MtrS is going to be used sparingly, when you are swimming in focus and MS has Procced the reset on Cauterize so you now have 2 spare GCD's that you don't want to be wasting focus in. Hit it, then continue with the priority list.

 

Looking at the ideas I've just posted and then looking at your parse, you are using slash too frequently and at the wrong times, and you are also clipping Cauterize's dot by 1 GCD occasionally. Cauterize is refreshed once every 4 GCD's, if you don't have the focus to use MS and OS as soon as they come up, then you prioritise your focus building over fishing for procs and then use Cauterize as soon as it comes up. Cauterize will float around a bit due to missing resets, but the priorities surrounding it's use are still the same.

 

I think that's all I saw, someone like Gorband will come in here, tell us all that we have no idea what we are doing and I will feel silly

[LadyDarkkitten]

Ty for the link to the mmo mech thread There are many talks about combat on the forums ( just gore then ravage?) and rage ( make sure you leap/oblit and have 3 stacks of shockwave before smashing), but not alot about anni/watchman apart from "its hard" and "it takes skill" which doesnt help a new guy to the spec. Gonna go read that now, but thanks alot for yr your tips man

[Zenmar]

One glaring thing that jumped out at me was the fact that you aren't using Twin Saber Throw at all. Twin Saber Throw should be used to replace Slash when you have procced the reset on Cauterize and are just using fillers whil waiting for Merciless Slash to come up or the Cauterize dot to fall off.

 

You use Inspiration as soon as you pull, and your adrenal before your first cauterize, this is limiting your potential because you are doing max damage when you have 6 Juyo Stacks and a 4 stack of Merciless. So an idea would be to delay your Inspiration a little bit (I guess around the first time you get a natural 30 stack of centering?) and definitely make sure that you are hitting Valorous Call and then subsequently hitting Zen within a couple of seconds of each other. I guess the optimal time to do all that would be to hit your Insp+VC+Zen as you have a 2 stack of Overload Saber on the target so your Zen stacks get chewed up the hardest hitting ticks of the stacks.

 

Double checking to make 100% sure, you have the 4 piece set bonus for sentinels because that there is an easy 100+dps.

 

Once you are in your 4 stack of Merciless, you have 3 GCD's between each MS. One of those will hopefully always be devoted to Cauterize, which leaves you with 2 GCD's in which you have to do several things:

- Ensure you have enough focus to hit MS and/or OS as soon as they come off cooldown.

- Attempt to proc the reset on Cauterize through Slash.

 

Generally you will be using one focus builder as one of the GCD's and the other will be Slash.

 

Priority list for focus builders is:

- Zealous Strike

- Force Leap

- Strike

 

Try to follow this exactly, watchman becomes quite focus starved once it gets going so you need to be not messing up your resources.

 

I've already stated the use of TST, now onto Master Strike (MtrS). MtrS is going to be used sparingly, when you are swimming in focus and MS has Procced the reset on Cauterize so you now have 2 spare GCD's that you don't want to be wasting focus in. Hit it, then continue with the priority list.

 

Looking at the ideas I've just posted and then looking at your parse, you are using slash too frequently and at the wrong times, and you are also clipping Cauterize's dot by 1 GCD occasionally. Cauterize is refreshed once every 4 GCD's, if you don't have the focus to use MS and OS as soon as they come up, then you prioritise your focus building over fishing for procs and then use Cauterize as soon as it comes up. Cauterize will float around a bit due to missing resets, but the priorities surrounding it's use are still the same.

 

I think that's all I saw, someone like Gorband will come in here, tell us all that we have no idea what we are doing and I will feel silly

 

Thanks a lot. I tried to focus on the things you said, and I think this morning I had a little improvement, considering during this new parse I was missing the Consular buff.

http://www.torparse.com/a/446342

[Afieri]

I saw a 60dps increase between this and your last parse which is decent enough in its own right, but I did a bit more research since then and it seems that in order to increase your dps, every time you hit Zen, use Master Strike in place of fishing for a Cauterize proc. this will delay Cauterize by probably 2 GCD's which is perfectly fine because the key is to make sure Master Strike hits while you have the Weaponmaster buff up. So as long as it doesn't delay MS or OS by more than a GCD, you should use Master Strike as soon as possible after you hit Zen.

 

You are using slash too much, only 2 uses of TST is bad because it forces you to build more focus.

 

EDIT -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Decided to elaborate on TST usage a little bit:

 

TST should only ever be used to replace Slash or Strike, anything else will result in a DPS loss as it delays Cauterize usage and therefore lowers the number of times you can use Cauterize in a fight.

 

When looking at the option to use TST, it does two things: 1) It is focus neutral (sometimes focus positive) and 2) It spends a GCD. Let's say you have 5 focus available to you and MS is off cooldown in 1 GCD, you know you need to hit MS as soon as it comes off cooldown so if you use Slash or Cauterize, there is a chance that you won't receive enough bonus focus in that 1 GCD which would allow you to use MS when it comes off CD but instead forces you to Strike, thus delaying your MS and more importantly delaying Cauterize due to the 66% chance of resetting Cauterize's CD. So you want to still do good amounts of damage, but you only want your focus to go up, this is the prime opportunity to be using TST as it essentially stalls for time. You should think of TST as a method of avoiding a GCD while still doing decent damage. Which means that it should essentially be used on cooldown, if not delayed by 1 or 2 GCD's at most depending on what is available at that time.

 

Also another thing, you shouldn't be aiming for over 3k every parse, if you can sustainably hit 2.8-2.9k, that is a very good dps level for your gear. The best parse for Watchman/Anni was Gorband who hit 3.2k and was in a lot of 75's and had a rather lucky focus generating spree on his bleeds and critical hits, which throws us into the whole gambling part of Watchman.

 

You have a chance to be generating 2 focus every GCD. In order to pull the top dps achievable, you take risks by saying I have 6 focus now, MS comes off CD in 1 GCD, I will Slash and hope to god that one of my burns crits, or this Slash crits and I will get 1 focus from that which will allow me to use MS when it comes off CD, but without sacrificing dps. That kind of stuff will give you a 3k+ parse when luck runs your way.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Afieri

[Zenmar]

Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it. I already saw a good increase thanks to your tips, what I can do now is just a lot of training.

[cxten]

On torparse you can trim your fight to any start & stop times with the time pull down menus on the left. Do this for your fight, trimming to exactly 5 min, and for a top watchman/annihilation (eg search torparse for gorband). Compare number of each ability.

 

First: Your actions per minute is a bit low. This could be lag, but make sure you're queueing up each ability before the previous one ends. Try to get in the 44-45 range. (Honestly, I'm not sure how gorband breaks 46 in annihilation).

 

Abilities: You're hitting slash way too much, which must be leaving you focus starved.

 

You're missing some merciless slashes and a few overload saber dots. My best guess is you're occasionally running a bit low on focus due to too many slashes and have to delay using these occasionally. They both should be hit as soon as they come up, especially overload saber (with the occasional exception of casting cauterize before merciless slash if it just came off cooldown naturally).

 

You aren't using twin saber throw at all. This costs no focus and hits decently hard and should be used as filler (and there's enough filler that you'll do it nearly on cooldown.)

[Kredox]

Try to get in the 44-45 range. (Honestly, I'm not sure how gorband breaks 46 in annihilation).

 

The interrupt act on the apm too Normally you will got an apm with annhilation from 44,3 - 44,8 if youre tough. Everything above is interrupt work.

[cxten]

The interrupt act on the apm too Normally you will got an apm with annhilation from 44,3 - 44,8 if youre tough. Everything above is interrupt work.

 

Thanks for the numbers.

 

I checked and he doesn't interrupt at all, but I looked through and he's casting cloak of pain (= rebuke) and saber ward! On cooldown these two would give an extra 1.5 APM (he doesn't do it quite on cooldown).

 

Cloak of pain isn't doing any damage (the training dummy isn't hitting him), so these are just fluff.

[Ausgelebt]

You won't pull off 3k in every parse in 72 gear, stop daydreaming. 3k with 72 gear only works if you get some lucky crits..