2.8 PVE Watchman Questions

[CycloH]

I've been following the 2.8 PTS Watchman feedback thread pretty carefully... and I have been actually on the PTS myself trying to get familiar with the changes. The best parse I got so far is 3938, but I may be confused about some of the changes.

 

Specifically, what does this do to the priority now? Typically when I would run watchman my three main CD abilities would be Overload Saber > Cauterize > Merciless Slash. My main question, does the increase damage to Merciless Slash now change the priority? I ask this because when I switched to Overload Saber > Merciless Slash > Cauterize I found myself becoming focus starved much faster. With that in mind does it still make sense to keep to the original?

 

The other thing... I currently run the Dread Forged FR and the Kell Dragon SA for the (bugged) double proc (which I signed the petition to fix btw) But what I fear is that if they fix that, the BiS is now Dread Forged FR and SA which will drop us about 100 DPS, which really negates the damage increases we are looking to get with 2.8. I am just so confused as to where all this is going and what it means for our beloved Sentinels.

 

I appreciate your feedback and thoughts.

Edited May 6, 2014 by CycloH

[Alucardess]

The recent talk about the return of the proc system (Merciless has 100% to proc Cauterize. Dunno about Dispatch/Slash. Most likely remains the same) doesn't change the rotation. It'll pretty much be the same, because you want Cauterize on CD most of the time. When Merciless Slash has 4 stacks with the new changes, it'll pretty much be the current iteration of PTS. Also, I found I did more damage when I had Cauterize prioritized over Merciless Slash. Just my opinion, although I still ****ed up a couple times because I had trouble putting Master Strike in my rotation.

 

In terms of focus management, I personally think it's better to have Cauterize up as soon as possible, because OS has some downtime where it's not applied, and if you Merciless Slash a target without a burn and it crits, that a wasted focus point where you could've had one, which helps a lot due to the reduced cost of Merciless Slash.

 

And yeah, the change to the relics is going to drop us. Ah well. They should've fixed it earlier than now.

Edited May 6, 2014 by Alucardess

[CycloH]

Yeah great points... I am glad it's not some major over haul of our rotations, just a slight awareness adjustment really.

 

And again on the relics... I really hope they are taking this into consideration. I mean, I am one who would hope they would base their adjustments from operations as opposed to a test dummy... But! The dummy parses show about 100 DPS increase with the new sentinel changes, but they are ALL using the double proc relic bug (FR and KD).

 

Being that the double relic fix is slated for 2.8 along side the Watchman changes, I really hope it all balances out properly in the end, otherwise it's really not a DPS balance patch at all! Rather, it would be a "let's fix the double proc relic thing". Here's hopin for the best.