Focus good for PVE and PVP?

[Moeror]

I've read that Focus is pretty good for PVP. I am on a pvp server, but as most people will know, alot of the game is spent questing solo and doing heroics. Would Focus still be a fine build to level up in as well as in PVP?

[MBirkhofer]

Force sweep is one of the hardest hitting moves in the game. and can be super abused with +surge items.

Some sync issues can cause it to miss more then you would like.

While, when it does land vs a 1 or more people. yikes.

 

Its pretty much a guaranteed 2.5k+ damage medal.

 

Force exhaust is super strong as well.

 

In a premade, the +10 centering after transcendence, means you can keep it up alot.

Solo.. not so much. you die before you ever get 30 centering in the first place. watchman really has the advantage here with +4 centering a hit.

 

And yes, it levels easy too. High damage slash. short CD blade rush.

And mega sweep/stasis. Stasis+sweep+ward makes all story bosses, trivial.

Edited December 25, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[Maefly]

I've read that Focus is pretty good for PVP. I am on a pvp server, but as most people will know, alot of the game is spent questing solo and doing heroics. Would Focus still be a fine build to level up in as well as in PVP?

 

Until about the mid 20s you'll do fine with Focus. If you plan on continuing past this point on your class quest solo you will run into some virtually impossible fights, the harbingers and Angral. If you have a buddy or two, no issues but Focus doesn't have the consistent damage or burst damage of the other two trees. It does have great aoe ability so the packs of standard mobs will be easy for a focus build.

 

In my opinion, focus is not really viable until the mid to late 40s even for pvp. Until you can get Force Exhaustion, the tree is lackluster and other than potentially topping the damage charts by just aoeing packs of enemy players, has no real benefit.

 

I have found that watchman provides both pvp and pve usefulness. In pve, it makes quick work of packs of mobs by spreading dots and has great sustained damage for single target fights. In pvp it allows you to get at least a dot off before you are stunned, punted, rooted, lightninged, blinded, or tracer missile'd to death. It's almost impossible to stick to a ranged target at this point in the game.

 

Combat starts to shine after 40 when you get Blade Rush. It's a harder spec to use going against big single target fights but not that much more difficult than Watchman.

 

For leveling (both pve and pvp) in my opinion its Watchman > Combat >>> Focus.

[MBirkhofer]

Until about the mid 20s you'll do fine with Focus. If you plan on continuing past this point on your class quest solo you will run into some virtually impossible fights, the harbingers and Angral. If you have a buddy or two, no issues but Focus doesn't have the consistent damage or burst damage of the other two trees. It does have great aoe ability so the packs of standard mobs will be easy for a focus build.

 

In my opinion, focus is not really viable until the mid to late 40s even for pvp. Until you can get Force Exhaustion, the tree is lackluster and other than potentially topping the damage charts by just aoeing packs of enemy players, has no real benefit.

 

dude what?

Focus has among the highest burst in the game. leap+stasis+sweep.

I destroyed angral at 31 as focus. And harbringers at 32 with relative ease.

[Edgedy]

+1.

 

Focus is the best spec right now, only way to play a Sentinel in PvE and PvP.

[Maefly]

dude what?

Focus has among the highest burst in the game. leap+stasis+sweep.

I destroyed angral at 31 as focus. And harbringers at 32 with relative ease.

 

You get that burst once every 50 seconds, if you're lucky. And after that assuming PvE you're not leaping again unless your fighting a ranged target. And the challenging encounters have all stuck to me in melee range. If you're running T7, you might have a second chance to leap but then again if you're running T7 your target is not dying to a focus build.

 

So yes, you can burst once a minute after that what do you do? You have no sustained damage and your focus generation is all active abilities. You have no real centering generation unless you spent some points in the combat tree first.

 

PvP level 40ish with focus is great, you can build up singularity with exhaustion and you can leap all over the place making your burst much more effective. But PvE, both Combat and Watchman offer better damage abilities, focus generation, and centering.

 

If your playstyle is focus, more power to you, I like that all the specs can be competitive but for PvE leveling, Focus is at the bottom of the three trees from a numbers standpoint.

[Maefly]

dude what?

Focus has among the highest burst in the game. leap+stasis+sweep.

I destroyed angral at 31 as focus. And harbringers at 32 with relative ease.

 

On a side note, I thought you had to go through the harbingers on your class quest first before Angral? Could be wrong but I could swear that harbingers were part of the class quest.

[RamzaBehoulve]

+1.

 

Focus is the best spec right now, only way to play a Sentinel in PvE and PvP.

 

Not really, it's just different than the other two.

[MBirkhofer]

You get that burst once every 50 seconds, if you're lucky. And after that assuming PvE you're not leaping again unless your fighting a ranged target. And the challenging encounters have all stuck to me in melee range. If you're running T7, you might have a second chance to leap but then again if you're running T7 your target is not dying to a focus build.

midgame. yes, you have a 47s cd stasis. But that burst is still among the highest. So your statement of not having burst is wrong. Also, 40+ you have exhaust, on an 18s CD. so, at that point your burst is now 18s cd, AND exhaust itself doubles that burst potential, as it too hits really really hard. This burst is literally 3-4x as much as combat can do. ever. Also, zealous leap gives you the 100% crit chance as well. Zleap also hits as hard as bladestorm. So, no, you are doing that in melee, and should be Zleaping every CD.

Should I mention zen slash burst? Also to add into that?

 

http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/jedi_knight/sentinel/#::f3ef2ef22ef4ef5e4fe9fe3d

at 50?

look at this. 9s cd sweep. 1 focus sweep. 18s cd exhaust. 47s cd stasis.

leap and Zleap. Leap in. 100% crit chance sweep+4focus. stasis+3focus. 3s stun.+100% damage sweep. now sweep-1 focus.. Exhaust-3 focus, zstrike+6focus, zleap-3. crippling or blade storm. another 100%damage/crit sweep 9s after first.

This volley is absurd. esp with a surge adrenal. This is kill a gold elite in 10s strong.

using stasis and leap yes, you can't keep doing 100% damage sweeps every 9s. But the initial volley you can. After that you are tied to exhausts 18s CD, every 2 times anyway. Certainly on raid bosses, you can stasis every 3. Mathematically I have not broken that down. stasis core damage isn't high.. but it does tick 4 times, and thus isn't super low. (bear in mind, it does build 3 focus as well) that extra damage burst on sweep probably makes up for it.

stasis also gets the 7% crit, and 30% surge of force attacks, and force attack hit % (90%), vs strikes no buffs.

 

So yes, you can burst once a minute after that what do you do? You have no sustained damage and your focus generation is all active abilities. You have no real centering generation unless you spent some points in the combat tree first.

Again, 15% crit on slash, 9% damage on slash. 15s cd on zleap, 9s cd on bladestorm.

7% force crits. Focus sustained dps is high right out the gate thanks to those slash buffs.

Additionally, the bladestorm and zleap. Once, you get exhaustion, your sustained is crazy, as you are doing those exhausts/sweeps as well. Which double your sustained damage output. (note they are both force attacks, getting the 30% surge as well)

30+ you also have 20% armor pen on all moves.

combat has to be taking damage for +centering.

 

PvP level 40ish with focus is great, you can build up singularity with exhaustion and you can leap all over the place making your burst much more effective. But PvE, both Combat and Watchman offer better damage abilities, focus generation, and centering.

 

If your playstyle is focus, more power to you, I like that all the specs can be competitive but for PvE leveling, Focus is at the bottom of the three trees from a numbers standpoint.

You are flat out wrong if you think combat outs out even half the damage focus does in pve. That is how far behind combat is.

 

While Im still on the side of saying, sentinals are definitely the weakest class. combat is in dire need. It is way way behind focus and watchman. It has the least burst, least sustain, least group utility, least mobility arguably. Force camo cc break is good. that really is like the single only good thing in the entire spec.

Justify how much damage merc slash does compared to anything in combat. Justify watchmans +2 centering/hit. its mega healing. Justify prec strikes base damage compared to zleaps. Justify the radical difference in focus/watchman zens compared to combats garbage one. You can't.

 

Watchman is good too.

Edited December 25, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[MBirkhofer]

On a side note, I thought you had to go through the harbingers on your class quest first before Angral? Could be wrong but I could swear that harbingers were part of the class quest.

 

harbingers is after.

[RamzaBehoulve]

You are flat out wrong if you think combat outs out even half the damage focus does in pve. That is how far behind combat is.

 

Not really, but whatever floats your boat.

 

Each tree has its niche situation in which it shines way above the other two.

Edited December 25, 2011 by RamzaBehoulve

[Maefly]

I think you're overlooking the passive focus generation offered by the other two trees. With Focus you mush use active abilities to generate focus and since you'll be in melee range you only get the focus from leap once. After that you're getting six from Zealous and you can blow through those 6 before the cd resets so what, you're spamming Strike? Strike doesn't scale very well with level and is probably the lowest damage / global cooldown we have. So all that extra crit you talked about (I should mention that my current crit chance is only around 25% so add all those extra numbers and its still a toss up if you crit or not) can't get used if you don't have the focus to do it. Also, you can't consider crit to be sustained damage since its not 100% - closer to 30% and any higher you're sacrificing other stats to build your crit.

 

Granted when you do crit it hits hard but that's not sustained damage.

 

In addition to that, you won't hit a zen state until far after Watchman and close to the same time as combat. Combat is the clear winner with 1 Focus blade rush spam + ataru proc, Watchman will be second simply because you can do it 3 or so times before Combat or Focus even get to a zen state (+ lower cd on Valorous Call), and Focus is last with 6 free slash hits...unless you're fighting two Champions in which case your zen state will blow the other two away and then you'll die.

 

Focus is great in PvP, I played it for several levels and loved the big numbers that came up, no problem topping the damage charts and every minute or so I could just outright kill 1 or 2 people. But the only reason Focus works is because you can leap around all the time. In an end game PvE single target fight if you run out the 10 meters to leap you'll be very far behind in potential dps no matter how hard your sweep hits after the leap.

 

Hopefully they give us a combatlog and a training dummy and we can present hard numbers for all the specs. It's my feeling that Watchman will be the dominant PvE spec followed closely by Combat and Focus will be the dominant PvP spec for group pvp.

Edited December 25, 2011 by Maefly

[MBirkhofer]

combat has the worst zen...

 

Centering gen is the same as combat. correct. (note focus transcendence is superior though. getting 10 free centering on use)

Focus zen gives you 18 free focus in 0 cost slash's. Which also build 6 focus.

In fact, I guarentee that is more focus then combats 1 focus per 6s.

 

That makes me actually deal more damage. combat zen just reduces the time you need from 9 to 6s. That doesn't actually increase your total damage dealt.

In fact, since, you can't make use of those +10% procs for blade storm, nor the lingering +ataru proc % on blade rush, its reducing your efficiency.

 

Why in gods name are you running out to leap? No wonder you think its bad dps.

Edited December 25, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[Maefly]

combat has the worst zen...

 

Centering gen is the same as combat. correct. (note focus transcendence is superior though. getting 10 free centering on use)

Focus zen gives you 18 free focus in 0 cost slash's. Which also build 6 focus.

In fact, I guarentee that is more focus then combats 1 focus per 6s.

 

 

Why are you using your centering for Transcendence? Aside from very rare "everyone is about to take a ton of damage that we need massive damage reduction cds for" you should be using centering on Zen or "bloodlust / heroism" Sure you get back 10 focus but Transcendence doesn't add any relevance to this discussion. So net 0 from a dps perspective.

 

It will take a bit longer 36 seconds to get to a zen state and Ataru procs should easily be putting you in a combat trance every 6 seconds which means you get a free 6 focus before zen so from a cost / focus standpoint, both the Focus Tree and the Combat tree get a free zen state damage buff. Wathcman's Zen doesn't give nearly the damage / focus increase but it can be done 3x as often.

 

 

That makes me actually deal more damage. combat zen just reduces the time you need from 9 to 6s. That doesn't actually increase your total damage dealt.

In fact, since, you can't make use of those +10% procs for blade storm, nor the lingering +ataru proc % on blade rush, its reducing your efficiency.

 

Now the question is which one does more damage in those six strikes. You're using Slash, which does slightly more damage per hit than Blade Rush at max level. However, Blade Rush also has a 100% Ataru strike which pushes it ahead of Slash by a decent amount. Now if you were to crit on every one of your Slash because of the increased crit from the focus tree you would do slightly more damage (assuming base 30% or so crit on Blade Rush). Of course you're not going to crit every time, in fact you'll only crit about half the time.

 

 

 

 

Why in gods name are you running out to leap? No wonder you think its bad dps.

 

 

I'm struggling to find out where you get all your focus from. As I mentioned before you must just be spamming Strike after Zealous goes on CD? Of course I'm not playing Focus because it doesn't do as much damage for PvE so, no I'm not running out to leap in. And apparently neither are you so where do you get your focus from? No passive sources, long cd on your main generator, no force leap for 4 focus, so it has to be Strike and if you're using Strike more than once every Zealous CD, your dps will suffer because Strike simply doesn't scale well with level.

 

It is very clear that you play and really enjoy focus and I think it's great that all three trees allow people to play how they want and can still do well in the game. But focus the bottom PvE tree in terms of numbers. There is nothing wrong with that because it's at the top for group PvP play which is what I believe the developers intended.

[MBirkhofer]

Trans because you have the option to? you have the choice.

 

Damage between slash/bladerush. Focus slash is +9% damage, and 15% crit.

Focus slash hits alot harder then a combat one. Ataru doesn't make blade rush hit harder at all. only the residual effect does.

Additionally, again. 18 free focus. vs 6 free focus. that 12 focus is then being put into bladestorms, exhausts. I can have zero focus when I hit 30 centering, and pop it immediately, and I END with 6 focus. you need 2 to use blade rush at least(2 cost+1 refund), and 6 total, and end with one. So I'm getting 6 slashs, 1 exhaust, 1 zleap, 1bladestorm. vs your 6brushs - 6 focus that had to come from somewhere, 3 strikes?

Sweep is only 1. exhaust 3, blade storm 3, leap 3.

combats blade storm is 2. Prec strike is 3. The problem is doubled right there, what are you spending your focus on? nothing hits hard in combat. you only have bladestorm, and blade rush. I'm not spaming strike like you spam rush. I have exhaust, leap, blade storm and sweep I can be using. Even stasis for +focus gen.

 

When I do use zen, I get more damage. And I get focus that will let me use my big moves, which all have a higher damage/focus value.

I don't think you quite get how hard exhaust/sweep hit. Or that my slash is about equal/possibly more damage then blade rush, all the time. Then when I do hit zen, my damage goes through the roof.

Using zen, focus's focus gen is significantly higher then combats. Even without though, the damage gained per point of focus, makes its efficiency higher. 1 focus per 6s is what combat gets over it. And with bladerush, a chance to proc ataru on strike for a bit of dps gain.

Edited December 25, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[Maefly]

Trans because you have the option to? you have the choice.

 

Damage between slash/bladerush. Focus slash is +9% damage, and 15% crit.

Focus slash hits alot harder then a combat one. Ataru doesn't make blade rush hit harder at all. only the residual effect does.

Additionally, again. 18 free focus. vs 6 free focus. that 12 focus is then being put into bladestorms, exhausts. I can have zero focus when I hit 30 centering, and pop it immediately, and I END with 6 focus. you need 2 to use blade rush at least(2 cost+1 refund), and 6 total, and end with one. So I'm getting 6 slashs, 1 exhaust, 1 zleap, 1bladestorm. vs your 6brushs - 6 focus that had to come from somewhere, 3 strikes?

Sweep is only 1. exhaust 3, blade storm 3, leap 3.

combats blade storm is 2. Prec strike is 3. The problem is doubled right there, what are you spending your focus on? nothing hits hard in combat. you only have bladestorm, and blade rush. I'm not spaming strike like you spam rush. I have exhaust, leap, blade storm and sweep I can be using. Even stasis for +focus gen.

 

When I do use zen, I get more damage. And I get focus that will let me use my big moves, which all have a higher damage/focus value.

I don't think you quite get how hard exhaust/sweep hit. Or that my slash is about equal/possibly more damage then blade rush, all the time. Then when I do hit zen, my damage goes through the roof.

Using zen, focus's focus gen is significantly higher then combats. Even without though, the damage gained per point of focus, makes its efficiency higher. 1 focus per 6s is what combat gets over it. And with bladerush, a chance to proc ataru on strike for a bit of dps gain.

 

 

Blade rush 100% procs and Ataru strike. I think a lot of the problem is coming from a misunderstanding of Combat on your part and perhaps an under utilization of stacking buffs for Focus on my part. I would encourage you to spend some time with the build, read the abilities carefully and take a hard look at the Damage compared to Focus.

 

I'll spend a bit more time with Focus in the interest of moving the class forward.

[MBirkhofer]

yes, I know blade rush procs ataru. blade rush +ataru is nearly break even with slash after focus buffs. the 6s buff to ataru procs by an extra 30% is the only thing that really makes it worthwhile.

 

The core of combats damage is not in moves. IF you want to defend it, you need to address the 6% accuracy in 3% ataru, and force accuracy each. These plus +offhand damage.

Provide a lesser noticed sustained dps.

My argument is that these do not add up to focus's much higher innate damage. Note that a significant amount of focus's damage is force, which does not use offhand damage/miss.

sweep, stasis, storm, exhaust all have 90% hit rate, and use 50% mh/oh force power.

 

Ataru is also force power, get again another example of cross purposes in combat. Its zen makes no sense, resulting in a 3s dps gain, at an overall dps loss. Its off hand mastery, and 6% acc having little effect on its force damage. (yes I am also aware of over 100% being pen)

What happens when you hit prec strike for 100% pen, and have over 100% accuracy? does this negate any bonus over 100%, or do you hit negative armor and have your attacks increased? again, either cross purpose, or actually really good possibly... need a combat log for that one..

 

hmm. proper zen usage for combat would be, strike, bladerush, strike, blade rush, strike, etc. adding in blade storm on cd.

Edited December 25, 2011 by MBirkhofer

[RamzaBehoulve]

Ataru Zen means you can do 3 Blade Rush/Slash in the time and cost you could do 2 normally. Just like the rest of Combat, it improves burst. Since it lasts 6 charges, that means with 6 Focus, you can 6x slash/BR in 6s as opposed to say 6x slash for free over 9s with Shi-Sho.

 

Not saying it's not bad, but it's not as bad as some of believe it is. It's just more situational than the other two effects.

 

In fact, it's very easy to fix its usefulness with BR or maybe they forgot to say it somewhere : when you Zen with Ataru, then Ataru Strikes happen every 1s as well (ie : on each BR hit)

 

I'm not 40 yet, so I can't test if BR procs Ataru every time while under Zen, but otherwise, it seems a small oversight on Bioware's part that will be fixed eventually.

 

That would pretty much increase Ataru Strike damage by 50% during Zen at no cost.

Edited December 25, 2011 by RamzaBehoulve