why is sentinel such garbage??????

[Ghingis]

They are not, borderline OP in PvP.

[Lancerx]

So, I've been having a lot of problems too with the Sent.

 

I came on here and did what I was supposed to. Researched. Looked at talent trees, read through dozens upon dozens of rotations and tips and tricks.

 

Respecced to Watchman, geared up for Lord Praven. Most recent quest rewards gear for Kira, galore. New gear for myelf, strength then endurance type.

 

Went into battle. Followed the rotation to a T. Click, click, click.

 

And he murders me. Brutally.

 

So, not one to fall off a horse and quit, I healed up, more stims and pacs. And back into the fray!

 

Five. More. Times.

 

I said to hell with it and went to go do some other quests. Came back at lvl 30.

 

Took me three tries to kill him. AT FRICKIN' THIRTY!

 

I guess I'm just frustrated because I really love the asthetics of the Sentinel. The animations are stunning, the dualweilding is just too awesome for words. And I'm one for DPS, as I'm mostly solo.

 

However, there's another difficulty too. Which I'm sure helps other people who... have nothing else going on around them. It's the singleminded focus and determination to follow the rotations and ensure you never get lost. You have to make sure you follow the clicks and don't look above your button bars to the rest of the screen, in case you miss a kick cool down. Outside distractions such as children also can completely ruin your fight altogether.

 

What I think would be grand is if we could turn... maybe one of the skill trees into an easier, less intensive tree for those of us who really enjoy the class but cannot afford to give our entire mind to the fight. Leave the other trees as is for those players who enjoy the more complicated gamestyle. That way, those of us who really love the class but just need to be of two minds, can still enjoy the fun of it.

 

Afterall, this is a game. Games are meant to be fun and entertaining.

 

What defensive cool-downs are you cycling to keep your mitigation up? also are you making sure to keep your dots stacked at 3 and preventing them from dropping off? I would love to help out, its hard to say because there are allot of things you can do that can really make it hard to play this class. I think I finished lord Praven around 27-28. I am biochem on my sentinel and artifice on my alt. So my sentinel does have reusable adrenals for surge and medpacs, as well as epic hilts, and in general at the time I had pretty good gear. I died once during the mission on some adds, but I did one shot Lord Praven.

 

What I normally do is start with force leap and then almost exact same time use my overload saber which is off global. Soon as I land I like to use zealot strike obviously which puts one stack of overload up. Now I know most people like to follow up with cauterize to get that dot up quickly but I like to use a force power , like blade Storm so that way it doesn't apply another stack of overload on target. Then on next global I use cauterize which will put a another stack of overload as well as the cauterize dot. Follow this up with another force power, like force stasis. This will also not put a overload stack up allowing you to finally get your third stack up right before overload saber cool down is fixing to come back up. Now you can force leap/overload then zealot strike to sort of start over. This will now reset your 3 stacks, and if you do this correctly you can try to keep those 3 stacks on as long as possible. I usually do the 2nd rotation similar but throw in a master strike. You can also wait to use overload saber until after your zealot strike then start with cauterize after followed by Force Sweep, Merciless Slash, Force Stasis, Master Strike. This basically allows you to use all your focus while also using filler abilities to set up rolling 3 stacks of overload saber dots.

 

I would just like to say a little about why I love biochem so much. I have a surge adrenal that is reusable that gives me 50% more crit damage. That combined with talents makes your crit damage 140% or so. and with Zen up you have 100% crit, so if you do the opener correct then pop zen and adrenal (just saying if you have biochem) then just watch their face melt off with 140% crit dots. With a little practice I was able to really learn to manage my dots better and I really started doing much better. During my 30's when in Balmorra I started to solo heroic 2+ missions, taking on multiple elites at once, and by the time I hit 40 I was just destroying elites same level without a companion.

 

I really wish I could just tell you exactly what you could do to execute and play better, but it would be hard to say without more information or watching you even. I will say this, when I first started playing watchman I was not doing well, and almost went back to combat. I did not realize just how easy it was to really screw up and then just die. It really was like night and day when I finally figured it out and it all started clicking, it really does take some practice and time to perfect, but it can be done, and it can be done well. Keep at it, don't give up.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Lancerx

[Hernathil]

Having Biochem makes the class infinitely easier to play , its hard to make any kind of a comparison beyond that . A person shouldn't be forced to take a certain trade skill , for a self heal and buffs , to beat a class quest mob lol . Edited January 2, 2012 by Hernathil

[Hernathil]

They are not, borderline OP in PvP.

 

Really and you play what , a bountyhunter ?

[KTheAlchemist]

Stop trolling. Instead how about post something realistic, if not constructive. Sentinels are very powerful right now, maybe hard to play. Which is probably why so many people fail and then come here to cry. I guess its easier to blame the class, I mean if you look at the alternative. After all if the class isn't broken then they would have to admit they are the problem. This class is superb for those of us who understand how to play them. I haven't struggled from level 1 all way to 41. And if anyone wants to talk mechanics or theory about how to play a sentinel better in a constructive way then Id be more then happy to help out with some advice. I absolutely love my sentinel.

 

When talking about class balance, there's an idea called a "skill gap". Basically, a skill gap what the performance difference of a class is between a low-skilled player and a high-skilled player. Sometimes, like when we had 2-button Arcane Mages in WoW (I have no idea what's it's like now), the skill gap can be too narrow. I'm thinking there's the possibility that right now for Sentinel, the skill gap may be too wide. It builds up slowly, over time, but it occurred to me today just how many keybinds I use every single fight, and just how harsh the penalty seems to be for missing any of them. And this is for run of the mill class quests, or even regular non-heroic quests in the world...most games don't require this sort of performance until endgame. I've never as a Sentinel had to attempt a fight more than twice, but it has been ROUGH...and honestly, it's starting to get a little exhausting to have to pull out every last stop any time I come across a gold, or sometimes even a silver star...especially considering how often I come across the former lately.

[Ghingis]

Really and you play what , a bountyhunter ?

 

I play a Jedi Sentinel with Watchman speccs, and I am doing more then fine in PvP.

Impossible to lose 1v1 to anything apart from an Operative, although they will only win if I dont have trinket up.

 

This class has a huge skillcap and the problem most people are failing is because of how focus works.

 

Every other class has full resources from the start whilst we have to build it up and keep our resources up by using rotations, which makes it easier to play other classes simply because they do not have to think about it in the same way at all.

 

Its just something that takes practice, but this class is extremely rewarding when you start learning it. I just love the fact that I have just started to grasp the class and still got SO much left to learn, absolutely love it.

[Zackath]

I dont wanna be one of those ''not nice people'' but...

 

1. I wreck anything 1v1 in pvp... ANYTHING.... even my mirror class (but sometimes its hard)

 

2. I got no problem killing angral and it was one of the most easiest fight.. hell the one against his son was more difficult lol.... dunno why. INTERRUPT is the key, if you still cant kill him well im sorry .. ''I AM DOING IT AND IT SUCCEEDED'' so if I CAN DO IT, why cant you?.... Im not god... you're probably doing something wrong.

 

3. I now solo champions of my level that have 100k hp... how? interrupts..... and survival cooldown timing.... call on the force etc.. stims....

 

4. I may sound quite rude.. but.. the class lack some ''THINGS'' but its not the class that is broken.. its you.

[KTheAlchemist]

I dont wanna be one of those ''not nice people'' but...

 

1. I wreck anything 1v1 in pvp... ANYTHING.... even my mirror class (but sometimes its hard)

 

2. I got no problem killing angral and it was one of the most easiest fight.. hell the one against his son was more difficult lol.... dunno why. INTERRUPT is the key, if you still cant kill him well im sorry .. ''I AM DOING IT AND IT SUCCEEDED'' so if I CAN DO IT, why cant you?.... Im not god... you're probably doing something wrong.

 

3. I now solo champions of my level that have 100k hp... how? interrupts..... and survival cooldown timing.... call on the force etc.. stims....

 

4. I may sound quite rude.. but.. the class lack some ''THINGS'' but its not the class that is broken.. its you.

 

If you don't want to come off as "not nice", perhaps statements like telling people they're broken isn't the best way to go about it.

 

I haven't had particular "problems" leveling, but it is sometimes a bit rougher than it should be for soloable content. Keep in mind that while a JK interrupts, times cooldowns, manages resources carefully, many other classes win the same fight simply by showing up and doing a much simpler sequence of button presses.

 

It's my belief that generally, superior player performance should be rewarded by superior character performance...it should not be required simply to achieve acceptable performance.

Edited January 2, 2012 by KTheAlchemist

[Slithers]

I think our dmg output could be increased. I am not having too much difficulty. I hate having the feeling that I HAVE to use Doc all the time. This class is challenging for sure. When I see Troopers and Smugglers killing things in 1/2 the time I do, with no apparent difficulty at all it does get frustrating. Oh well, I am not giving up. I will just play smarter. Most my deaths come because I was just stupid and ran in w/o waiting for cool downs and such.

[TehUberGeek]

What defensive cool-downs are you cycling to keep your mitigation up? also are you making sure to keep your dots stacked at 3 and preventing them from dropping off? I would love to help out, its hard to say because there are allot of things you can do that can really make it hard to play this class. I think I finished lord Praven around 27-28. I am biochem on my sentinel and artifice on my alt. So my sentinel does have reusable adrenals for surge and medpacs, as well as epic hilts, and in general at the time I had pretty good gear. I died once during the mission on some adds, but I did one shot Lord Praven.

 

What I normally do is start with force leap and then almost exact same time use my overload saber which is off global. Soon as I land I like to use zealot strike obviously which puts one stack of overload up. Now I know most people like to follow up with cauterize to get that dot up quickly but I like to use a force power , like blade Storm so that way it doesn't apply another stack of overload on target. Then on next global I use cauterize which will put a another stack of overload as well as the cauterize dot. Follow this up with another force power, like force stasis. This will also not put a overload stack up allowing you to finally get your third stack up right before overload saber cool down is fixing to come back up. Now you can force leap/overload then zealot strike to sort of start over. This will now reset your 3 stacks, and if you do this correctly you can try to keep those 3 stacks on as long as possible. I usually do the 2nd rotation similar but throw in a master strike. You can also wait to use overload saber until after your zealot strike then start with cauterize after followed by Force Sweep, Merciless Slash, Force Stasis, Master Strike. This basically allows you to use all your focus while also using filler abilities to set up rolling 3 stacks of overload saber dots.

 

I would just like to say a little about why I love biochem so much. I have a surge adrenal that is reusable that gives me 50% more crit damage. That combined with talents makes your crit damage 140% or so. and with Zen up you have 100% crit, so if you do the opener correct then pop zen and adrenal (just saying if you have biochem) then just watch their face melt off with 140% crit dots. With a little practice I was able to really learn to manage my dots better and I really started doing much better. During my 30's when in Balmorra I started to solo heroic 2+ missions, taking on multiple elites at once, and by the time I hit 40 I was just destroying elites same level without a companion.

 

I really wish I could just tell you exactly what you could do to execute and play better, but it would be hard to say without more information or watching you even. I will say this, when I first started playing watchman I was not doing well, and almost went back to combat. I did not realize just how easy it was to really screw up and then just die. It really was like night and day when I finally figured it out and it all started clicking, it really does take some practice and time to perfect, but it can be done, and it can be done well. Keep at it, don't give up.

 

Truthfully, I hit every single cooldown that ISN'T greyed out. Any time Rebuke looks pretty, I smack it, Saber Ward before every Force Leap in and again if I can before the fight is out. Zen as soon as it comes light again, Statsis and... oh shoot. I can't remember the last one, it's the one that hampers their aim for 6 seconds or something. I saved Call of the Force for this specific fight. I used adrenals, both Might and Fortitude on different battles, best medpac I could get my hands on.

 

I, also, have slicing so I have the option to disable droids for 60 seconds. So, I always make sure I do that if I can before I go into any battle.

 

One of my problems is that I CAN'T spend the time and the energy focusing and practicing, practicing, practicing. This is the only toon I have, no alts, and I have been playing since Day 1 of the preorder invites. And I'm just now level 30. I, often, have to toss the game aside because I have small kiddos who need me more than my guildies, lol.

 

So I really wish they could... just let us have an easier tree. That way I could enjoy this wonderful and fun class... and still be able to level a bit. I was enjoying it until I hit Tattoonie and just got frustrated with the constant dying.

[Lancerx]

When talking about class balance, there's an idea called a "skill gap". Basically, a skill gap what the performance difference of a class is between a low-skilled player and a high-skilled player. Sometimes, like when we had 2-button Arcane Mages in WoW (I have no idea what's it's like now), the skill gap can be too narrow. I'm thinking there's the possibility that right now for Sentinel, the skill gap may be too wide. It builds up slowly, over time, but it occurred to me today just how many keybinds I use every single fight, and just how harsh the penalty seems to be for missing any of them. And this is for run of the mill class quests, or even regular non-heroic quests in the world...most games don't require this sort of performance until endgame. I've never as a Sentinel had to attempt a fight more than twice, but it has been ROUGH...and honestly, it's starting to get a little exhausting to have to pull out every last stop any time I come across a gold, or sometimes even a silver star...especially considering how often I come across the former lately.

 

Yea I totally agree here. After thinking about it, I think I use my control,alt,shift modifiers all bound to abilities that are used often times during fights. This class has a steep learning curve for sure. And like you say the penalty for under performing can be harsh.

 

When I first started doing well I thought I had it all figured out, then it wasn't until later that I figured out I was making some huge mistakes. Honestly I enjoy the challenge of playing a class that requires a higher level of performance but the argument could be made that the learning curve is a bit to high. That being said the class is balanced well if played correctly, albeit playing correctly is not as easy as maybe other classes. Other classes seem to be able to show up and perform easier with less skill required.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Lancerx

[PantsOn]

Yea I totally agree here. After thinking about it, I think I use my control,alt,shift modifiers all bound to abilities that are used often times during fights. This class has a steep learning curve for sure. And like you say the penalty for under performing can be harsh.

 

When I first started doing well I thought I had it all figured out, then it wasn't until later that I figured out I was making some huge mistakes. Honestly I enjoy the challenge of playing a class that requires a higher level of performance but the argument could be made that the learning curve is a bit to high. That being said the class is balanced well if played correctly, albeit playing correctly is not as easy as maybe other classes. Other classes seem to be able to show up and perform easier with less skill required.

 

What mistakes were you making?

[Bigbazz]

I think the most important thing for a sentinel leveling up is to always have the most up to date hilts in your lightsabers, which kinda makes artifice almost a necessity. I've leveled up and not really had any issues with killing various elites or bosses. I've died here and there but usually due to server lag or being stupid.

 

(which is different to server lag in wow, its less noticeable in SWTOR, because you don't see it so much clientside until you instantly lose 1/4 of your health bar and are dead out of nowhere ^^), or when you kill the mob clientside while on very low health, but then you die and the mob returns to full health, causing anger and raging at the screen. Latency wise It usually shows as 39-50ms for me.

 

 

Generally I've owned it up, all the way. But I did keep my lightsabers up to date, when I missed out the level 45 hilts and waited until I got the lvl47s (blue quality) I did find it a lot more difficult during that lvl45-47 range. It really does make a big difference.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Bigbazz

[Lancerx]

What mistakes were you making?

 

well I never tried watchman until 32 and when I did, I read all talents and thought I had it all figured out. I was doing well but it wasn't until I realized how to alternate between force powers and melee to allow overload saber to stay up 100% with 3 stacks instead I was letting it fall off. Another thing I didn't realize , for whatever reason, was that overload saber was off global and could be used just like riposte. I was not using it properly and was basically wasting a global cool-down. With a class that relies on every global to either dps, mitigate damage or generate focus you can not afford to miss globals. It is so easy to miss a global and once I figured out when and how to use my overload, I was able to generate focus a bit faster and got my rotation going even smoother. All these things seem small at first but it is amazing how horrible your performance can drop from just a few mistakes in rotation.

 

I also agree with the above poster, that hilts are so important. I have artifice and I keep epic hilts on both sabers every 5 levels or so. You can mouse over an ability and then equip and epic hilt and watch how much more damage each ability goes up. I don't think it is required to play a sentinel well but it really helps. They seem to scale very well with gear.

[PantsOn]

How do you get epic hilts from Artifice? Constantly R/Eing?

[Bigbazz]

How do you get epic hilts from Artifice? Constantly R/Eing?

 

Would have to be yeah, I did it at low levels but at high levels it's madness, it often takes a lot of hilts to get a new pattern (the record I had for greens to get a blue was 18 hilts to get the pattern, can't imagine doing that for an epic).

 

When you think materials wise the crew missions take from 31m - 1h12m each, and the blue hilts take 25mins to craft, not to mention the expensive materials (especially gemstones which take 1h minimum and can only be aquired from missions).

 

At that point it doesnt make much sense to use anything better than blues, you replace them every 2 levels anyway, the epic level 43 hilt will be the same as the blue level 45 hilt. It would still be much cheaper/easier to make 2x lvl43 blue hilt, then 2x lvl45 blue then 2x lvl47, than just making the 2x lvl 43 epic hilts.

 

The ammount of time you would spend trying to aquire the epic hilts you could have outleveled them with questing.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Bigbazz

[arthasess]

Gotta agree, we need a buff to stand shoulder to shoulder with other class's

[PantsOn]

Gotta agree, we need a buff to stand shoulder to shoulder with other class's

 

Yeah, that why I was wondering whether I missed something somewhere along the line.

[Snoobic]

I dont wanna be one of those ''not nice people'' but...

 

1. I wreck anything 1v1 in pvp... ANYTHING.... even my mirror class (but sometimes its hard)

 

2. I got no problem killing angral and it was one of the most easiest fight.. hell the one against his son was more difficult lol.... dunno why. INTERRUPT is the key, if you still cant kill him well im sorry .. ''I AM DOING IT AND IT SUCCEEDED'' so if I CAN DO IT, why cant you?.... Im not god... you're probably doing something wrong.

 

3. I now solo champions of my level that have 100k hp... how? interrupts..... and survival cooldown timing.... call on the force etc.. stims....

 

4. I may sound quite rude.. but.. the class lack some ''THINGS'' but its not the class that is broken.. its you.

 

 

I'm so sick of this. Yes, the sentinal is a class that can be learned to play well. The problem with the class is that the learning curve & skill requirement is dramatically skewed as compared to the other class-types.

 

Go try a different class. If you still "wreck everything" and find that you don't require 36+ memorized keybinds to still do so - then come back and talk.

[RamzaBehoulve]

I'm so sick of this. Yes, the sentinal is a class that can be learned to play well. The problem with the class is that the learning curve & skill requirement is dramatically skewed as compared to the other class-types.

 

Go try a different class. If you still "wreck everything" and find that you don't require 36+ memorized keybinds to still do so - then come back and talk.

 

How is it a bad thing to have 1-2 classes in the game harder to play than others, but with a greater reward for mastering it? Why do you absolutely want to dumb down the Sentinel to suit your selfish needs, completely ignoring the people who chose the class for what it is and not some dream they had about it?

 

Once again, it's not the people enjoying the class who should be trying something else, it should be you and all others complaining all day long how much Sentinel sucks. So please, do us a favor and go play those "easy" classes and leave us alone.

 

The people enjoying the class as aren't the bad guys. You are.

Edited January 2, 2012 by RamzaBehoulve

[Snoobic]

How is it a bad thing to have 1-2 classes in the game harder to play than others, but with a greater reward for mastering it? Why do you absolutely want to dumb down the Sentinel to suit your selfish needs, completely ignoring the people who chose the class for what it is and not some dream they had about it?

 

Once again, it's not the people enjoying the class who should be trying something else, it should be you and all others complaining all day long how much Sentinel sucks. So please, do us a favor and go play those "easy" classes and leave us alone.

 

The people enjoying the class as aren't the bad guys. You are.

 

There isn't really a greater reward for mastering it. Since this thread started, I've actually gotten quite a bit better with my keybind rotations and rarely run into issues dying anymore anymore.

 

The thing is - I watch other classes solo the same missions that I'm having to pull out every trick in the book to beat - with relative ease.

 

The skill requirement to play Sent well gets you to the same point that other classes are just "handed out." If I felt like I was being rewarded for the skill mastery, I think this would be a different conversation.

 

Why don't you put your ego aside for a second and take a step back and look at how the classes actually balance in the big picture? Sentinal is not an uber class. It's built to be on par with all the others.

 

I'm not whining for a dumbdown. I enjoy the class - but there is clearly a balance issue.

[PantsOn]

Snoob, it's spelled Sentinel, not Sentinal. Edited January 2, 2012 by PantsOn

[Lancerx]

How do you get epic hilts from Artifice? Constantly R/Eing?

 

Its actually much simpler. Whenever you reverse engineer any item for example a green might hilt 14, then there is a chance you can learn blue quality might hilt 14. If you reverse engineer that blue you have a chance to learn the epic might hilt 14.

 

Now here is the trick. The chance for you to learn is directly affected by how hard it is for you to craft the item. If the item is yellow or orange then it is a good bet you will not be learning any higher quality recipe from procs on reverse engineering. However if you level your artifice high enough where the might hilt 14 is greyed out , which is to say you will no longer receive skill ups from making them, then the chances of you learning a higher quality recipe from reverse engineering is much better. I often times get blue and epic quality recipes from reverse engineering no more then 1 to 3 hilts, sometimes it can take more but depends on your luck too. Always reverse engineer hilts that are greyed out if possible.

[TehUberGeek]

Its actually much simpler. Whenever you reverse engineer any item for example a green might hilt 14, then there is a chance you can learn blue quality might hilt 14. If you reverse engineer that blue you have a chance to learn the epic might hilt 14.

 

Now here is the trick. The chance for you to learn is directly affected by how hard it is for you to craft the item. If the item is yellow or orange then it is a good bet you will not be learning any higher quality recipe from procs on reverse engineering. However if you level your artifice high enough where the might hilt 14 is greyed out , which is to say you will no longer receive skill ups from making them, then the chances of you learning a higher quality recipe from reverse engineering is much better. I often times get blue and epic quality recipes from reverse engineering no more then 1 to 3 hilts, sometimes it can take more but depends on your luck too. Always reverse engineer hilts that are greyed out if possible.

 

Wait, wait, wait!

 

Come back and help me with this rotation!

 

Can you give me like... just a list of what to click in what order? Because I'm writing this down, then I'm going to go change my keybinds and buttons and go forward with this new set up.

 

Also, what companion do you use? I've heard some suggestions about... what happens at the end... But I won't worry about that now.

 

PLEASE HELP BEFORE I GIVE UP!!!

[Snoobic]

Snoob, it's spelled Sentinel, not Sentinal.

 

Touche