While indeed using Force Leap almost always on CD (sometimes you have enough focus to use something of higher priority and it's up, at that point I prefer to delay Force Leap in favour of 2-4 numbers) there are some encounters like Writhing Horror in TFB NM that make using Force Leap on CD kinda hard, atleast I know that after encounter starts if you use your leap 2nd time, boss will burrow and you will need to run to him. Wonder if running is not bigger DPS LoS than holding back on Leap.

Purge those thoughs, if you want to do decent sustained never use Force stasis (unless there is specific mechanic you want to prevent, I find it usefull to interrupt Shockwave in S&V HM on blue in sneaking part) and Force Scream (the tooltip of this ability may apear tempting, it has quite decent damage. Problem is when you look at the Damage/Focus ratio, that ability in our spec ends up being worse than simple Slash). Your opener should look like the person before me said, only difference is that after Master Strike you want to use Cauterize, assuming it procced off Merciless (1.5 GCD from Cauterize+1.5 GCD from Merciless+3sec from Master Strike and bam you have 6sec, exactly the time needed to not clip it, that is of course assuming you don't have any Alacrity, which I hope you don't ^^), if not go with Twin Saber Throw, use one Strike to build a bit focus and by then you should have force Leap and Overload saber off CD. After that go with more or less priority like this: 1. Zen (Top DPS is achived apparently by trying to time your Zen for 3 stacks of Overload Saber, but that's damn tricky to do and if you mistime it you end up getting punished for it, so just use it when it comes up) 2. Merciless Slash 3. Dispatch 4. Overload Saber 5. Cauterize 6. Focus builders to keep yourself up atleast at 6 focus 7. Master Strike (if and only if abilities above have more than 2secs on CD) 8. Twin Saber Throw 9. Slash It probably is not optimal rotation. I'm guessing those 3k dps monsters have some terrible secret that makes it possible for them to that kind of DPS but this priority is relativly simple and is good enough to hit 2.7-2.8k DPS (I know I managed to parse that much). As for build I would go with something like this 36/8/2 . Choice of Force Fade/ Weakening Wounds/ Watchguard is really up to preference and encounter. Some people will prefer 2% crit from Insight than 3rd point in Dual Wield Mastery, again up to preferences. According to some theorycrafting Dual Wield Mastery should give you a tiny bit more DPS, but nothing significant.

35/11/0 I was kind of messing around with skill calculator and something like this came out. I'm not very experience Shadow mind you but this build seems quite interesting for node guarding and generally tanky stuff. While dealing damage I'll porbably have trouble with force but that's not the point of this build. One of the things that makes me wonder is if it's worth to get 25% damage reduction in exchange for slow from force Slow

Aye, but not every class gets almost an auto-crit on execute move (+60% crit chance, so if you have around 35% crit chance it's almost an auto-cirt) I never claimed WHorror or DG Council to be not sustained, quite the contrary, I said this fights are easy to keep your stacks up and high DPS on dot classes. TFB: - Between the pairs of tentacles you lose stacks/dots/whatever (Nothing much, but at the same time that break does not have any punishment for burst specs like combat or sharpshooter, except for idling which everyone pretty much do) - If you are hunting anomalies (both at 75 and 50%) - Irregularities That's plenty of opportunies to lose your sustained. Kephess Asation is not really hard to keep stacks/dots up (well, unless you are hybrid gs and are tasked with hunting balls, tough luck ^^), tbh I find it to be very easy, the real difference shows up when Kephess gets "knocked down". Smart burst player will delay his burst 2 or 3 secs if that gives him a chance to squeeze it all in while Kephess is on the ground. I am not caliming that always burst > sustained. I'm just pointing that this ranking is based on results from dummies and in OPS depending on encounter it can be very different and that lately encounters seemed to favour burst a bit more (nothing that makes sustained anything to sneeze at, mind you). One could say that you should respec according to encounter (heh, maybe even reroll). My point is, find what is your favourite, 'cause almost every DPS(poor scoundrels ) in this game has some upsides and downsides. Do not be mislead by this dummy(as in training dummy, not dummy OP) ranking. Well, though I'm mostly not referring to main post but OP later comments. They are very biased, that's why I'm very distrustfull to all of his input. For example: Anni's shorter CD on Interrupt, that's not really very helpful, I mean if something is casted in say 1.5sec (only cast ability that I can think of now, that has to be interrupted now is Calibrating Shot in EC NiM Kephess which is casted in 1.0, oh right, there's also the shield that Ciphas cast on Heirad, but that's even less of an issue) CD will be too long either way so you have to have 2 guys interrupting it. Watchman/Anni heals? 1.5k health in total per Zen, maybe a bit usefull but nothing that really impacts an encounter, 'cause if your healers are not keeping up, that won't help. Also if just from utility point of view, merc/sage have something that sniper/gs don't. Combat rez. Of course every healer has combat rez but sometimes when the fight takes it's toll on healers dps can pick up the poor soul that went and died. Well, there are also quite a few fair points here. In general I'm an enemy of rankings 'cause they quite often don't show how small those differences really are. I mean JG is very good example of that, there is no better class for burn phases but his overall DPS and utility won't show it. Frankly I have no idea why would Sin/Shadow go above JG/Jugg here speaking strictly from boss encounter point of view. On trash Sin/Shadow may be a bit more useful 'cause of CC, but no serious raider cares for trash.

This topic has way to many assumptions made. First being that sent/mara has to run with watchman/anni which is just silly. Current fights more often than not favour front-loaded burst than sustained (WHorror, Dread Guard from Asation and for example Firebrand & Stormcaller have high uptime so in those fights indeed sustained matters more but on other fights like Operator, TFB, or I dunno, even Kephess in Asation not so much anymore). Second is you completly dismiss what makes vig JG unique and valuable which is his dispatch phase and can be very useful in bosses with burn phases. I'm not extremly faimiliar with other specs in OPS enviroment so I'll refrain from commenting but I guess almost anyone could input something here. You look at DPSes from dummy perspective in which case your ranking holds true but outside of it in OPS it looks different that's why I would take most of things in this topic with a grain of salt.

I didn't say Cauterize shouldn't be used. I didn't try any rotation yet as my sent failed to copy, it's just with our usual priority system (which imo doesnt change at all) it feels like there will be less focus which usually was used as zen dump, that's not a bad thing, it's just makes it, hmmm, a bit more boring?. I mean that with 4 stacks of Merciless it will be tighter. There will be still enough for Cauterize of course but I kinda said in an overblown way to show that I thing that our priority list will become that much shorter. 'Cause we'll have to spend time building up focus for merciless that is to come in 4.5 sec (that is 3 GCD) after last one was used and still be left with something to spare for overload saber. And yea. I didn't do any math on how much focus we'll have and for what 'cause I don't like doing mundane additions and substractions like this. All I've said is based on a gut feeling so don't take it too much to heart.

http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sentinel/233/ Here's skil tree, check it out. I don't know why but for me it seems like all that's left for watchman will be to use Overload saber and Merciless strike and every spare window will be left for focus builders. Maybe throw a Cauterize from time to time but that's a maybe On that note, I currently fidled something like this: http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/sentinel/233/?build=002303020212221202300230012000100320200000000000000000000000000003000000000000000000000000000000&ver=20 What do you guys think? Better have 2% force crit or 12% more dmg on OH? Going for Swift slash to get 7.5% crit on dispatch no longer seems to be an option though (especially now that it can be only 7.5% instead of 15%) ...

I'm usually just browsing forum and don't bother to replay but this one topic I found today after my first WZ quit. I never quit 'cause I'm losing or team playing badly .... it happens so deal with it. But today when I saw in CW 4 people farming medals on node from the start (yes, from 600 points) not even bothering to try playing I quit. TBH I hope the other 3 who tried playing also left. 'Cause while I don't mind doing badly when people just don't know what exactly they are doing. But when I see a full group who came to WZ simply to farm some medals and be done with - well they won't farm from me >.<