Only thing Sentinels have that can stop that, is Stasis. Which I tend to always save to either interrupt massive damage channels (Series of shots I'm looking at you.) or to do just that. Keep a nearly dead opponent from escaping/healing. Those are the only two strategic uses of stasis outside of huttball. That said, the thing sentinels DON'T have, is CC.. they have massive damage, very good survivablitiy if their CD's are used properly. are excellent at hit and run tactics. But we have NO CC except stasis, and that's on a comparatively short CD for other classes' CC's, but still agonizingly long compared to many other sentinel abilities. It all comes down to being aware of the current situation, and getting that stasis off at the right time to either get yourself a kill, or allowing a teammate to finish them. Again, as I said above. Hit and run is the name of the game for sentinels. standing in the front will just get you CC'd to death, as you said.

That was my biggest problem with both of my inqusitor playthroughs too. 100% this.

yeah... assuming people are incompetent is a great way to get people to listen to you. I've tried using CC to break these people of this habit. It doesn't work. I use LOS regularly. And all too often, this knocback happiness come from a pull that I've already LOS'd once, and have very limited options in doing so again. But I get it, efficiency offends you for some reason. Making everyone's job harder than it has to be is just bad teamplay, imo. but.. whatever. my bad for wanting to be efficient on trash pulls. >.>

In this point in the lore, The Sith are mostly just bloodthirsty idiots foaming at the mouth with a hard-on for killing everything that breathes without permission. It's really unfortunate, and ultimately insanely boring in my opinion. Every time I play a more level-headed sith, or one with actual foresight, that is actually conniving and manipulative, I get told I'm doing it wrong... too bad.

for the third time, I had no intention of PVPing consistently at 55, So I didn't bother to grind for a bunch of stuff that's going to collect dust in my cargo hold for weeks at a time. I can definitely understand where you're coming from, wanting people who put in the work to have an edge, to get something for their effort. I understand that completely, as it's one of my personal values as well. Someone who puts in the effort, should get the fruits of their labors, no matter the medium. I'm not complaining about how long it takes to gear up, because I have no intentio TO gear up. If I thought it was just a minigame to screw around in, I wouldn't try as hard as I do to contribute to my team's success as I do when I do PVP. I'm well aware I could contribute more if I geared, or PVP'ed more often and such, but.. PVP has never appealed to me as a primary method of enjoying an MMO. That's just my personal preference, and we all have those. I'm not asking for PVP on the whole to cater to what I want. I'm well aware I have no right to make demands of anything PVP, as I participate very little in comparison to hundreds, maybe thousands of others who do. All I ask, is a fair shake. I have to wonder why you are so against people who don't PVP as often, having once been complete non-contributors to your team's success, are suddenly competitive, and not completely useless feeders. If your primary concern is winning, why does it matter so much if everyone on your team is competitive? I'm not askign for PVP or PVE to be homogenized and humdrummed into oblivion like some people in this thread. I understand full well the need and intent of a PVP gear grind. But I'm also of the mind that even PVP should be enjoyable for people who don't want to or don't have the time to put into gearing up in a few days. I know there have been several MMO's where I've found the PVP to be fun enough mechanically, but get snubbed every time I try simply because the gear gap is unbearable. TLDR: I'm not asking for PVP to cater to casuals, eliminate the gear grind, etc. All I'm asking for is a fair chance for those who haven't geared already, or want to possibly try a new way to enjoy a game.

Love how you cut out all but 1/10th of my post, and decided to use ad hominem to try to be clever. If you actually read the rest of the post, you'd see that I never claimed to be good, I just knew what I was doing to be competitive and help my team once the bolster change took place, and wasn't just dead weight merely because I didn't grind WZ comms in anticipation of 55 PVP, because that wasn't what I wanted to do.

I primarily PVE and RP, but as I said before, I PVP on occassion, but I know how to hold my own in a Warzone, and not be as you put it, a "boat anchor" for my team. The reason I didn't PVP nearly as much before the bolster change, was because the gear gap was so unforgiving, and despite my personal skill, I was still totally useless, simply because I was wet toilet paper in comparison. Now, I actually feel competitive, and like I can contribute. I just have to work a little harder, or play more conservative than someone who has better gear than I do. IN fact, there was one case, I ended up in a 1v1 against a fully conq geared Mercenary on my ungeared sentinel in my 3rd PVP match on Novarre coast at the mid turret. What did I do? I hit her, and when I started getting my *** kicked (naturally) I LOS'd her, and ran her in circles around the turret shed until reinforcements showed up and ganked her. I know fully geared PVP'ers who wouldn't think to do half the things I did to stay alive long enough to counter that cap. So in my humble opinion. Gear is a crutch. Skill, resourcefulness, and situational awareness make you a good PVP'er.

I only PVP when I want to. I couldn't care less about the gear. But what do I know, I'm just a dirty casual.

Best advice I can give for when you actually hit 50. Stockpile as many planetary comms as you can, and as soon as you hit 50, go to the makeb vendor and buy up as many of the most useful mods/armorings/enhancements/hilts whatever you need as you can. This will give you a very good head start on surviving Makeb, as well as passing requirements for lvl 50 HM ops, which I'll get to the reasoning for those in a minute. Once you've got those mods, start queueing for 50 HM's, and continue working on Makeb content. The armor mods you already bought will give you decent enough gear to get started in HM's, and you'll likely find even more useful pieces in the FP's themselves (black hole gear drops in FP's which if i'm not mistaken is equivalent if not slightly better than what the makeb mods will give you anyway. Only reason to get the makeb mods first is to get you past gear req's, and because comm mods are guaranteed to be there. FP drops are not.) Once you're more comfortable that the gear you have is up to snuff, start lookign for guilds running lvl 50 retro Hardmode ops, and see if you can't squeeze in. Most of the guilds I've seen pulling pugs are fairly lenient on requirements to get in, and as long as you listen, understand your role, and don't act like a tool will allow you to stay, possibly run again in the future, and most importantly, get gear. The main reason you want to run Hardmode or higher lvl 50 Ops, is because the gear you get out of them is right at the gear level requirement for lvl 55 hardmode flashpoints. you can also rack up a nice number of basic and classic comms this way as well, Useful for obtaining lvl 53 gear (which can be baseline for storymode 55 ops in most cases) or just to gear your most commonly used companion. (I'd only ever use classic comms to gear a companion. the basic comms are too valuable to waste on your way to 55 IMO) Once you've got the gear for 55 HM's, just do them. Make sure you get your daily FP, and if you're looking for more drops than that, continue queueing. you'll have enough basic/elite comms through those (and dailies and weeklies. Never forget to pick these up before you queue.) To get the gear you need in no time to start story mode ops. And from there, well. self-explanatory. And of course, once you hit 50, you gain access to the daily zones Section X (if you're a sub or you bought the authorization) Black Hole, the Belsavis dailies, Ilum, and more. Do as many of them as you can stomach a day. pre-55, they still give the same credit reward as they did when 50 was max, and also give a nice chunk of experience to help you along the way. A decent enough diversion if you find yourself wanting to take a break from Makeb content, which IMO would be totally understandable. XD Hope this helps you out. Edit: Damn, I got beat. D:

You're most likely right, but if that's true, she probably thought she could take me without them. Which was clearly a grave miscalculation on her part. Gear doesn't make you a crafty, sneaky bastard. Situational awareness does.

People like that make MMO's better. The ones who vote to kick on basis of ignorance need to be physically kicked in the junk for being toxic. Kudos to anyone who's helped someone who didn't fully understand something about a game.

Yay ad hominem. can we get back on topic please?

Knowing what/how to use defensive cooldowns and threat reduction is what seperates the excellent DPS, from the average DPS. Marauders/sentinels are most definitely stacked with defensive cooldowns, and this often leads me to take a secondary role keeping an eye on the healer just in case the tank misses a target. I can typically pull off the healer and either off-tank it with a defensive cooldown, slow it and kite it to the tank, or outright kill it with a little extra juice, usually in the form of popping Zen. A lot of DPS get tunnel visioned on their target, and don't pay attention to anything else, including their threat generation, or their health. this gets them killed more often than not. Situational awareness is the name of the game as a melee DPS.

I like all of these ideas. I'm not a hardcore PVP'er myself, I tend to RP or PVE most of the time, but I do queue for Warzones when it strikes my fancy, and I've definitely noticed the difference since the max level bolster change. I actually feel competitive, rather than a comlpetely useless balloon, feeding the other team kills (and points in certain WZ's, which lead to a loss) I'm not one of those PVP'ers that's focused purely on the numbers, whether on gear or on DPS/heal charts, I focus on how I contribute to my team. Whether that be harassing healers, defending an objective, protecting an ailing comrade, whatever. The situation is more important than the numbers to me. Before the bolster change, I rarely Queued because I honeslty felt I was nothing but a hindrance, a walking feeder, and it was by no fault of my own, aside from not PVPing my way up to 55 and prepping to buy partisan gear (or better) beforehand. Why didn't I prep for 55 PVP? Because as I said, it's not how I planned to spend my time at max level. That's not to say I'm bad, or that I don't know how to play my class in PVP, or to play the warzones. I do my research to know what I'm getting into, and what goals I need to be working for before I start, and pick up strategies and tactics that help in the future from Ops chat during them, remembering and reusing tactics that work. PVP gear has always rubbed me wrong ever since it's inception. I understand the need for progression and such, but I've *NEVER* condoned improving one person's experience of the game at the expense of another person's experience. That's not to say that winning and losing is part of that detraction of the experience. Losing is part of the game too, and can be just as satisfying as a win if both sides were fighting tooth and nail, and it was neck and neck the entire time. The more frantic and nailbiting the fight is, the better IMO. I don't judge my experience with PVP on how many W's and how many L's I get, or even how much damage/healing I put out. I base my experience on how much enjoyment I got out of it. nothing more. Isn't that what we play games like this for? To enjoy them? That's just my 2 cents as what most would consider a "casual" PVP'er. I know. we're the devil to some people. How dare we not grind for weeks for the best gear, doing something we'd rather not all day.

Edit: I copy/pasted this to a friend, and he equated it to a Benny Hill video, runnin circles spanking her and running in circles to Yakkety Sax. Whoops, sorry for the double post. hit qupte instead of edit. :X