1. Yes 2. Sentinel/Watchman Forced companion usage, punishment for playing your character as a character, bad mechanics, buggy as the dickens. This one is a winner. It makes me not want to log in. I don't care that it's hard, I like a challenge. I liked the other boss fights that seem to have drawn criticism. They could be beaten if you played your rotation and kicked the right spells. You also had the ability to use whatever companion fit your build. Here you have to play silly buggers with cliffs or pillars or endless kiting and be punished for playing like a jedi knight.

It is - Slash resets your cauterize. Master strike is decent damage but doesn't build OR spend focus and so doesn't help w/ focus management, does not build centering stacks, and doesn't reset your burns. A strike + slash over the same amount of time as the channeled master strike does comparable damage and has a chance to reset your cauterize as well as building centering. Unless you're using master strike on a weaker mob to deal damage + the stun because you want to mitigate some of the incoming damage, I would drop it from your rotation. (Unless you're finding yourself with a dead three seconds somewhere? I've not experienced that kind of gap - a single GCD wasted is the largest I've had). Edit: My rotation - Varies. I prioritize certain abilities. Other than predicatably leaping and overloading in air to open I flow with whatever abilities are up in the priority and depending on what burns are applied. Something like this: Cauterize>Overload Sabre>Zealous Strike>Merciless Slash>Slash>Force Leap>Strike Depending on it the mob is one you absolutely need interrupts for on certain abilities I save force stasis as a panic button, if this is not required it is my go to focus builder before I use a second force leap.

Been doing a bit of a stance dance when I'm not lazy, as Shii-Cho's Zen is way better than Juyo's if you don't need the heal/don't have party members to heal, but Shii-Cho isn't as good when you DON'T have 30 stacks. Juyo to 30, shii, zen, crazygonuts apespaz with slashes and cauterizes, back to juyo.

Beating a dead horse time: interrupt. That's seriously all it is. Almost all the "bosses" in the class quest are pretty simple once you learn the two basic keys of all dungeon running in MMOs - interrupt casts, kill adds. This one doesn't have any adds, so just make sure you kick those casts. Save force stasis for your panic button when he goes to cast and your kick is still on cooldown. It will stop the cast, build focus, do damage, AND give Kira a few few seconds to pound on the jerk.

I've gone through and overhauled mine. Now I have to learn to replay the game Along the left bar I have skills that are seldom used - my hour long buff, my stances, my quick travel, my fleet pass, etc. For my standard centre bar I find it comfortable to use 1-5 from the WASD cluster, with 1-3 being most comfortable/effortless, so 4-5 are high use, but somewhat situational abilities, and I generally only use 5 in conjunction with 4 so I can roll a finger or just touch over. 1 - Strike 2- Zealous Strike 3 - Slash 4- Force Sweep 5 - Pommel Strike Num pad (naga thumb pad) - keybound to bottom centre bar. A lot of these are just habit for me, in other games my interrupt is always on naga 7, my distance closer on 8, my execute type ability on 11 and my stuns on 4 and 10. Things like that, just because it's comfortable for me. 5 is a natural resting place for my thumb so I have merciless slash there as I basically want to be throwing it on cooldown. From the 5 key I find the easiest things to "reach for" are keys 1 and 2 so I have my key burn abilities there to maximize burn uptime, etc. 1 - Cauterize 2 - Overload Sabre 3- Master Strike 4 - Blade Storm 5- Merciless Slash 6- Force Cyclone 7 - Force Kick 8- Force Leap 9 - Zen 10- Force Stasis 11- Dispatch (will go here - currently empty) 12- Force Camoflauge Shift + Naga pad is bound to right bar and this is where my defensive cooldowns, relics, medpacs, and situational abilities (pvp stuff could go here but I don't bother). Again, as 5 is my natural resting place I have things like shift + naga 5 being rebuke, as I'm more or less hitting it on cooldown and I find the right bar easy to watch along with my 2 bottom bars/castbar of enemy and display (allows me to somewhat tunnel out the left side).

Alright everybody, we have a ton of buttons - how are you managing them? Maybe also post how you play - i.e. I use a Razer Naga so I keybind things to num pad to pop w/ my thumb. Just hit 40 and I've reached the threshhold where I no longer have easy access to all the skills I want to use regularly without hunting and clicking. Hoping someone comes up with a clever bind system to inspire me.

Checking the disagree box on this one. I beat the harrowers at lvl 32 w/ Kira and she survived every fight. Make sure she's in her armor penetration stance and tank for as long as you can before force camoflauging onto her. She's not as glass cannony as people think and you'll have more than enough time to finish jerkface off. Kira is amazing for PVE, she's just a different playstyle. Basically you're on rushdown duty with her out, smashing damage as fast as possible. Whenever I switch her out for Doc (my other favourite) it takes me a while to adjust to how much more slowly things die. Kira is a dps beast.

Watchman is not useless, it's extremely focused on doing one thing well - damage over time. When raiding is more common is when Watchman will prove its metal as all that dot damage and some raid utility from heals will be gdlk. Lorewise Watchman becoming the tanky/offtanky spec doesn't make much sense. If anything focus should be the more "defensive" tree if one were to be redrawn the way you've suggested. Focus specializes in Sho-Chii which is a more balanced form. Ataru and Juyo are both fairly aggressive. Ataru is very acrobatic so you can make an argument for them being the evasion types, but Juyo is fairly lightsaber to face.

Alderaan was kind of a nightmare. Just press through it. That level range seems especially bad for the JK, plus there seem to be a lot of bad pulls on Alderaan. Which is a shame because it's gorgeous.

I think the equipment is a bigger issue than people realize. There's a reason why it was better to have a different main first in WoW before you rolled that rogue... Somewhat squishy melee classes need to be decked out. It helps to have a sugardaddy.

Zed, Haven't played a gunslinger to the level you have so I'll defer to you on this one - you say you have five bars filled, and yes, every class has a lot of buttons - my question to you is in a given fight against a normal pack of trash mobs, how many of them do you use? How many do you NEED? My point being the sent not only has a bajillion buttons, to survive a given fight they have to make use of the vast majority of them. Styx, Yeah I noticed that in the Valdis thread as well. I guess it's a paradigm shift for a lot of players where they have to not only concentrate on what they're doing but also be worried about the opponent. I think maybe enough people didn't grow up on Street Fighter.

Honestly I found force camoflauge the key to these jerks. Tank em yourself until you've taken significant damage, medpack back up and continue until you're not comfortable holding them, force camoflauge dump them onto Kira. Apespaz and damage race them to finish.

I think the problem might be clicking, honestly. We have just a frickin ton of buttons, and we have to use most of them. If people are mousing about and clicking to try to get that interrupt, oh back to rebuke, oops cauterize is off CD get that dot up swing back over to activate zen. Etc. It's just too much and the Valdis and Angral type fights where you HAVE to interrupt quickly just don't reward people who have to look for/mouse to/click their interrupt. I won't address pvp as I haven't touched it yet but I think clicking in PVP is generally regarded as suicide anyway. I think that people who aren't hunting around for all their skills are probably the ones having more success with the JK. I'm having a blast and I enjoy the difficulty, but I also know that I have about 24 skills I can activate without having to mouse to them and click. People who click because they don't know better or because it's their preferred playstyle are at a disadvantage and this class is somewhat unforgiving of disadvantages.

Or as I like to call it - walk in room, die clueless. At least with SWTOR you should have some idea of what is killing you. And you can interrupt the vast majority of it. Hover fingers over force kick and force leap. Use force stasis as a panic button.

As much as I hate to give a dismissive easy answer, basically this. The game doesn't have a handholding here is how you interrupt and this is why you MUST do it mission - but for this class perhaps it should. Force kick, Force Stasis, and Force Leap will all interrupt Angral's big dang death moves. You MUST interrupt them. I know sometimes we get in the mindset of squeezing out damage and we let a "cast" go that we could have kicked so we can reapply a dot or something, but this is suicide. Angral is a truck and you are a little car. Do not go head on at the truck, use the tools at your disposal. Shoot out the jerk's wheels first.