I have a Sentinel and a Guardian DPS, and for some reason, it feels like I do more DPS and kill mobs faster with the Sentinel. The Guardian definitely has all the fun abilities, like Saber Throw and Force Push, but when I am fighting, particularly the strongs, I feel like I am wearing the mobs down. Whereas with the Sentinel, I feel like I'm cutting them down hard and fast. I'm sure I take down gold stars faster with the Sentinel, particularly when I hit Zen.

Is it just a matter of perception? I am told that Guardian and Sentinel do approximately the same damage, yet I seem to tear through the baddies much faster with the Sentinel.

I have a 32 sentinel and playing the class isn't easy, but not entirely complicated for anyone who has ever played a ranger type class in previous mmo's. My typical opener for golds and silvers is force leap>saber overload>cauterize>master strike> force stasis. For silvers they are just about dead by the time I'm done and if it's an elite they are left with maybe 25% health if that. I always roll with T7 because I dont have doc yet and because if I'm going against a group of 4 norms and 1 silver or gold he will take enough heat off me to finish the harder mob. Watchman should be your pve build for lvling and focus for pvp for the crits and aoe.

The problem with this class isn't survival in pvp/pve if you pop rebuke first wait 5 sec and then pop saber ward (med packs also help when soloing champions). It's closing the gap with pvp and the majority of pvp imps being ranged. A skilled group of ranged imps will melt you down in 10 seconds flat if your ward and rebuke are on cd. If you can manage to toss it up and escape your fine.

To be a successful sentinel you have to learn to pick your fights. You can really mess people up with a pocket healer but if you don't have a healer stick to fights you can win, catching someone alone or at most 2 squishies with ward and rebuke up. I have 1v1 a 49 jugg and won because I was able to break line of sight and when I was using watchman (good for pvp but takes more practice) with my same opener for silvers or golds. All those dots in a row and then a cc that is also a dot made him an easy kill. But if he had any friends around it would have been a death for sure. Heal debuff and leg slash are really helpful for closing the gap as well.

In short if you have pocket healer =ownage

No healer = pick your fights or death

without healer if the other team is mostly range =screwed

With healer and the other team is mostly ranged =true test of skill and ownage if your good

Hope this helps I know I jumped around a bit. But if you really practice and pick your fights or back up your teammates who are already engaging a target you will melt faces. You can solo or 2v1 but only with wards used wisely. Think of this class as a duelist rather than a melee with medium armor because most damage is internal and elemental and ignores armor.

Both classes have their merits; there's a lot of complaining about how the Sent is inferior especially in PVP but that's a non issue, it's only a matter of time until they are buffed and totally dominate, then get nerfed again and so it goes. For me the biggest decider was simply the feel of both, the Guardian can tank and their DPS makes me think of Arms Warriors: complex priority system, reliance on a cast/channeled ability, minor but important dots and a relatively small amount of really hard smacking attacks. The Sent is faster with greater mobility since they don't use Master Strike with larger amount of weaker hits. Not that I mean they use less or more abilities in their rotations just the animations and feel of the abilities make the Guardian look/feel more like Luke hammering down on Vader at the end of ROTJ while the Sent feels much more agile and acrobatic more like the fights from the prequels. At least that is my experience thus far and it is almost entirely just how they feel to me.

Sorry, not trying to nitpick, but I don't know where you got your info. I'm a 50 Sentinel and my Master Strike routinely hits for 4k+, I use it every single time it's up. And as Combat spec, it roots the target in place for the duration, so it always does full damage.

If its a LOT of abiities,I`m all for it.I like to have something for every occasion

Here is what my quickbars look like at 37: http://i.imgur.com/y3OO1.jpg

If you want to Tank, go Guardian, if you only ever want to DPS I'd probably go Sentinel. Not because Guardian DPS is pathetic, but because Sentinels offer more to the team than a Guardian.

Sentinels get 3 VERY nice buffs on cooldowns. One buff causes your bleeds to heal your team, if you're Watchman spec it's amazing. The second buff increases ranged and melee defense while increasing movement speed by 15%. The third buff increases damage and healing by 15%.

You'll get nothing that useful as a Guardian.

Here is what my quickbars look like at 37: http://i.imgur.com/y3OO1.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to Tank, go Guardian, if you only ever want to DPS I'd probably go Sentinel. Not because Guardian DPS is pathetic, but because Sentinels offer more to the team than a Guardian.

 

Sentinels get 3 VERY nice buffs on cooldowns. One buff causes your bleeds to heal your team, if you're Watchman spec it's amazing. The second buff increases ranged and melee defense while increasing movement speed by 15%. The third buff increases damage and healing by 15%.

 

You'll get nothing that useful as a Guardian.

Actually it's 50% speed.

And the first buff, Zen, as Combat spec it reduces the focus cost of your main focus dump, and reduces the global cd by 0.5 seconds (making it 1 second flat). It's really an amazing dps boost, much more useful than healing your party (your healer should be handling that). And for hammering down an enemy, six 1k+ non-crit attacks in rapid succession is devastating. I can get off six hard hitting abilities in the span of six seconds, instead of nine. That's just huge.

I love the Sentinel. Yea, it could use some fixes but tbh, they really don't have to tweak a lot, because it's kind of bordering overpowered.

Very gear dependent though, and I imagine it isn't much different for a Guardian.

You also have to toy around with builds, since it's a class for which you really need to find *your* way to play it in order to enjoy it, more so than other adv classes I've tried.

The thing with Sentinel's is that they can deal out significant damage in a very short period of time. On the other hand, you can die fairly quickly.

Between Saber Ward, Rebuke, Guarded by the Force, Pacify (90% melee/ranged hit chance reduction) Force Camo (which if you spec Watchman, can be 4 seconds of 100% damage reduction) Awe, Force Stasis and Call on the Force, which resets the cd on Saber Ward...the only time I die is in extreme situations or when I'm caught with all of my defensive abilities on cd.

We're really quite well equipped.

Sorry, not trying to nitpick, but I don't know where you got your info. I'm a 50 Sentinel and my Master Strike routinely hits for 4k+, I use it every single time it's up. And as Combat spec, it roots the target in place for the duration, so it always does full damage.

Ok my bad; haven't gotten my Sent as high as my Guardian. Although I doubt you use it as much since you don't have an ability to refresh it's cooldown. And in your next post you mentioned hammering your opponent down. When I said that I didn't actually mean in terms of burst DPS, I meant in the way the attacks feel. The animations and feeling of my Vigi Dps is much that of just battering them down while my Sent feels more like I'm dancing circles around them chewing them up circa the prequel lightsaber fights.