Its really seems like they want to adjust swtor to steam deck which has so many pre orders for now. They are planning to release patch before Christmas as Steam Deck and get additional money from new players. Such discussions shows players attitude to this changes from very start. We may yell as much as we can, but money rules. I think this decision was dictated to dev team from above. Edited July 29, 2021 by DragonsKnight_

Went onto the PTS. Took me a bit to get adjusted, chose between A or B did some remedial testing, came to conclusions. First i'll answer your questions.

 

I am a Carnage/Combat main, I will be speaking from that perspective alone.

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you?

-Transcendence. This should not be a choice in the kit. This is one reason you bring maras/sentinels to raids. This is raid utility.

-Raid buff. I have access to it, and I also have valorous call to thus use it without costing me anything. This is good.

 

Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies?

-This is a non sequitor. Adequate testing cannot be done. I need the availability to test sentinel in higher end content to even have a chance of telling you how it would work. I can only speculate. So I will speculate:

 

1.) Defensive roll should NOT be a choice. The built in 6% DR and defense chance built into my kit on live is fine. If you remove it, you're just going to make healers lives more difficult come 7.0. If AOE is not something you just have, no one will take it on a sentinel. Defensive roll is the difference between getting one shot or surviving in a lot of nightmare content.

 

1A .) You do not understand how the content works in this game if you make the DPS choose between defensive or offensive skills. I will not, under any circumstances choose a defensive passive over an offensive one, this is effectively NOT a choice. This should not be a choice and will just lead to more complaining by the playerbase that they get one shot or die too much. It's a really bad idea, stop it.

 

1B.) Grant Defensive roll and other defensive passives either in their own section where you choose between defensive in a vacuum, or not at all and give them to use by default. This is stacking a mistake if you also intend to remove DCD's. If your intent is to decrease the TTK in pvp, making us choose between defensive passives is a more viable option.

 

1C.) Lack of self cleanse. This is usually baked into the utilities we have now on live. This is really important for a lot of reasons. Self cleansing on zorn & toth. Your self cleanse in council. Why we don't have this baked into force camo is beyond me.

 

3.) Removing force clarity as a default option is also wrong. It will effectively nerf marauder unnecessary as the premier set bonus is where we derive 10% dps + use of force clarity. This alone makes restricts choice and makes taking that choice, not a choice. Again, this is really bad decision making and a lack of any form of awareness of how these classes and/or specs are played in the game. Either take the time to understand what you're doing or don't do it. In this choice alone, you take away the sentinels mobility, and damage because the only thing you'll be allowed to run is the descent of the fearless set bonus. You are literally failing to accomplish your mission.

 

4.) Removing force choke / Aoe soft stun/Obfuscate. I need this for specific raid mechanics. They both add things to the game. It adds another layer of interaction and shouldn't be removed.

 

Examples: Soft/hardstunning graces at Tyth, TFB cores if one core is killed too soon, or if I want to push the phase faster. The droids in SNV at city boss if one is pulled. Obfuscate is missing. I need that to deal with Snipers at Thrasher. Fingers at brontes in p1 or six finger phase to reduce the incoming damage. There are so many more I can't even think off the top of my head.

 

Edit: Forgot Trauma. All marauder specs and all classes in general need this. Example: nim brontes going into burn.

 

This is on the exact same level of interrupt and CC break. You gave us those back, are you going to give us these other things back that we need?

 

This is a mistake. You are removing a layer of interaction we currently have in the game. You may view them as unnecessary but they are anything but. And what are you removing it for? to take it away from us so newer players struggle to figure out how to use these abilities?

 

Summary:

 

Either do none of this, or take the time to sit down with someone who knows about the classes / specs who actually knows what they are doing or the goal you're shooting for won't just be unattainable, it'll be broken. The example with force clarity and descent of the fearless shows this very clearly. This isn't just an oversight, you just have no idea. Why give us something cool if we are never allowed to take it.

 

If you want to make us less defensible and force us to make choices, that's fine. but segregate defensive choices and offensive choices so those things can occur away from each other. Because, like I said, those things are also not a choice, but a requirement to be competitive.

 

I LOVE the direction you went for combat/combat with the emphasis on speed, damage and uptime. That's amazing. That's innovation, that's something I WANT to play with. I will never get to do this because of how the choices are presented to me.

 

Sorry if this comes off harsh, but I'm just being honest about how I feel after sitting down and trying to understand what you're trying to present us with.

Edited July 29, 2021 by zorngodofall

Its really seems like they want to adjust swtor to steam deck which has so many pre orders for now. They are planning to release patch before Christmas as Steam Deck and get additional money from new players. Such discussions shows players attitude to this changes from very start. We may yell as much as we can, but money rules. I think this decision was dictated to dev team from above.

 

Yeah, would be great in case they admit that one way or another instead of all the lame excuses we heard so far. Anyway, driving away players who have been subscribers for years or even from the beginning and hoping that new players will be gained and compensate therefor seems foolish.

 

The whole ability pruning would be less annoying in case the choice of the passives/abilities affected would appear less arbitrary and less mindless (cf. previous posts) and be part of a complete overhaul of the game, inter alia including rebalancing PvE-content, in particular veteran/mastermode OPs, adjusting revolster to get rid of the stupid alacrity relic, etc. But there is no sign of that...

The whole ability pruning would be less annoying in case the choice of the passives/abilities affected would appear less arbitrary and less mindless (cf. previous posts) and be part of a complete overhaul of the game, inter alia including rebalancing PvE-content, in particular veteran/mastermode OPs, adjusting revolster to get rid of the stupid alacrity relic, etc. But there is no sign of that...

 

And its really pity because they actually may avoid so much pruning, for examle make voting for players to chose 5-6 most important abilities, some make work passive way in some interesting conditions, make abilities which needs cast time to work only when player is not moving, and the same abilities work in different way while moving. Tha same for "jumping abilities", bind something to jump + .... Create for console pre-set 2-line bar with such combinations and it will be intuitive and innovative, players will go here just to see how it works that way.

Edited July 29, 2021 by DragonsKnight_

Hey BW,

 

thanks for the amazing new Update, that propably won't backfire at all.

 

It's nice to see, you're going the Blizzard way of pushing updates, the community knows, will be very bad for the game, all with the attitude "If there are problems, we still can fix them later". But really, we all know, you can't and you won't.

 

So I beg you, to watch

nice little video and I mean REALLY watch it, or at least sent it to whoever is calling shots on this dumpster fire and reconsider what you are about to do to this game, beloved by many and propably one of the reasons you wanted to work with BW in the first place.

 

I know this is still a sUpEr HiGh LeVeL pReViEw, but wow, what's been shown until now, it's terrifying and I can only imagine what's yet to come and I sure most people think the same (at least if they are somewhat interested in what all this means).

 

+ The point of "there are too many dcds over the years" is utter bs, since most were here from the beginning(or close to), some aren't, but that's clearly not the majority.

I'm going to make a proper feedback post later down the line, but I read some of the comments on here and think God people can cry, the changes generally aren't that bad and its so clear people don't actually listen to what BW say, this is suppose to be a basic outlook, abilities will be missing if they don't want them tested. Its why they added stun breaker and interrupt back in because people can't read and cried so hard about not having a full bar. They just want certain abilities and passives testing. THIS ISNT THE FULL LOADOUT.

 

Yes we are locked in with the abilities at the moment so it does look like your abilities are halved, but when they open the UI you can pick all the abilities back if you so want. YES we are going to be down two defensive cooldowns but people don't seem to be acknowledging that BW really want to work on scaling Operations correctly so we don't need as many, and what's to stop you from picking certain defensives for certain fights. Personally I can only think of 1 or 2 operation boss's I use blade blitz as a Sentinel as an effective cooldown, you can live without it.

 

Maybe they want to add new abilities in aswell but don't wanna spoil it till later down the line ? Has anyone thought about that ? A lot of you are getting worked up for smallest of things in my opinion, its like watching candy getting taken away from a toddler.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Jedilifee

I've been posting too many things, but i'll just make one question, already hopeless that i'll get a reply, but oh well, never hurts. Is there anything we players can say or do to prevent the class changes update? Or is it set on stone and the feedback you want is just how to improve the class changes? Cause if it is the second option, i'll try to enjoy the next few months before 7.0 as much as i can and unsub after that. Jackie or anyone, an answer would be welcome about this. If it is the second option, i'll just step away from forums and leave this be.

With our next phase of PTS now live, you can help test the Combat Style for the Jedi Sentinel.

 

Please answer the following questions:

 

• What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you?
  
• Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies?
  
• If you have feedback on the different disciplines and loadouts, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it.
  

Feel free to answer in as much detail as possible to help us understand your thought process and line of thinking.

 

Thank you!

 

Transcendence became useless in pvp because we can't use it in critical moment (since now it requires centering points). Camouflage is an optimal ability and needs to be chosen among others. Force clarity is also can't be chosen because we need guarded by the force much more than this.

 

Because of all mentioned above, sentinel looks absolutely the same as guardian with only one difference - enraged defenses. Without transcendence, camouflage and force clarity sentinel became even more simmilar to guardian which sucks completely considering that swtor didn't have any new classes since release. I guess the end is close...

What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you?

I play Combat Sentinel on live, and I guess the abilities that I tend to think of regarding my Sentinel are Clashing Blades and Blade Blitz.

 

Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies?

Honestly, I barely felt any difference with Combat from Live. All the rotational abilities were there except Force Clarity, which I rarely remember to use in non-raid settings. So Offense-wise it felt fine.

 

If you have feedback on the different disciplines and loadouts, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it.

• I am really interested in trying out a Swiftness, Rush Down, and Driving Lance build. I really like the concept for Combat/Ataru. I'm kind of worried that is is just going to end up as a meme build, but I still want to try it.
  
• I'm also interested in the Quickness family of utilities. Although I'm not sure if these really coalesce quite as well as the Swiftness ones seem to. Using Zen Lance was fun, but I'm iffy on how well it would work in a rotation. I feel like it will probably require Fanged God Form to really be usable.
  
• One general issue that is sort of present all across the current builds, a lot of the choices feel boring. 15 and and 30 feel like interesting choices, but a lot of the other choices feel boring. Especially choices between existing utilities. We have a few very flavorful choices, and then some that are just w/e. Even level 35 feels boring. While Quickness and Swiftness both feel interesting and thematically appropriate, they are both completely overshadowed by Force Clarity, which is just mechanically better and lacks the discipline specific flavor of the other two. I'd like more choices like 15 and 30. So move Force Clarity to somewhere other than 35, and add some more flavorful choices in a different level. Like modifiers for Clashing Blades!
  

 

As a side note, I got a red system message about invalid ability for Combat and Watchman but not Concentration. So I don't know if I was missing an ability on them or not. I did notice that Concentration got a new ability 'Critical Zen' which was not listed in the build overview. So maybe the other two were missing some corresponding "special" passive or something?

Transcendence became useless in pvp because we can't use it in critical moment (since now it requires centering points). Camouflage is an optimal ability and needs to be chosen among others. Force clarity is also can't be chosen because we need guarded by the force much more than this.

 

Because of all mentioned above, sentinel looks absolutely the same as guardian with only one difference - enraged defenses. Without transcendence, camouflage and force clarity sentinel became even more simmilar to guardian which sucks completely considering that swtor didn't have any new classes since release. I guess the end is close...

 

Well I guess with all the abilities they are removing they can package them together and make a new class dont even have to bother making new animations /s

What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you? They are suppose to be fast, agile, and DPS. Taking away transcendence of 30 sec CD is wrong. Unless you are planning to add something to other classes that have a raid buff that uses like 100% force, 100% max heated out. Making us have to use the centering will make transcendence never be used. I get ability pruning at high level of abilities that never get used and merging them, but not as we level. Slash and strike at end level, don't need, crippling strike/slash merged with another ability.

 

Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies? From just reading I would say no. Removing so much DCD again is not the way to go. Currently I use every DCD ability in PvP on sent/marauder. Without them I would be a wet noodle. Also the most recent ability that was added to warrior/knight. The 4 stack one is not needed except for current set bonus. That is an extra ability bloat. I always forget to use it.

If you have feedback on the different disciplines and loadouts, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it. You want to adjust the TTK in PvP remove off heals of classes that are not healer spec or increase the amount of resource they use. Lower the cooldown of some of the abilities that let players scurry away. In all honesty some classes need some DCD removed since they are not meant to be tanky. Make it so stealthers can be easier detected by all classes. Remove dps abilities from healer specs or increase resource that is used for them.

Edited July 29, 2021 by BallisticKaine

Jedi Sentinel- Combat-Load Out A

It seems to be about as well as the one I am used to. Forgive the chart but that is the way I compare the abilities.

Note: I am using the Descent of the Fearless Gear and I also went and upgraded the gear to 306. Yes, I had to start a chapter, but it was worth it to see how it stacks against my gear on live. As stated before, I only have 2 characters (out of 14) that is not in set gear or 306 in live so an accurate testing I needed to upgrade. (You should have this gear in 306 and easier for people to upgrade than having to accept a chapter and then going to Odesson)

Please answer the following questions:

 

• What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you?

One of the abilities that I have always loved is the twin saber throw and thankfully it is still there so I will give you a +100 on that. (This is the reason I play sentinel and the combat one)

• Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies?

• I did some chapters and various other items that I normally do, and it really didn’t seem like a problem. In some ways it seem that it worked better.

• If you have feedback on the different disciplines and loadouts, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it.

Did Loadout A

 

 

Thank you!

 

(Sorry for the messed up chart. It was neater when I typed it in word but for some reason can't copy a chart from word to here)

 

Abilities:

ABILITIES OLD ONE NEW LOADOUT (A) LOADOUT (B)

ATARU MASTERY No Yes Yes

ATARU SAVVY No Yes Yes

AWE Yes No No

BLADE BARRAGE Yes Yes Yes

BLADE BLITZ Yes Yes Yes

BLADE RUSH Yes Yes Yes

CENTERING Yes Yes Yes

CLASHING BLAST Yes Yes Yes

COMBAT TRANCE No Yes Yes

CONTEMPLATION No No Yes

CYCLONE SLASH Yes Yes Yes

DEFENSIVE FLOURISH No No Yes

DEFENSIVE ROLL No Yes NO

DISPATCH Yes Yes Yes

DUAL WIELD Yes Yes Yes

ENERGY BARRAGE No Yes NO

EXCISE No Yes Yes

FORCE CLARITY Yes Yes Yes (Check the note below)

FORCE KICK Yes Yes Yes

FORCE LEAP Yes Yes Yes

FORCE MIGHT Yes Yes Yes

FORCE STASIS Yes NO No

FORCE SWEEP Yes Yes Yes

FOCUSED SLASH Yes Yes Yes

FORCE CAMOUFLAGE Yes Yes Yes (Check Note below)

GUARDED BY THE FORCE Yes Yes Yes (Check the note below)

HEROIC MOMENT Yes Yes Yes

IMMACULATE FORCE No Yes Yes

INSPIRATION Yes Yes Yes

INTERCESSOR No No Yes

INTROSPECTION Yes Yes Yes

JEDI ENFORCER No Yes Yes

LANCE Yes Yes Yes

LEG SLASH Yes No No

PACIFY Yes NO NO

PRECISION Yes Yes Yes

PUNCTURE No No Yes

QUICKNESS No Yes No

REBUKE Yes Yes Yes

RESOLUTE Yes Yes Yes

RIGHTEOUS ZEAL No Yes Yes

SABER STORM No Yes Yes

SABER WARD Yes Yes Yes

SNARING SLASH No No Yes

STRIKE Yes Yes Yes

SWIFT BLADES No Yes Yes

SWIFTNESS No No Yes

TRANSCENDENCE Yes Yes Yes (Check the note below)

TRAIL BLAZER No No Yes

TWIN SABER THROW Yes Yes Yes

VALOR Yes Yes Yes

VALOR BLADE NO Yes No

VALOROUS CALL Yes Yes Yes

ZEALOUS STRIKE Yes Yes Yes

ZEALOUS WARD No Yes No

ZEN Yes Yes Yes

ZEN WARD No Yes NO

 

 

 

Note:

Some abilities you must choose from:

 

Level 20 Choices:

Slash

Blade Barrage

Transcendence

 

Level 35 choices:

Swiftness

Quickness

Force Clarity

 

Level 70 Choices:

Blade Blitz

Guarded by the Force

Force Camouflage

 

 

For my playstyle on the abilities I need to choose from (since I refuse to do pvp so that is not a factor for me and therefore it does not have anything to do with my playstyle)

 

Level 20:

Blade Barrage

Transcendence

 

I would choose Blade Barrage over Transcendence but if Transcendence could be added in without having to choose from one of the others that would be great.

 

Level 35

Swiftness

Quickness

Force Clarity

 

Not sure about the other two but Force Clarity might be the one I choose on live even though I used Loadout A this time and I used quickness as there wasn't a choice right now. It seemed to be okay.

 

Level 70 Choices:

Blade Blitz

Guarded by the Force

Force Camouflage

 

For my choice I am not sure which I would use the most: Blade Blitz or Force Camouflage. I have rarely used Guarded by the Force and Force Camouflage I like at time to by pass some mods but as that is really not that big of a deal to me, I would most likely chose Blade Blitz.

Edited July 29, 2021 by casirabit

Maybe they want to add new abilities in aswell but don't wanna spoil it till later down the line ? Has anyone thought about that ? A lot of you are getting worked up for smallest of things in my opinion, its like watching candy getting taken away from a toddler.

 

I get your point that some people didn't read about stun breaks and stuff. But that's not the reason i'm complaining. I'm a PvE player, main tank. Every defensive that i have is usefull somehow in most fights, cause it's not just about how the fight is supposed to go, but dealing with unexpected situations. Sometimes a blade blitz can save your team from a wipe, sometimes it's enure, sometimes it's reflect. Depends on what happens. If they add new abilites, they won't make up for those we can't pick together. And take into account that it's one less defensive here, another one there and by the end of the update, you go for an 8m or a 16m MM operation with a full nerfed group. Add to the fact that desync is a reality, bugs and you have a lot more wipes happening just because they removed some defensives. Yeah, sure, i can give them the benefit of doubt with all this, maybe i am wrong and it won't be a bad update. But what i don't agree is to just ignore a lot of reasonable feedbacks about it saying this is not the update we asked for. They can just nerf the skills depending on the spec, something we already have with deflection on shadows (it's 100% dmg reflect for tank spec, but 50% for dps spec iirc). This is much better than removing skills. Someone suggested this, they can just make dps guardian reflect be only 50% dmg reflect, lower focused defense stacks for dps spec, enure gives less hp or runs off faster for dps specs. You see, it's easy to improve this without removing any ability and they don't even need to change the fights to rebalance.

Just to preface, I played through both options of all 3 specs with a full set of irating 306 gear. I also rolled amplifiers for each spec (armor pen, weapon expertise, and periodic intensity). I actually think the dev tooks the right step for this class in particular. I've mained mara for a few years now, and they gave maras a feature they've needed for a long time. Damage.

 

What makes Sentinel feel unique to you?

 

I can only speak from person experience, but for a long time Sentinels have felt wrong. They'e been forced to play as a hit and run stealth class because its outdated dcds and merely moderate damage. When many of us signed up to play sentinel, we expected a hard hitting beserker style class that had dcds on the lower end, but damage to make up for it. I'd say this recent pts patch does that pretty well. While Sentinels do lose awe, force stasis, predation, and obfuscate, they make up for that dcd loss with a much higher damage output. I'm not sure people realize just how high the damage increase is, but here's a 10 second example of of the damage you can achieve with just 306 gear,

amplifiers, and no augments.

 

 

Without the extra bonus critical damage from furious strike and the extra 100% crit chance from Critical Zen( Activating Zen causes your next direct damage attack to critically hit) this attack would be about a 30k hit. Critical Zen cause it to reach 60k. Relic procs and the furious strike damage bonus allows it to reach 85k consistently. If this was fully min-maxed in the current meta, I'd say you could reach a 100k aoe easily. Now take into account the fact that this is using the aoe utility, and if you picked the Focusing Strike(Focused Burst deals more damage the more Focus you have and applies trauma) utility, the single target damage would be even higher. I'd say this definitely compensates for the loss of cc and dcds.

 

Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies?

 

With fury, if Zen is up, you can wipe all standard enemies in one hit as long as they're grouped. So yes, this is highly effective and should be kept this way. Combat takes a bit longer, but with the increased crit chance from the passives, groups of most enemies don't take longer than 10 seconds. Anni's killing potential has also been improved, but personally I would raise its dot spreading potential. In the current meta, its extremely difficult to cleave in pvp with anni due to the small radius of its aoe, and the ease that it can be shut down with cc. Increasing the radius of smash or replacing it all together would help the class.

 

Additional things I found.

 

• The speed and crit chance increase that Swiftness provides is not what is described. When testing, I found that the buff provided more like a 20% speed and a 10% crit chance per stack. When fully stacked and wearing the fanged you can reach over base 100% crit chance. This all needs to stay. This buff is a perfect replacement for predation.
  

• This isn't accessible on the PST, but if you combine Swiftness with Criticality (Your crit chance during zen is increased by 25%), and Zen Lance(Whenever Lance consumes a stack of Zen, its cooldown is reset), sentinels will be capable of Goring 4 times in a row while autocritting each time. They can fit a 5th gore in if they use a rage builder after the 4th. Every single hit during Zen will be an autocrit.
  

• If each sentinel spec will be this squishy and lacking in cc, they should probably have a small amount of health regen. Concentration doesn't really need self heals because it has stun dr, but Combat could either use some additional Damage Reduction, healing, stun reduction, or you could reduce the length of time they can be stunned for.
  

 

If implemented, these changes can put Concentration and Combat in very favorable positions. Anni will be in a good place also, but I think it needs a bit more work before its ready. Sentinels were designed to be an all dps spec that dishes out ridiculous amounts of damage, but also only lives for a short time. Sentinels will no longer have to rely on playing like a stealth class just to survive. If you do keep these changes, healers will most likely need to be substantially buffed.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Llacertus

Well I guess with all the abilities they are removing they can package them together and make a new class dont even have to bother making new animations /s

 

haha, indeed. But we all know that we won't get any new class. Instead we will have old classes butchered so they all be the same and simmilar

• What abilities make the Sentinel unique to you?
  

 

Dual welding, the use of centering, fast movement speed with transcendence, force camouflage to go in and out of combat, pacify.

 

• Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies?
  

 

Well it’s hard to say, in PVE with random enemies and a heal to keep you alive everything die, and the dps cycle for the 3 discipline is still the same, but I doubt it will be the same in PVP, the missing of Force stasis, Awe, transcendence and force camouflage who are conditional, guard by the force and other, as well as no more option to root, it(s going to be a nightmare to stick in melee.

 

• If you have feedback on the different disciplines and loadouts, please note your feedback accordingly so we can track it.
  

 

There are good idea, like the customisation of lance ( more like this please), but the rest of is not fun at all, you are mixing dps choice with defensive choice and utility choice, and this is not what we want.

 

If a choice had to be made, it should be between the same type (make the choice between 3 different types of defensive, 3 dps upgrade, 3 utility upgrades, etc.), that way we can customise our gameplay, and it’s not going to be a nightmare to balance, at the moment, when I switch between loadouts I felt like I playing a more fragile Guardian more than a sentinel, like it is always missing something and it is very very frustrating

Losing Pacify, Choke, and Awe takes away almost all utility sentinel had in pvp. Is the idea Sents are damage machines with strong mobility and defensives that get setup by other classes? Or are other classes going to be also barebones on utility? Either way the class is going to need strong damage to make up for a lack of utility.

 

Combat and Watchman are put in a really tough spot choosing between Camo and Guarded by the Force. If there were any iconic Sentinel defensives, it is those and Rebuke. If Concentration doesn't have to choose it will end up being default pick in pvp and the other two will be even less competitive than they are now.

 

With 10m crippling slash and the Force Melt & Clashing Blast snares gone, watchman doesn't have any way of getting a 10 meter ability to stop someone from kiting. If other classes lose a lot mobility, this may be fine. But Concentration benefits from having Force Exhaustion and Zealous Leap and Combat gets Driving Lance.

 

Watchman: Force Lash doesn't feel very good to use. Is the idea hit merciless slash, deadly saber, and force melt and then just spam Force Lash until the dots run out, and then you have two gcds to recover? Merciless Slash having a 9 second cd and Zealous Strike having a 15 second cd in a 12 second system doesn't help. It didn't seem very compelling to use personally, especially since it seems to be the standard single target choice in that row.

 

Cauterizing Focus seems like a pvp talent based on applying trauma to train one person down, but doesn't work with the tactical designed for that (spiteful saber doesn't work with quite a few new mechanics). It also falls off where Anni shines in pvp, which is smashing its dots between two targets and not applying them manually. If it applied trauma on dot application regardless of source, it could be pretty compelling.

 

I like the cool thematic changes of additional burn damage on Melee hits in Zen and Blade Barrage dealing extra burn damage. They fit in well with making Zen and BB more fun abilities to use. But can the hits not consume Zen charges? They individually hit for 1/3 the damage of even Cauterize and Force Melt ticks, so the old feel of of watching 3 stack of overload saber crits roll off your target is effectively gone.

 

Melting Center is really fun to use, giving you some nice burst damage in Zen, but is also really awkward to use. Do you save Zen for it come off cooldown after using it (which happens a lot with it generating 10 centering) or do you hold one of your main dots and focus generator for Zen? With how quickly Zen gets used up now you'll rarely see the two line up. If it applied to any hit of force melt damage but only one hit, and the burn hits didn't consume Zen it'd be a fun talent.

 

Combat: Zen Lance letting you spam Lance could probably be pretty annoying since it prevents people from using barrier or escape abilities, but is an interesting mechanic in a way. If it became the standard pve choice it may not be fun coordinating pooling a lot of focus before Zen to spam Lance, but that depends on tuning.

 

Concentration: has absolutely nuts cleave with Unstable Focus. With double Charge (which I like as a addition) it will be easy for to keep proccing auto crits for both Sweep and FB. AOE in the game atm comes in the form of dot spreads or spam aoe like suppressive fire, which require time to be felt. Having hard hitting single aoe abilities will be nuts in pvp. While I love the idea of old smash being back, i don't know if that is what you want it to end up being.

 

Critical Zen gives Conc an absolutely nuts burst with its inherent autocrit. Since the damage is also applied to the aoe on unstable focus, I think this would be much better balanced if it only applied to the next direct weapon attack.

 

Force Meditation don't seem very compelling. Getting more focus may allow you to trade a Zealous Strike for a Slash every so often, but that doesn't seem like a compelling bonus.

 

All in all, lots of things rough around the edges, which is to be expected. But lots of things that look really fun and interesting.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Cavtarus

I have tried all combinations of specs that are available on the PTS. I have to say, this does not feel like Sentinel whatsoever . Force Camo and Transcendence are vital abilities for the class, choosing between blade blitz & Force camo, or not even having Transcendence makes no sense. I get that simplifying the game is the plan you're going with, but this is just murder. Forcing centring to be used on Transcendence and having to choose anything that is not force-camo is going to kill the class if it were to be released as it is now. 99% of posts on this thread are upset about it, and I do not know what the Devs were thinking when making this change (tbh it was probably a sage main that was upset that maras keep sitting on them ).

 

The second topic I want to touch on is class Balance. Combat went from the worst spec to the absolute best. Having a 135% crit chance with an 80% crit multiplier is just nuts, especially now that the Defel-Meta won't be a thing anymore if the proposed changes go through. Combat shreds now and while the argument can still be made that Concentration is viable, especially with that Zen + burst combo, it has been put in its place by Combat. Even for PvE, Watchman won't be reigning supreme anymore. Pre PTS, Combat was not viable, now after testing the PTS anything but combat is not viable for neither PvE nor PvP.

 

The main issue here is that the root of the class is being destroyed by taking away its mobility and shifting it to a 1 spec meta. While no spec reigns forever during SWTORs patch cycle, taking away the class utility of sentinels and robbing them of their ability to strike fast and hard, you will destroy it. Before you were playing a skirmishing class that utilized hard-hitting hit and run tactics and weaved in and out of combat. Now with the PTS changes, your class cant move, cant cleanse, cant be useful for your team and only 1 spec does any major dmg. You are a sitting duck that will be slaughtered in PvP and ignored for PvE because you provide no upside to your raid team.

 

 

What I hope the Devs take from this is that these changes will kill off one of the most played classes in the game overnight. Not all hope is lost, some good changes were made to class balance (ie making combat viable, better implementation of zen into the rotation of EVERY spec), however, now 1 class reigns supreme, whereas before it was two.

 

P.S: Another issue is that the previous BIS set bonus gear will be completely useless due to the force clarity nerf . Instead, I would suggest that new set gear be introduced to the game, which not only improves Zen or makes the centring cost of Transcendence 0, it should also impact the way animation look. I would like some Kickass tier sets that would not only fix the issue with mobility but would also impact the look of your abilities.

I tried out the A path of the Combat spec. Overall it felt pretty good, but I have no experience with Sentinel so I'll have to wait until we get something like vanguard or sniper to go more in depth. That said, I do want to comment more generally on what I've seen in the comments here as well as on Reddit and Twitter. There seems to be near universal agreement that choosing among abilities is something people don't want. On the other hand, many people seem to like the choices of passives, or at least like it much better than choosing abilities. It seems obvious to me that this means you should make options only for passives, and remove needing to choose from a selection of abilities.

 

If you need to do ability pruning, then combine some abilities or just take them away. If you want dps to not have threat drops, just take them away and make tanks hold aggro better to balance it out. If you want less DCDs, combine some into one. To use an example from vanguard, you can combine Power Yield and Reactive Shield, or make one an upgrade to the other that you can choose as you level.

 

One of the stated goals of these changes is to maintain class identity, and honestly I could see class identity being enhanced if the changes are done right, by taking away abilities that shore up a class's weaknesses, making them rely on the strengths of other classes. If this makes heroics a group activity again, I would welcome that. But taking away defensive capabilities of a guardian or the mobility of a sentinel only seems to homogenize the classes by taking away each class's strengths.

Edited July 29, 2021 by MasterKulon

Dear SWTOR team,

 

I have tested all specs for the Jedi Sentinel on PTS. So here is my feedback.

 

1. I would like to point out that all specs feel the same way as before. The core rotations were unchanged, so the specs are preserved for the most part, and I am very happy about that.

 

2. I would like to commend you guys on some choices/options that you have for different specs. For example, making the focused burst an AoE attack is awesome. Sentinels are not very good at AoE and this gives them more juice so to speak. Some other passives that involved Zen ability were pretty cool too (like the one that resets a cooldown on lance ability for Combat Sentinel, or quadrupling the damage on the force melt for the Watchman, and hell even the increased crit chance during Zen for Concentration). I had a lot of fun testing them.

 

3. A comment about Force Clarity, are you intending to keep it for the jedi sentinels? It does provide a good boost to damage, but I am just curious if you are going to have it replaced with something else or removed entirely for the sentinels.

 

4. Force Camouflage, I realize that it is one of the choices on the way to lvl 75/80. It is a good mobility skill as well as the ONLY threat drop. Do you guys intend to make it easier for tanks to generate threat or are you going to just have some separate ability for threat drop?

 

5. Transcendence, once again it is one of the choices on your way to lvl 75/80. Transcendence is a mobility skill that defines Sentinels as great Utility Class for the Operations content. Making it a choice as well as making it cost centering might be a problem. If you decide to stick with the centering cost, I think it would lose its value since it is very hard to predict when you are going to have 30 centering stacks (and you do not want to save up, otherwise you are wasting centering stacks, I guess you have valorous call to generate it, but it is a pretty long cooldown). . If you give some good mobility to other classes, I would probably not select that choice, otherwise, it will have to do and I am not sure how it is going to work.

 

6. Blade blitz, this is once again one of the choices that you make along side with Force Camouflage and Guarded by The Force. I don't really care that much for its defensive capabilities (I will choose Guarded by The Force anytime over it), but it is a very nice mobility skill in both PVE and PVP. I hope you are keeping in mind the balance of mobility for the classes, when you decide to change them up. It is not a necessary skill, but it certainly helps even in PVE.

 

Thank you and let us see where it leads us.

Do these ability paths feel effective against enemies? From just reading I would say no.

 

I think this is a bigger problem with asking for feedback. Too much feedback from people who aren't actually testing

Edited July 29, 2021 by CrazyScruffy

I played with Concentration and Combat in loadout B and A, respectively.

 

The DPS rotation for Concentration is exactly the same, with one exception - Centering builds much faster due to new passives. In PvE, I don't believe there is anything to be gained from this. In PvP, it'll probably be quite useful.

 

The DPS rotation for Combat feels very refreshing, compared to Onslaught. All that remains is to do away with Fanged God Form, and provide an enjoyable alternative as a tactical.

 

However, the main change is to defensive cool downs. Notably, without specialising into any loadout, we're missing:

- Blade Blitz

- Force Stasis

- Pacify

- Force Camouflage

- Awe

- Guarded by the Force

- Transcendance

 

I would hope that the fact that Force Statis and Awe are missing is merely an oversight, as CC plays a fundamental role in any PvP environment, and being left with nothing at all would leave Sentinels in a poor state. Under this assumption, that means there are 5 abilities missing. That's a lot, and their absence is felt. I would argue that both Force Camouflage and Transcendance are iconic abilities for the Sentinel, and making them optional isn't a good idea.

 

What I would instead suggest, is to make Transcendance only affect the Sentinel, and give it baseline. Then one of the "talents" can be to make it group-wide again. Force Camouflage simply needs to be baseline, for both PvE and PvP considerations. Particularly in PvP, if left with so few defensive tools, there needs to be a way to escape focus fire. Blade Blitz, Pacify and Guarded by the Force being optional seems completely reasonable, in that scenario.

 

Overall, I think this direction is alright, but you've gone slightly too far with taking away defensive abilities.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Giliodor

I don't main sentinals on live, I only play enough to get through story, vet fp, and the easier tiers of MM fp. I default to fury/concentration since it's the simplest spec to play, keybind wise.

 

For me a sentinal is a dual wielder with force camo (aka: the poor man's stealth), predation/transcendence, pacify, and a fast paced combat style.

 

I ended up quitting the pts after seeing the given loadouts for concentration.

 

On live I have certain keybinds that are the same on all classes. Things like the hard stun, the interrupt, the escape, the short mobility (transcendence on Sentinal).

 

Both loadouts for concentration were missing transcendence, and the hard stun. Plus other abilities.

Although they kept cyclone slash in the loadouts, along with force sweep ... if you want to purge abilities, then why leave cyclone slash, a pretty much useless ability?

 

The abilities being removed, or made optional/a choice just seem to be the wrong ones to me. Especially compared to some of the largely useless abilities (slash? strike? both could be removed with a bit of tweaking for energy management to replace strike).

 

Why do we need two aoe abilities but can't have a hard stun and predation? I understand loadouts are preset, but the choices for the presets make it clear that the dev's are not playing the game the same way I do.

 

I don't know what the end result of the combat overhaul will be, but testing seems pointless to me at this stage when I can't even look at the available loadouts without being baffled by the dev's choices.

 

I like the gameplay on LIVE, barring a few things that could be tweaked, but with what's on the pts right now, I'm pretty sure I will not like what 7.0 ends up being. Whoever the combat overhaul is aimed at; it is not me.

If you need to do ability pruning, then combine some abilities or just take them away. If you want dps to not have threat drops, just take them away and make tanks hold aggro better to balance it out. If you want less DCDs, combine some into one. To use an example from vanguard, you can combine Power Yield and Reactive Shield, or make one an upgrade to the other that you can choose as you level.

 

Yeah, I think this would be a better approach tbh. A lot of these "choices" when it comes to the active abilities aren't really choices, we're pretty much boxed into taking one option over another. If the problem is too many abilities and DCDs (which, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, I like ability pruning in theory, b/c some classes do feel bloated and I've struggled to learn them because of it), then combine abilities into one.

 

I also wonder how feasible it would be to, rather than choosing from a set of three options, to choose from the entire pool of abilities instead. A skill "soup", rather than a skill tree, if you will. Of course, that creates issues where one person can, for example, get an ability at a lower level than they do in live, so it'd need fine tuning (and I'm also not a game developer, so I don't know how easy or difficult this would be to implement), but I think the issue with the system as it is right now is that we have to make choices between abilities we shouldn't have to choose between. There are some abilities I would be happy to just not have (for most encounters, for example, I don't use Guarded by the Force, and for fights where a self-cleanse isn't needed, I can go without Force Camouflage), but when I do need these abilities, I don't want to sacrifice something like Force Clarity or Inspiration to take it.

 

Like I said, I'm not a game developer and thus don't know how it works behind the scenes, so take my ideas with a grain of salt.

Both loadouts for concentration were missing transcendence, and the hard stun. Plus other abilities.

Although they kept cyclone slash in the loadouts, along with force sweep ... if you want to purge abilities, then why leave cyclone slash, a pretty much useless ability?

 

The abilities being removed, or made optional/a choice just seem to be the wrong ones to me. Especially compared to some of the largely useless abilities (slash? strike? both could be removed with a bit of tweaking for energy management to replace strike).

 

Seriously lol. I don't know any Sentinel player that uses Cyclone Slash outside of heavy AOE situations (and even then... why?). And I feel like they could get rid of Strike and make Slash build Focus instead. That way you still have that energy management at low levels, but no longer have a useless ability at high level (at least for Watchman, Strike really only gets used when I screw up somewhere, I don't actually need it for energy management.