SWTOR 7.7 Watchman Sentinel PvE Guide and Best Builds

SWTOR Watchman Sentinel PvE Guide (DPS) for beginners and more experienced veterans: Skills, Choices, Rotations, Gearing, Builds, Tips!

Introduction to Watchman Sentinel

Watchman Sentinels burn their adversaries with the extreme heat of their overloaded twin sabers. These peacekeepers make further use of this heat to protect themselves and cauterize their allies’ wounds.

In my opinion, Watchman is one of the most challenging specs in the game. It features a relatively complex priority system that is influenced by RNG, a high APM requirement, has very few abilities with more than 4m range, and a DoT with a short duration that must be refreshed.

In exchange for this challenge, Watchman offers some of the highest sustained damage output in the game, though this doesn’t translate as well to burst situations. Thanks to a new mandatory ability tree choice, Watchman’s burst is stronger than it’s been in a long time, maybe ever, but it’s still probably one of the worst specs in the game when it comes to burst damage.

AoE damage output is lower compared to what some other DoT specs are capable of, so you won’t be able to let others use purely single-target builds in fights where AoE is required, but you’ll be able to contribute enough to carry your own weight in the most demanding of AoE situations and sometimes slightly increase your single-target damage output.

In terms of survivability, Watchman remains strong in PvE despite losing some small defensive capabilities and I would argue they are one of the strongest specs in this department now because they can take AoE RDT basically for free and have DCDs for both burst and sustained damage.

Sentinels in general offer some of the best generic raid utility in the game thanks to Inspiration and Transcendence. Watchman in particular is also the only Force-wielding discipline that can always apply the Internal/Elemental DPS debuff and offers significant raidwide healing. Right now, Watchman’s groupwide healing can reach as high as 10k EHPS, which is equivalent to about 30-50% of a single healer’s output!

BioWare will likely be making balance changes throughout the first few patches, so be sure to check back to this guide after each update. You can check at the top of the guide to see if the guide has been updated for the most recent patch.

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Watchman requires 2 other DPS debuffs:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Armor	3.2%
Force	2.7%
Total DPS Gain:	5.9%

Watchman is pretty average when it comes to group composition dependency, though it doesn’t require any specialized debuffs (as in the debuffs will probably also benefit someone else), so it should be fairly easy to fulfill Watchman’s needs.

Watchman Sentinel pairs perfectly with Deception Assassins / Infiltration Shadows because both Combat Styles provide both debuffs that the other needs and they each help to cover for the others’ weaknesses. Please note that this pairing only enables maximum flexibility in what other players can bring when you’re shooting for optimal DPS compositions; it is absolutely not required.

If you have to pick between someone else only providing one of the two debuffs for some reason, definitely go with the armor debuff. It will provide a greater benefit to Watchman as well as the rest of the group. Don’t forget to factor in player skill and balance with group composition. If you’re increasing the group’s DPS by 2000 combined but the player will deal 2500 DPS with that spec either because they don’t know it as well or it’s just a weaker spec, it will be worse to have a more optimal debuff composition.

Major Changes in 7.0

• 2 choices buff a discipline-specific ability (2 abilities, 1 choice each).
• 3 choices which are just old Utility effects. These choices are almost always the same for all disciplines. 
• 2 choices where you’re picking between 1 ability or 1 of 2 passives. One of the ability choices tends to be an offensive cooldown (OCD). The other seems to be related to PvP balance, but there isn’t a clear pattern beyond the choice forcing players to decide which of 3 capabilities they want to keep.
• 1 choice where you’re picking 1 of 3 abilities. One of the abilities is always one of your primary CCs, either the 8s mez or 4s hard stun. Another of the abilities is the movement ability with the longest cooldown. The third option is less consistent, it seems to be there as an extra balance lever for BioWare since some abilities that got locked away are more impactful than others. The 3 abilities are almost always the same for each discipline.

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Sentinels permanently lost access to 3 abilities: 

• Leg Slash
• Pacify
• Awe

These changes don’t affect Sentinels in PvE very much at all and were clearly aimed at reducing their power in PvP.

In addition, Guarding is now a tank-only ability, which is the logical next step since the nerf to Guard for DPS partway through 6.0 was ineffective at stopping its ubiquity in PvP. 

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only, but there is no longer a global 5 min lockout on those abilities, so it’s treated just like any other ability, albeit with a much longer cooldown.

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5 second duration before you can activate another ability) given the constraints of the fight? Which ability do I use right now that will provide me the most DPS? How can I maximize my uptime? If I’m not activating an ability right now, why not? Can I finish this cast before I need to move? What happens if I don’t have time to finish a cast before moving? Can the healers deal with it without too much stress?  

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide.

Abilities Explained

Please have the game open while reading through the next few sections. I will not be writing out ability descriptions and I will only be transcribing the components of discipline passives that directly relate to the ability and rotation. This forces you to read through what everything does so that you can understand what all of your passives and abilities do as well as locate these abilities in-game. Make sure you place all of these abilities on your bar in an order that makes sense to you. 

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Note: Watchman has a lot of interdependencies and powerful synergies, but I can only explain one thing at a time, so it might be hard to fully appreciate how the spec works until you get to the rotation section and if things are still confusing by that point, I encourage you to re-read these sections. I think when you have an idea of what everything is, it will be easier to understand how they work together.

Zen and Centering

Zen is a special ability that has a unique effect for each Sentinel discipline. It’s closest to an offensive cooldown in terms of functionality, but you’ll be using it rotationally, so this isn’t a perfect comparison. Zen (and Centering) are what distinguish Sentinels from other combat styles.

For Watchman, activating Zen grants 6 stacks of the Zen proc. While you have at least 1 stack of Zen, all burn damage automatically critically hits. Each time one of your burn effects critically hits, 1 stack of Zen is consumed. In essence, Zen makes your next 6 burn effects autocrit.

Zen stacks can be consumed very quickly in Watchman, especially when you have DoTs on multiple targets, so it’s essential that Zen is only activated right before Force Melt for reasons I’ll explain soon.

Rather than having a cooldown, Zen is only usable when you have 30 stacks of a proc called Centering and activating Zen consumes those 30 stacks. Centering is generated whenever you activate an attack that spends Focus. Centering is also generated when you defeat an opponent, but this isn’t all that relevant. In addition, 30 Centering can be spent to activate Inspiration, but I’ll talk more about that later on.

It’s essential to be able to distinguish between abilities that do and don’t generate Centering. I think it’s easiest to just memorize the attacks that don’t cost Focus and thereby don’t generate Centering:

• Zealous Strike
• Blade Barrage
• Twin Saber Throw
• Strike

Force Melt used to be on this list as well, but thanks to a new ability tree passive, it can generate 10 Centering. Zen has 2 combat style passives associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Valor
Increases the Centering generated by each attack that consumes Focus by 2. Basically, each attack that consumes Focus generates 4 Centering, so it will take (at most) 8 attacks to reach 30 Centering. There are 3 other ability tree buffs that can allow you to generate Centering in other ways, but I’ll cover those later on.

Contemplation
You build up 30 Centering of the course of using Introspection (or other rest and recharge ability). Cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. This used to be a utility, but is now given for free to all Sentinels. It allows you to build up Centering outside of combat.

Juyo Form

In the early days of SWTOR, lightsaber stances (and other combat stances) were actual toggleable abilities that you could switch between at will, but this system caused some major problems.

For casual players, it could contribute to them dealing significantly less damage if they had the wrong stance active or didn’t have one active at all. It could also be abused by more skilled players to get excessive mitigation by using a tank stance as a DPS spec, though Sentinels couldn’t do this. Stances were phased out as the discipline system replaced the skill tree system and they’re now just discipline passives.

Juyo Form builds stacks whenever you deal melee damage. Each stack increases all damage dealt by 1%. These stacks last up to 30 seconds, so they shouldn’t ever fall off during a boss fight unless there is a super long period of downtime. Part of Watchman’s poor burst performance comes from the fact that these stacks can fall off and do take a few seconds to rebuild. Juyo Form has 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Juyo Mastery
Each stack of Juyo Form also increases the critical hit chance of your burn effects by 1%. Since Zen makes your next 6 DoT ticks (which are burns) autocrit, this effect also effectively increases the critical damage dealt by your DoT ticks during Zen by 1% per stack thanks to the existence of supercrits.

Accelerating Victory
Juyo Form now stacks up to 6 times. I don’t know why this couldn’t have been built into the base effect or part of Juyo Mastery, but for some reason, the effect is given to some other passive. In total, this means that with 6 stacks of Juyo Form, you’ll deal 6% extra damage and your burns have a 6% additional chance to crit all the time which will translate to 6% additional critical damage during Zen.

Force Melt

(Force/Elemental/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Force Melt is a powerful burn attack that has an initial hit followed by a 9 second DoT. It’s a whole lot more important than it used to be thanks to new ability tree buffs that make it deal double damage and reclaim life when used while Zen is active or always generate 10 stacks of Centering even during Zen.

Since Zen already makes your burn attacks autocrit, the initial hit of Force Melt can deal over 35k damage if Zen is active. This effect is so strong that the entire rotation is now structured around ensuring that Zen is available in time for every single Force Melt activation.

Force Melt also has a 10m range and generates 4 Focus upon activation. Both of these factors mean that you should always be able to activate the ability when it becomes available. With the new ability tree passive, Force Melt is your highest priority ability and should be activated immediately after activating Zen.

You should only delay Force Melt if Zen is not yet available (so if you don’t have 30 Stacks of Centering), but you have tools at your disposal to ensure that both abilities will be available at roughly the same time. A key part of picking ability tree buffs in Watchman is ensuring you get Zen available just in time for when Force Melt comes off cooldown. Force Melt has 2 discipline passives and 1 proc associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Plasma Blades
Your burn effects have a 20% chance to generate 1 Focus whenever they deal damage. Cannot occur more than once per second. In addition, Force Melt (as well as Cauterize and Overload Saber) heal you for 15% of the damage they deal. The Focus generation component of Plasma Blades is part of what adds RNG to Watchman and necessitates a priority system because the exact amount of Focus you’ll have at any given time is not guaranteed.

The self-heal aspect isn’t strictly relevant to your rotation, but it does account for a significant portion of your survivability. I also want to note that self-healing meant as a type of damage mitigation no longer generates threat towards enemies, so you shouldn’t get aggro in weird situations anymore.

Blazing Ward
Dealing burn damage increases your damage reduction (DR) by 5% for 3 seconds. Basically, this will be active whenever you are actively attacking something and be off during downtime. You shouldn’t ever think about this proc, but I wanted to bring it up because you will probably notice it ticking down very fast all the time on your buff bar.

Cauterize

(Force/Elemental/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Cauterize is primarily a DoT and the only one that will have 100% uptime in Watchman. It does have a small initial hit that deals weapon damage rather than Force, Elemental, and Periodic, but this aspect will only be relevant in specific fights with frequent downtime or target swapping.

Spiteful Saber Tactical Item
Cauterize deals 10% more damage and Slash, Dispatch, and Twin Saber Throw refresh the duration of Cauterize’s burn effect and tick its damage. This tactical allows you to maintain Cauterize indefinitely, and Slash is the only way to reliably maintain it since Dispatch and Twin Saber Throw will mostly be used on cooldown.

In 6.0, it was harder to maintain this DoT because Focus was harder to come by so Slash wasn’t always available, but this is no longer the case. Watchman feels much smoother to play compared to 6.0.

When Spiteful Saber is not being used, Cauterize should still have 100% uptime from DoT bouncing. If you can’t bounce DoTs, you should reapply Cauterize manually.

Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
As BioWare has refined Watchman’s rotation over the years, Slash is now your only filler ability and will make up approximately 45% your GCDs in single-target situations. Slash does still cost 3 Focus per activation, but Watchman does have sufficient Focus generation to accommodate this. Slash has 1 discipline passive and 1 combat style passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Burning Focus
Your direct damage attacks that hit a burning target build 1 Focus. Cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds. Since Cauterize has 100% uptime thanks to Spiteful Saber, we don’t have to worry about the burning target part. In case you didn’t know, direct damage attacks are anything that isn’t periodic damage, so if it’s not a DoT, it’s direct damage.

Enraged Slash
Slash, Dispatch, Merciless Slash, and Cyclone Slash refund 1 Focus when used Basically, all of your melee attacks that consume Focus refund 1 Focus. Enraged Slash effectively enables you to spam Slash a whole lot more than you otherwise could.

Overload Saber

(Force/Elemental/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Overload Saber is one of the only rotational attacks in the game that is not on the GCD and is a big part of why Watchman has a higher APM requirement than most other DPS disciplines.

Overload Saber works by making your next 3 melee attacks apply a stack of a DoT to the first enemy they hit, but each subsequent stack really just increases the damage dealt by the singular DoT tick. Since it’s off the GCD, it can (and should) be activated during other melee attacks, though it doesn’t apply a stack of the DoT to attacks that are mid-animation, even if the attack hasn’t landed yet.

Since Overload Saber costs 3 Focus but doesn’t start ticking until your next melee attack and isn’t a melee attack itself, it will never grant any additional Focus upon activation, so you can’t do any sort of gambling as you can with all of your other attacks.

Each Overload Saber stack application also refreshes the duration of the entire DoT, and that’s where all of the shenanigans with this spec begin. You can mess with your ability order to the extent of forcing it into becoming a rotation in order to increase the total number of Overload Saber ticks you get.

Not only do these extra Overload Saber ticks result in a surprisingly significant DPS increase on their own, but they are also additional burn ticks, so your Focus generation will be more consistent and your rotation will become easier if you time your abilities correctly.

The core idea is to activate Overload Saber 2 GCDs before Force Melt comes off cooldown (and their cooldowns are identical) so that you do 2 melee attacks to apply 2 stacks to the boss, and then use Force Melt, a Force attack, to squeeze out another tick before following it up with another melee attack that applies the third stack.

This approach also guarantees that you’re always using that off-GCD Focus consumption to build Centering because you’ll be activating it outside of Zen while also guaranteeing that you’ll have the 3 stacks applied while Zen is active.

You can also activate Overload Saber during downtime before you can actually deal damage to get what the people call “perma Overload Saber”, which allows it to have 100% uptime. If you don’t time Overload Saber with Force Melt and just use it on cooldown, even during downtime, it’s easier to accomplish and helps to reduce the DPS divide between the approaches.

Regardless, don’t worry about perma-Overload Saber, leveraging it is at the cutting edge of Watchman skill. You don’t have to worry about passives or procs either, because Overload Saber has none associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned. 

Merciless Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is Watchman’s most damaging weapon attack, though Dispatch can match it sub-30% and Force Melt will consistently surpass it as your most damaging overall attack. Since it is a high-priority ability, I want to point out that Merciless Slash costs 4 Focus instead of 3 or less like most of your other abilities, so make sure you have at least that much before you activate it so you aren’t delaying it. This now basically boils down to determining if you’ll need to use Zealous Strike in a prior GCD.

There’s not much more to say about Merciless Slash without going into its discipline integration. Merciless Slash has 3 procs and 1 debuff associated with it that are relevant to your rotation.

Merciless
Activating Merciless Slash reduces the cooldown of Merciless Slash by 1.5 seconds. Stacks up to 3 (really 4) times and lasts 30 seconds, effectively reducing Merciless Slash’s cooldown by 6 seconds at 4 stacks. Honestly, I’m shocked that this effect has existed in the game for over a decade and I’m especially amazed that it wasn’t removed with the launch of 7.0. All it does is force you to have a weird opener and gives the spec some weird ramp-up that is almost exclusively relevant at the beginning of boss fights but also incentivizes you to have to rush around so the stacks don’t fall off between trash pulls, which can aggravate other group members.

Watchman already has poor burst especially next to Concentration and Combat even if you’re able to engage with full stacks of Merciless and Juyo Form, and that’s before you get to some special PvP effects unique to those two specs like increased armor penetration provided by Precision for Combat and the CC immunity provided by Gravity Vortex for Centering. Both specs offer vastly superior mobility as well.

There’s just no reason for this spec to still have to be burdened by what was always a ridiculous proc. Merciless Slash is unique enough with its name, other procs, and high damage, but I digress. You got a rant when you barely need to know the proc exists at all.

Accelerating Victory
Merciless now stacks up to 4 times. I only point this out to show you where that 4th stack of Merciless comes from.

Smoldering Burns
Merciless Slash increases the damage dealt by your burns by 5% for 6 seconds. The damage boost isn’t big enough to impact its current place in the priority, but it does contribute to Merciless Slash being one of your highest-priority abilities.

Burning Focus
Dealing damage with Merciless Slash applies the Internal/Elemental damage debuff, which makes the target take 7% more damage from Internal/Elemental attacks. This is one of the best debuffs in the game. Usually, the armor debuff is better, but there are some compositions where this one would be better.

Zealous Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your dedicated Focus-generating ability. It generates 6 Focus alongside any other Focus triggered by one of your passives. In 7.0, it no longer needs to be used on cooldown in Watchman because passive Focus generation is so high. Since Zealous Strike deals relatively little damage and doesn’t generate any Centering, it should be used as little as possible.

Zealous Strike should typically only be used if you have 4 Focus or less and will not be able to afford the next ability. If you can afford to activate your next ability even if you have less than 4 Focus, you should continue delaying Zealous Strike. It’s especially important to consider when Force Melt will next be available because that ability generates 4 Focus and you’re more likely to get a few extra Focus from the Plasma Blades passive while Zen and Force Melt are active.

The only time that Zealous Strike should be used proactively or when you have more than 4 Focus is if a bunch of high-priority abilities that cost Focus are about to come off cooldown, particularly Merciless Slash + Overload Saber. It can also be a good idea to use Zealous Strike a bit earlier than you would normally if you’re about to go into a DPS check or activate your Adrenal so you have maxed out your Focus. Zealous Strike has 1 combat style passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Focused Slash
Zealous Strike applies the melee DPS debuff, which makes targets take 5% more damage from melee attacks. This passive is really only valuable to Assassins | Shadows because they are the only combat style that deals melee damage that doesn’t provide the buff themself. However, if you’re the only one that applies it in the group, check every so often to make sure it hasn’t fallen off or you’ll end up hurting your own DPS.

Twin Saber Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Twin Saber Throw is a one-of-a-kind AoE ability that causes your lightsabers to travel in a straight line toward your target and keep going until they are 30m away and then they come back. Any other enemies they hit along the way will also take damage. Be careful not to pull other groups of nearby trash. Twin Saber Throw seems to just check if the blades collide with the models along the path or use some sort of tall invisible telegraph.

The most reliable way to hit multiple targets with it is to temporarily target the enemy that’s furthest away from you which maximizes the number of enemies in between you and your target. For example, if there’s a big cluster of enemies near you, the best way to ensure you’ll hit all of them is to stand on one edge of the cluster and target an enemy on the opposite edge of the cluster.

The sabers always travel towards the center of the target reticle on the enemy, wherever blaster shots would hit. This is typically the chest, but not always. For taller or gigantic enemies, this can result in the sabers traveling upwards and not hitting anyone else along the way. In these cases, it is better to target a shorter nearby enemy if you want to hit multiple targets.

Please note that it takes a moment for the damage to actually go through and trigger the refresh on Cauterize, so don’t rely on Twin Saber Throw to refresh Cauterize if there’s less than a second left on its duration.

Mind Sear
Dealing damage with one of your burn effects has a 20% chance to grant Mind Sear, which increases the damage dealt by your next Twin Saber Throw by 100% and resets its cooldown. There’s no need to use Twin Saber Throw on cooldown; just use it before the Mind Sear proc expires or when Zen is active.

Blade Barrage

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability doesn’t get a specific buff in Watchman, but it’s still valuable to use ooccasionally because it doesn’t cost any Focus and deals a fair bit of damage. Please note that Blade Barrage does not refresh Cauterize with the Spiteful Saber tactical unlike Twin Saber Throw.

Blade Barrage deals more damage than Slash alone, but when the Spiteful Saber tactical is equipped, the Cauterize tick will cause Slash to deal more damage overall. This DPS difference is much smaller than the difference between either ability and Zealous Strike, so it’s still worthwhile to use when it will reduce the number of Zealous Strike activations.

The best time to use Blade Barrage is while Zen is active because you can’t normally generate Centering at that time and since you won’t refresh and tick Cauterize, that’s potentially 1 more tick that could be consumed by Force Melt instead.

I also want to note that Blade Barrage synergizes with the Dispatcher Legendary Implant as well as the Burning Focus and Burning Zen ability tree buffs because it hits more times than all of your other attacks so it will more reliably trigger those effects. That said, these synergies aren’t enough to impact Blade Barrage’s place in the priority.

If you have a way to generate additional Focus, you can and should forego using Blade Barrage in favor of Slash. This is pretty much exclusively possible with the Adjudicator ability tree buff that I’ll talk more about later. As I mentioned before, Blade Barrage does not have any additional ability tree buffs or discipline passives associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Dispatch

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals almost the same amount of damage as Merciless Slash with the added bonuses including costing 3 Focus instead of 4 and having 10m range. Unfortunately, it can only be used against targets that have less than 30% of their max HP left. Since Dispatch deals so much damage, it should be used pretty much on cooldown. Dispatch has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Dispatcher’s Challenge
Activating Twin Saber Throw grants Dispatcher’s Challenge, which makes your next Dispatch (or Slash) automatically critically hit. This proc is provided by the Dispatcher’s Legendary Implant. Since Dispatch hits so hard, it’s valuable to try to consume the buff on Dispatch instead of Slash.

It isn’t super hard to accomplish this. You just have to use Dispatch on cooldown and Twin Saber Throw should come off cooldown along with the proc for every other Dispatch. I wouldn’t delay Dispatch for more than a GCD or two to synchronize it with Twin Saber Throw, but it’s okay to delay Twin Saber Throw significantly since you’re limited by the proc anyway.

AoE Abilities

The formula for determining how much damage an AoE ability does per GCD such that it can be compared to single-target abilities is: (Damage Dealt/Number of GCDs) x Number of Enemies. An AoE ability’s place in the priority is as high as it can be until it reaches a single-target ability that deals more damage than the AoE will deal to all enemies in the GCD.

AoE damage is considered fluff if the adds do not need to die ASAP or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage to adds. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss.

Force Sweep

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your DoT spread. It can only spread Cauterize and Force Melt, not Overload Saber. In fights where you are able to DoT spread for the entirety of the fight, you can leverage Force Sweep’s short cooldown to bounce your DoTs between targets where you spread them to one target, then before they fall off that second target, use Force Sweep to spread them back to the first target.

DoT bouncing can even enable you to have higher uptime on Force Melt than is possible in single-target situations, resulting in a slight single-target DPS increase. With DoT bouncing, the Spiteful Saber tactical is made redundant, but you can use Malmourral Mask instead.

Don’t let DoT bouncing distract you from doing your rotation and following mechanics. If you find it takes up too much of your attention, it’s fine to just use Force Sweep on cooldown and once in a while have to manually reapply Cauterize.

Remember when you have DoTs on multiple targets, all of your Zen stacks are going to evaporate almost instantaneously, so you have to press the buttons for Force Melt and Zen almost simultaneously.

Cyclone Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Cyclone Slash is your generic spammable AoE. Cyclone Slash is really only worth using instead of Slash because everything else still needs to be used for other reasons.

Cyclone Slash surpasses Slash if you manage to hit multiple targets even without the Trailblazer ability tree buff. Blade Barrage is in the same boat, but you’re more likely to be short on Focus if you’re using Cyclone Slash, so you won’t always be able to avoid using it.

I personally don’t like using Cyclone Slash at all when I’m using the Spiteful Saber tactical because it opens up a whole can of worms where you have to change the priority of Cyclone Slash depending on the number of targets. I only use Cyclone Slash when I’m using the Malmourral Mask tactical, but you can get extra DPS even when you use Spiteful Saber.

Twin Saber Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
I basically already covered everything related to AoE about Twin Saber Throw back in the single-target section. Nothing really changes in terms of priority because you’re still fundamentally limited by the rate limit of the Mind Sear proc.

 Blade Blitz

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Since this ability now has the old Cut Loose utility effect built in, its damage as an AoE ability is pretty good, though not quite as strong as your other AoE abilities. If you find yourself with a spare GCD and a bunch of enemies lined up, it’s pretty fun to mow through them with Blade Blitz. Only use it when you have a spare GCD, though.

Offensive Cooldowns

All offensive cooldowns (OCDs) should be used as frequently as possible under the conditions stated here and should only be delayed if they need to be saved for a DPS check or burst window, but don’t start delaying them until you see that you have to.

 Force Clarity

This ability is optional and will likely only be taken in fights with burst DPS checks. While the tooltip says it boosts the damage dealt by your next direct single-target melee attack, it does not boost the damage of or consume a charge of Force Clarity on Zealous Strike or regular Strike. I assume this is a quality of life thing since those are weak abilities that no spec wants buff. 

When you’re using it as an offensive cooldown, you won’t have much control over which abilities you use it on, though try to avoid consuming charges on Slash and definitely the application of Cauterize. It’s better to use a charge of Force Clarity on Blade Barrage than Slash because while Slash deals more damage per GCD since it refreshes and ticks Cauterize, Blade Barrage deals a bit more melee damage.

Make sure you have all 4 charges available for the burst DPS check. Your melee attacks that have cooldowns are your best targets for Force Clarity when you use them all at once, but don’t let this get in the way of executing your rotation. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to avoid spending at least 1 charge on Slash during burst DPS checks.

Outside of burst DPS checks, Merciless Slash is typically your best choice for individual charges. Dispatch will be a better option sub-30% when you can guarantee it will crit thanks to the Dispatcher’s Challenge proc from the Dispatcher’s Legendary Implant. Twin Saber Throw will be your best option whenever you’re able to hit at least 2 targets with it, though I would consider this to be fluff if the enemies aren’t super high priority.

 Adrenal

It’s essential that you have your Adrenal available for DPS checks, especially when burst is required because Watchman doesn’t have very much burst. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where this delay will be enough to where it will result in missing out on a use of the Adrenal, so feel free to delay it as needed.

The best time to activate your Adrenal is at the same time as Zen (and Inspiration) right before Force Melt. You should be able to get 2 activations of Force Melt inside a single Adrenal window with a couple seconds of leeway.

Inspiration

Inspiration is the most powerful raid buff in the game, but it costs 30 Centering to activate, which restricts when you can use it. The only time you can activate Inspiration is when Valorous Call is available so you can activate it back to back with Zen. It is essential that both Inspiration and Zen are activated immediately before Force Melt.

You should not think of Inspiration as a personal offensive cooldown, though it can technically be used as one. Typically, your raid lead will tell you when they want it to be activated, but it’s typically best to activate Inspiration and other raid buffs during DPS or heal checks, especially burn phases. It’s also good to activate them when the boss takes increased damage like when Kephess the Undying in TFB is knocked down by a pillar. If a fight doesn’t have a specific time, it’s usually best to activate raid buffs at the very beginning of the fight during everyone’s openers.

Since raid buffs have such long cooldowns, they can typically only be activated once or twice per fight. This allows you to delay them as needed for specific DPS checks, but if sustained DPS is the priority like when you need to beat an Enrage timer, remember to factor in how many activations you can get in that fight. For example, with Grob’thok in DF, you can wait to pop Inspiration and other raid buffs at the first magnet, but you’ll probably miss out on a second activation if you wait that long.

Valorous Call

Valorous Call has limited usefulness as an offensive cooldown in Watchman because you already have to activate Zen at specific times and your discipline already enables you to activate Zen as often as possible. Don’t get me wrong, Valorous Call isn’t useless.

The most important use of Valorous Call is to enable you to activate Inspiration without disrupting your rotation since that ability also costs 30 Centering to activate. You do need to be very careful about the order in which you activate each of these abilities.

Zen should be activated first, then Valorous Call, then Inspiration, then Force Melt. It is essential that you are able to activate Zen and Inspiration before activating Force Melt so that you don’t miss out on the 10 stacks of Centering generated by Force Melt. If you don’t do this, you’ll be forced to use Force Melt once without Zen to resynchronize both.

You can technically also use Valorous Call to increase your damage output in extremely short DPS checks to get yourself 6 more DoT autocrits, but this comes at the cost of future sustained DPS as you’ll have to use your next Force Melt without Zen to resynchronize them.

If you’re having to do this consistently, you should probably switch to a spec that offers better burst for that fight. That said, it’s not the end of the world when sustained DPS isn’t a concern. It’s essential to remember that this should only be done for very short checks where you aren’t able to activate Force Melt twice.

Outside of Inspiration, Valorous Call will mostly be used to automatically resynchronize Zen and Force Melt in case you mess up your rotation or get unlucky with RNG and would need to delay Force Melt at least 3 GCDs to reach 30 Centering.

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

Defensive cooldowns (DCDs) are not used just to stop you from getting killed, they’re there to minimize overall damage taken. For any Combat Style in any fight, your most effective DCDs should be mapped to the most damaging attacks in the fight while weaker DCDs should be used against weaker attacks. 

Don’t pop all of your DCDs at once or only use them when your health gets low. You should be attempting to mitigate as much damage as possible by using your DCDs against predictable damage.

In fights where you’ll be taking a high amount of sustained damage, it’s important to use your DCDs in the order that maximizes your overall uptime. If you can tweak the order that you use your DCDs where it allows you to get an extra use out of one of them over the course of a long burn phase, you should definitely do that instead of activating your potentially stronger DCDs first.

It’s good to have 1 emergency panic button too, but everything else should be used to prevent your health from getting low in the first place. Part of knowing a fight is understanding how much damage you take and what you can do to mitigate that damage.

 Saber Ward

This DCD is useful against any attack, though it mitigates damage differently depending on the attack type and it’s far more powerful against melee/ranged damage than force/tech. 

Against melee/ranged damage, Saber Ward increases your defense chance, which is the chance to completely avoid taking the damage. Against frequent ticks of damage, the 50% defense chance increase is not statistically different from giving you 50% DR against those damage types instead. 

Saber Ward also provides 25% damage absorption against force/tech attacks. Since it provides damage absorption, which is considered post-mitigation, it won’t feel quite as strong as something like 25% DR, which will get added to the DR provided by your armor. In other words, Saber Ward only applies to the damage you would take after DR has been applied, so it affects a smaller proportion of overall damage taken.

I would recommend using something else against force/tech damage unless this is the only thing you have left. It’s better than nothing, but against big hits you’ll probably need to pair it with something else, like Rebuke.

Rebuke

Rebuke is in a weird spot as a DCD. It provides DR, not RDT (post-mitigation) as the tooltip says, so it is stronger than the tooltip would suggest, but even though it is DR, 20% is right on the cusp of not being good enough to mitigate big hits on its own.

Don’t get me wrong, you can survive some big hits with Rebuke alone, but you will often be brought right to the brink of death and may give your healers a heart attack in the process. For the largest hits, I recommend pairing Rebuke with Saber Ward or just using a different DCD altogether.

Rebuke’s true strength comes from mitigating smaller, frequent hits like you’d typically find in burn phases. It’s also one of the best DCDs in the game for fights where damage is going out constantly or in the form of DoTs like Red (Dxun first boss), Underlurker, and Nefra.

Rebuke is so great for these situations is because it can last up to 30 seconds and deal upwards of several GCDs worth of damage over the course of that duration depending on how many times you get hit.

Guarded by the Force

Guarded by the Force is an insanely powerful DCD, but doesn’t quite rise to the level of being a cheese. It provides an extreme amount of mitigation against regular attacks, but doesn’t work consistently as a cheese because even 1% of damage taken from attacks that are designed to kill you will still often be enough to chew through a full health bar.

That said, it will still be incredibly effective against any hit you’re meant to take and you will almost certainly be able to survive for the 6 seconds that it’s active unless you have close to 0 HP already. You shouldn’t ever need to pop anything else alongside this DCD.

 Medpac

Don’t save it for a rainy day because today is that rainy day! Unless you get hit by a one-shot mechanic (which you shouldn’t), you should never let yourself die while your Medpac is still available and you certainly should never try to use one of your heals before using your Medpac.

If everyone’s health is getting low or there’s a heal check in the current phase, do not hesitate to use your Medpac if you can take full benefit of the health provided or need to be above a certain health level to survive an imminent mechanic.

If you think Medpacs are too expensive, it’s time to get Biochem on one of your alts or even better, your raiding toon so that you can make your own or get reusables. Choosing not to use a medpac for financial reasons and subsequently dying is not a valid excuse.

Force Camouflage

Force Camo is a true Swiss Army knife ability. If there’s a mechanic that you need to deal with, there’s an astronomically high chance that Force Camouflage will be able to help you in some capacity.

Cleanse
The Expunging Camouflage utility has been rolled into the base ability so you can always use Force Camouflage to cleanse yourself.

Threat Drop and Stealth
Contrary to popular belief, Force Camouflage does not zero out your threat like an actual stealth out ability. It does cause you to enter stealth so enemies won’t notice you while active, but that’s not the same thing. In terms of threat reduction, Force Camo works just like any other threat drop.

Damage Mitigation
Force Camouflage reduces your damage taken by 50% while active. Since attacking will deactivate Force Camo, this is only useful in PvE to mitigate single, predictable hits. Just like Overload Saber, this does not apply to instant attacks that are already in progress even if the damage has not yet gone out, so you’ll always get close to a GCD of mitigation. The idea is that you want to activate Force Camo at the very last second right before the damage hits.

Camo is also great to use to mitigate damage during transitional phases where damage might be going out but no enemy is present like when Styrak rains down Force Lightning after you defeat the Kell Dragon.

Mobility
Force Camouflage increases your movement speed by 50% while active. Since the movement boost only applies while Force Camo is active just like the damage mitigation, you can’t use this all the time. Only use it when you can’t actually deal damage to anything like when you’re beyond 30m away from a boss or during a phase where there’s nothing to attack.

CC Immunity
While Force Camouflage is active, you are immune to all controlling effects. Just like with damage reduction and mobility, this effect is only active while Force Camo is active, so you have to time it very carefully to avoid losing DPS. One of the best uses for the CC immunity is on the third floor of the Revan fight to ignore the push/pull/machine heartbeat (it doesn’t work on the Unstable Aberrations).

Force Leap

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This is your primary gap closer ability. It generates 3 Focus and deals very little damage. Force Leap can often be used while you are still flying through the air from a knockback and you should definitely do that if you’re able to. Unlike with Guardian, it’s basically always optimal to just leap in if you’re outside of melee range of your target because you only have 1 attack with 30m range and it’s most likely on cooldown.

Force Leap also interrupts the cast of whatever target you leap to, though it doesn’t apply a 4s lockout like your actual interrupt ability does, so it’s more for just buying you a couple of seconds for your or someone else’s interrupt to come off cooldown than a more proper solution to a mechanic. This does come up fairly often though if your group is leveraging your short interrupt cooldown, so it’s important to be aware that you can do this.

Transcendence

This is the raidwide movement speed buff. All old utility effects have been merged into the base ability, so it no longer costs Centering ever and always boosts everyone’s movement speed by 80% and purges movement-impairing effects.

Be mindful of situations when a good portion of the group needs to move even if you don’t have to. In other words, you might be able to get where you need to go with Force Leap or Blade Blitz, but the rest of the group might be lagging behind. This most often occurs in fights with raidwide knockbacks like Dash’roode and Gharj where you’ll be able to leap back immediately while other group members might still be 30m away from the boss.

Your raid lead may call for Transcendence to be used at specific points in the fight in order to help cheese mechanics like the Reaches phase in Brontes or running into the room during the third boss (second encounter) in Dxun.

Transcendence can occasionally be used as a raidwide DoT cleanse as well if the DoT has a movement-impairing component. The poster child for this is Captain Horic’s grenade in the Cartel Warlords fight in S&V NiM where you can cleanse every other grenade application for the group. Your healers will thank you for this.

The melee/ranged defense boost can also be handy as a way to mitigate damage, particularly in fights or phases with a lot of adds since those almost always do melee/ranged damage. If you don’t need it for movement, it can be worthwhile to use if the tanks are out of DCDs during a phase where they’re taking a lot of damage because bosses often have a melee/ranged basic attack that can make up a sizable portion of tank DTPS.

 Blade Blitz

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This ability is both a defensive cooldown and movement ability. As a defensive cooldown, it’s your cheese ability. It gives you 100% defense/resist chance for the duration of the dash, meaning you’re completely immune to taking damage during your dash, provided that it’s damage that is mitigatable, so it won’t work against things like 0 damage kills and typeless damage. 

Since the mitigation is so short, it can be fairly difficult to time, so you may need to practice it a little bit and don’t be afraid to completely stop DPSing for a moment if there’s something that will kill you if you don’t do the cheese correctly. 

As a movement ability, Blade Blitz does help you cover a fair bit of distance, but it does cost a GCD to use, so it is best used when you’re out of range of the boss so you couldn’t deal damage anyway or after your other movement abilities have been used. It’s not the end of the world to use this ability for movement though, especially now that the damage increase effect of the old Cut Loose ability tree option is built in. Bottom line: try to hit something with Blade Blitz if you can or use it when you’re out of range of everything.

I also want to add that if you’re using this ability against one of the Energy Spheres from Brontes, or some similar mechanic where something detonates on contact with you, make sure that you hit the orb at the end of the animation, rather than the beginning or middle. If you don’t do this, the mitigation might not work because of position lag. The server may not update your position until the end of the animation after the mitigation has ended.

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals extremely little damage, but it does generate 2 Focus upon activation. Thanks to improvements in Focus generation in 7.0, you’ll basically never have to use this anymore. It’s still important to have on your bar because there are instances where you can get extremely unlucky with RNG or overspend on Slash but still don’t have Zen for Force Melt, but it’s very possible to never use this ability at all over the course of an entire fight.

Blade Storm

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals less damage and costs 1 more Focus than Slash. The key benefit is that it has a 10m range. Given that you have more Focus to work with now, it can be worthwhile to use only if you can’t get into melee range.

 Force Stasis

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Channeled)
This is your hard stun, meaning it does not break on damage. In PvE, this will generally only be used for specific mechanics since most things you’d care about stunning are immune, though the more recent operations do have lots of opportunities to stun things. In general, be sure to pay attention when something is stunnable because that often means you’re intended to stun it. 

 Force Kick

This is your interrupt. As a Jedi Knight, you have the shortest cooldown on your interrupt in the game at 12 seconds, though a few other melee classes can match it. This short cooldown does mean you can handle some interrupt mechanics entirely on your own or with less help than is normally required and your raid group may want to take advantage of this. If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted. 

Resolute

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’d and are prevented from dealing damage or doing a required mechanic.

Ability Tree Choices

Force Melt Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Juyo Melt

• Effect: Force Melt immediately maxes out your Juyo stacks builds 10 Centering.
• Recommendation: Take this option if you don’t plan to main Watchman. Juyo Melt enables a rotation that’s been available throughout 7.0, though without the damage boost to Force Melt. Since you gain Centering in a consistent and fully predictable manner, your rotation with Juyo Melt is a fair bit easier than with Melting Center, though its DPS potential is lower. You have a bit more flexibility in terms of when you activate Force Melt in relation to Zen. You won’t start to lose a significant amount of DPS so long as you have fewer than 20 stacks of Centering, though it’s still optimal to activate Zen shortly before Force Melt since it consistently hits harder than Cauterize and Overload Saber. 

Melting Center

• Effect: Force Melt deals double damage and heals you for 50% of the damage it deals whenever it consumes a stack of Zen.
• Recommendation: Take this if you plan to main Watchman. Melting Center offers the greatest single-target DPS potential, but the associated rotation is considerably more challenging because it’s less consistent and requires more precise timing, especially in AoE situations. In order to guarantee that Force Melt’s damage will be doubled and that you receive healing, always activate Zen shortly before Force Melt. In single-target situations, you can and should activate Zen 1-2 GCDs earlier if it’s available then. If you have DoTs on multiple targets, always use them at the exact same time. Please note that the self-healing provided by Melting Center does not offer a survivability increase in practice over the alternatives at this level because you must take Stoic instead of Inspired Focus with this ability tree buff.

Critical Melt

• Effect: Force Melt increases the critical chance of all your burns on that target by 10%.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Critical Melt doesn’t provide enough of a DPS increase to ever be worth taking, even in AoE situations.

Snaring Slash, Debilitating Slashes, or Transcendence – Level 27 Choice

Snaring Slash

• Effect: Slash and Blade Barrage slow targets they hit by 50% for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. In PvE, slows have very little benefit since most of the things you’d maybe want to slow will be immune anyway.

Debilitating Slashes

• Effect: Blade Barrage immobilizes the target for 3 seconds and generates 1 Focus.
• Recommendation: Only take this in fights where activating Transcendence is detrimental. In certain fights, particularly ones that require very precise positioning, like Tyrans, giving a sudden movement speed boost can cause players to move too far. Debilitating Slashes provides an alternative miniscule benefit when you can’t use Transcendence at all.

Transcendence

• Effect: Grants the Transcendence ability, which applies Transcendence to you and all Operation group members within 40m. Transcendence purges movement-impairing effects, increases movement speed by 80%, and increases melee and ranged defense chance by 10%. Lasts 10 seconds. 30 second cooldown.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Transcendence is the best choice in this tier in PvE by far because raidwide movement speed boosts are frequently useful. Even as just a personal movement speed boost, this would still be way better than the other options.

Cauterize Buffs – Level 39 Choice

Flaming Wave

• Effect: Dealing damage with Cauterize sends a wave out from your primary target, causing your burns to deal damage to nearby targets.
• Recommendation:
• Dealing damage with the initial hit of Cauterize sends out a Flaming Wave from your target, ticking every burn effect that is active on each target within 5m.
• Almost always take this. If you’re familiar with Bloodrage | Burning Focus, Flaming Wave causes Cauterize activations to do basically the same thing. It won’t be useful in pure single-target fights, but you’re not really giving anything up by taking it. Twin Saber Throw w/ Mind Sear + Spiteful Saber will deal more damage to potentially more targets while costing fewer Focus than Cauterize, though Flaming Wave will deal far more damage than Cyclone Slash while costing fewer Focus. In other words, there is basically no reason to use Cyclone Slash if you are taking Flaming Wave, and you’ll pretty much always want to take Flaming Wave.

Force Fracture

• Effect: Replaces Cauterize. Deals a small amount of direct energy damage and an additional small amount of Elemental damage for each of your burn effects on the target. Costs 2 Focus, 10m range, instant, no cooldown.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Technically, you can make a semi-viable build with Juyo Melt, Force Fracture, and Burning Center that utilizes a static rotation, but it’s fairly fragile and crit-reliant, so I don’t recommend using it for any content.

Cauterizing Focus

• Effect: Cauterize applies Trauma and refunds Focus when used while Zen is active.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Trauma is rarely useful at all in PvE and tanks can typically apply it when needed. The only benefit offered by Cauterizing Focus is to give you a more cost-effective, but less damaging, alternative to Slash during Zen when Twin Saber Throw and Blade Barrage are unavailable. I haven’t been able to observe a tangible DPS increase from incorporating Cauterize while Flaming Wave often provides a substantial boost to AoE damage, so I don’t recommend ever taking Cauterizing Focus in PvE.

Force Clarity, Burning Center, or Burning Zen – Level 43 Choice

Force Clarity

• Effect: Grants the ability Force Clarity, which consumes all ability charges of Force Clarity when activated and applies the same number of stacks to you. Each stack increases your next direct single-target melee attack by 25%. 15s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Force Clarity is not compatible with Melting Center’s Centering requirements while offering less DPS and being more difficult to use than Burning Zen.

Burning Center

• Effect: Critically hitting with periodic burn damage builds 2 Centering, even during Zen. This effect cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this with Melting Center. You need the additional Centering generation from Burning Center in order to get 30 stacks of Centering in time for each Force Melt activation. With Juyo Melt, the extra Centering generation doesn’t offer enough of a DPS increase to be worth using and only serves to destabilize the rotation by causing your Zen availability to move around and become desynchronized with Force Melt.

Burning Zen

• Effect: All melee damage attacks deal a tiny amount of additional burn damage while Zen is active. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Always take this with Juyo Melt. You don’t need additional Centering generation with Juyo Melt, so this option yields more of a DPS increase. Abilities that hit multiple times over the course of the GCD, like Blade Barrage and Zealous Strike, can trigger Burning Zen multiple times.

Adamant, Intercessor, or Steel Self – Level 51 Choice

Adamant

• Effect: You generate 4 Focus when stunned, immobilized, put to sleep, or get knocked around. Additionally, the cooldown of Resolute is reduced by 30 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. The additional Focus and CC break can be helpful in specific fights, but this effect isn’t strong enough to compete with Steel Self in group content. In solo content, you do get CC’d quite a lot, so this is a nice effect to have.

Intercessor

• Effect: Force Leap gets an additional charge and builds 2 Centering.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. Intercessor can ensure that Force Leap and Zen are available more reliably in solo content, but it doesn’t offer enough of a benefit compared to Steel Self in group content. The only exception I can think of where you might want to take this is if you’re in charge of dealing with Graces in Tyth because AoE damage in that fight is avoidable.

Steel Self

• Effect: Increases Internal/Elemental damage reduction by 3%. In addition, activating Inspiration, Rebuke, or Transcendence grants Steel Self, which reduces your AoE damage taken by 30% for 10s.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvE group content. AoE RDT remains one of the strongest effects available and as a Sentinel, you get it basically for free on top of slightly better Internal/Elemental DR. In solo content, AoE damage is far less prevalent so Steel Self is less useful.

Adjudicator, Trailblazer, or Zealous Ward – Level 64 Choice

Adjudicator

• Effect: Each use of Strike and Zealous Strike reduces the active cooldown of Rebuke by 3 seconds. In addition, while Rebuke is active, you generate 1 Focus whenever you are attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds.
• Recommendation:  Never take this as Watchman. You can’t really make use of the spare Focus, and you hardly use Zealous Strike.

Trailblazer

• Effect: Increases the damage dealt by Cyclone Slash by 15%.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Flaming Wave will cause Cauterize to always deal more damage and cost fewer Focus than Cyclone Slash.

Zealous Ward

• Effect: Activating Saber Ward grants Zealous Ward, which grants immunity to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects for 6 seconds. In addition, getting attacked while Saber Ward is active heals you for 3% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Always take this as Watchman. Zealous Ward can heal you for up to 36% of your max HP over its duration. That’s a pretty nice boost in burn phases where you’ll typically be taking damage pretty frequently. The partial CC immunity is also beneficial for specific fights like Brontes to ignore her Fire and Forget. Even if you don’t need the extra survivability, the alternatives do nothing, while this at least helps Saber Ward act as a better emergency button.

Force Stasis, Blade Blitz, or Guarded by the Force – Level 68 Choice

Force Stasis

• Effect: Grants the Force Stasis ability, which stuns the target, deals a small amount of damage, and builds 3 Focus over the duration of the cast. Can be cast while moving.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Blade Blitz and Guarded by the Force are far more valuable, but you may be assigned to keep a specific enemy interrupted thanks to the short cooldown on your interrupt and this can help against certain adds. If your group is not utilizing your interrupt, I would recommend that another group member that doesn’t have to give something up should handle stuns.

Blade Blitz

• Effect: Grants the Blade Blitz ability, which makes you dash forward 20m, dealing a moderate amount of damage (includes Cut Loose damage) and increasing your defense chance by 100% while dashing. Can be used while immobilized and purges movement-impairing effects when activated.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Blade Blitz offers improved mobility, a cheese, and decent AoE damage, so it’s typically the most useful ability out of these options.

Guarded by the Force

• Effect: Grants the Guarded by the Force ability, which reduces the damage you take by 99% for 6 seconds. 2 min 30s cooldown. 
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Guarded by the Force can be more valuable than Blade Blitz if you’re more concerned with mitigating damage and can’t really benefit from what only Blade Blitz offers. The best example of a fight where you’d want to take Guarded by the Force over Blade Blitz is the TFB.

Inspired Focus, Incisor, or Stoic – Level 73 Choice

Inspired Focus

• Effect: You heal for 1% of your max health whenever you activate an ability that consumes Focus. In addition, Inspiration generates 12 Focus when activated.
• Recommendation: Take this option if you don’t need extra Centering. Inspired Focus offers vastly superior survivability compared to Stoic, but not so much that it’s worth delaying Force Melt. I don’t think the 12 Focus from Inspiration should ever be part of your decision making process for whether to take Inspired Focus.

Incisor

• Effect: Force Leap and Force Melt snare the target, reducing its movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Slows have very little use in PvE, especially in group content where most things are immune.

Stoic

• Effect: Increases your damage reduction by 2% and you build 2 Centering when attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 1.5s.
• Recommendation: Take this option only if you need extra Centering. You should have barely enough Centering with 100% uptime to not need the extra Centering from Stoic, but as soon as you start losing singular GCDs to mechanics, you might not be able to activate Force Melt on cooldown because Zen isn’t ready, and Stoic is typically enough to mitigate that. If you don’t want to bother with swapping your ability tree buffs all the time, just always take Stoic in this tier. Inspired Focus is nice, but typically not essential.

Centering Generation, Burning Zen, and Burning Center vs Stoic

Your main goal with Watchman is to generate enough Centering so that Zen is available by the time that Force Melt comes off cooldown because delaying Force Melt will result in a DPS loss. When you have (nearly) 100% uptime, like on a dummy, you can typically generate 30 stacks of Centering by the time that Force Melt comes off cooldown.

If you start missing GCDs because that is inevitable in boss fights, you won’t always have enough Centering to activate Zen by the time Force Melt comes off cooldown, so you’ll need another source of Centering generation to compensate for that and there are 2 ability tree buffs in Watchman that can facilitate that: Stoic and Burning Center.

By taking Stoic, you sacrifice a bit of survivability because you can’t take Inspired Focus. By taking Burning Center, you sacrifice a bit of DPS because you can’t take Burning Zen. You’ll basically never need to take both Stoic and Burning Center at the same time. Burning Center tends to offer more consistent Focus generation because it isn’t dependent on external factors like Stoic is (not all bosses deal damage to you at the same frequency), but usually the more uptime you lose, the more often you take damage from the boss.

Since your primary job is to DPS, the general consensus is that it’s better to take Stoic over Burning Center.

Gearing and Stat Priorities

Tactical Items

Spiteful Saber
Effect: Cauterize deals 10% more damage. Slash, Dispatch, and Twin Saber Throw refresh the duration of your Cauterize’s burn effect and tick its damage.
Recommendation: This is your single-target tactical. You’ll primarily be using it in group content where boss fights last long enough that being able to refresh Cauterize will actually matter. Thanks to other improvements in 7.0, you don’t usually have to worry about making sure you have enough Focus to use Slash to refresh Cauterize anymore.

Malmourral Mask
Effect: When Merciless Slash deals damage to an enemy affected by Force Melt, it triggers a burst of damage to up to 8 nearby targets.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical. It’s great for solo content where most groups of enemies won’t last long enough for you to need to refresh Cauterize and it looks cool, but it’s not your only option for solo content. In group content, it’s useful when you are able to maintain Cauterize and Force Melt (mostly) indefinitely through DoT bouncing. In addition, since it makes Merciless Slash an AoE, you don’t have to make quick decisions about whether there are enough targets to prioritize Cyclone Slash over Merciless Slash.

No Time For Fools
Effect: Merciless Slash automatically kills standard and weak enemies with less than 30% health. Killing an enemy this way resets the cooldown of Merciless Slash.
Recommendation: While this tactical may seem strong in solo content at first glance, I have found it to be pretty useless in practice. The cooldown reset only applies if the target had less than 30% HP and was a standard or weak enemy. Merciless Slash doesn’t need to autokill against targets with that little health where a couple of DoT ticks will be enough to finish them off. Merciless Slash crits are usually enough to take out standard and weak enemies that have below 50% HP. To make matters worse, the tactical is absolutely useless in heroics and most Flashpoints where most enemies are strong and elite. If BioWare were to make it so the cooldown reset triggered whenever a target was killed by Merciless Slash and perhaps made it autocrit enemies that had less than 50% HP, it might be more useful, but in its current state, it’s just a waste of Tech Fragments.

In our Catalog of all Tacticals in SWTOR you will find information about all other Tacticals that we didn’t list in this guide. You may find something adequate that is also cheaper and easier to obtain for your needs while you work on getting the recommended one for your combat style and build.

Legendary Implants

BioWare has removed set bonuses from the game and replaced them with Legendary Implants, which are just implants with old 4 or 6-piece set bonus effects on them, so rather than needing to collect 4 pieces of a gear set to get the 4-piece set bonus, or 6 pieces for the 6-piece, you’ll get either a 4 or 6-piece set bonus effect on an implant. 

This was done to improve customization (now you can mix and match set bonus effects), make them easier to obtain, and consume less inventory space. Here are the Legendary Implants you should use as a Watchman Sentinel:

• Dispatcher – Activating Twin Saber Throw grants Dispatcher’s Challenge, making your next Dispatch or Slash critically hit. Critically hitting with a weapon attack generates 1 Focus. Cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.
• Berserker’s Call – Reduces the cooldown of Valorous Call by 15 seconds. Additionally, activating Zen increases all damage dealt by 5% for 10 seconds.
• Fearless Victor – Whenever you use an attack that spends Focus, your melee damage is increased by 10% for 10 seconds.

The BiS Legendary Implant pairing for Watchman Sentinel is Dispatcher and Berserker’s Call.

Dispatcher is the most essential Legendary Implant to Watchman (and Combat), it really helps to smooth out the rotation by ensuring that you’ll basically always have enough Focus to spam Slash and also yields the most DPS.

Berserker’s Call technically offers higher DPS than Fearless Victor, but not by much, and Fearless Victor is better for Combat and BiS for all other Warrior / Guardian DPS specs, so if you don’t have the Tech Frags to spare, you’ll still do fine with Fearless Victor.

You can get away with pairing Berserker’s Call and Fearless Victor as well, but the rotation is far less luxurious without Dispatcher. You might want to do this if you primarily play Centering.

If you want to know more about Legendary Implants, check out my guide Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0. It explains how to unlock Legendary Implants and contains a list of all Legendary Implants in the game.

Stat Priority

As a DPS, you’ll need to care about 3 different stats: Accuracy, Alacrity, and Critical Rating. There are thresholds associated with Accuracy and Alacrity, so you need to prioritize reaching those thresholds to get the full benefit from each stat point.

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to ~7.5% – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. You need 7.15% Alacrity to get from the 1.5s GCD to the 1.4s GCDs. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCD, resulting in an experience that feels clunky and inconsistent. You need roughly 0.4-0.5% more Alacrity past the exact threshold to effectively eliminate those 1.5s GCDs.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

Find out which mods to purchase from Hyde and Zeek in SWTOR on the Fleet to minimize spending and optimize your build. The dedicated guide contains tips for all roles in both PvE and PvP.

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since the stats come in much smaller amounts, augments allow you to fine-tune your gear to provide almost as much of each total stat as you want.

To equip an augment, you must first use an Augmentation Kit that matches the crafting grade of the augment (ex. Grade 11 augments require MK-11 Kits).

The 296, 302, 310, and 318 iRating augments released with 7.6 and 7.7 are BiS. The higher the iRating, the more stats they offer and the more expensive they are to make or buy, though most of the benefit is provided by having augments at all, and the base-rarity blue 296 augments are the cheapest.

Almost everyone should buy the blue 296 augments because they provide the greatest bang for the buck, but you do have multiple options:

• Gold 318 augments (Superior [Type] Augment 86). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS) and offer ~25% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 4 additional gold augments. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Purple 310 augments (Advanced [Type] Augment 86). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They are cheaper than the gold 318s, but they’re in the same price bracket in terms of affordability, so there’s no reason for anyone to use them at this point.
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76) are the mid-tier augments. For all intents and purposes, these are equivalent to the gold 300 augments from 6.0. I only recommend them if you’re close to a stat threshold or don’t already have gold 300 augments and want something a bit better than the blue 296s.
• Blue 296 augments ([Type] Augment 83) are the most basic tier of augments for level 80 players. They are pretty cheap as only the schematic comes from the associated lair boss, Propagator Core XR-53. You don’t need any Corrupted Bioprocessors to craft these augments.

Check out our 7.7 Augments Guide for everything you need to know about augmenting gear!

Earpiece

Which Earpiece you use will depend on what specific tertiary stats the rest of your gear and augments provide. Typically, you’ll need to use either an Accuracy (Initiative, yellow icon) or Alacrity (Quick Savant / Nimble, green icon) Earpiece.

Crystals

Advanced Eviscerating Crystals are the best. They are the only type of crystal that increases one of your tertiary stats. Since the stat pool for tertiary stats is much smaller than that of primary or secondary stats, adding 41 is a more significant upgrade than it would be if you were to add 41 to one of the primary or secondary stats (mastery, power, or endurance).

Relics

I recommend the Relic of Focused Retribution (FR) and Relic of Serendipitous Assault (SA) for all PvE content. Each relic offers a proc; FR’s proc boosts your Mastery, whereas SA’s proc increases your Power stats. If you have the choice, purchase the Relic of Focused Retribution first because in equal amounts, and only in equal amounts, Mastery offers more of a DPS gain than Power.

Biochem Items

I recommend the Advanced Kyrprax Proficient Stim, Advanced Kyrprax Medpac, and Advanced Kyrprax Attack Adrenal for all PvE content. Grade 11 Biochem items from the crafting tier released with 6.0 remain BiS. Since they haven’t been updated to level 80, their effects are weaker than they should be, though they can still have an impact.

You should use the Proficient Stim as a DPS because it provides 2 tertiary stats that you need, Accuracy and Critical Rating, and tertiary stats are harder to come by and what you build your gear around. You should use the Attack Adrenal because it provides Power, which typically provides the greatest DPS increase, though it’s also more consistent, which is what you need for DPS checks.

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

If your guild uses the Zeal (cyan) guild perk set bonus, which gives a passive +5% Alacrity boost, you won’t need nearly as much Alacrity stat to reach your desired Alacrity threshold. My recommendations do not factor in these boosts, so if you have one, you’ll need to pay attention to percentage thresholds rather than the stat amounts. Just keep adding one augment at a time until you reach the desired percentage.

Guild leaders, I recommend using the Fortune (yellow) guild perk set bonus instead. It grants +5% Critical Chance and also boosts the Critical Rate and Time Efficiency of all Crew Skills by 2%. The reason for this is that you don’t have to change the way you gear in order to benefit from the effect.

Neither effect works in MM raids or PvP, so if you or your guild members do either of those activities, you’ll need to tweak your gear to reach the desired threshold depending on the activity, which I find super tedious. Even if your guild doesn’t do those activities, leaders still need to actively maintain the set bonus because your gear will become suboptimal on top of losing the bonus, whereas it’s not a big deal if your crit is a little lower for a bit.

The Alacrity boost is much stronger than the Critical Chance boost. Still, PvE content isn’t balanced around these guild perk set bonuses anyway, so I find it better to have a smaller boost I don’t have to worry about than a larger boost I have to manage.

Best Watchman Sentinel Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. Build Essentials can include important ability tree buffs, a tactical item, and even Legendary Implants occasionally.

The ability tree buffs that aren’t listed as Build Essentials can be changed as needed without compromising the integrity of the build, though I have included a full set of default choices that will be most consistently helpful in accomplishing what the build sets out to do.

For Boss Fights: Melting and Burning Center

This build offers the highest overall single-target sustained damage output. You rely on Burning Center and Stoic to consistently generate 30 stacks of Centering in time for each Force Melt activation. In actual boss fights where you’re taking damage, you shouldn’t have to delay Force Melt at all, but you will occasionally need to do that on the dummy. 

In general, the rotation will be a little more challenging since you aren’t in control of all of your Centering generation, so you’ll need to make more adjustments on the fly. I don’t recommend using this build unless you plan to be a Watchman (or Annihilation) main.

Stoic helps with consistency, but it isn’t required and is inconsistent in the benefit it provides whereas Inspired Focus provides more survivability at the cost of a more challenging rotation.

Cloak of Retribution will also help to improve reliability by letting you not have to worry about Focus generation as much. If you know you’ll be generating Focus consistently as a result of Cloak of Pain, you can skip using Blade Barrage altogether as Slash + Spiteful Saber deals more damage.

For Boss Fights: Juyo Melt and Burning Zen

This build offers slightly less single-target sustained damage output, but it’s a fair bit easier to execute the rotation because you are completely in control of all Centering generation, though you will have to give up some survivability and control by taking Stoic in fights where you have lower uptime and aren’t able to keep Force Melt synchronized with Zen.

I recommend using this build when sustained DPS is required you don’t plan to main Watchman (or Watchman) because the DPS loss is quite small and you’d probably have trouble getting the better numbers with Melting and Burning Center anyway if you’re at all rusty with the discipline. 

I want to be clear that you shouldn’t usually need to take Stoic with this build and even though you don’t get any survivability from Juyo Melt, Inspired Focus offers enough HPS to surpass what Melting Center provides.

For Solo Content and Flashpoints

This build is quite similar to the Melting and Burning Center build but is optimized for trash mobs instead of boss fights. Your objective is to apply and spread your DoTs and then whack the group with AoE Merciless Slash and Twin Saber Throw. 

I recommend using Melting Center over Juyo Melt because you get another big hit in your arsenal along with additional survivability. The added survivability is valuable because you’ll want to take Stoic for the Centering generation. Usually, you’ll want to apply Force Melt to the strongest enemy in the group, or at least a different one from what you applied Cauterize to so that the target doesn’t die before you have a chance to spread.

You can and should switch to using Spiteful Saber instead of Malmourral Mask against bosses since the latter does little to improve single-target sustained DPS.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks. It can be a little different than the standard rotation because everything is off cooldown, including your OCDs and relic procs. It’s important to get as much damage as possible while all of your damage boosts are available to maximize their impact.

1. Introspection (pre-cast for 30 Centering)
2. Force Leap
3. Zealous Strike
4. Overload Saber
5. Cauterize
6. Adrenal
7. Inspiration ▶ Valorous Call (if applicable)
8. Merciless Slash
9. Zen
10. Force Melt
11. Slash (rotation only)
12. Twin Saber Throw (if procced) or Blade Barrage
13. Priority or Rotation

This opener is a bit different from what you’ll see topping the charts on Parsely. Players there will use the Hidden Power tactical to build Focus before the pull and pre-cast Overload Saber to achieve higher uptime. It will yield slightly higher DPS, but I do not support this approach.

It’s too much tedious work for too little benefit and requires purchasing another tactical. More importantly, you’re gonna screw over your team and probably cause a wipe if you forget to unequip Hidden Power or you got Leeroy Jenkins in your group.

Zealous Strike and Merciless Slash are activated before Force Melt so that you can apply both of your debuffs as early as possible. In addition, Zealous Strike’s debuff boosts Merciless Slash’s damage and Merciless Slash’s debuff and proc boost Force Melt’s damage.

Structurally, you’re also setting yourself up to apply 2 stacks of Overload Saber and then use Force Melt followed by a melee attack to build the third stack. Valorous Call should typically only be used if Inspiration is activated or if someone pulled and you didn’t have time to build stacks.

Technically, you can use it to get a few extra ticks out of Zen and then clip it when you use Force Melt, but I strongly recommend using it to resynchronize Force Melt with Zen in the event you make a mistake.

Dual Approaches: Priority System or Rotation

As Watchman, you can use either a priority system or a static rotation. The rotation is more reliable but requires higher uptime. The priority system requires you to react a bit more and manage your Focus, but you are less beholden to the whims of the boss.

With both approaches, you’ll feel like you’re stepping onto an escalator or a moving walkway, or running on a hamster wheel with regards to Rage generation and ability synchronization. While you’re in the flow, everything is really smooth, but you come to a screeching halt if ever you decide to stop.

If you want to deal the most damage, you really need to flow between them depending on the current happenings in the fight. Sometimes, the rotation doesn’t work, and sometimes, you can make use of the extra stability.

Priority System Approach

A priority system is a list where you use whichever ability is highest on that list that’s available. It’s a way of ensuring your most important abilities are used as often as possible.

1. Overload Saber
2. Zen ▶ Force Melt
3. Merciless Slash
4. Cauterize (only if not on your target)
5. Force Sweep (only if you can hit multiple targets)
6. Twin Saber Throw (only during Zen or if you can hit multiple targets)
7. Dispatch
8. Cauterize (only if you can trigger Flaming Wave)
9. Blade Barrage (only during Zen)
10. Zealous Strike (Focus-dependent)
11. Slash
12. Cauterize (Focus-dependent)
13. Strike (Focus-dependent)

It’s important to practice this on a dummy at least until you can execute it without having to constantly look at your bar. 

Zen and Force Melt should be activated within 1 (or conditionally 2) GCD(s) of each other with Zen ALWAYS being activated before Force Melt so that you don’t waste the benefit from the Force Melt ability tree talent.

Since both abilities are so essential to your rotation, they have the highest priority. In AoE situations, always delay Zen and use it immediately before activating Force Melt; if you don’t do this, you risk all Zen stacks getting consumed before you can activate Rend. 

Even within this priority system, I recommend trying to adhere to activating Overload Saber 2 GCDs before Force Melt, as it is a genuine DPS increase and makes the rotation easier, so long as you can maintain it. Don’t delay either ability for more than 1-2 GCDs or you’ll end up losing more DPS than you’ll gain.

The rest of the priority system is less complicated than it may initially appear because there are many abilities you’ll only want to use in specific contexts. Generally, you want to use abilities that don’t cost Focus during Zen so that you can spend as many GCDs as possible outside of Zen on abilities that don’t spend Focus. By doing this, you maximize your Centering generation.

That said, it’s not worth using an attack that doesn’t cost Focus just because Zen is active and you shouldn’t delay attacks that do cost Focus just because Zen is active. In practice, you really just want to try to use Twin Saber Throw and Blade Barrage over Slash while Zen is active and delay using them in favor of Slash or Dispatch until your next Zen window. 

For the same reason, it is ideal to use Zealous Strike while Zen is active, but the vast majority of the time, you’ll have too much Focus for it to be worthwhile. Furthermore, there will be times when you need Focus outside of Zen windows and will be forced to use it anyway. Try your best to only use Zealous Strike if you can fully benefit from the Focus it generates and won’t be able to last until Force Melt.

In AoE situations, your first priority is to make sure Force Melt and Cauterize are applied, then you’ll want to spread them with Force Sweep. Use Twin Saber Throw whenever it’s available. You’ll deal more damage with it than Cauterize because Spiteful Saber makes Twin Saber Throw tick Cauterize on each target it damages. Thanks to Flaming Wave, you’ll use Cauterize as your filler instead of Slash, Blade Barrage, and Cyclone Slash when you can hit multiple targets.

The vast majority of the time, your filler will be Slash. You’ll only want to use Cauterize if you have 2 Focus and need a bit more Centering going into Zen or use Strike if you can’t afford anything else. During Zen, Twin Saber Throw and Blade Barrage take priority.

Sub-30%, you need to time your Twin Saber Throws such that Dispatch will be off cooldown by the time you hit that spot in the priority while still using Dispatch on cooldown and Twin Saber Throw mostly only during Zen in single-target situations. Ideally, you want to use them back-to-back, but it’s fine to use anything but Slash, Cauterize, or Strike in between the two if you can think that far ahead.

Single-Target Rotation Approach

Rotations are used when you can use all of your relevant attacks on cooldown without those cooldowns interfering with each other. They’re more rigid, but some find them easier to memorize and they’re definitely easier to lay down on your quickbar.

1. Overload Saber
2. Melee Attack Priority
3. Melee Attack Priority
4. Zen ▶ Force Melt
5. Melee Attack Priority (omit for AoE or if target is sub-30% HP)
6. Twin Saber Throw (if procced) or Blade Barrage
7. ( Zen falls off during prior GCD)
8. Melee Attack Priority
9. Melee Attack Priority
10. Melee Attack Priority
11. Melee Attack Priority (only if you omitted the one after Force Rend)
12. Repeat

Now, I know I said this was a rotation, and some of you are probably yelling about all of those priority slots, but I promise it’s really straightforward. The vast majority of those slots will be Slashes, and then Merciless Slash floats around to a few of them.

1. Merciless Slash
2. Cauterize (only if not on your target)
3. Dispatch
4. Force Sweep (only if you can hit multiple targets)
5. Cauterize (only if you can trigger Flaming Wave)
6. Slash
7. Zealous Strike (Focus-dependent)

Again, this structure is the most stable form and guarantees that you are generating Focus from Burning Focus as often as possible. The only limitation is that you have to give up some stability as soon as multiple enemies are involved or your target drops below 30%.

If you DoT spread, those Zen stacks are gonna get gobbled up faster than the pies at the Dantooine Spring Abundance Festival, and you still need to use those freebies inside Zen for optimal Centering generation.

Once your target drops below 30%, you need to start incorporating Dispatch and using it on cooldown while also synchronizing it with Twin Saber Throw so that it autocrits. Technically, you don’t have to change it, but it’s really annoying how the cooldowns line up. I recommend rereading both sections so that you can see how they fit together.

The key to being a great DPS is to always be DPSing. Using any damaging ability is better than just standing there not doing anything. Some DPS is better than zero DPS. Even if you mess up, keep doing the rotation! Unless there’s a mechanic that prevents you from dealing damage or forces you to stop DPSing, you should not stop DPSing. 

If a tank is telling you to stop DPS or hold off for a few seconds because they can’t keep aggro, don’t listen to them, they’re the one that doesn’t know the proper way to keep aggro. Tell them to git gud and read a tank guide!

I will be updating all of my class guides as balance changes are released and new discoveries are made, though this will take time as I am just one person with many different class guides to maintain. If you come across something you believe I haven’t considered, like a build, rotation, or opener, that performs equal to or better than what I recommend, please tell me about it in the comments!