SWTOR 7.7 Telekinetics Sage PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Telekinetics Sage

Telekinetics Sages fend off their aggressors with ceaseless gusts of telekinetic Force energy while confounding their foes with Jedi mind tricks.

Telekinetics is the strongest ranged burst spec by far, but it has trouble competing with most melee DPS disciplines in terms of sustained DPS. Its saving grace is its exceptional PvE-style burst, thanks to powerful offensive cooldowns that are enhanced by its legendary implants.

Telekinetics also has the potential to offer significantly more AoE damage than just most other burst specs in the game, though they now have to sacrifice some single-target DPS in exchange for rotational AoE. Unfortunately, all DoT specs are leagues better when it comes to AoE, and many of them are competitive with PvE-style burst, including Balance.

While most combat styles had their survivability nerfed in some way with the release of 7.0, Telekinetics was arguably one of the hardest hit in PvE and is in a much worse place compared to 6.0. The biggest nerf to Telekinetics in PvE comes from the fact that Sages no longer have access to AoE RDT, which is now only given to mDPS and Snipers / Gunslingers.

If that’s all it was, Telekinetics would be in a rough spot, but their other mitigation could potentially compensate. Sadly, that wasn’t the only nerf BioWare felt was necessary. Valorous Spirit (15% DR on Force Mend), Resistance (3% DR), Pain Bearer (+5% healing received), and Valiance (+30% Healing to Force Mend) are also largely inaccessible in PvE group content or gone completely.

Balance has vastly superior survivability these days, so it’s difficult to justify playing Telekinetics in fights where you’ll be taking a lot of damage, even if Telekinetics can technically survive many of them. 

Major Changes in 7.0

Utility points are gone! Instead, there is a new system called the Ability Tree. Each discipline has 8 choices where they pick 1 of 3 options. The options have several similarities across the Combat Styles:

• 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. Telekinetics permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Force Slow
• Revival

Battle rezzes in general are now healer-only (so Seer still has Revival), 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. 

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.

Group Composition Tips

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

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Armor	4.6%
Internal/Elemental	2.4%
Total DPS Gain:	7.0%

Telekinetics is significantly less independent than most burst specs, but it’s still pretty average in terms of group composition dependency compared to all DPS. Unfortunately, there isn’t a “perfect pairing” for Telekinetics either because no single discipline provides both DPS debuffs that Telekinetics needs (Armor and Internal/Elemental).

It is true that the Armor and Internal/Elemental debuffs are useful to all disciplines, so it won’t be too hard to meet Telekinetics’ requirements. However, Telekinetics is really only contributing 1 valuable debuff itself, which will still limit which specs other DPS can bring.

You’re best off bringing a Juggernaut / Guardian alongside a Telekinetics Sage since they provide the armor debuff and can benefit from both debuffs Telekinetics provides.

To be clear, Juggernaut / Guardian are by no means required and are not the only Combat Styles or disciplines that provide the DPS debuffs required by Telekinetics. They are just the most efficient and allow the 4th player to bring whatever they want. So long as each DPS is given the debuffs they need (or at least the most impactful ones), you’ll be fine. Don’t fixate on having a 100% ideal composition. 

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

Weaken Mind

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This DoT is one of your hardest-hitting abilities on its own and should typically be the first ability you use on any new target. When Weaken Mind is on the target, Turbulence is an autocrit, so it is imperative that Weaken Mind is active on anything you plan to hit with Turbulence. 

If there’s ever any downtime or if you ever have to switch to attack something else, make sure that Weaken Mind is on the target before continuing on with your rotation, as it can often fall off.

Since this is one of your most damaging abilities, it’s beneficial to put on secondary targets that need to die (like if a fight has two or more bosses), especially if they are within 8m of each other. This is called multi-DoTing. 

If you’re just starting out, it’s best to just always reapply Weaken Mind as your first ability, but if you’re a more advanced player, it technically doesn’t always need to be applied immediately as your first GCD on a new target.

There are situations where it can be slightly beneficial to use other abilities first, such as Mind Crush and Telekinetic Gust, because missing individual ticks of Weaken Mind over the course of a fight won’t add up nearly as quickly as delaying the use of high-damage abilities. 

The primary benefit of Weaken Mind being on the target is just to make Turbulence an autocrit. You definitely don’t want to delay Turbulence in the process of delaying Weaken Mind, but if Turbulence still has a few seconds left on its cooldown and one of your other high-priority abilities is available, it can be worthwhile to use those abilities first. Again, if you’re still new to the spec, just always apply Weaken Mind first. 

There are still instances where you should use Weaken Mind first even if you have other high-priority abilities available. If an alacrity buff like Mental Alacrity is about to run out, you want to make sure you apply it before that falls off so you get the higher tick rate.

If you’re focusing down an add that will die quickly and not a boss, the longer you wait to apply Weaken Mind results in lost DoT ticks on that target, so the GCD used to apply Weaken Mind will be less effective. It’s already a DPS loss to have to reapply Weaken Mind at all, so you definitely want to get the most out of that GCD. Weaken Mind has 1 proc that is relevant to your rotation: 

Mental Momentum
Weaken Mind’s duration is refreshed by dealing direct damage with Telekinetic Wave and Mind Crush. This means you only need to apply it once to most targets unless there is a significant amount of time where you do not use those abilities. It is possible to maintain Weaken Mind on 2 targets indefinitely by alternating Telekinetic Wave and Mind Crush on each target, but this is tricky to do and results in less damage dealt by Stormwatch.

You have to remember to use Telekinetic Gust on whichever target you apply Mind Crush to as well. Since a full duration of Weaken Mind is still a DPS increase over Telekinetic Burst, I prefer to just manually reapply Weaken Mind to secondary targets after it’s fallen off rather than squeeze every last drop of DPS out of the spec.

Turbulence

(Force/Internal/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
This is easily the TK’s hardest-hitting ability because it automatically critically hits targets affected by Weaken Mind, so you want to make sure that Weaken Mind is on the target before using Turbulence. It’s also crucial to never delay this ability since it deals so much damage. The only time it is ever beneficial to delay Turbulence is if there are a ton of adds to AoE, though make sure you aren’t fluffing. Turbulence has 3 procs and 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Tidal Force
Finishes the cooldown on Telekinetic Wave, makes your next use of the ability instant and consume 50% less Force. This can only occur once every 10s. This ability can also proc off of Telekinetic Burst and Forcequake, but the rate limit (internal cooldown) on this proc aligns perfectly with the 9s cooldown on Turbulence, so it’s important to make sure that this procs off of Turbulence so that you can ensure you are getting the proc as often as possible and gain it in a predictable fashion.

Telekinetic Effusion
Direct Force attacks grant 2 charges of Telekinetic Effusion when they critically hit, each charge reduces the Force consumed by your next Force attack by 75%. This proc is one of the primary reasons why you don’t have any Force management as a Telekinetics Sage since you are almost guaranteed to have this proc for ⅔ of your attacks and will always get it from Turbulence since it’s an autocrit.

Reserved Light
Turbulence grants a stack of Reserved Light, making your next Benevolence activate instantly and heal for 30% more. Stacks up to 2 times and lasts 15s. This proc was added in 7.1.1 to the Clamoring Force discipline passive. Since Benevolence still costs a GCD, it mostly serves to improve survivability in PvP. In PvE, even with this proc, you should only use Benevolence during downtime where you can’t hit anything so you don’t lose DPS. 

Clamoring Force
Increases the critical damage dealt by Turbulence, Telekinetic Gust, Telekinetic Wave, and Mind Crush by 12%. This passive makes it so that Turbulence, Telekinetic Gust, and Telekinetic Wave synergize better with Force Potency than your other rotational abilities. 12% isn’t enough to make Mind Crush a viable Force Potency target because the crit chance increase only applies to the initial direct damage hit, not the DoT, though both components of Mind Crush still benefit from Reverberating Force.

Enhanced Turbulence
When you activate Turbulence, there is a 25% chance that the ability will produce a second blast that strikes the same target for 20% damage dealt by the initial hit. This passive is pretty straightforward, I only wanted to mention it because it shows up as a separate entry in StarParse, and note that it will autocrit just like Turbulence does.

Force Mobility
You wouldn’t know it unless you read the 7.3.1 patch notes because the game doesn’t tell you, but Force Mobility, which makes Turbulence castable while moving, is now built into the discipline.

In other words, you can now always cast Turbulence while moving. There is no need to take anything extra, and you can now select a different ability tree buff at level 51.

Telekinetic Wave

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Casted)
This ability provides Telekinetics with some rotational AoE damage, which is uncommon for burst DPS specs, though it still doesn’t come close to matching the rotational AoE damage output provided by DoT specs. In single-target situations, Telekinetic Wave should never be hard-casted and should only be used with the Tidal Force proc. However, if there are multiple targets, it can be a DPS increase to hard-cast the ability, though I’ll discuss that in more detail later on.

While Telekinetic Wave is one of your harder-hitting abilities, it does not always need to be used immediately on cooldown. The only normal limitation is that it needs to be used before your next Turbulence because that ability is what we want to proc Tidal Force (this changes when it becomes viable to hard-cast), so the effective cooldown of the ability is the cooldown of Tidal Force and Turbulence, though it often will be used directly after Turbulence anyway.

Outside of the priority system, you should delay activating Telekinetic Wave if adds have spawned recently and are not yet sufficiently grouped up but will be before your next Turbulence, delay this ability until they are close enough together that you can hit (almost) all of them. Telekinetic Wave has 1 debuff associated with it that I want to mention:

Overwhelm
Dealing damage with Telekinetic Wave applies Overwhelmed, which increases the target’s AoE damage taken by 10% for 45s. The AoE debuff is only useful outside of AoE situations to Vengeance Juggernaut / Vigilance Guardian, Virulence Sniper / Dirty Fighting Gunslinger, and Lethality Operative / Ruffian Scoundrel because those are the only disciplines that have a rotational AoE ability that do not provide the AoE debuff for themselves. 

Telekinetic Burst

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
Telekinetic Burst is your filler ability, so it is only used when everything else is on cooldown. While this ability accounts for a large portion of your overall damage output, almost equal to the amount provided by Turbulence, it only does so because you use it far more frequently. It takes 4-5 uses of Telekinetic Burst to deal the same amount of damage as a single Turbulence. 

Telekinetic Burst does not deal appreciably more damage than Telekinetic Throw, so you won’t lose DPS if you want to use that ability instead, though I only recommend doing so if you need to resynchronize the Tidal Force proc with Turbulence.

The way Telekinetic Burst makes itself important is by being so tightly integrated into the discipline, benefiting from and providing many procs. Telekinetic Burst has a whopping 5 procs and 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Clamoring Force
Force Speed grants 2 charges of Clamoring Force which make your next 2 Telekinetic Bursts activate instantly. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a DPS increase. Because Telekinetic Burst is still a 1.5s cast (same as a GCD), you’re not actually doing your rotation any faster because you can’t use your next ability until the same amount of time has passed since the ability was activated.

The only difference is that the damage goes out at the beginning of the 1.5 seconds when it’s instant instead of at the end when it’s casted, which can result in a DPS increase if a temporary damage boost would fall off partway through the cast before the damage goes out; however the inverse is also true for random procs, so it’s kind of a wash. Any other observable DPS increases would be due to the exploitation of bugs. This is not enough of a reason to use Force Speed on cooldown because you’ll miss out on far more DPS if you have to move and don’t do anything for a GCD or two, however thanks to the Gathering Storm and Unmatched Haste Legendary Items, you end up having to use Force Speed on cooldown anyway. 

Concentration
Taking direct damage has a 25% chance to grant Concentration, which makes your next Telekinetic Burst instant and can only occur once every 8s. It’s very difficult to capitalize on this in PvE unless you’re taking damage very consistently. The only example I can think of is if you’re kiting Raptus or Greus. The big thing to note is that if this proc is active and you use Force Speed to gain Clamoring Force stacks, both Concentration and a charge of Clamoring Force will, unfortunately, get consumed on the same Telekinetic Burst.

Telekinetic Refuge
Telekinetic Burst increases damage reduction by 5%, stacks up to 3 times (15% damage reduction total). This proc is now built directly into the ability itself. It’s easy to let this damage reduction fall off because you can go a relatively long period of time without using Telekinetic Burst due to its low priority.

With the lack of AoE RDT, it’s more important to prevent Telekinetic Refuge from falling off. If you can delay Telekinetic Wave to prevent the loss of these stacks, do it. That said, don’t let this get in the way of the rest of your rotation unless you think you’ll die without that DR.  

Mental Continuum
Telekinetic Burst increases your Force regeneration rate by 10%, stacks up to 3 times (30% total). Doing your rotation normally will ensure sufficient uptime on this proc to where you never run out of Force, but it can be more beneficial to make sure you have higher uptime if you die and get rezzed since you come back with a smaller pool of Force. After you get rezzed, prioritize building these stacks over using Telekinetic Wave, though still be sure to activate Telekinetic Wave before Turbulence comes off cooldown. 

Telekinetic Momentum
Telekinetic Burst, Telekinetic Wave, and Telekinetic Gust have a 25% chance to produce a second telekinetic blast which deals 25% damage. Telekinetic Momentum is twice as likely to occur while Mental Alacrity is active. This effect introduces a lot of RNG to the spec because it accounts for about 6% of your damage dealt, and some of your other passives are dependent on triggering Telekinetic Momentum.

Please note that Telekinetic Momentum can consume the 20% damage increase proc from Gathering Storm Legendary Item. This is especially problematic, but unfortunately unavoidable, when one of your Telekinetic Bursts triggers Telekinetic Momentum right before you activate a Turbulence that you intend to use the 20% damage increase on. 

While Mental Alacrity is active, it’s slightly more important to use Telekinetic Burst over Project or especially Telekinetic Throw while Mental Alacrity is active. Since you have 4 GCDs to use Project after Mind Crush, I try to wait until after Mental Alacrity falls off when Mind Crush is applied at the very end of the window for a small potential DPS increase from an extra tick of Telekinetic Momentum.

It’s also technically ideal to apply Telekinetic Defense before activating Mental Alacrity, but you have so many other considerations to make with that ability that it’s almost never possible to factor that in. I want to emphasize that these are tiny optimizations that may not even result in a DPS increase. Only cater to Telekinetic Momentum if you feel extremely comfortable with the fight and rotation.  

Tremors
Telekinetic Momentum (and Mental Momentum) each reduce the cooldown of Mental Alacrity by 1 second each time they trigger. This effect is very significant; over a parse that’s just a little less than 5 minutes, Telekinetic Momentum triggered 116 times, resulting in 116 seconds of Mental Alacrity’s cooldown getting reduced, almost enough for 2 additional uses of the ability!

This effect of Tremors is bugged or may have been changed resulting from it being combined with another effect that makes you immune to interrupts for 4 seconds upon being interrupted. Currently, there seems to be a 15s rate limit on this cooldown reduction because the interrupt immunity can only be granted once every 15 seconds.

Telekinetic Gust

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals nearly the same amount of direct single-target damage as Telekinetic Wave, though it will directly account for a smaller proportion of your overall damage output thanks to its longer cooldown. Telekinetic Gust has 2 procs associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Force Gust
This proc is built directly into the ability and reduces the activation time of your next Mind Crush by 0.5 seconds. If both Telekinetic Gust and Mind Crush are off cooldown at the same time, be sure to use Telekinetic Gust first so that you can take advantage of the reduced cast time on Mind Crush.

Stormwatch
This is the primary tactical item you will be using for Telekinetics. It accounts for about two-thirds of the damage dealt by Telekinetic Gust as a GCD, making it drastically more important to use Telekinetic Gust on cooldown than it may appear at first glance.

As a result of the changes in 7.3, Stormwatch now lasts long enough to have slightly more than 100% uptime. This difference enables you to delay Telekinetic Gust by a single GCD so you can prioritize Turbulence. However, the timing is super tight, and it will fall off before you can finish the cast on Turbulence if you have any downtime, so you still have to prioritize Telekinetic Gust.

Alacrity helps to smooth this out, so you have more leeway with the next activation after Mental Alacrity since the cooldown of Telekinetic Gust is reduced but the Stormwatch debuff duration is not.

Mind Crush

(Force/Kinetic/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target/Casted)
This ability deals both Direct and Periodic damage with the initial hit being Direct and the DoT component being Periodic damage. This makes Mind Crush a very poor candidate for use with Force Speed and Force Potency because only the weak, initial hit will benefit from these abilities or any others that only affect direct damage. However, Mind Crush as a whole still deals a substantial amount of damage, more than Telekinetic Wave and Telekinetic Gust, so it is worth using on cooldown.

It is imperative that this ability is not used unless you have the Force Gust proc from Telekinetic Gust active because without the proc, its DPS becomes too low. It is possible to use Mind Crush and Telekinetic Gust on cooldown and always get the proc, though the timing is sometimes pretty tight.

A frequent situation can happen where Mind Crush will come off cooldown right before Telekinetic Gust so you’ll still have the proc, but it will fall off very early into the cast, which is fine, but be careful because if you’re slow (low APM) or don’t have enough alacrity, you might end up hard casting Mind Crush which is bad. While you’re learning, it’s best to play it safe and always use Telekinetic Gust first. Mind Crush has 1 proc and 1 discipline passive that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Magnifying Vibrations
Project deals 35% more damage to targets affected by your Mind Crush and Mind Crush deals 10% more damage during Mental Alacrity. This means that you have 4 GCDs following Mind Crush to use Project on that target. Please note that you don’t get a buff on your bar and Project won’t light up as a result, so it’s not quite a proc even though I refer to it as such throughout this guide. The second component of the effect won’t change how you use the ability since Mind Crush already has a pretty high priority. 

Mental Momentum
Mind Crush applies the Force debuff, which makes the target take 5% more damage from Force attacks for 45 seconds. Mental Momentum also makes Mind Crush have a 25% chance to tick an additional time whenever it deals damage. Unlike Telekinetic Momentum, this chance does not increase while Mental Alacrity is active, but it does benefit from the effects of Tremors. These additional ticks will also trigger Stormwatch.

Project

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
The primary use of this ability is on targets affected by Mind Crush, and its 6s cooldown guarantees that you can only use the ability once per use of Mind Crush unless you use Mind Crush and immediately increase your alacrity.

While Mind Crush is on the target, it deals slightly less damage on average than Telekinetic Gust and Telekinetic Wave since it doesn’t benefit from Clamoring Force and can’t trigger Telekinetic Momentum. Since Project isn’t included with these sorts of damage buffs, Force Potency and Force Speed should not be consumed with it, though this is fairly easy to avoid.

Without Mind Crush on the target, Project still deals about 20% more damage than Telekinetic Burst, even with Telekinetic Momentum factored in. Unless you’re taking a lot of damage or your Force is ridiculously low, you should prioritize Project over Telekinetic Burst. Project doesn’t have any other procs or discipline passives associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Imbued Force Armor with Telekinetic Defense

Telekinetic Defense is an ability tree buff makes you deal a flat amount of damage to your attacker whenever your Force Armor absorbs direct (AKA non-peridoic/non-DoT) damage. Each tick of Telekinetic Defense deals nearly the exact same amount as a Telekinetic Burst. The damage dealt by Telekinetic Defense is not dependent on the amount of damage dealt by the attack that triggered it.

So as long as you manage to absorb some amount of non-DoT damage during the 30s it’s active, you will break even on DPS when Force Armor is used in place of a Telekinetic Burst and mitigate a bit of damage at the same time.

Without Telekinetic Defense, Force Armor costs a GCD to mitigate some damage without dealing damage. It’s an off-heal. With Telekinetic Defense, you become able to apply Force Armor to yourself without always losing DPS. You can even gain a little bit of DPS if you apply it during downtime.

Unlike in past expansions, it’s exceptionally difficult to get more than a single tick out of Telekinetic Defense before your bubble pops, at least in harder content. Telekinetics Sages don’t have access to nearly as much damage reduction, including AoE RDT, though that’s not the only limitation.

The amount of damage absorbed by the Force Armor just hasn’t kept up with our overall health pools. We have over 400k HP at level 80 now, and the bubble absorbs less than 20k. It actually absorbs slightly less damage now than it did in 6.0 when we had about 30% less max HP than we do now.

Make no mistake, reactive damage like Telekinetic Defense was a plague on game balance, so it’s good that it’s been curtailed so much. It’s important to appreciate because you do still want to put some thought into when you bubble yourself.

Periodic damage will usually chew through your Force Armor in just a couple of ticks, so you have to be careful to bubble yourself only when you know you’ll take non-DoT damage before that DoT is applied. It’s also not worth bubbling yourself if your Telekinetic Refuge would fall off or you’d delay a stronger attack. You do get some mitigation from Force Armor but don’t bend over backward for it.

Finally, I want to note that Telekinetics Sages specifically get 5% DR while they are Force-imbalanced by any bubble, so while you can’t give or receive Telekinetic Defense from other Sages, you can get that 5% DR if another Sage or Sage bubbles you.

Telekinetic Blitz

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is pretty unique and one of the only damaging abilities that can have multiple charges and deals more damage each time it is used thanks to the Empowered proc, though this proc only lasts for 5 seconds, so you can’t do much else in between Telekinetic Blitz activations if you want to benefit from Empowered.

Telekinetic Blitz deals slightly less damage per target on average compared to Telekinetic Burst, so it should only be used while you have the Elemental Convection equipped because it almost entirely eliminates the DPS loss associated with using Telekinetic Blitz, even in single-target situations when using Power of the Force.

This ability has other trade-offs compared to Telekinetic Burst too because it’s not as tightly integrated into the discipline. It won’t trigger things like Telekinetic Momentum or grant Telekinetic Refuge and Mental Continuum like Telekinetic Burst does.

Besides AoE, Telekinetic Blitz does have another key advantage over Telekinetic Burst: always being instant. This enables vastly superior mobility to the extent that you can probably get away with doing almost your entire rotation while moving except for casting Mind Crush.

Telekinetic Blitz also has the effects of the Endless Offensive set bonus from 6.0 built in, so activating Force Speed grants 2 charges of Telekinetic Blitz, though it still has the bug where it resets the cooldown timer whenever activated.

To reiterate, Telekinetic Blitz should only be used Alongside Elemental Convection, and only if you can proc Tidal Force, need to deal AoE damage, or need to move when Project is unavailable, and the Concentration or Clamoring Force procs that make Telekinetic Burst instant are unavailable.

AoE Damage

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 immediately or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage than necessary to adds. The best example of this for Sages is placing your Forcequake on a group of Ugnaughts that are away from Grob’thok. 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. 

Forcequake

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Channeled)
This is your spammable AoE. It proc Tidal Force, which is good when you need to AoE, but it can desynchronize the proc from Turbulence, so make sure that it gets resynchronized with Turbulence as you return to single-target (basically use Project or Telekinetic Throw instead of Telekinetic Burst until your next Turbulence). You can also just keep using Turbulence to proc it. Forcequake’s damage per GCD surpasses the following abilities after the following number of targets are hit.:

• 2 targets: Telekinetic Burst
• 4 Targets: Telekinetic Gust, Mind Crush, Project w/ Proc
• 6 Targets: Turbulence
• Never: Telekinetic Wave, because Telekinetic Wave deals roughly the same damage but only has a 2.5s cast time instead of a 3s channel

If you are channeling Forcequake during a boss fight, you should probably use the Dormant Tremors ability tree buff unless there is a more important single-target DPS check.

Telekinetic Wave

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Casted)
This ability is already used rotationally and should be used on cooldown, including being hard-casted if there are multiple targets. When it is being hard-casted, the instant proc should be used as soon as you get it since the ability’s cooldown is now the relevant limiting factor in how frequently it can be used, not the rate limit on the Tidal Force proc. It has higher priority when hard-casted if the following number of targets are hit with one use of the ability:

• Telekinetic Burst, Telekinetic Gust, Mind Crush, Project w/ proc: 2 targets
• Turbulence: 3 targets

Weaken Mind

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
Thanks to the Mental Continuum proc, you can place Weaken Mind on lots of enemies if they are within 8m of each other and keep Weaken Mind up on all of them indefinitely because Telekinetic Wave will refresh their durations. The more targets there are, the longer it takes for this to result in a DPS increase.

The less health each enemy has, the less time there is for the DoT to tick. It’s hard to give exact recommendations about when to apply Weaken Mind to adds. It’s best to apply Weaken Mind to only a few targets with high health, like the Champions.

Telekinetic Blitz

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability is only an AoE while you have the Elemental Convection tactical equipped and only if you’ve activated Telekinetic Wave within the past 10 seconds. With Elemental Convection, you can use Telekinetic Blitz in 2 different ways.

The first way is focused on sustained DPS where you only use Telekinetic Blitz when you are able to proc Tidal Force to reset the cooldown on Telekinetic Wave. The second way is focused on burst AoE where you use all 3 charges mostly back to back so you can benefit from the Empowered Proc.

Make sure that you don’t use Telekinetic Blitz if you think it will proc Telekinetic Wave when you already have Tidal Force because you’ll just overwrite the proc rather than get another one. In general, the only time you should use Telekinetic Blitz before procced Telekinetic Wave is if you are certain you won’t trigger Tidal Force. Telekinetic Blitz has a higher priority if you can hit the following number of targets with one use of the ability:

• Telekinetic Burst, Telekinetic Gust, Project w/ proc: 2 Targets
• Mind Crush: 3 Targets
• Turbulence: 4 Targets
• Telekinetic Wave: Never

Forceful Retribution

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Casted)
This ability is brand new in 7.0, but don’t get too excited. It basically just lets you cast Telekinetic Burst to 3 targets at once, but without most of the little bells and whistles that Telekinetic Burst gets from the discipline. The only thing it can do is trigger Tidal Force (Telekinetic Wave proc).

Forceful Retribution is really only worth using against trash mobs out in the open world as a pre-casting AoE alternative to Telekinetic Burst, so you don’t have to hard-cast Telekinetic Wave against every single group of trash. For most groups of standard enemies, you can take them down with Forceful Retribution > Telekinetic Wave (instant) > Forcequake (with Dormant Tremors).

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. 

Mental Alacrity

Thanks to our Unmatched Haste and Gathering Storm Legendary Items, this ability will have approximately a 33% uptime when used on cooldown where your Alacrity will be increased such that you will have a 1.2s GCD and deal 20% more damage with all of your attacks. 

Make sure Mental Alacrity will be available for any and all DPS checks, but don’t save it for so long that it could have come off cooldown in time for the DPS check. 

Unless the timing for a check doesn’t allow for it, you should always activate Mental Alacrity immediately before casting Turbulence, ideally right as a pre-casted Telekinetic Wave finishes. If you do it right, Telekinetic Wave will hit after Mental Alacrity is active and you’ll get an extra 2 GCDs worth of damage inside the window.

Force Potency

This ability should almost always be used during Mental Alacrity, and if you’re activating them at the same time, make sure you activate Mental Alacrity first. It’s okay to delay it for a significant period of time because the alacrity from Mental Alacrity will counteract the delay, so your next Force Potency will end up happening at roughly the same time regardless. 

I usually base this decision on how much time is left on Mental Alacrity’s cooldown if it isn’t active. If the cooldown is above 30-40 seconds, I will try to use Force Potency immediately because it means that Mental Alacrity likely just ended, so you’ll have a situation where Force Potency will skip the next Mental Alacrity but become available by the time for the following one. Using Force Potency during Mental Alacrity compounds the benefits of both damage increases; you get an autocrit that deals 20% more damage. 

Almost always use one stack of Force Potency on Turbulence. While that ability is an autocrit, it will still deal increased damage as a supercrit, which is a special property of autocrit attacks where the excess critical chance is converted into critical multiplier, meaning that Force Potency, when used on Turbulence effectively, increases its damage dealt by 60%. To be clear, supercrits only affect abilities that are autocrits. It does not work when abilities just happen to have their crit chances go over 100% from combined effects. A singular effect needs to grant 100% crit chance.

The other stack of Force Potency should be used on either Telekinetic Wave or Telekinetic Gust, depending on what’s available. If you use Telekinetic Wave as one of the abilities for Force Potency, it must always be used on the second charge if there are multiple enemies that will get hit because it will consume a charge for each enemy hit, though the crit chance will still be increased for all enemies even if it’s only possible to consume one stack. 

Likewise, Power of the Force should always be prioritized for the second stack of Force Potency over Telekinetic Gust because its damage dealt is effectively the same as if you were hitting a second target with Telekinetic Wave.

Once you activate Force Potency, it’s more important that the correct abilities benefit from the increased critical chance, so it’s okay to ignore the priority list for a moment. Generally, this means that you’ll have to delay Mind Crush by a GCD so that you can use the second charge on Telekinetic Wave. 

Force Potency can also be used on Forcequake if you need some beefed-up AoE damage. That ability will only ever consume a single stack, even if it hits more than one enemy. Force Potency should never be used on Mind Crush because it will only affect the initial hit since Force Potency only increases the crit chance of direct damage.

Never use Force Potency with Telekinetic Burst. If you mess it up, you’re better off using one of the charges on Telekinetic Throw because Telekinetic Throw does the same damage per GCD as Telekinetic Burst, so you’re better off getting effectively 2 GCDs to autocrit instead of 1. 

As I mentioned before, Project is not a good choice to buff with Force Potency either because it doesn’t benefit from the Reverberating Force discipline passive, and it’s better to use the second stack on Telekinetic Throw. 

Force Speed

This ability increases the damage dealt by your next direct Force attack by 20% thanks to the Gathering Storm implant, and it also reduces the cooldown of Mental Alacrity by 5 seconds thanks to the Unmatched Haste implant, so you need to use this on cooldown in order to maximize the cooldown reduction and number of damage increases. 

It’s best to save the proc exclusively for Turbulence instead of trying to use it on cooldown on something like Telekinetic Wave or Telekinetic Gust, though it’s not the end of the world if you use it on one of those abilities instead. Due to the travel time of Turbulence, there’s a good chance most of your uses of Force Speed will actually end up buffing Telekinetic Wave instead unless you’re super close to the boss.

The 20% buff can be consumed by Telekinetic Momentum, which is terrible. If you feel really comfortable with the fight and rotation and have very high APM and know that you’ll be using an ability that can trigger Telekinetic Momentum prior to using Turbulence, try using Force Speed immediately after using Turbulence instead of before in these instances in order to ensure that the buff gets consumed on Turbulence. 

Adrenal

Make sure to always activate your Adrenal during Mental Alacrity, even if you have to delay it a while unless you have a fight with a lot of DPS checks where it’s impossible to have Mental Alacrity available for every single check. 

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 and most of the delay will end up being counteracted by the Alacrity increase from Mental Alacrity anyway.

It’s important you do this because you will get more abilities off during the Adrenal window thanks to your higher APM thanks to the alacrity and the damage increase will compound with the stat increase from the adrenal. 

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 and 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. 

Cloud Mind

This is your bread-and-butter defensive cooldown, providing you with good damage reduction for a short period of time. Its short cooldown and duration make it better at mitigating spikes than dealing with higher sustained DTPS that you’ll find in burn phases. 

Cloud Mind also functions as a threat drop, so make sure to use it at the beginning of the fight, especially if you aren’t guarded. The best time to use it is right after the second Turbulence or Telekinetic Wave in your opener, which should be right before the tank’s AoE taunt is wearing off and right around the time raid buffs are ending. 

If you are having issues with pulling aggro on the primary target continually and you are doing your threat drop correctly, request that someone guard you. At this point, you’ve done everything you can to minimize your threat generation, and it’s your tank’s fault for losing aggro. 

Force Mend

This ability is not off-healing. Do not consider it as off-healing. Consider it a defensive cooldown just like any other that just so happens to work by providing you with a lot of HP. The traditional wisdom with Sage survivability is that they can take big hits and survive because they will almost always be at higher HP than all other combat styles such that if someone else uses another defensive cooldown with lower health, they won’t lose as much health overall. Since the Sage was at higher health before they took the hit, thanks to their proactive use of Force Mend, they’ll be dropped to the same health level as the other class. 

Force Barrier and Enduring Bastion

This ability works by giving you +20,000% defense chance, so if an attack cannot be dodged/deflected/parried/resisted, Force Barrier will not work. In most fights, this ability doesn’t get used and is more of an emergency button unless it’s getting used to cheese something deliberately like Doom from Ciphas or Ion Cutter from Master. 

Since you aren’t dealing any damage while channeling this ability, it is absolutely critical that you do not channel it for longer than you need to. Unless you’re buying time for DoT ticks and such, there’s not too much of a point to channeling for longer than 6 seconds anyway, which is when you get the fourth and final stack of Enduring Bastion, which absorbs a massive amount of damage (though usually not massive enough if you need the 4 stacks). Each stack of Enduring Bastion absorbs as much damage as your Imbued Force Armor, so at 4 stacks of Enduring Bastion, you basically have 4 bubbles on you at the same time.

Force Barrier does not cost a GCD to use and functions as a CC break, and I recommend using it that way if you need to CC break frequently, like on Monolith when getting a color.

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 (and I hope you know that Force Mend is not included in this rule). 

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.

Restoration

This is the cleanse for the Sages. Generally, healers are responsible for dealing with most of the cleanses, though there are a few instances where the DPS should help, like on Dread Council with Tyrans’ Death Mark. Before you use this on yourself, make sure that you don’t get Telekinetic Defense ticks off of whatever you’re trying to cleanse 

Try to avoid using this as your cleanse, a lot of the cleanses that DPS are responsible for can be removed with an ability that is off the GCD like the CC break or the Egress ability tree option and unless the debuff is going out to many members of your group at the same time, your healers are responsible for cleansing you. 

Your job as a DPS is to spend your GCDs on dealing damage. Your healer’s job is to spend their GCDs on mitigating damage, which includes most cleansing.

Force Speed

This ability is easily the best ability for movement in the game because it allows you to keep DPSing while moving an incredible distance very quickly. Unfortunately, now we don’t really get to use it for movement since we need it for our Legendary Items, though if you come across a situation where you will likely die if you don’t use it, save it for that situation but try to rely on Phase Walk as much as possible if those situations can be predicted and make sure to use Force Speed during downtime to keep reducing the cooldown on Mental Alacrity. 

Phase Walk

Due to our legendary implants requiring us to use Force Speed on cooldown, our mobility is reduced significantly and it becomes more important to rely on Phase Walk for movement. This ability can be activated off the GCD even though it has a cast, the only reason it has one at all is to prevent you from placing it in the air or while you’re moving.

Phase Walk can also be activated in the middle of channels (including Force Barrier), not casts though, without interrupting the cast so long as you stay in range of whatever you’re hitting and can be used while CC’d, even though the button will be grayed out if you try to use it while CC’d. 

If you try to teleport while in the air, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there is a whole lot of lag before it teleports you so be mindful of that. When thinking about different spots to place Phase Walk, ask yourself: is there a specific location I know I will want to return to at some point later in the fight? Is that position going to be generally safe to return to? Ask yourself this in every single fight and consider that its usefulness may be different in each phase.

Group Utility

Force Empowerment

Your raid buff should be used on cooldown just like any other offensive cooldown unless it needs to be used for a burst phase or DPS check. Using it once results in an approximate sustained 1k DPS increase or about 4k over the course of those 10 seconds it’s active. HPS is more variable, but should still be proportionally stronger too. Force Empowerment is not a personal buff for you. It’s something that buffs the whole team, so multiply those numbers by 6 + a little extra for the tank contribution.

Normally the raid lead will make the call on when this should be used. Since there is a 5 min lockout for everyone who received the buff to activate or benefit from the effect, and this applies to both factions’ versions of the ability, so only one player in the raid group should ever take Force Empowerment or Force Empowerment. Other Sages and Sages should take one of the other 2 options in the ability tree instead. When multiple DPS are dead, the player with an unused Force Empowerment or Force Empowerment should be prioritized.  

I also want to point out that all raid buffs only have a 40m range, so be mindful on larger maps that it might not catch everyone; be sure to position yourself so that it affects as many people as possible before activating it. The most notable instance of this range limit is during the second set of tentacles in the first phase of the TFB fight where you need to position yourself in the center near where the first and third set of tentacles spawn in order to ensure everybody gets the raid buff.

Use this on trash mobs if you want to troll your team.

Rescue

This is the famed Sage pull! While it is primarily used for trolling to great effect, especially when paired with Phase Walk to jump off ledges while pulling an unsuspecting victim to their doom while you teleport back safely, it does still have some utility in combat.

If you are 100% certain that someone will die if you don’t pull them, do it; if you are 99% certain they will die, probably don’t pull them. You will get yelled at if you mess up. You should have a very good idea of where this ability is on your bar because if you have to waste time finding it, you’ll probably end up sending a corpse soaring through the air instead of saving someone’s life, and at that point, you’re better off just removing it from your bar. When possible, try to minimally disrupt the other person’s rotation since it will interrupt their cast, and communicate with them beforehand if there’s time.

Off-Healing

If you ever have to do this, something has clearly gone wrong with the attempt, or someone is not pulling their weight. You should complain to the raid lead and, if necessary, make a big scene about needing to off-heal. PvE in this game around each role being able to fully perform all of its duties without the need for another off-role’s help.

Healers are balanced to be capable of keeping everyone alive without anyone needing to spend GCDs off-healing. You should never off-heal yourself when you could be dealing damage unless you literally think you will die if you do not receive healing right now, and the pull is salvageable. 

A lot of bosses have enrage timers too, so if you have to waste your precious GCDs helping out another role because they can’t deal with what they are fully capable of dealing with, you’re gonna end up wiping to an enraged boss later anyway.

If you do end up in a situation where off-healing another player is possible or necessary, I strongly recommend spending your stacks of Reserved Light with Benevolence first, followed by Force Armor, and then Rejuvenate. If you need to heal yourself, Force Armor has a higher priority than Benevolence thanks to Telekinetic Defense.

Crowd Control and Other Notable Abilities

There are only a handful of instances in operations where CC is required, so I will briefly go over what the Sage has at their disposal.

Force Wave

This is your conal knockback. The only fight it’s important for right now is Styrak in NiM where you have to knock back the Chained Manifestations. It now has Force Wake as a built-in feature. Also, please do not ruin everybody else’s day by using this ability for its AoE damage. 

Force Stun

This is your hard stun. Most stuns have a range of either 4m or 10m depending on whether it’s a melee or ranged spec, however TK’s stun has a range of 15m because Telekinetics has a 5m range increase on almost all of its offensive abilities. 

Mind Snap

This is your interrupt. Unfortunately, it only has a 30m range. At 18 seconds, its cooldown is longer than what most melee specs have, but isn’t the longest for ranged specs. That honor goes to the Mercenary, which has a 24 second cooldown on their interrupt (and it was the only class that didn’t have one at launch). 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. 

Force of Will

This is your CC break. Use it when you get CC’d and are unable to deal damage or satisfy a mechanic as a result of being CC’d.

Telekinetic Throw

As I mentioned earlier, this ability deals the same damage per GCD as Project, Telekinetic Burst, and a Telekinetic Defense tick, so the full channel will deal the same damage as two casts of those other abilities. However, that doesn’t mean it should be part of the normal rotation. As strange as it is, you should not use Telekinetic Throw rotationally in the Telekinetics spec, though it does have a few benefits that make it worthwhile to use on occasion:

• 2 GCDs of damage for one use of the ability. This means it’s better to use Force Potency and Force Speed on this ability rather than Telekinetic Burst since the effects will apply to the entire channel. It’s still not enough to make it better than using these cooldowns on a more appropriate ability, but it does help you recover if you mess up.
• It’s a channeled ability instead of being casted, so the damage goes out in 4 ticks over 3 seconds instead of 1 tick at the end of 1.5 seconds, so if something is only a GCD or two away from death, this is a more valuable use of your time than casting a Telekinetic Burst and hoping it lands before the enemy dies. 
• It’s very helpful in resetting the Tidal Force proc to Turbulence if they get desynchronized. Generally, what will happen is you end up delaying Turbulence by a GCD because none of the cooldowns line up properly in Telekinetics, thanks to the inconsistent Alacrity and cooldown durations that aren’t multiples of each other. In any case, Tidal Force ends up proccing off of a Telekinetic Burst right before you cast Turbulence. The key to fixing this is not using any Telekinetic Bursts or anything else that procs Tidal Force until you use Turbulence again. Telekinetic Throw and Project are two abilities you can replace your Telekinetic Bursts with when trying to fix this. 
• It slows the target by 50% for the duration of the channel (Telekinetic Burst only slows by 30%). 

Ability Tree Choices

Make a habit of reading through all of your Ability Tree choices each time you log in. They are intended to be changed on the fly and having a clearer idea of what all of them do will help you to recognize situations where individual choices will be useful in-game.

Level 23 Choice – Telekinetic Wave Buffs

Mysteries of the Force

• Effect: Dealing damage with Telekinetic Wave reduces the cooldown of Force Mend by 5s, up to 15s per Telekinetic Wave activation, and builds stacks of Mysteries of the Force, increasing the healing done by your next Force Mend by 5% per stack (up to 15%). Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in boss fights where you can consistently hit at least 2 targets with Telekinetic Wave, but AoE from Forcequake is unnecessary. The effect is super confusing because the cooldown reduction scales with the number of targets hit, up to 3 for a maximum cooldown reduction of 15 seconds per Telekinetic Wave activation while the you can get up to a 15% healing boost to your next Force Mend (this will happen consistently even in single-target situations), but the stacks of Mysteries of the Force have no bearing on the extent of the cooldown reduction. Make sure to activate Force Mend before using Telekinetic Wave whenever you use this ability tree buff even if you canonly partially benefit from the heal.

Power of the Force

• Effect: Replaces Telekinetic Wave with a single-target version of the ability that deals about 30% more damage and has a cast time that is 0.5s longer.
• Recommendation: Take this for single-target boss fights only. Power of the Force offers a single-target DPS increase that makes it deal practically the same damage as 2 Telekinetic Bursts. Since Power of the Force becomes your second most damaging direct attack by a considerable margin, it’s imperative that your second stack of Force Potency is used on Power of the Force, not Telekinetic Gust or anything else and it’s okay to delay your other abilities by a GCD to ensure that this happens. Hard-casting Power of the Force offers the same amount of DPS as casting 2 Telekinetic Bursts instead, but since survivability, mobility, and reliability are diminished, there is no reason to hard-cast the ability outside of pre-casting.

Dormant Tremors

• Effect: Telekinetic Wave applies Tremors to all targets it hits. Your next Forcequake detonates the current, dealing additional damage.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and add fights. In solo content, this option is awesome since it practically guarantees that you won’t have to channel Forcequake more than once. Dormant Tremors is also valuable in boss fights where you’re regularly using Forcequake throughout the fight and there isn’t much of a single-target DPS check (such as add fights like Draxus and Revanite Commanders). Using a single GCD of Forcequake against a target affected by Dormant Tremors is a single-target DPS increase over Telekinetic Burst. That said, it’s unpleasant to break the cast on Forcequake in every single rotation cycle, so I’d only recommend taking this in fights where you’re mostly fighting adds the entire time and can afford to do the full channel of Forcequake.

Level 27 Choice – Forceful Retribution, Cloud Mind, or Clarity

Forceful Retribution

• Effect: Grants a new ability that deals similar damage to Telekinetic Burst but can damage up to 3 enemies.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content only. It isn’t fully integrated into your rotation, so it doesn’t work well in sustained DPS situations, but for solo content, it will proc Telekinetic Wave, effectively making it so you don’t have to hard-cast Telekinetic Wave for every single trash pull.

Cloud Mind

• Effect: Grants the Cloud Mind ability, which increases your damage reduction by 25% for 6 seconds and reduces your threat by a moderate amount.
• Recommendation: Take this for all group content. Force Mend isn’t enough to keep you healthy on its own. You need something to help you mitigate the big hits that’s available more often and less cumbersome to use than Force Barrier. The threat drop component is also important to have as a burst DPS spec for the beginning of the fight.

Clarity

• Effect: Project deals bonus damage and returns Force when hitting targets affected by slows and increases your movement speed by 20%. This can only occur once every 8 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Bosses are immune to slows, meaning you can’t benefit from this in a meaningful way in raids. Outside of raids, Forceful Retribution is probably going to be a more helpful option.

Level 39 Choice – Turbulence Buffs

Off Balance

• Effect: Turbulence immobilizes targets for 2 seconds. This can only occur once every 9 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this in PvE. Its effect is extremely useful in PvP, but in PvE, you won’t benefit much from a root.

Incoming Turbulence

• Effect: Turbulence causes your next Telekinetic Wave or Power of the Force to deal 10% more damage.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content and in fights with a lot of adds. Incoming Turbulence offers a DPS increase over Mental Disparity even while you have Stormwatch equipped if you can consistently hit at least 3 targets total. If you are not using Stormwatch, you only need to consistently hit 2 targets for Incoming Turbulence to become superior. It never offers a DPS increase if you’re using Power of the Force because 10% of Power of the Force’s damage is less than the damage dealt by a single tick of Weaken Mind and you can never hit multiple targets with that ability. Keep in mind that with only 2 or 3 targets, the DPS increase from using Incoming Turbulence is minuscule, so if you’re not consistently hitting more than the minimum or the secondary targets have a much lower priority than the primary one, you should probably use Mental Disparity instead.

Mental Disparity

• Effect: Turbulence ticks Weaken Mind.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights that are mostly single-target. Mental Disparity is the strongest option whenever you are using Power of the Force or can’t consistently hit at least 3 targets with Telekinetic Wave. It will typically be inferior in solo content. Since Stormwatch triggers off of Weaken Mind ticks, Mental Disparity synergizes with it, though an individual Stormwatch tick is still pretty weak.

Level 43 Choice – Defensive Blast, Force Empowerment, or Enhanced Force Armor

Defensive Blast

• Effect: Turbulence grants a stack of Defensive Blast, which increases your damage reduction by 5% for 18 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this if someone else is providing the raid buff or it isn’t needed. 5% DR is not that much. Don’t feel too bad about missing out on this if you have to take the raid buff instead, though Defensive Blast will be your default choice for group content.

Force Empowerment

• Effect: Grants the Force Empowerment ability, which increases Mastery, Endurance, and Presence by 10% for you and your Operation group members within 40m for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this if no one else is providing the Sorcerer / Sage raid buff. Telekinetics has the weakest options in this tier compared to Madness / Balance and Corruption / Seer, so if you have multiple Sorcs / Sages, the one who’s playing Lightning / Telekinetics will lose the least mitigation to take this. Balance gets 15% DR from one of their options and Seer gets 6% DR or a passive that synergizes extremely well with one of their Legendary Items. Only one player should ever be taking this raid buff in the group.

Enhanced Force Armor

• Effect: Increases all healing received by 5% and increases damage absorbed by Imbued Force Armor by 10%.
• Recommendation: Take this for solo content only. It’s hard to say with certainty whether Defensive Blast or Enhanced Force Armor is better for solo content. Defensive Blast can quickly mitigate more damage than the increased bubble absorption, but the boost to healing received will offset this. Since you typically don’t have your DR up for most trash pulls but are able to apply your bubble outside of combat and will likely have a companion that heals you, I think it makes more sense to take this for solo content even if it may not always result in the absolute maximum amount of damage mitigation. That said, for longer fights as you’d find in heroics, I think Defensive Blast will be a clearer winner.

Level 51 Choice – Telekinetic Defense, Staggering Stratagem, or Resistance

Telekinetic Defense

• Effect: Your Force Armor draws in debris that is launched at attackers for as much damage as a Telekinetic Burst whenever it absorbs direct damage to you. This does not affect Force Armors placed on or by allies and cannot occur more than once each second.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Telekinetic Defense allows you to use Force Armor on yourself in lieu of a Telekinetic Burst without losing DPS. Force Armor not only absorbs a small amount of damage, but the Force-imbalanced debuff gives you +5% DR.

Staggering Stratagem

• Effect: The cooldown of Force Stun is reduced by 15s. Targets successfully stunned by your Force Stun deal 25% less damage for 10s after the stun wears off.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only in PvE. Staggering Stratagem is far more valuable in PvP, but since most NPC enemies you’d want to stun are immune, it gets far less mileage in PvE. The only time you want to take it outside of PvP is if there’s a particularly strong add that can be stunned.

Resistance

• Effect: Increases damage reduction by 3%.
• Recommendation: Take this in the few fights where neither alternative is useful. Resistance is always helpful, but it has the weakest effect of the 3 options. There are instances where it doesn’t make sense to bubble yourself and there isn’t anything stunnable. Those are the times when you want to take Resistance.

Level 64 Choice – Valorous Spirit, Metaphysical Alacrity, or Kinetic Collapse

Valorous Spirit

• Effect: Force Mend increases your damage reduction by 15% for 6 seconds and the cooldown of Force Mend is reduced by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this in PvE if you absolutely must have additional survivability. It’s a nice effect, but Metaphysical Alacrity is more important since it’s a DPS increase. It’s best to pair with Mysteries of the Force to increase the uptime on the 15% DR.

Metaphysical Alacrity

• Effect: Reduces the cooldowns of Force Speed by 5 seconds and Force Barrier by 30 seconds. In addition, Force Speed lasts 0.5 seconds longer, Mental Alacrity increases your movement speed by 100% while active, and activating Force Barrier finishes the cooldown on Force Speed.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. The cooldown reduction on Force Speed makes this option a substantial DPS increase thanks to the Gathering Storm and Unmatched Haste legendary implants. The other mobility improvements are nice too.

Kinetic Collapse

• Effect: Imbued Force Armors you place on yourself erupt in a flash of light when they end, mezzing up to 8 nearby enemies for 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. It’s useful in PvP, particularly against Assassins / Shadows and Operatives / Scoundrels, but this isn’t very helpful in raids due to CC immunities being present on most enemies.

Level 68 Choice – Force Lift, Phase Walk, or Telekinetic Blitz

Force Lift

• Effect: Grants the Force Lift ability, which mezzes the target for 8 seconds. If the effect ends prematurely, the target is stunned for 2 seconds. Strong, Elite, and Champion enemies heal rapidly.
• Recommendation: Take this when there’s an add that needs to be CC’d. Phase Walk is nice, but it isn’t essential. CCing specific enemies is almost always more valuable than moving somewhere faster.

Phase Walk

• Effect: Grants the Phase Walk ability, which allows you to place a mark on the ground that lasts up to 10 minutes. At any point, you can teleport back to that mark if you are within 60m, at which point the ability goes on cooldown for 60s.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. It’s the most consistently useful ability out of the three in raids, though if there isn’t a strong need to take this ability, feel free to swap it out for one of the other two.

Telekinetic Blitz

• Effect: Deals a small amount of damage to your target and grants Empowered, which increases the damage (and healing, if applicable) dealt by Telekinetic Blitz by 30%. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you have the Elemental Convection tactical equipped. Telekinetic Blitz is your weakest ability without Elemental Convection. It deals very little damage, but with the Elemental Convection tactical, the extra Telekinetic Wave it can proc will make up for this. Some damage is also better than no damage, so if you’re in a fight where you need to kite so much that you have GCDs where none of your abilities are available, you might want to consider taking this option.

Level 73 Choice – Egress, Mind Ward, or Confound

Egress

• Effect: Force Speed grants Egress, purging all movement-impairing effects and granting immunity to them for the duration.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you get slowed. Adds tend to apply slows more frequently than bosses, but slows aren’t super common in raiding. Egress can also be used to cleanse certain DoTs that have a movement-impairing component like Captain Horic’s Corrosive Grenade in S&V NiM.

Mind Ward

• Effect: Reduces periodic damage taken by 15%.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where enemies deal periodic damage to you. Mind Ward isn’t that great, 15% reduced damage taken (RDT) against a single type of damage that usually comes from a single attack, if the boss even has one to begin with. It’s better than nothing and that’s about it. Sadly, there isn’t a consistently useful alternative in this tier for raiders.

Confound

• Effect: Targets affected by your Weaken Mind are slowed by 30% for its duration.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Bosses can’t be slowed and for enemies that you can be slowed, you have other rotational slows that are more than sufficient.

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Stormwatch
Effect Telekinetic Gust applies Stormwatch to its target for the next 15 seconds. Whenever the target takes damage from Weaken Mind, Turbulence, and Mind Crush, a force gust is called down upon the target dealing a small amount of kinetic damage.
Recommendation This is your default tactical item for single-target situations, especially if you need sustained DPS or don’t plan on target swapping. You must be mindful of what you use Telekinetic Gust on by taking this tactical because it basically applies another DoT.

Elemental Convection
Effect Telekinetic Blitz triggers Tidal Force when activated (on a separate rate limit). Telekinetic Wave gives you Telekinetic Deluge, causing your Telekinetic Blitz to hit multiple targets for the next 10 seconds.
Recommendation If you need sustained AoE, this is the better tactical since you get an additional Telekinetic Wave and AoE from Telekinetic Blitz. Never take it with Power of the Force.

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 Items, 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 Items you should use as a Telekinetics Sage.

• Unmatched Haste – The duration of Mental Alacrity is increased by 5 seconds and using Force Speed reduces the active cooldown of Mental Alacrity by 5 seconds. 
• Gathering Storm – Force Speed makes your next Force attack deal 20% more damage and you deal 20% more damage while Mental Alacrity is active.

I recommend purchasing the Gathering Storm implant first because that one grants the actual damage increases while Unmatched Haste only amplifies them.

If you want to know more about Legendary Items, I have a guide called Legendary Items in SWTOR 7.0. It explains how to unlock Legendary Items and contains a full list of them broken down by Combat Style.

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 a Variable % – 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. Lightning has unique stat requirements that vary depending on the max iRating you’re going for because it gets a whopping +5% from the Focal Lightning proc. I’ll cover the options for what percentages you should shoot for in a dedicated section momentarily.
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.

Telekinetics Sages and Alacrity

Telekinetics has a proc called Telekinetic Focal Point that grants +5% Alacrity. This makes it a lot easier for Telekinetics to reach the 1.3s GCD and even 1.1s GCD during Mental Alacrity. However, if your iRating isn’t high enough, you will end up sacrificing too much Critical Rating to reach those upper thresholds. The 1.3s GCD is valuable as a Telekinetics Sage because it enables you to do the following:

• More reliably delay Telekinetic Gust for a GCD to cast Turbulence without Stormwatch falling off at the very last millisecond.
• Prioritize Mind Crush without worrying about the Force Gust proc falling off when Telekinetic Gust is about to come off cooldown.
• Better adhere to the priority system during Mental Alacrity because you have 1-2 spare GCDs at the end and aren’t obligated to use Telekinetic Wave immediately after Turbulence, even if you have other high-priority abilities available.

I only recommend shooting for the 1.3s GCD in PvE if you have either 344 gear OR the Zeal (Alacrity) Guild Perk Set Bonus. If you don’t have either of those things, use mods to drop your overall Alacrity down to ~2.5% and dump the remainder into Critical Rating (after reaching 110% Accuracy, of course).

Recommended Alacrity Targets for Telekinetics in 7.4

• 344: ~10.6% (1.3s GCD)
• Zeal Guild Perk: ~10.6% (1.3s GCD)
• 340 Only: ~2.5% (1.4s GCD)

Augments

Augments allow you to put additional stats on every piece of gear except tactical items. Since tAugments 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, and 310 iRating augments released with 7.6 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:

• Purple 310 augments (Superior [Type] Augment  + Augmentation Kit MK-11). These are overall best-in-slot (BiS). They offer ~13% more stat than gold 300 augments, which is roughly equivalent to 2 additional gold 300 augments worth of stat. They’re extremely expensive and completely unnecessary for all content in the game, so I only recommend them to the wealthiest individuals. 
• Blue 302 augments ([Type] Augment 76 + Augmentation Kit MK-11) 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 + Augmentation Kit MK-11) are the most basic tier of augments from 7.6. They should be 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 7.6 New Augments Guide for more details about the exciting world of negligible improvements!

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, regardless of gear. However, your second relic is dependent on how much Alacrity Rating you have in your gear. 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.

If you are shooting for the 1.3s GCD with 344 gear but do NOT have the Zeal Guild Perk Set Bonus, you can gain a small amount of DPS by swapping out the Relic of Serendipitous Assault for the Relic of Devastating Vengeance (DV).

Your Critical Rating is low enough that you don’t dive deep into diminishing returns. In addition, you will be able to use Turbulence during most procs thanks to its cooldown that roughly matches the duration of the Relic’s proc, causing Turbulence to deal additional supercritical damage. I use it with my 344 gear, but the improvement is small and not as consistent, so I don’t want to cause confusion by recommending something that only applies to a small portion of the playerbase.

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 C

Best Telekinetics Sage 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 items 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.

Telekinetics doesn’t have any interdependent ability tree options, so there isn’t as much of a need for dedicated builds as there is with many other disciplines. Telekinetics also has a lot of situational options, so you should be prepared to make changes on the fly.

Single-Target Build

This build feels really similar to Telekinetics from 6.0 (minus the rotational AoE) and emphasizes survivability over fluff. As the name of this build suggests, it should be used when you want to maximize your single-target DPS because adds are rare, non-existent, or being dealt with by DoT specs in your group.

In fights where you don’t need Force Mobility, you can take Telekinetic Defense instead, but remember that delaying Turbulence to move will almost always result in a great DPS loss than what you’d gain from Telekinetic Defense.

Sustained Heavy AoE Build

This build is designed for dealing heavy sustained AoE damage in group content, so there is a greater emphasis on survivability compared to what you might use in solo content. The Telekinetic Wave ability tree buff as well as Telekinetic Blitz and Elemental Convection are each optional, enabling you to have fairly precise control over exactly how much single-target DPS and survivability you want to sacrifice in favor of additional AoE damage.

You can take Stormwatch and not Telekinetic Blitz instead, but you must take Telekinetic Blitz and Elemental Convection at the same time. You won’t deal any AoE damage with Telekinetic Blitz if you don’t take Elemental Convection; and without Telekinetic Blitz, Elemental Convection does nothing.

Regarding the Telekinetic Wave ability tree buffs, Dormant Tremors allows for maximum AoE damage, but should only be used when you have to use Forcequake rotationally. Use Mysteries of the Force when you don’t find it necessary to use Forcequake. You could make a case for taking Valorous Spirit instead of Metaphysical Alacrity if you’re taking Mysteries of the Force in order to increase uptime on the 15% DR, but you have to weigh that against the DPS loss from the reduced effectiveness of your legendary implants.

I don’t think it’s worthwhile to take Forceful Retribution with this build because you don’t have very many free filler GCDs. With Elemental Convection, Telekinetic Blitz, and Forcequake, it’s not really a DPS increase over Forceful Retribution anyway, even at 3 targets. Furthermore, Forceful Retribution doesn’t benefit from pushback protection, making it horrible whenever you’re actually in combat. Cloud Mind is more valuable for damage mitigation too.   

Solo Content Build

These options are centered around dealing maximum damage in a solo content setting. Against most groups of trash, you just do a simple rotation of pre-casted Forceful Retribution (if applicable) ▶ Telekinetic Wave ▶ Forcequake. Any stronger enemies that are left over get whacked with Weaken Mind ▶ Turbulence ▶ (if necessary) Telekinetic Gust ▶ Mind Crush. Imbued Force Armor should also be applied outside of combat between trash pulls.

It doesn’t really matter which tactical item you use; they all have advantages. Stormwatch will result in the highest sustained DPS and is best in longer fights. Eyrin’s Haste can often allow you to defeat enemies outright with Turbulence, so you don’t have to spend an extra GCD to do Telekinetic Gust. Elemental Convection gives you a bunch of AoE, but you get enough from your ability tree buffs that it isn’t super necessary.

I want to draw attention to a couple of specific non-essential choices too. Egress is by far the best choice in the top tier since so many adds slow you with those pesky DoTs that reapply the slow with each tick and persist for way too long.

Phase Walk is also super nice whenever you need to come back the way you came, like if you only need to go into a room or alcove to click a button, you can put Phase Walk at the doorway to save yourself a bit of time.

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. Telekinetic Wave (pre-cast)
2. Mental Alacrity
3. Weaken Mind
4. Adrenal
5. Force Empowerment (if applicable)
6. Telekinetic Gust
7. Force Speed + Force Potency
8. Turbulence
9. Telekinetic Wave
10. Mind Crush
11. Project
12. Priority List

This opener assumes that you are using the Stormwatch tactical and are using the Unmatched Haste and Gathering Storm legendary implants. You will have enough time to get the full duration of Mind Crush inside Stormwatch even by waiting so long to cast it.

Telekinetic Wave is used before Mind Crush because Force Potency is active. This is especially important when using the Power of the Force ability tree buff. When Power of the Force is taken, it’s vastly superior to pair with Force Potency compared to Telekinetic Gust, so this also enables you to not have to tweak your opener depending on which Telekinetic Wave buff is taken.

Telekinetic Gust is used before Turbulence so we don’t miss out on 2 ticks of Stormwatch. You can delay it until after Turbulence (and the following Power of the Force) if you are not using Stormwatch, but make sure you use it before Mind Crush.

Mental Alacrity must be used before Weaken Mind is applied because this will increase the tick rate for as long as Weaken Mind remains on that target, which can be the entire fight in many instances. Force Potency and your Adrenal are also affected by Alacrity so those are also used after Mental Alacrity.

The Adrenal and Force Empowerment are saved until after Weaken Mind is used because these sorts of cooldowns only affect damage that occurs during the buff, not the entirety of the DoTs. A great way to remember this is that damage increases apply once the health is actually reduced (or when you see the flytext for the damage value), not based on ability activation. 

It’s essential to wait to use Force Speed and Force Potency until after you activate Telekinetic Gust so that the damage boosts are used on Turbulence and Telekinetic Wave. Technically, it’s okay to use Force Potency on Telekinetic Gust if you’re using Telekinetic Wave since they deal very similar single-target damage, but Power of the Force or multi-target Telekinetic Wave are superior uses of the second Force Potency stack.

Priority

In Lightning, you use a priority system because it is impossible to use all of your rotational abilities on cooldown, so when multiple high-damage abilities are available at the same time, a priority list is used to determine which one should be used first in order to provide the highest DPS and ensures that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible.

1. Weaken Mind (if not on the target)
2. Turbulence
3. Telekinetic Gust
4. Mind Crush
5. Project
6. Imbued Force Armor (only with Telekinetic Defense)
7. Telekinetic Wave (with Tidal Force proc)
8. Forcequake (if you can hit at least 2 targets)
9. Telekinetic Burst

This ability priority ensures that your most damaging abilities are being used as frequently as possible. It is common for multiple high-damage abilities to become available at the same time; all you have to do is adhere to the priority and you’ll do fine. It’s important to practice this on a dummy at least until you can do the rotation without having to constantly look at your bar.

Remember, you have the full duration of Mind Crush to use Project and the full duration of the Tidal Force proc to use Telekinetic Wave, so you can delay them for other higher-priority abilities if there’s still time. Telekinetic Wave in particular only needs to be used before your next Turbulence comes off cooldown.

The only things you really don’t want to delay are Turbulence and Telekinetic Gust. Sometimes, Turbulence and Telekinetic Gust will sometimes come off cooldown at the same time. If you didn’t have any downtime, you should be able to prioritize Turbulence, but you should prioritize Telekinetic Burst if Stormwatch fell off.

In a similar vein, Telekinetic Gust will come off cooldown at the same time as Mind Crush, be careful not to use Mind Crush without the Force Gust proc. You’re gonna lose more DPS by using Mind Crush without the proc than you will by delaying it a GCD, though you can cut it pretty close as you only need to have the proc on your bar until you start the cast. It does not matter if Force Gust falls off mid-cast.

If there is downtime during a fight, remember that you can apply Weaken Mind and often pre-cast Turbulence or Power of the Force right before the boss can actually take damage. You will miss out on 1-2 ticks of Weaken Mind but you also won’t have to spend a GCD to apply it when the boss is vulnerable, so you will end up dealing more damage.

Fillers are where Telekinetics’ priority gets significantly more complicated. The priority list I showed earlier is simplified for clarity. There are many situations where you’ll want to tweak that priority:

• Telekinetic Wave should always be used immediately after Turbulence if you have Recklessness or at the end of Mental Alacrity, but otherwise be delayed to use your other abilities on cooldown.
• Telekinetic Wave should be prioritized if you can hit multiple targets.
• Telekinetic Burst should be prioritized if its Telekinetic Refuge and Mental Continuum procs are about to fall off, especially in fights where you’re taking a lot of damage or your Force is sub-150.
• Project should be used over Telekinetic Burst even without Mind Crush on the target if your buffs aren’t about to fall off.
• Telekinetic Defense’s priority changes based on the amount of damage you’re taking. If you can get more than 3 ticks per activation, it’s worth prioritizing over everything else, including Turbulence.
• Forcequake should be prioritized if you can hit multiple targets, and Telekinetic Throw can be used to resynchronize your Tidal Force proc with Turbulence.
• Apply Weaken Mind to secondary targets that you aren’t focusing.

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.