SWTOR 7.7 Combat Sentinel PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Combat Sentinel

Combat Sentinels utilize the acrobatic Ataru Form to swing their lightsabers with a high degree of precision that can bypass armor and bring a swift end to any conflict.

Thanks to the introduction of the Shard of Mortis tactical with 7.1, Carnage offers competitive single-target sustained DPS. While damage boosts from taking damage (e.g. Telekinetic Defense and Reflective Armor) are far less prevalent in 7.0 for most disciplines, Combat can still gain quite a lot, so you should also be able to surpass Combat’s dummy numbers in actual fights.

Combat can deal a decent amount of dedicated AoE damage for a direct damage spec, but you have to sacrifice a massive amount of single-target damage output to maximize your AoE. This means Combat can perform fairly well in phases with pure AoE like the Trench Cutters you face during the Warlord Kephess fight in EC, but it doesn’t translate to fights and phases where a primary target exists and rotational AoE becomes a necessity like Dread Master Bestia in DP.

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

Sentinels in general offer some of the best raid utility in the game thanks to Inspiration and Transcendence. Combat also provides the Armor debuff, and if your group deals a lot of Energy/Kinetic damage, being able to provide this debuff can be enough to fully compensate for Combat’s lower sustained damage output assuming you know what you’re doing with this discipline.

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

Group Composition Tips

In order to deal maximum damage, Combat requires 1 other DPS debuff:

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Force	1.0%
Total DPS Gain:	1.0%

Combat is extremely independent when it comes to DPS debuffs and can easily be a part of any group composition while losing almost no DPS. The Force debuff is provided by Sorcerers / Sages and Assassins / Shadows. It’s certainly nice to have, but definitely not essential. If able, you should focus on optimizing your group composition around disciplines that are more dependent on the presence of particular DPS debuffs.

Major Changes in 7.0

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

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

• Leg Slash
• Pacify
• Awe

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

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

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

DPS Mindset

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

Check out the SWTOR Damage Types and Damage Mitigation guide.

Abilities Explained

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

Single-Target Rotational Abilities, Attributes, and Important Procs

Zen and Centering

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

For Combat, activating Zen grants 6 stacks of the Zen proc. While you have at least 1 stack of Zen, your alacrity is increased by 30%, enabling the 1.2s GCD. Each time you activate an attack, 1 stack is consumed. In addition, if Precision is activated while Zen is active, it will have 3 stacks rather than 2.

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

In Combat, Centering will primarily be generated by Blade Rush and during Precision windows when Zen is not active. Your main goal with generating Centering is to ensure that you’ll have Zen in time for every other Zealous Strike ▶ Precision window. This requires pretty high uptime, but you can compensate for disruptions with the Stoic ability tree buff that I’ll talk about in greater detail later on. Zen and Centering have 2 combat style passives associated with them:

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

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

Ataru Form

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

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

Combat utilizes Form IV, Ataru, which increases alacrity by 3% (enabling you to have more crit in your gear) and giving each attack a 20% chance to trigger a second attack that deals a small amount of damage. Unlike Telekinetics Sage’s Mental and Telekinetic Momentum, these attacks deal flat damage rather than a percentage of the attack that triggered the strike, though they will occur far more frequently. Ataru Form does not have any passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation, though many abilities do interact with Ataru Form strikes.

Precision

Precision is basically just a completely rotational offensive cooldown, but the whole discipline is designed around its usage. It makes your next 2 (or 3 if Zen is active) attacks ignore armor, which translates to a 28% damage boost against bosses (factoring in the armor debuff). Your priority for consuming Precision stacks is the following:

1. Clashing Blast
2. Dispatch
3. Lance
4. Blade Rush

Typically, each Precision window will consist of Clashing Blast and alternating between either Dispatch or Blade Rush. Lance will only be used when Zen is active to consume the third stack of Precision.

There are rotations that use Lance more frequently, but they require you to incorporate Strike, which makes the rotation a lot more difficult. If you have spare Focus, it’s pretty easy to exchange Blade Rushes for Lances when you have a surplus of Zen stacks.

I also want to clarify that Precision does not consume a stack of Zen, but Zen must already be active in order for Precision to grant that third stack when activated. Precision does not have any passives associated with it.

Blade Rush

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Blade Rush is your filler ability and definitely one of the best examples of a filler in the whole game because it will be used in over half of your GCDs in single-target situations, at least with the rotation I recommend.

Blade Rush’s damage output is slightly stronger than your average filler when you factor in the guaranteed Ataru Form strike, but it is rather expensive, costing 3 Focus. This Focus cost is a significant factor when it comes to actually playing the spec as it heavily restricts what else you can do.

Blade Rush has 1 proc and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Blade Rush
Activating Blade Rush grants Blade Rush, which increases your chance to trigger Ataru Form strikes by 30% for 6 seconds. This results in each attack having a 50% to trigger an Ataru Form strike rather than 20%. Ideally, the Blade Rush proc should have 100% uptime, but it will probably be slightly less than that in practice depending on when Twin Saber Throw is activated. Since Ataru Form strikes will benefit from Precision, but not consume a stack, it’s essential that this proc is active for the entirety of the Precision window.

Efficient Strikes
While Zen is active, Blade Rush (and Cyclone Slash) each consume 1 less Focus. Again, because you have so little surplus Focus to work with in Combat, it’s essential that as many spare Zen stacks are going towards Blade Rushes and notably not Twin Saber Throw.

Zealous Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This is your dedicated Focus-generating ability, giving you 6 Focus per activation. Since Combat is already pretty starved for Focus even with Zealous Strike being used on cooldown, you can’t afford to delay it. Zealous Strike has 1 combat style passive and 1 discipline passive associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Focused Slash
Zealous Strike applies the melee DPS debuff, which makes targets take 5% more damage from melee attacks. This passive is really only valuable to Assassins / Shadows because they are the only combat style that deals melee damage that doesn’t provide the buff themself.

Righteous Zeal
Reduces the cooldown of Zealous Strike by 3 seconds. This discipline passive is now hidden, but you can still see that Zealous Strike has a shorter cooldown in Combat compared to the other Sentinel Disciplines. This cooldown reduction is significant because it allows Zealous Strike to have the same cooldown as Precision.

You’ll always want to use both abilities back to back to ensure that their cooldowns remain synchronized as they get reduced by Zen and also ensure that you’ll always have enough Focus to do your Precision window uninterrupted. That said, since Precision has been charge-based for a while, you won’t lose any sustained DPS if you have to throw in an Strike to generate Focus while Precision is active.

Since Zealous Strike doesn’t consume or benefit from a stack of Precision, you are also technically free to use Zealous Strike after activating Precision as well.

Twin Saber Throw

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

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

The sabers always travel towards the center of the target reticle on the enemy, wherever blaster shots would hit. This is typically the chest, but not always. For taller or gigantic enemies, this can result in the sabers traveling upwards and not hitting anyone else along the way. In these cases, it is better to target a shorter nearby enemy if you want to hit multiple targets. Twin Saber Throw has 1 (hidden) discipline passive associated with it that is relevant to your rotation:

Force Health
Damage reduction is increased by 2% and activating Twin Saber Throw builds 2 Focus. The fact that Twin Saber Throw builds 2 Focus is pretty essential since Combat already has barely enough Focus to go around. Even without the Dispatcher Legendary Implant, you’d still want to use this ability on cooldown for the Focus generation. It also deals more damage than Strike despite generating the same amount of Focus.

The passive itself appears to be completely hidden now, and I only mentioned the DR part to point out that it’s still a thing too. You can see for yourself by watching your DR drop by 2% when you switch away from Combat.

Dispatch

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Dispatch is one of your most damaging abilities in Combat; it also conveniently has a 10m range. Typically, it can only be used against targets that have less than 30% max HP remaining. Dispatch has 2 procs associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Hand of Justice
Dealing damage with an Ataru Form strike grants Hand of Justice, which finishes the cooldown on Dispatch and makes it usable against any target regardless of health level. In addition, Hand of Justice makes your next Dispatch cost no Focus. Cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds.

The Hand of Justice proc effectively enables Dispatch to be part of every other Precision window, and technically every single Precision window against targets below 30%, though you only have 1-2 GCDs of leeway, so it’s difficult to pull off in actual combat.

Since Hand of Justice makes Dispatch free, you will actually generate 1 Focus when the proc is consumed thanks to the Focused Slash combat style passive I mentioned earlier. Without the Hand of Justice proc, this makes Dispatch cost 2 Focus rather than

Dispatcher’s Challenge
Activating Twin Saber Throw grants Dispatcher’s Challenge, which makes your next Dispatch automatically critically hit. This proc is provided by the Dispatcher’s Legendary Implant. Dispatcher’s Challenge also applies to Vicious Slash, but that ability gets replaced by Blade Rush, so you don’t ever have to worry about wasting the proc on the weaker ability in Combat.

Since Dispatch is usable above 30% thanks to the Hand of Justice proc, Dispatch is effectively now always an autocrit with this proc and this will cause it to hit harder than Clashing Blast, making it your most damaging ability.

Please note that since Twin Saber Throw has such a long cooldown, you will only be able to benefit from Dispatcher’s Challenge as often as the Hand of Justice proc is available. In other words, if you use Dispatch without the Hand of Justice proc, you won’t be able to get more autocrits.

It’s still worth using Dispatch without either proc during Precision, but if you don’t have spare Focus, your DPS gain will be mostly negated because you’ll have to use Strike.

Clashing Blast

(Force/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Clashing Blast is one of your most damaging abilities and thanks to its short cooldown, you’re able (and want) to use it with every single Precision window. Technically, it has a shorter cooldown than Precision, but if you try to use it on cooldown (outside of Precision windows), you’ll end up dealing less DPS than if you just delay it.

I also want to point out that Clashing Blast deals Force damage, so it cannot trigger Ataru Form or benefit from Force Clarity. Clashing Blast has 2 discipline passives and 1 proc associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Opportune Attack and Immaculate Force
Dealing damage with a Ataru Form strike grants Opportune Attack, which increases the damage dealt by your next Clashing Blast by 5%. In addition, thanks to the Immaculate Force passive, the Opportune Attack proc also makes your next Clashing Blast an autocrit.

Combat Trance
Consuming the Opportune Attack proc generates 1 Focus. This makes Clashing Blast effectively cost 2 Focus instead of 3. Not sure why they couldn’t just make Clashing Blast cost 2 Focus in the first place and deal 5% more damage baseline, would have been a lot simpler than the current implementation of Opportune Attack, but whatever. Even with Combat Trance, you should always have enough Focus to activate Clashing Blast.

Lance

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Lance is another of your high damage abilities. It doesn’t deal quite as much direct damage as Clashing Blast or Dispatch because it doesn’t autocrit, but it’s still a whole lot more damaging than anything else you could possibly use in single-target situations. Lance has 2 debuffs and 1 tactical item associated with it that I want to mention.

Sunder
Dealing damage with Lance applies the armor debuff, which reduces the target’s armor rating by 20%. Since bosses have 35% DR from armor, this reduces it to 28%, resulting in a 7% effective damage increase to everyone’s Energy/Kinetic attacks. The armor debuff is considered the best DPS debuff in the game because Energy/Kinetic attacks usually represent the majority of damage output, though the Internal/Elemental debuff can match or surpass it in effectiveness in groups with a lot of DoT specs.

Hinder
Dealing damage with Lance Hinders the target for 1.5s. Hindered targets cannot use high mobility actions and escapes. This is the exact same debuff applied by Electro Net. I think the idea is that you aren’t going anywhere while you’re currently impaled by 2 lightsabers. You might think in PvP that 1.5s isn’t long enough for it to matter, but let me tell you that it does come up and skilled Combat Sentinels are definitely able to ruin your day with it. Being Hindered isn’t relevant in PvE, but I still wanted to address it since it is a feature of the ability itself.

Andeddu’s Malevolence Tactical Item
The Andeddu’s Malevolence tactical now has a new effect that just makes it so Lance applies a 12s DoT that deals enough Internal damage (so it already ignores armor) such that Lance deals as much damage per GCD as Clashing Blast and Dispatch. 12 seconds is a fairly long time, and even though it will be more like 9s with Zen, you’ll still need to factor this in it comes to burst DPS checks, but I’ll talk more about that later on.

Blade Barrage

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Blade Barrage deals almost identical damage to Blade Rush, and while it technically isn’t guaranteed to trigger an Ataru Form Strike, it’s highly unlikely that it won’t because it hits 4 times.

The biggest distinction between Blade Barrage and Blade Rush is that Blade Barrage is free while Blade Rush costs Focus. The most significant situation where this matters is with Zen since the Efficient Strikes discipline passive makes Blade Rush cost 1 less Focus while Zen is active. Since Focus is the limiting factor of Combat’s damage output, not using Blade Barrage while Zen is active can increase your DPS.

Technically, it’s fine to use Blade Barrage during your Precision window instead of Blade Rush when Zen isn’t active, but I’ve had slightly better results when I use Blade Rush instead. Blade Barrage doesn’t have any procs or passives associated with it.

AoE Abilities

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

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

Precision

I want to address Precision in general first because Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash can each consume a stack of it just like your single-target abilities can. Precision is still an offensive cooldown and like any OCD, your goal is to maximize the amount of damage you deal while it’s active, which requires that you use your most damaging attacks while it’s active.

When enough targets are present, your AoE abilities can surpass the damage dealt by your single-target attacks, and when this happens, it can be better to spend your Precision stacks on those AoE abilities rather than single-target ones. For example, Cyclone Slash deals more damage than Clashing Blast when 4 targets are present, so it can also be better to use Cyclone Slash during Precision rather than Clashing Blast if you can hit at least 5 targets.

That said, Cyclone Slash and Force Sweep are fairly weak as far as AoE goes. Often, there is an additional target that has higher priority than adds (like the boss), so just because are technically enough adds present does not mean it is optimal to use your AoE attacks during the Precision window.

If you find this to be too complicated, it’s 100% okay to just continue using your single target abilities during the Precision window and only replace Blade Rush activations with Cyclone Slash. Combat doesn’t do a whole lot of AoE damage in the first place and it comes at a significant cost to single-target damage output.

Cyclone Slash

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Cyclone Slash is your spammable AoE. Combat has a unique passive called Ataru Savvy, which makes Cyclone Slash triggers an Ataru Form strike on each target it damages. This passive is given to Combat instead of the +15% critical chance, +30% critical damage to spammable AoE that almost all other direct damage specs get.

Ataru Savvy also helps to make you not have to worry about maintaining the Blade Rush buff while you can AoE. In addition, it’s a lot easier to transition between single-target and AoE since your procs trigger off Ataru Form strikes as well. Cyclone Slash deals more damage than the following abilities if you manage to hit at least the following number of targets:

• 2 Targets: Blade Rush, Blade Barrage
• 4 Targets: Clashing Blast, Dispatch, Lance
• Never: Twin Saber Throw, Zealous Strike, Precision

Please note, it is difficult to do testing, especially with Precision, but I’d say these numbers are fairly conservative.

Force Sweep

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Never use Force Sweep in Combat. Thanks to the guaranteed Ataru Form strike on Cyclone Slash thanks to Ataru Savvy, Cyclone Slash will always deal more damage than Force Sweep in Combat (and Force Sweep can’t trigger Ataru Form at all). With the Trailblazer ability tree buff, the initial hit is enough to surpass the damage dealt by Force Sweep. Furthermore, Force Sweep effectively costs way more Focus because you can’t get the refund from Focused Slash or Dispatcher.

The only advantage of Force Sweep is that the AoE is centered beneath you instead of in front of you, but in my book, that’s just not enough of a reason to make it worth using. That said, it’s not the end of the world if you want to use it in solo content, I guess. The difference in damage output is not likely to make a difference and it does stun standard and weak enemies for 2 seconds too, but definitely do not use it in group content.

Twin Saber Throw

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
I basically already covered everything related to AoE about Twin Saber Throw back in the single-target section. Nothing really changes in terms of priority, though you might want to be slightly more opportunistic about when you use it depending on when the enemies are grouped up and you can delay it during the filler section of the rotation if needed.

 Blade Blitz

(Melee/Energy/Direct/AoE/Instant)
Since this ability now has the old Through Victory utility effect built in, its damage as an AoE ability is pretty good, though not quite as strong as your other AoE abilities. Like Blade Barrage, the key advantage of Blade Blitz in Combat is that it’s free, and your Focus management doesn’t really change when you’re doing AoE. Blade Blitz does not benefit or consume stacks of Precision but can trigger Ataru Form strikes.

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.

Inspiration

Inspiration is the most powerful raid buff in the game, but it costs 30 Centering to activate, which restricts when you can use it. The only time you should activate Inspiration is when Valorous Call is available so you can activate it back to back with Zen.

You should not think of Inspiration as a personal offensive cooldown, though it can technically be used as one and will result in a greater DPS increase than a single use of Zen. Typically, your raid lead will tell you when they want it to be activated, but it’s typically best to activate Inspiration and other raid buffs during DPS or heal checks, especially burn phases.

It’s also good to activate raid buffs when the boss takes increased damage like when Kephess the Undying in TFB is knocked down by a pillar. If a fight doesn’t have a specific time, it’s usually best to activate raid buffs at the very beginning of the fight during everyone’s openers.

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

Valorous Call

Thanks to new ability tree buffs, Valorous Call is a lot more useful in Combat as an actual offensive cooldown because you can reliably use Lance to consume the third stack of Precision whenever it is present. In the past, it wasn’t really possible to get much benefit out of additional activations of Zen and could even mess up your rotation if used incorrectly.

I’ll talk more about how Lance interacts with Zen later on, but the key thing now is that Valorous Call should be used mostly on-cooldown because it does result in a noticeable DPS increase.

Valorous Call can and should be used whenever you have 0 stacks of Centering, including while Zen is active. Be careful not to activate Zen the second time until you can guarantee that you’ll have 3 stacks available for your Precision window. This corresponds to when there are less than 3 seconds left on Zealous Strike’s cooldown.

Make sure you have Valorous Call available when it’s time to activate Inspiration. Your raid buff provides a much greater DPS increase than Zen, so it’s okay to give up a Zen activation to do this. The activation timing doesn’t change, you still want to activate Valorous Call and Inspiration as soon as you activate Zen.

If you don’t have Valorous Call available when it’s time to activate Inspiration, you’ll have to choose between activating Inspiration and Zen. You’ll have to use your judgment or ask your raid lead about which you should pick. Typically, it’s better to wait until Valorous Call comes off cooldown to activate Inspiration unless doing so would cause you to miss out on a second activation of Inspiration during the fight or make you miss out on popping it at a specific time.

 Adrenal

It’s essential that you have your Adrenal available for DPS checks, especially when burst is required. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where delaying your Adrenal for a check will be enough to where it will reduce the total number of activations over the entire fight (thereby reducing sustained DPS), so feel free to delay it as needed.

The ideal time to activate the Adrenal is when you activate Precision while Zen is active, though you do have some flexibility. Even if you activate it at the same time as Zen, you should have enough time to get through 2 Precision windows while the Adrenal is active.

For longer checks, like burn phases and burst checks that last 15+ seconds, make sure you have Valorous Call available as well so that you can get an additional stack of Precision in that second window. The increased alacrity from the additional Zen should also enable you to squeeze more abilities into the Adrenal window.

 Force Clarity

This ability is optional and should never be taken in Combat, so I’m not going to explain it here beyond saying that the best abilities to spend charges on are Dispatch, Lance, and Blade Barrage in that order. Clashing Blast does not benefit from Force Clarity unless you take a garbage tactical because it is a Force attack.

Defensive Cooldowns and Mobility

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

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

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

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

 Saber Ward

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

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

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

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

Rebuke

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

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

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

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

Guarded by the Force

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

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

 Medpac

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

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

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

Force Camouflage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Force Leap

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

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

When it comes to target swapping, it’s ideal to use Force Leap during the filler portion of your rotation, but it’s not the end of the world to use it at any point since it doesn’t consume stacks of Precision. You’ll mainly just want to continue on in the rotation for whatever you were doing before leaping.

The only real concerns with Force Leap and target swapping come from Centering generation and Zen stacks. Since Force Leap doesn’t generate Centering normally, if you’re having to use the ability frequently, you might not have 30 Centering by the time you need to activate Zen. In these cases, make sure to use the Stoic ability tree buff (more on that later).

With Zen consumption, the concern comes from running out of Zen stacks before you have a chance to activate Lance since that ability gets buffed by the Zen Lance ability tree buff. When you’re using Force Leap frequently, make sure to not activate Zen early, like use it right before Zealous Strike. Alternatively, you can adjust the rotation to use Lance earlier in the Precision window (more on that later, too).

Transcendence

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

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

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

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

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

 Blade Blitz

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

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

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

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

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

Strike

(Melee/Energy/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
This ability deals extremely little damage, but it does generate 2 Focus upon activation. With the rotation I recommend, you shouldn’t have to use this very much at all, like maybe once per fight if you get unlucky or mess up.

 Force Stasis

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

 Force Kick

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

 Resolute

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

Ability Tree Choices

Lance Buffs – Level 23 Choice

Puncture

• Effect: Lance deals damage to up to 8 enemies in a straight line behind the target.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in solo content only. Lance is quite strong, so it’s great that this lets you hit multiple targets. The DoT from Andeddu’s Malevolence also applies to any additional targets you hit thanks to Puncture. Please note that it’s hard to hit all enemies in a given group thanks to the narrow area of effect, especially without a tank (companion) where they can gather around someone other than you, so you might not find it worthwhile in solo content. You’ll also be giving up over single-target 1,000 DPS by taking this over Zen Lance, so make sure to consider if your AoE is truly necessary before taking this option.

Driving Lance

• Effect: Replaces Lance. Driving Lance has a 10m range and causes you to lunge at your target. In addition, activating Driving Lance increases your movement speed by 10% for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in PvP or solo content only. Driving Lance will typically only be detrimental in group PvE content because you can end up self-rooted in the middle of a deadly circle. It does synergize with the Rush Down ability tree buff, but doesn’t result in enough of a damage increase to be worth the risk. That said, Driving Lance is fine for solo content because circles are less common and deal far less damage, allowing this to be a nifty gap closer. I do want to point out that the 10% movement speed boost will only be beneficial as a damage increase for Rush Down because only the most powerful movement speed boost is active at any given time and you have 100% uptime on a 15% movement speed boost thanks to the combat style passive called Haste.

Zen Lance

• Effect: Lance’s critical hit chance is increased by 10% while Zen is active and whenever Lance consumes a charge of Zen, its cooldown is reset.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Zen Lance offers the greatest single-target DPS increase out of these options by enabling you to always have something strong available for each Precision window. The sustained DPS boost is noticeable and relies on you activating Valorous Call on cooldown, but the actual damage boost comes from making your Zen-buffed Ferocities more potent by ensuring that you’ll always have a Lance for them. Zen Lance also enables you to capitalize on excess Focus gained by Adjudicator by turning some of your Zen stacks that aren’t needed for the Precision window on additional Lances. You can’t do this without excess Focus because Blade Rush ends up being a fair bit cheaper than Lance.

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

Snaring Slash

• Effect: Blade Rush and Blade Barrage slow targets they hit by 50% for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Transcendence is just sooooooooo much better.

Debilitating Slashes

• Effect: Blade Barrage immobilizes the target for 3 seconds and generates 1 Focus.
• Recommendation: Only take this in fights where activating Transcendence is detrimental and for practice on the dummy. In certain fights, particularly ones that require very precise positioning, like Dread Master Tyrans, giving a sudden movement speed boost can cause players to move too far. Debilitating Slashes provides an alternative benefit when you can’t use Transcendence at all. It’s also nice when you’re practicing on the dummy to give you a tiny bit more flexibility with Focus management. You won’t need this in actual fights because you have other extra sources of Focus generation.

Transcendence

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

Blade Rush Buffs – Level 39 Choice

Defensive Flourish

• Effect: Dealing damage with Blade Rush grants Defensive Flourish, increasing your damage reduction by 2% per stack. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this in PvP. You don’t need extra DR in PvE, but it’s valuable to have all the survivability you can get in PvP.

Rush Down

• Effect: Blade Rush deals 10% additional damage per movement-enhancing effect active on you.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in solo content only. If you want to be a little speed demon like Yoda, this option offers almost identical damage output compared to Valor Blade, but it’s less consistent in terms of Focus generation, so you may have to use Strike occasionally. Rush Down also relies on using Transcendence on cooldown to truly match Valor Blade in terms of damage output, and you typically don’t want to use Transcendence on cooldown in group content.

Valor Blade

• Effect: Blade Rush’s critical chance is increased by 20%. Activating Blade Rush reduces the cooldown of Valorous Call by 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this in PvE. Valor Blade offers superior consistency with Focus management. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever have to use Strike with this option. It also improves the frequency of your burst with the cooldown reduction on Valorous Call, though you should avoid delaying Valorous Call when you can or you will lose DPS. These effects are less valuable in solo content where Focus generation is less of an issue.

Force Clarity, Swiftness, or Quickness – Level 43 Choice

Force Clarity

• Effect: Grants the ability Force Clarity, which consumes all ability charges of Force Clarity when activated and applies the same number of stacks to you. Each stack increases your next direct single-target melee attack by 25%. 15s cooldown.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The damage boost is too small even in burst situations to ever compete with Swiftness.

Swiftness

• Effect: Critically hitting grants Swiftness, which increases your movement speed by 5% and your critical chance by 5% per stack. Stacks up to 5 times and lasts 6 seconds.
• Recommendation: Always take this. Swiftness is an incredible boost, effectively increasing your critical chance by a whopping 25%. The increased critical chance also synergizes with the Dispatcher Legendary Implant to more reliably generate Rage and deal additional supercritical damage with Dispatch (and also Clashing Blast). At 3 stacks of Hyper from the Shard of Mortis tactical, Swiftness is excessive except for boosting supercritical damage from autocrits, though you won’t ever have more than 3 stacks for more than a single GCD anyway.

Quickness

• Effect: Dealing damage with an Ataru Form strike reduces the cooldown of Focus-consuming offensive abilities by 1s. Cannot occur more than once per second. In addition, Ataru Form strikes deal 3% more damage.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in PvP only. Quickness is not competitive with Swiftness in terms of sustained damage output, and your spike damage will be weaker but more frequent in PvP.

Adamant, Intercessor, or Steel Self – Level 51 Choice

Adamant

• Effect: You generate 4 Focus when stunned, immobilized, put to sleep, or get knocked around. Additionally, the cooldown of Resolute is reduced by 30 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. The effect is nice to have, but it’s never more valuable than AoE RDT in group content and Focus isn’t as much of an issue anywhere thanks to Adjudicator, so there really isn’t a situation where this is the best option.

Intercessor

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

Steel Self

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

Adjudicator, Trailblazer, or Zealous Ward – Level 64 Choice

Adjudicator

• Effect: Each use of Strike and Zealous Strike reduces the active cooldown of Rebuke by 3 seconds. In addition, while Rebuke is active, you generate 1 Focus whenever you are attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 2 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. The extra Focus is extremely valuable to Combat. Even just 1-2 extra Focus generated by this buff is enough to add a ton of stability to the rotation and anything beyond that can be converted into extra Lance uses with Zen Lance. You’re also able to benefit more significantly from the cooldown reduction component because of Zealous Strike’s reduced cooldown, which can result in much higher uptime on Rebuke, increasing your DPS while decreasing your DTPS.

Trailblazer

• Effect: Increases the damage dealt by Cyclone Slash by 15%.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever you find yourself using Cyclone Slash a lot. Adjudicator is extremely valuable in Combat, so it’s really hard to justify giving it up. In fights where you’d want to use Trailblazer, you’ll be fighting adds so downtime is more frequent and Force Leap tends to be used more often, so Focus is less of an issue, but the benefit of Trailblazer is small and doesn’t change your AoE priority, so it really depends on how valuable Adjudicator is in that specific fight. Trailblazer should only be taken if Rebuke has low uptime AND you are using Cyclone Slash a lot.

Zealous Ward

• Effect: Activating Saber Ward grants Zealous Ward, which grants immunity to stun, sleep, lift, and incapacitating effects for 6 seconds. In addition, getting attacked while Saber Ward is active heals you for 3% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once per second.
• Recommendation: Consider taking this in PvP or specific boss fights only. You’d want to use Zealous Ward primarily in burn phases or other situations where you’ll be taking damage for the entire duration of Saber Ward to maximize the defensive boost from Zealous Ward, but in these sorts of phases, you’ll almost always also be able to fully benefit from Rebuke’s increased uptime thanks to Adjudicator, which provides both an offensive and defensive boost that is potentially greater than Zealous Ward in longer checks, so I don’t think it’s ever worthwhile to take this unless you can maybe also benefit from the CC immunity. Even then, an extra GCD or two from being CC’d can easily also come from Adjudicator, so even then I don’t think Zealous Ward is worthwhile.

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

Force Stasis

• Effect: Grants the Force Stasis ability, which stuns the target, deals a small amount of damage and builds 3 Focus over the duration of the cast. Can be cast while moving.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific boss fights and PvP only. Blade Blitz and Guarded by the Force are far more valuable, but you may be assigned to keep a specific enemy interrupted thanks to the short cooldown on your interrupt and this can help against certain adds. If your group is not utilizing your interrupt, I would recommend that another group member that doesn’t have to give something up should handle stuns. None of these options are essential in solo content, so if you must have Force Stasis for RP reasons, don’t feel bad.

Blade Blitz

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

Guarded by the Force

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

Inspired Focus, Incisor, or Stoic – Level 73 Choice

Inspired Focus

• Effect: You heal for 1% of your max health whenever you activate an ability that consumes Focus. In addition, Inspiration generates 12 Focus when activated.
• Recommendation: Take this option if you don’t need extra Centering. Inspired Focus offers vastly superior survivability compared to Stoic, but not so much that it’s worth losing DPS over. I don’t think the 12 Focus from Inspiration should ever be part of your decision-making process for whether to take Inspired Focus. The effect just happens too frequently and really doesn’t ever offer that much of a benefit because Force Leap + Zealous Strike gives you 9 Focus.

Incisor

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

Stoic

• Effect: Increases your damage reduction by 2% and you build 2 Centering when attacked. Cannot occur more than once every 1.5s.
• Recommendation: Take this option only if you need extra Centering. You should have enough Centering with 100% uptime to not need Stoic, but as soon as you start losing singular GCDs to mechanics where Zen isn’t available by the time Zealous Strike comes off cooldown, you’ll need to start taking this buff. In fights where you’re taking frequent damage, you will build excessive stacks of Centering. Make sure that you don’t activate Zen until 1-2 GCDs before activating Zealous Strike.

Gearing and Stat Priorities

Tactical Items

Shard of Mortis
Effect: Dealing damage with Blade Rush grants a stack of Hyper. Each stack of Hyper increases both your critical chance by 15% and the Focus cost of Blade Rush by 1. Dealing damage with an ability that isn’t Blade Rush consumes all stacks of Hyper and generates 1 Focus per stack consumed. Hyper lasts 6 seconds and can stack up to 3 times.
Recommendation: This is your single-target tactical. It is similar to the Fanged God Form tactical that had to be removed and reworked with the launch of 7.0 because it enabled players to do considerable DPS by basically exclusively spamming Blade Rush. Now, Shard of Mortis enables proper rotations that are quite similar to what was possible in 6.0 with Fanged God Form without the Blade Rush spam and offers considerably more single-target DPS than Andeddu’s Malevolence. The rotation with the Swiftness ability tree buff is quite similar to what is done with Andeddu’s Malevolence, but due to the Focus cost of Blade Rush increasing, it’s a bit more strict.

Andeddu’s Malevolence
Effect: Dealing damage with Lance applies a DoT called Bloody Focus; it lasts 12 seconds and deals Internal damage.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical. The DoT itself deals about 20k damage, enough to the point where Lance matches the damage per GCD of Clashing Blast and Dispatch. Andeddu’s Malevolence only acts as an AoE tactical when paired with the Puncture ability tree buff, which enables Lance to also deal damage to enemies behind your target, which will apply the DoT from this tactical to them. Prior to 7.1, this was also used in single-target situations because there was nothing better, but now Shard of Mortis outperforms it by a considerable amount. Andeddu’s Malevolence only offers a sustained DPS increase if you can manage to consistently hit at least 3 enemies with each Lance. This is a really high bar, so it likely won’t see much use.

Hidden Power
Effect: Force Camouflage generates 2 Focus per second.
Recommendation: I don’t like the term tryhard, but it applies here. If you want to be a tryhard, you can equip Hidden Power and activate Force Camo to build yourself 12 Focus before the fight/dummy parse starts and omit the initial Zealous Strike and Force Leap from your opener. DO NOT forget to switch back to Shard of Mortis. I don’t bother with Hidden Power because the DPS gain is ultra-negligible and negated a thousand times over if you ever forget to switch it back. We all have more important things to think about.

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

Legendary Implants

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

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

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

Dispatcher and Fearless Victor are the BiS Legendary Implants for Combat Sentinel.

Dispatcher is the most essential Legendary Implant to Combat (and Watchman), it really helps to smooth out the rotation by ensuring that you have enough Focus to spam Blade Rush and get an autocrit on Dispatch. Fearless Victor offers slightly higher DPS than Berserker’s Call, but not by much, so if you don’t have spare Tech Frags, you’ll still do fine with Berserker’s Call.

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

Stat Priority

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

1. Accuracy to 110.00% – Before investing in any other stats, make sure you hit 110% Accuracy because attacks that miss deal 0 damage, and no other stats matter if the attack doesn’t land. Furthermore, many procs require you to actually deal damage, not just activate the ability, so you can mess up your rotation if an attack misses. You need 110% Accuracy in PvE and not just 100% because bosses have a 10% chance to dodge/resist player attacks, and any percentage over 100% reduces this chance. Anything over 110% is not helpful in PvE, so you do want to go over 110%, but with as little excess as possible.
2. Alacrity to ~7.5% – Once your Accuracy is above 110.00%, it’s time to think about Alacrity. It has the second-highest priority because you do not get the full benefit of the stat unless you surpass one of the GCD thresholds. It’s less important than Accuracy because your attacks still need to hit. You need 7.15% Alacrity to get from the 1.5s GCD to the 1.4s GCD. However, as you approach 7.15%, you actually start getting a mix of 1.4s and 1.5s GCDs, resulting in an experience that feels clunky and inconsistent. You need roughly 0.4-0.5% more Alacrity past the exact threshold to effectively eliminate those 1.5s GCDs. Please note that this discipline gets +3% Alacrity from their stance, so you don’t need as much to reach the desired threshold, and it is more practical to go for the 1.3s GCD if you decide to use the Zeal (Cyan) Alacrity Guild Perk Set Bonus.
3. Critical gets the rest – After you’ve got your thresholded stats sorted out, you can start investing in crit. To be clear, Critical Rating is still valuable; it just has the lowest priority because it does not have a threshold associated with it that you need to meet to get the most out of each point of stat as the other tertiary stats you care about do. Critical Rating increases both your Critical Chance and Critical Damage. If you have a single effect that increases your Critical Chance by 100% all on its own (it can’t be from multiple effects combined), all of the Critical Chance percentage for that attack gets added to your Critical Damage percentage, causing the attack to deal supercritical damage.

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

Augments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earpiece

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

Crystals

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

Relics

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

Biochem Items

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

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

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

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

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

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

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

Best Combat Sentinel Builds in 7.0

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

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

Swiftness Single-Target Build

In boss fights, your top, coequal priorities are executing mechanics and dealing maximum, typically single-target, sustained DPS. The talents in this build enable maximum sustained DPS, though sometimes you will need to adjust to account for specific mechanics or provide utility to your group. 

You’ll also be taking talents that increase your survivability and active mobility because you can’t deal damage or do mechanics if you aren’t alive or in range.

The boss build is inferior against regular enemies because your AoE is weaker and less immediate in exchange for being more efficient and sustainable. You’re relying on your target to be alive for an extended period of time to deal damage, and enemy health typically doesn’t line up with a full-fledged boss rotation.

This build is not as performant in PvP because your CC is primarily limited to whatever you get for free, and your instantaneous burst will be weaker or outright non-existent.

Combat’s boss fight build offers extremely little flexibility thanks to the significant number of build essentials. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you don’t like messing around with changing your choices too much, but the only options you should ever be changing are Stoic to Inspired Focus and Blade Blitz to Guarded by the Force.

With this build, you’ll leverage an extremely high critical chance to deal more damage and reliably trigger the Dispatcher Legendary Implant’s effect to generate Focus. This build doesn’t offer as much DPS, but in my opinion, it’s more intuitive, so it’s easier to recover if you make a mistake and incorporate AoE when you need to.

In fights and phases where you take frequent damage, Rebuke with Adjudicator allows you to convert excess Focus into additional Lances during Zen, even outside of the Ferocity window because the Zen Lance ability tree buff makes prevents Lance from going on cooldown if it consumes a stack of Zen.

In order to properly leverage the benefit of Zen Lance, you shouldn’t be using Lance if Zen is not active unless you’re doing a burst DPS check, or its cooldown doesn’t matter, like at the end of a fight or before downtime. With these extra Lances, you won’t be able to benefit from the Andeddu’s Malevolence tactical item DoT, but it’s still much stronger per GCD than Blade Rush.

You can’t take full advantage of Zen Lance without excess Focus from Adjudicator (and Force Leap) because Lance costs 1-2 more Focus than Blade Rush thanks to the Efficient Strikes and Focused Slash passives.

Solo Content

In story content, on planets, and in flashpoints, you’ll almost exclusively encounter regular enemies AKA trash mobs. While you can technically use DPS to measure performance against trash, it is far more appropriate to think in terms of how many GCDs it takes to defeat each enemy and a whole group, and which talents get you over the threshold and actually reduce the number of hits to kill.

As of 7.0, SWTOR now offers dedicated talents and tactical items that are designed and balanced for use specifically against trash mobs.  

These talents almost always have effects that trigger when you specifically defeat an enemy or when you enter or exit combat. They expand single-target attacks into powerful AoEs or reset cooldowns on specific abilities, often with a massive yet short-lived, damage boost attached to it. 

These factors come together to create a truncated rotation that incentivizes a high APM and deals enough damage to defeat an entire group of trash in a flashy way in a matter of seconds.

Yes, trash mobs pose no threat to someone more invested in the game like you, dear reader. The advantage of making such a build is that they genuinely deal more DPS. My testing with Assassin showed a ~25% reduction in TTK, and the combat experience was a lot more fun. 

These effects aren’t suitable in boss fights because their effects last such a short time and can only trigger reliably when you are in a small group and are fighting enemies that have a small amount of HP.

These same deliberate limitations also prevent them from being effective in PvP because it’s so difficult to predict exactly when your opponent will die, and such buffs aren’t useful after the fact anyway. Furthermore, you often have to give up effects that are more useful in PvP to take these talents.

The Combat solo content build is nearly identical to the single-target sustained build. The biggest difference comes from how Lance is used. You’ll be leveraging Zen Lance and Andeddu’s Malevolence which will allow you to hit every enemy in the group and make each of them bleed.

You could use Piercing Lance instead, but you’ll basically never be able to hit as many targets and it’s far more inconsistent. You can also use Rush Down instead of Valor Blade, it doesn’t really matter all that much since you won’t be using Blade Rush all that often against trash mobs and Valor Blade offers higher single-target sustained DPS along with greater utility and burst.

Combat PvP Build: Survivability Emphasis

This build is best suited for fighting against enemy players, where survival and control are the name of the game and fight duration is completely variable. You will be trading a huge chunk of sustained damage output in order to stack as much damage into a single instant as possible, making it harder for your opponent to mitigate it at all.

Survivability is king because you secure objectives or win outright when you outlast your opponents, though it also means there is more time for help to arrive. Controlling effects help immensely with securing objective and improving the reliability of your spike damage landing, but they also improve your own survivability. 

Time where the enemy can’t hit you is time where you aren’t taking damage, and CC is especially helpful to use against enemies that have some sort of OCD or DCD active because you don’t want to be taking more damage than your opponent or not hitting as hard against them.

The PvP build is far less effective in boss fights because most bosses are immune to CC and the ability order you use to set up your massive damage spikes requires you to break what would be a sustained rotation by delaying important abilities. 

This often results in higher resource costs, but the downtime from CC helps to mitigate the inefficiency. Fillers often play a role in survivability as well, so it is as much of a waste to use them either. 

The CC will be useful in solo content, but your burst is focused onto a single enemy and is often super duper overkill. It is better to spread that damage out a bit. 

Undying Cloak is a crafted tactical item. You can get the schematic from S3T-BNS or purchase it from someone else on the GTN. It is superior to Grit Teeth for Sentinels, especially for Combat, because you can get pretty high uptime on Rebuke and significantly reduce the cooldown of Guarded by the Force.

You will feel weaker than if you were to emphasize damage with Shard of Mortis, but you do get to be aggressive with using Guarded by the Force. It’s pretty satisfying to dive into the enemy team head-first with Guarded by the Force and watch them flush all their opening spike damage down the toilet. Unfortunately, in this example, you are the toilet.

Yes, you can do this even without Undying Cloak, but this way, by the time you’ve used up all your other DCDs, Guarded by the Force will be back off cooldown and you’ll be able to flush again!

I recommend Zen Lance and Swiftness by default, but it’s totally fine to go for Driving Lance and Quickness instead.

Shard of Mortis doesn’t work as well with Swiftness, but that’s not a problem with this build, and it’s nice to throw in other burst before your opponent is ready for it.

Driving Lance is just super messed up in part because it doesn’t root, so you can do crazy stuff like teleport across the map with them if your opponent activates Phase Walk or otherwise gets yeeted at the same time.

Combat PvP Build: Damage Emphasis

While I don’t advise emphasizing sustained damage output in PvP, Shard of Mortis is quite powerful and can improve your spike damage potential, so using what is basically just the PvE build in PvP is not as bad as it is for other disciplines.

I recommend using Stoic and Valor Blade by default, but you may want to consider using Defensive Flourish and Inspired Focus instead, as they are less integral to Combat’s effectiveness in PvP. It’s also easier to justify taking Zealous Ward instead of Adjudicator if you prefer.

Despite not feeling like it, the level 68 ability choice is perfectly balanced. I personally prefer Guarded by the Force, but the cooldown durations, damage mitigation potential, and other benefits are equivalent for Force Stasis and Blade Blitz.

I recommend sticking with Zen Lance with this build because it increases damage output. There’s more value in spamming Lance while Zen is active in PvP because of the hindering effect. Your opponent can’t escape so long as you spam it. 

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

Swiftness Opener

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

1. Introspection (pre-cast for 30 stacks of Centering)
2. Twin Saber Throw
3. Force Leap
4. Zen
5. Valorous Call
6. Zealous Strike
7. Blade Rash
8. Precision
9. Adrenal
10. Inspiration (if applicable)
11. Clashing Blast
12. Dispatch
13. Lance
14. Blade Rush
15. Blade Barrage
16. Zen (if applicable)
17. Blade Rush
18. Zealous Strike
19. Blade Rush
20. Precision
21. Clashing Blast
22. Blade Rush
23. Lance (skip if Zen is not active)
24. Rotation

Twin Saber Throw is used at the beginning so that you can have sufficient Focus for the opener and obtain the Dispatcher’s Challenge proc for your first activation of Dispatch.

It’s important to wait to use Inspiration until right before your first GCD in the Precision window (Lance) so that the first GCD of your next Precision window (Clashing Blast) will also benefit from Inspiration. In terms of sustained DPS, this doesn’t matter all that much, but it can definitely make a huge difference in burst DPS checks. I don’t think this timing is quite as important for the Adrenal since it lasts 15 seconds instead of 10.

If the armor debuff is not on the target, you can use Lance as your first ability in the opening Precision window to apply it, but I don’t bother because I don’t do that anywhere else in the rotation.

If someone else is providing Inspiration, you can use Valorous Call to give yourself a second Zen instead of activating Inspiration yourself. In this case, you’ll use Lance during the second Precision window.

Blade Rush is used before Blade Barrage so that you spend the final stack of Zen on Blade Rush (saving 1 Focus) and refresh the Blade Rush buff. Blade Barrage shouldn’t ever consume stacks of Zen. Since Blade Barrage doesn’t generate Centering, it’s best to activate the second Zen from Valorous Call after Blade Barrage.

Priority-Based Rotation

You can technically write out a super long static rotation for Combat for an entire fight, but that approach doesn’t put you in the right mindset for actual fights where your rotation will be disrupted. I think it’s best to think about the Swiftness rotation as alternating between 2 components: Precision Window and Filler.

Precision Window

Your goal during the Precision window is to use your most damaging attacks and should always look something like this:

1. Zen (if applicable)
2. Zealous Strike
3. Blade Rush
4. Precision
5. Clashing Blast ( Precision stack 1)
6. Dispatch or Blade Rush ( Precision stack 2)
7. Lance ( Precision stack 3) or Blade Rush (no Precision)
8. Filler

Your Precision window should always start with Zealous Strike ▶ Blade Rush ▶ Precision. Blade Rush is done after Zealous Strike so that Clashing Blast can deal additional superciritcal damage from 1 stack of Hyper from the Shard of Mortis tactical. It’s also important to do Blade Rush before Precision because Ataru Form strikes benefit from the increased armor penetration, but do not consume stacks of Precision, so you also want the increased chance to trigger them from the Blade Rush proc for the entire Precision window.

It’s most important to use Zealous Strike + Precision followed by your actual powerful attacks. The boosts from Blade Rush are secondary. You’ll quickly start to lose more DPS than you gain if you delay your Precision window because you need the buffs from Blade Rush. You may find it easier or even superior to always do Blade Rush ▶ Zealous Strike ▶ Precision ▶ Clashing Blast (basically just swap the order of Blade Rush and Zealous Strike), so it’s fine to do that instead if you prefer.

I think Zealous Strike should always be used at roughly the same time as Precision because they share the same cooldown (1 GCD later because of Shard of Mortis). This ensures that you will have enough Focus to get through the entire Precision window and makes it so you don’t have to worry quite so much about timing Zen and those two abilities getting desynced.

Zen should be activated no sooner than 1 GCD before Zealous Strike because you’ll need 5 GCDs for Zealous Strike ▶ Blade Rush ▶ Precision attacks. I’ve found the easiest way to track this is to delay Zen if it becomes available early until there are less than 3 seconds left on Zealous Strike’s cooldown. This aspect of the rotation is a lot more challenging in actual combat than it will be on the dummy thanks to the Stoic ability tree buff which will cause Zen to become available at inconsistent times.

The easiest way to mitigate Zen being available early is to just wait to activate it until right before you use Zealous Strike. It’s preferred that your excess Zen stacks are after the rotation anyway so that you can spend them on excess Lances when applicable.

I prefer to typically use Devastating Blast as the first GCD after Precision is active because it’s the only ability you’ll be using with every single activation of Precision. By starting with what you activate during Precision most often, it’s a lot easier to narrow down your choices when deciding on which ability to activate next.

Typically, Dispatch and Blade Rush alternate being used in the second Precision slot, but you have 2 Zens back to back thanks to Valorous Call, you’ll revert to the opener and do Lance 2x for one of the Precision windows. Dispatch always takes priority whenever it’s available because it will always deal more damage than Blade Rush (and Lance) even without the Hand of Justice proc, though that’s only applicable sub-30%.

Thanks to Valor Blade and Zen Lance, you can now activate Valorous Call more frequently and fully benefit from additional Precision stacks by using additional Lances. I think it makes the most sense now to only use Lance while Zen is active and use it in the third slot of Precision that is only available with Zen to make it harder for you to accidentally put Lance on cooldown by using it when Zen isn’t active.

It’s also much easier to just spam Lance back to back when you want to expend excess Focus from Adjudicator or Force Leap and allows you to practice something that’s a lot more transferrable to PvP by greatly extending the active time on the Hindered debuff.

This approach to Precision windows does come with a very minor DPS loss. If you were to use Lance in the first Precision slot, you could get an extra tick out of the Andeddu’s Malevolence DoT before spamming it at the end when you have excess Focus. It’s also better to use Lance first against new targets since it applies the armor debuff. That said, I think it’s a worthwhile sacrifice in order to have a more consistent Precision window that’s far easier to think through in the moment when you’re trying to activate abilities on the 1.2s GCD.

As you can see, there’s a ton of nuance with the Precision window, though it doesn’t have a very significant impact on your DPS. If you just adhere to the list I showed you before this essay on Precision, you’ll do fine.

Filler Priority

The Filler section of the rotation will consist of Blade Rush, Twin Saber Throw, Blade Barrage, and hopefully not Strike.

1. Lance (during Zen, if you have spare Focus)
2. Blade Rush (refresh Blade Rush buff)
3. Twin Saber Throw
4. Blade Barrage (if you have enough Centering and didn’t use Twin Saber Throw)
5. Blade Rush (spam)
6. Strike

The typical rhythm of rotation will look something like Precision window ▶ Blade Rush until you’re out of Zen stacks ▶ Twin Saber Throw OR Blade Barrage ▶ Blade Rush spam until the next Precision window. Remember that Cyclone Slash can be swapped out for Blade Rush and Blade Barrage in AoE situations.

You’ll usually have issues with generating enough Centering in time if you try to use both Twin Saber Throw and Blade Barrage in the same filler section, so only use 1. Since Twin Saber Throw gives you the Dispatcher’s Challenge proc and generates 2 Focus, it takes priority whenever you have to pick.

If Zealous Strike has come off cooldown and you have 26-28 Centering, it’s much better to delay the Precision window by a GCD to reach 30 Centering because the alternative is giving up a stack of Precision completely, so it will always be far less of a DPS loss compared to just giving up on that stack of Precision completely and delaying Zen for a whole cycle. Remember that if this happens, it means you probably made a mistake and need more practice or need to use Stoic if you aren’t already.

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

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

Static Rotation

There is an alternate rotation that also uses the Swiftness ability tree buff but leans more heavily into maximizing the critical chance provided by the Hyper stacks from Shard of Mortis. In my opinion, this rotation is less intuitive and harder to recover from if you make a mistake or get interrupted, but it is completely static. Since the opener is just the rotation + OCDs and a few extra abilities to set things up at the beginning, I think it makes more sense to explain the rotation first.

1. Zen
2. Blade Rush
3. Precision
4. Blade Rush
5. Dispatch
6. Clashing Blast
7. Blade Rush
8. Zealous Strike
9. Blade Rush
10. Blade Rush
11. Blade Rush
12. Precision
13. Lance
14. Clashing Blast
15. Blade Barrage
16. Zealous Strike
17. Blade Rush
18. Twin Saber Throw
19. Blade Rush
20. Repeat

With the completely static rotation, you’ll do Zealous Strike shortly after each Precision window and it must always consume the final stack of Zen so that it benefits from the alacrity and remains synchronized with the rest of the rotation.

The ability order within the Precision window is structured to maximize the crit chance (and subsequent supercritical damage) provided by the Hyper stacks from Shard of Mortis. The goal is to have 3 stacks of Hyper for that first ability.

Dispatch and Lance seem to offer the greatest DPS because Dispatch is your most damaging attack and has an autocrit while Lance will be a guaranteed crit thanks to 3 stacks of Hyper. That said, the damage difference isn’t huge, so don’t freak out if you end up buffing Clashing Blast instead of either of those abilities.

Unfortunately, this rotation doesn’t allow you to make full use of Valorous Call or Zen Lance (and subsequently Valor Blade), but it does seem to offer higher DPS anyway.

Static Rotation Opener

This is the opener you use with the completely static rotation. It is just the rotation except for the first 4 attacks and the addition of OCDs.

1. Introspection (pre-cast for 30 stacks of Centering)
2. Force Leap
3. Zealous Strike (skip if you don’t need Focus)
4. Blade Barrage (skip if you don’t need Focus)
5. Twin Saber Throw
6. Zen
7. Adrenal
8. Valorous Call ▶ Inspiration (if applicable)
9. Blade Rush
10. Precision
11. Blade Rush
12. Dispatch
13. Clashing Blast
14. Lance
15. Blade Rush
16. Zealous Strike
17. Blade Rush
18. Blade Rush
19. Blade Rush
20. Precision
21. Lance
22. Clashing Blast
23. Blade Barrage
24. Zealous Strike
25. Blade Rush
26. Twin Saber Throw
27. Blade Rush
28. Rotation

The purpose of the 4 abilities at the beginning is to generate Focus and put Zealous Strike’s cooldown in the right spot so it will be available again when it’s needed. This has the unfortunate side-effect of delaying your high damage for longer than is preferred at the beginning of the fight, but will enable you to do higher sustained DPS.

If you bother with Hidden Power, or take Inspired Focus and use Inspiration at the beginning of the fight, you can technically forego using Zealous Strike, Blade Barrage, and even Force Leap at the very beginning since you’ll have sufficient Focus to last until the first rotational activation of Zealous Strike.