SWTOR 7.7 Balance Sage PvE Guide and Best Builds

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

Introduction to Balance Sage

Balance Sages are wardens of the Living Force. They attempt to maintain balance by suppressing their opponent’s connection to the Force and reclaiming life taken by their aggressors while keeping them distracted with Jedi mind tricks and an endless torrent of rocks controlled through Force telekinesis.

Balance is one of the weaker specs in terms of single-target sustained DPS, but they are still capable of pulling viable numbers and offer significantly stronger burst potential than what most DoT specs can do, especially when pre-casting is possible. 

Meanwhile, this discipline’s AoE potential is pretty average for a DoT spec; it manages to keep up with all of the other DoT specs in the game, really only falling behind compared to the ridiculously overpowered disciplines, Vengeance / Vigilance and Hatred / Serenity. Since most AoE capability was removed or heavily constrained from burst specs in 7.0, Balance is in the upper echelon compared to all other DPS specs.

Balance truly excels when it comes to survivability. Their exceptional damage reduction and self-healing mean that healers can largely ignore them outside of heal checks, and even then, they’ll probably be fine with just the AoE healing.

Major Changes in 7.0

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

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

This means almost all disciplines had 5 abilities locked away behind choices with the option for players to keep up to 3 of them. In addition, many extremely situational abilities were pruned entirely. Balance permanently lost access to 2 abilities: 

• Force Slow
• Revival

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

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

Group Composition Tips

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

DPS Debuff	Presence of debuff increases DPS by approximately
Internal / Elemental (sometimes)	4%
Armor	3%
Total DPS Gain:	7% (sometimes only 3%)

It is more common for Force wielders to provide the armor debuff, while it is more common for Tech wielders to provide the Internal / Elemental damage debuff. 

For Force Wielders, you’re best off bringing a Juggernaut / Guardian since they provide the armor debuff and can benefit from both debuffs Balance provides. For the Tech wielders, you’re best off bringing an Operative / Scoundrel, which can provide both the Internal / Elemental debuff for Balance and the Tech debuff for any other Tech class. Both of these options enable the 4th player to bring whatever they would like and everyone will have full DPS debuffs. 

If you’re using the Shifted Balance ability tree option, Balance provides the Internal / Elemental debuff instead of the AoE debuff, meaning they’re more independent in terms of debuffs and only require the armor debuff. In this case, an Advanced Prototype Powertech / Tactics Vanguard can be used instead of the Juggernaut / Guardian and the Operative / Scoundrel is no longer necessary. 

To be clear, the disciplines and Combat Styles I mentioned above are by no means required and are not the only ones that provide the DPS debuffs required by Balance, they are just the most efficient and allow the 4th player to bring whatever they want. 

So long as each DPS is given the debuffs they need (or at least the most impactful ones), you’ll be fine. Don’t fixate on having a 100% ideal composition. 

DPS Mindset

How can I do as much damage as possible in each GCD (global cooldown, 1.5s 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 on the boss? 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

Force Serenity

(Force/Internal/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
This ability’s signature trait is that it heals you for as much damage as it deals, and it deals quite a bit of damage, making it one of your most important abilities both offensively and defensively. 

Force Serenity has a slightly shorter cooldown than Force in Balance and Vanquish While this difference is somewhat made up by the cast time, it still ends up having a slightly shorter cooldown than those two abilities, so you’ll still only use it once per rotation cycle. When using the priority system, you’ll end up having the opportunity to take advantage of this shorter cooldown and use it more frequently.

Force Serenity also deals 30% more damage when used on a target affected by Weaken Mind. In addition to affecting the damage output of one of Balance’s best abilities, this also influences the healing you receive since the ability heals you according to how much damage it does. Make sure Weaken Mind is always on the target before you use this ability. Force Serenity has 2 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation: 

Focused Insight
Increases the life stolen by Force Serenity by 100%. This additional healing is not reflected in the ability tooltip but you will see it in the flytext. Focused Insight also increases the healing dealt for some of your other abilities and plays a major contributing factor in your defensive capabilities as a Balance Sage.

Mental Scarring
Force Serenity restores 15 force when used on a target affected by your Force Suppression. Resource management is not something you have to worry about for Balance unless you get battle-rezzed or spend a lot of GCDs on abilities outside of your single-target rotation. That said, even if your Force gets too low, Force Serenity is strong enough that you shouldn’t consider this component when deciding to use it.

Force Mobility
You wouldn’t know it unless you read the 7.3.1 patch notes because the game doesn’t tell you, but Force Mobility, which makes Force Serenity castable while moving, is now built into the discipline. In other words, you can now always cast Force Serenity while moving, no need to take anything extra.

Force in Balance

(Force/Internal/Direct/AoE/Instant)
This ability deals slightly less damage than Force Serenity and has the distinction of being one of the only rotational placeable AoE DPS abilities in the game. You might have trouble placing this ability when you’re far away from large bosses if you double-click to place instead of positioning manually. The range on your AoE abilities is calculated based on how far away the center of the reticle is from the player. When you try to place your reticle on a large enemy when you’re close to 30m away, sometimes the center of the reticle doesn’t reach the center of the boss so you can’t double-click to place. 

In practice, this means that Balance often has a closer max range than 30m. For especially large bosses, you can’t be further than 25-27m away from the boss to be able to activate Force in Balance. This used to not be an issue when Force in Balance had an 8m radius, but now it’s only 5m. 

While this was done for balance reasons, the issue could be fixed without having a noticeable effect on balance by giving Force in Balance a 35m range (or just giving them back the 8m radius). Telekinetics’ 35m range feels so much more valuable than it might seem because the range difference is actually closer to 8-10m, not 5m, in practice unless you’re okay with manually placing your AoEs. Force in Balance has 2 debuffs, 1 proc, and 3 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation:

Force Suppression
The next 15 ticks of your periodic abilities will deal 15% additional damage. This is a major contributing factor to Force in Balance’s high priority and there are a couple of other things that are dependent on Force Suppression stacks being present, like Killing Field and Mental Scarring. Force Suppression stacks do not get consumed on other Sages’ DoTs (though they used to).

Abundant Justice
Force in Balance spreads your Weaken Mind and Sever Force to targets it damages as long as it damages targets already affected by these abilities. In addition, Force in Balance overwhelms its targets for 45 seconds, causing them to take 10% more damage from AoE abilities. This is your DoT spread. I’ll go into greater detail about this later on.

Critical Kinesis
Force in Balance grants Warden’s Vigor, which makes Telekinetic Throw heal you for 15% of the damage it deals for the next 12s. This proc was introduced in 7.1.1 and adds about 750 HPS to Balance’s maximum healing. Since Force in Balance should be used on cooldown, Warden’s Vigor will end up having about 85% uptime including always being active whenever you’d want to channel Telekinetic Throw and creates an incentive to prioritize Telekinetic Throw over Disturbance, even with the Presence of Mind proc.

Resonant Pulse
Targets hit by Force in Balance have a 50% chance to emit a Resonant Pulse, damaging itself and up to 7 targets within 5m for a small amount of internal damage. This passive helps to extend the reach and slightly increase the damage dealt by the ability. Resonant Pulse does not spread DoTs, but it does provide a small amount of self-healing.

Mind’s Eye
Each time a stack of your Force Suppression is consumed, you gain 2 Force. This means if you hit 3 targets with Force in Balance, it will effectively be free. As I mentioned before, it’s not super important to care about this since Balance has almost no resource management.

Weaken Mind

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This DoT is one of your harder-hitting abilities. Weaken Mind should be the second ability you use on any new target immediately following Sever Force. This DoT is used second because it is the weaker of the two and gives you more time to activate Force Serenity before Weaken Mind falls off when using the priority instead of the rotation. Often, Force Serenity will come off cooldown right before Sever Force falls off. Weaken Mind doesn’t have any procs or discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned.

Sever Force

(Force/Internal/Periodic/Single-Target/Instant)
This DoT is another of your harder-hitting abilities and is slightly stronger than Weaken Mind. Be mindful of the 2s root it applies when you intend to DoT spread from a moving target since it can separate that enemy from the rest of the group if it is vulnerable to roots. In order to mitigate this, try to target an add at the front of the pack or apply Weaken Mind first when DoT spreading to minimize the resulting desynchronization.

Sever Force is also the sole beneficiary of the Tempest of Rho, our default tactical item for single-target situations. You’ll actually get more ticks triggered by Tempest of Rho than you will from the base ability! Sever Force does not have any procs or discipline passives associated with it that I have not already explained. 

Vanquish

(Force/Kinetic/Direct and Periodic/Single-Target/Casted)
Vanquish is a somewhat unique ability, it deals a very high amount of damage overall but doesn’t synergize well with some of the buffs provided by some Balance and general Sage buffs. 

It deals both Direct and Periodic damage with the initial hit being Direct and the DoT component being Periodic damage. This makes Vanquish a very poor candidate for use with Force Speed and Force Potency because only the relatively weak, initial hit will benefit from these abilities or any others that only affect direct damage. 

It also ticks every second, so the damage dealt by each individual tick is a little smaller than it is for Sever Force and Weaken Mind, making it a worse candidate for Force Suppression stacks (there aren’t enough to boost all of your DoT ticks), not that you can help it since it still hits really hard so it needs to be used on cooldown. 

Vanquish doesn’t spread unless you equip the Killing Field tactical, and then it automatically applies to all targets with Force Suppression stacks that are near the primary target. Vanquish “spreads” regardless of whether or not the initial target is affected by your Force Suppression, so if you miss one of your targets with Force in Balance but they’re all sufficiently grouped up, it’s best to apply it to the target without Force in Balance since it will still spread but also deal damage to that additional enemy. Vanquish has 1 proc associated with it that is relevant to your rotation that I haven’t mentioned yet:

Presence of Mind
Dealing damage with Telekinetic Throw produces a stack of Presence of Mind. At 4 stacks, Presence of Mind causes your next Vanquish (or Disturbance) to activate instantly, consume 50% less Force, and deal 25% more damage. This is the most important proc in your rotation. You need to make sure that you have it before Vanquish comes off cooldown so you don’t have to delay it.

Throughout this guide, I refer to the Presence of Mind proc as something you get and you’re done instead of it having 4 stacks. Presence of Mind is not useful until it has 4 stacks which is why I refer to it in this way. You can get all 4 stacks of Presence of Mind from a single full channel of Telekinetic Throw since Telekinetic Throw ticks 4 times.

Telekinetic Throw

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Channeled)
Telekinetic Throw is your standard filler ability. It’s responsible for generating the Presence of Mind proc, usually heals you for a small portion of the damage it deals, and can trigger your Tempest of Rho tactical item. On average, each use of Telekinetic Throw will result in 2 additional Sever Force ticks from Tempest of Rho. Telekinetic Throw has 2 procs and 3 discipline passives associated with it that are relevant to your rotation that I haven’t already mentioned:

Telekinetic Balance
Balance no longer has a cooldown. In addition, Balance ticks 33% faster and deals 20% less damage. The first effect allows Balance to be spammable and function as a filler ability. Outside of the Balance discipline, Balance has a 6s cooldown.

The second effect increases the damage dealt by Balance and is responsible for making it a ~2s channel instead of a 3s one, desynchronizing the ability from your GCD.

Inner Strength
Each time your Telekinetic Throw deals damage, you recover 2% of your total Force. This is a major contributor to why Balance does not have any resource management. Each channel of Telekinetic Throw gives you back more Force than it costs to use the ability.

Rippling Force
Telekinetic Throw has a 20% chance (and Force Serenity has a 60% chance) to restore 2 Force and deal a small amount of energy damage to the target. This is basically just a minor effect that gives the discipline a little more zest.

Psychokinetic Torrent
Dealing damage with Telekinetic Throw increases the critical chance of your periodic effects by 3% for 10 seconds, stacks up to 4 times (12% total). It’s easy to have 100% uptime on this proc in your single-target rotation. However, you’ll cut things close if you use the priority system and need to put effort into maintaining it when spamming Forcequake because Broadsword has opted to not make Forcequake apply and benefit from the same effects as Telekinetic Throw.

Disturbance

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Casted)
Disturbance is your second filler ability. It can be boosted by Presence of Mind, but even with the Presence of Mind proc, Disturbance deals slightly less damage per GCD than Telekinetic Throw and never provides any self-healing, so it’s not worth using if you can help it. However, since Presence of Mind makes it instant, it is usable while moving unlike Telekinetic Throw, so it’s a DPS increase over doing nothing, but it should only be used when you have to move and can’t use Project instead. Disturbance does not have any additional discipline passives associated with it that I haven’t already mentioned.

Project

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/Single-Target/Instant)
Project is pretty weak on its own; it only deals about as much as without the Presence of Mind proc and can’t trigger Tempest of Rho. It is instant though, which means it’s a good ability to use while moving. Project doesn’t have any procs or passives associated with it, but I’ll have a lot more to say about the ability later on because it gains new functionality and has an essential place in the priority system thanks to a powerful ability tree buff called Teachings of Rajivari.  

Teachings of Rajivari makes it so Project finishes off all of your DoTs (including Vanquish), dealing their remaining damage immediately. This gives Balance actual burst capability, a ton of control, and additional mobility, resulting in a potential DPS increase and enabling a unique new priority system that eliminates many of the problems with the old rotation.

The benefits of Teachings of Rajivari come at a great cost. The ability tree buff makes the resulting priority system significantly more challenging to execute as you need to make constant judgments about whether or not to use Project.

You want to be able to reapply your DoTs immediately without delaying anything else, but you also don’t want to let Psychokinetic Torrent fall off. Most importantly, you need to consider if you need to pull it out of your “rotation” and use it against an add that’s about to die or earlier than you’d otherwise like against a boss that is about to become invulnerable.

Finishing off DoTs with Project + Teachings of Rajivari does not alter their damage types at all, so you can think of them as just being gigantic DoT ticks in terms of buff synergies. The DoTs will heal you for 10% of the damage they deal thanks to Focused Insight, will consume single stacks of Force Suppression, and cannot benefit from or consume Force Potency or Force Speed, though they’ll still affect Project.

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 or if you are otherwise shirking your main responsibilities to deal more damage to adds. The best example of this for Sages is placing your Forcequake on just a couple of the Ugnaughts that are away from Grob’thok. It’s pretty easy to tell what is and isn’t fluff, don’t be greedy and don’t hurt your group’s chances of beating the boss. Your incredibly fluffy numbers mean nothing if you wipe. 

Forcequake

(Force/Kinetic/Direct/AoE/Channeled)
This is your spammable AoE. Forcequake’s damage per GCD surpasses the following abilities after the following number of targets are hit with one use of the ability:

• Telekinetic Throw: at least 2 targets 
• Force Serenity: at least 4 targets

Keep in mind that Forcequake is not the AoE version of Telekinetic Throw. Forcequake does not build stacks of Wrath or Psychokinetic Torrent, regenerate Force, trigger Rippling Force, heal for a portion of the damage it deals, or even have the same channel time as it does for the other specs.

Force in Balance

(Force/Internal/Direct/AoE/Casted)
This ability is already used rotationally, but it should not be used on cooldown when you need to use it for AoE purposes because Force in Balance is your DoT spread and has a 15s cooldown while Sever Force and Weaken Mind last 18s. 

DoT spreading to a target that still has your DoTs active does not refresh or extend the duration in any way, so if you use Force in Balance on cooldown, you’ll only maybe spread your DoTs back to the enemy who you initially spread from and then the rest of the enemies won’t get respread to until the next Force in Balance. 

Balance really only gets one shot per DoT cycle though, so make sure you don’t activate Force in Balance until the DoTs have fallen off of all the enemies you’re spreading to. Usually, you want to spread from whichever enemy has the highest health and continue spreading from that one until it dies for consistency. When DoT spreading, you will have a standard rotation:

1. Telekinetic Throw (only if Psychokinetic Torrent has fallen off)
2. Weaken Mind
3. Sever Force
4. Force in Balance
5. Vanquish (only with Killing Field)
6. Force Serenity (only if there are fewer than 4 targets)
7. Forcequake x2
8. Repeat

It’s important to know the single-target priority list that I mentioned earlier since it’s difficult to transition between the single-target and AoE rotations and often fights that require AoE have it intermittently. It’s okay to delay Force in Balance in your single-target rotation for a few GCDs if you know you’ll have to DoT spread soon, just make sure that you aren’t delaying it so long that you completely miss out on using it for a cycle.

It’s also okay to get started with generating your Presence of Mind proc and applying your DoTs before the adds have been fully grouped up, just don’t use Force in Balance until they’re close enough for DoT spread. If you don’t DoT spread in the GCD immediately following the application of Weaken Mind and Sever Force, make sure to continue delaying Force in Balance in future GCDs until the DoTs have fallen off the targets that the DoTs were spread to.

Offensive Cooldowns

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

Mental Alacrity

Thanks to our Unmatched Haste and Gathering Storm legendary items, Mental Alacrity is one of the strongest offensive cooldowns in the game because it boosts your damage dealt by 20% and increases your alacrity to where you have the 1.2s GCD, enabling you to activate more abilities during that window than you otherwise would be able to. When it’s used on cooldown, Mental Alacrity will have approximately a 20% uptime.

In Balance, the only thing you need to consider about Mental Alacrity is timing it with your DoTs. Regardless of whether or not you’re using the static rotation or priority system, you can activate Mental Alacrity immediately after applying Sever Force and Weaken Mind.

If you’re using Teachings of Rajivari and you need all the burst you can muster, you can also apply all 3 of your DoTs (Vanquish last), then use Mental Alacrity immediately followed by Project. The cooldown on Project is reduced by just enough that you’re able to use it again as your very last GCD during Mental Alacrity, though the timing is super tight.

This structure enables you to get a lot more DoT damage boosted by 20% than would otherwise be possible, though it typically comes at the cost of only being able to use 1 of each of Force in Balance and Force Serenity when you could otherwise get 2, which reduces the difference between the approaches.

Force Potency

Force Potency is an incredibly quirky ability that boosts the critical chance of your next 2 direct Force attacks by 60%. In Balance, always use the stacks of Force Potency on Force in Balance and Force Serenity. 

Force Potency only increases the critical chance of direct damage abilities, so it won’t work on Weaken Mind, Sever Force, or the DoT component of Vanquish. This means that you can activate it before applying Weaken Mind and Sever Force, but make sure you don’t use it on Vanquish. 

Force in Balance will consume both charges if it hits multiple enemies. Make sure to use Force Serenity first in this case.

Whenever your critical chance is below 40%, as is the normal case with optimal gear for Balance in 7.0, there is a small chance that Force Potency won’t cause your next attack to critically hit. The stack of Force Potency won’t get consumed, but you’re forced to use it suboptimally.

While it can contribute to supercritical damage, Force Potency never causes a supercrit. Supercrits only occur when an individual buff single-handedly boosts the critical chance of an attack by 100%; when this happens, all of your other critical chance is added to your critical damage.

Force Speed

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

You should always use this on either Force in Balance or Force Serenity sincesince they are your most damaging direct attacks by far. Force Speed never buffs the damage dealt by Sever Force or Weaken Mind and only boosts the initial hit of Vanquish, just like Force Potency. 

Technically, it’s better to use Force Speed on Force Serenity since it deals slightly more single-target damage, and the self-healing is indirectly increased as well. However, Force in Balance is always the superior choice as soon as you can hit multiple targets. If you’re using the priority system, it’s better to use Force Speed as often as possible instead of timing it specifically with Force Serenity.

Force Serenity does have a travel time though, so if your APM is high, you can still use Force Speed immediately after the cast of Force Serenity finishes and it will get consumed on Force Serenity.

Adrenal

Make sure this item is always used during Mental Alacrity, even if you have to delay it a while. It is highly unlikely that a fight will last long enough where this delay will be enough to where it will result in missing out on a use of the Adrenal and most of the delay will end up being counteracted by the Alacrity increase from Mental Alacrity anyway. 

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

If you’ll only get one more use of the adrenal before the boss dies and it comes off cooldown around 40%, you’re better off saving it for the next Mental Alacrity that occurs below 30% so you can also benefit from the Mental Scarring discipline passive damage boost. 

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. 

Force Mend

This ability is not off-healing. Do not consider it as off-healing. Consider it a defensive cooldown just like any other that just so happens to work by providing you with a bit of HP.

The traditional wisdom with Sage survivability, and now for Balance especially, is that they can take big hits and survive because they will almost always be at higher HP than all other classes such that if someone else uses another defensive cooldown with lower health, they won’t lose as much health overall but since the Sage was at higher health before they took the hit thanks to proactive use of Force Mend, they’ll be dropped to the same health level as the other class.

In other words, you should use Force Mend as soon as your health drops low enough that can make full use of the heal (so when you’re lower than ~90% HP) or know you won’t be taking more damage for another ~30s. Don’t agonize about getting every last drop of healing out of each activation, just use it proactively to keep your health high.

Force Barrier and Enduring Bastion

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

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

Force Barrier does not cost a GCD to use and functions as a CC break. It’s okay to use it as a CC break if there is no predictable source of damage you can take that will require its use. In other words, using it to mitigate damage takes priority over rising it as a CC break.

If you take the Metaphysical Alacrity ability tree buff, Force Barrier also resets the cooldown on Force Speed. Just like with using it as a CC break, only use Force Barrier to reset the cooldown on Force Speed if there’s no attack you’re saving it for. Sometimes resetting the cooldown on Force Speed can enable you to survive or pass a mechanic that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.

I do not recommend resetting the cooldown on Force Speed just so you can benefit from your legendary implants to boost another attack’s damage by 20% and lower the cooldown of Mental Alacrity by 5s. Force Barrier is too valuable and has too long of a cooldown while the DPS increase is literally negligible.

The deciding factor for beating a boss is far more likely to be surviving long enough with Force Barrier over the full channel than getting an extra Force Speed or two throughout the fight and if you get killed when Force Barrier is on cooldown because you used it as a DPS increase instead, you’re gonna lose a whole lot more DPS by being dead. 

Please note that most enemies will also stop attacking you when you activate this ability, so you can’t use it when you have to temporarily tank something. They will come back as soon as you finish channeling though. 

Mending Force Armor

Every Combat Style now has one ability that gains a unique effect or otherwise functions a bit differently with each discipline. For Sage, that ability is Force Armor, which gains the following effect while in the Balance discipline: 

Your Mending Force Armor, Force Barrier, and Enduring Bastion heal you for 1% of your maximum health every second for as long as they last. The healing dealt by Enduring Bastion is increased by 1% for each stack of Enduring Bastion.

Even with these added effects, Mending Force Armor still isn’t different from any of your other off-healing abilities like Rejuvenate and Benevolence because it costs a GCD to use.

Mending Force Armor should only be used as an off-heal (so instead of a DPS ability) if you think you or someone else will die if you don’t use it, and when I say die, I mean it, I do not mean take a giant hit, I mean actually die. If your healers can heal you back up and you don’t have the Telekinetic Defense ability tree option, don’t use it unless there is downtime where you can’t do any DPS. 

As of 7.3.1, you will be able to take Telekinetic Defense quite often, but the amount of value you get per activation depends on the difficulty of the content you’re doing. Due to its damage per tick, you only ever want to use it instead of a non-essential Telekinetic Throw (only when you already have the Wrath proc) or Disturbance and want to prioritize using it during downtime.

It takes about 2 ticks of Telekinetic Defense in order to match the damage dealt per GCD of Telekinetic Throw and Disturbance (with Tempest of Rho). In harder content, many attacks will consume your bubble in a single hit, so it is often a DPS loss to use unless you need to move or can pre-cast it during downtime. However, in easier content, you can get tons of ticks from a single activation.

Medpac

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

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

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

Restoration

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

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

Force Speed

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

Phase Walk

Since our legendary implants require us to use Force Speed on cooldown, our mobility is reduced significantly and it becomes more important to rely on Phase Walk for movement. This ability can be activated off the GCD even though it has a cast, the only reason it has one at all is to prevent you from placing it in the air or while you’re moving. Phase Walk can also be activated in the middle of channels (including Force Barrier), not casts though, without interrupting the cast so long as you stay in range of whatever you’re hitting and can be used while CC’d, even though the button will be grayed out if you try to use it while CC’d. 

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

Raid Utility

Force Empowerment

Hopefully, another Sorcerer or Sage in the group will be able to provide this. If you do have to take Force Empowerment, it should be used on cooldown just like any other offensive cooldown unless it needs to be used for a burst phase or DPS check. Normally the raid lead will make the call on when this should be used. 

This is not a personal buff for you, it’s something that buffs the whole team. It also only has a 40m range, so be mindful on larger maps that it might not catch everyone and position yourself accordingly so that it catches as many people as possible.

Rescue

This is the famed Sage pull! While it is primarily used for trolling to great effect, especially when paired with Phase Walk to jump off ledges while pulling an unsuspecting victim to their doom while you teleport back safely, it does still have some utility in combat. If you are 100% certain that someone will die if you don’t pull them, do it; if you are 99% certain they will die, probably don’t pull them. You will probably get yelled at if you mess up. 

You should have a very good idea of where this ability is on your bar because if you have to waste time finding it, you’ll probably end up sending a corpse soaring through the air instead of saving someone’s life and at that point, you’re better off just removing it from your bar. Try to minimally disrupt the other person’s rotation since it will interrupt their cast and communicate with them beforehand if there’s time.

Off-Healing

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

Healers are fully capable of keeping everyone alive without anyone needing to use off-heals. You should not ever off-heal yourself unless you literally think you will die if you do not receive healing right now and the pull is salvageable. 

You should also not waste your time healing another player with Rejuvenate or Benevolence, just bubble them and go back to DPSing because the other heals do not do enough to save someone’s life. If there is downtime where you can’t do anything else at all, it’s okay to heal yourself and others with these abilities, but really make sure there’s nothing you can do at all that would increase your damage output first. 

Besides it being not your job, a lot of bosses have fairly tight enrage timers, so if you’re having to waste your precious GCDs helping out another role because they can’t deal with what they are fully capable of dealing with, you’re gonna end up wiping to an enraged boss later anyway.

In Balance, Rejuvenate gives you 30% armor while the HoT is active, but this is insignificant. It only brings your damage reduction up to 23.76% from 19.77%, and that’s only against Kinetic/Energy attacks. An additional 4% DR isn’t gonna save you. Don’t waste the GCD.

Crowd Control and Other Abilities

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

Force Wave

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

Force Stun

This is your hard stun, 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. Be sure to pay attention when something is stunnable though because that often means you’re intended to stun it.

Mind Snap

This is your interrupt. At 18 seconds, its cooldown is longer than what most melee specs have, but isn’t the longest for ranged specs. That honor goes to the Mercenary, which has a 24s cooldown on their interrupt (and it was the only class that didn’t have one at launch). If you really want to be a clicker, I highly recommend you at least keybind this ability or you will have trouble with some of the shorter casts that need to be interrupted. 

Force Lift

This is your mez, a CC ability that breaks on damage. If you’re using this in combat, you’ll usually want to use it very soon after the enemy spawns.

Force of Will

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

Vindicate

This ability recovers 40 Force at the cost of reducing your Force regen rate by 2 for 10s, effectively giving you back 20 Force per activation. That’s less Force than most of your abilities cost, so it’s really only useful if your Force is ridiculously low after dying and you need a jump-start because you can’t even afford to finish a Telekinetic Throw channel.

In fights with a lot of downtime where you have the opportunity to off-heal at lot, your Force may get low and it can be worthwhile to spam Vindicate towards the end of the downtime, but it’s not essential. You can get away with never using this ability in PvE, and previous versions of my guide didn’t even mention it.

Telekinetic Blitz

This is your last resort as an ability that you can use while moving if everything else is unavailable. Its damage output only surpasses Project if used with 2 stacks of Energized, but the average DPS across all 3 activations will be lower.

Cloud Mind

This used to be your threat drop and bread-and-butter defensive cooldown, providing you with decent damage reduction for a short period of time. It still is for the other Sage disciplines, but it’s now locked away behind a better choice, meaning it’s never worth taking Cloud Mind as a Balance Sage anymore.

Ability Tree Choices

Level 23 Choice – Force in Balance Buffs

Consuming Light

• Effect: Force Suppression stacks have a 50% chance to be refunded when consumed.
• Recommendation: Take this in most fights. The Force in Balance buffs are all about trading survivability and damage output. You get to pick 2 of the following: increased survivability, increased DPS, and DoT spread. Consuming Light increases your single-target DPS while enabling you to DoT spread at the cost of potentially reduced survivability. Please note that this option does not inherently increase your AoE DPS alone. It only you DoT spread and increases your single-target DPS by giving you more Force Suppression stacks. You need to take either the Shatter Connection ability tree buff or Killing Field tactical to boost AoE damage output with Consuming Light because Sever Force and Weaken Mind only consume 12 Force Suppression stacks without any influence from other optional effects, so you’re only missing out on what amounts to 3-4 Vanqiuish ticks. However, since Teachings of Rajivari doesn’t work correctly, Consuming Light is more valuable as it enables you to have 100% uptime on Force Suppression stacks, and those Teachings of Rajivari ticks get a major boost.

Shifted Balance

• Effect: Replaces Force in Balance with a single-target version of the ability that deals about 20% more damage, heals for 50% of the damage dealt, applies the Internal/Elemental debuff instead of the AoE debuff, and slows the target by 50% for 6s. Once the slow effect expires, there is a 30% chance for the slow to be reapplied and cause Shifted Balance to deal damage again.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. This option offers additional survivability but forces you to give up your DoT spread and sacrifice some of your own boss DPS, though you might enable your group to make up for it. The damage dealt by reapplication of the slow should be enough to catapult Shifted Balance into being the strongest option for single-target sustained DPS, but because bosses are immune to slows, this component of Shifted Balance never applies outside of solo content and PvP, resulting in Consuming Light + Shatter Connectionl offering higher single-target sustained DPS. The DPS difference would be small if Teachings of Rajivari worked correctly, only about 600 DPS, and that can easily be made up by providing the Internal/Elemental debuff for the group. The additional survivability in single-target situations and full 30m range on the ability are also quite valuable, so Shifted Balance would be worth taking in fights where you don’t need a DoT spread if Teachings of Rajivari worked correctly.

One with the Force

• Effect: When a Force Suppression stack is consumed, you are healed for 1% of your maximum health. Cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this if you want access to a DoT spread and favor survivability over damage output. The 3s rate limit is not present in the tooltip and changes this option from being broken overpowered to situationally useful since it no longer scales with the number of targets. The actual effective healing is roughly the same as what you get from Shifted Balance, meaning the choice to take One with the Force is all about how much you value survivability vs DPS when you can DoT spread.

Level 27 Choice – Enhanced Force Speed, Destructive Wave, or Teachings of Rajivari

Enhanced Force Speed

• Effect: Dealing periodic damage reduces the cooldown of Force Speed by 3 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 5 seconds
• Recommendation: Take this if you want to use the static rotation and in fights with little to no downtime or target swapping. Enhanced Force Speed contributes to enabling you to use Force Speed as often as possible, which allows you to gain more from your Gathering Storm and Unmatched Hasted legendary implants. On its own, the cooldown reduction from Enhanced Force Speed lets you choose whether to apply the Force Speed buff to either Force in Balance or Force Serenity every time, eliminating the old desynchronization issue and enabling you to take Valorous Spirit instead of Metaphysical Alacrity at level 51.

Destructive Wave

• Effect: Replaces Disturbance with an AoE version that deals the same damage, but can hit up to 2 additional targets within 10m of the primary target.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Destructive Wave does enable Disturbance to deal significantly more damage per activation than Telekinetic Throw, but there’s not really a situation where you can benefit from Disturbance hitting multiple targets. In solo content, spreading Vanquish with the Killing Field tactical will take out standard enemies, so the damage is wasted. If anything is left standing, you’re better off channeling Forcequake than Telekinetic Throw, so you shouldn’t typically have a Presence of Mind proc to spare in AoE situations. In group content, you’ll want Teachings of Rajivari or Enhanced Force Speed. The key advantage of Destructive Wave is that it synergizes specifically with Tempest of Rho to trigger more ticks of Sever Force, but by the time you get to Destructive Wave, the adds are most likely dead, and if you’re taking Tempest of Rho over Killing Field, you probably care too much about single-target DPS to be able to afford giving up Enhanced Force Speed or Teachings of Rajivari.

Teachings of Rajivari

• Effect: Shock finishes off all of your DoTs, dealing their remaining damage. The cooldown of Shock is increased by 12 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this right now. Teachings of Rajivari is bugged, causing it to be less effective than intended, but ability damage distribution for this spec is also messed up, and Teachings of Rajivari is essential to the abomination that is the current optimal rotation. These are the bugs that Broadsword has continued to ignore:
  • Teachings of Rajivari does not take into account the level 60 discipline passive Rippling Force, which extends the duration of Vanqiuish by 3s, causing it to tick 3 additional times since it ticks once per second. You can only ever get up to 6 ticks worth of damage by finishing it off instead of 9 if you were to let it tick.
  • The damage source for Vanqiuish is the initial direct damage component rather than the DoT, causing it to be misclassified as direct damage when it should be periodic. This is problematic because it bypasses the 30% damage reduction that most DoT specs have against other DoTs.
  • When Sever Force is finished off by Teachings of Rajivari, that finished Sever Force “tick” cannot benefit from the level 39 talent Center Point, hurting overall damage potential and preventing what should be a build synergy.
• Even without the bugs, or if you choose to ignore the rotation and use a priority system, Teachings of Rajivari is still a great option because it enables you to finish off freshly applied DoTs on enemies that are about to die or deal all of your damage before the boss goes immune. It also significantly improves burst potential and allows you to reduce DoT clipping and get those final ticks off, though that’s super difficult.

Level 39 Choice – Sever Force Buffs

Returning Light

• Effect: Dealing damage with Sever Force reduces the cooldown of Force Potency by 2 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in single-target fights only. The effect is decent, but the rate limit prevents it from scaling well with the number of targets present beyond more frequently dealing more damage with Force in Balance.

Center Point

• Effect: Sever Force has a 30% chance to deal damage to up to 4 targets within 10m of the initial target.
• Recommendation: Take this in fights where you can consistently hit at least 3 targets with Force in Balance. Center Point is stronger than Shatter Connection in terms of AoE damage when you can consistently get at least 1 tick of Sever Force to damage at least 3 targets, which will happen when you can DoT spread among 3 targets. Sever Force ticks from Center Point do not trigger off Tempest of Rho, nor can they benefit from or consume Force Suppression stacks, though they will heal you thanks to Focused Insight.

Shatter Connection

• Effect: Dealing damage with Sever Force can consume and benefit from an additional Force Suppression stack.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you’re also taking Consuming Light. Force Suppression stacks are already finite because of Vanquish, Tempest of Rho, and Killing Field, so Shatter Connection isn’t a single-target DPS increase on its own unless you can increase the number of Force Suppression stacks, which you can only do with Consuming Light. Shatter Connection + Consuming Light effectively offers a 15% DPS increase to Sever Force with additional boosts to targets damaged by Vanquish or Tempest of Rho coming from Consuming Light.

Level 43 Choice – Warden of the Force, Cloud Mind, or Force Empowerment

Warden of the Force

• Effect: Dealing critical damage with your DoTs grants Warden of the Force, which increases your damage reduction by 5% for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. 15% DR with virtually 100% uptime is incredibly strong, especially when paired with the self-healing you get from Balance. Even in situations where healing is light, this DR will enable your healers to use additional DPS abilities that will result in greater damage output than you’d be able to get out of the additional Force Speed activations from Enhanced Force Speed.

Cloud Mind

• Effect: Grants the Cloud Mind ability which increases damage reduction by 25% for 6 seconds and reduces your threat.
• Recommendation: Never take Cloud Mind as Balance. I’m not sure that he was referring to the 7.3.1 Level 43 Balance Sage ability tree choice, but the Donald put it best when declared, “This has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever.” It’s never worth giving up 15% passive DR for a threat drop and what amounts to only an extra 10% DR for 6s every 45s. The mitigation provided is too small to make a consequential difference against spike damage and short enough to quickly become worse against sustained damage.

Force Empowerment

• Effect: Grants the Force Empowerment ability which increases Mastery, Endurance, and Presence by 10% for you and your Operation group members within 40m for 10 seconds.
• Recommendation: Only take this if you’re the only Sorcerer or Sage in the group and you’re not meeting a DPS check. Balance has very strong alternatives in this tier. Telekinetics and Seer’s options are much weaker, so if you have non-Madness Sorcerers / Balance Sages in the group, make them take the raid buff instead because they aren’t giving up as much. Force Empowerment isn’t worth taking if there isn’t a significant burst DPS check to use it on.

Level 51 Choice – Telekinetic Defense, Force Mobility, or Resistance

Telekinetic Defense

• Effect: Your Mending Force Armor reverberates with Force energy equal to about half the damage of one of your fillers whenever it absorbs direct damage to you. This does not affect Mending Force Armors placed on or by allies and cannot occur more than once each second.
• Recommendation: Almost always take this. Since Force Mobility is now baked into Force Serenity, we can actually consider the alternatives at level 51! Telekinetic Defense is typically the best option because it can enable you to bubble yourself without losing DPS. However, Balance’s fillers deal a lot more damage than Telekinetics’, so you need to be able to get 2 ticks out of a single activation in order for it to not be a DPS loss. With the removal of AoE RDT from Sages, it’s a lot harder to stack DR to get a ton of ticks by standing in something, so just concentrate on getting 2 ticks. However, the bubble itself still provides a significant amount of survivability even if it isn’t able to stay active for very long, so it’s absolutely worth using if you’re taking Telekinetic Defense.

Staggering Stratagem

• Effect: The cooldown of Force Stun is reduced by 10s. In addition, when the stun from Force Stun wears off, the target deals 25% less damage for 10s.
• Recommendation: Take this in specific fights only. Staggering Stratagem is typically useful whenever you have to stun an add, especially if it hits hard like the ones you face in Dxun. This option lets you stun enemies more often and provides additional survivability for the whole group.

Resistance

• Effect: Increases damage reduction by 3%.
• Recommendation: Take this whenever you can’t make use of the other two. Telekinetic Defense and Staggering Stratagem aren’t useful in every fight and make the spec a bit more challenging to play. If you can’t get 2 ticks out of Telekinetic Defense consistently and there isn’t much downtime nor is there anything to stun, or if you know you’re just gonna forget to use either, Resistance provides a smaller improvement to your survivability that always works.

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

Valorous Spirit

• Effect: Force Mend increases your damage reduction by 15% for 6 seconds and the cooldown of Force Mend is reduced by 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this if you’re taking Enhanced Force Speed in group content. You don’t need Metaphysical Alacrity if you’re taking Enhanced Force Speed, and Valorous Spirit offers a nice survivability boost. It’s worthwhile to use Force Mend for the DR prior to taking the hit if you expect to take more than ~300k damage (~75% of max HP) from that hit, though if you’re taking that much damage, consider using Force Barrier instead…

Metaphysical Alacrity

• Effect: Reduces the cooldowns of Force Speed by 5 seconds and Force Barrier by 30 seconds. In addition, Force Speed lasts 0.5 seconds longer, Mental Alacrity increases your movement speed by 100% while active, and activating Force Barrier finishes the cooldown on Force Speed.
• Recommendation: Take this if you’re taking Teachings of Rajivari in PvE group content. The cooldown reduction on Force Speed makes this option a substantial DPS increase thanks to the Gathering Storm and Unmatched Haste Legendary Implants, but it’s redundant if you’re taking Enhanced Force Speed. I’ll explain why at the end of the builds section.

Kinetic Collapse

• Effect: Mending Force Armors you place on yourself erupt in a flash of light when they end, mezzing up to 8 nearby enemies for 3 seconds.
• Recommendation: Take this in solo content in PvE only. Most enemies in group content are immune to CC, but the effect is incredibly powerful in solo content.

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

Force Lift

• Effect: Grants the Force Lift ability, which mezzes the target for 8 seconds. If the effect ends prematurely, the target is stunned for 2 seconds. Strong, Elite, and Champion enemies heal rapidly
• Recommendation: Take this when there’s an add that needs to be CC’d. Phase Walk is nice, but it isn’t essential. CCing specific enemies is almost always more valuable than moving somewhere faster. You don’t have to give up anything essential to take your mez, so you should be volunteering first if something needs to get CC’d, like a Stalker in the Red fight in Dxun.

Phase Walk

• Effect: Grants the Phase Walk ability, which allows you to place a mark on the ground that lasts up to 10 minutes. At any point, you can teleport back to that mark if you are within 60m, at which point the ability goes on cooldown for 60s.
• Recommendation: Take this by default. It’s the most consistently useful ability out of these 3 options in raids, though if there isn’t a strong need to take this ability, feel free to swap it out for one of the other two.

Telekinetic Blitz

• Effect: Deals a small amount of damage to your target and grants Energize, which increases the damage (and healing, if applicable) dealt by Telekinetic Blitz by 30%. Stacks up to 3 times and lasts 5 seconds.
• Recommendation: Never take this. Telekinetic Blitz is balanced around requiring a tactical item in order to be viable and Balance lacks such a tactical item (The Rushdown tactical is garbage). You have sufficient mobility with Teachings of Rajivari.

Level 73 Choice – Egress, Mind Ward, or Confound

Egress

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

Mind Ward

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

Confound

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

Gearing and Stats Priorities

Tactical Items

Tempest of Rho
Effect: Disturbance and Destructive Wave have a 100% chance and Telekinetic Throw has a 50% chance to cause Sever Force to tick an additional time whenever they deal damage. Does not trigger additional healing.
Recommendation: This is your single-target tactical. In StarParse, the extra ticks will show up as their own entry called “Tempest of Rho” and will end up accounting for more of your total damage output than Sever Force itself. This tactical also enables Telekinetic Throw to deal more damage per activation than with the Presence of Mind proc.

Killing Field
Effect: Vanquish hits all nearby targets affected by your Force Suppression.
Recommendation: This is your AoE tactical. Since Vanquish is one of your strongest attacks, this is a gargantuan AoE DPS increase, though it doesn’t boost single-target DPS at all, so Killing Field should only be used in fights that lack a single-target DPS check. Outside of boss fights, Killing Field is incredible and there’s basically no reason to use anything else.

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 Items you should use as a Balance Sage.

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

Gathering Storm should be purchased first since it offers a far more substantial damage increase. Unmatched Haste really only serves to improve the effectiveness of Gathering Storm. If you happen to play an Assassin or Shadow, you can also use the Force Training Legendary Implant. It offers almost the same DPS increase for Balance.

Stat Priority

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

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

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

Augments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earpiece

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

Crystals

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

Relics

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

Biochem Items

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

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

Regarding the Zeal Guild Perk Alacrity Boost

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

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

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

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

Best Balance Sage Builds in 7.0

These are the builds that I recommend for different types of content and situations. The Build Essentials are what I consider to be the core components that make the build viable. Without them, the build no longer accomplishes its primary function. 

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

Just Use This for Group Content Right Now Build

After going through and testing the other builds for 7.3.1, I learned that the spec is still in shambles. From a top-level view, the spec can perform adequately in most, but not all, content, but I don’t think any spec has ever been as dysfunctional as this one is right now in the entirety of the game’s history.

There are long-standing structural issues with Balance Sage pertaining to Telekinetic Throw’s non-GCD channel time and the overall lack of synchronization between its DoT durations and ability cooldowns, which I discuss in far greater detail in the aforementioned article.

However, I recently became aware that several discipline effects do not actually work as described. I assumed they did when coming up with my recommendations for 7.3.1 because I don’t have the time (nor willingness) to validate whether every single effect in the game actually works as described. Game developers literally have entire departments dedicated to this task, called Quality Assurance (QA) or Quality Verification (QV).

These are the other issues I am now aware of that warp and defile what should be the optimal rotation:

• Teachings of Rajivari does not take into account the 3s/3-tick increase from the Rippling Force (previously Mind Warp) discipline passive. When you use Project against a target affected by Vanquish, you now lose DPS because the counter for Teachings of Rajivari is counting down from 6 ticks instead of 9, meaning the max damage from Projecting to finish Vanquish is like 4-5 ticks worth of damage instead of 7-8 (a tick will go out before you can use Project.
• Downfall has a hidden effect that makes Sever Force deal an additional hit of damage when it is applied to a target that is affected by your Force Suppression . The damage is stronger than a regular DoT tick, though I’m not sure if it is a DoT tick or direct damage.
• Weaken Mind deals more damage when finished off by Project than ticking passively due to having a different, higher modifier from normal ticks.
• This is Imp Side only, but Sustained Corruption has a 3s rate limit. This is not stated and transforms the effect from being busted good to busted bad.
• The damage dealt by your 18s DoTs surpasses Telekinetic Throw + Tempest of Rho after 3 ticks, so it is worthwhile to reapply DoTs, then Project, and immediately reapply DoTs as soon as Project comes off cooldown, and this DPS increase is enough to make Teachings of Rajivari the strongest option at level 27.

These bugs turn what should be actual choices into an illusion of choice that warps what ends up being optimal to the extent

Static Rotation and Standard Group Content Build

This build is optimized for group content and requires you to use the static rotation since Teachings of Rajivari is not being used. You’ll be utilizing the pairing of Shatter Connection and Consuming Light to give you maximum single-target sustained DPS while retaining the capacity to DoT spread. If you just want to always stick with a single build for group content, this is the best option.

Since you have to take Consuming Light, your survivability will be lower than what is possible with Balance unless you are able to DoT spread to a bunch of adds and steal life from a bunch of targets. That said, Balance’s survivability is still exceptional even in fights without a whole lot of adds.

I recommend taking Telekinetic Defense and Phase Walk by default, but remember to swap those out based on the needs of the group.

You may think to take Enhanced Force Speed and Metaphysical Alacrity at the same time because more Force Speed = more DPS, right? However, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to combine them because the DPS gain is tiny and the costs are huge in comparison. I will explain my rationale in far too much detail at the end of the builds section.

Pure Single-Target Sustained Build

This build is optimized for group content. It trades the capability to DoT spread and a bit of single-target DPS for additional survivability and additional group utility thanks to Shifted Balance. You should only use this build in pure single-target situations unless AoE is fully covered by other group members. If your group lacks the Internal/Elemental debuff, being able to provide it with Shifted Balance will typically increase your group’s overall DPS by significantly more than you’ll lose by taking Shifted Balance.

Remember, the survivability increase is only consequential in single-target situations because the HPS provided by Force in Balance and DoT spreading scales linearly with the number of targets. In fights with a lot of AoE, Shifted Balance will not provide more survivability than Force in Balance.

Technically, you can take Teachings of Rajivari and/or Metaphysical Alacrity with this build, but there’s often something to DoT spread to in fights where you’d want to use Teachings of Rajivari, so I don’t think that’s super relevant.

As I mentioned before, you can combine Enhanced Force Speed and Metaphysical Alacrity for maximum Force Speed, but I don’t think it’s worth it for such a tiny DPS increase, and I’ll go into more detail at the end of this section.

Teachings of Rajivari Build

The Teachings of Rajivari build differentiates itself from other builds by requiring you to take Teachings of Rajivari and Metaphysical Alacrity. Teachings of Rajivari enables you to finish off your DoTs at far more opportune times than would normally be possible so that you don’t lose DPS from them not ticking because the target is dead or immune.

Metaphysical Alacrity reduces the cooldown of Force Speed so that you can use it with most activations of either Force in Balance or Force Serenity. This is mandatory because you have to give up Enhanced Force Speed to take Teachings of Rajivari.

You have to execute a challenging priority system instead of the static rotation with this build, but you are rewarded with more burst, potentially higher sustained DPS, better mobility, and superior control over your damage output.

Like the other group content builds, you are free to make different choices at levels 51 and 68 depending on the needs of the fight. Technically, this also applies to the choices at levels 43 and 73, but you’ll almost never change those.

Solo Content Build

This build offers extremely potent AoE damage that you’ll be able to benefit from quite often in solo content, especially heroics. You are unlikely to feel the loss of single-target sustained damage because you can use Force Serenity, Mental Alacrity, Force Potency, and Project to finish off higher-health enemies in a timely manner. The loss of sustained DPS really only starts to become apparent in boss fights in group content.

Your first goal in combat is to spread Sever Force and Weaken Mind by applying each of them and then using Force in Balance to spread them to every enemy in the target area. Then use Telekinetic Throw to build 4 stacks of Presence of Mind followed by Vanquish and watch as legions collapse from insanity.

I used to offer 2 solo content builds for Balance with one focused wholly on survivability and the other offering a more balanced selection of ability tree buffs, but after the 7.3.1 changes, I opted to combine them into a single build that I feel takes the strongest and most synergistic option in each tier.

Feel free to take Destructive Wave, Enhanced Force Speed, Metaphysical Alacrity, and/or One with the Force + Center Point if you prefer. I recommend Consuming Light + Shatter Connection because it still offers a consistent AoE damage boost, but performs significantly better against stronger enemies and the survivability you get without One with the Force is sufficient.

Why You Shouldn’t Combine Enhanced Force Speed and Metaphysical Alacrity

Let me be clear up front. You absolutely can take and make use of Enhanced Force Speed and Metaphysical Alacrity at the same time. It will allow you to get maximum use out of Force Speed and sometimes increase the number of Mental Alacrity activations in a given fight, but I don’t think it’s worthwhile.

The DPS gain is incredibly small and can quickly evaporate if you aren’t on top of your APM. A single microdelay can easily negate the DPS gain from the extra Force Speed you get. A 20% damage boost is effectively the same thing as 20% of a GCD, and 20% of the 1.4s GCD you’ll be using with Balance is 0.28s.

If you delay something for a quarter of a second to pair it with Force Speed, or disruptions cause Force Speed to come off cooldown out of sync with an ability that it’s worth buffing, you effectively miss out on that extra Force Speed activation, meaning the combination didn’t do anything.

If you do combine Enhanced Force Speed and Metaphysical Alacrity, you’ll end up with Force Speed “floating” around such that it comes off cooldown at different points in your rotation. The Force Speed buff gets consumed on your next tick of direct damage, so it’s pretty worthless with Vanquish, Telekinetic Throw, and Forcequake. It’s really only worth using with Force in Balance, Force Serenity, and, to a MUCH lesser extent, Disturbance.

Since each ability tree buff is enough on its own to buff either Force Serenity or Force in Balance each cycle, the extra Force Speeds provided by the combination are pretty much exclusively going to buff Disturbance. This severely constricts the overall DPS gain and means the boost primarily comes from reducing the cooldown on Mental Alacrity, which takes a while to build up and gets lost if ever you delay the activation, even for a rotation cycle.

On top of all that, you have to give up the additional survivability from Valorous Spirit while the rotation ends up being a little more complicated in a way that’s a lot more distracting. You have to keep a close eye on the Force Speed cooldown and quickly determine which ability you’ll be pairing it with next. That includes deciding whether you’ll be using Telekinetic Throw or Disturbance in the second and third filler slots.

Take Valorous Spirit, combining Enhanced Force Speed and Metaphysical Alacrity just isn’t worth it.

Openers, Rotations, Priorities

There are two main approaches to Balance, one is the static rotation that’s similar to what was optimal in past expansions, the other is the priority system that requires Teachings of Rajivari.

There is also an approach that takes the bugs into account that is completely static but doesn’t have much staying power.

Just Use This For Group Content Right Now

Props to Draemn for cooking up this gameplay atrocity. His static rotation capitalizes on the DPS that can be gained from Broadsword’s helpful bugs while avoiding the ones that reduce your DPS. It offers at least 1-1.5k more DPS than the other rotations I recommended.

Learn it if you want to do maximum DPS right now, but know that Broadsword will try to fix it (eventually). If you don’t play the spec very often or don’t want to bother learning a new rotation that won’t stick around (eventually), it’s fine to just use one of the others in this section.

1. Force Speed
2. Force Potency (if applicable)
3. Force in Balance
4. Force Serenity
5. Telekinetic Throw (builds Presence of Mind)
6. Sever Force (clip previous application)
7. Weaken Mind (clip previous application)
8. Mental Alacrity (if applicable)
9. Adrenal (if applicable)
10. Project (finishes fresh/recently clipped 18s DoTs)
11. Vanquish (instant, only with Presence of Mind)
12. Sever Force (fresh)
13. Weaken Mind (fresh)
14. Telekinetic Throw (builds Presence of Mind)
15. Disturbance or, if applicable, Telekinetic Defense
16. Repeat

It is impossible to derive this as the optimal rotation based on the information you are given from the discipline because it defies convention. You don’t use most of your strongest abilities on cooldown and actively clip DoTs halfway through their duration in service of abusing a single specific ability tree buff.

The downside that results from the divergence of optimization and convention is that you can’t rely on convention to figure out how to recover from mistakes or adapt to the fight. In other words, you can’t look to see if your DoTs have fallen off to know that you need to reapply them or see that a strong ability is available and know that you need to activate it. You can’t rearrange things as easily because they work differently than described.

“There is no thinking, there is only taking a ride on a conveyor belt.”

–My Sixth Line to the Jedi Code

Your primary objective is to use Project to finish off fresh 18s DoTs as often as possible and use Vanquish immediately after to minimize its delay and avoid giving up damage by finishing it off with Project. You use Mental Alacrity (and Adrenal) immediately before Project so that you get 2 activations while the window is open.

You use Force in Balance and Telekinetic Throw shortly before this to ensure that you have Force Suppression stacks and Psychokinetic Torrent in order to maximize the damage dealt by Teachings of Rajivari.

Force Serenity is used after Force in Balance because there’s time, the cooldown + cast time of Force Serenity lines up, it’s your best ability with Force Potency, and your Force consumption is a bit more relevant, so you want to make use of the cost reduction.

You can also use Telekinetic Throw as the final GCD instead of Disturbance or Telekinetic Defense, but you’ll want to clip it at the final tick since Force in Balance and Force Serenity are off cooldown. Remember you need to get 2 ticks of damage out of Telekinetic Defense in order for it to be a DPS increase over Disturbance or Telekinetic Throw.

Everything in between is fillers and DoT applications. Typically, if there’s a bit of downtime or you mess up, I find it easiest to start from clipping DoTs and using Project. It’s typically off cooldown by that point. If it isn’t, then Force Serenity and Force in Balance are, so you can start from there instead.

Static Approach, WITHOUT Teachings of Rajivari

Without Teachings of Rajivari, both your opener and rotation are completely static. In single-target sustained DPS situations, the Teachings of Rajivari priority can only match the damage output provided by the static rotation, but the static rotation is A LOT easier to execute, giving you more freedom to focus on mechanics.

Static Rotation

This is the static rotation for Balance that does not utilize Project + Teachings of Rajivari. It’s super easy to do but doesn’t have the potential to deal as much damage as the priority system, or the high skill floor.

1. Vanquish (instant, only with Presence of Mind)
2. Sever Force
3. Weaken Mind
4. Force in Balance + optional Force Speed (AoE only)
5. Force Serenity + optional Force Speed (single-target only)
6. Telekinetic Throw (builds Presence of Mind)
7. Telekinetic Throw or Disturbance (only with Presence of Mind)
8. Telekinetic Throw or Disturbance (only with Presence of Mind)
9. Telekinetic Throw (guarantees Presence of Mind)
10. Repeat

This rotation does involve clipping Sever Force and Weaken Mind. There isn’t a way to do the rotation without delaying something unless you clip them without taking Teachings of Rajivari. Normally, you do not want to clip DoTs because it results in a DPS loss, but it actually results in slightly higher single-target DPS to do this rotation than trying to do a more convoluted one that involves occasionally delaying abilities (without Teachings of Rajivari).

It’s easier to think about this rotation as two sections:

• DoT Reapplication and Strong Abilities – This is the half of your rotation where you are completely mobile. If you know you’ll have to move soon, do it preemptively during this part of the rotation if you can. 
• Fillers – This half of the rotation has you doing Telekinetic Throw repeatedly while your DoTs tick and strong abilities are on cooldown. It’s much harder to move during this portion of the rotation. Use Project, Disturbance (with Presence of Mind), or Telekinetic Defense if you need to move. 

Vanquish will come off cooldown slightly before your final Telekinetic Throw is finished channeling. I would personally recommend finishing the channel since the final tick will have a chance to trigger your Tempest of Rho tactical but it doesn’t seem to have a very noticeable effect on your DPS either way. This overshoot comes from the fact that Telekinetic Throw is not synchronized with the GCD. If you apply Telekinetic Defense there, you’ll be right on time.

If there is downtime during a fight, remember that you can place your DoTs on shortly before the boss can actually take damage and sometimes even precast something. You won’t get the full damage of your DoTs but you also won’t have to spend a GCD to apply them when the boss is vulnerable, so you will end up dealing more damage.

Finally, I want to clarify a few things that I think people are gonna agonize over that really don’t matter specifically for this rotation and opener in sustained DPS situations:

• Telekinetic Throw and Disturbance + Presence of Mind are interchangeable. The only things that actually matter are:
  • Not delaying Vanquish because you didn’t have Presence of Mind as a result of using it on Disturbance
  • Not letting Psychokinetic Torrent fall off as a result of using Disturbance
• Using Force Potency only while Mental Alacrity is active. It does not significantly impact sustained DPS though it can be more impactful for burst checks.
• Caring about pairing Force Speed with Force Serenity or Force in Balance
• Combining Enhanced Force Speed with Metaphysical Alacrity does not provide a tangible DPS increase.

Some of this stuff has a small, but mostly theoretical benefit, but it’s far more important to focus on the fight, learning mechanics, and executing them correctly than worrying about these minuscule details.

The vast majority of the time, your luck with critical hits and whether you had to sneeze during that pull is gonna have a greater impact than all of those factors combined. Don’t miss the forest for the trees. Don’t make mountains out of molehills.

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 Opener

This is the opener you use without Teachings of Rajivari. It’s quite similar to the static rotation, though the filler section is a bit different as you have time for an extra Disturbance.

1. Mending Force Armor (pre-apply)
2. Vanquish (pre-cast, without Presence of Mind)
3. Sever Force
4. Weaken Mind
5. Mental Alacrity
6. Force Potency + Adrenal
7. Force Empowerment (if applicable)
8. Force in Balance
9. Force Serenity + Force Speed
10. Telekinetic Throw
11. Disturbance (only with Presence of Mind)
12. Telekinetic Throw
13. Disturbance (only with Presence of Mind)
14. Telekinetic Throw
15. Telekinetic Throw (only if Vanquish is still on cooldown)
16. Rotation

You want to activate all of your buffs immediately after applying your DoTs, but before activating your strong direct attacks. Mental Alacrity must be first because the alacrity reduces the cooldown of the others. It’s rare that you’ll be able to hit multiple enemies with your first Force in Balance, but if you can, use Force Serenity before Force in Balance instead so that you don’t waste a stack of Force Potency and pair Force Speed with Force in Balance.

The main difference with this opener is that you have enough time to use Disturbance after both Telekinetic Throw activations thanks to the extra alacrity from Mental Alacrity. At the very beginning of the fight, because Vanquish is hard-casted instead of being instant, it will take an extra GCD to come off cooldown.

For mid-fight activations of Mental Alacrity, you will not need to wait for Vanquish and won’t have to use that extra Telekinetic Throw. However, because of the alacrity, your next Vanquish will come off cooldown a GCD early, but you just keep doing the 4 filler abilities like normal. If you do use Vanquish early, you’ll cause it to float around or end up clipping your DoTs too early or waiting for Force in Balance to come off cooldown anyway.

Using Teachings of Rajivari

This is the opener and priority system you’ll be using with Teachings of Rajivari. It is significantly more challenging (and fun) and has the potential to offer more DPS in actual combat, though on the dummy and in single-target sustained situations, it won’t surpass what you can get with the static rotation.

Teachings of Rajivari Priority System

This priority system you use to determine which ability you should activate at a given time during combat, it requires that you incorporate Project with the Teachings of Rajivari ability tree buff. Unlike a pure priority system, you shouldn’t have to delay anything if you execute it properly.

1. Project (only as a finisher)
2. Sever Force ▶ Weaken Mind
3. Force Serenity
4. Force in Balance
5. Vanquish (only with Presence of Mind)
6. Project (only if you have time to reapply DoTs)
7. Disturbance (only with Presence of Mind, and only if it won’t cause a delay)
8. Telekinetic Throw (spam)
9. Telekinetic Defense (only if you expect to get 2 ticks of damage out of it)

It’s important to practice this on a dummy at least until you can execute it without having to constantly look at your bar. I know it looks pretty simple, but there’s a surprising amount of complexity. If you execute the priority correctly, you shouldn’t ever have to reapply Sever Force and Weaken Mind at the same time as your other abilities come off cooldown.

Outside of Mental Alacrity, you can completely ignore the state of Vanquish’s DoT when deciding whether to use Project. Vanquish will always tick fully before it comes off cooldown, so finishing the DoT early doesn’t really offer an inherent sustained DPS increase since its damage type is no longer modified.

In essence, Project ▶ Sever Force ▶ Weaken Mind becomes another filler block when there aren’t other targets. The whole point of doing this is to prevent delaying other abilities without having to clip your DoTs. You won’t be using Project on cooldown, and you’re probably using it too much if you’re letting Psychokinetic Torrent fall off, but don’t take that as gospel.

The whole priority system is, fittingly, chaotic, meaning it is incredibly dependent on initial conditions. In this case, those initial conditions are the exact order in which you activate abilities in your opener. In other words, as you execute the priority system, Balance will feel kind of like a rotation, but exactly how you’re able to follow the priority will be defined by the opener. 

Since you get the most benefit out of Teachings of Rajivari when there’s frequent downtime and target swapping, you won’t really be able to settle into an actual rotation unless the fight is super consistent.

The most challenging part of this priority system is making sure you only use Project to finish off your DoTs when you have enough time to reapply them without delaying one of your other attacks while prioritizing Project as a finisher to get all your existing DoT damage off before the target dies or becomes immune.

To reiterate, using Project to finish off your DoTs is only a sustained DPS increase because it prevents you from needing to delay any of your attacks with cooldowns while still getting the full benefit from your DoTs. Without Project + Teachings of Rajivari, you either have to delay some of your powerful attacks or clip your DoTs. So long as you are able to squeeze the full duration out of your DoTs without delaying any of your abilities that have a cooldown, you won’t lose any DPS.

However, there is more DPS to be gained by finishing off DoTs on a target that is about to die or become immune, and it’s okay to delay everything else to finish those DoTs off on that target.

Keep in mind you’ll lose more DPS because you have no abilities you can use while moving or your target will no longer take damage as a result of being immune or dead than you will by having to slightly delay other abilities to reapply your DoTs. 

Since your DoTs only have slightly longer durations than the cooldowns on your high-damage abilities, it takes several rotation cycles for the need to clip or delay to arise. In actual fights, you can leverage this to save Project for specific situations like when you need to move, focus down an add that doesn’t have much HP, or finish off your DoTs before the target becomes immune.

It takes 3 GCDs (4.5s) to activate Project and reapply your DoTs, so you need to check if the cooldown on Force Serenity or Force in Balance is less than that. If it is, you don’t have time to do Project without delaying something. You will frequently have to cut it close though, especially with Force Serenity.

Vanquish should be used after Force in Balance so that all Vanquish ticks can get buffed by Force Suppression stacks and you don’t have to change habits when switching to Killing Field, but both abilities rarely come off cooldown at the same time.

To be clear, Sever Force and Weaken Mind have a higher priority than your other strong attacks, they should not need to be refreshed when another ability is off cooldown. They still take priority though if it does happen because they are your most damaging pair of attacks and most of your other abilities either buff their damage or are dependent on their presence.

Weaken Mind should be used after Sever Force because once in a while, Force Serenity will come off cooldown right as your DoTs are about to fall off. Since Force Serenity deals 30% more damage against targets affected by Weaken Mind, you want to make sure that one has an extra GCD before it falls off just in case. In other words, if you do Weaken Mind ▶ Sever Force, Weaken Mind will occasionally fall off before the cast on Force Serenity completes, robbing you of 30% of the damage (and healing) that would be dealt by Force Serenity.

Force Serenity has a higher priority than Force in Balance and Vanquish because otherwise, Force Serenity will eventually end up getting “stuck” behind them where Force Serenity ends up perpetually delayed because the cooldown + the cast time of Force Serenity is equal to the cooldown of Force in Balance and Vanquish.

Using Force Serenity first allows it to float around as it needs to and actually be used on cooldown. It’s okay to delay Force in Balance by a GCD to make sure that Force Serenity continues to float. It doesn’t happen often enough to cause a DPS loss. 

Force Speed should exclusively be paired with your next activation of Force in Balance or Force Serenity, and thanks to Enhanced Force Speed, you should always have Force Speed available for your next activation of one of those abilities each cycle. Remember to buff Force in Balance in multi-target situations and Force Serenity in single-target situations.

When all of your abilities are on cooldown, you’ll be spamming Telekinetic Throw until something becomes available. Disturbance can technically be used instead of Telekinetic Throw if you need to move and have time to use Telekinetic Throw again to regenerate 4 stacks of Presence of Mind before Vanquish comes off cooldown.

Disturbance can also be useful if you know you’ll need to delay an attack slightly if you use Telekinetic Throw. However, you have enough on your plate already, so be super cautious about using Disturbance. Until you feel confident with Teachings of Rajivari, just use Telekinetic Defense in those situations instead, even if you can’t get a second tick out of it.

Teachings of Rajivari Opener

This is the rotation you use at the very beginning of the fight and for burst DPS checks while using Teachings of Rajivari. The opener is simply an execution of the priority system from a state where 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. Mending Force Armor (pre-apply)
2. Disturbance (pre-cast)
3. Sever Force
4. Weaken Mind
5. Force Potency + Force Speed
6. Force Empowerment (if applicable)
7. Force Serenity
8. Force in Balance
9. Telekinetic Throw (if you don’t have Presence of Mind and Psychokinetic Torrent)
10. Vanquish
11. Mental Alacrity
12. Adrenal
13. Project
14. Sever Force
15. Weaken Mind
16. Priority System

Disturbance is pre-casted instead of Vanquish so that you can use your other strong abilities much earlier and get all of Vanquish’s damage buffed by Presence of Mind, Psychokinetic Torrent, and Mental Alacrity.

The first applications of your DoTs are getting finished early by Project, so there is no benefit to accelerating their tick rate by applying them while Mental Alacrity is active. Since DoT ticks get individually boosted by OCDs that are active when the individual ticks go out, it’s actually detrimental to apply DoTs after OCDs have been activated.

In the case of Sever Force and Weaken Mind, those GCDs are effectively getting wasted because they only deal ~17% of their damage in that initial GCD whereas you could get 100% of the damage from using other GCDs under Mental Alacrity instead, even if those attacks are weaker. 

I recommend using Force Empowerment earlier outside of Mental Alacrity at the beginning of combat because most other specs start using their strongest attacks at the second or third GCD, including Balance, which will still be applying to your Force Potency-empowered Force in Balance and Force Serenity. Furthermore, you’ll still be able to get the first Mental Alacrity-empowered Project inside the window.

If you’re mid-fight and your opener is starting with Project and you’re using Force in Balance and Force Serenity early inside that window, use Force Empowerment at the same time as Mental Alacrity.

Meanwhile, the Adrenal has the exact same duration as Mental Alacrity, so you should use them at the same time. Make sure to use the Adrenal after Mental Alacrity, not before, so that it gets affected by Alacrity.

You can also use Force Potency on the next activation of Force Serenity and Force in Balance, but with the priority system, those abilities don’t always come off cooldown at the same time, so you have to be more opportunistic.

It’s beneficial to use Telekinetic Throw before Project in the opener because you’ll be able to generate 4 stacks of Psychokinetic Torrent, which will increase the critical chance of your DoTs by 12%, and that’s absolutely valuable while all of your OCDs are active.

Teachings of Rajivari doesn’t change damage types (anymore), so it’s only going to deal the remainder of the damage dealt by your DoTs anyway, meaning it doesn’t matter if they tick before Project goes off.

Rationale
It’s impossible to have your cake and eat it too with the Teachings of Rajivari opener. You’re forced to either delay an ability or use something else without a buff. There are a ton of variations and I can’t test them all, so I am not certain that this opener is actually the absolute best, but it should get you pretty far.

This opener in particular focuses on minimizing the delay of as many strong abilities as possible while prioritizing abilities that others are dependent on and maximizing the damage dealt during Mental Alacrity, which is your strongest OCD. Force Serenity and Force in Balance should come off cooldown before Mental Alacrity ends, so you’ll still get an activation of each while Mental Alacrity is active, and you’re not missing out on practically whole GCDs like you would be if you opted not to open and close the window with Teachings of Rajivari.

The main drawback is that you don’t apply the Force debuff for quite some time because Vanquish is the last of your strong abilities to be activated. That said, it is helpful to create some distance between your applications of Force in Balance and Vanquish so that you have more flexibility when executing the priority system. It’s only 1 ability, and something else would have to get delayed to that degree instead.

All the alternatives I can think of require you to delay strong abilities for far longer or otherwise cause you to miss out on multiple sources of damage, which is why I believe this is likely the best, but I will update the guide with a new opener if I am incorrect.

Damage over Time Abilities (DoTs) vs Direct Damage

DoTs are not special abilities that let you deal damage when you can’t target the boss with new attacks. Contrary to popular belief, throwing your DoTs on right before you become unable to attack the boss does not result in a DPS increase over an ability that deals the same amount of damage immediately because you’re still spending a GCD to cast the DoT. 

I think it’s most helpful to conceptualize DoTs compared to direct damage abilities (regular non-DoT / non-Periodic abilities) by imagining them as dealing all of their damage hitting at the end of their duration instead of being spread evenly throughout, or at least that’s when you’ll get the amount of damage listed on the packaging. 

Prior to that point, you’ll be getting less damage out of each GCD equal to the damage dealt per tick times the number of ticks that were left. This is why clipping your DoTs (reapplying them before they’ve expired) is generally considered a bad thing. When you clip your DoTs, you make the last GCD where you applied your DoTs retroactively deal less damage. 

In general, DoTs are worse than abilities that deal the same amount of damage immediately because the enemy could become immune, enraged, or dead by the time all of that damage will hit. In order to combat these disadvantages, DoTs tend to deal a bit more damage than direct damage abilities and almost always deal Internal/Elemental damage so they ignore armor. 

DoT specs have often been capable of dealing more sustained DPS than burst specs and usually have some sort of sub-30% HP execute window where DoT damage is increased. This helps to compensate for those targets dying before the DoT has finished ticking, though on targets that die quickly, this damage bonus isn’t enough to make it worth reapplying DoTs and makes it no different from clipping your DoTs. 

The sub-30% damage increase becomes more than just an equalizing effect on bosses since they usually last multiple DoT applications (and often several minutes) below 30% health, allowing enough time for DPS to actually increase. If DoTs have just fallen off of your target and you know it will die before the DoT completes all of its ticks, you should not reapply them to that target and either use one of your direct damage abilities (usually filler) or apply your DoTs to another target. 

Unless an enemy needs to die ASAP, it’s usually okay to switch targets preemptively since the vast majority of your damage contribution will be over in this situation. If you do decide to switch targets before the enemy dies, make sure you verify that the enemy actually died soon after you switched, sometimes the rest of your group might have the same idea and you’re left with an add wandering around with 1% HP left.