SWTOR Sentinel PvP Guide

SWTOR Sentinel PvP Guide by Rankith

Contents:

0. Change Log
1. What you should know first
2. Abilities and cool downs
3. General tips and guide lines
4. Damage dealing rotations
5. Taking down healers
6. Role in groups
7. 1v1
8. Specs
9. Using the focus frame
10. How to improve further
11. Conclusion
12. Appendix A: PvP Gear
13. Appendix B: Keybinds

What you should know first:

This is a PvP Sentinel guide. I’m going to cover several things such as cool downs, damage dealing, how to be effective, what you should be doing in groups and several other things. I’m NOT going to be covering specific skills and explaining what they do (for the most part). You need to know what all of the Sentinels moves are and how Sentinels work before reading this. I’m going to start with our important CDs and then give you some some general widely applicable PvP tips/ideas before getting into some more specific things.

If you need a more general guide, check out this excellent post by Maefly.

Abilities and Cool Down Usage:

Force Stasis: Our 1 minute CD channeled stun. Quite lackluster compared to other classes stuns but still a useful tool. You should only be using this as either an interrupt/cc for healers that you are trying to bring down, or when your big damaging moves are on cd to buy you time for them to come back and build you some focus.

Awe: 1 minute CD aoe soft cc/incapacitate. This appears to have about a 10m range. The best use of this is a peel for yourself/friends or a cc on a healer while you kill something else. Its only 6 seconds, but that’s quite a while. It can also be used to stop someone that is about to get out of range of you, for example you get the 5 second immobilize applied to you from a sniper, you can respond with this so that he gains no ground. 1 minute is really not very long, don’t be afraid to use this.

Force Leap: Our main gap closing ability. If this is on CD and you are slowed/snared away from your target it’s gonna suck unless you have some other CDs up. Your goal with this move is to use it as little as possible. Any time you can close the gap in a timely manner without using this move, and you aren’t trying to burn the target ASAP, don’t use Force Leap. This can also be used as a survivability tool to get you out of bad places, look around for a target that is far away from where you are, other classes will have a hard time closing the gap with you again.

Force Camoflauge: This is both a survivability and mobility tool. It’s only a 45sec cd so can be used plenty. Use this when you need to get back on target and force leap is down (combat spec skill really helps this use). Also of good use when you are about to go down to give you 4 seconds of free run away time or healer catch up if you need it. Also keep in mind that since it drops target, in a group situation it will be hard to find you again so it’s often enough to use this if you get focused and just wait a few seconds before re-opening on your target.

Rebuke: Awesome, awesome survivability CD. You should pop this every fight as soon as you start getting focused a bit. Ideally you should have this up from 90%-0% of your health bar as it will last 30 seconds. If you are not using this ALL THE TIME, start using it.

Saber Ward: Our bigger survivability CD. 50% defense and 25% less force/tech damage for 12 seconds is A LOT. At 3 minutes, the CD is a bit prohibitive of frequent use, so save this for more important fights such as trying to hold an objective until backup arrives.

Guarded by the Force: 99% damage reduction for 5 seconds, you are basically invincible. The fact that this takes 50% of your hp makes it unusable in a proactive fashion for the most part, so use it to stay up for an extra 5 seconds when you are inevitably going down, or to give your healer the time to get you back on your feet in the health department. Don’t use this above 20% hp in almost any situation.

Zen: This really, really depends on your spec. As watchman, you will have the centering stacks for this a lot and should be using it every time you have a 3 stack of overload saber on someone. As combat it’s a bit less useful but still good for bursting an important target. Of special note is that shii-cho form Zen gives you a good aoe. So if you are in the thick of things with several targets around you, feel free to switch stances to Shii-Cho form and then pop Zen. Just be sure to dump the focus you build up back before going back to your stance of choice.

Transcendence: Super awesome group buff from centering. Use this to help your ranged teammates kite away from melee, or as a gap closer for yourself. The 10% defense is just a nice bonus. I currently use this more than anything for the most part, since it is such a great group buff and mobility buff for you.

Inspiration: Our single biggest CD at 5 minutes. The only time you would ever want to use this is if you were with several team mates. Using it by yourself is a waste as the zen buff will buff your damage just fine.

Valorous Call: Gives 30 stacks of centering. Use this right after one of your centering buffs wear off or if you are at an important fight with 0 centering stacks so you can get your group buff or zen up quick.

Resolute: Our cc breaker. This breaks everything but is on a 2 min CD. The use of this move is very subjective and should only be used when it will really help. Don’t use it if your getting focused and going to die, or the target you were on is still fine health wise. Use it to screw someone over when they are barely going to get away, or to get away yourself when not being 100% mobbed.

General Tips and Guide Lines:

Manage your focus! In PvP you always want to have at least 1 focus available for your interrupt. The only time it’s ever worth going below that is when bursting with team mates or you KNOW that last hit is going to kill them. Nothing is worse than being out of focus and unable to interrupt the cc/heal that is being cast.

Don’t force leap if you can just run up to your target. It’s your only real gap closer and is best saved to get back on target if they get away from you. That said, you will still be opening with leap a lot to get to a target in the back or if you have already been engaged by someone else.

Be aware and use your defensive CDs proactively, don’t panic when you are low and use Saber Ward at 30% hp, use it when you know you are going to be focused.

Force leap and Force Stasis are great in huttball. Leap their ball carrier when he is crossing a fire spot and then Force Stasis him so he gets toasted.

Watch for Guard on your targets. It’s a blue shield bubble around them when it goes up, but it can be hard to see sometimes too, check their buffs. Going on a target that has guard on them by yourself is very, very pointless. You need to separate them from their tank somehow, which you are not good at with no displacement moves, or choose a new target.

Positioning is HUGE in PvP. As melee, your positioning is only a concern if you get too separated from your team mates. What mostly concerns you is the enemies positioning. If a healer or ranged player is anywhere near the engagement line of the fight you can often drop whatever you are doing and switch to them. Once you do that, you want to keep them out of position, so use your snares/stuns/immobilize effects so you and your team can have more time to punish them for over extending.

Go cybertech! They 4s incapacitate re-usable grenades help fill in one of the failings of the class which is a lack of any true CC.

Now then, onto specifics!

Damage Dealing “Rotations”:

Generally, PvP is a bit too dynamic to be able to do a particular rotation. You can still have something to shoot for though! Rotation depends a lot on spec, so I will cover both Combat and Watchman in specific, but first, some general considerations.

Several things will interfere with actually doing a rotation, such as applying a slow, interrupting, switching targets, getting stunned etc. Be aware that all of those things will interrupt the flow and you need to be able to pick up where you left off, or start over or in the middle as needed.

Watchman: Assuming you Force leap in, you need to first decide if you need to apply your slow or healing debuff, typically I always apply my slow even if there are team mates attacking, as it really blows if they slow you and simply walk away :P. So, Force Leap(4)->Overload Saber(in air)(1)->Zealous Strike(7)-> Leg Slash(5)->Cauterize(3)(pop Zen now if you have it)->Strike(5)->Merciless Slash(1). As you can see, that kinda takes a while, if you remove leg slash you can finish that much quicker as you don’t need to Strike either, just 3 hits after landing on your target and hes got your dots and has some hurt going. So when you really want to kill something, forego that Leg Slash. Usually this will do quite a number to someones health bar AND you have 6 good crit dots coming.

Without force leap your going to be simply running up to your opponent and opening with Zealous Strike(6)->Overload Saber(3)->Leg Slash(1)->Strike(3)->Cauterize(1)->Strike(3)->strike(5)->merc Slash(1). As you can see, thats alot slower, but you will have to do this in alot of occasions. Again, dropping that Leg Slash if you absolutely must will help speed this up. And also consider that you get knocked back at some point in the middle of this and can then Force Leap in for that 4 focus and that will speed up your output a bit.

Combat: Again assuming the Force Leap in and deciding on leg slash, a decent alternative here is to use Crippling throw as it will be a 3 second immobilize as combat. Force Leap(4)->Zealous Strike(10)->Crippling Throw(7)->Precision Slash(4)-> Blade Storm(2). Unfortunately Zen in Ataru is not that great compared to the other forms. After that, just use Blade Storm on CD and Precision Slash when you have some focus to dump into Blade Rush and Blade Storm.

Again, without force leap, run up and start with Zealous Strike(6)->Crippling Throw(3)->Strike(5)->Strike(7)->Precision Slash(4)->Blade Storm(2). Again, takes alot longer, but remember you will throw force leap in here if you get knocked back. Also to consider is that if you immediately get an Ataru Form proc you can remove a Strike as you will have enough Focus from the Trance proc that happens after 6 seconds of an Ataru form strike.

Focus: Assuming Force Leap. Force Leap(3)->Force Exhaustion(0)->Zealous Strike(6)->Force Sweep(5)->Here it branches depending on squish factor. Either going to strike, blade storm, dispatch, or just continue dealing out damage and using a force stasis->Zealous Leap->Force Sweep later. If you don’t force leap in, its very similar except you open with Zealous Strike and at some point Force leap back to your target before your first Force Sweep.

Master Strike can be used at the end of any of these rotations if you are out of focus and need to push damage out ASAP.

Remember, the huge majority of the time you can’t follow these strictly, but you still want to be striving towards that as it is the optimal damage rotation.

Taking Down Healers:

As I see it, this is one of our main roles in a group PvP situation. First things first is get your slow up, followed by crippling throw as they will still get heals off(instants/hots). After that be sure to keep enough focus for your interrupt and use it on CD on a heal they are trying to cast. Never Force Stasis if your kick is up, save it for when they may actually get a heal off in between your Kick CD. You can also use Awe if you have nothing else to interrupt, but should be a last resort. If they get distance at any point, wait for them to stop and try to cast before Force Leaping back, so long as they don’t just straight book it out of range. You can also use Force Leap point blank as another interrupt depending on your spec, but be careful with that, cause if they get away afterwards your going to be wishing you had it.

A big key to taking down a healer is to remain calm and take it slow. It’s very easy with any target to see them get low and start spamming your damage moves as much as possible, but it’s an even worse mistake against a healer. Keep them slowed, keep them healing debuffed, and keep an eye on their casts for Kick.

If they are NOT solo and have another healer backing them up, well than you need backup too, you simply won’t be able to solo your way through 2 competent healers.

Role in Groups:

We can’t heal, and we can’t tank, so our role is to take out their squishies, or be the main assist/target caller due to our healing debuff. It really depends on your group.

If you are going to be getting back to their healers, wait for the fight to start before force camoing in or force leaping in, get Rebuke up as soon as they take note of you and try to keep your target locked down. If this is a true group situation you will hopefully have backup of some sort :P.

The other role we perform exceptionally is being main assist. Lead off with your healing debuff and snare before unloading with the help of your team mates. When your target is about to go down, find the next one and call it out so everyone can be ready to go right when the current target dies. Target order should be fairly obvious, go for any healer dumb enough to be out of position up front, than the squishiest dps you can get your hands on, and try to avoid guarded targets unless they are a very high priority.

1v1:

Even in warzones this happens periodically, and it’s also what a lot of group fighting devolves into, you trying to kill the other guy before he kills you, so it’s very important to be good at this.

First things first, keep a cool head and keep track of your CDs. I already covered how to deal damage to people in general, so were going to take a look at some of the classes you will fight and discuss what to watch out for etc. I’m not going to cover them all, just 4 that you will see a lot of and can cause problems :P. And remember, 1v1 is all about knowing your enemy, so if you want to improve more, go look their all the classes skills/abilities and specs so you can easily identify and anticipate their moves.

Assassins: Most assassins you come across are going to be specced for melee dps. They can burst pretty hard pretty fast and can do it again shortly too. They are however, quite squishy (unless tank spec). They have several CDs you need to watch out for.

The first is their Vanish type skill that allows them to get back into stealth. When your fighting an assassin and he gets low and you think he may run, get Cauterize on him regardless of spec so the dot pops him back out for you. You can also Awe or some other aoe right when he vanishes to knock him out.

They also have a 4 sec incapacitate called Low Slash, this breaks on damage, make sure you differentiate it from their 4 sec stun for the purposes of using your CC breaker. Don’t panic and use it on this one when you don’t need to.

Force Shroud removes debuffs and makes them immune to debuffs for 3-5 seconds. This doesn’t really affect us as most of our moves are physical. But be aware this can get rid of our dots and allow a clean escape. Also be sure not to use Awe if this is up.

Those are the big ones so keep them in mind and learn to identify them. Other than that, just stay on target and be patient as they will tend to play evasive and try to keep you locked down as much as they can.

Operatives: Much like an assassin. The main thing to watch out for here is getting blown up before you react. Their out of stealth opener is BRUTAL and comes with a nasty stunlock, but once out of stealth they are quite vulnerable. If you see one of these guys, get on him and keep him from restealthing to greatly lower their threat. They have a vanish similar to Assassins and also a team stealth, which can be a gnarly surprise!

They could also be heal specced, in which case it’s just like killing a healer :P. Just be aware that this healer can vanish and run away!

Sniper: This is my least favorite class to fight (well maybe sorc). Immune to our charge when in cover, a knock back with 5 sec immobilize and a 15sec cd 5 sec immobilize (both of which break after 2 seconds if you get hit), also have a knockback attached to Ambush if you get too close. You will most likely be running up to them to engage which can be painful. Don’t attack if they see you coming as you will get shredded without support. If you have to, pop Rebuke as you run in.

Once you initially get on them, most will either use their 4 sec stun, or knockback root, so the first thing you should do for SURE is your slow. If they do the KB, try to get a crippling throw off as its happening so they are rooted for part of your root duration (if Combat). As soon as you get out of that root, force leap back before they enter cover again (an alternative for combat is to use force camo here). Once back on them they will use whatever they didn’t last time, depending on what you’ve used so far, you may or may not have an answer. Hopefully you have your CC break still and can stay on top of them.

Once you have finally waded through their escapes and CC and have some time to wail on them, make sure you keep that slow up and pay attention to what they cast. The things to look for are Snipe, Ambush and Series of shots. You can’t interrupt anything when they are in cover, so just be aware of when the cast is going to finish so you can use Guarded by the Force or Force Camo as needed.
One CD to be aware of is Entrench, this makes them immune to CC, but cancels if they leave cover, if they pop this, they intend to stay put for at least a few, so don’t waste your Force Stasis on them.

Sorcerer: If damage specced these guys will NUKE you hard. They also have a lot of CC and slows. Their channeled lightning attack has a built in slow and will be quite hard to deal with. And even as damage spec they can heal ok if they get breathing room.

The main thing to do here is get your initial engagement off, then get back on them after their KB. At this point they still have their Force Speed to get distance, you can try to anticipate it and use Force Stasis right when they pop that but its pretty much a crapshoot. A better bet is to save Crippling Throw if combat specced and use it right as they start running. Once you get past that you have some good time on target. Remember as always to be using your interrupt on CD. Lightning Strike is their basic nuke, and buffs some other spells they have. Crushing Darkness is a nuke/dot. Force Whirlwind is a long CC so take extra care not to let them get this off.

Specs:

I have played all 3 specs quite a bit, combat being the least as it quite simply appears the weakest.

Watchman: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#50…RdcGzZRMbZ0M.1
Most of this is obvious, but a few points to be made. You really only need 1 point in Close Quarters, as using it closer then 5m to your target is a mistake in most situations, a 6s cd on kick should be all the interrupts you need for the most part, and if you really need it you can just be a little extra aware and backup for the leap as an interrupt.

I played with Force Fade for quite a while at the insistence of some others, but I still found it very rarely actually helping me out so dropped it.

One alternative spec to this is if you want Inflammation. It sounds great, but I have found it lack luster in practice. Its only for 6 seconds, and its only for 30%. Pretty much every slow you get put on you is more than 30% so its no good. That said, it can work, so an alternative is to drop 2 points from Plasma Blades if you really want this.

Other alternatives usually involve dropping Plasma Blades points to pickup some other utility skills such as Force Fade or Defensive Roll or Master Focus

A slightly different spec that grabs Swift Slash from focus is also viable and looks along the lines of this http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#50…dcrzZMzZRM0M.1. This depends on playstyle and if you find your self slashing alot. I typically don’t and much perfer the additional focus from Focused Leap

Combat: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#5010cZGGbbddrRrsZzM.1 Again, pretty obvious. Fleet Footed is AWESOME and so is Displacement. No real alternatives to even consider here. The only question is how much accuray is needed for PvP. If you don’t need the full 3 points in steadfast you can get that last point in master focus instead.

Focus: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#501bcZMMZG0RrdrMdGR.1 Pretty straightforwards here. You don’t need Dual Wield Mastery as its a very small damage difference and your main damage sources don’t use both sabers anyways. The only real consideration here is potentially dropping Pulse to pickup the additional 1 second root on Force Leap from Stagger. But in group PvP you are fairly likely to get hit by something random, so I wouldn’t consider it too much.

Combat Vs Watchman Vs Focus: So, which is best? Well it really depends. Watchman generate centering faster, has a much better Zen and really, really hurts when played optimally. It’s also the healer killing spec with the 6s interrupt and 0m range force leap if you go that route. That said, it is INCREDIBLY focus intensive and difficult to play optimally. You need to have the focus for Merc slash and Overload Saber when they come off CD, and you need to have focus left over after that for your interrupt (Fortunately, the way Focused Slash skill works helps alleviate Merc Slash). Watchman requires you to really be on top of 4 short term CDs and your focus to really put its hurt out. The hard part about this is even when your doing it right, it can often feel like your not since you don’t get very many big numbers :P. Spending focus on Overload Saber also makes it harder to visibly see the damage you are getting out of that focus spent. Rest assured however, that while you don’t get chunks out of health bars, you are pretty rapidly draining them when done right. As far as the PvP utility you get from it, the decreased CD on leap is quite awesome, and reduced cd on kick is AMAZING for killing any sort of ranged player. Oh, and some self/group healing from your dot crits!

Combat is much less focus intensive and simply revolves around a nice easy to use 9s cd Blade Storm and 15s cd Precision Slash to buff your next 4 attacks. The CD reduction on Zealous strike also helps with focus quite a bit. You also get two very solid PvP utility skills in Fleetfooted (Force camo breaks movement impairs) and displacement (3 sec immobilize on your 10m range crippling throw). You don’t stack centering nearly as much, but that’s not too terrible because your Zen skill is not nearly as great in Ataru form anyway :P. The damage from here is still great and comes out nice and fast. Its also delivered in a satisfying way as you see plenty of big numbers floating around.

Focus if fun :P. You can burst quite hard and anything that is squishy or undergeared is gonna die to your main combo. My sweep typically hits for 3.5k+. Slash actually becomes a decent damage dealer too with the crit, armor pen and extra damage on it. The worst part is that you will be tempted to force leap in a lot more than you should, remember to save it as you’ll get knocked back or your target will get distance in plenty of cases before you need to sweep anyways. Also, sweep is pretty easy to miss with, it doesn’t do damage until the end and with all the KB and pulls and pushes its easy to miss your target Even though you have Zealous Leap this seems to be the least mobile spec. You will be using Zealous as a damage tool fairly often and it requires 3 focus so if you are not careful and get off target you won’t be able to use it as a catchup anyways.

So… let’s compare
Combat: 3 short term cds to keep track of for damage. Watchman: 4 short term cds to keep track of for damage (1 proc). Focus: 5 Short term cds to keep track of for damage, though these are pretty easy to manage by comparison as they flow quite well.
Combat: Relatively easy to manage your focus. Watchman: Very focus intensive and requires a lot of attention. Focus: Easy to manage focus, only time it becomes troublesome is during the Zealous leap part of your rotation as it can drain your focus a bit faster than you expect.
Combat: Root break on 45sec cds force camo and 3sec immobilize on your crippling throw. Watchman: Faster cd on kick and Force Leap. Focus: 10m Range slow, cheaper leg slash, Zealous Leap with speed boost.
Combat: Slow centering buildup and meh Zen. Watchman: Super fast centering build up and awesome Zen. Focus: Same buildup as Combat, however your Zen is quite nice, awesome when there are multiple enemies and still nice even on one
Combat: Visibly bursty damage on short cd. Watchman: Consistent damage output that rapidly drains health bars. Focus: Burst damage on short cd, little more effort to setup then combat but hits like a truck.

So, watchman is harder, but better for killing healers and does do a little more damage in general as well as bringing the group utility of the heals and plenty of transcendence buffs. Combat is a lot easier to manage and is slightly better for sticking to targets and peeling and has more readily available burst. Focus is for pub stomping and lotsa fun :P. It’s not as good in group situations as it has less peel and utility then combat and not as good at 1v1 or healer killing as watchman.

It’s really up to personal choice, all 3 specs have their place and are great. A word of warning however, Watchman is very hard, I don’t care how good you are, it is A LOT to manage when combined with a PvP fight where you need to be keeping track of multiple targets, what they are doing, what they are going to do and what your friends are doing on top of everything about YOU. If you can’t do the Watchman rotation perfectly in PvE, you will not do well with it in PvP. And I don’t care how much damage you do if you tunnel vision and focus only on what you are doing, you will not succeed in any PvP that is played at a high level by doing that.

Using the focus frame:

The ui in SWTOR is a bit lacking, but at least it has a focus frame. The focus frame is a great tool in any instance where you are fighting more than one person. The default keyboard to set something as your focus frame is alt+f, change this to something comfortable. You will also need to change the modifier key for using an ability on your focus target, it defaults to the “end” key which is really terrible, what were they thinking? I setup mine for alt, but choose a modifier you are comfortable with, this could even be a mouse button. Unfortunately, it can’t be the one you are most comfortable with as I’m sure you already have keys bound with that modifier. The other thing you need to make sure is that any keybinds you have for skills you would use on a focus target aren’t bound with a modifier, as hitting two and the key will never be “easy”.

Once you have that setup we can get into actually using it. The first part is selecting your target. In team situations, there is typically some time when you see the enemy before both sides engage. Use this time to evaluate the opposition and choose your target and focus target.

There are a couple different uses for your focus target. The first is the obvious, target a person you will want to interrupt or stun or leap to on demand when you see them casting something you want to stop. Typically this is a healer. Now, being melee can make this difficult, so you will want your target to be someone that is going to be near that healer. Often times this will be fruitless, but it pays off often enough that its worth doing. It’s quite satisfying as kicking that healers heal while your on another target and then killing your target.

The second use is to have it as your second or secondary kill target. This way you can either instantly engage your next target, or in a team situation call for a target switch if the primary is getting healed too well. If everyone has the secondary on focus there is very little gap in the damage output :P.

The final use is just for keeping track of a threat. Again this is often a healer, but in this situation you aren’t really expecting to be interrupting your focus since he is going to be too far away. Typically in this situation I set my focus to a DPS Sorc or Sniper. Since we are simply a damage dealer there isn’t much we can do besides using it to call out an incoming CC. Something that’s pretty useful if you are getting focused though is to know if your focus is hitting you, and use force camo or guarded by the force when they have a big hit coming in (such as ambush from a sniper).

How to improve further:

Ok, so you’ve read this and can work towards applying it. But how can you take it further? How can you increase your skill faster? What can you do when everything I’ve covered is super obvious and seems basic to you? Well… lots of stuff!

1. Keep practicing, there will never be a point where you can just stop and not have your skills decay.
2. Gain understanding of other classes, you should at least know all of their CDs and how their mechanics work so that you can begin to anticipate them.
3. Duel players you know are good. This will improve your 1v1 skills against that class and allow you to predict opponents of said class much better.
4. Watch videos/streams of good players playing your class. Do your best to analyze and follow everything they do. Then you can take some of the tricks or tactics they employ and use them yourself.
5. Watch videos/streams of good players playing other classes. Again this goes back to knowing your enemy. Keep track of what they are doing and use that to help you anticipate other players of that class.
6. Ok this last one is probably the best. Record yourself and then watch and thoroughly analyze your play. There are so many decisions to be made every second. Look at situations that you feel you failed in, figure out what you could have done different. Look at situations you succeed in, and make sure you know exactly why you succeeded.

If you only do a couple, do #1, 2 and 6, in that order.

Conclusion:

So hopefully after wading through all of that you’ve learned something! But that only goes so far, as I said in the previous section, make sure you practice and work towards applying things you’ve learned.

Also, keep in mind I am not the best player in the world. If you disagree with anything I’ve said or suggested, or have your own tips/methods to offer, please do! I am more than happy to discuss things more in depth and encourage any (constructive) criticism.

Appendix A, PvP Gear:

PvP Gear in this game is pretty straight forwards right now. The difference between PvP gear and not PvP gear is the Expertise stat. This increases damage done to players, healing done to players and reduces damage taken from players. It is built into the gear itself and not. If you PvP while leveling, don’t bother with the PvP Gear as it does not have expertise.

There are two commendations you can get while leveling, Warzone and Mercenary. Warzone come from warzones. And Mercenary come from trading in those Warzones at a rate of 30 WZ for 10 Merc. So while leveling, be sure to convert your WZ commendations whenever you get near 1000.

Once you hit 50, you have access to dailies and weeklies, there are 2 dailies and 2 weeklies, One is for WZ wins and the other for doing objectives on Ilum. The dailies award one Champion bag, weelkies award 3, and you can buy 1 for 200 WZ and 200 Merc commendations (800 WZ total to convert and have 200 left). In the bags you get either a token for Champion gear and 1 Centurion token, or 3 Centurion tokens. The drop rate seems to be around 1 in 5-8 for gear. So its luck based, have fun with that :P.

Something to note is that once you get enough gear and start getting duplicate Champion items, you can remove the Mod and Enhancement out of the duplicate you got and put them in some other gear. You dont get Expertise this way, but you do get the stats from those level 56 purple slots :P.

Our set bonuses are:
2 Piece: Decreases Cool Down of Guarded by the Force by 15 seconds. Pretty useful, you will usually end up using this lots :P.
4 Piece: Increase range of Dispatch by 5 meters, making it 15. 15 is faaaaar and is quite nice.

Appendix B, Keybinds:

ESDF for movement:
E: Forwards
D: Back
S: Strafe Left
F: Strafe Right

Then my main keys are (in this order): R, A, G, T, 3, Y, Q, W, Z, C, V, B, and shift modifiers. Also, for watchmen I have the middle of my top bar arranged with: Merciless Slash, Cauterize, Zealous Strike, Overload Saber, Force Leap so I can easily see all the CDS on them at a glance. I also have moves that are similar/make sense together on similar binds. For example, strike is R and Zealous Strike is Shift+R. Force leap is T and Overload Saber is Shift+T so I can hit it easily in sequence. Here is my full list of keybinds, mostly unorganized:

1: Force Camoflauge
2: Cyclone Slash
3: Merciless Slash
Shift+3: Master Strike
4: Pacify
6: Awe:
A: Slash
G: Cauterize
Q: Rebuke
Shift+Q: Saber ward
W: Crippling throw
Shift+W: Riposte
R: Strike
Shift+R: Zealous Strike
T: Force Leap
Shift+T: Overload Saber
Y: Dispatch
Z: Guarded by the Force
Shift+A: Zen
Alt+A: Transendence
V: Force Stasis
Shift+V: CC Grenade
C: Leg Slash
Shift+C: Disable Droid
B: Blade Storm
Middle Mouse: Inspiration
H: Valorous Call
X: Sprint
Shift+X: Mount
Shift+Mouse Scroll Up: Relic 1
Shift+Mouse Scroll Down: Relic 2
Alt+Mouse Scroll Up: PVP Stim
Alt+Mouse Scroll Down: PVP Med Pack
Mouse 4: Force Kick
Mouse 5: Throw Huttball
Ctrl+1: Shii-cho form
Ctrl+2: Juyo form
Shift+H: Call on the force

Thanks for reading!