Heya guys!! Welcome to the Watchman/Annihilation Leveling Guide for the Jedi Knight Sentinel & Sith Warrior Marauder. The goal is to expound upon multiple builds while leveling your character depending on your predilections towards Flashpoints, Warzones, and Questing.
For the TLDR crowd you can skip down below to get to the Talent Build section.
Note: Post last updated 1/6/2012
Personal Preference
It is important to remember that while leveling up your character you should never feel pressured to follow specific cookie cutter builds if you do not want to. While there are stronger arguments for such behavior in top end content, leveling should be about fun more than anything else. If you see something you want and everyone tells you not to take it, then take it. You can always respec later.
Talent Calculators
There are two very good options available for your use at both Torhead and DB Darth Hater. I find I swap back and forth between their sites for every day use as their customizations vary from area to area.
It should be noted that by spending 31 points into Watchman/Annihilation 8 points worth of talents will not be taken. You will have to make more relevant sacrifices in this tree.
Watchman/Annihilation Talents
Talents are fully listed for cross faction purposes in case you are not familiar with every name.
Tier 1 Watchman/Annihilation
Tier 2 Watchman/Annihilation
- Juyo Mastery / Juyo Mastery
- Inflammation / Sleeping Wound
- Merciless Zeal / Hungering – when combined with Zen & Juyo Form each tick will heal for 3%
Tier 3 Watchman/Annihilation
Tier 4 Watchman/Annihilation
- Valor / Short Fuse
- Watchguard / Subjugation
- Repelling Blows / Deep Wound
- Close Quarters / Close Quarters – this makes Force Leap part of your melee priority system
Tier 5 Watchman/Annihilation
Tier 6 Watchman/Annihilation
Tier 7 Watchman/Annihilation
Talent Builds
Level 20:
PvE: 11/0/0
As you will rarely use Riposte (if ever), Recompense is a useless talent. Inflammation is a PvP talent so you skip this one too.
PvP: 11/0/0
You are forced into a meaningful sacrifice the moment you reach the 2nd tier of talents. Juyo Mastery is required for Searing Saber, so this becomes an automatic purchase. From there you must decide between either Inflammation or Merciless Zeal, which may not be an easy call to make.
While having a 2nd slow is invaluable you need to be aware that you have no self healing in combat. Zen grants you a 100% crit chance on your next 6 dot ticks, which translates into a 18% heal over 4 – 6 seconds roughly. Personally I recommend Merciless Zeal.
Level 30:
PvE: 21/0/0
Watchguard is the only sacrifice that you have to make here, which is simple as this talent is directed at PvP.
PvP: 21/0/0
Force Leap becomes usable in melee range with Close Quarters, and Blurred Speed makes it usable only that much more often. This is one of the core spec combos as it gives you an additional melee range rage generator and a melee range immobilize as well.
Watchguard is the only problem that you run into because against a character with heavy casts this becomes an invaluable tool. The caveat however is that this has a limited application against only a percentage of your opponents while the other talents are always effective.
Level 40:
PvE: 31/0/0
While Focused Pursuit is strong, it doesn’t stack up to Force Fade and having an emergency button in case something goes horribly wrong. Outside of that one decision everything else is a straight forward pick.
If you followed the PvE build to the letter you will have lost out on on the following talents:
PvP: 31/0/0
While Focused Pursuit is strong, it doesn’t stack up to Force Fade and having an emergency button in case something goes horribly wrong. Especially when you consider the ability to run through Fire and Acid in Huttball. Outside of that one decision everything else is a straight forward pick.
If you followed the PvP build to the letter you will have lost out on on the following talents:
Special Notation
At this point you may have noticed that the PvE and PvP specs are identical, which is decidedly odd imo. I did go back and check on changing something, but outside of listing viable alternatives these specs are at their strongest as they stand.
Level 50:
PvE: 31/3/7
I don’t have my definitive post on Annihilation/Watchman done yet, however you can reference this post: Entry level Annihilation/Watchman DPR/F and Priority Systems. Long story short you don’t use Merciless Slash. Instead you use Slash. Due to this you invest into Focus for Swift Slash. From there the last 3 points will probably give you the most dps from Dual Wield Mastery.
PvP: 31/3/7
While Merciless Slash may not be the most efficient dpr (damage per rage) ability it still does amazing burst for PvP. So while you still want to pick up Swift Slash, don’t forget to use Merciless Slash while PvP’ing. Regarding Insight and Stagger, I have not sat down and tracked all of the “force” abilities yet (force attacks do yellow damage), so swapping 2 points into Stagger may be the better option.
Defensive Forms is a must buy due the fact that Defensive Forms combined with Valor allows you to generate 30 stacks of Centering in under 15 seconds when attacking and being attacked at the same time. As to that last point, I put it into Dual Wield Mastery though I imagine you could put it elsewhere if you wanted.
Level 50 Respec
Please do not forget, these are LEVELING SPECS. While they may not drastically deviate from an end game spec, they can/may deviate enough to warrant a respec at 50 once you begin to tackle end game content. Please keep that in mind.
If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or track me down through my Contact page.
-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…
Not convinced about Insight; as far as I can see we have all of two? Force abilities. Is there some sort of evidence that our heal ticks from dots are considered “force powers” that would be affected? I think the extra hit is more effective in nearly every way.
Jermz if you saw the recent posts on the site you would have seen that I denoted yellow damage = force, white damage = non-force. Also I said I will be updating the guides, etc… Previously there was no known way to identify what constituted a force attack, so I simply “assumed” until I found out how to tell. Which, yellow = force. This guide will be updated within the next few days as I just respeced to Annihilation yesterday.
Guide updated 1/6/2012