Balance Sage

Last Updated: 5/31/21

6.0 Impact on Discipline

Sage DPS received some interesting changes in 6.0. The overall class got a great set bonus in The Gathering Storm between making Force Speed apply a powerful damage buff to the next ability and increased uptime and duration of Mental Alacrity and an accompanying damage buff during its entire duration. The Gathering Storm is arguably one of the best overall set bonuses in 6.x to date.

Balance Sage as a discipline received a decent buff through the combination of a great class set bonus in The Gathering Storm and some useful tactical options. The discipline has suffered a bit in comparison to Telekinetic, which does nearly as much DPS while offering better burst and mobility. That said, buffs in 6.1 and beyond are intended to buff the discipline to an appropriate level so it should continue to be a solid sustained ranged DPS discipline and offer very good sustained AoE DPS through DoT spreading.

Please see my Gearing Guide for a detailed overview of gearing in 6.x in SWTOR. Please also see my Alacrity Guide for a much more in-depth look at alacrity.

For Balance Sage, I gear as follows:

• Set Bonus: Gathering Storm

• Tactical: Tempest of Rho (I usually keep Tempest of Rho even for heavy AoE since Balance has great AoE already)

• Amplifiers: Force Sensitivity

• Mods: Unlettered Lethal Mods

• Relics: Devastating Vengeance & Primeval Fatesealer (Serendipitous Assault & Focused Retribution for Dxun/PVP)

• Stim: Proficient

• Adrenal: Critical (Attack for Dxun only)

For Balance Sage, I allocate my tertiary stats as follows:

• Accuracy: 1,585 - 1,630 (anything outside this approximate range and I usually try to re-optimize by swapping around enhancements and augments)

• Alacrity: around 1,400 (at least 1,895 if the Zeal guild perk applies)

• Critical: all remaining tertiary points go into Critical

• Shield: None

• Absorb: None

1. Vanquish - DoT, should be instant due to procs from opener or previous rotation, debuffs target to take 5% more damage from Force attacks

2. Sever Force - refresh 1st DoT

3. Weaken Mind - refresh 2nd DoT

4. Force in Balance - AoE damage, self-heal, also buffs DoTs 15% damage for 15 DoT ticks

5. Force Serenity - high damage filler, self-heal

6. Telekinetic Throw - filler, completing a cast enables an instant cast of Disturbance or Vanquish

7. Disturbance - instant-cast via previous Telekinetic Throw

8. Telekinetic Throw - channel here to ensure we can instant cast Vanquish when it comes off cooldown

9. Telekinetic Throw - generally will need to clip channel per main rotation

(begin main rotation instant proc of Vanquish)

Please see the "Disturbance v. Telekinetic Throw" discussion below. Replacing Disturbance with extra Telekinetic Throw will be a DPS increase in most circumstances. However, I recommend learning this rotation first since it is more mobile before working on more advanced rotations.

I think it is important to note that this single target rotation is a bit inefficient but will probably be the best rotation for the majority of players due to its simplicity and ability to consistently execute it.

The inefficiency comes from us committing the first sin of a DoT class...refreshing our DoTs early?!?! Yes, most rotations for Balance refresh their DoTs based on the 15 second (before alacrity) cooldowns of Vanquish and Force in Balance rather than the 18 second (before alacrity) duration of Sever Force and Weaken Mind.

Why do most rotations do this? It is a pain to float DoTs through the Balance rotation due to Telekinetic Throw's 2 second / 1.5 GCD channel time. Balance is the only DoT class that has key abilities floating through the rotation along with multi-GCD channel abilities. Let's compare to other DoT classes:

• Vigilance Guardian - All rotation abilities are instant and consume 1 GCD, Plasma Brand floats through the rotation

• Watchman Sentinel - All rotation abilities are instant and consume 1 GCD, Force Melt floats

• Serenity Shadow - All rotation abilities are instant and consume 1 GCD, Force in Balance and Serenity Strike float

• Dirty Fighting Gunslinger - Wounding Shots is channeled but its cooldown is 1/3 that of your DoTs so you can refresh them without any conflict or overlap

• Saboteur Gunslinger - Speed Shot is channeled but it has the same cooldown as Incendiary Grenade, only minimally conflicts with Vital Shot and Shock Charge only has to be applied once with the Ruthless Interrogation tactical

• Ruffian Scoundrel - All rotation abilities are instant and consume 1 GCD, Sanguinary Shot floats

• Assault Specialist Commando - Full Auto is channeled but Incendiary Round and Serrated Bolt have the same cooldown so they do not conflict

• Plasmatech Vanguard - All rotation abilities are instant and consume 1 GCD

Is it possible to change the rotation to be more efficient? In theory this should be possible but in practice it has a lot of potential trade-offs and difficulties to execute properly. For example, any other rotation would involve more clipping of Telekinetic Throw that can be difficult to do properly and a significant DPS loss if done incorrectly. Vanquish and Force in Balance take higher priority generally than your DoTs, so most attempts to restructure the rotation would leave to occasionally not having DoTs active. Having a tiny bit of downtime on DoTs might be okay but leaves us open to forgetting to refresh them and destroying our rotation.

I've outlined some alternative approaches to the rotation below for your consideration. Please note that I recommend following the above rotation unless you are a highly advanced player or are really comfortable with much more complicated rotations. It is slightly sub-optimal particularly with regards to using Disturbance (see more below on that) and the early refresh on DoTs but it will still deal high damage, is easy to execute and can clear virtually all content in the game.

If refreshing DoTs early bothers you as much it does me, then you can try running Balance as a priority rotation. The idea here is to let our DoTs, Sever Force and Weaken Mind, float and only refresh them as they expire if possible. Vanquish and Force in Balance take higher priority.

The upside to this approach is that you will gain a few extra GCDs due to less frequent application of DoTs, which will enable more frequent channels of Telekinetic Throw. The downside is that you will occasionally have to either refresh them a bit early or let them drop off for a GCD due to Vanquish or Force in Balance coming off cooldown. I have also found this makes use of Telekinetic Throw difficult by requiring much more frequent clipping. As discussed in detail further below, there is some weird ability activation delay that commonly occurs that can make this priority rotation less efficient than it should be in theory.

My experience has been that playing Balance as a pure priority rotation discipline is roughly the same DPS due to the benefits and costs mostly offsetting or being within the margin of RNG on damage, crits and how often Tempest of Rho and Rippling Force trigger. I do not recommend it as being better than the fixed rotation above, so would generally recommend newer players run the fixed rotation and then try this out later to see if it fits better after you know the discipline well.

Ability Priority

1. Vanquish - Deals by far the most damage per activation, should always have the Presence of Mind buff that makes it instant, consume 50% less Force and deal 25% more damage.

2. Force in Balance - Deals less base damage than either DoT but it contributes more total damage after considering the Force Suppression charges it applies that buff 15 DoT damage ticks by 15%.

3. Sever Force - Deals slightly more damage than Weaken Mind and can be ticked by Tempest of Rho by Telekinetic Throw and Force Serenity. I suggest applying this DoT slightly early to avoid it falling off due if Vanquish or Force in Balance will come off cooldown when it needs to be refreshed.

4. Weaken Mind - Deals slightly less damage than Sever Force and cannot be ticked for extra damage. I suggest letting this one fall off for a GCD before re-applying if that is more convenient.

5. Force Serenity - Deals significantly more damage than Telekinetic Throw so we want it to use it on cooldown. Force Serenity can be used 1 GCD more often than Vanquish or Force in Balance, so it will tend to float until eventually it gets "stuck" behind either Vanquish or Force in Balance under this priority system.

6. Telekinetic Throw - Filler for most situations since it deals more damage after considering bonus damage from Tempest of Rho and Rippling Force.

7. Disturbance - Filler that should only be used with 4 stacks of Presence of Mind to make it instant and deal 25% more damage. I only recommend Disturbance when you need to DPS on the move or the target will die in a few seconds. Be really careful not to use Disturbance with Presence of Mind unless you know you will have time for a full Telekinetic Throw channel before Vanquish, as if not you will have to delay Vanquish which is a big DPS loss.

If this guide has not yet convinced you I am a bit crazy, this part may do the trick. Let’s assume that you (like me) really dislikes having to refresh DoTs early but finds the priority rotation a bit clunky. Can we design a rotation that follows the priority but leads to a fairly smooth rotation?

I think we mostly can by looking to Balance’s cousin, the Serenity Shadow. Serenity’s rotation is designed around refreshing its DoTs and letting Force in Balance and Serenity Strike float. Balance is the opposite where Vanquish and Force in Balance have a fixed location and both DoTs float.

The key to Serenity’s rotation is spacing the DoT application apart far enough to let abilities float without being delayed. We can do the same for Balance.

Prior to alacrity, Force in Balance and Vanquish have a 15 second / 10 GCD cooldown while Sever Force and Weaken Mind have a 18 second / 12 GCD duration. That means each DoT will float backward 2 spots in the 10 GCD rotation each block. As such, we can design a rotation where we let Vanquish and Force in Balance take GCDs #1 and #3 and then as long as we apply DoTs in even numbered GCDs then they can float and be refreshed as they expire without ever delaying Vanquish or Force in Balance.

This rotation design leads to 6 blocks that repeat until the DoTs get back to the same position. The major downsides to this rotation are the much higher complexity and blocks 2-4 involving a LOT of clipped Telekinetic Throws. That is pretty messy to do effectively.

I do not necessarily recommend this rotation as I have not had significantly better DPS with it than the base rotation. I do recommend considering it as a way of visualizing how your rotation would eventually look if you tried to avoid refreshing DoTs early. I think it can outperform the base rotation when played well and I think helps one understand how the abilities work even if not.

KEY NOTE - The numbering below is per ability activation. An unnumbered Telekinetic Throw represents the partial GCD for a full channel. A numbered Telekinetic Throw without an unnumbered Telekinetic Throw after it means the channel should be clipped by activating the next ability.

KEY NOTE #2 - I have outlined the use of Disturbance with Presence of Mind below to illustratively show how it would move around. As discussed elsewhere, I generally recommend replacing Disturbance with additional channeling of Telekinetic Throw due to the extra damage from Tempest of Rho and Rippling Force. I feel this rotation should replace Disturbance with Telekinetic Throw anytime doing so will avoid clipping Telekinetic Throw, but where only one GCD is available continue to use Disturbance. For example, the third block below goes Sever Force / Disturbance / Weaken Mind. I would suggest keeping that even if most of the time you avoid Disturbance.

Disturbance has long been a key ability in the Balance Sage rotation due to the Presence of Mind passive skill. Telekinetic Throw builds stacks of Presence of Mind each time it deals damage. A full channel of Telekinetic Throw deals damage 4 times and will build 4 stacks of Presence of Mind. When you have 4 stacks of Presence of Mind, you can instantly activate Disturbance or Vanquish and the ability costs 50% less Force and deals 25% more damage.

Historically the approach to Balance was to use one buffed Disturbance per rotation cycle then build another 4 Presence of Mind stacks to use Vanquish instantly when it came off cooldown. This rotation goal was complicated in 6.0 due to the Tempest of Rho tactical and Rippling Force passive skill.

Before we think about the other effects, let’s first compare Disturbance with the Presence of Mind buff and a full channel of Telekinetic Throw. The numbers quoted below are from some baseline parsing without using any cooldowns like raid buff, adrenal, Force Potency, Force Speed or Mental Alacrity. This was done so the “normal” damage by abilities could be compared without needing to worry about whether some were buffed more often than others, so are probably a bit low compared to a full-out parse.

Telekinetic Throw usually did around 16 - 17k damage per full channel prior to any critical bonus damage or bonus damage from tactical or passive skills. This damage was over a 1.87 second channel with alacrity just past the 1.4 second global cooldown breakpoint. So the DPS by Telekinetic Throw alone was around 8.6 - 9.1k.

Disturbance with Presence of Mind did around 16 - 17k damage per activation prior to any critical bonus damage. Disturbance is instant with Presence of Mind so consumes one 1.4 second global cooldown, which leads to DPS around 11.5 - 12.1k.

So Disturbance is the winner and we should always try to use a buffed one when we can without delaying Vanquish? Not so fast!

Rippling Force is a passive skill that gives Telekinetic Throw a 20% chance and Force Serenity a 60% chance to restore 2 Force and trigger some bonus damage. In my testing Rippling Force typically ticked for around 1.7 - 1.8k damage. A full channel of Telekinetic Throw deals damage 4 times so gets 4 rolls for bonus damage at a 20% probability. A quick analysis indicates it is around 60% likely we get at least one tick of Rippling Force per full channel and around 50% likely we get at least one tick per clipped channel. It is also possible we get really lucky and all ticks deal damage…

Tempest of Rho is a tactical item introduced in the 6.0 Onslaught update for Balance Sage and is the recommended tactical for all encounters except very high AoE DPS fights and possibly PVP. Tempest of Rho gives Telekinetic Throw a 50% chance and Disturbance a 100% chance each time they deal damage to tick Sever Force to deal damage. In my testing Tempest of Rho typically ticked for around 4.1k damage. A quick analysis indicates we should expect at least two ticks of Tempest of Rho on average per full channel of Telekinetic Throw and it is almost 94% likely we get at least one tick per full channel.

So let’s revisit the math. Disturbance still deals around 16-17k base damage plus a guaranteed tick of Tempest of Rho for 4k, which works out to a total of 20-21k damage over 1 GCD or a bit over 13k DPS before alacrity. Telekinetic Throw deals base damage of around 17k on the high end, plus it should average 0.9k damage from Rippling Force (assuming 1 tick every other channel) and 8.2k damage from Tempest of Rho (assuming 2 ticks every channel on average). Telekinetic Throw’s total damage contribution of 26.1k damage over a 1.87 second channel results in DPS of 14k DPS.

So our conclusion is that Telekinetic Throw should be a DPS gain over Disturbance given the extra ticks of damage from Tempest of Rho and Rippling Force. This is subject to RNG but absent terrible luck it should still be a DPS gain and could be a big DPS gain if you get lucky. This is supported by most top parses that only use Disturbance at the end of a parse if an instant cast can end the parse a second or so earlier than a channeled Telekinetic Throw.

The only exceptions to this analysis is that Disturbance with Presence of Mind can be activated instantly so can be used on the move. Many fights will require DPS on the move unexpectedly to move out of damage AoEs.

Telekinetic Throw normally has a 3 second / 2 GCD duration. The Psychic Projection passive skill causes Telekinetic Throw to channel 33% faster, leading to a 2 second / 1.33 GCD channel duration for Balance Sage.

Telekinetic Throw deals damage 4 times during its channel. I noticed the exact timing for some ticks of damage varies a bit but overall was fairly consistent. When I gear just enough alacrity to get a 1.4 second GCD, I had the following results for a 1.87 second channel of Telekinetic Throw:

• First tick @ 0.002 seconds (beginning of channel)

• Second tick @ 0.67-0.70 seconds (1.1 - 1.2 seconds left on the channel)

• Third tick @ 1.20-1.30 seconds (0.6 - 0.7 seconds left on the channel)

• Fourth tick @ 1.87 seconds (end of channel)

A common strategy for Balance Sage players is to clip Telekinetic Throw after the third tick of damage, since the rotation usually requires clipping to use Vanquish as it comes off cooldown.

An important observation from the above results is that a full GCD for these purposes was 1.4 seconds (or 0.4 - 0.5 seconds left on the channel), so we deal 3 of our 4 ticks of damage after one GCD and 4 out of 4 after 1.33 GCDs. Mathematically this should work out to the same damage whether we do a full channel or a clipped channel.

I tested clipping a fair bit and had some interesting results:

• You cannot clip Telekinetic Throw via re-activation of Telekinetic Throw. Whether spamming the button or trying to hit at the right moment, the ability queue loads the ability but will not interrupt the first channel.

• You can move to break a channel of Telekinetic Throw then channel again. This will always be a DPS loss due to the delay imposed by movement. The best I could consistently do with this strategy took the same time as a full channel of Telekinetic Throw only with just 3 ticks of damage.

• You can consistently clip Telekinetic Throw with another ability. It works most consistently with instant abilities, of which all Balance abilities are instant or become instant via procs except Force Serenity. Spamming the button is less consistent than simply hitting the ability key around 1 second into the channel, which let me semi-consistently clip the channel at 0.6-0.7 seconds and always get the first three ticks of Telekinetic Throw.

• Despite clipping Telekinetic Throw within 1 GCD, I consistently had some delay activating the next ability. Instead of 1.4 seconds from Telekinetic Throw to the next ability as I was hoping, it was usually 1.5 - 1.6 seconds. I suspect this there is a “mini-GCD” imposed from the last tick of Telekinetic Throw causing the delay.

• Even using full channels of Telekinetic Throw nonstop for a few minutes still caused some delays between ending one channel and beginning another channel. Despite my alacrity causing Telekinetic Throw to have a 1.87 second channel time, it was usually fairly close to 2.0 seconds. I noticed roughly similar results at various alacrity levels, so again I suspect there is a “mini-GCD” imposed from the last tick of damage from Telekinetic Throw, which is either the third tick happening at the end of a clipped channel or the fourth tick happening at the end of a full channel.

Sorry if that is not super helpful. The lesson I learned from playing the discipline and testing clipping in a few ways is that it is theoretically a DPS gain if you can do it right but it dramatically increases the difficulty and can even be a DPS loss if done poorly.

So my conclusion and belief thus far is that a perfectly clipped Telekinetic Throw is a slightly DPS gain over a full channel. However, I noticed some ability activation delays with both a clipped and full channel as discussed above. The delay was usually bigger with a clipped channel than a full channel. Thus I feel like trying to constantly clip Telekinetic Throw will be a DPS loss for most players in most circumstances. The only time clipping Telekinetic Throw will be a DPS increase is if it lets us use an ability closer to its cooldown, as is usually the case to align our rotation with the cooldowns of Vanquish and Force in Balance.

Balance Sage has really strong sustained AoE DPS. The discipline's DoTs tick pretty hard with the debuff applied by Force in Balance, which also spreads your DoTs and deals AoE damage.

The trick with Balance Sage is determining when it makes sense to use Forcequake for extra AoE DPS. Since Force in Balance is used rotationally, Balance will generate high sustained AoE DPS just by doing its regular single target rotation.

I rarely execute the above rotation outside a couple very high sustained AoE DPS encounters. In nearly all situations, I use the single target rotation and use Force in Balance to spread my DoTs and often throw in one Forcequake in place of Telekinetic Throw then go back to my single target rotation on my primary target.

The only situations where I would lean fully into AoE DPS per the above rotation, taking the utility to buff Forcequake and equipping Slow Mercy would be:

• Hive Queen in Veteran Mode if the group does not include other DoT spread classes. The DPS check in this fight is really a single target check to kill the Hive Queen before she starts spamming you with Berserkers, so I prefer to avoid AoE unless my group has so little AoE DPS that adds die too slowly and start overwhelming healers.

• Dxun Control Center (3rd encounter) in Veteran/Master Mode. There are a LOT of adds inside the control center and can be overwhelming in higher difficulties. Depending on group strategy and composition, you may need 1-2 DPS to focus moreso on AoE while others focus on single target to kill the big adds and droids. If so, this may be helpful.

• If I want to fluff damage on fights with regular adds, such as the above in Story Mode or a few other fights with lots of adds.

Normal Rotation (note that Telekinetic Throw is presented here by GCD so a full channel is 2 icons)

Rotation to DoT 2 targets

Rotation to DoT 3 targets

Please remember that applying DoTs to multiple targets reduces your uptime on your main target. Given that Telekinetic Throw will generally tick your Sever Force DoT extra times via the Tempest of Rho tactical, DoTing multiple targets is less of a DPS increase than before since you lose Tempest of Rho ticks in exchange for extra DoT ticks on another target.

DoTing 2 targets is nearly always sufficient and DoTing 3 targets should never really be necessary in my opinion. The only fight where it might be useful is DoTing 3 Trandoshans in Dxun, though that should be done very carefully. The upside to the 3 DoT rotation is that it is entirely mobile except for one full channel of Telekinetic Throw, so if used in Dxun could be helpful to kite Greus while keeping DoTs ticking on the other bosses.

Keep in mind also that the 3 DoT rotation will require a full channel of Telekinetic Throw at the end, where normally that channel would be clipped. A full channel will require slightly delaying Vanquish and Force in Balance, so again I do not really recommend it but list it here for completeness just in case you want to try it.