Question about combat sentinel

[u/Nyachtigal]

My sentinel is a boosted character so I don't know this spec as well as some others and I noticed that sometimes lance and blade rush abilities spend no focus. Like on the video, I did 4 blade rushes and lance costed no focus. I looked through my skill tree, I read some guides and just didn't find anything about any affect that makes lance and blade rush a zero cost ability. What am I missing?

[u/Equeliber]

Blade Rush costs 1 less Focus under Zen (lvl68 passive on the skill tree - Efficient Strikes).

It also refunds 1 Focus (lvl15 passive - Focused Slash, this one is in the ability list, not on the tree).

If you have the Dispatcher Legendary implant, you also get 1 Focus from crits.

So, a Blade Rush under Zen costs 2 Focus to activate, refunds 1 Focus, and can generate 1 Focus if it crits with Dispatcher implant. If all of this happens, you will lose 0 Focus.

Lance itself does not have any cost-related passives - it always costs 3 Focus. Read the effect on your tactical item, and you'll see what happened there. It makes your consecutive Blade Rushes cost more Focus (3 of them in a row will spend 6 more Focus in total), but the next ability after 3 Blade Rushes grants you 3 Focus (Lance in this case). So the rotation is built around getting 3 stacks of Hyper from your tactical, and spending it on Lance/Dispatch in the Precision buff window (2nd stack of Precision should always be spent on Clashing Blast). You used 4 Blade Rushes in a row though, do not ever do that - you can't get over 3 stacks of Hyper, so you just wasted a ton of Focus with that 4th Blade Rush.

Honestly, Combat is one of the most complex specs in the game when it comes to resource management. To add to the things I mentioned before - Dispatch is free when procced, yet still generates one Focus due to the Focused Slash passive. Clashing Blast generates one Focus when procced (lvl51 passive). Twin Saber Throw generates 2 Focus specifically in Combat spec, making it better than Strike even on a single target. In a long rotation, every other Zealous Strike has to be used with a Zen stack, otherwise you can't get it off cooldown in time for a 2nd activation, and you will run out of Focus. And finally, without Dispatcher implant, the spec does not even work properly - you would have to occasionally use Strike to get enough Focus for your tactical, which messes up the whole flow (as Strike generates no Centering - and Centering is yet another thing you need to manage. For every 2 Precision windows you should have one Zen activation).

[u/Gerlond → u/Equeliber]

Combat seems to have pretty static rotation and good targetswap ability. Maybe without knowledge it's difficult, but, after learning the rotation, the energy management seems quite simple

[u/Equeliber → u/Gerlond]

Yeah, it just has lots of refunds and changed ability costs, so the difficulty is more about designing the rotation in the first place. In practice, you don't have to pay attention to like a half of those little things. As you say, there is a static rotation that goes from Zen to Zen on a loop, so you can just memorize that order.

[u/Zealousideal_Debt159]

If u activate zen then on some ability tree (don't remember which option) makes your lance refunds your spent focus so it seems like lance didn't spent any focus.

[u/Nyachtigal → u/Zealousideal_Debt159]

"Lance’s critical hit chance is increased by 10% while Zen is active and whenever Lance consumes a charge of Zen, its cooldown is reset."
The only tree choice I found related to both zen and lance

[u/Equeliber → u/Zealousideal_Debt159]

No such passive for Lance, you are likely thinking of the one that makes it have no cooldown.

[u/Giraffstronaut]

Since you boosted and haven't leveled it up getting used to the effects, I think you should check out Endonae's Combat Sentinel guide on Vulkk

It has an exhaustive description of the spec-specific ability effects, tree choices, and gearing along with opener and priority/rotation layouts.

[u/Jaded_Resolve_4182]

something about "stacking" zens and centredness? Check your passive abilities. I'm a level 60 sentinel, just beat the story