STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™ Guide

SWtOR All Classes Gameplay Guide: How To Pick Your Combat Style By Class! for STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™

SWtOR All Classes Gameplay Guide: How To Pick Your Combat Style By Class!

Overview

Are you someone who prefers ranged attacks and heals? Or are you that in-your-face bring-it-to-ya melee brawler? Do you like sustained damage or burst? Well, this guide gives impressions of what you can do with each! Take a dip, don’t take it too seriously and let the fun begin! Intended for those who enjoy flavorful discussions of style.

How To Use This Guide

Imagine sitting in front of your first computer, and being told it has games.

“Games, you say?”

“Yes, Games” you are told. “The greatest game. Star Wars: the Old Republic. Where you can make anything, be anyone, evil or good and save the galaxy with eight different intertwined stories to make one grand epic tale of drama, conquest, betrayal, hatred, love, revenge, truth and lies.”

“Okay, but how do I know if I’m going to like it or not? It sounds like a lot and I want a good first impression right?”

“Well, let me start with this…”

Telling it like it really is: Combat Feels

I have 4 pages of characters at level 75 I enjoy how they feel and play. I keep coming back to my guardian/juggernauts though, mostly tanks. I’ll explain why in a minute.

First, BioWare had some pillars to build their game upon. Story and Lore; Exploration and World; Gameplay and Agency; Epic Grand investment in the larger theme; Progression and development of the player through the proxy character.

I summarized drastically, but essentially these are it. Combat falls under Gameplay and Agency, the visceral grip the screen pulls you into and makes you want to move on to the next group of badguys, the next challenge, the next room, the next mission, the next planet, the next character.

I keep coming back to my Guardians and Juggernauts. They have possibly the biggest hitting feel, from the hilt-strike to the backhand-smack, the smash, the force-scream, the Suspension, the push, the leap, the spinning strike (which used to have a truly memorable Master Strike… RIP). If you want meat to chew, combat that has you by the heart and throat and slams you against the wall, this IS IT. Guardian and Juggernaut is the most crushing stompy gameplay since AT-ATs boomed echoingly through the Hoth snow. And they are FAST, with blitzing spinning rushes and multiple leaps, throwing Light Sabers like Dare-Devil at a Pinata party.

Sorry for the dramatic poetry! But it does feel filingly chunky to play, and I love it.

Now. I need to mention this, because I see it so few other places in other games.

This game has stealthy healers.

Yes. You can roll around like Sonic the Kolto Hedghog immune to effects as you flip around healing other people and occasionally blasting or stabbing your enemies, or interrupting or stunning them instead as you need. Additionally, you have fast-recurring cleanses which take away nastybad damage-over-time effects while putting tasty healing-over-time effects on friends. You can even toss some clouds of evil on your baddies to make them regret staying in one place. The agent/smuggler healer class is amazingly effective and extremely hard to kill when played right. The Medic Ninja with Poison Knives, you have a job to do and are able to occasionally do a little of someone else’s job too for fun. If you like fast scramble motion and praise from friends who watch you heal them while occasionally you steal a kill with a backstab, Smuggler/Agent healer is your jam. You have a little longer range with your interrupt and your acid dart keeps OTHER stealthers out of stealth for a second or so.

OK, I spoke about love and backstabs and heals and stealth so far. But do you like giving heart-attacks? Yes, yes you do like giving people heart attacks. You enjoy being invisible until you appear out of nowhere, stun the enemy and begin turning their character into chunks of meat in a few short seconds with long dual-bladed pikes of hot death. That is the assassin and shadow damage class. You are death who has their finger on the “now” button. You wait until they are precisely out of defenses and then shadow-stride from across the map into their shadow and begin disembowling their organs. Combine that with a few damage-over-time attacks to keep THEM out of stealth and begging for a cleanse, you can leap back into invisibility again during combat only to rush them again when their defenses fade after being used in a panic. You are the reason the enemy always looks behind them in fear for no reason, just in case, because they remember the last time they were caught alone with you.

“OK sounds fun, but I want them to die before they ever get near me” you say. Ah, a player of culture, I see. Snipers and Gunslingers have a perfect defense against rolling and leaping ass-ass-ins and thuggernuts. You are a turret of invulnerable death which is a tank without a taunt, a howitzer of long-range pulverization. Whether damage-over-time or burst damage, you are the big “NO” sign to leaps and rushes and yet you slow them, you blow holes in them, you open wounds in them for your buddies to take advantage of be it hellfire or toxic acid. Oh here they come, they waited until my defense fell away? That’s cool since they are leaping, I am also rolling or holo-relocating away to restore my rush immunity and begin the cycle of evil again. Ah, and your area-effect damage dealing is arguably, if built right, the best in the game as baddies in groups are shredded and fried like psychotic gourmet. Bombs, you like bombs? We got bombs. You throw bombs on them and then watch them explode in fireworks-display of doomthunder.

Well wait, mercs and troopers have AOEs too I must say! I love my mercs and troopers who dish out great Area-effect crushing attacks and excellent burst attacks while healing and shielding and running around like turkeys with no heads. I wear heavy armor, have two bubble shields, can heal myself and others either as needed or as a backup contingency, can distract and move while immune to stuns, look cool, act badass, and work best in teams. This makes the Troopers and Mercenaries the on-and-off again favorite to play and to be killed due to your ability to be the Swiss Army Knife of the field. You can revive, heal, bomb, nuke, blast, fry, stun, and push like a childish god if you learn to time your defenses right. This makes them the biggest targets to destroy on the field, be warned, the ultimate nuisance class. Merc and Trooper HEALERS are excellent and reliable and very visible. Imagine toy robots scurrying around the floor yelling “DANGER WILL ROBINSON” with arms flailing and damage and healing clouds everywhere, and you have the Merc and Trooper. It’s hilariously fun but you must be aware you look insane going back and forth from being a turret to being a running screaming ball of fire.

So, let’s talk about the kings and queens of the board. Yes, the sorcs and sages. I’m sorry, I mean the glass cannons. You speed around the map like a dream only to stand and deliver like a death-star on display. No stealth here. No health here. No armor here. But that’s ok, as they notice you and start to focus you they are already withering, dying, frying, and crying as you unleash hell from the sky and earth upon them. A great team-pleaser, you can heal yourself and others and revive your friends as they melee and dive, roll and troll while in the corners you rain down curtains of lightning and rock their world beneath them. Even more a target than Mercs/Troopers sometimes, you are the wizards, the witches, the Gandalf and the Emperor cackling like mad gods as you watch them scatter from your power. They retaliate, as they should, only to find you are held in a immune stasis-bubble, gathering your power anew as they either out-wait your defense or try to heal up before you spring your new assault. Sages and Sorcerers are bi-polar tacticians who love playing with toys before breaking them.
Tanks look fun. They are hard to kill, right? They distract the enemy and keep you from the objective and away from their friends, right? Yes, yes, but also tanks are immortal trolls who never let you breathe or get a break and never seem to die. They pressure and push, lift and stun, leap and throw damage like candy. What they lack in damage (don’t be fooled, some of the new tacticals make them deadly and a properly statted tank is brutal to behold to the unwary) they make up by reflecting damage back on you and coming back from the brink of death only to shove their weapon of class back up your nose.

A squad of PVP healers and tanks is simply cruel and also beautiful to behold when done well. These teams are the most player-versus-player endurance game possible as they wear down the other players’ endurance and mind since time is on their side. Bring snacks; these types of bouts take forever and are more about timing and tactics than raw burst damage.

Marauders and Sentinels are trash.

Sentinels and Marauders: Special Notes

They take a lot of skill to do well. They have lots of resource management and only do well in PVP for experts in the class. They wear less armor and have little comeback power under surprise circumstances. They do best in PVE solo situations with their pocket healer. In groups they tend to go big and go hard and stealth out of trouble they can’t handle and hide while the rest of the team deals with two or three groups pulled.

They’re great in solo PVE. They don’t teach you how to play in team scenarios, though, and tend to make you focus on your energy rather than your surroundings. And in teams when dual saber throw brings in twenty baddies and they stealth out when nearly dead for the rest of the team to try to mop up or wipe out, they make no friends.

Sents and Maras require precision, care, and practice and a very good knowledge of their environment but they look great and feel great to play.

Additionally they lost Force Push and Stun Droid abilities which made them even more helpful.

In PVE Raids, where you are carefully herded by wise people in guilds, they can be amazing and very helpful at certain times with their abilities. But in Eternity Vault they have a cool spec which breaks the boss fight for Infernal Council makes it unwinnable if they have chosen that damage-over-time combat specialization (Annihilation / Watchman). More notes on this in this guide here: [link]

In pug groups, they are fast, hyper, aggressive, and try to tank when they cannot keep aggro. When they get aggro, they get in trouble in their medium armor and short DCDs and stealth out of the way for everyone else to scramble from.

Skilled mara and sent players shine like the sun. Average or new players quickly wipe pug groups and risk being shunned.

Here’s an example. When KOTET was out and we were smashing the content, my three marauder buddies and I would all run into veteran Star Fortresses and go hard and wreck the place, rotating our cooldowns and getting all the achievements with evil sounding sabers. We had a blast, 4 marauder mayhem. We called it the Hate Machine.

Had we had a different class join us as the fourth, they would have been left behind constantly to catch up or die.

Sents and Maras play solo in group content and it shows, with of course some rare exceptions.

Please be the exception. Be an amazing sent or mara. Show the rest how to be great. Be a team player and know they work in teams.

Thank you.

My “Jon Sno” sentinel dancing with his love!

Thank You For Reading!

I tried to keep this as lively and interesting as possible without going into any math or breakdowns of builds. That’s for the number crunchers and stats twinks who need to have the best of everything to have fun.

I want you the player to have as much fun just being that class and feeling like you’re actually there in the game, living the Star Wars Old Republic dream, whether it’s healing that nearly-dead last team-mate or standing with the fifteen other buddies for that screenshot as you finally finish that operation/raid.

See you on the fleets and in the missions, adventurers!

May the Force Be With You, and May The Force Always Serve You Well.

^^ Just a little fun with my Assassin… being assassinated by a Lucky Dread Rancor XD

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