Posted by Shockum | 14 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should All Classes Be Able To Fill All Trinity Roles?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

One thing that’s always guided me towards my class of choice is what combat roles I could fill with it. I like options, and the more options you give me, the happier I am. In World of Warcraft I primarily played a Paladin and a Druid. With just a quick change in talents, I could go from healer to tank, or ranged to melee DPS. I didn’t like being tied to one role, and with these hybrids I didn’t have to be.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is taking it a step further. For the most part, (save high-end content) nearly every class will be able to fill more than one role ably. This allows the player to play what they want to play, and not roll an entire character for a specific for a role. Going back to the age-old MMO adage, take the player, not the class.

So the question is, do we want all the classes to be able to do everything? It might sound nice on paper, but doesn’t seem logical. Think of it this way: would you expect Darth Vader, knowing the kind of character he is, to heal you? Can you envision Han Solo tanking a Rancor while you shoot it in the ankles?

Where do you stand? Do you think all classes should be able to fill all three trinity roles? Or is it best to stick to the idea that classes have specific combat roles?

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Posted by Reedyn | 3 Comments

Halls Of Healing: Healing In The Sith Empire

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

Last week we dissected the healing advanced classes on the Galactic Republic side, this week we will take a closer look at the Sith Empire.

The advanced classes have been confirmed to be mirrored with the opposite side, however, it has not been confirmed how much mirrored they will be. Looking over the known abilities for each class you can see a pattern of abilities that are similar or identical to everything  but the name and animations however there’s some abilities that are entirely different. How BioWare will handle this will be very interesting, on one side you have the lore and story of each class and on the other pure balancing and gameplay mechanics. It’s going to be very difficult for them to balance the classes if they are entirely different on each side.

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Posted by Shockum | 21 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Have You Stuck To Your Guns (Or Lightsaber)?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

When Star Wars: The Old Republic was first announced, and you made the decision that you wanted to play, one of the first questions that had to be answered was, “What class should I play?”

There are some of us who need time to make the final decision, perhaps not knowing until the TOR is out and we’re sitting in front of the character creator. Players now had the chance to play classes that resemble characters we’ve come to know and love. Either way, it became a difficult decision.

However, there were some of us, like me, who knew from the get go what we intended to play. Enter the Sith Inquisitor. Being cunning, manipulative, and giving me the ability to shoot lightning was all I needed. I was hooked the moment I read about the class. It all seemed very Sith-like to me. I knew right away I was going to be a Sith. No offense to those of the Republic, but they just seemed to be too good.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wavered on my choice for awhile. Although I always knew I was going to be Empire, I was thinking of setting down a lightsaber for a pistol.

For a brief moment, I thought of Boba Fett and becoming a Bounty Hunter, who only wants to get the job done. I even flirted with the idea of being an Imperial Agent, reminiscent of Thrawn (I’d recommend picking up the trilogy if you are unaware of the name).

But when all was said and done, I could not lay down the neopixel lightsaber. In a way I was asking myself, “Do you really want to do this?” The answer, clearly, was no. Although I’m intending to play each class over the life of TOR and I’ll have a full character selection screen,  my first character will be my first choice.

What about you? Have you stuck to your guns, or lightsaber? Or has one of the other classes caught your eye?

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Posted by Reedyn | 37 Comments

Halls of Healing: Healing In The Galactic Republic

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

Since this is my first post I’ll start by introducing myself. I’m Reedyn, a new columnist here at Ask A Jedi and I will be covering the healing related topics. I’m also the chief-nerfherder of a healing community known as Force Heal and a general contributor over at R2-Db. If you want to get in touch or discuss anything feel free to send me a message to my twitter @Reedyn or just leave a comment below! I also want to specifically thank strawbeki for the artwork you can see in the banner above.

Healing in Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game that, similar to the many other MMORPGs out there, is built upon the traditional class trinity with the roles that we are so familiar with: the tank, the damage dealer and of course, the healer.  The healer’s job is to keep the group alive, while the tank holds aggro and the damage dealers kill the target. More or less.

To the majority of people, keeping the group alive consists of using skills that restore the health of your fellow players. This is how the vast majority of MMORPGs are built when it comes to healing, and it’s a concept that works. However, to the more advanced players, keeping the group alive involves much more than simply using your healing skills. It can involve using cooldowns on your group, reviving a party member back to life, crowd controlling mobs and even in some situations damage dealing and tanking.

For Star Wars: The Old Republic, every class has a wide variety of supportive abilities and damage dealing skills that don’t necessarily fit the mold of healers past. All of these things allow healing advanced classes to have a much more engaging playstyle than players may be accustomed to in previous games.

In this first article we will dissect the surface of the healing advanced classes of the Galactic Republic. Keep in mind, most of the data is missing and probably subject to change!

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Posted by ReDDoT | 12 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You View Advanced Classes As Full Classes?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

One of the longest-running discussions within the TOR community has been the difference between classes, advanced classes and specializations. Most “outsiders” are unaware that TOR’s advanced classes aren’t mere talent specs or minor cosmetic differences. Even during the show floor presentations yesterday at PAX, Lead End-game Designer Gabe Amatangelo described them very clearly: “advanced classes ARE the classes” he said. After introducing this concept to players new to the community,  typically they agree that the advanced classes essentially are separate classes sharing primarily a story, and beyond that just a few basic mechanics.

Still, there are holdouts that can’t seem to accept this idea. In all fairness, it’s not their fault either. BioWare dug a bit of its own whole here by labeling your character choice as a “class” during character creation, not to mention their wavering on the topic of wether or not you’d be able to “switch” your advanced class after you pick it at around level 10 in the game. Last we knew, you will be able to.

Personally, I view the advanced classes as truly separate classes. For example, let’s take the Jedi Consular class and examine the two potential options – Shadow and Sage. In terms of gameplay, Sage could be played as dedicated healer whereas Shadow could be played like a traditional rogue in other MMOs. The same versatility goes for other classes on both the Empire and the Republic sides. As you might expect from BioWare, they’ve defined their classes by their story. And it’s the advanced class system where the combat class really comes into focus.

So we want to know what do you think. Does TOR have 16 or 8 classes in total? What are you factoring into your decision? Let us know below!

 

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