This is something that I've wanted to post for a good few months or so – this has been kicking around as part of a draft post focusing on the "goods, the bads, and the eeehhhhhs" of 7.0 for quite some time now – and I felt it was about time to finally kick it into life somewhat.
This was definitely not inspired by a recent post on Shin's blog.
Nope.
... okay, it was.
~~~
When 7.0 was announced almost a year ago, the big thing they were announcing as this expansion’s core updates was the reformatting of advanced classes into combat styles. Gone would be the days of a trooper being a commando or a vanguard exclusively; now that trooper could be any one of the eight tech styles and have the option to run with a second combat style to boot! Furthermore, Force characters whose alignment swung the opposite way to their supposed nature could adopt either 'dark' or 'light' combat styles.
While this opened the potential for dark Jedi and Imperial
commandos – two requests which had been made occasionally throughout the years but
gradually began to die as the game got older – at long last, my reaction to
them was muted. Sure, it would be fun to see some extra variety about, and I could
imagine that many people would enjoy playing their favourite class stories
again free from being forced to pick between classes they might not enjoy.
As far as I was concerned, this system didn’t hold much
initial appeal. Would I make use of it? If I was forced to, certainly, but I
was convinced that there wasn’t anything there for me to make that much use of.
Then I thought of something: since I had been finding powertech
/ vanguard relatively clunky, why not experiment? I wanted to keep their weapon aesthetics intact (i.e. one wielding a rifle, the other a pistol), since that's always important to me, but didn't particularly want to make Jenn the trooper a sniper (hah!), nor did I want to make Phirella the hunter a gunslinger because I didn't feel either character suits the role of ranged DPS. Additionally, Phirella only has one eye, so she probably wouldn't have the depth perception required to be a gunslinger in the first place...
To provide some additional context here, I tend to run with a very
tight stable of alts. I like to think of my characters as the ‘definitive’ character
for their class, just so I have a face and a name to put to the Barsen’thor or
the Empire’s Wrath. While I have come up with my own personal stories for
several of my characters, their in-game personae would still take priority for
convenience. As such, for the longest while – much to the bafflement of several members of my guild – I only kept eight characters in my roster.
As such, while I have rolled a few scoundrels over the years, no other smuggler would have lasted long: Cal, my longest-serving smuggler, has been irreplaceable for a long time due to her being my raiding main across several expansions. The same is true of operatives conflicting with my longest-serving agent, Pip. Additionally, outside of guardian, melee DPS just wasn’t my thing for many years.
Yet now, here was a golden opportunity to add operative and
scoundrel to my character roster without adding any new characters and
upsetting the balance! Figuring it was at least worth a shot, having grown to like other melee specs over the years, testing these
classes formed a considerable part of the months I spent playing on the PTS.
I’m happy to say that I consider the “Operative Experiment”
a success. It seems Jenn and Phirella are forever destined to be deemed my "experimental" characters...
This wasn’t all, however. When the rework for sage was unveiled,
I immediately fell in love with the changes that were being brought in for
balance. Notably, we would be getting what seemed to be decent burst potential
and – this is the best part – we could also spec our Force in Balance to be
single-target! No longer would fights like Toth / Zorn, Firebrand /
Stormcaller, Terror from Beyond, and Revan be the bane of the balance sage!
Combined with a massive misinterpretation of BioWare’s
stated intent for content difficulty, I was absolutely convinced that this
would be the patch for balance. To some extent, the numbers on StarParse do reflect
that belief; it’s in its best position in the charts for years. As a result, I made
the move to hang up my guns with Cal – something I had been wanting to do for
some time (more on this later) – and run with my consular Vihala as my main.
Again, this is something that I had wanted to do for some
time, so this was a lot of biases coinciding.
This meant that I also resolved to spec sage as the second combat
style for my knight Miora, since at least that way I would have two versions of
my main spec available to help with the inevitable repeat runs of the operation
content that we could do while helping gear ourselves up.
However,… I also don’t feel all that comfortable with my
knight even being a sage. Much like gunslinger not suiting my hunter, I just
don’t feel it suits her character as I have envisioned it. She’s moderately
strong in the Force, but not enough to wield it with the offensive potential
enjoyed by a sage!
Conversely, I feel that my consular really does suit the
guardian combat style well as an option. In my ‘headcanon’, as it were, my
knight and consular are master and apprentice, so it does make some sense for Vihala
to have picked up some of Miora’s combat moves even if she’s not (in-universe)
as adept in swordsmanship as her master. Plus, the identical loot disciplines between
both characters have been useful for collecting first Force-Master and now
Pummeler’s armour sets from the various Nefra runs. Only two more pieces from
the latter set to go!
This brings me to my smuggler, Cal. Now, Cal’s been in a
very weird spot for years. She’s been my raiding main for several expansions
now, but I must confess… throughout that time she’s also been one of my least favourite characters in
the roster. Not because of who she is or things like that, but just because of
her class aesthetic as a gunslinger.
I generally do not like the aesthetic of dual-wielding
characters. Whether it be sabers or pistols, there’s just something about
dual-wielding that… I don’t want to say irks me, but I can’t think of anything
more appropriate. Indeed, even in her technical infancy, I had always viewed
her in my head as a scoundrel. I’m not much of a skilled artist, but I do have
images in my head of exactly how I would like several of my characters to be
represented if I could draw them well enough. Cal’s image is, and always has
been, of her with one pistol and one pistol only.
Yet for gameplay reasons, she’s always needed to have two. It’s always been a part of her class identity, but never really her identity. So now, courtesy of combat styles, she’s now essentially a scoundrel as her primary combat style, finally reflecting my internal perspective of her. Seriously, this 'little' thing was enough for me to just really dislike using Cal as a character, although there just was no practical alternative at the time.
Despite this delightful update to Cal's aesthetic, both of my scoundrel characters are also the ones
whose in-game stories are the ones I care for least (smugglers and hunters
absolutely do not belong in the position of “Commander”), and so they are also the
ones I have played the least throughout 7.0 thus far. Ah well.
Along with wanting to get more practice with the playstyle on a
different character – and continuing to have a hard time adjusting to the
removal of the cover bar (which I have since managed to get over!) – I added
operative to my agent as well. Generally, I feel that agent suits both
operative and sniper well, along with trooper, although I don’t think the
stealth mechanic makes nearly as much sense for the latter class as it does for
the former. The trooper isn't really the stealthy-stealthy type...
Of course, all things have to stop somewhere.
Neither of the remaining characters who existed before 7.0
have selected a second combat style yet. Without the extra nudge for needing a
second sorcerer, my warrior Ferok’ia is still only a juggernaut, while I don’t
see anything other than sorcerer working for my inquisitor, Vahnora. I don’t
see either working as an assassin, and it will be a scorching hot day on Hoth
before I roll a marauder or sentinel again.
So… unless I change my mind with those two, they shall
forever have that mission in their logs and will never adopt a second combat style.
~~~
I’m curious to see what happens with combat styles going
forwards. Obviously, the most exciting prospect from this change will be the
most realistic potential yet for BioWare to develop the first new playstyles
since the game’s inception.
Even then, while I shall of course check them out, I don’t
really believe that I’ll be investigating any of these potential new styles with
the intent to play them. I feel most of my characters are in a good spot right
now with the combat styles they have selected. The one exception being Jenn the
operative / vanguard trooper, but that’s only because with the ‘birth’ of my consular’s
younger sister, Athena the sniper / operative trooper, that really does clash
with my philosophy for only having one character of each class.
Yet, as I’ve expressed before, I also can’t get rid of Jenn
since that would mean that my hunter would be the only character with the powertech
/ vanguard playstyle left… and even though I would vastly prefer Phirella to
only be a scoundrel, I also don’t want to run the risk of one day getting back
into her original combat style and not have an equivalent character on the
opposite faction.
At the same time… until a couple of months ago, I was
convinced that my time rolling new characters was at its end. Yet now I have not
only a new trooper – providing a wonderful and unintentional bookend to
the first ten years of SWTOR by my first character in the second decade
of the game’s lifespan being the same base-class as my first ever character all
those years ago – but a new main character.
All this, not even two months after I had officially
conferred the title to her in-universe sister! Tch. Younger siblings, right?
Disclaimer: the author does not have any biological
siblings.
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