Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Update 3.0 Class Changes

BioWare Austin is preparing quite a bit of new content for us in their Shadow of Revan expansion pack and subsequent Game Update 3.0 patch for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and this includes a variety of character class refinements, enhancements, balance improvements, and general tweaking. To give us a better idea of what’s to come, they’ve been putting together previews on the official website, including a closer look at the Commando and Mercenary, Vanguard and Powertech, Shadow and Assassin, Sage and Sorcerer, and Sentinel and Marauder. A few choice excerpts:

Kinetic Combat Shadows get a new passive ability that increases shield absorption by 30% for 20 seconds when Force Potency is used. They also get another passive ability that increases the damage Whirling Blow deals to targets that have their accuracy reduced. In addition to these passives, Kinetic Combat Shadows also get the following new active ability:

Cascading Debris: Deals kinetic damage to the target and consumes 40 Force over the duration of the channel. Slows the movement speed of the target by 50% and stuns weak or standard enemies while channeled. Shares a cooldown with Telekinetic Throw.

Overall, the Kinetic Combat discipline should feel quite familiar to most Shadow tanks.

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Like Telekinetics Sages, Balance Sages also received two new passive and two new active abilities. Similar to the new Serenity Shadow passive, one of the new passive abilities allows Force in Balance to spread Weaken Mind and Sever Force periodic effects to the unaffected targets it damages, as long as one of the targets it damages is affected by those periodic effects. The other new passive ability increases the damage dealt by Rippling Force and causes Force Suppression to restore some Force each time a charge is consumed. The following abilities are the new actives for Balance Sages:

Force Serenity: Redistributes life from an enemy, dealing internal damage to the target and healing you for 50% of the damage dealt.
Vanquish: Vanquishes the target with mighty force, dealing kinetic damage initially, plus additional kinetic damage over 6 seconds. The target also becomes Vulnerable for 45 seconds, increasing the damage taken from Force attacks by 5%. Shares a cooldown with Mind Crush.

While Vanquish is shared with Serenity Shadows, Force Serenity differs from Serenity Strike in the following ways: the former has a 30 meter range, a 1.5 second activation time, and deals internal damage; while the latter has a 4 meter (or melee) range, activates instantly, and deals weapon damage.

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As mentioned in the previous section, Sentinels no longer have access to the Riposte ability. We made this change because the Sentinel disciplines did not really support the use of Riposte, and except for a few rare cases that involved dealing a little extra burst damage here or there, using Riposte was actually a poor use of focus for Sentinels.

Another change that Sentinels will notice is that Crippling Throw has been removed from the game, but the healing received debuff it provided has been rolled into Leg Slash, while the damage of Leg Slash has been adjusted to compensate for this addition. We made this change to streamline the Sentinel experience a bit because in most cases where you wanted to apply one of these debuffs, you also wanted to apply the other one. The final result of these changes is that Leg Slash is now far more about the debuffs it applies, rather than the small amount of damage it inflicts, to enemy targets.

In addition to these changes, all Sentinels will have access to the following two passive abilities:

Focused Slash: Slash, Cyclone Slash, Dispatch, Blade Rush, Merciless Slash, and Concentrated Slice refund 1 focus when used. In addition, Zealous Strike beats down its target for 45 seconds. Beat Down targets take 5% more damage from melee attacks.
Valor: Increases the amount of Centering built by 2 when activating abilities that consume focus, and reduces the cooldown of Valorous Call by 30 seconds.

Many Sentinels will also notice that Cauterize is missing. It is not gone, but it has moved into the Watchman discipline. While it provided a sustained damage boost for all Sentinels, it was never intended to be used by any discipline other than Watchman, from a thematic perspective (note the lack of skills in the other trees that improve Cauterize). But fear not, for Combat and Concentration Sentinels will make up for this resulting sustained damage loss with other new abilities that they have gained.