#swtor 7.0.2

[thebreadtree]

This is a crime

[thebmatt]

As you guys know, while there’s a bit of a lull in content in XIV for me (and I’m not quite up for finishing the EW MSQ on Fearless just yet, the Final Days are about to start for her and I’m not emotionally up for handling that at the moment), I decided to try out SWTOR again since there’s a lot of story I hadn’t seen in there yet. Plus it was fun to go through the thought exercise of picking a second combat spec for everyone, and then actually implementing that (organizing hotbars, picking talents, and so on).

For the ol’ main here, Beskad, I opted to go Sniper. Even before Mandalorian made sniper rifle wielding Mandos cool, I had long wanted to be a sniper rifle-wielding Mandalorian, because sniper rifles have always been cool looking. And let me tell you, I think the rifle the gave me when I chose the spec might be one of my favorite rifle models in the game. That just looks pretty.

I did choose Marksmanship for his spec, because I’ve long preferred to go with direct/burst damage specs in SWTOR over DoT-based ones. I primarily play solo if at all possible, just playing through the story, doing the required Flashpoints in solo mode, I don’t really engage much with the SWTOR community, because frankly they’re not great for the most part. And for solo stuff, I’ve always been under the impression that direct damage specs generally get through mobs faster than waiting for DoT ticks to take them down. Is that always true? Certainly not, i fully admit it’s a prejudice I have in SWTOR that may not actually be based in reality. It’s just an inclination I have that leads me to normally pick the direct damage specs when making a new character, or choosing a second combat style in this case. I mean, for his main spec, I’ve been Arsenal on him since vanilla.

Rest of the story’s under the cut since this is getting a bit long

All that said, I came across this video, a tier listing for SWTOR”s specs as of 7.0.2, which I believe is the current patch as of publishing this post. Now, normally I take tier lists with massive grains of salt, but a few factors lead me to believe this one might be worth viewing.

To start, I don’t know SWTOR’s specs super well as I might, say, XIV’s jobs. I also don’t have a good sense for how well BioWare does with spec balance like I do for XIV.

The content creator for this video has put out how-to guides for all of the specs. I watched a few of them when adding second combat styles to everyone, and they indicated to me that he has a pretty good grasp of how every spec works and plays, so I figured he’s probably trustworthy.

https://youtu.be/qtZieTBDBcs Click the link since embedding isn’t working for me at the moment.

So he starts out by reviewing the D Tier specs, the ones that are underperforming and unsatisfying to play in their current form. What’s at the bottom of the list?

Welp. Honestly, I’m not surprised. I tried actually doing some story content as Marksman Sniper after I picked it, and stuff was taking so long to die while the playstyle just felt awful that I gave up on it and swapped back to Arsenal. Granted, things weren’t exactly dying much faster, but at least I knew the spec well enough to feel like it was making some kind of an impact.

Okay, what’s next

Oh. That…..that might explain it.

Well, okay, clearly my two choices aren’t doing my hunter any favors. But that’s it for the bottom tier! Maybe the rest of my characters won’t have bad choices too. Okay, let’s look at the C tier. C tier, in the video’s own words is “underperforming but not unplayable”. To me that seems like specs I should probably avoid, but if there’s not a better choice, I can live with it. All righty, so what’s the C group look like?

OH COME ON.

So, a bit of backstory here. Back in the day of vanilla, the leveling strat for Jedi Sentinel was “Go watchman to level until you hit level X and get Blade Rush, then swap to Combat, once you have that you’ll just tear through things”. I followed this strat, and then just kinda stuck with Combat over the years and expansions. Call it Inertia, call it familiarity with the spec, I just never really wanted to get away from it (which, now that I think about it, is probably the same reason I’ve stayed Arsenal on the Hunter all these years)

At any rate, here’s the rest of the list. As you can see, most specs occupy the B and C tiers, which would be my personal threshold for “Okay, I don’t really wanna play this right now”,

Based on this I’ve made a few changes to my characters. Beskad now has a loadout for Lethality, given that it’s an S-Tier spec, we’ll see how it works for him, but some early reads do look promising.

I also put a Concentration loadout together for my Sentinel. I’ve never really tried Concentration, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, but apparently it’s the best of the best according to this list, so I’m going to give it a go. I picked Jedi Shadow for his second combat style, and while this list is ranking Serenity ahead of Infiltration, I like Infiltration’s playstyle enough that I’m going to stick with it for now.

On the Sith Inquisitor, I’m leaving Lightning as his spec on his primary combat style, and since I picked assassin as his second style, I’m going to stick with the same logic for why I’ll stay with Deception there. And since my Consular is primarily a Shadow with Telekinetics Sage as his second style, we’re gonna leave him be for the same reasons

Finally my last 70 and above character is my Light Side Sith Warrior. His primary style and spec has been Vengeance Juggernaut forever, and I see no reason to change that. Yes it’s a DoT spec primarily but it’s got a decent amount of burst that I’m okay with it. Since he’s Light side, and since I don’t see Sage or Shadow fitting his personality well, I opted to give him Jedi Sentinel as his second spec, and since I don’t currently have anyone else using it, we’ll go with Watchman for his spec and see how it plays out. Two DoT specs might not work out well on him, so we can move him over to Concentration as well if that particular experiment works out.

[thebreadtree]

I love how they're still reducing the health for enemies in SoV