How to Create Anakin Skywalker in SWTOR: Full Build Guide

This SWTOR Anakin Skywalker Build Guide is designed to be as faithful to the lore and authentic as possible within the constraints of the game. You’ll find everything you need to know in order to create a toon in SWTOR and play like Anakin Skywalker as he appeared throughout the Clone Wars up until he tried it on Mustafar, even though Obi-Wan specifically told him not to.

Note: This build is not optimal for endgame content and should only be used when playing alone or role-playing with friends. It is beginner-friendly and does not require you to be at level cap to play it.

Physical Appearance

Anakin Skywalker is a young human male with brown, unkempt hair that grew out over the course of the war. He also has a cleft chin, bushy eyebrows, and a scar near his right eye.

Here are the physical appearance parameters I recommend using for Anakin Skywalker as he appeared in the later days of the Clone Wars as his hair was starting to grow out:

Keep in mind that SWTOR’s character creator is pretty limited. Many of the customization options are bundled together, so there are some trade-offs.

If you are creating a new character, this is done during the creation process. You can use the Appearance Design Tool on the Fleet to alter the appearance of an existing character, but this will cost you Cartel Coins each time you do it.

Outfit and Weapon

I recommend the Headstrong Apprentice’s Robes and Ardent Defender’s Lightsaber, both of which can be purchased from the Cartel Market or GTN (from someone else who purchased it from the Cartel Market).

Anakin’s lightsaber color is blue, and you have a few different avenues you can go down depending on preference. The cheapest option is likely just a regular Blue crystal since it can be crafted or purchased for a couple hundred thousand credits.

Meanwhile, Farmhand Blue gives you the paler blue from A New Hope whereas Cloud Blue gives you a darker blue than Farmhand while retaining the more diffuse light. Personally, I think Cloud Blue is the best, but there are strong arguments for the alternatives.

Story, Combat Style, and Gearing Choices

This section will focus on key choices you’ll have to make in order to end up with a playstyle and story that fits Anakin’s character.

Origin Story

Anakin Skywalkers was the headstrong champion of the Jedi Order during the time of the Clone Wars. Few could match his lightsaber skills and almost no one had a connection to the Force as strong as him.

The Jedi Knight Origin Story is hands-down the most appropriate choice for Anakin. You’ll be saving the galaxy countless times while being tempted by the power of the dark side.

Combat Styles, Disciplines, and Ability Tree Choices

Anakin primarily uses a single lightsaber in combat, and while he is strong with the Force, he doesn’t do anything super fancy with it like Master Yoda or Count Dooku.

Anakin mainly uses one of the two variants of Form V called Djem So, which does not exist in SWTOR. The other variant is called Shien, which does exist and is used by Vigilance Guardians and Vengeance Juggernauts. However, outside of a couple of attacks with long-ish cooldowns, I don’t think that discipline actually matches the appearance of Anakin’s fighting style very well.

Anakin tends to frequently and aggressively leap at his opponent and then really whack the opponent with repeated heavy swings and occasional powerful uses of the Force. This playstyle is far better embodied by Focus Guardian and Rage Juggernaut, though it uses Form I, Shii-Cho, instead of Form V.

Of the two, I think the actual animations for Rage Juggernaut match Anakin’s attacks a bit better because they’re more fluid and aggressive, but the differences aren’t huge there’s definitely a strong argument to be made for playing the Jedi version, Focus Guardian since Anakin was a Jedi.

Rage and Focus are also great options because they have sister disciplines as part of the twin saber-wielding combat styles, Fury Marauder and Concentration Sentinel. If you used one of those as your second combat style, you’d be able to switch between the two and use many of the same attacks just with two lightsabers instead of one.

This build focuses on granting access to and strengthening abilities that Anakin has used in combat. Unlike other builds, I don’t think there’s much value in defining the build essentials because they’re all pretty important in constructing a playstyle that will make you feel like Anakin.

However, I want to draw special attention to Indignant Rumination / Focused Meditation, which enables you to spam one of the most powerful lightsaber strikes in the game, Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice, for a short period after activating Enrage / Combat Focus.

The boosts primarily make your single-target attacks hit harder so you can take out most enemies in 1-2 hits, though you really can’t hesitate between abilities or your attacks won’t hit as hard. On top of that, you will need to activate your abilities in a very specific order or you won’t get all of the boosts, but I’ll cover that later on.

Legendary Implants and Tactical Item

Anakin Skywalker was one of the most powerful Jedi in the order, so I recommend implants that improve your damage output and a tactical item that increases your survivability. You gain access to legendary implants at level 80 and tactical items at level 75.

 Fearless Victor

Fearless Victor makes your melee attacks deal more damage for a short period of time after spending Rage / Focus, your class resource, on a melee attack.

 Champion’s Precision

Champion’s Precision significantly increases your critical chance for a short time after activating Enrage / Combat Focus, increasing your damage output.

 Grit Teeth

Grit Teeth reduces the cooldown on Saber Ward whenever you take damage, enabling you to use it a lot more often.

For more information on gearing, check out my guide on Which Mods to Buy from Hyde and Zeek. For an Anakin Skywalker build, I recommend gearing as a DPS, which means you’ll want to focus on increasing stats that boost damage output like Accuracy, Critical, and Alacrity.

Key Abilities

In this section, I’ll be going over specific Rage Juggernaut / Focus Guardian abilities that match Anakin’s fighting style, including lightsaber swings, Force attacks, and defensive maneuvers. To be clear, this is not a complete list of all Rage Juggernaut / Focus Guardian abilities, I am only shining a spotlight on specific relevant ones.

I’d like to note that while Anakin is incredibly strong with the Force, he rarely does anything super flashy in combat. He also exclusively strikes and slashes with his lightsaber, he never stabs or does thrusts.

Offensive Abilities

These are attacks that deal damage to one or more enemies. Typically, they cannot be used at the same time as one another. Some of them cost Rage / Focus, which is the Juggernaut / Guardian’s class resource and most of them have short cooldowns that prevent them from being spammed.

In order to keep the game balanced while retaining the look and semblance of power for Jedi and Sith abilities, a lot of Rage Juggernaut / Focus Guardian abilities effectively have two versions with similar animations where one is focused more on providing some sort of powerful utility while the other is focused on dealing damage.

 Furious Strike and Concentrated Slice

Unlocked at level 60
Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice is one of the most powerful and expensive lightsaber swings in the game. You’re really putting your full weight into this attack and it really feels like you’re beating down your opponent.

Normally, it has a cooldown, but thanks to Indignant Rumination / Focused Meditation, it doesn’t have one while Enrage / Combat Focus is active, allowing you to spam it up to 3 times in a row. The animation looks a lot better with Rage compared to Concentrated Slice in terms of how it flows when spammed, including looking more aggressive like Anakin does when he’s whaling on some helpless villain.

Enrage and Combat Focus

Unlocked at level 15
Enrage / Combat Focus doesn’t deal any damage, but grants several effects that are essential to being able to fight like Anakin. Most importantly, it removes the cooldown on Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice (and all other abilities that cost Rage / Focus) thanks to Indignant Rumination / Focused Meditation and generates a ton of Rage / Focus over its duration.

It also increases your movement speed while active and can be used at the same time as your other abilities. It must be used immediately after activating Raging Burst / Focused Burst in order to have enough time to use Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice 3 times (and not put Obliterate / Zealous Leap on cooldown).

To be clear, Indignant Rumination / Focused Meditation can enable you to spam other abilities instead, but it makes the most sense by far to use it with Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice.

Obliterate and Zealous Leap

Anakin constantly uses the Force to enable him to jump at his targets and whack them with his saber as he lands. Obliterate / Zealous Leap works the same way, though you can’t be super far away as the ability only has a 10m range, so it’s meant to be used to remain in range rather than get in range in the first place.

Obliterate / Zealous Leap hits fairly hard and makes your next Raging Burst / Focused Burst automatically critically hit. In addition, if you defeat your target within 3 seconds (2 attacks) of using Obliterate / Zealous leap, you’ll reset the cooldown on Raging Burst / Focused Burst and Obliterate / Zealous Leap, and increase their damage dealt for 6 seconds, though you can’t reset the cooldown while their damage is increased by this effect.

Force Charge and Force Leap

Force Charge / Force Leap also causes your character to leap, though it deals significantly less damage. In exchange, you gain a lot of utility including being able to leap from significantly further away from the target (30m), interrupt them if they’re casting or channeling something, and generate 3 Rage. It also grants the autocrit to Raging Burst / Focused Burst.

This ability can’t be used if you’re within 10m of the boss, so you’ll never find yourself in a situation where both Force Charge / Force Leap and Obliterate / Zealous Leap are usable at the same time. The idea is to use whichever is available as needed and before each Raging Burst / Focused Burst.

Force Push

Force Push deals a small amount of damage, but launches the target across the battlefield and doesn’t cost any Rage / Focus. It also resets the cooldown on Force Charge / Force Leap, so you can immediately get back into range.

Raging Burst and Focused Burst

This ability has a very similar animation to Force Push, but the target will take a ton of damage rather than get knocked back. Raging Burst / Focused Burst gets buffed by a bunch of other abilities and grants several buffs upon being used, so it’s definitely worth using, and while it does have a short cooldown, you’ll still almost exclusively be using saber swings, so it won’t feel like you’re using too many Force attacks.

 Force Choke and Force Stasis

Unlocked at level 27
Anakin often uses the Force to incapacitate or subdue enemies as a finisher, though he wasn’t opposed to choking people out with the Force either if he was in a mood, especially when Padme was involved.

Force Choke / Force Stasis doesn’t deal very much damage, but it fully stuns the target for a few seconds and generates some Rage / Focus over the duration, so it’s the high-utility version of using the Force to control your opponent.

Force Crush and Force Exhaustion

Unlocked at level 47
As the name suggests, Force Crush / Force Exhaustion causes the Force to collapse around your opponent, dealing a little bit of damage over time and slowing them until they can hardly move.

Force Crush / Force Exhaustion deals significantly more damage than Force Choke / Force Stasis, and while the slow is quite potent, it’s not nearly as effective as a stun, so this is the damaging version of using the Force to control your opponent.

Force Crush / Force Exhaustion grants several boosts to other abilities as well that are relevant to making combat flow properly. It makes your next Raging Burst / Focused Burst and Furious Strike cost no Rage / Focus along with making Raging Burst / Focused Burst deal more damage. Each time the attack deals damage, you’ll also generate 1 Rage / Focus.

Sundering Assault and Sundering Strike

Unlocked at level 7
This lightsaber swing deals little damage, but it generates 6 Rage / Focus, enough to fill up half your bar. You’ll typically need to use it after spamming Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice in order to recover from spending so much Rage / Focus beating your opponent into submission.

 Vicious Slash and  Slash

Unlocked at level 1
This is a basic lightsaber swing that deals moderate damage to a single enemy and has no cooldown, but costs 2 Rage / Focus per activation. It is weaker than the attacks I’ve mentioned already, but if you have spare Rage / Focus, this is a great option to use while you’re waiting for a stronger attack to become available.

Sweeping Slash and  Cyclone Slash

Obtainable at level 27
Sweeping Slash / Cyclone Slash is extremely similar to Vicious Slash / Slash. The only differences are that it can hit multiple targets, but doesn’t deal quite as much damage as Vicious Slash / Slash, so only use it instead of Vicious Slash /Slash if you can hit multiple enemies.

 Assault /  Strike

Unlocked at level 1
Assault / Strike is your most basic lightsaber swing. It deals a small amount of damage to a single enemy and has no cooldown. In lieu of dealing more damage, it generates 2 Rage instead of costing any, so you are always able to use it assuming you’re in range.

Defensive Abilities

All of these abilities can be activated at the same time as other attacks and offer some sort of temporary boost to your survivability. Their cooldowns are significantly longer than that of most attacks.

Disruption and  Force Kick

Unlocked at level 19
Anakin often uses fancy kicks alongside his lightsaber swings and force attacks to disrupt his opponent. Disruption / Force Kick fills that role, and while it doesn’t deal any damage, it interrupts the target’s current cast and prevents it from being used again for a short time. It can be used at the same time as your other abilities, so be sure to use Disruption / Force Kick if you see your opponent casting something. Longer casts tend to be more dangerous, especially if the ability has a foreboding name.

Disruption and Force Kick have the greatest disparity in animation, and unfortunately for those of you that are leaning towards picking Rage, Force Kick is far more accurate compared to Disruption because they look so different. Disruption has you using a small Force push to interrupt instead of kicking at all. That said, since you’ll often need to use it at the same time as other attacks, you usually won’t get to see the animation anyway.

Saber Reflect  

Obtainable at level 68
Saber Reflect causes you to use your lightsaber to reflect all incoming non-melee damage back at your attackers for a few seconds, just as Jedi like Anakin did on the front lines in the Clone Wars. It’s great if you bite off a bit more than you can chew if you accidentally attract the attention of too many enemies or to redirect a singular powerful attack that you might otherwise want to interrupt with Force Kick.

Saber Ward

Unlocked at level 15
Saber Ward is similar to Saber Reflect in that you’re using your lightsaber to defend yourself. However, unlike Saber Reflect, Saber Ward works against all types of damage and lasts over twice as long, though it works differently for different types of attacks. For weapon attacks, it significantly increases your chance to dodge them completely, but for other attacks, it absorbs part of the damage you take.

Endure Pain and Enure

Anakin may not have handled it well, but you can’t deny that he Endured a ton of Pain throughout his life, especially on Mustafar, and growing up as a slave on Tatooine he was Enured to the atrocities the galaxy was capable of.

Endure Pain / Enure gives you a bunch of bonus health for a short time and cleanses all removable debuffs, allowing you to survive for just a bit longer so you can outlast your opponent or bide your time until help arrives.

Ability Order

I don’t usually include an ability order for these solo guides, but I do think it makes a considerable difference for Anakin. If you don’t activate your abilities quickly back-to-back and in the right order, your attacks will end up being a lot weaker and you won’t feel that fluidity from taking out a bunch of enemies with 1-2 hits. Each encounter should start out roughly like this:

You’ll probably be able to finish off most standard and weak enemies with individual attacks. Singular activations of Raging Burst / Focused Burst, Furious Strike / Concentrated Slice, and Obliterate / Zealous Leap will be available for another round after that, but you should have wiped out the whole group by then.

If you want to play as Anakin after the events of Episode 3, check out the guide on how to create Darth Vader in SWTOR. It includes everything you need, of course – character appearance, outfit, story choice, and skills.

This concludes the Anakin Skywalker Build Guide. If you have recommendations for tweaks or slight variations in appearance or other abilities that might fit well, or if you have a favorite character you’d like to get a build for, leave a comment.