SWTOR 7.3 Combat Style and Discipline Changes Announced

The Force is with us! Shabir Dhillon, one of BioWare’s SWTOR gameplay designers, announced some excellent combat style balance chances coming along with Game Update 7.3.

This article will cover all of the announced changes along with my analysis of the impact they’ll have on game balance. Affected combat styles include:

• Powertech and Vanguard
• Mercenary and Commando
• Sniper and Gunslinger
• Operative and Scoundrel
• Assassin and Shadow
• Sorcerer and Sage
• Annihilation Marauder and Watchman Sentinel

Powertech and Vanguard

Powertechs and Vanguards received general changes as well as specific ones for Advanced Prototype and Tactics.

General

Here are the general changes for Powertech / Vanguard:

• Adjusted timing of some ability grants to smooth out the leveling experience.
• Stealth Scan has been redesigned and renamed “Terminator Droid”. In addition to revealing stealthed enemies, it also slows them and decreases their accuracy.
• The Neural Trigger tactical now roots the target instead of stuns.

The nerf to Neural Trigger will make the tactical less effective overall, and do very little against ranged combat styles, but will still be quite strong against a lot of melee specs if the PT/VG makes use of their 10-15m range to remain outside of melee range while still dealing damage.

The changes to Stealth Scan seem focused on making the ability more effective in PvP (and hopefully more consistent in PvE). It’s unclear if they’re removing the famed “PT Pred” groupwide movement boost or just adding the accuracy/slow as an additional effect.

Since PT/VG already has waaaaay more group utility than any other combat style, I hope BioWare takes the effect away from them and gives it to another combat style that’s lacking in the group utility department, like Operative / Scoundrel (perhaps append it to Infiltrate / Smuggle) or Assassin / Shadow.

Advanced Prototype and Tactics

Here are the announced changes for Advanced Prototype / Tactics:

• The Prototype Rail / High Friction Bolts discipline passive now vents 6 Heat / regenerates 6 Energy Cells when their effect is triggered (up from 5).
• The Energized Blade tactical which was removed with the launch of 7.0 has been redesigned and renamed to Energized Vambrace. It now has the following effect:
  • Gaining an Energy Lode stack increases the damage on Retractable Blade’s / Gut’s bleed and increases the damage dealt by Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt, Magnetic Blast / Tactical Surge, and Energy Burst / Cell Burst by 5% for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 4 times (20% total).

I assume the Energized Vambrace tactical will be reintroduced with 7.3, but Shabir neglected to specify in the post. Regardless, it’s fantastic that AP/Tactics will finally have a good tactical item in PvE group content! By my rough calculations, I think this will push the discipline to be pretty close in line with the other melee “burst” specs like Deception / Infiltration and Carnage / Combat.

While Energized Vambrace will be optimal for PvE group content, it’s unclear to me whether Neural Trigger or Energized Vambrace will be better for PvP. You’ll get stronger burst with Energized Vambrace during Power Yield / Balmorran Advanced Weaponry, but there is an argument to be made to use Neural Trigger with AP / Tactics against melee-heavy comps if you use the 15m range buff at level 43 for additional survivability.

The additional 1 Heat venting / Energy Cell regeneration is a step in the right direction, but I expect it to be wholly insufficient in mitigating the existing Heat / Energy Cell management issues with the discipline. It only effectively gives you an extra 4 Heat / Energy Cells to work with for every regular Energy Burst / Cell Burst.

The main issue is that you’re spending a ton of Heat / Energy Cells all at once when you do 2 Energy Bursts / Cell Bursts back-to-back with Power Yield / Balmorran Advanced Weaponry and foregoing Rapid Shots / Hammer Shot in favor of Magnetic Blast / Tactical Surge during Explosive Fuel.

The extra 4 Heat / Energy Cells is a drop in the bucket, especially when your resource is spent in such concentrated amounts. I would like to see it possible for Vent Heat / Recharge Cells to have a 1-minute cooldown so it can be used for every single Power Yield / Advanced Balmorran Weaponry and some sort of cost reduction to Magnetic Blast / Tactical Surge during Explosive Fuel / Battle Focus so you only have to worry about managing Heat / Energy Cells outside of the burst windows.

There are alternatives to mitigating the massive Heat / Energy Cell consumption spikes, that’s just an example. It’s also possible that the change BioWare announced will be more consequential than I realize, so we’ll have to wait until we can test on the PTS.

Mercenary and Commando

Mercenaries and Commandos received general changes as well as specific ones for Arsenal and Gunnery.

General

Here are the general changes for Mercenary / Commando:

• Adjusted timing of some ability grants to smooth out the leveling experience.
• Supercharged Gas / Cell now has a unique name for each Gas Cylinder / Energy Cell Discipline. It will have the following names for each discipline:
  • Bodyguard / Combat Medic: Supercharged Kolto Gas.
  • Arsenal / Gunnery: High Velocity Supercharged Gas / Cells
  • Innovative Ordnance / Assault Specialist: Supercharged Gas / Cell (no name change)
• Stealth Scan has been redesigned and renamed “Hunter Killer Droid”. In addition to revealing stealthed enemies, it also reduces the casters damage taken while stunned.
• The Random Charge Legendary Implant has been redesigned and renamed to Overcharged Cells. It now has the following effect:
  • Priming Shot / Vortex Bolt, Thermal Detonator / Assault Plastique, and Healing Scan / Advanced Medical Probe generate 3 Supercharges. Cannot occur more than once every 15s.

The change that stands out the most to everyone I’ve spoken to is the redesign of Random Charge to Overcharged Cells.

Statistically for IO/AS and healers, it shouldn’t make too much of a difference thanks to frequent ticks from AoE, DoTs, and Kolto Shells / Trauma Probes since you should be getting about 3 Supercharge every 15s given the existing rate limit, though it was less reliable for Arsenal / Gunnery and will be more impactful, especially given the buff to High Velocity Supercharged Gas / Cells.

The biggest concern people seem to have is that getting 3 Supercharge all at once from a high-priority ability will sometimes result in 1 or more stacks getting wasted. IO/AS already experiences this because they generate 2 stacks from each Missile Blast / Explosive Round and that ability doesn’t necessarily have as high of a priority as the ones for Overcharged Cells nor generate as much Supercharge per activation.

There are solutions to this issue, like increasing the stack limit without increasing the cost to activate Supercharged Gas / Cell, but it’s clear that there needs to be more refinement.

Meanwhile, the redesign to Stealth Scan is neat and unique from the one for PTs/VGs, though it’s not clear exactly how the ability will work and whether the old Battlefield Protocols / Suppression Protocols utility effect is sticking around (probably not).

I get the impression that players will get 30% Stun DR for some length of time after placing Stealth Scan similar to how the 30% periodic DR was granted after cleansing yourself. The idea seems to be to make Stealth Scan more valuable even if you don’t detect your target by mitigating the damage you take while stunned as the stealth disciplines often want to open with an ability that stuns the enemy.

That said, I think this idea could be better supported by giving the ability multiple charges and/or increasing the radius of the AoE to 8 or even 10m. These buffs to Stealth Scan can and should coexist beside the base ability so it can be more useful in actually finding people currently stealthed.

Right now, the best way to use Stealth Scan is the same as Electro Net by placing it preemptively so that players are punished for trying to stealth out and it may be that BioWare is changing the name of the ability so that players stop thinking to use it in a way that isn’t like Electro Net.

At the same time, [erhaps the PT/VG and Merc/Commando versions could be further differentiated by making one something that moves with the player and radiates out, like the Spotter buff or something resembling thermal vision while the other is placeable.

Arsenal and Gunnery

Here is the announced change for Arsenal / Gunnery:

• The duration of High Velocity Supercharged Gas / Supercharged Cells has been increased to 12s (up from 8s).

This is probably the only change I’m unhappy with out of the whole set because it’s just so ridiculously underwhelming. Arsenal / Gunnery is one of the weakest specs in the game in practically every way and BioWare decides to give it a token buff to its already weak offensive cooldown.

Arsenal / Gunnery needs far more extensive changes than a 50% increase to the duration of High Velocity Supercharged Gas / Cells. In order for it to have burst that is commensurate with other disciplines, both Heatseeker Missiles / Demolition Round and Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt need to autocrit reliably and Supercharged Gas / Cells needs to be more effective.

If I were BioWare, I’d have High Velocity Supercharged Gas / Cells increase alacrity by a flat 30% for the full 9s so it matches the duration of Electro Net makes all attacks ignore armor completely (this isn’t too far off from its current effect by the way). I’d also have the Concentrated Fire implant apply the autocrit to Heatseeker Missiles / Demolition Round instead of Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt and have the Tracer Lock / Charged Barrel proc make Rail Shot / High Impact Bolt autocrit in addition to its other effects.

BioWare also needs to migrate some of the damage from the Primed Ignition tactical over to Blazing Bolts / Boltstorm, possibly by bringing back the Barrage / Curtain of Fire proc, so the discipline isn’t so hampered by target swapping and there’s more room for Unload / Full Auto to be buffed in IO/AS.

Sniper and Gunslinger

Snipers and Gunslingers received general changes as well as specific ones for Marksmanship, Sharpshooter, Virulence, and Dirty Fighting.

General

Here are the announced changes for Sniper / Gunslinger:

• Reestablish Range / Reset Engagement is now granted as a combat style passive at level 43 for all Snipers / Gunslingers, and the knockback effect has been removed.
• Reestablish Range / Reset Engagement has been replaced by Vital Regulators / Cool Under Pressure as the level 64 choice on the ability tree for all Snipers / Gunslingers. Vital Regulators / Cool Under Pressure has the following effect:
  • You heal for 2% of your max health every 3s while in cover.

Apparently, it’s Christmas in April (though it’ll probably be July by the time we actually get 7.3). I’ve been wanting them to remove the knockback effect from Reestablish Range / Reset Engagement for literal years and finally, after I had given up hope, they decided to do it!

The knockback was occasionally super annoying against adds and trash because it would knock your primary target out of your and everyone else’s AoE once you did one of your very rotational attacks, though you had a strong incentive to risk it because the speed boost is nice.

My inner cynic tells me to be skeptical that BioWare did this out of the goodness in their hearts when it could be an attempt to counterbalance the reintroduction of Vital Regulators / Cool Under Pressure.

I got the impression that BioWare initially decided to take away self-healing while trying to get out ahead of potential balance issues that could be caused by Sniper / Gunslinger’s range and leap immunity coupled the move to lock away most of the non-leaps behind ability tree choices.

Regardless, it’s an absolutely fantastic change, so we should all welcome it with open arms. Thank you, BioWare!

That said, I am a bit concerned if this will be enough for PvP. They only get the self-healing when they’re in cover, so not kiting. I think Snipers / Gunslingers will still be focused first, at least in Arenas so they’re forced to kite and miss out on much of the healing.

I suppose they could always just give back roll heal and take away another piece of their kit that creates space, like resetting the cooldown on roll with Countermeasures / Surrender.

Marksmanship and Sharpshooter

Here is the announced change for Marksmanship / Sharpshooter:

• The Targeted Ambush / Hotshot ability tree buff will now trigger from killing an enemy within three seconds of damaging them with Ambush / Aimed Shot.

Currently, Targeted Ambush / Hotshot increases the critical damage dealt by Ambush / Aimed Shot by 20% and resets the cooldown on Ambush and Laze Target / Aimed Shot and Smuggler’s Luck if you kill them with a critical hit of Ambush / Aimed Shot.

BioWare didn’t mention the 20% critcal damage boost, but I doubt that is changing. The reason for this change likely has to do with the fact that getting it to trigger consistently is pretty difficult on higher-level planets like the fancy new daily areas on Manaan and Ruhnuk. It didn’t synergize with the Active Reload implant either and now it should, so that’s great since the discipline previously lacked a solid unique implant.

Virulence and Dirty Fighting

Here is the announced change for Virulence / Dirty Fighting:

• Corrosive Refund / Scrounging has been redesigned. It now causes Corrosive Grenade / Shrap Bomb to refund 2 energy each time it ticks.

Virulence / Dirty Fightning already gets nearly enough Energy regeneration from the base passives. Unless BioWare is planning to release or redesign an implant or something that provides a damage boost that scales with your Energy level or regeneration, I really don’t understand the purpose of this change because it is beyond excessive.

It’s certainly possible that BioWare plans to redesign the Locked and Loaded implant. I can’t imagine they’re happy with such a boring effect being optimal for all 5 of the disciplines that can use it and all of them have access to passives that affect Energy regeneration, though this remains pure speculation right now.

Operative and Scoundrel

Each Operative and Scoundrel discipline received minor 1-2 balance changes.

Medicine and Sawbones

Here is the announced change for Medicine / Sawbones:

• Tactical Overdrive / Hot Streak now also grants interrupt immunity to healers while it is active.

The ability has such a long cooldown, it hardly matters. People can still just stun or mez you while it’s active anyway. It seems like it would make more sense to put this on Stim Burst / In the Zone so you’re immune to interrupts during Stim Boost / Pugnacity instead. The effect would be available more often, making it more consequential. If anything, I’d do that and throw in CC immunity on Tactical Overdrive / Hot Streak anyway.

Regardless, Operative / Scoundrel healers are most in need of additional survivability that protects on the damage intake side. Literally the only thing they have to mitigate the damage from a Force/Tech attack in PvE right now at all is Shield Probe / Defense Screen while also being the only thing that works against most sustained damage. That’s beyond absurd even in a world where healers have weaker defensives than DPS and tanks because the other healers still have far better survivability in PvE.

Concealment and Scrapper

Here is the announced change for Concealment / Scrapper:

• The Best Defense ability tree buff’s lifesteal effect has been improved.

I haven’t heard people complaining about Concealment / Scrapper survivability in PvP and that’s the only place where you’d take The Best Defense. I imagine this change has more to do with them trying to buff the effect if it’s not being taken as much as BioWare expects it to and there isn’t a great way to nerf the alternatives.

In other words, BioWare is probably buffing The Best Defense to present a more balanced set of options. I suspect it will probably just steal life equal to the damage it deals since it’s already so weak to begin with, though Shabir neglected to specify the exact buff.

Lethality and Ruffian

Here are the announced changes for Lethality / Ruffian:

• Corrosive Return / Brutal Return no longer extends the duration of Stim Boost / Pugnacity by 5 seconds.
• The Viral Elements tactical no longer causes Lethal Strike / Point Blank Shot to hit the primary target twice.

The nerf to Corrosive / Brutal Return is likely to address complaints about Lethality / Ruffian’s survivability in PvP, though it does help to round out the buff choice for Corrosive Assault / Brutal Shot in PvE. Now, there’s no incentive to take Corrosive / Brutal Return if you’re getting frequent TAs/UHs from defeating enemies and that’s fine.

The mention of Viral Elements sounds more like a bug fix than a balance change, though it’s concerning to see it mentioned here while the bug with Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari is not (I’ll cover that later on). Still, it’s good to see that this is getting fixed as it has a pretty profound impact on the overall balance of Lethality / Ruffian tactical items.

Assassin and Shadow

Hatred / Serenity and Deception / Infiltration each got 1 change each and they’re related, so I’m gonna go over them both at the same time. Here are the announced changes for each discipline:

• Hatred/ Serenity: Reduced the damage bonus given from Inevitable Demise / Aching Mind to 25% (was 30%).
• Deception / Infiltration: Increased the damage bonus given by Executioner / Judgement while an opponent is below 30% max health to 5% (was 3%).

BioWare is reducing the performance delta between the Assassin / Shadow DPS disciplines by altering the strength of their sub-30% DPS “execute” damage boosts. Hatred / Serenity will be weaker sub-30 while Deception / Infiltration will be stronger. Deception still offers comparatively weak burst and no AoE though, so there’s not much of a reason to bring it in PvE, though group utility from Assassin / Hatred in general is exceedingly limited:

• Off-Taunt, but with weaker survivability in sustained situations, making it typically significantly less effective compared to PT/VG and Jugg/Guardian.

So the key conclusion with Assassin and Shadow changes is that you now get to feel less bad about playing Deception / Infiltration in PvE, but you should still feel bad for not bringing a PT/VG or Jugg/Guardian instead.

Sorcerer and Sage

Both Sorcerer and Sage DPS disciplines received a couple of changes each.

Madness and Balance

Here are the announced changes for Madness / Balance:

• Dark Echo’s / Resonating Pulse’s chance to reapply Death Brand’s / Shifted Balance’s slow has been reduced to 30% (from 50%).
• The Life Steal / Reclaim from Vitiates Malice / Warden’s Vigor on Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw has been reduced to 15% down from 20%.

These changes seem primarily directed at slightly nerfing the discipline’s survivability in spirit. The overall impact will be fairly negligible.

In PvP, you aren’t using Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw that much because you can always just DoT something else instead and deal a lot more damage while healing for roughly the same. Meanwhile, you’re applying Death Brand right before using Shock / Project with Plauge Master / Teachings of Rajivari, and if you do it right, your target will end up dying long before the slow falls off for the first time anyway.

In PvE, the Dark Echo / Resonant Pulse effect for Death Brand / Force in Balance literally never goes off against bosses because they’re immune to slows. Meanwhile, it’s not like the healing from Vitiate’s Malice / Warden’s Vigor is all that significant to begin with. We’re talking about partially lowering the healing dealt that is derived from a fraction of the damage dealt by a filler ability.

The nerf to Force Lightning / Telekinetic Throw is a reduction of about ~175 HPS, so now it will take ~12.5 mins for that effect to heal you to full instead of the previous ~9.5 mins.

If the chaotic priority system enabled by Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari as I have listed it in my Madness and Balance guides is actually what BioWare intends, I can understand why they’d want to mostly eliminate survivability and resource management, and the existing self-healing is sufficient.

However, BioWare needs to fix Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari so it actually works as advertized. Currently, when you use Shock / Project to finish off the duration of your DoTs, it converts the damage dealt by Demolish / Vanquish from Kinetic to Internal damage, allowing that attack to unintentionally completely ignore armor.

Against bosses, this results in Madness / Balance’s most damaging attack dealing 28-35% more damage than intended. Against players, it allows Demolish / Vanquish to completely bypass player armor, including DCDs that boost armor as well as ones that trigger at specific health levels, resulting in stronger burst that is most punishing to combat styles that get their survivability from heavy armor and everyone killable at higher percentages than intended.

It also perverts and defiles the beautiful chaos that should be the Madness / Balance priority system by enabling revolting static rotations that subvert the core principle that defines how rotations and priority systems are designed: your most damaging abilities should be used as often as possible.

All of the best rotations for Madness / Balance are disgustingly static, require that you delay your strongest abilities for Plague Master / Teachings of Rajivari, and sometimes involve clipping DoTs. None of it is intuitive.

It’s almost funny how all this stems from an abhorrent little bug where the damage type of a single attack is converted when it shouldn’t be.

Lightning and Telekinetics

Here are the announced changes for Lightning / Telekinetics:

• Increased the Stormwatch tactical’s duration to 15 seconds up from 10 seconds.
• Increased the damage of Halted Offensive / Power of the Force by 7%.

The most notable change is that Stormwatch will now have 100% uptime, cementing Lightning Flash / Telekinetic Gust as your highest priority ability in single-target situations but also further diminishing the target swapping capabilities of the discipline.

Halted Offensive previously got nerfed directly by 15%, so this walks that back by half a step, though the cast time being lengthened to 2 GCDs remains. Beyond that, part of what made the static rotation viable before was that you were guaranteed to get a full duration of Crushing Darkness / Mind Crush inside Stormwatch when you otherwise wouldn’t be able to with a priority system. Since that possibility is being eliminated, I don’t think hard-casting will remain viable beyond pre-casting into Polarity Shift / Mental Alacrity.

Furthermore, the delays to Thundering Blast / Turbulence will add up to a sustained DPS loss and you will miss out on survivability and Force regen from the Lightning Bolt / Telekinetic Burst procs falling off, so it just won’t be practical. Overall, I get the impression that BioWare wants Halted Offensive to offer the same sustained DPS as Lightning Bolt x2 so it comes down to other factors regarding which one you should use.

That said, I would love for the static hard-casted Halted Offensive / Power of the Force rotation to make a return as a single-target burst option in PvP while remaining viable in single-target situations in PvE and making Suppressive Current / Dormant Tremors the clearer default for sustained DPS in PvE group content by having the debuff detonate from single-target abilities.

Annihilation Marauder and Watchman Sentinel

Marauders and Sentinels only got a single change and it’s specific to Annihilation and Watchman:

• The Rage / Focus generation effect of the Bloodlust / Burning Focus passive has been modified. It now has the following effect: “Your direct damage attacks that hit a bleeding / burning target build 1 Rage / Focus. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.” The rest of the passive’s effect remains the same.

The change to this passive will improve the overall consistency of the discipline in terms of Rage / Focus generation, though it feels like a drop in the bucket because there’s so much RNG and crit dependency for so many other effects including multiple sources of Rage / Focus generation. Removing RNG on a single component will only have a marginal effect on overall consistency.

Perhaps this was BioWare’s intent, but changes to Annihilation / Watchman have often been half-measures throughout the expansion, so who knows?

Meanwhile, BioWare ignores bigger issues like the (IMO) game-breaking group healing from Berserk / Zen that is widely considered the most overpowered effect in the game right now, at least according to NiM raiders. The presence of an Annihilation Marauder effectively eliminates most healer checks in the game and can completely eliminate the need for healers in SM Operations.

There’s also people to squeezing likely uninentional extra ticks of Deadly Saber / Overload Saber and Rupture / Cauterize by selectively delaying the abilities that refresh them. As far as I can tell, this or something related to it is resulting in thousand(s) of extra DPS for those players.

Perhaps removing RNG will pull back the curtain and make these ridiculously high numbers more achievable for even your average NiM raider.

These changes are a fantastic step in the right direction, but…

More work is needed for the game to return to and surpass the balance BioWare achieved by 6.0, at least in PvE. I do want to be clear that BioWare did make great strides towards improving overall balance with 7.0 as well. They managed to eradicate many of the issues plaguing balance and gameplay in 6.0 with the release of ability trees while making most specs more fun to play.

The issues in 7.0 are different and related to the sweeping changes that came with the switch to ability trees. Most of the changes coming with 7.3 seem geared toward closing the performance gap between disciplines of the same combat style, which is definitely a good thing though philosophical issues block them from making the bigger changes that are needed.

First and foremost, group utility needs to be more evenly spread out. You have combat styles like Powertech / Vanguard and Marauder / Sentinel with gobs of group utility spewing out of their every orifice (and yes it is disgusting) while other specs like Assassin / Shadow and Operative / Scoundrel are pumped up with artificially high sustained DPS.

Second, the DPS gap between ranged and melee DPS needs to be as nonexistent as possible. Ranged DPS do have an advantage in PvP since they can hit their target a lot before getting into range, but this can be mitigated by amplifying ability activation pushback in PvP or making ranged choose between DPS increases and escape tools. In my opinion, at least in PvE, 30m range is equivalent to the capacity to off-Taunt in terms of overall impact.

Last, but not least, BioWare needs to pick a lane for the role of burst and AoE in balancing capabilities. Are they (powerful) individual group utilities? Are they a singular defining element of a given discipline? Or maybe they’re something that every discipline should have both of in inconsequentially consistent amounts?

There are advantages to each approach, but being noncommittal is causing a lot of problems right now in PvE where DoT specs offer vastly superior AoE, burst potential, sustained DPS, and survivability than anything offered by the direct damage specs. There’s basically no reason to play any of the historically burst specs at all right now except for fun, even in PvP.

I have hope that we’ll get there, but I wonder how long it will take…