SWTOR’s third 8.0 PTS iteration includes level 85 changes for all 3 Juggernaut | Guardian disciplines. We’ll explain what they are and what we think about them.
General Changes Approach
The changes on the PTS are very, very preliminary. Each combat style is getting one of their baseline abilities replaced with a version that adds a unique additional function for each discipline at level 83, like the second ability each class gets at level 15.
None of the unfinished business with ability trees and talent choice design have been fixed (yet), it’s just that new ability and a “new” passive at level 83, though that passive is almost always just that spec’s most popular tactical item and the ability is almost always a cooldown.
It seems like they’re intending to make the most popular tactical less ubiquitous, rather than just balancing the alternatives properly, and the fact that they’re doing it this way has the potential to create even more imbalance without eliminating this flavor of the month issue because they’re going off of popularity rather than actual power level or intended use case.
Many players are not even aware that tactical items exist, nor that they’re designed like ability tree choices where they tend to be optimal against a specific enemy and content type, whether it be a boss (fight), trash mob (solo content), or player (PvP).
Some players just pick the one, usually the single-target sustained option meant for boss fights and end up doing worse in other types of content and end up disengaging rather than learning.
Tactical items also cost a lot of Tech Fragments and Credits and take up unnecessary inventory space while acting as an incentive against having alts.
Really, each discipline has ~3 tactical items that should just be migrated to their own new talent choice in the tree. The ones that need rebalancing or refining can be addressed individually.
So far, it feels like they’re trying to use a single size screwdriver to fix a bunch of specific and unique problems, but sometimes that screwdriver just doesn’t fit. I don’t think the same one-size-fits-all approach will work here like it did with Ability Trees because the problems for one spec aren’t shared by another.
Juggernaut and Guardian
The changes to Juggernaut | Guardian focus on adding a semi-unique effect to Enraged Defense | Focused Defense and integrate AoE-oriented tacticals for Vengeance | Vigilance and the tank spec, while Rage | Focus gets a new effect.
The upgrades to Enraged Defense | Focused Defense for the DPS specs both enable the consume charges when you attack in some discipline-specific way or instead extend the duration to up to 30s if you’re already at full health.
Currently, Enraged Defense | Focused Defense doesn’t consistently help DPS in boss fights because you don’t take damage as often as the tank does and when you do take damage, it’s rarely more than a couple hits at a time. It doesn’t help that you can’t activate it preemptively, either.
Enraged Defense | Focused Defense also has disparate performance between Warzones and Arenas and is a cornerstone of Juggernaut | Guardian survivability.
In Warzones, Enraged Defense | Focused Defense is one of the most powerful DCDs in the game because the opponent will either have to kite and wait it out (if possible) or burn through the extra ~350k HP it provides.
That’s a lot of extra damage to get through, especially if you don’t have sufficient cooldowns to respond to it at that point in the match.
The best course of action is to wait out the Enraged Defense | Focused Defense by kiting and not hitting them, so you deal no damage to them for 15s, and they can’t deal damage to you because you’re not in range. It becomes a game of who has better mobility, and the Juggernaut | Guardian is not favored there.
In Arenas, Juggernauts | Guardians are one of the first combat styles to get focused because Enraged Defense | Focused Defense only buys you the few seconds it takes for 3-4 opponents to erase its charges (and subsequently you), so it’s not much more valuable than a cheese.
This discrepancy arises because Enraged Defense | Focused Defense is uniquely powerful against 1-2 opponents. The charge-based healing prevents it from being effective against more opponents.
The fact that these 8.0 upgrades you can extend its duration when you aren’t using it is super helpful in boss fights, and I think it’s a really clever way to improve the ability.
It feels very Vader-esque since the Juggernaut | Guardian gets to force you to attack them and make a major sacrifice (by burning one of your own best cooldowns on a 1v1) to counter their advantage, or you have to just completely run away basically forever (until the circumstances of the fight have changed).
Unfortunately, I think it widens the survivability discrepancy between Warzones and Arenas because multiple players can continue to burn through the charges in a few seconds.
I think we need another component to fix the problem, perhaps something like “In addition, getting attacked grants a stack of Unyielding Defense | Unwavering Defense, which increases your Defense Chance by 10% for 3s and stacks up to 10 times.”
I would also modify Pooled Hatred | Gather Strength to stack up to 10 times, last up to 10 seconds, and at 10 stacks, you’d purge all movement-impairing effects and gain immunity to them until the effect ends.
I would suggest swapping its position in the tree so it can be taken alongside Through Passion | Through Peace, which reduces the cooldown of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense by 30s, but I’m not sure such a talent should exist for an upgraded ability.
There’s a completely separate issue to discuss. In the larger scheme of things, it is not necessary to differentiate how the ability’s duration gets extended for each discipline.
That’s just pointless work and unnecessary complexity for the player to satisfy an arbitrary design schema, especially when it also causes problems for other combat styles.
If Broadsword is unwilling to change the format of their combat style changes, they should standardize this change to Enraged Defense | Focused Defense and change the ability upgrade to Furious Power | Force Clarity.
Vengeance | Vigilance
Vengeance | Vigilance extends the duration of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense (or consumes a charge if not at full health) each time one of your DoTs ticks. In addition, the Cut to Pieces tactical is now the discipline passive at level 83.
- Empowers you with 12 charges of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense, lasting up to 15 seconds. Whenever you take damage or deal damage with one of your periodic effects a charge of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense is consumed to heal you. If you are at full health, your bleed | burn effects instead extend the duration of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense by 1 second up to 30 seconds. This ability can be used while stunned or otherwise controlled but cannot be used while above 70% health.
- The Cut to Pieces tactical is now the level 83 discipline passive for Vengeance | Vigilance
- Hemophilic Slash will be optimal for all PvE content and Grit Teeth will be optimal in PvP
Extending the duration of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense by a second each time one of your DoTs ticks just guarantees the ability lasts 30s, even in single-target situations.
You have 3 DoTs. Each ticks every 3s, so that averages out to a 1s duration extension per second. If you add a second every second, you’ll never run out of time. In AoE situations, you’ll spike it to its max duration (or heal to full) almost immediately.
Of course, if you need the healing, you’ll be “spending” some of those ticks to trigger it instead, but remember, the whole point of this benefit is to improve the usability of the DCD because you don’t take frequent, consistent damage as a DPS in boss fights.
Integrating Cut to Pieces into the base discipline is terrible idea. It ruins the existing hybrid rotation-priority system where you alternate Impale | Overhead Slash, Force Scream | Blade Storm, and Vengeful Slam | Vigilant Thrust with other abilities.
Integrating Hemophilic Slash instead wouldn’t help very much, either, because then you’d still run into an issue where you’re picking Cut to Pieces as your tactical or something that offers little to no DPS at all, like Overwhelming Offense, Grit Teeth, Thirsty Blade, or A Vicious Cycle.
It’s emblematic of a much larger problem with Warrior | Knight tacticals where most of them are too weak and bland to work well with a plan like this.
Rage | Focus
Rage | Focus extends the duration of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense (or consumes a charge if not at full health) each time you spend Rage | Focus and gets a new passive at level 83, so its tactical item choices remain the same.
- Empowers you with 12 charges of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense, lasting up to 15 seconds. Whenever you take damage or spend rage/focus a charge of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense is consumed to heal you. If you are at full health, spending Rage | Focus instead extends the duration of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense by 3 seconds up to 30 seconds. This ability can be used while stunned or otherwise controlled but cannot be used while above 70% health.
- Rage | Focus receives a new proc for their level 83 discipline passive called Unknowing Rage | Unwavering Focus, which has the following effect:
- Force Crush | Force Exhaustion applies Unknowing Rage | Unwavering Focus, which increases the damage dealt by of your next direct single-target melee attack by 50% for up to 15s.
- Cauterized Coronary will continue to be optimal in boss fights, Enrage Crush will continue to be optimal in solo content, and Grit Teeth will continue to be optimal in PvP, though some people prefer using Enrage Crush there instead
- Obliterate | Zealous Leap no longer leaps to the target if you are already within 4m of them (Low Slash-style)
Rage | Focus can’t accelerate the rate at which it extends the duration of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense to the same degree as Vengeance | Vigilance, but it has a higher base rate since you’re spending Rage | Focus every 1.5s to get 3s of additional time, so you’re still guaranteed to get to the max duration.
I still don’t think the ability needs differentiation like this, and I think it would be better if they leaned into the name and made it proportional for all specs where you get 1s added to the duration for every 1 Rage | Focus you spend, and then specialize Furious Power | Force Clarity instead.
It’s so tragic that they came up with a great ability back in 6.0 that was just what Warriors | Knights needed for their kit, and then they locked it away in the tree in 7.0 behind a choice where every discipline prefers the excellent passives they came up with instead.
Speaking of passives, unlike the vast majority of other specs, Rage | Focus is being given a new proc added to its discipline at level 83, rather than just rolling a tactical item into the tree.
Furthermore, the new proc is different from the one being given to Fury | Concentration. It’s really great that Broadsword is continuing to differentiate the playstyle of both of these specs, so they aren’t just identical except one is holding an extra saber.
In practice, the new proc will apply to Furious Strike | Concentrated Slice, which is your strongest melee attack and typically the first you use after Force Crush | Force Exhaustion.
That’s a pretty hefty spike alongside the two-stack Dominate | Felling Blow and Force Crush | Force Exhaustion detonation or lead-into a trio of Furious Strikes | Concentrated Slices.
It’s also WONDERFUL that the devs are finally making it so that Obliterate | Zealous Leap isn’t a self-root anymore. This will greatly improve the discipline’s reliability in boss fights.
However, I am still concerned about uptime requirements. The nature of the cooldown reduction passive demands 100% uptime to ensure functionality. It would be nice if Saber Throw, Vicious Strike | Strike, Ravage | Blade Barrage, Mad Dash | Blade Blitz, and Force Choke | Force Stasis triggered the cooldown reductions as well.
It would also help if Rage | Focus had a recovery tool like Frenzy | Valorous Call. A second charge of Enrage | Combat Focus would do the trick, but the cooldown reduction passive could only trigger if you didn’t have any charges, or you’d get it too often.
Immortal | Defense
Immortal | Defense takes a different approach to upgrading Enraged Defense | Focused Defense that increases the number of charges and health threshold required to activate it and enables its cooldown to be lowered drastically by Retaliation | Riposte. It also gets the Leviathan’s Hide tactical built in.
- Empowers you with 15 charges of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense, lasting up to 20 seconds. Whenever you take damage a charge of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense is consumed to heal you. This ability can be used while stunned or otherwise controlled but cannot be used while above 80% health. Dealing damage with Retaliation | Riposte reduces the cooldown of this ability by 5 seconds.
- The Leviathan’s Hide tactical is now the level 83 discipline passive for Immortal | Defense
- Grit Teeth will continue to be optimal for all content
The upgraded form of Enraged Defense | Focused Defense for tanks is absurdly overpowered.
You are guaranteed a Retaliation | Riposte every 12s thanks to Crushing Blow | Guardian Slash, so every 12s, you’ll shave at least 5s off its cooldown.
Every minute, that’s 30s, but the attack has a 6s cooldown and becomes available whenever you dodge an attack, so you’ll actually get to use it twice every 12s, meaning you get to cleave a full minute off its cooldown every minute.
With Through Passion | Through Peace, the effective cooldown on the ability that lets you heal to full will be in the neighborhood of 30s.
Let’s not forget the Retaliator implant, which completely removes the cooldown on Retaliate | Riposte, meaning we’re quickly approaching 100% uptime on Enraged Defense | Focused Defense.
Juggernaut | Guardian tank might be the weakest of the 3 tanks, but it’s not nearly by that much. Honestly, I don’t understand why the devs would bother to program these abilities before making sure the basic math checks out.
Before we move on to the tactical items, I have to point out again that Retaliation (not Riposte) is in desperate need of a new animation.
The entire Juggernaut combat style is heavily inspired by Darth Vader, Immortal most of all, and one of the spec’s cornerstone abilities is Retaliation, which is a stab animation, but Vader never stabs. Broadsword needs to change this animation to one of those little flick swings he loves to do.
Anyway, the story is better when it comes to Immortal | Defense tactical items. Grit Teeth is the only serious contender for the tank spec, but Leviathan’s Hide is the best discipline-specific tactical for Immortal | Defense, so it’s nice that you’ll be able to benefit from that effect now.
