Yesterday, Austin Peckenpaugh, Senior Designer on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, gave us a developer blog update with some important info regarding class changes and PvP mechanic changes that will be happening in Game Update 1.4.

We’ll be seeing some changes to Trooper/BH and Inquisitor/Consular crowd control abilities, a new interrupt for Mercenaries and Commandos, a new self-healing ability for Sorcerers and Sages, some adjustments to in-combat stealth abilities, and the following changes to the Resolve system:

We’ve also made adjustments to the Resolve system in Game Update 1.4. We’ve adjusted the gain logic of Resolve such that simultaneous and overlapping control effects no longer linearly add together their Resolve gain values. Instead, using a crowd control ability on an already controlled target now applies reasonable Resolve gain values by comparing the incoming control effect to the greatest of existing control effects.

As a result of these Resolve changes, unorganized teams will no longer pay huge penalties for overlapping control effects at critical moments. For example, it can frustrate players when pickup groups accidentally make a Marauder immune to Control because two or more teammates tried to stun him at once. The resulting unstoppable wrecking ball that the attacker transforms into made for a pretty poor experience for players trying to escape him. Additionally, we don’t like it when a Huttball ball carrier gets “fed” full Resolve by a disorganized pickup group trying to stop him from scoring by simultaneously landing multiple Control effects.

Check out the full Developer Blog for all the details. If you’re interesting in community opinions, also make sure and check out the feedback discussion thread on the official forums.

In sharp contrast to the Jedi and Sith who exist separately from the militaries, the armies of the Republic and the Empire have no mystical force to rely on. Their prowess and cunning come from training, discipline, and oftentimes a willingness to do things that a Jedi would cringe at. These front line troops have far more to lose than their Force wielding counterparts, and they know it. Whether they enlist for patriotism or power, to walk onto a battlefield and know that facing down a Jedi or Sith is a possibility takes courage that many in the galaxy don’t have. To come out victorious is an even bigger task.

The men and women in the militaries of Star Wars find themselves facing Rakghouls, Sith and almost every terror the galaxy has. Jump past the cut to learn more about these incredibly soldiers.

Hello all and welcome to another guide by myself, Elicas. This is my guide for Commando healing. I’m hoping to make this guide the ”go to” guide for all things Commando PvE, from healing your first instance to healing the MT at the latest raid boss. This guide will include which companions you can get, what their specialisations are, where to get them and also what crew skills work well for a Commando. I will not however, include any hidden companions or anything about the Story Arc. I’m not here to ruin you’re enjoyment of the game, there are no spoilers ahead!

FORCE Junkie Basics Series is an effort to help you decide and decipher between all the different Classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This series of video guides describes the eight basic classes in the game to help give you an idea of the classes mechanics and root abilities. Each of the eight different classes are broke up into mirrors; for example the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior are the two equivalent Imperial and Republic classes. Each of the eight basic classes are divided up into two separate Advanced Classes which are not covered in these guides.

So if you are new to the game and want to see a brief intro into each class, make sure you watch each video to get an idea of what you’re getting yourself into!

With last week’s NDA lift, many fan questions can finally be answered!

Jedi Knight Guardian / Sith Warrior Juggernaut
The Guardian and Juggernaut are iconic Star Wars roles. From a high level, they closely resemble tanking classes in other games by force leaping into battle and using melee abilities to gain threat. Feedback from the beta seems to imply that these advanced classes are slightly underpowered. Specific complaints include: limited area of effect damage, low up-front threat generation, low DPS from the non-Defense/Immortal talent trees. This is not to say they are less than capable tanks! Nonetheless, they are slightly more challenging to play in their current state, particularly with large area of effect pulls. The good news is that this minor balance issue is something BioWare can easily tweak in the near future.

Welcome back to the Basics series. Today’s special guest is the Trooper, a rifle touting commando that is the Republic’s answer to the Bounty Hunter. Like the Bounty Hunter video, you can expect to learn basic game mechanics about the class, like important stats, gear, and resource management. Enjoy.

One of the things I’m most looking forward to once the NDA is lifted higher is the revelation of the exact nature of TOR’s various healing classes. I love the fact that Commando Troopers, Scoundrel Smugglers, Mercenary Bounty Hunters, and Operative Agents can heal as well as Jedi Consulars and Sith Inquisitors. I love that The Old Republic has healers that wear different types of armor and are also formidable with a saber, blaster, or assault cannon. I love the fact that some of these healers heal by chucking med packs into the foray instead of merely waving their hands around. I love it all, but I find myself wanting to know how they heal, exactly.

Tough, Loyal, Brave and Powerful: These are all terms that can describe the next class we’ll be focusing on in “The Galaxy is Yours”. A far cry from the Sith Warrior, the Trooper relies on his gut instincts and a ton of firepower to get the job done rather than some hokey religion. These soldiers of the Republic have what it takes to stand toe-to-toe with Sith Lords and Bounty Hunters. But do you have what it takes to be one?

Articles continue to fly off the keyboards of the press, and today we get another one from IGN where they preview the combat of SWTOR.

I know that the intention behind the system is to make you consider whether you would rather use a special skill right that second or build up more of your class resource in order to pile on the damage a little later. The issue I take, I think, is that my basic attack didn’t have damage anywhere near comparable to even some of my weaker resource-using skills. It didn’t seem to scale very well, and it made swinging my Lightsaber at a group of droids feel more like wagging a twig.

The author goes on to explain the lack of auto attack and the feeling of that while playing. Instead of sitting there doing nothing and watching some numbers crawl up the screen, players are expected to use a keypress every time they expect to do something. The author then goes on to explain a quick observation of the Trooper vs. the Jedi Knight.

It didn’t help that the Knight has so few area-of-effect attack options, at least before level 20. In The Old Republic, most of the enemies you fight come in small groups. This is a design choice intended to make your character feel powerful from the get-go, but it ended up having the opposite effect after I saw what classes like the Trooper were capable of. My Jedi Knight had a single ability that damaged multiple targets, and the damage wasn’t particularly high. If so much of the combat didn’t emphasize multiple targets so heavily this wouldn’t have been an issue. The Knight also didn’t get any powerful crowd control, which made questing alone somewhat frustrating at times, and made me more reliant on my companion for mass killing power. Yes, the Knight (and especially the Guardian advanced class I chose) is meant for tanking in group situations, but BioWare may need to introduce skills that are more viable for solo-play or may risk discouraging low-level dedicated tanks.

It looks like Bioware has some balancing to do, at least from the perspective of this IGN Staff Writer. However, as we found out at NYCC, the developers are still putting out new builds and don’t seem to be slowing down!

Tentonhammer has put up their own Trooper class preview. Inside you’ll find a list of class abilities, story elements, combat impressions and more.

The Republic Trooper was, in short, a pleasant surprise. Rather than presenting a garden variety grunt slogging along in the wake of someone else’s orders, BioWare has woven an interesting narrative confronting some of the gut-twisting emotional conflicts that real life soldiers face. On occasion, and without spoiling any surprises, dialogue options required a fair amount of intelligence and adaptability in the field. As icing on the cake, the addition of Aric Jorgan provided resonance for even fairly mundane dialogue choices, and it’s clear that the BioWare trademark of meaningful in-game relationships is well represented in what is (undeservedly) SWTOR’s least popular class.

Make sure you check out the whole preview.