Thread: Mana, Energy, Force, WTF?

Hello everyone! This week I am going to look at a topic that has been confusing absolutely everyone, including myself. Everyone seems to be confused about what exactly drives the Jedi Consulars resource system. Is it mana? Is it energy? The Force? I did some research and I am here to deliver the answers, directly to your face. Read on.


This topic originally came up when one of our forum users, Pyrofox, came to Brandon and I looking for a concrete answer on what the hell the Consulars resource system actually was. It seemed that nowhere could anyone actually figure out a direct answer. At first I actually gave the wrong answer to more than one person as I myself was mistaken about the system. After looking into it, I can understand why. In some strange way, the Jedi Consular, the Sage and the Shadow all use different variations of the same system. With this, it would greatly depend on which AC specifically you were referring to get understand it correctly. In this case alone, BioWare has me sold on each AC being a different class since these mechanics operate very differently. Let's take a look at them one at a time.

*

The Jedi Consular

This is where TOROcast and all of the other fansites knowledge sits. Not one of us has been lucky enough to go beyond level 10 and experience the advanced classes. This is where the confusion started. The Jedi Consular seems to run on a basic Energy system called Force. The system works like this, your character has a base Force pool which is capped at 100 (not 100% confirmed on this). Some skills require Force in order to be cast and as you cast them it will deplete the Force pool, which starts at full. To counteract this, the Consular has a static regeneration rate of Force which is currently unknown.

For an example of this someone can look at the World of Warcraft Rogue or any of the Warhammer classes as they all operate on a form of Energy system. With this base in place you then move on to your Advanced Class and this is where things get tricky. Each AC comes with a passive skill which greatly effects how this class resource is controlled. Let's take a look at the Sage first.



Jedi Sage


Let us start with the skill that defines the difference between a base Consular and the Sage. Hang on after the tooltip and we will analyze why this difference is huge.

Force Studies - Passive
Versed in the Force, your maximum force is increased by 400. In addition, your Presence increases the rate at which your Force regenerates.
Acquired: Level 10

Let us take this skill apart piece by piece. First is the increase in your maximum Force pool by 400. That is a tremendous increase over what a base Consular has. This increase is great at illustrating that the Sage will not only revolve around a very steady skill usage, but that these skills will all be Force intensive. Many people have compared this system to a Mana system but it should be noted that this is a point where it is nothing like Mana. A Sage will have a fixed Force pool which is not augmented by stats. If their Force system acted like mana then the size of the Force pool would be effected by stats as well.

The second part however is where it is very much akin to mana and not energy. Typically all energy systems have a static regeneration rate. This allows the developers to balance their skill usage to ensure that they cannot "frontload" their DPS, or if they do, they will then be energy starved and unable to act in as powerful a fashion. However, we see here that like a mana system, the Consular will be able to stack Presence in order to increase their Force regeneration. This is a very big deal.

Ask any experienced raid healer, resource management is often one of the most important elements to being successful. We now know that resource management for this healer is all about spacing out skill usage in order to maintain a steady amount of Force. What I like about this system for a healer is that any healer knows the pain of being in a raid and going OOM (out of mana) and basically just staring at their monitor as their fellow guildmates die. With an Energy system, a player can still bottom out their resource pool, and that will still not be a good thing to do. However, now they will still be able to provide some healing, even if it is at a handicapped speed.

Jedi Shadow


The Jedi Shadow also takes the base system and expands on it a bit, although they do it by going in a much different direction.

Martial Studies - Passive
Increases the rate at which your Force regenerates by 3 per second.
Acquired: Level 10

As you can see the Jedi Shadow stays much more true to the traditional energy system. A small energy pool that is dictated by proper skill usage and energy management. Everything revolves around pace since the important part of your resource is its regeneration, not its base value. Not to call out World of Warcraft but I cannot help but associate the "rogue" playstyle of the Shadow directly to the Rogue from WoW, the similarities are simply too great.

In one of my earlier articles about the Shadow I linked to a stun-lock video which was a perfect illustration of how proper energy management directly leads to success in playing the class. Anyone who has played a WoW Rogue or any Energy based melee class previously should feel very comfortable in the Shadows shoes.

As you can now see the variation in resources between the two advanced classes is much greater than any of us originally suspected, especially mine. I can see why there was such confusion on how the resources actually worked for this class and it took a bit of research to get answers to my own questions. One word of caution. I did reference skills that have appeared in previous builds of the game which dictated a large part of my analysis in this article. Remember, any of this is subject to change so take it with a grain of salt.

For those who aren't playing the Consular, fret not! In the coming weeks I am going to analyze each class and their resources and expand on how this will directly effect their playstyle in game.

Hopefully this cleared up any confusion. Feel free to comment below or head to the discussion thread. Alternately you can always email me musco@torocast.com or send me your comments on twitter. Thanks for reading!

-eric


More...

I'm not sure that I agree with the statement that Shadows are similar resource wise than the Rogues of WoW, but it does sound like somewhat of a similar playstyle associated.