Thread: Rrraaagggeee!!!

After the great reaction I received for my article on the Jedi Consulars resource system "Mana, Force, Energy, WTF?" I decided to hit the topic once again. Except this time it is for the other lover of lightsabers, the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior. Being how the Warrior is my own class of choice, I have done plenty of analysis of their resource system and now, I pass that onto you. Read on.


I have not had the luxury yet of playing the Jedi Knight, however I do have more playtime with the Sith Warrior than any other class. From a mix of my playtime and all known information, it does appear that the classes use the exact same resource mechanic. The Sith Warriors is called Rage and the Jedi Knights is called Focus. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to it simply as Rage for the remainder of the article.

Let's start with the basics of the system. Your character starts with a base of 0 Rage. There are certain abilities that grant you Rage, such as:

[*] Assault - Instant • Melee range
Inflicts your weapon damage spread across a series of quick melee attacks. Grants 2 Rage.

As you can see, every time you use this skill your character will gain 2 Rage. There are other ways to gain rage also, such as Forms:

Soresu Form - Instant • 1.5s cd
While in Soresu Form the Warrior gains 1 Rage when attacked by an enemy once every 3 seconds. Reduces the amount of Rage generated by Assault by 1. Also increases chance to parry or deflect incoming attacks by 5%

Now that you have seen how to generate Rage, what do you do with it? Well, as stated previously your character starts at a base of 0 and then use skills and triggers to gain Rage, which currently has a maximum resource pool of 12. Once you have Rage you can then use other skills which require Rage in order to use, such as:

Vicious Slash - Rage cost: 3 • Instant • Melee range
Vicious weapon strike that deals high damage to a single target.

Impale - Rage cost: 8 • Instant • Melee range
Impales the target with your main-hand saber for very high damage and knocks the target to the ground briefly.

So to sum it up, your character starts with 0 Rage, they then use skills such as Assault to gain Rage up to a maximum of 12. As they gain Rage they get access to more powerful skills such a Impale which will then cost Rage in order to use.

Effect on Gameplay

As you can see, playing a SW or JK properly will revolve entirely around proper Rage management. I can tell you from my playtime that the skills that require Rage are quite a bit more powerful than those that build it. Although I certainly don't have math to back it up yet I can assure you that maximizing the usage of your Rage abilities will be key. For those who are not familiar with how a class like this might work, I recommend looking at the World of Warcraft Warrior which uses a Rage mechanic which is fairly identical to this class.

One thing that has always been great about a class like this is that they have a never ending supply of their resource. You will never run into a circumstance where you cannot act. At worst you could continuously spam Assault forever. It may not be efficient but it is certainly possible. Because of this I always felt that this mechanic is great for beginners as it is very simple to grasp the concept of and you wont hit the frustration of being action-limited because of your resource.

Just like all well developed systems, anything that is simple to learn is often difficult to master and that is certainly true here as well. Once you put your min/maxxer hat on, this is where things get complicated, especially for BioWare. What BioWare will need to be cautious of is how they balance Rage usage. Their are two things that can commonly become issues with a Rage mechanic, and they tend to run counterproductive to each other.

First is being Rage starved. This means that the player will feel the need to constantly and excessively use Rage builders in order to use their more powerful skills. Although this isn't necessarily a huge issue, it tends to frustrate players when they cannot use all of their skills. Secondly, is an excess of Rage. This will often happen due to a large number of procs, talents, etc which grant the character Rage. The reason this sometimes becomes a problem is that a player should not always remain at or near their maximum Rage. Otherwise this means they will constantly be using their most powerful skills. This can also reduce the "skill" required to play the class and it can turn into just spamming your most powerful skill.

One thing I am sure many of you came to this article for is a reflection of the resources within each advanced class. From the information we have seen so far it appears that the Rage mechanic will remain in tact in each AC. They may generate Rage differently through different skills (such as stances) or different talents (passive process) but sadly we just do not know any of this information yet to speculate on. Especially talents.

Hopefully you have a better understanding of the Rage mechanic and its effect on SWTOR. Down the road as we learn more I will certainly revisit the topic, hopefully next time with some math! What do you think? Is Rage too simple? Not enough diversity between AC's? Comment below or head to the discussion thread. Also, you can always email me musco@torocast.com or throw me your comment on Twitter. Thanks for reading.

-eric


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Great post.

I shall be playing Sith warrior at launch and I do agree with you. Sith warrior sounds identical to a warrior from wow.

I really hope they do get the rage balance correct as you mentioned. Another mistake they could make is in PVP. If Sith Warriors don't get enough "stun breakers" this runs the risk of us being kited by other classes such as the bounty hunter.

Have you unlocked any stun breakers yet? Are they useful?

By the looks of the abilities list, a lot of abilities generate rage, opposed to taking it away like in WoW. So I'm assuming this 'rage' is used for something else, such as adding power to your basic attacks?