Advanced Classes: Episode II – Send In The Consulars

With E3 wrapping up we’ve had a few big reveals regarding AC’s and how they’ll function. Each Advanced class is going to promote a certain weapon style. Which destroys one of the major ideas I had for the Consular and that was a shared melee talent tree between the classes. My original vision for the class had one AC with a telekinetic DPS tree and a control tree with the second obviously being a healer/buffer. The shared melee tree would have meant that You could have had a combination similar to a Disciple of Khaine for the healers where you had to both actively heal and melee in order to unlock the full potential of that build. The other build possible with a shared melee tree would have been reminiscent of the Sentinel from KotOR. A dps class that uses the force and their lightsaber with equal skill. The latter is still very possible though as we’ll see.

Jedi Consular

Jedi Sage –  “A Consular is a specialized kind of Jedi. They focus more on cerebral Force skills. They’re our healers, our researchers, our seers.” This would be the more thoughtful of the two paths. Some might gripe about an entire advanced class dedicated to healing and buffing, but it makes sense from a lore standpoint for the class as there are many examples of Jedi Healers throughout the Expanded Universe. Sub-trees would consist of a more reactive traditional healing tree with your standard hots, quick heals, group heals, shielding via force absorbs, and imbued heals similar to prayer of mending from Warcraft . The second tree would focus more on buffing your party with regeneration auras for both health and combat resources, battle meditation that would increase speed, critical strike, damage reduction,  and other buffs for the group. Maybe this is where I’ll be able to see hints of my old Bard because I doubt my Knight idea would ever happen. I believe that the shared tree will be the telekinetic DPS tree and that would allow for multiple builds even within the AC’s without losing the core concept of the class which is not as IN YOUR FACE as the Knight is perceived.

Jedi Sentinel – After watching the newest cinematic for TOR everybody is in awe of the utter devastation caused by that lone female Jedi. The way she mixed and matched agile melee with deadly telekinetic force was something many people would want to attempt to replicate in the game. While I don’t think we’re going to toss around Darth Malgus like a rag doll I think that style of combat is both very interesting and unique enough to set it apart from the Knight. This AC would prefer the saberstaff because around half of it’s damage would come from direct melee albeit more agile than the Knight, but to unlock it’s full potential for dealing damage you’d have to mix in force powers as well. The ideal DPS build would be a 50/50 split of telekinetic damage (from the shared tree) and melee skills. One of the trees would be force enhanced melee and the other would be more about controlling the battlefield. This would provide many options that would be viable in both group and solo play.

One of the pictures I used was from a video entitled “The Art of the Saber” it is possibly the best fan-made lightsaber sequence I’ve seen. Here’s the whole thing for those of you that are interested.