Star Wars The Old Republic‘s latest update and expansion, Shadow of Revan, has plenty of new things for players to check out. The biggest is the change to the skill system. The new Discipline system completely revamps how players get skills and even changes some specializations around.
It is a streamlined system that puts most of the old talents in a tree that you get automatically while leveling. All the choice isn’t gone however, as you get new utility points as you level.
The new system will take some time to get used to, but I’m here to help with the transition.
This guide will go over the new Discipline system in SWTOR including:
- Discipline System – How it works and what everything means.
- Utilities – How they work and how many you get.
Discipline System
Some are skeptical of the change, which is understandable, but I believe this new system is better overall.
It seems like you don’t have much of a choice anymore, and overall that’s true, but that doesn’t mean it is worse. The new system automatically gives you some of the skills you chose anyway.
It also still lets you choose Utilities, which have 3 different levels. I’ll go over those later, but you have to choose them carefully just like the old skill system.
First let’s go over the interface. Below is a skill calculator of the new system from Dulfy.net.
This shows what you see when selecting your specialization. Obviously this is a little different from what you see in-game because you’ll only see the class you chose.
Take note of the right side. You now choose which tree to activate. Before you just put skill points into whichever tree you wanted. It lets you know their combat role, a description of the tree, and the 4 active skill unique to that tree.
You can also look at the actual discipline tree before confirming. As you can see, some of the skills have been switched around. Guardians, for example, get Plasma Brand at the beginning of the tree, instead of the end.
Each class also gets a new move of some kind. Most of them replace an older skill. Now I’ll go over the actual skill tree.
The new system has a list of active skills, passive skills, and utility points. These go in a path from the top to the bottom and you don’t select which ones you get. Instead, you get them automatically while leveling.
Hovering over them gives a description of the skill and what level you get them. The green outline indicated an active skill and the blue outline is for passive skills. The triangles inside circles indicates utility points.
Utilities
If you look at the right side of the discipline tree, you’ll see the number of available utility points. You’ll also see all the utilities you can choose from. They are divided into 3 levels, Skillful, Masterful, and Heroic.
- You need 3 points in Skillful to unlock Masterful.
- 5 total points in either Skillful or Masterful to unlock Heroic.
You can put all 7 points in any combination you want, besides the levels that require unlocking. So you can put 5 in Skillful and 2 in Heroic if you want.
Utility points are extra things to help out during a fight. Generally they do things like increase mobility, help group members, or lower cooldowns on certain skills. Some, like Trailblazer for Guardians, increase damage of skills.
You can change your discipline tree just like the old skill trees by going to your class trainer. If you have the field respec Legacy perk, you can do it at anytime. Also, subscribers don’t pay credits to do this.
That covers the basics of the new discipline system in SWTOR. If you have any questions, or notice anything I might have missed, let me know in the comments!
