SWTOR 7.0: Combat Styles

Combat Styles represents the newest way to play SWTOR by separating your story and gameplay. The way you pick your combat styles works differently for new and veteran players. During character creation, both types of player choose their origin story (knight,consular,agent,bounty hunter etc). Then, you pick your first combat style from a pool of all the tech classes if you chose a tech based origin story (bh, agent, smuggler, trooper), or force classes if you chose a force based origin story. Your base class, now called an origin story, no longer dictates any of the abilities you gain. Your abilities are solely determined by your current active combat style - the new term for advanced class.

The way you gain access to certain combat styles differs for new and veteran players. New players will not be allowed to choose mirror faction force classes for their first character. This means a jedi knight cannot pick the sith sorcerer, assassin, marauder or juggernaut combat styles at level 1. If however, you have unlocked the Dark 5 and/or Light 5 legacy achievements, any character you make - even a new one at level 1 - will gain access to the opposite faction's force classes. This does not matter for tech classes as there are no restrictions. If you choose a force combat style and later while playing, that specific character reaches the max alignment associated with the opposite faction, they will be given the choice to change their combat style to the opposite faction's mirror class. In practice this means if your jedi knight origin story who has chosen a jedi sage combat style reachs dark 5, you can swap your sage combat style for the sith sorcerer combat style.

Subscribers will have access to two (2) combat styles. Your combat style choices are permanent. Once you have chosen them, you will not be able to change them with the exception of reaching a high enough alignment and being offered the mirror combat style. Brand new players on their first character will not choose their second combat style til after they have reached or completed Act 3 of their origin story - this is to prevent information overload. For veteran players who have likely completed Act 3 numerous times, any new and current character will immediately be given the option to choose their second combat style when entering the game - even at level 1.

You can freely swap between your 2 combat styles with or without using the loadout system (detailed below) so long as you are out side a phase (operation, flashpoint, warzone). Likewise, you can swap between your disciplines within those combat styles the same way you can on live by using the field respecialization legacy perk or talking to the respec trainer on the fleet.

Pick your starting origin story (class in current terminology) for the story and your first combat style (advanced class) from the tech or force pool -> Then pick a second combat style depending on whether you have completed Act 3.

You will not be able to mix and match animations from mirrored specs.
Force based origin stories cannot pick tech based combat styles and vis versa. This is something the devs are open to exploring in the future and see combat styles as a step in this direction.

Loadouts allow you to save your current ability placements, gear, tacticals, current applied outfit and hotkeys to a loadout slot. Then when you swap loadouts with the press of a button, all of these things instantly change to a different saved preset. You will have maybe 4-5 loadouts depending on dev plans, subscription status etc - the exact number is yet to be confirmed but there will be more loadout slots than combat style slots. Loadout choices are NOT permanent and you can continuously update them as you change gear, outfits, abilities etc. Your loadouts are also not tied to any particular combat style, you could have 3 loadouts in one combat style for each of the three disciplines, you could even have multiple loadouts for a single discipline with different ABC choices and gear for pvp or pve.

While we don't know exactly what gearing will look like in 7.0, some aspects have been made apparent.
Current set bonuses will not work at level 80, the same way level 70 set bonuses don't work for level 75 characters.
Approximately 10% of combat tacticals that we use rotationally will be baked into base abilities. Some tacticals may remain in their current form, but don't expect them to.
The devs intend to create multiple new tiers of gear and the tiering system may continue throughout 2022 though nothing else was said about this.
New gear will appear on the PTS at a later stage.